Hens Dancing Page 7

  My mother arrives for tea and bonding with The Beauty prior to attending Giles’s concert, and I leave her with her granddaughter and Gawain, under the guise of fetching something from the fridge, and charge back into my study.

  When I come out three-quarters of an hour later, The Beauty is under the table with the remains of the sketchbook and a potato, there is a vodka bottle empty on the table, a large plate brimming with cigarette butts and my mother is singing her party piece, ‘Three Craws Sat Upon The Wall’. I try to dissuade her and Gawain from coming to the concert, but she bridles, lights another cigarette and inhales deeply and with feeling. ‘I am not missing Giles’s moment of glory,’ she insists. ‘Neither am I,’ says Gawain, swaying slightly in the background.

  We are late. Giles scans the room anxiously, and his frown deepens when he sees my party. Gawain escapes and looms over to the row of chairs and looks around, his jaw squared as if for combat. Combat immediately turns up, in the form of the headmaster. Giles is hopping with alarm, but I decide that I can do nothing and affect ignorance. Mercifully the lights go down and the first squeaks and moans of the violin drown Gawain’s inevitable ousting from the top row and his return to our party. He and my mother fall asleep with their mouths open for the rest of the concert. Gawain snores. Giles and I agree afterwards that this, although obvious and ill-mannered, had been a blessing.

  June 30th

  Gawain shows no sign of leaving, or of doing any work, but he is very keen to come to all the children’s school events. Initially I am grateful, Charles having called yesterday evening, from a blipping and buzzing mobile telephone, to say that he and Helena are taking a much-needed break and will be in St Tropez for the week.

  ‘I’ll do a long weekend when I get back,’ he says grandly, and is cut off before I can complain. Gawain overhears the conversation, and takes a dim view.

  ‘The guy has become a total stiff. He’s started to believe in his own product and has had his brain embalmed by that ridiculous pygmy. I can’t believe we were ever friends.’ He pours himself a large measure of vodka, adds tonic and swigs it before adding, ‘You should have married me instead, Venetia.’

  This is a favourite theme this week, brought on by a schism with the manic depressive girlfriend. It is well meant and very exhausting, as it involves him performing in character as perfect husband. He realises that the night of Giles’s concert did not go well, but it has only put him on his mettle to do better at the many other school events there are. He thinks he looks like everyone else’s husband, and takes much pride in this. However, he does not, and is a source of deep mortification to the boys. First, none of the fathers wears Birkenstock sandals, nor do they have their toenails painted purple and henna webs up to their ankles. Second, none of them addresses his wife loudly as ‘babe’, as in: ‘Babe, you said I could be in the fathers’ race, so I had to wear shorts.’ Gawain starts stripping off his clothes at Felix’s sports day to emerge in PE shorts and an oversized white T-shirt with ‘Betty Ford Clinic’ written on it in huge capitals. To my amazement, Felix is delighted.

  ‘Mummy, look at Gawain, he’s definitely going to win, he’s got the right clothes. Daddy never wins, so it’s really good that he couldn’t come. Who’s Betty Ford?’

  Felix jumps about beside me, too excited to keep still, and Gawain jogs down to the start, hopping and sidestepping in the manner of a top athlete. Mrs Wilson, Felix’s headmistress, puts him in the middle lane, and with much giggling fires the starting pistol. Gawain wins by miles, and once again looks nothing like a regulation father coming back from winning a race, as he is leaping about and catcalling in front of a small, puffing straggle of portly men with slacks and ties and cross, red faces. Felix cheers loudly and unsportingly, and I forgive Gawain for the concert and buy a wine box as a treat for the evening.

  July 3rd

  Gawain receives a telephone call asking him to submit a portrait for a show in Cork Street in September. He has to send the picture within a week. He is disconsolate.

  ‘I haven’t got a portrait of anyone, not even a dog,’ he complains to my mother at one of the daily drinking sessions they have ritualised in this fun-packed week. We are in my mother’s garden having attended the very last school concert. The boys are fishing with The Gnome, and I am revelling in not having to care that their uniforms are torn and covered in mud. I don’t even have to care that it is late, the summer sun is low over the wheat field behind us and the swaying green-gold is flooded orange in a path from the horizon almost to the yard. Our small yellow table slants gently towards the river, following the inclination of the lawn. To minimise any drunken sensation, we have plunged the legs of our kitchen chairs into the ground, and sit around with our chins at table height sipping Mateus Rosé and feeling light-headed. My mother has supplied straw hats for the whole party, and two for The Beauty, now sitting in her sombrero on the grass, ready to set sail. My mother has a bee-keeper’s hat on and is busy smoking cigarettes behind the veil.

  ‘The best way to keep the midges off,’ she insists, then, suddenly inspired, flips back her veil and lurches forward on her chair. ‘I know, why don’t you paint Venetia?’

  This appeals strongly to me, and I am just simpering and beginning to say, ‘Oh, no, why would he want to—’ when Gawain leaps up shrieking.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ll do it. I’ve even got sketches of her. I can see it now. Let’s start right away.’

  The appeal is already dwindling for me; I was hoping for a glamorous pose with draped silken garments and so forth. My post-school look of tired hair and pink T-shirt generously coated in custard creams is not good. There is no stopping Gawain, though. He takes about twenty polaroids of me, mostly with a view of the inside of my nostrils as he is lying on the grass throughout the photo session. Then he vanishes into the house and orders a taxi.

  ‘I’ve got to hit town and get my canvas sorted,’ he explains. ‘I’ll be back to collect my stuff as soon as I can.’

  Bemused, my mother and I wave him off just as Giles and Felix approach with two silver, sleek trout, sopping wet clothes and huge grins on their faces.

  ‘The Gnome has lit a fire and we’re going to cook them,’ says Felix, and scooping up The Beauty and her hat, we remove to the meadow for supper.

  July 7th

  Egor the bull terrier is in residence as my mother has gone to Hadrian’s Wall on a bus with The Gnome and his sculptor friends, the Foxtons. The sculptors are still keen to adorn my mother’s garden, but have moved on from their wooden pig carcass idea and now want to install a series of boxes using sheep hurdles, in which they are going to place various cuts of meat and see what happens to them. My mother is looking forward to this installation as she will not have to buy Egor any dog food for a while. Neither she nor I can understand why Hadrian’s Wall is relevant, but it’s a nice place to go at this time of year, and my mother is always game.

  Work and filth mount up in my house, as well as Egor’s hairs and horrible trails of saliva which he spools about the place whenever he has a drink of water. It is all beginning to look very like Miss Havisham’s, with no chance of improvement as I have no one to remove The Beauty while I scrub lavatories and so forth. This is my favourite kind of work avoidance, so I am desperate to find a Granny stand-in. Had not realised until now how mother-dependent I am. Perhaps I need to see a shrink? Actually, I’d rather spend the money on a sundress.

  Desmond is still in residence at my mother’s house, but is busy whittling a walking stick and says this will take him a week at least so he can’t help. Inspiration strikes when stuffing yet more plastic rubbish into the bulging toy cupboard. I am able to create a dazzling sparkle on two lavatories and a bath upstairs while The Beauty bowls along the corridor inside a yellow nylon pop-up tent. It is a huge success. Even achieve a few minutes of paper-shuffling by pushing a couple of biscuits into the tent through a small slot in the zipped-up door.

  July 8th

  A big nit harvest this evening. Fe
lix has forty-seven, Giles has twenty, I have probably at least a thousand but fail to evict them because Rags appears in the bathroom, apparently covered in young, podded broad beans. Closer inspection reveals the smooth purple-grey polyps to be ticks. Gross. Have to light matches and plunge red-hot match head onto each tick to dislodge. Giles is very keen on this, and watching his face lit with intent concentration and joy, I wonder if he had a past life as a professional torturer in the Spanish Inquisition. He says not, but maybe he has yet to unlock the memories. Repeated singeing of each tick only makes the little creeps waggle their legs harder. I give up, having burnt my fingers, used all the matches and singed Giles’s eyelashes. Giles is as hard to remove from the terrier’s side as one of the ticks, giggling and returning for ‘Just one last go at them, please, Mum.’

  He soon stops laughing, though, when I try to persuade him to wear mascara to cover up the damage.

  ‘I am not wearing make-up. I’m going to Cambridge,’ is all he can say.

  I give up, but am nervous, as Charles is having him this weekend, and Helena the poison dwarf specialises in noticing my crimes and errors of motherhood.

  July 9th

  Charles rings the day before he is due to collect the boys and asks to have The Beauty as well. I am outraged. ‘How on earth do you think you would manage a one-year-old? You’ve never changed a nappy—’

  Such a relief that the telephones with TV screens are not yet invented, as in my fury I post myself through the hatch between kitchen and study where the telephone lives, and land, one arm flailing, the other clamped to phone, in the huge pile of photographs, faxes and pages torn from magazines which is my archive.

  ‘Venetia, what are you doing?’ Irritability raises the pitch of Charles’s voice and makes him sound like Dame Edna but not Australian. ‘Helena will be there to help me with the baby, and I understand from Felix and Giles that she is a very biddable child.’

  I do not answer, as I am craning my neck to keep the biddable child within sight as she makes off down towards the wood, a carefully selected Rosa Mundi bloom in her hand and a pair of pants off the laundry pile slung rakishly around her neck. She stops by the steps down to the wood and turns back to look at the house before shredding the rose and stuffing a fistful of petals into her mouth. I must save her from the nettles ahead.

  ‘All right, have her then!’ I scream down the mouthpiece of the telephone and, slamming it down, run to scoop up The Beauty. She is enraged and bites me. I hope she does the same to Helena.

  July 10th

  Crunch of car tyres on gravel is terrible death-sentence drum roll in my present state of high anxiety and misery. It is Charles, early, coming to take the children for two nights. Can hardly bear to wave them off, and have to clamp teeth together in unnatural grimacing smile so as not to cry. Giles and Felix sense my pitiful state and hug me tightly. ‘Don’t worry, Mum, we’ll look after her,’ says Felix, robbing me of my last scraps of self-control. Things go badly from this moment. The Beauty’s lower lip trembles and dissolves in sympathy, and Felix threatens to collapse too, but is bolstered by the appearance of Fabius Bile, the Chaos Commander he has been longing for, from Charles’s pocket.

  Charles struggles with the car seat while The Beauty and I skim about the house, weeping and gathering up suitcases and vital toys. Charles’s ears are puce with frustration and he cannot fit The Beauty’s seat. ‘This is unspeakable,’ he says through tight lips. Giles, who arranged himself in the front seat of the car hours ago, looks up from his Warhammer magazine.

  ‘Oh, I’ll do it for you, Dad,’ he says, and puts the seat in the car and The Beauty in the seat in moments. The Beauty is much cheered by being in the car, and crows joyously and claps as all my precious children sweep down the drive with their father, Rags in hot pursuit as far as the gate.

  July 12th

  Am woken by plopping noise and murmuring from the gravel below my window. It is nine o’clock on Sunday morning, so it can’t be a burglar. I leap bravely out of bed and open the curtains to a radiant morning and Giles, Felix and The Beauty sitting on the lawn with their possessions around them. Heave the window up and poke head out, bracing my shoulders so as not to be guillotined when the sash cord breaks.

  ‘Where’s your father?’

  Three faces upturn and smile. I would be thrilled if not livid with Charles.

  ‘Hello, Mummy, he dropped us off. He said we should wake you up, so we’ve been throwing stones at your window.’

  ‘Have you had breakfast?’

  ‘Yes, we went to the Happy Eater hours ago. Now we’re hungry again.’

  Bliss-of-motherhood sensation only lasts as I waft downstairs tying dressing gown and humming in time-honoured fashion. The Beauty bursts into tears when she sees me open the door. I pick her up and find a stigmata of eczema has appeared behind her ear, her nappy is dirty and green poo has squelched all over her pyjamas. Giles and Felix are similarly repulsive, both having Happy Eater ketchup and egg yolk around their mouths.

  ‘Helena’s mother had a heart attack, so they had to drop us off and go to see her.’ Giles wriggles like a tick as I pin him down and wipe his mouth with the corner of my dressing gown. I am suspicious of this excuse.

  ‘Why didn’t he ring me?’

  ‘You didn’t hear the phone.’

  ‘Did she have the heart attack at dawn this morning?’

  ‘No, but I don’t think Helena likes looking after The Beauty. The Beauty threw her supper on the floor last night and while Helena was clearing it up she pulled her hair.’

  ‘And The Beauty bit her,’ adds Felix with a broad smile. I am determined not to picture the scenes there must have been. Waves of exhaustion pour over me, and I trudge upstairs to change The Beauty, hugging her tightly despite wafts of nappy scent which wreathe her.

  Have spent regressive sulking-teen-style weekend with terrible withdrawal symptoms from not having The Beauty issuing her mad gurgling commands from dawn until dusk. Insomnia both nights, followed by heavy morning sleep yesterday from seven a.m. until lunchtime. Could have done with the same today, and the early return of the children is therefore ghastly. Awful jet lag sensation pervades, and I can suddenly think of vast range of places I’d rather be this morning than in the kitchen breakfasting with offspring. Self-loathing kicks in when they are all sweetly munching peanut butter and jam on toast. This is what I have been monstrously missing while spooning down my sad meals of cold baked beans straight from tin for the past forty-eight hours. I am blessed and must not forget it. So busy despising myself that I forget to ring Charles’s mobile phone and berate him for irresponsibility towards Little Miss Biddable and her brothers.

  July 17th

  The boys are neo-teenagers now and don’t wake up until mid-morning. This gives me several hours in which to worship The Beauty and get round to dressing her and myself. We don’t need to wear much; by nine o’clock sunbeams are everywhere and the morning dew has evaporated, leaving just a trace of damp warmth for bare feet on the grass. I am sure that The Beauty needs a hat for her matutinal stroll, but she knows better. No sooner is this confection (delightful sorbet-pink with a frill) clamped on her head than she removes it, saying ‘Ha ha’ in the manner of Tommy Cooper. We perambulate very slowly past the borders, with the hat propelled up onto her head by me, and back to the ground by her. She loves this game and lapses into her most guttural growl to emphasise her pleasure.

  Inspired by the garden’s high-summer loveliness, I plan a day of gracious living with a lunch party under the lime tree. The Beauty will wear a yellow gingham pinafore and we will have tortilla and salad with crimson nasturtiums. Of course, this is just fantasy. Felix and Giles appear, rubbing their eyes and demanding cereal, and take a dim view of gracious living.

  ‘You said we could go swimming today and have a picnic. We want to go to the Sampsons and practise water-bombing.’

  I compromise by putting nasturtiums in their ham sandwiches and we arrive at the Sampsons to
find Sir Nicholas glowering as minions scuttle to and fro around and the pool, which is not quite full but very clean. Felix and Giles hurl themselves into the water, and my heart sinks as I contemplate a day of exchanging platitudes with Sir Nicholas as the toll for using his pool. Sir Nicholas nods a greeting, and I have to bite my lip to stop myself suggesting that he, like The Beauty, should be wearing a hat. The sun is bouncing shinily off his bald patch and his cheeks are mottled purple. It looks painful and wrong. He glides towards me, stopping at the knee-high box hedging and bending forward to kiss my cheek.

  ‘Venetia, my dear, how lovely to see you all. Lucky you didn’t come yesterday,’ he says, picking up a springy twig and slashing at the lupin seed-heads in the border. ‘That idiot daughter of mine left the gate open and the donkey fell in the pool in the middle of the night. Ripped the cover and nearly died. Had to call the fire brigade. Bloody teenagers. Pool still hasn’t filled completely, so watch your heads, boys.’

  Giles and Felix, hearing me exclaim, heave themselves out of the water and drip over to us. ‘What happened to the donkey? Is it dead? How did you get it out?’

  Sir Nicholas, soothed by all the attention, gives us a drink from a fridge in the pool hut and enlarges. The main thrust being that Phoebe is in big disgrace and has gone back to her mother in London. Sir Nicholas thinks her behaviour is craven and wet. She should be looking after her donkey. The poor donkey, as he coyly puts it, ‘soiled the pool’ in its terror, and was finally led up the steps and out by a fireman. Phoebe had apparently paid no attention to the donkey throughout the emergency, but had chosen this epic moment to begin a flirtation with one of the firemen. Sir Nicholas had found it necessary to threaten her with grounding. All this at dead of night and lit only by the moon, with the church tower looming above the fire engine. Giles and Felix are rapt.