Chaos of clothing carpets my bedroom as I attempt to find something to wear. I am going for a drink with David to celebrate the near-completion of the bathroom. Initially refused David’s kind invitation, issued just after an outburst on my part at Digger, whom I caught burying a newly bought loaf of bread under the yew chicken. Having stubbed my toe kicking him, I marched round to complain to David, and felt lame and crabby when he spoke first and asked me to go to the pub. Giles overheard me saying rudely, ‘Sorry, I can’t. I’m busy’, as I stood, arms crossed, leaning on the door of David’s ambulance with Digger cowering within. ‘Yes, you can,’ Giles interrupted. ‘Jenny can babysit. You shouldn’t make up excuses.’ Tried to tread on his toe to shut him up but he skipped out of the way, leaving me red-faced in front of David. Had to say yes to diminish embarrassment.
Jenny, who has a gold tooth, hennaed hair and a flourishing business growing coriander and basil in poly tunnels for local supermarkets, arrives with her boyfriend. He is called Smalls. ‘It’s a nickname,’ Jenny explains, unnecessarily. Smalls turns out to be one of David’s henchmen, and as well as looking like a Warhammer, he is an avid collector of these oddities. Felix and Giles cannot wait to get me out of the house so that they can leap into pitched battle with Smalls and a cohort of wild woodland elves. The Beauty doesn’t need me either. She is fast asleep in her cot, exhausted by the arrival of three new teeth this week. Despite being redundant, I hang around at home making myself late and telling Jenny dozens of ways to deal with The Beauty, should she wake: ‘But of course she won’t, this is just in case.’
Take short cut to unknown pub selected by David, and become very lost. The Wheatsheaf, East Bessham is somewhere in a valley fringed with bluebell woods, and I soon stop worrying about the time and am enchanted by my route down narrow roads which tunnel through banks scattered with pink campion and buttercups. The evening light is a luxurious gold after a day of energetic sunshine, and I take deep breaths and revive from children’s bedtime and am glad that I bothered to wear my ironed skirt and not jeans. Just becoming parched and anxious when the pub appears in front of me, separated from the road by a little stream and enhanced by branches of fragrant lilac waving pinkly over the garden wall. I park the car and dawdle across a peeling blue footbridge, noting its rustic charm and its excellent credentials for the Troll and Billygoat game with Felix. Once within the pub walls I quickly find David on a cropped lawn playing boules with a gang of men. I pretend to be interested in rules and scores for a few seconds before saying brightly, ‘Let me get you a drink,’ and diving into the bar.
At the bar, I become panic-stricken by the thunderbolt reality that I am out having a drink with a man. On my own. What will we talk about? He is bound to think I am pursuing him. Am I pursuing him? Why have I come? What shall I drink? I’m starving. Will I look deliberately suggestive if I have crisps?
The barman has been patiently waiting, but begins to shift from foot to foot and roll his eyes. I take a deep breath and order the first drink that enters my head. ‘Two Pimms, please, and some prawn cocktail crisps.’ David appears next to me and is drawn, as I am, to silent contemplation of the lengthy procedure of the Pimms’ creation. The barman must be about to do his cocktail exam. Everything is going in – strawberries, lemon, cucumber, orange, apple, a glacé cherry and finally a pink paper umbrella. On the bar, surrounded by pints of Guinness and halves of cider, the Pimms are lush and outrageous, like a couple of dolled-up transvestites on a commuter train. I am thrilled with my choice of drink. I hand one of the confections to David with a flourish, along with a pink foil packet of prawn cocktail crisps.
‘Shall we sit outside, or have you finished the game?’ Have regained my nerve, am full of renewed poise, and am looking forward to my drink. Another boules player is at the bar now, and his face is a mask of severity as he gazes at David with his pink drink. David’s lime-green shirt seems to me the perfect backdrop to the cocktail, and, emboldened by the first gulp of Pimms, I say so, loudly.
David puts his glass down on a low table behind him. ‘I think I’ll have a pint as well as this,’ he says hastily, and the boules player unbends visibly and turns back to his cronies.
I drink all of David’s Pimms as well as my own, and eat both packets of prawn cocktail crisps. I am thoroughly enjoying myself and can’t believe I was nervous. I share my feelings with David.
‘I am so glad Giles made me come out, because now I realise that it’s no big deal to go for a drink with a man.’ He looks taken aback for a moment, but rallies.
‘Would you like another drink?’
‘Yes, I’d love one, and shall we have something to eat? I’m starving.’ Am vaguely aware that protocol would have preferred him to say this, but he hasn’t and I have, so what the hell. He reaches for the menus from behind the bar, and passes me one.
‘Go ahead. I won’t. I thought you might have eaten with your kids, so I had something earlier, but don’t let that stop you.’
My stomach shrivels like a slug with salt poured on it, and I feel blushing embarrassment rise in a tide up my neck and onto my face.
‘Oh, God, I can’t. I’m not hungry at all, actually, I forgot I’d had those crisps. I’m full, in fact. Completely full.’
David is grinning. ‘Only teasing. Come on, let’s order quickly before they close the kitchen. I’ll have a steak sandwich, what about you?’
Can only just bring myself to say, ‘Me too, please.’
June 2nd
Am enjoying a most satisfactory morning, having spent half an hour scraping dried Weetabix and worse off The Beauty’s high chair. It looks lovely now, and she is in it, dressed for success in shocking-pink tights and leopard-skin miniskirt. Have never seen anything as delicious as this miniskirt, which is made of soft felt and is full like a tutu. It came by post this morning from Rose, accompanied by a card announcing her arrival. Decide to go and get her room ready to avoid doing any work for a bit longer.
I have a setback with the joys of morning upon reaching the spare bedroom. Sidney had peed on the pillows, and even more insultingly, padded little black raspberry footprints over the crisp sheets to reach his lavatory. I fling open the window and hurl the gross, damp pillows out, shrieking, ‘Urgh, bastard cat. God, I loathe you.’
Muffled echo of the ‘Urgh’ noise comes from outside, and I peer out to see David and Smalls, who have just arrived in the ambulance, with the pillows which must have landed on their heads. Quickly step back from the window and hope they haven’t seen me as I can’t be bothered to explain.
The morning improves again when a large delivery lorry hums up the drive with my order from a poncey garden catalogue. The company is called Haughty Hortus, which I think is nearly as good a name as Teletubbies. I have bought a Vita Weeder, which is a chic trowel, and a glamorous fork called a Daisy Pusher. Their arrival necessitates a morning in the garden. The Beauty enjoys this, and almost eats her first worm. Well, I hope it’s almost. The worm is wiggling from her mouth as she sucks it in like her favourite pasta. I yank it out as soon as I notice, but cannot tell how tall, or rather long, the worm was before it went in. She sobs bitterly at the loss of her worm, and I am about to cave in and give it back rather than have to go inside and find more wholesome bribes when Sidney the creep arrives. He slinks over to The Beauty and insinuates himself like Shere Khan. She pats him vigorously, cooing and a little breathless, with a fat, spent tear wobbling on her cheek. He departs. Regretfully I down my top new tools and return to the house to find elevenses for The Beauty and to say thank you to David for taking me out last night.
Having greatly enjoyed most of the evening except for the moment of salted-slug stomach, am now keen to find other people to go for drinks with. Telephone my mother to ask if she can think of anyone. She suggests The Gnome, and I am underwhelmed. Get off the telephone and find The Beauty mimicking me. She is sitting in her toy car under the kitchen sink, babbling sweetly into her pink plastic mobile telephone.
June 9th
The bathroom is finished. Vivienne appears as David is taking me on a guided tour of its beauty spots and areas of perfection. We are admiring the copper pipe which runs from the high cistern to the loo when she opens the door.
‘Gosh, this is wonderful, isn’t it? Venetia, did you know that there is a black Labrador mounting Rags on your lawn?’
I am out of the mermaid’s palace in a flash. ‘That creep, Digger. I think Rags is on heat. Who let that filthy brute out? I shut him in your car, David. God, I wish you wouldn’t bring him here.’
All this is wasted breath. David is demonstrating the power shower to Vivienne, and anyway couldn’t care less what Digger does to Rags, as he won’t have to bring up a litter of freak pretend-Labradors with terrier-length legs or worse. Fortunately, Rags has protected her virtue and is sitting firmly on her tail looking apologetic; Digger saunters down the drive with garbage investigation rather than carnal matters on his mind. Vivienne appears in the garden with The Beauty, fresh and twinkly of eye post-rest, and David; I am sidetracked by noticing that all three of them are wearing purple T-shirts and look like the perfect family in a cereal advertisement. On reflection, Vivienne’s wild red hair makes them a bit too avant-garde for cereal; perhaps a new car commercial is more the look. David is giving her the full programme of events now the bathroom is officially open.
‘… And we’re going to use it to photograph this mate of mine’s handbags. He designs them, and has a backer who will pay for the location and give me some of the pictures.’
I am not sure about all this, and wish Rose had not gone suddenly to Spain instead of coming this weekend to advise me. I must be looking especially blank, as David suddenly breaks off and turns to me.
‘I thought you would like it, Venetia. And don’t forget, part of the deal was that I could use it for photographs. You’ll really like Rob, anyway, and it’ll be good for you to get to know a new crowd. You never know, if you chat Rob up enough he might give you a free handbag.’ I open my mouth to tell him he is a patronising git, but he has already turned back to Vivienne, who is becoming very excited.
‘Who did you say was coming? Robin Ribbon? Oh, I’ve read about his designs, I’d love one. Venetia, you are lucky.’
I find her words unaccountably red-rag-like: ‘Well, I don’t want one, and I don’t want to meet any sodding handbag-makers. You must be mad, David, if you think I’ve got time to deal with all this sort of nonsense. God, I left London years ago to get away from handbags and all that they stand for.’ My outrage gathers momentum. ‘And how am I meant to show off that bathroom properly if you aren’t here?’
‘Why won’t I be here? I’m not going to leave you to deal with something I’ve set up.’ Exasperated, scowling, David runs his hands through his hair. The Beauty leans towards him from Vivienne’s arms to pat his shoulder. She then reaches for his hair and grips a few locks tightly in one fist. David tries to detach her, but she continues breathing heavily and gripping. He grabs both her hands, and clasping them as if pleading with her, says simply, ‘I don’t want to put you through any hassle, it’ll just be a bit of fun.’
Awful how unused I am to dealing with genuinely thoughtful men. Feel guilty, and supress lemon-faced emotions in a rush of hospitality.
‘Shall we all have some lunch to celebrate you finishing it?’ The Beauty catches my effervescent mood and suddenly launches herself from Vivienne’s distracted embrace and hurtles, arms and legs whirling, towards the floor. David neatly catches her and she pulls his face towards hers and peppers his cheek with her first kisses.
June 11th
Felix, The Beauty and I arrive at school having dropped Giles at the more senior entrance, and are met by a huge poster announcing the Concert with Cake Sale this afternoon. Had, of course, forgotten all about this dainty entertainment, and will now have to forgo lunch with Vivienne and afternoon of gossiping and dawdling at her house. In the school cloakroom the smell of antiseptic smarts from the loos and mingles with a puff of the headmistress’s scent as she rustles past with a pile of egg boxes and a grim, determined expression. She smiles vaguely at Felix and I realise that we have failed to brush his hair. The Beauty adores school and settles down, growling happily, to remove books from shelves in Felix’s classroom. Felix and his friends assist her and she holds court delightedly, her gingham bloomers causing mirth among her admirers and huge pride for her.
On the way out of the school with The Beauty, I enjoy a five-minute interlude with two other school mothers. We talk about our children, their starring roles in the forthcoming concert and how many cakes we are baking for the sale. All is a big lie on my part. My cakes, although often surprisingly delicious to eat, are low on physical charms, and I have no intention of making any for the school at any time in case I am humiliated by their not being bought. As for the concert, Felix is still on ‘Old MacDonald’ after a year of piano lessons, and shows no promise at all. I never make him practise because both of us hate it so much, and we have begged the teacher to let him give up. She just smiles kindly, and says, ‘Have you tried bribery? He must persevere, he’s doing so well.’ Another big lie.
Disaster lurks in the car park. I bid farewell-until-the-concert to the other mothers and move towards the car. Rags is leaping up and down in the front seat, whining and scratching as if she has been left for about three hundred years instead of fifteen minutes. I am about to open the door when a wild, flailing paw lands on the lock. There is a whooshing, electrical-sounding multiple click and the car is locked with Rags inside it. And the keys.
An hour with Reggie from the garage ensues. Reggie has an unravelled coat-hanger and wiggles it about through the car window with the same expression of blissed-out concentration that he might wear for cleaning his ears with a Q-Tip. The morning is overcast and still, a pair of squirrels swarm and tumble around us, then vanish up the trunk of a vast horse chestnut tree, its branches still laden with pyramids of blossom. The Beauty and I purchase a packet of Rolos from the newsagent and loll on the grass watching Reggie. He has taken off the top half of his boilersuit, and its dangling arms fascinate The Beauty, who shuffles over for a closer inspection. It is clear to me that Reggie will never get into the car this way, and we will have to break the window. I am about to say this when he steps back in triumph, foiling The Beauty who is poised to grab a sleeve and tug the whole boiler suit down. ‘We’re in,’ he says, and opens the door to remove the keys so that Rags the hysterical hell-hound cannot repeat her performance. There is now no obstacle to cake-making.
June 18th
The Beauty and I munch peanut butter sandwiches and join in with rippled applause as Giles and the rest of the Colts A cricket team zap their way to victory against Swinburn House. We find this a most civilised and pleasant way to spend the afternoon, and are cordially curious as to what is happening on the pitch. Giles is bowling now, but affects deafness when I wolf-whistle at him.
‘Concentration is all-important to the bowler.’ A pot-bellied father has sidled up to me, murmuring and sighing, his shirt straining warped blue checks over his paunch, his eyes narrowing to slits as he observes Giles. ‘That boy is not bad for his age; not a bad little player at all.’ Sudden spatter of clapping from the parents indicates that Giles has just made a successful move. ‘Well played indeed,’ says Papa Pot Belly, and I nod, affecting intelligence.
‘Mm, yes, what exactly did he do, though?’
I am interrupted by a cheer from the parents. Something even better has happened, and Giles is part of it. Suddenly boys surround us, wolfing the sandwiches. Giles hovers over a silver ashet of cakes, and while he is hovering, The Beauty crawls over to him and wraps fat arms round his cricket whites. He picks her up to kiss her, and is suddenly, for an instant, the image of Charles, but the Charles I married, rather than the one I divorced. Am invaded by a million emotions and tears rush into my eyes. Furious blinking follows, while Giles stands in front of me holding The Beauty at arm’s length.
‘Mum, she’s done a poo, I can smell it,’ he hisses, frowning and dumping her in my arms before walking off with a friend towards the pavilion. More reminders of his father.
June 20th
Rose arrives at lunchtime with Theo, but without Tristan who has gone to Barcelona to an architects’ conference. She has come for a midsummer night party, and is entirely in charge of it. We take the babies out to frolic in the garden and are mobbed by hens and chicks. The Beauty bats her eyelashes at them and pats the grass invitingly, hoping one will come and nestle next to her, while Theo ignores them utterly in his pursuit of a punctured football he has found. Rose has resuscitated her garden in London after eighteen months of its being a building site. Idle garden chat and glancing at my borders with dissatisfaction leads to the inevitable. Suddenly we are whizzing across Norfolk on our way to a rare-plants nursery, our car filled with music from the motion picture Reservoir Dogs to keep the babies quiet.
The outing is a big mistake. Rose and I are thwarted in our attempts to bankrupt ourselves by the pig-headedness of The Beauty and Theo. Both behave as if the rare-plants nursery is a nuclear testing ground, and will not be put down for a second, but clutch at us and assume terrified expressions if either of us tries to extract ourselves from their grip. Even when placed in a charming metal trolley together and wheeled round the walled garden, they sob unrestrainedly, reminding me of small eighteenth-century French aristocrats in a tumbril. The nursery owners are very kind, even when Theo pulls a peony flower the size of a hat off a plant and tears it to bits in front of them. Its crimson petals drip in gory echo of his cochineal experience.
‘Do you think he’ll make horror films when he grows up?’ wonders Rose as we depart, the car pretty well laden under the circumstances. In fact, the inclusion of Theo’s semi-double peony Arabian Prince, even without one of its flowers, gives our booty a much-needed glamour boost.
June 21st
The summer solstice is upon us with all its attendant pressures: why am I not staying up all night being at one with nature? Why have I yet again failed to take the children to an open-air production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream? How can the days, and indeed the year, be diminishing again? How soon can I get to Norwich to buy fake tan for lovely summer-look limbs?
Such is the litany of soul-searching questions I am occupied with as I stroll into the village to attend the Village Show committee meeting. At home, Rose and Lila are creating a solstice feast. Rose, with her usual flamboyance, has provided whole lobsters, tiger prawns and pink champagne. Lila, ever the reformer, has soya milk, organic tofu and some sesame paste. As I depart to the meeting she is attempting to spread her weird pastes onto tiny crisps of fat-free wafer, and Rose is rolling her eyes. She mutters to me under her breath, ‘There’s more sustenance in bloody Communion bread than in that cardboard of Lila’s.’
We have invited Simon and Vivienne to our feast, and also David, whom Rose bumped into on the village green this afternoon. Dazzled by the glamour of him in cricket whites and by being able to say hello to one of the team, once he was pointed out to her by Felix, she has become obsessed with him.
‘He’s so good-looking. Why aren’t you having an affair with him?’ she demands, ignoring Felix and Giles lying in the kitchen armchair, reading the Beano with their ears flapping.
The committee meeting is a shambles. Nothing is arranged, even though the show is in about six weeks. My only contribution, apart from agreeing to judge the Pet Most Like Its Owner class, is a suggestion that we have a teddy-bear parachute contest from the church tower. To my amazement, the committee is keen as mustard, and I am sent home to make posters forthwith.
As I approach the house it becomes clear that the feast is in full swing. Out on the grass, framed by a bank of thistles (sadly not the fashionable sort), is a bivouac with three tents, a high table and fairy lights twinkling from the trees. Simon, having provided a hog to roast, has built a spit, and clad in shorts and long thick socks like a game park warden, is busy doing his primitive man bit with the meat. Giles and Felix and Lila’s children, Diptych and Calypso, have made the most of the dressing-up box and also my make-up bag, and are paid-up members of some Indian tribe. They have adorned the tents with my zebra skins and Felix is wearing the fur coat I bought in a charity shop for a fiver. They are splendidly non-PC: I am amazed Lila hasn’t noticed and tried to ban them. All very elemental, and I look forward to Druid work and chanting taking place soon.
The rugged outdoor life stops there, however. In the kitchen, Rose, Lila, David and Vivienne offer a contrasting existence of hedonism. All the girls have plainly raided Rose’s wardrobe, and are semi-clad in slivers of skirt and skimpy T-shirts in colours as vibrant as poppies. David is still wearing his cricket whites and is making tequila slammers. The table is awash with crushed ice and on the ice, little lemon-wedge boats are marooned here and there. My favourite musical medleys of the moment are movie soundtrack CDs, and one is blasting from the drawing room. Everyone is already flushed and half drunk, even Lila, who is so relaxed that she forgets to ask if the lemons are organic. I gulp my first tequila slammer and enter the fray.
June 22nd
Never. Ever. Again.
June 25th
The Beauty is one today. To make the most of the occasion, she rises at five-thirty a.m. beaming and beady of eye, and immensely pleased to have become the kind of person who can stand up in her cot when I go in to get her up. She has her bottle in my bed and I drink tea and stare half-wittedly out at the milky, misted morning. Sunrays which began palest lemon are now radiating jolly and vigorous beams at the mist, and by the time we go downstairs, the diaphanous veil has vanished and the garden sparkles with dewdrops, and is truly a paradise for The Beauty to enjoy. This she does with aplomb. It is still too early to wake her brothers, so I take her out and she stamps around holding my hands because it is too wet for her to crawl. She loves this new feely sensation, and lifts each small, fat foot high, pointing her toe before plunging forward with her next unsteady step. We pick a very gratifying bunch of pink and amber roses with which to adorn the birthday tea table this afternoon.
Present-giving is a huge success. The Beauty gets the hang of unwrapping straight away, and has no truck with the ‘babies like the wrapping paper best’ theory. Felix gives her a Teletubbies ball and Giles a drum. The Beauty is enchanted, and crows and slaps her thighs in a new swashbuckling way of indicating pleasure. Rose has triumphed and has sent, by courier, a doll-sized version of The Beauty’s very old-fashioned pram. She straightaway sees the point of it and insists on being wedged in, becoming very Mabel Lucie Atwell with seraphic face appearing vast due to miniaturisation of her chariot. Charles arrives as Felix and Giles stage a pram race on the lawn with The Beauty in the toy pram against Rags in the real pram. The Beauty finds this huge fun and laughs like a squeaky toy as she is hurtled towards the pond by Felix. Rags, however, is terrified, and ruins Giles’s chances of victory by leaping out of the pram and scuttling back to the house.
Charles parks and leans against his sleek bullet-like car wearing his usual smirk. He is dressed as an alien as far as we are concerned, in grey flannel trousers, polished slip-on shoes and a beige polo-neck sweater. No dog hairs or fluff balls have clung to him, and everything he is wearing is either brand-new or ironed so that it looks as though it has just been unfolded from its purchase pack. The boys abandon The Beauty and run towards their father. I am guilt-ridden and shocked by how much I mind that they are thrilled to see him. Giles reaches him first.
‘Dad, come and have a race. Will you push me in the pram?’ Charles sucks in his ribs and arches away backwards like a crab, raising his arms so that they at least are not caught in the chocolate- and grass-stained embrace of his sons. He pats their heads gingerly.
‘I’d have thought you were rather old for that sort of nonsense now, Giles.’
Giles grins and retorts, ‘Well I’m not,’ and I turn away fast to hide my smile. Can’t help being glad that Charles is a total bastard, as anyone less vile would cause me so much more misery every time the tireless, ‘Did I do the right thing?’ thought surfaces.
A rattling camper van creeps up the drive as the second pram race begins. This one is between Charles pushing Giles and Felix pushing Rags, as The Beauty has retired after her victory and is excavating the large box Charles has brought for her. Out of the camper van step my brother, Desmond, and a half-naked youth.
‘I thought she’d like some entertainment for her party,’ says Desmond, and I stare at the stripagram as I assume he is, and wonder how old Desmond thinks The Beauty is.
‘This is Oak, he’s a mate of mine and he’s going to do a bit of juggling.’ Desmond squats next to The Beauty and hands her a red plastic rose. She bites the head off. Charles escapes from the pram race and moves in to help open the box he has brought. To complete the happy family scene, my mother arrives with The Gnome who has written a poem for The Beauty and wishes to recite it. He squats beside her and clears his throat. The Beauty is now surrounded by crouched men, none of whom she has any recollection of having met before. It is too much. She tries very hard to look pleased for a moment and then the bottom lip protrudes, wobbles and collapses and weeping commences. Her party is a disaster. She sobs and buries her face in my shoulder and I am attacked by the usual hysterical laughter, and so is my mother.
Charles has unwrapped his gift and is standing looking foolish next to a very done-up and bijou doll’s house.
‘Oh, Charles, how kind,’ I say, ‘you shouldn’t have.’ Am mentally computing price, and becoming red with fury that he can have forgotten the presence of my own doll’s house, and so squandered a fortune on this soulless Bovis-style residence when he could have given her a musical box. The Beauty is becoming frenzied with misery and everyone else is standing about talking in groups as if at a garden party. Am saved from spiralling lunacy by Oak, who blows giant bubbles the size of footballs, and with them casts a spell of happiness over The Beauty and even her bored and cynical friends and relations.
Everything is looking up now: Charles says he has to go, and even the discovery of Sidney scooping cream off the top of the cake with his paw cannot diminish the new party spirit.
June 26th
The Beauty is still hung-over from her party and sleeps most of the day, enabling me to have two arguments with David over the bathroom and to plant a tray of Verbena officinalis.
Argument One: David wants to put gauzy fabric across the ceiling like a tent, and I think this will make the bathroom look like a Turkish Delight advertisement. We agree to try it and then decide.
Argument Two: The tent effect is in place, it looks wonderful and seductive and sensuous. I am enraged. Make a special trip to the village shop for a bar of Turkish Delight. I place it on the lavatory seat and stand back.
‘Look, David, I told you so.’ He removes the Turkish Delight without a smile.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ he says crisply. ‘Let’s leave it and see what you think tomorrow.’
Go into garden to avoid thinking about being defeated on this, and create a doughnut-shaped weed-free zone in which to plant the verbena. Move a few pink foxgloves to the centre of the doughnut, and a pot of slender agapanthus spears, and retire from the garden convinced that I have achieved a beautiful effect. The feathering green leaves and palest pink of the tiny-flowered verbena will look a treat surrounding raspberry Mivvi foxglove spikes, and then blue pompons of agapanthus. The design will be borrowed by many, just as if I were Vita, or Beth Chatto. Hooray.
June 29th
It is the last week of Giles’s term, and parents are expected to attend school as often as their offspring and for almost as long each day. This is maddening: the summer holidays always catch me unawares, and I can see life and work careering off into the gloaming like a runaway train. I had hoped to spend today and every other day this week filing, telephoning and writing, in a last-ditch attempt to save myself from hopeless inefficiency and brain death in the days to come. But Gawain, an old school friend of Charles’s, indeed, the only friend of Charles’s I ever liked, arrived yesterday. ‘I’ve come for a week or so,’ he announced gladly. He is a painter, nearly successful, and always neurotic. He plans to finish a series of canvases entitled ‘Normal for Norfolk’ while he is here. So far he has not even opened a tube of paint, but instead has spent the morning mowing the lawn. Or trying to.
‘I think I’m more of a window-boxer than a gardener,’ he explains the third time I am called out to help him push the mower out of the border into which he has driven it at high speed. I have noticed that the ride-on mower excites men when they first see it, but disappointment at the poor acceleration usually leads to boredom halfway through the grass cutting and it is left, like flotsam at low tide, marooned in the middle of the lawn. Gawain is no exception, and leaves the mower curtseying into the beech hedge.
Over lunch he shows me photographs of Normal for Norfolk I to IV, and I love III so passionately that I buy it there and then without really being able to imagine how big it is. Or how I am going to pay for it. I give a very small down payment and arrange to pay a monthly pittance for ever. Gawain is ecstatic. ‘Man, this is groovy,’ he yells, and rushes off to the larder to find the case of Red Stripe beers he brought as a house gift.
Halfway down the first can he is garrulous, and we cover such topics as the breasts of the girls on Baywatch, upon which subject he is lucid, the inspiration behind the Normal for Norfolk series, about which he is less clear, and whether it is worth driving five miles to Cromer to place a bet on the one-forty at Kempton Park. ‘Yes, but will you take me, Venetia? I’m over the limit.’
By the end of the second Red Stripe he is dancing to The Archers theme tune on the radio and I am longing for him to become unconscious. Hours pass, and I make pea and mint soup because I can do nothing else; Gawain needs company. He unburdens his soul, gazing mistily at me, shaking his head sadly and murmuring, ‘You’re so understanding, Venetia, I love you, I love you.’
This is infuriating. He doesn’t love me, he’s getting me muddled with his manic depressive girlfriend. And I don’t want to be understanding, I want to be in my study. When The Beauty goes for her rest, I try to leave the room but am foiled. Gawain follows me into the study and settles into the large armchair, pulling one side of the shutters to so as to protect his head from the sun, and continues a seamless narrative about a trip to Barcelona with the manic depressive girlfriend, whom he says has a good figure but is not as beautiful as me. I am underwhelmed by the compliment and am ticked off for gracelessness. In desperation I return to the kitchen and start to make bread, and Gawain is silenced at last. But still very present. He has decided to incor-porate me into Normal for Norfolk, and begins sketches for my portrait.
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. Felix 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.
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.
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.
‘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.
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.’
Felix gazes at the larder wall.
‘We should bother. We need jam,’ he says firmly. Increasingly, Felix is taking over the running of the household. Am not quite sure who his role model is, but am determined that he shall be mine.
The strawberry field is empty of pickers but full of flamboyant scarecrows. The farmer is a big fan of B-movies, and every strawberry season he adorns his field with mannequins in nylon bikinis and skimpy dresses from charity shops. Giles runs ahead, but stops short at the entrance.
‘Look, Mum,’ he yells, ‘they’ve hung one.’ The gate is guarded by a mannequin dangling on a rope from a vast oak tree, this one clad more in the style of a Brueghel peasant than Raquel Welch.
‘I like the wedding one, she must have kept the birds away. I’m going to pick near her.’ Giles grabs a punnet and makes his way towards the centre of the field where a fabulous blonde is positioned, with a vast confection of transparent polythene on her head and trailing down her back. Despite her green bikini, there is no question that she is a bride, and I make a mental note to tell the handbag gang to come down and photograph their wedding collection here instead of in my bathroom. Ten pounds of strawberries later we are home, and to my relief the recipe book says, ‘Leave to steep in sugar for twenty-four hours.’
Miles the photographer is on a ladder outside the bathroom window, looking in at The Beauty in the bath with a handful of chicks he has scooped out of their run. There is no handbag visible in this shot, and when I mention this oversight, Miles rolls his eyes and says kindly, ‘The product has a voice, you know, it kind of speaks through this sort of set-up.’
What a nonce, as Giles would say.
Jam-making commences at dawn. Utterly forgot the steeping strawberries yesterday, so have committed cardinal sin of leaving them lying around for two days. Kitchen quickly begins to resemble Willie Wonka’s factory, with bubbling pink mess on the Aga and ruby droplets on small saucers and indeed the floor. Felix is not helping. He is lying in bed reading the Beano and is no longer my role model. Am scraping old labels off jars with my fingernails and listening to a practical pig-keeping report on Farming Today, when there is an ominous gushing sound followed by billowing black smoke. The Aga hotplate vanishes beneath a black mass, like sticky volcano lava, as more and more syrupy jam froths out of the pan.
‘Bastard, bloody, sodding jam. God, I hate the Aga. Why is this happening? What do I do?’ Wailing and weeping self-pitying tears, I wage war on my strawberry jam.
July 23rd
Ten jars, and it has set, and is delicious. Aga still thick with incinerated jam. David arrives for house-sitting instructions and is clearly impressed. Felix is not: ‘Last year’s was better,’ he insists at teatime. No time to argue though, I must pack for the longed-for holiday.
July 25th
Have arrived in Cornwall after gruelling two-day journey in the car, including sleepless night at Welcome Break hotel on the M4. My mother, who refuses to sit in the front, has kept her eyes shut almost all the way and has been no help at all, so Giles has assumed role of navigator. Hurtle down the final winding roads, shoving the car into the bank as vast Jeeps and Mercedes cruise towards us full of families returning sandy and sun-kissed from the beach. Every village and indeed every house is called Tre-something, which confounds Giles, and we sweep up a rough track and arrive at Trefogey, a low white cottage in which a family of total strangers are having tea.
‘No, Mummy, ours is called Trepanning, and the village is Tredition,’ hisses Giles, ducking his face low as the family, all wearing pink polo shirts, converge by our car and stare at us with mild contempt.
‘Sorry, you’re the wrong people,’ I shout out of my window, in what I hope is a hearty and jolly fashion, and we spin back down the track, a cloud of dust billowing in our wake.
Tredition is enchanting. A clutch of cottages clings to three criss-crossing lanes which plunge down to the cliffs between meadows and tiny golden cornfields. Where the lanes meet there is a village green with a mini shop on the corner, and a squat church whose delicate spire pierces the sky. Trepanning is at the end of a terrace with roses straggling up the walls and evening primrose nodding yellow beneath blue window frames. Lila has already arrived, and is standing on a chair in the garden fiddling with her mobile telephone.
‘It doesn’t work here, and Angelo was meant to ring to tell me his train times.’ Heart sinks: Angelo is Lila’s seventeen-year-old nephew by marriage, spoilt and disagreeable no doubt, like her children. My mother manages to extract The Beauty from her car seat where she has been embedded in biscuit crumbs, segments of orange and smeared raisins. We stand around for a few minutes while Lila teeters on the chair, waving her telephone above her head.
Felix and Giles rush round from the other side of the house.
‘Can we go surfing after tea? Is the tide right? Can we buy some T-shirts at the beach and an ice cream afterwards?’
The tide is right, and I am amazed that they can remember the routine, as our last Cornish holiday was three years ago, with Charles at his most sergeant major-ish due to having invited his business partner, Henry Loden, and family to come with us.
My mother is worn to a shred by back-seat driving and elects to Beauty-sit. Leaving her in charge of a bumper bottle of gin and a few miniature tonics, we all squeeze into Lila’s red convertible VW Beetle and roar up the road to Treboden and the beach.
Lose my head utterly in the surfing shop and find that I have purchased wetsuits for both the boys and am unable to resist a miniature one for The Beauty. ‘It’s all right, they’re second-hand,’ I whisper over and over to myself. Usual nasty moment behind the curtain in the hire hut, when I am convinced that I no longer fit into the size M wetsuit. Struggle to pull wet, sandy neoprene over thighs, while out of the corner of eye observe Lila sliding into a red short-legged version, which is dry and therefore much easier to get on. Final test is to thrust arms in and heave ever-tightening suit over shoulders. This is like peeling a banana in reverse. It is on, and, as always, have sudden conviction that I am a Baywatch star and have perfect figure and posture.
Felix and Giles are hopping excitedly on the steps to the beach, and I follow them down. We break into a perfect beach-bum canter as we hit the sand, dodging between every size and shape of wet-suited surfer to head for the surf. Can never get over how well neoprene suits everyone. Portly gentlemen in their sixties, liquorice-stick-limbed children and pear-shaped mummies are all glorious, fit and healthy: perfect cereal-packet people. In the sea, seal-like bodies are everywhere, rising gleaming wet and black on waves and tumbling from bright boards into the spray.
Immediately lose sight of children who hurl themselves onto waves and come riding in effortlessly every time, black shiny exclamation marks, perfectly upright on their boards. Flat on my own boogie board, in the beginners’ area, I dither, hoping to catch the elusive big wave, but unsure how to. My face is full of sea; inhale it, trying not to think about number of people who have entered the water and found that they needed a pee. Perfect crested sea horse approaches; leap onto it and forget sanitation worries in a flash.
July 27th
The cottage has become little more than dormitory and wardrobe. Cushions pieced together like a jigsaw form Felix’s bed in the sitting room, and Giles occupies the sofa. Diptych has been relegated to a small cot mattress and a few pillows under the window. Upstairs, Angelo sleeps in the top bunk of a room no bigger than a paper hanky, and Calypso and seven Barbies are in the bottom one. My mother and Lila have a twin-bed room, and The Beauty and I have the dubious pleasure of sleeping in a double bed together. Every inch of space not occupied by bedding is covered with clothes, and these garments are all sprinkled with sand and are mainly damp. There is nowhere to dry anything, as it has rained almost ceaselessly. The wetsuits have not been dry since we obtained them, and the path from the cars to the back door is strewn with every size of suit, thrown on the ground and left like deflated rubber dolls in a heap next to ice-lolly pink, blue and green slabs of surfboard.
Angelo has increased our street cred in Tredition no end, and a stream of long-limbed youths and exquisite girls with silver trainers and braids in their hair make their way to Trepanning each day to sit in the garden and smoke with him. His arrival, twenty-four hours later than expected, was greeted with shrill relief from Lila. ‘Oh, Angelo, thank God you’re here, I was dreading telephoning your mother to find you.’ Angelo, king of cool in big-pocketed flapping trousers, shades and a camouflage Michelin-man jacket, was aghast.
‘Never telephone my mother, she is the last person to know where I am. I have been down at the campsite with some friends.’
It transpires that Angelo has spent several holidays in this part of Cornwall, can surf standing up and has a large retinue of followers. He is indeed the King of Cool, and Giles and Felix are delighted to have him in the house. He treats me and Lila with the usual amused contempt that teenagers save for adults, but is so respectful to my mother that I begin to think he has confused her with a Mafia leader or a member of the royal family. My mother loves him. They even share nail polish. Angelo is very taken by my mother’s poison-green, and in exchange offers her Party Time dark purple for her toes. My mother is blessed with an invitation to the Ploughman pub for local groovers. Am jealous and at the same time relieved not to be asked; too demoralising to be crushed by throng of lithe and lovely young, when all my clothes are crumpled and have something wrong with them, nose has somehow become sunburnt despite weather, and one shoe is missing after today’s surfing.
July 28th
Weather gloomy, but we are not put off trip to rocky beach with magical green pools. Angelo leads the way, carrying The Beauty on his shoulders and followed by his friend Lowdown whom we found on the sofa next to Giles this morning, and who has not yet removed his wraparound sunglasses. Path to perfect beach meanders through wild flowers, about which flutter butterflies as small and vivid as confetti. My mother and I are beasts of burden behind Lila, who has managed not to carry any of the picnic, but is skipping ahead with the young, pausing to pat cows and sniff at flowers. Drag the wicker basket over a final mound, vowing in future to forfeit style in favour of comfort. Picnics shall come in plastic bags from now on.
Arms of rock reach out from either side of beach, embracing waves rolling and thundering in. Sun makes grand entrance and beams hotly, and The Beauty dons her exotic red bathing suit and yellow floral hat and sits happily in a rock pool, picking seaweed and catching transparent shrimps. My mother and I spread rugs, after much shuffling around the beach looking for the best spot, and lay food out. Rags hears the rustle of tin foil on sandwiches and bounces over, briny, sandy and wet from the sea. She puts her paw in a treacle tart and is hurled away back into the sea, but not before she has shaken herself briskly and wetly over the pile of towels. Egor is exemplary by contrast, his fear of the sea ensuring that he does not move from the boulder behind my mother.
‘Why did we bring that little beast?’ howls Lila, emerging from the sea. ‘You should be able to control her, Venetia.’ Am about to apologise, when Calypso, who has taken against The Beauty because she wants to be the youngest, runs up to her and jumps deliberately in the rock pool, startling The Beauty who is in a trance of pleasure making sand pies, and causing her to bellow.
‘And you should be able to control your children,’ I snarl back. This is the wrong thing to say. Lila sniffs and pulls herself up very tall.
‘Come, Calypso,’ she says with magnificent hauteur, ‘come, Diptych, we shall find a more peaceful picnic spot for ourselves.’
Diptych is furious. ‘No way, Mum, Giles and I are going to look for the conger eel; we’ve got fish fingers for it. Anyway, I hate those bean curd sandwiches you make us eat. I’m having a pasty.’
Lila stamps her foot and flares her nostrils like a small bull preparing to charge. My mother leaps up to create a diversion, clearly not having thought of what to say, but doing the haughty bit with great élan.
‘Lila, Venetia, that will do!’ She pauses and glares at us both. ‘Now why don’t we all go and look for the conger eel?’
The kindergarten approach is successful. When Calypso grabs The Beauty’s cup and swigs her juice, her black eyes fixed defiantly on my face, I am able to rise above it with my own version of magnificent hauteur.
‘Venetia, stop looking like a lemon,’ whispers my mother, back on her rug, with no intention of looking for conger eels, and preparing to read the newspaper in the sun with the help of a pair of dark green plastic lenses attached lopsidedly to the front of her specs. Affect deafness and move away to seek out the children, clambering over steep, sleek rocks, shiny with sea spray, with The Beauty clinging like a marmoset to my shoulder. We find the boys perched like statues on individual ledges protruding from a deep, still pool, gazing at the water in silence. Felix has a packet of fish fingers on his rock, and, breaking one, he lowers a large lump into the water. We continue to stare at shadows, and after a while become bored. Just as I am about to return to the picnic spot, Felix gasps and points. At the back of the pool, where shadows meet cavernous rock behind, a streak of lapis blue flashes. The fish finger vanishes, there is a confusion of teeth and jaws and a vast eel glides away, as unstoppable and smooth as an express train, back to his cave.
‘Cool,’ whispers Giles with enormous satisfaction.
‘Yesssss,’ yells Felix, leaping up and stabbing the air as if he has scored a winning goal. Diptych grabs the fish-finger packet and tosses the rest into the pool, and waits again, his camera poised for the return of Jaws.
Calypso kick-starts a crescendo of complaint with the time-honoured whine, ‘It’s not fair. I didn’t see it. Mummy, get it back. The boys wouldn’t let me see, they said I couldn’t.’ She hiccups herself into full-blown sobs and kicks Lila while burying her face in her skirt. Lila’s teeth clench.
‘That is nonsense. I was with you and the boys did nothing of the sort. They didn’t even know you were there, in fact. Now stop behaving like this.’
‘No, I hate the boys, they spoil everything. And that stupid baby.’ More roaring and kicking.
I raise my eyebrows and carefully arrange my expression to one of sympathy and camaraderie. ‘Dear little thing,’ I say, ruffling Calypso’s wire-wool hair as if I adore her, ‘she’s so passionate. Do send her to play with The Beauty when she calms down.’
Lila glares, and The Beauty, ever keen to enhance a situation, blows a kiss to the pair of them. The boys and my mother are well into the picnic when we return, wolfing Cornish pasties and recounting big game stories. Anything big appears to count.
‘The French are building a giant stick as big as Mount Everest for New Year,’ says Felix.
‘It’s not a stick, it’s a French loaf and it’s two miles high and they’ve already done it,’ says Giles, condescension withering every syllable he utters.
‘I saw a giant snail at a party once,’ continues Felix, undaunted. ‘It was the size of a hedgehog and it wee’d on my hand with a kind of squirt.’
Find the tone of conversation uninspiring, so sit down with The Beauty and my mother. My mother hands The Beauty a pasty.
‘She’s only eaten sand so far.’ The Beauty says ‘Ha ha,’ and dabs it in the sand before tasting it, giving me a moment to wipe her forever running nose with my skirt.
A family adjacent to us have a tin foil barbecue and are cooking sausages on it, their well-mannered Labrador not even licking his lips, but sitting with an expression of resigned nobility at the edge of the rug. The Beauty loves Labradors, thinking they are all Digger, and approaches this one waving her pasty. He cannot resist, and it is a repeat of the conger eel show as a flash of pink jaw, white teeth and huge tongue precedes the disappearance of the pasty. The Beauty is delighted by this trick and sits back on her heels, clapping and cooing approval. Her nose is once again a disgrace, and absently I reach for a T-shirt of Felix’s to wipe it on.
‘Here, do have this, it’s quite clean. You needn’t bother returning it.’
The lady with the barbecue proffers a white handkerchief, small and fine, the sort that proper people keep tucked under their watch straps. She smiles understandingly.
‘It’s so difficult getting out of the house with everything, isn’t it? I remember just how it is for you; I had four under five myself, although it seems years ago now.’
Four under five. And I can’t even get a handkerchief organised for one baby, despite having ancient boys and an able-bodied assistant in the form of a mother on holiday with me.
Barbecue lady is arranging her picnic now. Out of a cool box and a hamper come Tupperware boxes in neat piles, each containing a clutch of different, delicious-looking sandwiches. Don’t like to stare, but have seen enough to know that I wish I was at their picnic. The Beauty has had the same thought, but unlike me, is confident that they have invited her. She squats down and helps herself to a roast-beef-filled roll, stuffing as much as possible in her mouth and saying ‘Mmmmm,’ as if she has been starved for weeks. The woman shakes her salt and pepper hair out from a ponytail and smiles at The Beauty, who beams back and grabs another sandwich.
‘Do you let her have beef? I brought a side down with me from our farm, so I can vouch for it completely.’
Hastily fling a towel over our supermarket pork pies and packet of plastic pre-sliced cheese.
‘Oh, in that case I’m sure it’s fine,’ I say airily, and struggling to regain some sense of being adequate: ‘Is it organic? We only eat organic meat now.’
‘So sensible, you can be badly poisoned by those supermarket pies and one can’t be too careful with a baby.’ The woman smiles, speaking without a shred of malice, as she blows The Beauty’s nose for the tenth time and gives her a pear.
How can I become more like her and less like my bag lady self?
Ceaseless rain and no silver lining in the weather forecast. There is a farm open day inland, and we select it as our excursion for the day. Lila and my mother opt out and go to a supermarket and also a launderette to dry all our clothes. Angelo and I are in charge of the children. On the way have fond fantasies of clotted cream and ‘How to Make Buttermilk’ lessons. Can hardly wait to sample homely cakes and pies which must be for sale there.
Arrive, brimming with excitement, hunger and anticipation, at huddle of corrugated-iron barns surrounding cluster of Lego brick houses with vast carports. Mud clogs car park entrance and our wheels spin. Felix falls over in a cow-pat as soon as he gets out of the car, and is so covered in excrement and mud that he looks as if he has been dipped in brown paint. Farm open day is quickly exposed as a euphemism for selling show homes, and there is not a lamb or indeed a milk churn in sight. And no cakes. Angelo vanishes with Calypso on a quad ride, and moments later we see them hunched against the rain, creeping up a hill with Calypso locked into a cage on wheels and Angelo hanging on grimly to the bounding quad bike.
‘Mummy, I’m frozen and there’s mud in my eyes,’ sobs Felix, who has not stopped crying since he fell over. In desperation he, The Beauty and I force an entry to a show home and find the bathroom. I run the bath and Felix begins to peel layers of mud and clothing.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ A beaky nose peers round the door, followed by a furious face, pearls and a blue rinse. ‘This is disgraceful, you must leave at once.’ The woman marches in and pulls the plug. ‘Now come on, out of here.’
The Beauty dislikes her tone and gives a loud kung fu shout, ‘Hah!’ before hurling a pink soap brick at the woman.
‘Ow, you little monster,’ yells the woman. ‘I shall call the police if you don’t leave immediately.’ The Beauty screws up her nose and growls like a fierce dragon. The woman holds the door open and we depart in deep disgrace, Felix still caked in the only evidence of animals we have found on the farm. No let-up with the rain, and Giles is throwing horseshoes at a pole with evident skill, as he has won two pink fur chimpanzees, each one bigger than The Beauty. Felix bursts into tears again because he wants a pink chimpanzee. I offer to buy him one, but he wants to win it. He throws a horseshoe and it hits a small boy in the back of the knee.
‘Your children are a disgrace,’ hisses the child’s mother, deaf to sobbed apologies from Felix. The man who runs the stall says there are no monkeys left anyway, and gives Felix a consolation prize of a small Day-Glo-green alien dressed in a purple nylon robe. Felix yells more loudly and hurls it into the flames of the hog-roast fire. The Beauty, who had her eye on the dear little alien, opens her mouth and bawls too. Am ready to jump onto the pyre myself when Angelo and Calypso finally return from their ride. Calypso is weeping because she banged her head and no one would let her out of the cage.
We depart, having spent forty pounds. All the children crying except Giles, who is sulking because we had to leave before the welly-throwing contest.
July 30th
Last day, and we have organised a babysitter and are succumbing to Angelo’s invitation to the pub and to a party on the caravan site. Try on three different dresses, and finally opt for the very dirty jeans I have hardly taken off all week. Children scarcely see us leaving, as they and their babysitter are building a camp in the garden. Babysitter is tiny, shorter than Giles and appears considerably younger. Can’t face asking her age in case she is only seven, but am comforted by the fact that The Beauty is sound asleep and Giles and Felix are capable of looking after themselves. Just don’t care what happens to Calypso and Diptych, as now loathe them unreservedly and Lila too, particularly when she comes out of the bathroom, having pinched all the hot water, wearing skimpy purple camisole top and a pair of my shorts, cast out of my wardrobe for being too small.
Angelo is already at the Ploughman, playing pool, and is clearly not going to acknowledge us at all. Thumping music of the sort Giles loves, and terrible Oxford Circus crush, except worse because all the bodies one is pushed against are limber and perfect reminders of own decrepitude. Have strong sensation of being the three ugly sisters as my mother, Lila and I settle ourselves at half a table and try not to notice that the youths at the other half have turned their backs to look out of the window at a row of overflowing dustbins. Angelo wins his pool game and is challenged to another. My mother drains her glass in moments.
‘This is ghastly,’ she says. ‘Let’s go.’
Stand around in car park wondering what to do next. Yearn for manly and capable escort to sweep me, in diamonds, to dinner.
‘Shall we go to the Rock Top Retreat?’ Suddenly remember genteel hotel, to which Charles’s partner and wife took us for pregnant-pause-ridden dinner last time.
Very soon we are sipping martinis, feet snugly buried in lovely powder-blue shaggy carpet, listening to tinkling piano and watching seagulls swerve and bicker above the sea. Much more the thing. Covert observation of others in the hotel bar offers interesting view of proper family life. Mr and Mrs Perfect, in their forties, both suntanned, with big teeth and handsome faces, lounge and manage to look comfortable on the swing seat overlooking the tennis court. On court, their four big-toothed children play doubles without having tantrums or swearing, and the scene is truly an example to us all. Lila, my mother and I are impressed.
‘Maybe they’re aliens,’ my mother whispers loudly, observing the eldest toothy as it holds out a hand to help its brother, who has tripped and fallen flat on his face but who is being brave and not crying. ‘None of your children would do that without being bribed.’
Lila and I glare at her, but know it is useless to argue. Cannot pretend, either, that self and Charles plus offspring ever made such a pleasing and harmonious tableau as the toothy Perfects, who have now all jumped into a huge, very clean Mercedes and driven off smiling, probably to amusing dinner with other faultless folk. My mother, now on her third gin martini and in rollicking form, is quick to point this out.
‘How I wish you and Desmond had turned out more like those people,’ she sniffs sadly, acting up with every gulp of gin. ‘What a joy it would have been to have a decent son-in-law who played tennis, not a creep with a crematorium.’
‘Well I wish I’d done better and married someone I liked,’ I snap back, goaded. Waving my glass towards the doorway I draw her attention to a spry sixty-year-old woman, sunglasses propped in her bouncy greying hair, immaculately clad in a navy and white striped sailor top and a white pleated skirt, escorted by a tall, courteous man with laughing blue eyes.
‘And maybe if you and Dad had been a bit more like that we wouldn’t be so dysfunctional.’
For a moment my mother inspects her role model, finding her glasses and propping them on her nose like a pince-nez as both the arms are now broken. But instead of looking stricken and gleaning a few fashion tips from this paragon she is unrepentant and speechless with laughter. Lila butts in.
‘Look, we’ve got to get back, we said we’d give the kids fish and chips for the last supper, and it’s half-past nine. We’ve still got to clean the cottage and pack and take all the surf stuff back.’
Holidays. Can’t understand how anyone finds them a tonic. Am sure that marshalling an army across the steppes of Russia is more relaxing.
August 1st
Last day in Cornwall. Up at dawn scrubbing and hoovering. Children bicker and whine and ceaselessly remove items I have just packed from cases I have just forced shut. Lose car keys. Am so frazzled that immediately forget I have lost them until everyone is in the car and waiting to go.
‘Where are the car keys?’ Yell so loudly that The Beauty, asleep in her car seat like an angel, wakes and bursts into tears. Her wailing becomes louder and louder, and I crawl through the cottage on hands and knees looking under beds and chairs for goddamn keys. Sudden silence suggests that The Beauty has been released from the torture zone of the car. Felix rushes in to find me checking the Hoover bag.
‘Here they are, Mum, I gave them to The Beauty to play with and then I forgot. Sorry.’
Count to ten, bite tongue to prevent filthy language and preserve appearance of dignity.
August 3rd
David has made everything much nicer than it normally is here. He is unusually tidy for a man. Even outside was improved by him, and we now have a dovecote for the fat pigeons Simon gave us for Easter.
‘They’ll probably nest,’ said David as he gathered his things before going. ‘You’ll have a colony to look out at soon.’
Outside still lovely, and pigeons cooing from their palace, but inside has reverted to usual chaos. Am still excavating damp, fetid suitcases. Find that many clothes are mouldy. Gloomily scrubbing favourite antique lace camisole and failing to remove grey flecked fungus from it when huge van drives up, shiny and red and definitely not the organic veg round. Joyfully abandon the washing and scuttle to the front door to make friends with whoever it may be. Thrilling special deliveries courier waits in the porch, invisible behind man-sized bouquet. It is for The Beauty and is a forest of sunflowers in every colour the sun has ever been, from blackest crimson to bronze and citrus yellow.
‘Thank you to our precious little Princess’ reads the card, and I am split between delight at the flowers and nausea at the message until Giles puts the card in the bin. Moments later, while I am arranging The Beauty’s gift in numerous pink plastic buckets as none of my vases do them justice, another van ticks up the drive. More signing for exciting parcels, and am delighted that this one is for me. Less delighted when parcel is ripped wide open to reveal a pair of high-heeled wellingtons the colour of aubergines, and a handbag designed to look like a watering can, or a watering can designed to look like a handbag. Cannot initially decide which, but dare not put water in to test. Have been speculating with Vivienne as to the nature of my thank-you present from the hand-baggers, and had rather set my heart on a delicious icing-pink jewelled item with silk ribbons and much fragile glamour. Telephone Vivienne to deliver the bad news.
‘God, how awful to think that that’s how they see you.’ She can hardly keep the glee out of her voice. Decide on the spot to donate the stupid bag to her, but will keep the wellies to add to my now considerable collection. Wrap the bag with some difficulty and post it to Vivienne forthwith, thus experiencing a rush of achievement for the day before returning to the mould battle in the scullery.
August 5th
A fine drizzle sets the tone for the village show today. Feeding the hens, pigeons and assorted wild birds now as tame as any of ours, my hair becomes cloudy with tiny raindrops and then properly wet as I scuttle around the garden pointlessly dragging already sodden prams and toys under cover. Bring The Beauty’s pram mattress in and put it on the Aga where it creates a comforting Chinese laundry fug.
Felix has been up for hours completing his entries for the show. He has made a Christmas card of a jolly old Santa carrying two longed-for Warhammers called Deathmaster Snikch and Nagash, and a Nintendo. The attention to detail is magnificent, but I fear that the message, which reads: ‘Here you are, is this what you wanted? Ho ho ho,’ will not please the fuddy-duddy judges. Having made two posters for the ‘Teddy Jumps Off the Tower’ contest, he is feeling very competitive about this class, and has dressed his bear as Deathmaster Snikch and is busy attaching yards of elastic to make him a bungee bear.
Giles has become unspeakable and refuses to do anything. In despair I put him in charge of fancy dress.
‘You can go as anything you like as long as you aren’t a Warhammer, and as long as you include Felix and The Beauty.’ Have little hope of this ruse being successful, but he shuffles off, kicking the door as he goes, and is not seen again for hours.
Lila arrives, laden with produce she plans to show.
‘I’ve grown this fantastic sea kale. Look, it’s still got the bloom of ozone on it. I picked it up this morning, it was terrifying. Three huge chunks of cliff collapsed when I pulled the roots out of the ground, and I haven’t even planted my sea kale close to the edge.’
Lila’s tiny seaside holiday hut is inching its way towards the sea as the cliff below it crumbles. Lila is very calm about sleeping there herself, but insists that her children and their au pair stay at the guest house down the road. Am convinced that she does this to avoid cooking for them, but she is adamant that it is for their safety. This lavish way of life is paid for by what she calls the ‘Poor Orphan Fund’, a seemingly bottomless well of money she extracted from the Italian government when Roberto, her husband, was crushed by a ceiling he was renovating in a twelfth-century chapel outside Naples. The accident was six years ago, but Lila still wears black or grey almost every day and adopts a tragic, wizened pose when husbands are mentioned. Her ruthless quest to get the better of all lawyers is exhausting, but today litigation is far from her mind, and instead she overflows with competitive spirit.
‘What have the boys done for the show? Gosh, is that all? Diptych has grown all these tomatoes. His grandmother sent the seeds from Italy. Look.’
I look. Irritatingly, the tomatoes are perfect, gleaming like a cluster of cabochon topaz and rubies in their festive harvest colours. Calypso has made a fairy garden out of an old vanity case of Lila’s.
‘I will win the prize,’ she lisps unbecomingly when I admire it. Find myself hoping not and am ashamed.
Off they go to the village, a picture of organic whole-someness and in extreme contrast with my own family. We are all in filthy moods, and apart from the Christmas card, have nothing to show. Suddenly I remember my jam, and rush to the larder, where I stand for some minutes debating which jar is most fetching. Plump for one with a gingham lid and return to the kitchen to find Giles coaxing Felix into my old spotty fake fur coat. He has turned The Beauty into a fat Dalmatian puppy by drawing black spots with an indelible pen on her vest and nappy. She has a black and white spotty ribbon in her hair and is dragging her own toy Dalmatian by the collar. Giles has borrowed a pair of white jeans from me and stuck blobs of black felt on with Sellotape. They all look wonderful. Am suddenly awash with love and admiration for my children. Noticing this weak moment, Giles hoists terrible silver mop and waves it at me.
‘Mummy, please will you put this wig on and be Cruella? And can you wear this red dress and your velvet cloak?’
Love and admiration suffer a setback. I am to wear skintight, flame-red disco dress with slits up both sides. Clamber into ghastly nylon pod with much protest and regret at the impulse which stopped me chucking it after its heyday in the late seventies. Lashings of red lipstick and pallid foundation are applied, and Felix and Giles look on approvingly. The Beauty, though, is horrified, and refuses to let me pick her up, shaking her head and hiding behind Giles.
Fortunately, the fancy dress contest opens the show, so we are still unsmudged as we parade around the ring with our team leader Rags gagging on her leash and trying to look like a Dalmatian by wearing cotton wool pads glued to her sandy coat. The other entries comprise an enchanting bird of paradise – a little girl covered in glittery plastic feathers – and a bedraggled Humpty Dumpty on a pony. We look as if we have tried too hard, and as the only adult in the ring I am horribly conscious of my diminutive dress and vulgar fishnet tights.
Mortification is enhanced a thousandfold by the discovery that David is the judge. He winks when he catches my eye and I become scarlet in the face to match my dress. We win first prize of four magenta rosettes and David ties one onto each of our outfits. Shaking hands with me and presenting the cup, he is purity and loveliness meeting tarted-up depravity. Try to cringe away and am thus caught by local paper’s photographer in hunched, wizened position for tomorrow’s newspaper. The Beauty, in contrast, is very pleased to see David, and throws herself out of my arms and into his. This causes much clucking and clapping among the spectators. Hope the paper uses this picture if they have to use any.
Only just effect a change of outfit in time to shimmy up the church tower for Felix’s teddy to make its jump. On the roof, we peer down at the churchyard below, an emerald handkerchief embroidered with scattered blobs of hurled bear. Giles is measuring the distance between each bear and the church door. The winner will be the one furthest away.
‘Geronimo,’ yells Felix, having paid his twenty pence to the lady in charge, who is our Christian neighbour. He lobs the teddy with mighty force. It lands on the Spar shop’s telephone wires. Felix starts to sob, and wails: ‘Get him down, he’s going to be electrocuted.’
I long to run away to a desert island where there are no village shows, no Spar shops and no children. Just apricot face cream, Pimms and Georgette Heyer.
August 6th
Weather still morose and Lila and her children are in residence, having stayed the night in order to celebrate their multiple victories at the show. Diptych’s tomatoes won a huge cup, now towering on the kitchen window sill with our eggcup-sized fancy-dress trophy next to it. This is bad enough, but worse is Lila’s small shield for the sea kale, to which she has attached my consolation certificate for failed jam.
Felix and Giles are malevolent this morning. They were forced by me not to watch The Simpsons video last night, but to cook sausages on a fire in the garden, in the rain. Much rudeness ensued, and just as they were becoming malleable, if morose, Diptych announced that he has become vegan and can only eat tofu. A sausage was slung and slid hotly down Diptych’s shirt, after which there was a vile food fight. Hostilities have opened again this morning with Giles torturing Diptych by beating him hollow at croquet, despite having patronising self-inflicted handicap of one hand tied. Felix and Calypso, friends since yesterday due to them both having won a class, Felix for his Christmas card, Calypso for her garden, are operating on Action Man with a penknife and it is best not to notice. My mother telephones and temporarily diverts Lila from throwing away everything in my larder with preservatives in it.
‘Desmond has chopped his finger off.’ My mother’s voice is shaky and I can hear the inhalation of a comfort cigarette.
‘How did he do that? Was he drunk?’ I am sickened and shocked by this news. Mind’s eye dwells unhappily on finger lying useless on the kitchen floor like Felix’s joke one with the nail through it.
My mother explains: ‘The stupid fool slammed the door on it in a fit of rage. Luckily we had some frozen peas, so I put it in the bag with them and took it, and him, to the cottage hospital. They have sewn it back on now, and all I do is thank God for Captain Birds Eye.’ Mind’s eye positively reels at the thought of finger stump among the peas: will never be able to eat another frozen petit pois again. Add three packets to Lila’s throwing-out pile, then return two to the freezer in case we need them for similar emergency.
My mother arrives half an hour later and saves me a lot of money by putting all my baked beans and tinned rice pudding back in the larder, stating firmly, ‘This is expensive food. To waste it is criminal.’
Lila is furious, and huffs and puffs for about ten minutes before announcing, ‘I shall go and see Desmond in hospital. He will need holistic help after the trauma of the National Health Service.’ She chugs off in her Beetle, forgetting her children and her trophies.
August 7th
Desmond arrives in a taxi, having discharged himself from hospital. I am rather touched by his coming to me, and welcome him warmly.
‘You poor thing, how is your finger? Get your things and come in.’
Desmond hesitates and looks sheepish.
‘I can’t, I’m on my way to Lila’s. Do you know her address?’
Broad grin sweeps my face, and I cannot remove it. Am relishing the Desmond/Lila meeting about to take place on sea-sprayed cliff top. Desmond’s leather jacket dangles from his shoulders, emitting a pungent aroma of old beer, McDonald’s and cigarettes whenever he moves in it. His shirt is clean, but is a nylon Arsenal football one, and his biker boots are unashamedly leather and were therefore formerly alive. The bandage on his finger is ragged and stained. Relish the thought of Lila rushing out to greet the taxi in perfect harmony with nature, wearing flax and other earthy fabrics. She will be barefoot. Maybe he will tread on her toe.
Desmond still has one foot in the taxi, and has not asked the driver to turn the engine off. I give the address and ask casually, ‘Does Lila know you are coming?’
‘Oh, yes, she’s going to cure my finger. She says all I have to do is lie flat with my hand resting on a marble slab for three weeks and it will heal. So I’ve had the stitches taken out and I’m going round to hers to use her marble slab.’
Cannot wait to tell my mother.
August 10th
Desmond is installed on the marble slab. My mother and I are fascinated by this notion and wish to see. Wonder if he looks like Frankenstein’s monster and Lila has become a modern Mary Shelley. Do hope so. Set off on a surprise visit with The Beauty. Would very much like to harness The Beauty’s energies into something useful such as making electricity or being a Girl Guide. Could she work on a wind farm? Or a treadmill? My morning bath was enlivened by her face rising over the side, radiant as the sun, blowing fat kisses at me. She diverted me with this sweetness, and while engaged in praising her, I failed to prevent her slinging into the bath a wet nappy, two toothbrushes and a pair of pants. Her lager-lout progress around the house is evident in the paths of debris linking all the cupboards, and ending up in the kitchen at the food cupboard. This is her favourite place. She climbs, like a limber little monkey, up the shelves to the tea bag zone, where she snatches a handful and tears them apart with her teeth. When tea is liberally scattered, she uses the papery remains of the bags to wipe a clean patch on the shelf surface and also to blow her nose. Such genius is naturally rewarded with laughter rather than discipline, with the result that she feels approved of as she tornadoes around the house. This may be good for her psyche, but her housekeeping methods are tipping the balance towards deepest squalor. It is becoming irreversible, and I can no longer face tidying up. A day at Lila’s, or even just an hour, will be bliss. Lila has no cupboards and even if she had, there would be nothing in them. She stores her food in a humming fifties refrigerator with a vast handle and superb anti-baby suction keeping it shut. Everything edible is in there, even her beloved pulses, and Lila has never used a tea bag in her life.
The Beauty whisks into the house with her lips pursed expectantly. Her cunning is remarkable. By the time I have greeted Lila and turned around to find her, she has spotted Lila’s Achilles heel – a plethora of face creams and lotions, neatly stashed on a shelf beneath the huge sink-cum-hip bath.
‘Get that child. Quickly!’ Lila lunges, but is not quick enough. The Beauty grabs a wholemeal-looking tube and has the lid off in a split second. Orange gunge hits the floor in a jet. The Beauty licks a drip from her fingertip.
‘Mmm, yummy,’ she says. Desperate not to have to go home straight away, I grab her and bundle her outside, begging Lila to let me purchase her another dose of the cream, which appears to be puréed carrot.
‘You can’t. It comes from a Mexican apothecary and it has to be mixed in the presence of the user,’ snarls Lila, adding unnecessarily: ‘It was very expensive.’
A nasty silence ensues, cut at last by a male voice.
‘Well it hasn’t made you look any different. Venetia looks just as good as you and she’s never been near a Mexican apothecary.’ Oh, how I sometimes love my brother. Desmond is standing in the doorway, his usually slick black hair wild from the beach. The Beauty is in his arms, and they make a surreal pair, framed by the blue view of sea frilled with white waves.
‘How come you aren’t on your slab?’ demands my mother, from outside the window where she has gone to smoke, but with the window open, so she can join in with the fun in the kitchen. ‘I don’t even believe there is a slab of marble here. There isn’t room.’ Cut off from the waist, and peeping between the red and white striped curtains, she is straight out of a Punch and Judy show. Lila gives her a dirty look, and I have to look at the ceiling not to snigger.
‘Maybe it’s under Lila’s mattress,’ I suggest. ‘A kind of hard Lilo.’
‘Aha,’ says my mother, her expression becoming thoughtful. Desmond hands me The Beauty. She is tinted orange, as if with Man Tan, by the sandy damp of Lila’s garden path. He confounds my love interest theory by pulling back a curtain and revealing a dank, larderish room, more like a cell as there is no food in it, just a marble shelf along one wall.
‘Look what I have to endure,’ he says. ‘I’ve been on the goddam slab for an hour this morning. But then Lila needed some wood chopped, and she says that a bit of exertion is good for the circulation, so she let me get up for a few chores.’
Lila the canny slave-driver is innocently scraping her precious cream off the floor and into a glass. She wipes her hands on a dainty little towel.
‘Let’s go for a walk, or rather a scramble – the cliff is like brown sugar,’ she says, keen to get us out of the house.
We tramp in single file down the cliff path, Desmond nobly carrying Ten Ton Tessie, as my mother has christened The Beauty. Lila skips ahead, nimble as a goat, and turns to take a photograph.
‘God, you look as though you are on day release from some institution,’ she yells up to us, and I do see what she means. Desmond’s arm is still in a sling, but he does not let this cramp his style, so is wearing bluebottle sunglasses and has perched The Beauty like a parrot on his good shoulder. She beams and points her fingers at his eyebrows, but doesn’t dare touch the springy mass of them. My mother is wearing her usual uniform of thick black jacket, long wool skirt, black tights and large hat. I never got round to taking off my old-maid white cotton nightie this morning, but managed to add a pair of harlequin leggings for relaxed seaside wear. Thus clad, I look like a faded bag lady, with strange swirls and mini roundabouts on my ankles where I have failed to apply my fake tan properly. Fortunately, Lila is much cheered by this, and scrambles back to join us, amiably suggesting lunch in the café a mile along the beach.
Wish profoundly that Giles and Felix were with us, instead of in some shopping mall in Cambridge with their father, as we stroll along the shore. Sand scrunches and gives beneath my feet, dirty, streaky blond where the tide lapped it this morning. The sea is teal blue, heavy and still like oil, and inviting. I cannot resist. The first moments are hell, numb toes bump pebbles beneath the water and I stumble, holding my stomach in so that there is less of me to feel the frozen ring of water encircling my flesh. Shut my eyes, and, emboldened by piercing squawk commanding my presence from The Beauty, I launch into silken blue sea, so clear that the sand and stones at the bottom and my pale marble limbs are visible. Twenty strokes towards the glittering horizon and the water becomes a little colder, a little deeper. The others tire of watching me and walk on, leaving silence, the sea and me. Lovely. Nature’s beauty treatments triumph once more. This must be better for me than a day with Mo Loam, and so much cheaper.
Idyll no sooner experienced than lost by cavorting splash twenty yards away. Terror-fuelled adrenalin has me racing for the shore at Olympic speed with Jaws music thudding in my head. Almost die from unusual amount of exertion, and have to lie, as if washed up, just beyond the tide on dry land. Coughing and wheezing, heart palpitating, I stand up to scan the horizon, hoping, now I am safe, to see a great white fin and know I have survived a dice with death. Instead, a smiling puppy-faced seal bobs in the shallows, rolling over to reveal sleek black barrel body and little fins. I half long to run back into the sea and cavort with dear cuddly creature in the manner of youths and maidens in Greek myths, but am too shaken. Wave, and am convinced that seal flaps a fin back at me. The others have vanished. I decide to catch up. Remember Simon telling me that you can get anywhere if you run twenty paces then walk twenty paces. Arrive at the café almost as soon as the others, and hardly puffing. Excellent. This shall be my new gait. Bungaloid and cosy, the café has been a pit stop since Charles and I first came to Norfolk. As I walk through the door, the smell of walnut cake and Camp coffee fills me with indiscriminate nostalgia. Can still dimly remember the days when Charles had turned his back on his army training and was trying to be relaxed. He even liked my family at first, or pretended to. Mention this to Desmond, who looks blank but says ‘Yes,’ enthusiastically.
We all have crab sandwiches, and marvel at the seal story. My mother unearths a half-bottle of wine from the clear-fronted drinks refrigerator. She is thrilled.
‘What luck. Someone must have left it here. It says Thistle Hotels on the label.’
‘Stolen from a minibar and swapped for crab sandwiches,’ Lila suggests. Half a bottle is just enough to make our table appear more civilised than it is, as The Beauty blows her chips out of her mouth and across the floral cloth, and the rest of us pay homage to the crab sandwiches by eating them in silence.
Insane morning spent packing for three children, self and Rags, with The Beauty shadowing me and behaving as if at a jumble sale with all my piles. The whole summer is a disaster. Can’t believe it is holiday time again. None of us wants to go anywhere, especially separately. Begin to weep while counting underpants in Giles’s room. Giles and Felix are going to Club Med in Sicily with their father and the poison dwarf tomorrow, and The Beauty and I are going to Ireland with Rose and Tristan, who have taken a cottage somewhere remote. Rags has been farmed out to Smalls, and we take her there at lunchtime with her bed, bowl and one bone as luggage. Smalls’s address is The House with Blue Windows, and we find it perched halfway up the one street of a tiny hamlet where all the cottages are built from uncut flint and are identical except for Smalls’s window frames. Opening a wooden door, we troop into a garden occupied by three caravans and a number of ducks, basking as if moored, in the shade. Rags bounds towards a large white drake with a pompon on his head, but stops in her tracks when he rises, quacking, and waddles into a wall of hollyhocks. Smalls emerges from the largest caravan, his hands stained blue, his tiny green hat and leather jerkin, making him a convincing leprechaun. ‘Woad,’ he says.
If only I were not rendered idiotic with exhaustion, would be able to ask him to explain ancient dyeing technique to the children. As it is, just manage to remember Rags’s dietary requirements and areas of neurosis before Rags, like a heat-seeking missile, discovers an ancient, shivering lurcher tucked in a drawer by the kitchen door and wages war. Try to kick Rags, miss, stub big toe, and in great pain mutter to Giles, ‘You sort everything out,’ and retreat to the car, tears welling, to curse and suppress waves of nausea. A few minutes pass and the sound of snarling terrier diminishes. Smalls and the children come out.
‘We’ve tied her up,’ says Giles. Smalls opens my door and hands me a tiny brown bottle.
‘Basilicum,’ he says. ‘Pour a drop into your palms and inhale the aroma.’ A powerful Mediterranean odour fills the car, and I recognise it vaguely. ‘It’s basil, and it lifts you out of exhaustion and revitalises you after a hard day. People in offices should use it to get rid of sick office syndrome.’ Smalls has never said so many words to me; this is evidently a ruling passion. Try not to look disparaging, but evidently fail.
‘Just try it, you look as if you need a boost,’ he urges.
‘I will,’ I promise, and drive off rolling my eyes and having negative thoughts. Afternoon of much labour, including stacking logs which were delivered in our absence at Smalls’s, and block access to yard utterly. Why have they come? It’s summer. Who ordered them? Cannot be bothered to discover answers to these questions.
Boys stay up late packing. Felix is taking twelve cuddly toys, two Beanos and half a packet of chocolate biscuits. Giles has tapes, Walkman, cricket magazine and bat. We watch the news and Sicily has a heatwave of monster proportions. More packing of sun cream, hats and water pistols follows. Wish and wish that I had followed my instincts and said no to Charles taking them away to ghastly caged oven of organised sports. Anxiety and exhaustion now making my legs ache; I fear that self-pity may be about to flood in. Suddenly remember basilicum. Sprinkle it about with vigour and inhale. Superb. Better than sex, as far as I can remember, and much easier to come by.
August 15th
Some strange impulse of masochism has placed me on the train with my three children and enough luggage to fill the Titanic. Car has gone for a rest cure with David, who promised to give it an MOT and fix the stereo. Hope he is to be trusted. The Beauty uses the opportunity, and the platform of the table, to perform a range of her finest kung fu noises and air chops before settling down to shred my newspaper. Felix, having mysteriously acquired batteries for his Gameboy, has become an automaton, and Giles wishes to spend all my money on the contents of the buffet trolley. Other passengers pretend not to look as The Beauty flicks the open end of a crisp packet around the carriage, and the contents whirl and settle like snowflakes on seats, briefcases, shoes and the floor. My longed-for plastic cup of coffee cools on the table across the aisle and I dare not even remove the lid in case of accident.
Suddenly a grey-haired woman bears down upon us, her eyebrows snapped together in dreadful rage: ‘I can’t bear this.’
I find this unreasonable. My children have made a mess, but they have not been fighting, swearing or even bickering. I bridle, but she brushes me aside.
‘My dear girl, you simply must have a chance to have your coffee. Let me hold your baby and you sit there for five minutes.’
Thank God I didn’t speak. This is an angel disguised as someone’s mother-in-law. Tears of gratitude rush as she gestures to the seat across the aisle, and thrusts me towards it with the sports pages, all that is left of my paper. Plonking The Beauty next to the window with a toy, she takes my place, crunching her Liberty-print bottom onto the crisp-strewn seat, and says brightly, ‘Now then boys, let’s play I Spy.’
Astonished, Giles and Felix comply. All tension dissolves in me, and has vanished utterly by the time I reach the end of the report of England’s tragic defeat in the Tour de France. The rest of the journey is accomplished in peace, The Beauty having fallen asleep on the table, clutching her kangaroo and surrounded by crisps and the little milk pots given out with tea and coffee.
Charles meets us at Liverpool Street and is elegance epitomised, tall, straight-backed and immaculate in a pale suit. The army taught him to stand quite still, and seeing him before he sees us as we walk towards the head of the platform, am struck by how unusual this is in the rush and pause that is a crowd in a station. Helena only becomes visible when we are almost upon her, hopping from one little foot to the other, trying to see us over people’s heads. Like the angelic mother-in-law, she is wearing a Liberty-print dress.
‘Hello, Charles, hello, Helena. Gosh, what a nice dress, did you make it?’
Why can I not manage to keep my mouth shut? And why, when I open it, does everything sound wrong? Fortunately the boys create a diversion by hugging Charles. He pats their heads feebly.
The moment of parting is immediate. I am left by the entrance to the underground watching their backs as they head out through the station to their car and the drive to Heathrow. Had planned brilliant self-defence against the boys going, of pretending I had decided to send them to Scout camp. Thought this would protect me from heart-break of not going on holiday with them. But the back of Giles’s head, hair gleaming and nit-free, as he looks up to say something to Charles, Helena’s nod and Felix turning to wave at me are more than I can bear. They are a family. There they go, up the escalator in a family group. They are off on a family holiday. And I am not. Sit on my case sobbing into The Beauty’s neck while she pats my head and says ‘Aaaah.’
August 17th
In Belfast, in McDonald’s. Not a good place to relax; have to change The Beauty’s nappy by squatting on the floor of the ladies’ loo and making my knees into the changing mat. She likes this and lolls her head back, looking up the skirts of those washing their hands. Rose, Theo, The Beauty and I have just eaten three McChicken sandwiches and two Egg McMuffins and we feel a bit sick. Soon forget this in Mensa-level intelligence test of attempting to put hired baby seats into hired car, followed by equally challenging map-reading moment. Eventually we are on our way, heading to Donegal and our cottage on the beach. Tristan will be there when we arrive, having flown direct to a landing strip on the sand, from his meeting in Denmark yesterday.
As soon as the babies fall asleep, Rose and I regress to teen-hood, with Joni Mitchell in the tape machine and much ground to cover in the fascinating parallel universe of film stars we have crushes on, make-up and clothes. Rose is driving, leaving me to guide us across to the west coast, which despite having no comprehension of left and right, I manage.
Very underwhelmed by landscape, which is scattered with DIY bungalows and dour grey villages, until we cross the border and climb an uninviting hill to find Donegal billowing ahead of us, wild, empty and romantic. Narrow streams, boulder-ridden and gushing white water rise and vanish again into the hills and still black lochs lie cradled in valleys. The Beauty wakes as we are descending towards the sea, and she and Theo become raucous.
‘Ten minutes more,’ pleads Rose. ‘Do you think you can keep them happy?’
I sing a medley of nursery rhymes, but fail to keep their attention. The Beauty hurls her toy mobile telephone at me, clonking me on the temple. ‘Ow,’ I shriek, and she bursts into tears. Theo tries to be brave, but as The Beauty reaches a crescendo, his lip crumples and he too wails. Mercifully, we spy a petrol station, and I leap out of the car and purchase many bribes and consolations. Rose shakes her head, watching in the mirror as Theo is corrupted with a square of chocolate.
‘The Beauty is so depraved,’ she sighs. ‘I suppose it’s having elder brothers. Theo’s never had sweets.’
I try to rally her. ‘Never mind, he probably won’t like them much.’ Fortunately her eyes are on the road, so she misses Theo thrusting a fistful of marshmallows into his mouth, batting his long eyelashes and grinning.
August 18th
Have adapted with ease to fashionable life in cottage with boat as sofa, chairs fashioned from tyres and driftwood, and pretty well everything else hanging from big ropes slung about the beams. Lila would be impressed by simplicity of first-night supper of lobster and scallops, although she might not have drunk three bottles of wine and gone cavorting in silk-warm sea at midnight. Routine-bound motherhood has been hurled out of the window, and The Beauty and Theo stayed up until they fell asleep, curled together in the cushioned boat hull like the Lost Boys in Peter Pan.
Tristan and Rose still not up although it is eleven, and the babies and I have examined a herd of cows, whose field ends in dilapidated hurdles a few yards from our back door. Boiling the kettle for The Beauty’s dawn bottle, I was taken aback to find a vast bovine face sniffing the window frame, shooting out a long black tongue at the steam marks on the glass. The Beauty and Theo spent half the morning hurling unsuitable items, including The Beauty’s bottle and Rose’s delicious turquoise embroidered slipper, into the cows’ field. Now they have moved round to the sea a few hundred yards in front of the house, and we have made two pilgrimages across the beach already. Theo squeals in delight, running naked into the waves, and The Beauty follows but sits down abruptly when the first breath of water covers her feet. This is baby paradise. Our cottage is just yards from the tide’s highest point, and the sea rolls back over hard wet sand, the colour and texture of fudge. Shallow pools form in pockets by boulders and the waves are delicate as lace, lapping baby ankles. Have huge fun paddling with Theo and The Beauty and can believe again that the boys are at Scout camp.
August 21st
A seaside holiday without Giles and Felix is weird, and am riddled with the conviction that I should be enjoying it more than I am. Emphasis much more on eating, and food is laid out like fabulous colour supplement spread. Tristan sees each meal as a chance to flex his creativity, and Rose and I do nothing but play with the babies, plan excursions we cannot be bothered to go on and paint our toenails. Today lunch is to be a picnic with bonfire near a tiny harbour further up the coast. Tristan has brought everything, and sends us off while he sets it all up. He wields his wooden spoon, camp as a television chef in his navy silk scarf and dreadful PVC apron with bosoms on it.
‘Go and look at the boats coming in for twenty minutes,’ he urges.
Am very impressed; he gets full brownie points from me, despite his outfit.
‘God, you’re lucky, Rose, it must be amazing to have a husband who can do all this stuff.’
Rose lifts Theo onto the low wall above the harbour so he can see the boats.
‘Well, it comes from his being power-crazed.’ She sounds resigned. ‘I sometimes wonder what I’m supposed to do. I’m not allowed to interfere with the cooking at all, or even buy the food for it. He does everything. He even picks flowers for the table. And he thinks doing it all on holiday and at weekends gives him the right to behave like a total slob the rest of the time. And as for that apron, he wears it because it annoys me. No other reason. Ask him.’
Gaze out at knife-edge horizon, beneath which the sea is crisp navy blue and above which palest clouds scud about, and try to imagine being annoyed by a husband who does everything but who wears PVC bosoms, when view is eclipsed by hands over my eyes.
‘Well hi there, gorgeous girls. What’s grooving?’ Gawain is standing behind me. Rose jumps up to welcome him.
‘Gawain, you’re here. How was your journey? That little plane is terrifying, isn’t it?’
She is not a bit surprised to see him, even though she doesn’t know him as well as I do, and I wonder if I have forgotten that I knew he was coming.
‘What on earth are you doing here, Gawain?’ Gawain has expression of joy writ large at the sensation his arrival has caused.
‘I ran into Tristan rollerblading in the park, and he said that you lot would be here for a week, so I arranged with him to come and surprise you, Venetia.’
‘Well you have.’ Rose is glaring at me; I realise that I sound rude and graceless. Relax lemon face by hugging The Beauty tightly as we walk back to the picnic.
Gawain is an exotic addition to our party, and I covet his clothes: his shirt is lobster pink and crinkly like cheesecloth and his trousers are purple velvet. He is on excitable form, and dashes to the pub for beers to add to the picnic. We expect him to return in moments saying the bar fell silent when he entered. He does not return.
Am sent to fetch him, and find him playing darts with two old fishermen whom he has just bought pints of Guinness. In Norfolk his appearance would stop traffic, but in Donegal he is accepted and enjoyed. He finishes a rollerblading anecdote, and, gathering a box of beer cans from behind the door, returns with me to Rose and Tristan.
The picnic is prawns, shoals of pink curls matching Gawain’s shirt. The Beauty enjoys them hugely, especially when she learns to pull the prawn from its shell, and she eats eleven of them. We return to the house and The Beauty and I collapse in the swinging boat and sleep all afternoon.
Wake up refreshed and discover Gawain pretending to be domesticated and podding peas on the doorstep. He passes me an envelope. ‘This came yesterday, and I wanted to tell you.’
Snatch it and tear it open, heart banging because for no reason, am convinced it is bad news about the boys. It is from New York, so can relax, but am too traumatised to be able to read the whole page of close typing.
‘I can’t face reading it, Gawain, what does it say?’
He returns the letter to his pocket and grins saying, ‘We won the portrait prize for the show next month.’
Much clapping and jumping up and down pleases him, but I can tell I am still not reacting properly. Must show more interest.
‘Who is the portrait of? Have you got a photograph of it? Will it make Normal for Norfolk more valuable? Speaking of which, where is my painting, Gawain?’
Gawain groans dramatically. ‘Christ, you’re a halfwit, Venetia. Have you really forgotten? It’s you. Remember, I took some photographs of you in Norfolk for it, but I haven’t got a snap of it here, I’m afraid.’
Amazing, delightful news. Surely this must be how Miss World feels, but better, as I did not have to wear high heels and a swimming costume. Rose appears from the beach like a mermaid, wrapped in a silver-green sarong, hair dripping down her back, skin glowing from sun and the sea. She looks exactly as I should like to look when emerging from the waves. I beckon her over to share the glad tidings about the portrait, and we caper about screeching, ‘Hooray!’ until Tristan brings champagne and olives to the doorstep. Am becoming increasingly at ease with this grown-up and civilised way of life. Wonder if I can recreate it at home without Tristan. Doubt it.
Second glass of champagne and Tristan is becoming ever more my ideal man. He has persuaded The Beauty and Theo to lie down in the boat sofa and is singing Bob Marley to them. About to suggest to Rose that we share him when notice his long yellow toenails for the first time. And he burps at the table to annoy Rose. And, of course, there is the apron. Gawain is crawling around in the sea singing a shanty and resembling a Labrador. It is hard to imagine a holiday romance with him, let alone a life. Why am I even bothering to think pointless thoughts about putting a man back into my life?
August 24th
Home again. House seems vast after Donegal cottage, but garden a minuscule doll’s house version of a jungle, now that I am used to having the serene sea as my lawn. Make shepherd’s pie in triumphant non-fashion statement. Shaking Worcester sauce into it and enjoying nursery-kitchen aroma, I know that I am a pedestrian housewife at heart rather than chic free spirit with a need for everything perfect about me. The Beauty is overjoyed to be home, and dashes from room to room shouting, ‘Ha ha,’ and patting cushions. Rags returns in the sidecar of Smalls’s motorbike, and The Beauty squats on the doorstep and hugs her. Have terrible anticipatory butterflies by the time Felix and Giles are dropped off.
‘Mummy, we’re back.’
‘Hello-oo, where are you?’
They burst through the front door ahead of Charles and are so different. Brown and freckled faces which have cheekbones I had never noticed before are smiling at me. Felix nearly as tall as Giles, and both surely six inches taller than a week ago. The Beauty jumps up and down wrinkling her nose and shouting, “Allo, ‘allo,’ at anyone listening. Charles is international man of mystery in appearance, with suntan and his usual smirk. Practically push him out of the door before the boys can say thank you, so desperate am I to have them to myself again.
August 25th
Club Med was not a success. ‘It was like a prison with a huge fence and we never saw Mount Etna,’ is Felix’s verdict on the holiday, and, in mitigation: ‘There were loads of really cool lizards, and I saw a snake in the swimming pool.’
Giles is hardly less surreal. ‘They had a thing called the Black and White Minstrel Show at night, and we did circus stunts every morning and it was so hot that one boy passed out and fell off the trapeze and had to go to hospital in a helicopter.’ He pauses, looks at me measuringly and adds, ‘Helena liked the entertainment. She wanted to do belly dancing, but Dad wouldn’t let her.’
Mind boggles. Cannot wait to see holiday snaps.
Mistakenly saw garden as jungle on my return from Ireland. Closer inspection reveals it to be arid parched zone with yellowing bindweed, vast sunflowers and strident fuchsias. Must do something about it. Good intentions are set back when putting on wellingtons. Sidney has been using them as a game larder. Unearth a dried shrew in one red ankle-length boot, and the tail feathers of a blackbird in the high-heeled aubergines. Discouraged, I opt for my oldest pair, green with holes in heels and soles, and stomp out leaving Felix, The Beauty and Giles watching Dirty Dancing, our latest bargain from the Spar shop, and at £2.99 for two hours, cheaper than a babysitter.
Satisfying session with wheelbarrow and spade getting rid of all but the sunflowers in readiness for autumn planting. Am wiping brow and enjoying dark chocolate brownie texture of the soil I have turned, when gravel-crunching and vehicle-groaning interrupts. A small blue van with Heath Robinson trailer is inching up the drive, terrible squeals suggesting a need for oil. Waving from the front seat and beaming are Vivienne and Simon. I chuck my tools down and rush to bang on the playroom window, interrupting Patrick Swayze at a particularly suggestive moment.
‘Quick, boys, the piglets are here.’
This visit was arranged months ago when Simon’s sow, Portia, gave birth to fourteen piglets, some spotty like fruitcake, some ginger and some plain pink. All very clean and reminiscent of old-fashioned sweetshops and Sam Pig stories. Had powerful desire to knot red spotted handkerchiefs around their necks. Simon offered us six of them. ‘You can have them to stay and they’ll clear some of your rough ground,’ he said, flicking cigarette ash into his jacket pocket, his face smothered in generous smiles at the thought of his clever plan for getting someone else to bring them up for him.
Six piglets in June, when they fitted into the palm of a hand or the crown of a hat, had seemed scarcely adequate for the rough ground, but now six large snouts sniff the air. Hairy faces and guttural grunts greet the boys, reaching towards the bars of the trailer to stroke them. They are warned off by Simon.
‘No, wait. Let them get used to you. Their teeth are very sharp. Come on, let’s put up the fence,’ he says, and wreathing the boys in electric fencing tape, marches off with them to the wood.
Vivienne is still sitting in the car, with The Beauty beside her, standing at the wheel as if she is Boadicea, making vrooming noises and waggling all the levers. Keen to sit down after my digging, I climb into the back seat for a rest. Next to me is the watering-can handbag, no longer an object for derision, but somehow amusing and chic, and coordinating with Vivienne’s sea-green cashmere cardigan and little lavender skirt. Am amazed at her choice of outfit for pig husbandry.
‘How can you keep clean?’ I ask in wonder, glancing down at my formerly white jeans, now skewbald with mud patches and speckled like an egg where I spilt tea on myself at breakfast time.
Vivienne strokes The Beauty’s hair. ‘I’m not clean, these clothes are filthy, that’s why I’m wearing them.’
Evidently, we have different standards of hygiene.
Felix runs up from the wood.
‘Simon says can you bring them down now, and he says you’d better drive across the lawn.’ He gives Vivienne his most pleading look.
‘Vivienne, please, please could I drive?’
She is no match for him.
‘All right then, at least you can see over the steering wheel, unlike your sister.’
The Beauty is passed back to me, rigid with fury, howling into my ear. I elect to walk with her, and we stand well back as Felix crunches the gears and bounces van, Vivienne and piglets across the lawn. Simon and Giles are putting the finishing touches to the corral, and with an old door propped up on bales for a house, and a big sink as a water trough, it is very inviting and Three Little Pigs-ish. Blood-curdling screams and trumpetings herald the piglets as the ramp of the trailer comes down, but no movement follows. Two fruitcake ones are prone across the doorway, the rest milling about behind them unable to work out the route. Simon shakes a bucket of food and the fruitcakes leap to attention, trotting out and into their field like veterans. Vivienne has reclaimed The Beauty, and takes her into the corral to sit on the largest piglet. An early morning oversight prevented The Beauty from dressing today, and sitting on the rusty brown piglet in her white embroidered nightie she looks like a painting, maybe ‘Baby Circe and the Swine’. Must ask my mother if Circe knew any pigs as a baby.
‘They love having their backs rubbed with a stick,’ says Vivienne, and Giles and Felix set to work at once, scrubbing away.
‘Mummy, look,’ Felix shrieks, and his piglet succumbs and collapses, front legs buckling first, until it is flat on its side and grunting blissfully, Felix still scratching away at the back of its neck.
August 28th
We love the piglets so much that Giles and Felix are moving in with them. They have cooked supper, sausages unfortunately, on a little fire just outside the electric fence, and are now snuggled down in a row with the ginger piglet and two pinks in the pig shack. Giles and Felix have sleeping bags, but are sprawled on top of them, sound asleep. Dusk is giving way to a hot, still night, and I hover with Rags between the house where The Beauty slumbers and the pig shack, unsure as to whether I should sleep out with the boys. Golden harvest moonlight glimmers on the pond, and, inhaling deep calm, I smell the nicotianas I planted rather late on and hear distant squawk of a tawny owl. Wonder if I might be nervous with just a few pigs and a tiny terrier to protect me and my children from spooks and worse. Distant squawk comes closer and up the drive, apparently preceded by Salvation Army tambourine. Out of the shadows cast by trees at the gate steps David, rattling a biscuit tin and followed closely by three piglets.
‘I found this lot on the green, and I thought I’d better get them back to you before anyone saw them. They aren’t allowed to go anywhere without a licence, you know.’
The three piglets are grinding their teeth and salivating expectantly at our feet. I chuck the biscuits into their corral and they spring over the fence in pursuit. This must be how they escaped, but cannot imagine how I failed to notice their absence; anyway, am delighted to see David.
‘Thank God you saw them. Would you like to stay the night now you’re here?’
David’s face is black and white like an old movie in the moonlight; he laughs.
‘Why?’
I point to snoring boys and piglets.
‘I wondered if you might sleep out here with them because I can’t make up my mind whether I should be here or inside with The Beauty.’ As the words leave me I realise that the request is ambiguous and that I may have propositioned him. Blush scarlet, but probably appear grey in moonlit night. David does not seem enthusiastic or eager. I make it all worse.
‘If you stayed, I wouldn’t have to sleep outside.’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’ He glowers through the dusk at me, then capitulates. ‘Oh, all right then. Have you got another sleeping bag and a tent, or do I have to go in the pigsty as well?’
Fall over biscuit tin in hopping excitement and grovel happily. ‘No, no, I’ll get you some stuff. Would you like a camp bed and a pillow as well?’
Withering glare, and David mutters, ‘Don’t push it, Venetia, just give me the pillow and forget the bloody camp bed.’ I run to the scullery to unearth the tent, congratulating myself on my good fortune. Now that I do not have to do it, can acknowledge sensation of utter terror at prospect of spending night outside and in charge. Pimple tent is erected in moments and I crawl around inside making it cosy by laying out a pillow and lime-green sleeping bag in which David will look like a glow-worm.
‘What would you have done if I hadn’t come?’ David is sitting on the steps by the pond smoking a cigarette. Sit down next to him and am instantly bitten by three midges, so start scratching.
‘I don’t know, I think I’d have had to drag the boys back inside, or else spend the whole night patrolling between here and the house.’
‘Don’t, you’ll make it worse.’ His hand is warm over mine on my leg, stopping my absent-minded scratching. My heart is hammering away and we look at each other for half a second which feels like several hundred years. Leap up, unable to cope with suspense and anything more significant, and scuttle off to the house shouting, ‘Ni-ight, sleep well,’ very casually over shoulder.
August 29th
Breadcrumb-head and peeled-eye sensation caused by night listening to the hall clock ticking and wondering how to face David in the morning. Needn’t have bothered as he is not here. The Beauty makes straight for the pig zone before I can even get her bottle from the kitchen, and peeps into the tent in the hope of action. Finding none, she crawls into the sleeping bag to make sure, but all is empty. The boys crawl out from their shack, shaking off straw and yawning. The Beauty is diverted and heads off to be a piglet in a dust-bath just vacated by one of the fruitcakes. Giles clambers carefully over the electric fence.
‘Did you see David, Mum? He’s gone to look for a frying pan. What’s he doing here anyway?’
David arrives back brandishing the pan and crouches to light the fire.
‘I rounded up your pigs in the village last night and when I got here and saw you two looking so comfortable, I decided to join in.’ He turns to me.
‘Good morning, house dweller, will you join us for breakfast?’
No time for embarrassment as we try to consume bacon and marshmallows without the piglets finding out and becoming cannibals.
August 31st
Truly hideous day spent buying trainers, pants and socks for Giles and Felix in Norwich. Purchasing the stuff is bad enough, worse is the fact that I will have to sew name tapes onto it all. Must remember to write to school governors with my brilliant idea. Have long believed that all school uniform should be pooled. Each parent could pay a set amount at the beginning of their child’s school career and that amount could pay for another set of clothes to go in the pool. With no name tapes and no ownership of items, there would be no lost property and no ghastly clothing list to upset mothers at the end of each holiday. It is all part of Utopian dream, like free bicycles in Cambridge, and just needs setting up to become a huge success.
Dawdle in the Games Workshop, mystic temple to Warhammer, and am forced to sit in corner while Giles is given a demonstration in painting the Blood Thirster by the whey-faced, black-clad shop assistant. Felix, a box of Dwarves in one hand and another of Boar Men in the other, is in a trance of indecision at the counter. Hope he chooses the cheapest ones, as his Warhammer collection spends much time scattered across his bedroom carpet and then in the Hoover bag waiting to be rescued, and so is not good value for him. Giles on the other hand has gone bigtime with his. The Blood Thirster is a hefty purchase. He has been saving up for it since the beginning of the holidays. Curious to see this object of desire, I get him to show me one in the shop. It does not look, as I had imagined, like an orange squeezer, but is a lump of moulded metal in the shape of the ghoul in Munch’s Scream but with skeletons and sundry corpses dangling.
Wish my children would spend their pocket money on something more wholesome, but am comforted a little by the thought that it could be worse. Charles is bringing out a line called Heavenly Pets, a range of plastic toys inspired by too many visits to McDonald’s with his children. Preying upon susceptibility of small, grief-stricken owners, he plans to sell tiny take-home wind-up coffins with pet of your choice within, ready to pop out when wound up. Only discovered this atrocity when Felix finally unpacked his bag this morning. Charles had given him a prototype hamster coffin.
‘Look, Daddy’s going to sell these and I helped him decide what colour they should be.’ The purple coffin, playing ‘Merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream’ opens slowly to reveal an orange nylon blob, presumably the hamster, reclining on cushion-effect plastic bed. As the tune finishes, the blob levitates, hovers and flops back and the coffin closes again. Utterly repulsive and tasteless. Felix loves it. I send a postcard in complaint, and only notice as I am posting it that I have used the one of the mummified cat from the British Museum.