Hens Dancing (10 page)

‘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.

‘Cool,' says Felix, ‘I bet the donkey's gone white and wrinkly from the chlorine now. Let's go and see her, but let's dive first and see if she left anything in the pool.' He makes a mad face, with googly eyes and tongue out, which enchants The Beauty, and cartwheels back into the water.

Giles races off with my camera to find the donkey, shouting back to Felix, ‘Its coat may have shrunk by being washed. Maybe it could go in the
Guinness Book of Records.
Come and see.'

Sir Nicholas, who has been on gin and tonic while we were all sipping bitter lemon, is now beaming and small bubbles of perspiration are forming on his nose and upper lip. He graciously asks us to lunch in the house. I decline, but am forced, basic civility demanding, to offer him a share in our nasturtium sandwiches, knowing that the boys will be furious if he accepts and will quarrel over who gives up their Twiglets to him. He accepts, and making a few remarks about leaving a lady to sunbathe in privacy, takes himself off into the house, promising to return at twelve-thirty.

I settle down on a rug in the shade with The Beauty and
A la recherche du temps perdu,
which I always seem to have in the bottom of my bag, but never take out unless there is absolutely nothing else to read, not even a crisp packet. The Beauty coos and pats my shoulders and I begin to feel as languorous as Marcel himself, when my ear is invaded by a cold wet snout. It is Jack, Sir Nicholas's Labrador, and with him Leo, Sir Nicholas's eighteen-year-old son. Leo, blond, brawny and very California-beach-bum, lollops towards the pool, hurdling the box hedging. The enchanting, blonde cause of this athleticism follows wearing the merest hint of a bikini. Felix and
Giles return from their donkey-watch in time to see Leo execute an elaborate dive. We wait for him to surface, expressions of impressed awe at the ready, but disaster has struck. Leo rises from the pool with blood cascading down his face, his hand pressed against a wound in his forehead. He staggers out and collapses on the edge of the pool. The blonde rushes to his side, ministers for a second, then shudders and recoils, throwing something small and bloody onto the ground.

‘Urgh! Gross. A bit of your head's come off,' she says.

Giles and Felix rush forward. ‘Let's see, where is it? What bit?'

Leo groans. ‘Quick, pick it up,
pick it up.'
But as if in a nightmare Jack the Labrador snuffles towards the small red dollop the blonde has chucked. Leo roars, ‘That's mine,' and lurches, but too late – Jack's pink tongue scoops up the itinerant piece of flesh and it is gone. Slobbering goodwill, the Labrador moves over to Leo and affectionately licks his bloodstained face. Leo and the blonde sob unrestrainedly in one another's arms. Giles photographs the wet concrete where the bit of Leo's head had lain.

July 19th

At last, Giles and Felix have stopped kicking furniture and moaning ‘I'm bored' every three minutes, and are building a tree house. The handbag crew are coming tomorrow to set up, and David will be here later today to prepare the ground for them, I am not sure why or how. Have not seen David since bacchantine feast and am apprehensive. How much can he remember? I have toe-curling memories of a nearly naked ping-pong tournament, a show-off session dancing on the dinner table and subsequent falling off, and, finally, singing ‘Jolene' in a much too earnest voice. Oh, God.

David is early. The sight of him, carrying a ladder out of the barn with Felix, gives me a nasty fright as I trip across the yard in my dressing gown and duck-beak-yellow wellies. These are a vast improvement on the red ankle-length ones, and were sent by Rose with a gloomy note saying, ‘The nearest we'll get to sunshine.'

Consider it best to ignore Felix and David until they speak, so set to work feeding the hens and staring at the sky. Hard to believe that sludge-grey clouds ever existed, and especially last week, as we are now immersed in sunshine and even the evenings are silk-warm and glowing with rose-stained sunsets. A puff of feathers and hot air greets me when I open the hen-house door in pursuit of eggs. No eggs, just a broody hen, clamped like
a tea cosy over her clutch. I stretch my hand cautiously under her and count seven eggs. David, the ladder and Felix approach, David unnecessarily jaunty for this hour.

‘Hi, Venetia, I love your boots. Can you come and give us a hand with this ladder?' He is not going to mention the party, his expression is preoccupied and distant. What a relief that men are so peculiar. We march in convoy with the ladder down to the wood, where Giles is perched high in an oak tree in his pyjamas. Peering down through rippling shade, he is green-skinned and ethereal in the underwater light. The wood is cool and dark, dew in exquisite droplets sparkles from the heart of curled leaves and the ends of grasses. David busies himself laying waste to a nettle wall with a scythe and I peer about me taking deep breaths of perfect air. Anxious to commune properly with nature, I raise my face and shut my eyes, still seeing bruise-blue shade in my mind's eye. Reverie hideously interrupted by a shaken-branch shower and the splat of dewdrops down my back and front. Giles sniggers.

‘You look such an old hippy when you do that, Mum.'

Felix is frowning in deepest disapproval of me, and his eyes are swamped with sudden tears.

‘Why can't we be a
proper
family? With Daddy here and you being normal, getting dressed before you come outside and stuff?'

If he had taken up the scythe and chopped off my
legs I could hardly have been more shocked or upset. Open and close my mouth a few times while battling with inner self. ‘Poor Felix,' says Inner Self. ‘That little swine,' says Outer Self. Mercifully, Inner Self takes over. Hug him, stroking his wild doormat hair. He begins to recover, wipes his nose on the back on his hand and in cajoling tones makes the most of an opportunity.

‘Well, if you can't be normal, or married, Mummy, could you get us a PlayStation?'

‘Come on, Felix, we need you up here.'

Before we can begin negotiations, David has picked him up and thrust him into the tree.

While he fumbles for a foothold, I scuttle back to the house and the solace of
The Grand Sophy
(nineteenth time of reading, I note from the tally I have marked up inside the back cover), and some cooing time with The Beauty.

July 20th

The silliness of the handbag crew knows no bounds. Most absurd is the photographer's assistant, a boy called Coll with a black quiff and orange velveteen Bermuda shorts. I overhear him asking Giles and Felix about the hens.

‘Hi, guys, will you show me your mum's hens?' he says, crouching in front of them in a down-to-your-level
manner which backfires as it makes his eyes level with their tummy buttons. ‘I hear they wear trousers.'

There is an expectant pause. Felix grudgingly fills it.

‘They wear flares, actually.'

Coll the Doll is not beaten yet.

‘That's really great, guys, isn't it? Does your mum knit the trousers, or is there a shop around here where she buys them?'

The silence following this priceless comment is golden and laden with incredulity. I peer round the corner of the house, where I have been loitering to listen, in time to see Giles and Felix burst into peals of laughter. Felix's face is beetroot with mirth, and Coll is rooted where he squats, twiddling a pair of sunglasses which look like the plastic goggles that go with the strimmer, but apparently cost as much as a small pony. The children are merciless, sniggering and repeating, ‘Does your mum knit the trousers?' over and over. Coll has assumed an expression of puzzled daftness, and I am considering rescuing him when the back door opens and Michelle the tiny stylist pops her head out.

‘Coll, can you come please?' The hens, who live with an ear to the ground waiting for doors to open and food to be hurled into the yard, scuttle round from the garden, arriving at Coll's feet and fixing him with their beady yellow eyes. Coll stares in awe at their apricot bloomers. ‘Wow, they are so cosmic,' he whispers, and is dragged into the house by Michelle.

I tag along, in search of The Beauty, who has been following photographic proceedings with interest. I find her ensconced in the bathroom surrounded by a sea of turquoise tulle, being a handbag prop. She has been given her own small reticule, apparently fashioned from a toy teddy bear, complete with pink sequin lips, matching ostrich-feather tutu and tiara. She is thrilled, loves the camera and bats her eyelashes and claps whenever it is pointed at her. The boys and I leave her at the centre of a ring of people all vying for her smile, and head off to pick strawberries. It is jam-making season, and having positively decided not to do any of this apron-string stuff now I am a single mother, was faintly appalled to find Felix in the larder this morning, matching jars to lids.

‘What are you doing that for?'

‘There isn't any jam left, so we'll have to make some today.'

I try to get him to see sense. ‘But we're about to go away to Cornwall, to have our summer holiday; we don't need to bother with jam-making.'