Greatly looking forward to term-time and also to wearing jerseys again and lighting fires. Summer still lingers, though, and combine harvesters bumble through the last cornfields creating herringbone tweed patterns as they cut. Out for the evening and the road is a neat centre parting between smooth golden stubble. Dust and heat follow me down it on my way to have dinner, or rather ‘kitchen supper’, at the Sampsons. Zoom along with windows down, hair flying and the plangent twang of Deborah Allen on the tape machine. She gets to my current favourite song and up goes the volume. I sing along with gusto, especially when we reach the chorus to which I have learnt all the words and all the instrumental flurries. Tap the steering wheel and shriek ‘Yeehah’ a few times. Excellent stuff.
Vast copper beach trees around the Sampsons’ lawn increase autumnal mood, their shadows long and inky across springy grass. Getting out of the car, am covered in goose pimples within seconds, having chosen to wear tiny lime-green and lemon-yellow sundress, purchased today from a market stall on impulse because it was so cheap. It is made of nylon and causes me to leap with static whenever I touch anything. It is most unsuitable, and, worst of all, I am convinced it would look better on a fourteen-year-old.
Sir Nicholas is passionate about his lawns and employs a man full-time to roll them, mow them, pull dandelions out of them and water them. Passing the pool, I glimpse a hunched figure on all fours behind a wiggle of box hedging: it is Sir Nicholas, sent out by Hilary to find mint, and overcome by a desire to be at one with his sward. I wave and call a greeting.
‘The grass here is wonderful, Sir Nicholas, mine has become a tundra now, so it’s lovely to remember what grass is supposed to look like.’
He bounces up, ‘Venetia, come through, my dear, how splendid to see you.’
He leads me in through a French window to the drawing room, where a handful of people are sipping tiny drinks from eggcup-sized glasses and trying to look relaxed. Hilary introduces me to the others, but not one of the names sinks into my head as I am crackling with static and embarrassment, both caused by my unsuitable dress. On top of the dress is fashionable boiled-wool shrunken cardigan. As an advance treat to myself for doing the name tapes, I persuaded Jenny the babysitter to sew puce ribbon around the edge of this cardigan last week and have been longing to try it out on an audience ever since. This audience is not appreciative.
‘Dear me, it is so irritating when the daily shrinks one’s clothes,’ says a well-meaning middle-aged woman in a piecrust frill and pleated skirt, watching me fumble to do up a button on my cardigan in an attempt to hide as much of the silly dress as I can. She has a daughter at Giles’s school, and she shows off about having bought and name-taped all her uniform at the beginning of the holidays.
Can think of nothing at all to say except, ‘Oh.’
Kitchen supper is pretty fancy, and delicious. I dispose of my goat’s cheese log in two mouthfuls and eat three pieces of bread while my neighbour prods his first course unenthusiastically. Having not listened to any introductions, I plunge in.
‘Which is your wife?’
He looks baffled. ‘Oh, I’m not married,’ and then, as if it follows, ‘I’m in the army.’
Of course, this is why I have been asked. Remember my mother telling me that Sir Nicholas was taking an interest in my single status and thought something should be done about it. Particularly thoughtful of him to provide an army man for me, like Charles but newer model. On my right, Sir Nicholas is busy with his other neighbour, the piecrust, and is not talking to me. The army man gives up pretending to eat the goat’s cheese, and concentrates on the large amount of my thigh visible despite my primly spread napkin.
‘What was your husband’s rank and regiment?’ he asks.
‘I can’t remember,’ I reply, graceless but truthful. Am immediately ashamed. Of gracelessness. Now I will have to ask him about his rank and regiment to make up. He drones away and I fiddle with my ribbon and listen to Hilary’s conversation with the splendid husband of piecrust. His hair is almost blue with snowiness, and he sports a beautiful tweed jacket and shoes polished until they gleam like walnut wood. He is judging the cattle classes at the local agricultural show. I would love to know about this, and cannot bear to miss the conversation, so apologise to army man.
‘I hope you don’t mind, I just need to know about cows.’ He is very understanding.
‘Of course, I do see. Why don’t we swap places?’
Soon I am leaning in my plate, topping up my wineglass and learning how to tell if a cow has championship potential or not. Arrive home late, determined to purchase a small bovine as soon as possible, preferably at the show tomorrow, and to keep it in the orchard and milk it in the manner of Marie Antoinette. Small green dress will become milkmaid outfit and will therefore be useful.
Almost negligible hangover in no way diminishes my enthusiasm for bovine purchase. Giles and Felix groan about it being the end of their holidays and wanting just to be at home, a line which I used to fall for but now recognise as euphemism for playing on the Gameboy and watching advertisements on television. It is raining as we depart for the agricultural show, and The Beauty is wild-eyed and dangerous with new teeth causing trouble. She throws all toys on the floor of the car and shouts fiercely all the way there, shattering my nerves. At the show, cannot bear the queue to enter, so deviously convince car-parking youths that we are members and drive straight to the main ring. Just as well, as downpour commences, to coincide with the Belgian Blue class. We watch from the warmth and comfort of the car, with the windscreen wipers on, as a slow procession of white cows with big blue ink spots and terrible shaven buttocks shuffle past us. Many of the bovines are creating cowpats as they go, and many others are walking through them, cloven hoofs squelching. Suddenly do not wish to own a cow.
‘Mummy, look, his balls are massive.’
Felix is standing with his head out of the sunroof and is waving a large pink umbrella with ‘Voo Doo Dolls’ written on it. One of the Belgian Blues shies as he trudges past us.
‘Felix, put it away,’ I hiss, shamefaced to be found with such an accessory among the countless weather-proofed oilskins in assorted puddle and mud colours. The umbrella and Felix hurtle to the ground beside the car.
‘It doesn’t work as a parachute, Mum,’ he tells me.
‘So I see.’ Two passing ponies shy and the judge in the ring breaks off from his inspection of a bulging blue backside to glare at us. ‘Let’s go and look around,’ I suggest, and am deaf to pleas for ice cream as we stagger to the dog ring, The Beauty’s pushchair becoming a snowplough in effect as it gathers clods of mud and straw in its wheels. These no longer turn, and I am eventually forced to drag the buggy, with The Beauty moaning piteously and struggling to escape. In the dog ring, a low-slung collie is whisking and skulking around a small herd of white ducks shaped like folded umbrellas. A jovial commentator booms away and the crowd titters and claps. The Beauty pulls her socks off and hurls them over the rope and into the ring, in the manner of a medieval damsel bestowing her colours on a favoured knight. The ducks waddle up some steps and down a slide. Ice cream beckons.
Haircuts. Jenny the babysitter’s mother Enid is a travelling hairdresser. She zooms up to the house in a convertible Morris Minor with pulsing music issuing from her car stereo, and impresses Giles and Felix hugely. Sensing a kindred spirit, Giles brings his radio into the kitchen where the haircuts are to take place.
‘Do you like this?’ The volume is increased and I abandon the kitchen, leaving The Beauty standing on the table bobbing up and down in time to the music and holding hands with Felix, while Giles and Enid sing along to a very fast rap song. Spend very enjoyable half-hour with hose, using high pressure to zap the wheels of The Beauty’s pushchair and remove the huge cakes of mud, straw and cowpats collected at the show. Scrub away, employing toothbrush for awkward bits, and experience great calm and happiness in completing the task and in having lovely shining pushchair to hurl back into the car with all the spilt earth, inexplicable gravel, sacks of hen food and crunched crisps that live there. Return to the kitchen to find two sons with terrible shorn patches of felt like Action Man instead of hair.
‘We’ve had number twos,’ Felix shouts, ‘and The Beauty’s going to have hers done now.’
Enid, clearly a fanatic, has strapped The Beauty into the high chair and wrapped her in a red towel. Only her head is visible. She pats her hair and beams at Enid, ready to lose her jaunty topknot, which is bound by a scarlet velvet bow and is especially fetching today. Enid’s broad pink rear sways rhythmically behind the high chair, keeping rapid time with the music as she combs and dances, her scissors snapping and chattering in anticipation about The Beauty’s head.
‘No, don’t!’ I scream above the music, and The Beauty bursts into sobs. ‘Turn that bloody noise off.’
Cannot believe that Giles and Felix can look this ghastly, and scarcely recognise them. The Beauty is furious to miss out, and writhes in my arms, as, shaking with rage, I pay Enid ten pounds for having turned my sons into aliens. She leaves, and I return to the kitchen from seeing her off, preparing to counsel the boys gently and supportively through the first glimpse of themselves in the mirror. No need. They have turned up the music even louder, and have got the mirror out of my make-up bag and are taking it in turns to stare admiringly at themselves in the tiny glass.
‘This is the coolest haircut we’ve had in ages,’ says Giles, reaching to run his palm over Felix’s scalp. I clutch The Beauty tightly and swallow to stop myself weeping. They are thrilled; I must be supportive. I must be positive. It will be easy to deal with nits. Thank God there is no need to photograph them for some time.
The Beauty and I are making the most of a balmy, late summer evening by cleaning out the greenhouse, and Giles and Felix have gone to the final cricket session in the village. Have found plangent country song on Radio Two and am singing along loudly and inaccurately as it is not one I know, but one I wish I knew. The Beauty is dressed for gardening in her first pair of wellingtons, green and glittery and found by my mother at a jumble sale last week. She is also wearing a crocheted cyclamen-pink and royal-blue dress sent by Lila who purchased it on a trip to the West Indies, and looks utterly eccentric. I must encourage self-expression, though, and let her look like a mini bag lady if she chooses to. Have given her some potting compost and a trowel, and she is making mud pies and eating them. I assume that Fisons peat compost is perfectly healthy and leave her to it, while I repot an exhausted pelargonium and take cuttings. Musk and lemon scent from the leaves create a feel-good aroma and the sky blazes pink and orange as the sun sets. Am at one with serenity and joy. Neil Diamond’s song ‘I Am’ is next on the radio and I join in. Suddenly, though, pleasure evaporates as Digger trots past the greenhouse with a chicken in his mouth. Not a feathered one, an oven-ready one. The chicken I had defrosted for supper.
Erupt from the greenhouse screeching, ‘Why is that bastard dog here? Rags must be on heat. She’s always on heat. Sodding hell! Where is David?’ Digger has vanished, leaving the chicken upside down and very naked in the newly turned border. Pick it up muttering and march round house to the front where I can hear Giles and Felix, and, I hope, David. There they all are, playing cricket and laughing, enjoying their own reverie without interruptions from scavenging bastard dogs.
‘Why do you have to bring that creep with you?’
David, Giles and Felix all assume expressions of hurt astonishment, and glance at one another wondering which of them is the creep in question.
‘Mum, David can stay to supper, can’t he?’ Giles ignores my stamping fury and tosses me the ball in his hands. Of course I miss it, even though I instinctively drop the chicken to be prepared to catch it.
‘Yes, and he can bloody well cook it.’ Pick up the chicken and hurl it at David, irritation rising even higher when he catches it easily. Giles is rolling on the grass giggling. Felix frowns.
‘Mum, why have you brought the chicken outside?’
I retreat, slamming the door into the house, and take The Beauty up for a soothing bath.
Last dregs of the holidays arrive not a moment too soon. After ten weeks Felix and Giles are as delighted as I am by the prospect of school, both having been supplied with huge quantities of new clothing and gumshields, and being keen to replace a nagging mother with enthusiastic and understanding friends. The gumshields are a particular triumph, and have been worn non-stop since we collected them from the dentist, making my formerly attractive children look like a pair of Neanderthals, particularly when combined with the new felt-head haircuts. I hate the gumshields especially because they represent a total outlay of almost one hundred pounds, which is three-quarters of a cashmere cardigan. The Beauty loves them, and has made one of her own with a wedge of apple, which she clamps between pursed lips, before grimacing fiercely and blowing the fruit hard across the room. Her manners are becoming atrocious, and she has learnt a lot from watching The Simpsons with her brothers. This she does with gusto, plumping herself on the armchair next to the television, biscuit in one hand, beaker in the other, sitting up straight and bouncing excitedly as the credits roll. Whenever Bart Simpson farts or does anything remotely ill-mannered, she cackles and claps, making sure that the boys are sharing the joke too. In the kitchen, or indeed a supermarket or other shop, she shouts a crescendo of ‘Oh! OH! OHH!’ when she wants something, and grabs my skin in a pinch-and-twist torture movement if thwarted. Am covered in scabs and gouges from my dealings with her, and wish she could go to school with her brothers on Tuesday, too.
September 7th
The last day features a medley of favourite treats, with a brief and painless moment at the dentist for The Beauty thrown in. This happens straight- after breakfast and is her first time in the chair. She takes to it well, hurling herself back several times before taking up a relaxed position perched on the arm. She bops Mr Jensen on the nose with her purple plastic sunglasses and stands up to caper about as piped music fills the surgery. Mr Jensen hovers over her head for about thirty seconds, making tentative dabs with his lollipop mirror and wooden icecream stick.
‘Lovely teeth,’ he says, tugging at the stick which she has clamped between them. ‘Don’t be in too much of a hurry to bring her back. A year is fine.’
We troop out. Felix manages not to say, ‘Can we have some sweets?’ until we are on the pavement outside.
Crab-fishing is next on our list, time-honoured end-of-summer ritual and another first for The Beauty. She is not an asset, and has to be trapped in her pushchair, where she roars in red-faced rage. Turn her to face the sea lavender and the clanking wind-chime masts of moored boats, and she instantly falls asleep.
‘Mum, Mum, there’s no bacon. Where’s the bacon? Did you bring it?’ Of course I didn’t. We are four miles from any shop, with the sea on three sides of us and a silver-veined grid of creeks and mud on the other. Very soon our crab dyke will vanish with the tide. Felix bursts into tears and I curse my constant fallibility as a mother, and general hopelessness as a human being. Saved by Giles, who produces bacon from his pocket in repulsive, slimy plastic bag.
‘I thought I’d better be in charge of this; Mum always forgets to bring the bacon,’ he says with a smirk. Must stop comparing him to Charles, although I suppose it’s not harmful so long as the comparison remains in Giles’s favour. Sit on the bank of the creek untangling orange-handled crab lines and cheering as the boys fill their bucket with snapping, glaucous crustaceans. By the time the tide turns, there are enough crabs for a Grand National race. Giles draws the starting line, scoring the black mud with the handle of his net, and Felix follows him, dropping the runners well back so they can set off at speed. The Beauty wakes just in time and her throne is turned to face the track. In an instant they are off, sixteen crabs and one inert anemone scuttling sideways back towards the creek.
‘How come they always go the right way?’ asks Felix. ‘Can they see the sea or do they smell it?’
‘It’s primeval because crabs are really old,’ Giles explains kindly, and I nod enthusiastically, delighted not to be taxing my brain.
Le Moon in Cromer for eating Chinese food with chopsticks is next, and requires a complete change of clothing for all of us. This is effected on the street outside the hideous breeze-block edifice which houses the boys’ favourite restaurant. Felix presses his nose to the steamed-up window, savouring the prospect of being inside.
‘Hooray, there’s no one else there. Look at the aquariums, Mum, I wish our house could be more like Le Moon. I want silver and red wallpaper like that in my room.’
He has a point; it would be great to have a room like Le Moon, with vast paper lanterns and gold and red tasselled lamps and huge clean aquariums with bubbling water and frisky fish, rather than our tiny, miserable tank where Pesce the fairground fish gapes at a bare wall through murky brown water. Make mental note to track wallpaper down, from God knows where.
We enter and are straight away seated beneath a three-dimensional gold-framed painting of a swan on water, and automatically begin cramming prawn crackers into our mouths where they stick to our tongues. The Beauty becomes high on monosodium glutamate and creates a fun game piling pancakes on her head. Have noticed that she has recently taken to Hair Protests. Anything wet or sticky, crumby or flaky is rubbed into her scalp, accompanied by a manic smile. Chastisement, or even the most gentle suggestion, is met with a defiant lift of the chin and increased dollopings onto the hair. Muse about The Beauty’s problem-child behaviour for a while and resolve nothing. Hair protest is better than dirty protest and, anyway, I am powerless to stop her. I have no control.
September 10th
Joy. Peace. Calm. A whole afternoon of silence. My mother has taken The Beauty as her companion to a wine and sausage-roll party she has been forced to attend by The Gnome.
‘It’s to raise money for a hostel for artists,’ she groans. ‘I’m only going because I hope it will be built soon so that The Gnome can go and live there instead of in my garden.’
Her new autumn look is formidable, and includes a cone-shaped fur hat given to her by a Russian sculptor who came to stay with her and with whom she consumed two bottles of vodka in one fourteen-hour session. She had to wear dark glasses for a week afterwards, and has only just removed them today. The Beauty and she swoop away like a pair of Tsarinas in their chariot, both now wearing hats, The Beauty having donned a damson velvet beret with turquoise beadwork. I wave them off, and struggle to stop myself curtseying and throwing rose petals.
The hours loom drearily. A corporate hospitality brochure awaits, my brief being to turn it into readable English. I can’t bring myself to read it, and instead plunge into my file of autumn plant catalogues. Order a dozen roses, including one called Spanking Prudence, a hideous cake-pink standard tea which I shall give to Gawain because his last girlfriend was called Prudence. The new postman turns up, four hours late and swerving much too fast up the drive. Can’t see what the rush is for, as all he has brought are two Reader’s Digest envelopes emblazoned with lies about vast sums of money I have almost won.
Work crawls, brain is like a very stale loaf of bread, crumbling, bone-dry and non-receptive. Finally decide to relax officially for a few moments, and lie down under my desk, with no pillow or rug so I don’t give an impression of slacking. Extreme discomfort does not prevent me from nodding off, and am woken by crunching of gravel and the arrival of the organic vegetable delivery. A further, and legitimate, respite from work, hooray. Dash out to assist in carrying box of goodies to larder and am drawn into conversation with Mrs Veg about gassing bananas. Am aghast when she shows me picture of piteous bananas suffocating in poisonous blue polythene and limply dangling from trees. Tomatoes also apparently wretchedly treated. Offer to join support group, but am secretly relieved when Mrs Veg says there isn’t one. Wave her off and return to house, reflecting on ghastly banana situation and also on own increasing dependence on people who arrive in vans to deliver things. Even quite fancied the new postman when he finally arrived. Return to work, and try to muster enthusiasm and extended vocabulary to describe the Van Den Plas suite of Organza Delaney’s conference centre.
Must have nodded off again, as am suddenly jolted awake by plaintive gulping noise of my computer asking me if I want to save what I have done. Have only written four words, but save them all the same. Searching brain’s hidden depths for a fifth word to add to my total when I notice a tiny Silvanian-style mouse gliding about on my zebra-skin rug. Teetering on mini-twig legs, it heads off towards the hall. Follow it, heart palpitating, convinced that if I lose sight of it for a second it will instantly conceive and bring forth a multitude of baby mice. Or, more likely, Sidney will get it.
Stalk it, and effect brilliant mouse coup outside the downstairs loo. Am tiptoeing speedily towards the back door with the poor, sweetie-pie mouse cupped in my palm when needle-sharp pain jabs my hand. Shriek ‘Ow,’ and drop vile little brute on hall floor. It has drawn blood. Dare not lick it off in case wound is contaminated with mouse spit. Have probably been poisoned. Do mice have rabies? Can’t remember having read about it, but have read about them having hepatitis; or was that monkeys? In an instant, a sensation of warm lunacy is coursing through my body. The mouse uses the opportunity to vanish into the kitchen where it will doubtless meet and marry its dream lover at any moment. Can’t worry about that, though, as am convinced that I have Weil’s disease and will die in a few seconds. Remain rooted in hall, observing minutest changes in mind and body. Feel as if tripping, and experience faintness, dizziness and heavy breathing. Limbs now leaden. Have to harness every ounce of courage to take my socks off and look to see if my feet are beginning to go black. Impossible to tell due to Blackcurrant Dream polish on each toenail. Hyperventilation averted by David’s arrival.
‘What are you doing?’
Tears spring to my eyes and trickle down face. Am not sure why, but cannot stop crying. David leads me into the kitchen, guides me to a chair and sits holding my uninjured hand.
‘What’s happened, Venetia? Are you all right?’
Weeping now unbridled, and nose begins to drip as well. Have to get a hanky, and find that standing up improves the situation enough for a tragic utterance.
‘The mouse bit me.’
‘What mouse?’
I point quavering finger towards the corner of the room most likely to be a rodent hideout: ‘That one.’
On cue, mini-mouse totters out from under the sink and pauses by a chair to take stock. It is roughly the size of a sugar lump. David calmly places a jam jar over it and a postcard beneath it and removes my arch-enemy without fuss or violence. Having found a bottle of rescue remedy in the cupboard, I am using the drop dispenser as a kind of straw, and am swallowing every last hint of delicious brandy-flavoured flower juice when he comes back in.
‘How about a proper drink?’ he says, surveying my red nose and wobbling lip. A splendid idea. I nod eagerly and am poised for a marathon drinking session to start when I suddenly notice the clock.
‘Oh, bugger, I can’t. It’s time to go and collect the boys. Some other time, David, thanks.’
Must still be suffering from slight mouse shock, as when he says, ‘Are you all right to drive, or would you like me to take you?’ I jump at the chance of being a passenger for once.
Felix is waiting by the gate, socks collapsing around his ankles, knees grass-stained and decorated with several plasters. He waves and jumps about when David’s clattering old Land Rover ambulance grunts into the school car park, and races to greet us.
‘Hi, Mum, why did David come? Can I sit in the front?’
There is in fact nowhere but the front to sit, as the back half of the ambulance does not even have its canvas hood on today, but is heaped with wooden planks and evil-looking saws. Giles is less pleased when we roar through the gates to his part of the school. Hands in pockets, face expressionless, he slowly extracts himself from a group of boys kicking a mini rugby ball and lunges over to us.
‘Where’s our car, Mum?’ He ignores David’s cheerful greeting, and Felix’s, and slumps back next to me, closing his eyes and muttering, ‘And I bet you haven’t brought anything for us to eat, have you?’
Am mortified by his behaviour, and furious.
‘Giles, how can you be so graceless? You’re jolly lucky to be collected from school at all. Maybe we’ll just leave you there tomorrow—’
Pulled up short by glancing down at him to find that he is rubbing his knuckles in his eyes and holding back tears. Am transported to the agonies of my own schooldays, the wrongness of my parents’ car, the wrongness of the parents themselves, and the knockout hunger and exhaustion experienced at the end of a long day. Hand him a packet of biscuits Providence has placed on the dashboard, and put my arm around him.
September 11th
I have a vile cold, and it is spoiling what should be a carefree day with The Beauty now that the corporate brochure is safely faxed to the publisher. Throat red and prickly, eyes ditto and am experiencing non-specific pain, gloom and self-pity. Hope it is not delayed Weil’s disease. Have consumed three Lemsips, two hot toddies, each with at least two inches of whisky, and six spoonfuls of cough mixture and it is still not lunchtime. The Beauty rises from her morning sleep much refreshed, and I follow her around the house for a while, blowing my nose every thirty seconds and putting on another jersey each time we pass one of the piles of clothing which are dotted about the hall and landing.
‘Bouffe,’ squeals The Beauty, body-surfing through a heap of vests and socks at the top of the stairs. Felix was her dresser this morning, and his choice of flouncy skirt, hairgrip and his own old Aertex shirt give her a very adorable St Trinian’s look. The Beauty is on riotous form, and pays scant heed to me, coughing and sneezing on the top stair. She has engineered that her pram shall be upstairs, and is a tank commander, driving it through every obstacle, crashing against walls and door frames as she pursues her aim of world domination, starting with my bedroom. I lie on my bed groaning and overflowing with self-pity until a slender-heeled and mud-caked shoe hits me in the midriff.
‘Oooh,’ The Beauty cries, poised with its pair for another grenade attack.
‘Ow, you little monster.’ Rage hardens me against her instant sobs and I march out of the room with her under my arm, determined at last to put the washing away. Trap her in the empty bath, where she immediately cheers up and starts pretending to wash her hair.
I trudge about, becoming increasingly bowed beneath vast piles of clean laundry, and wishing my life was less pedestrian and more like Rose’s, when inspiration suddenly strikes. What I need is a laundry room, of the sort generally found in the nether regions of stately homes. Start hurling washing onto the spare-room bed and quickly use up my piles. Make a dash through all the upstairs rooms looking for more clothes to add. The spare-room bed will act as a giant clothes holding station for all of us. No more boring folding and putting away of garments; I shall simply chuck them onto the heap and send Felix, Giles and The Beauty in to select their outfits when necessary. We will all dress and undress in the holding station, and dirty laundry will vanish into the bedroom’s en suite loo until I can be bothered to take it down to the washing machine.
September 14th
Spend the morning harvesting lavender with The Beauty hovering at a distance with her wheelbarrow and some sand. She has found a pair of gardening gloves, and has huge fun dipping them in a puddle and then cuddling them. God knows what she thinks they are, amphibious dolls, perhaps? Bees drone about nearby, the sun shines and the heady, feel-good scent of lavender fills the air and I am sure begins to work its magic on my cold. Leave lavender in a heap in the hall until can think of something to do with it. Lavender bread, perhaps? Or lavender bags. Could become upstanding member of the WI with schemes such as these. Linger outside, admiring nature. Someone has lit a bonfire nearby, and gusts of smoke scent puff across the garden and through the lavender, until even the lawn and the trees are grey and softened.
Am proud of our pig husbandry. We have had the piglets almost a month now, and they are a credit to us. They simply get on with life, rootling and grunting, scratching or snoozing under their garage-door roof. One of the fruitcakes has made a good wallow next to the water trough and is lying in it, a neat tidemark making him look as if he has been dipped in dirty cream.
Leave them and saunter up to the orchard with The Beauty to pick some windfalls. We count the apples into the bucket and The Beauty throws them out again, guffawing and seeking applause. The garden is suffused with a rich, damp earth smell, and the golden afternoon light sparkles through wet leaves and petals until the borders are wreathed in precious jewels. One or two horse mushrooms gleam in the grass, and squatting over them in admiration The Beauty is a Teletubby lookalike in her purple dungarees with her paintbrush topknot. All is blissful.
I take a deep breath and begin to panic. Am suddenly assailed by dreadful cabin fever. I have not spoken to a human being over five feet tall and ten years old for four days. My cultural references are down to one toddler’s TV programme, I haven’t read a book or seen a film for months. I can only cook fish fingers and macaroni cheese and have forgotten what grown-ups eat, let alone how you cook it. All my clothes have holes in them, all my shoes are covered in mud and many are no longer pairs, having been requisitioned by The Beauty for dressing up in. A glance at the mirror in the downstairs loo reveals terrible wire-wool hair in need of much expensive attention. Remember that I have not dared open the sunroof in the car for weeks now in case I accidentally catch sight of my grizzled locks. I must go to London and improve myself. Immediately.
Fate has placed a glossy magazine next to the telephone. I open it at the beauty pages, among which I remember seeing an article about a new hairdresser in a very expensive shopping street. Moments later I have booked myself into the Concept Salon, where my hair will be serviced and I will also be massaged and generally mollycoddled. What heaven. I ring Rose to share the great news and she is delighted.
‘I’ve been longing to go there. You are clever to have organised it. I’ll come and meet you afterwards, then we can go and buy things.’
Can’t wait for this day of girlie hedonism.
September, 19th
Any residual guilt feelings at the amounts of money I hope to spend on my outing with Rose vanish when I receive a telephone call from Mo Loam’s Temple of Beauty, where I have had an appointment for an overhaul since practically the dawn of time. The High Priestess has apparently fallen off her pedestal and broken her collarbone, so no beauty magic will be dispensed until after Christmas.
‘Don’t say that horrible word,’ I shriek at the assistant priestess who rings, ‘I can’t think about Christmas now.’
Although I had utterly forgotten my assignation with La Loam and would have missed the appointment anyway, as I have not written it down anywhere, I am still furious not to have it to look forward to.
‘We’ll book you in for February 12th then,’ purrs sub-priestess, ignoring my whingeing with regal serenity. ‘Do please now give me your credit card number so I can take a deposit. It’s thirty-five pounds, and is redeemable against Loam products.’
Am so gobsmacked that I do exactly as she tells me, and afterwards find a tiny crumb of satisfaction in having accidentally paid for it from Charles’s account in my confusion.
September 23rd
Have cleverly timed trip to London to coincide with Gawain’s preview party. Cleverness is accidental, as I had most unfortunately used my invitation to the show to splatter a superwasp on the kitchen window sill and was forced to throw it away weeks ago, but Rose has the date etched on her soul and is determined to take me there in new clothes.
Read the beginning of Frederica by G. Heyer, and the whole of Hello! on the train, revelling in the atmosphere of serenity in my carriage, where there are only five passengers, all reading, all drinking coffee. Escaping to London during term-time, leaving my mother and Egor holding the fort, is a rest cure in itself, and hysteria ebbs as the train thunders away from home and the school run towards shops, hairdressers and cinemas. Am, of course, very keen to do culture as well as retail therapy, and have even made a plan to meet Lila at the Royal Academy tomorrow. Make a list of everything I want to buy as the train pulls into London and realise that I will have to marry a millionaire or win the lottery in the next twenty minutes if I am to achieve even a fifth of the desired purchases.
The Concept Salon is terrifying. I enter through a mirrored door, deliberately not looking at myself, and am suddenly in a vast white room like a photographic studio or an operating theatre. Everything is white: the floor, the chairs, the frames round the huge mirrors, even the brooms wielded by the juniors. My dress, forties floral crepe, with a tiny hole under one arm, which looked utterly chic and bohemian when I left home, now feels like an item from a jumble sale. Which, of course, it is. Jude, my hair technician, approaches, as if from the future, his white-blond hair sleeked back to touch the collar of his silver neoprene bodysuit. He is chillingly beautiful. I wish I had worn my wetsuit, and succumb to his ministrations.
Rose does not recognise me when she enters the café we have arranged to meet in. I watch her scan the room, missing me because I am the eiptome of blissed-out cool after a head massage, a manicure and a complete hair overhaul. Have purchased a red wool jacket to hide my bag-lady dress, and with new highlighted, sleek fair hair I feel as groomed as a Hitchcock blonde. Raise a sultry eyebrow at Rose and she shrieks and rushes over.
‘My God, you look amazing. How did they do that? It’s fantastic. I can’t believe it.’
Am torn between delight at how impressed she is and irritation at how surprised she is.
‘I asked him to make me look like him, and he said he couldn’t but he’d do the next best thing. I don’t think he even realised how vain he sounded.’ Rose and I giggle hysterically, and are too overexcited to drink our cinnamon-flavoured coffee. We depart and plunge into a wild afternoon of extravagance. Am astonished at how quickly I adapt from rustic hayseed to town-bronzed sophisti-cat; wielding my credit card like a machete in the urban jungle, I am soon forging ahead in the smart-bag count. The final purchase is the most fraught and the most rewarding, in a shop where the assistant looks at me as if I am Sidney the cat walking in with a decapitated rabbit in my jaws. She stalks up and sticks her nose in my ear as I examine a rail of clothes. ‘Can I help you?’
Determined not to be intimidated, I turn on my heel and walk across to the changing room, grabbing the nearest garment.
‘I’ll try this,’ I say languidly, and shut myself in the cubicle.
I have brought in a fluid, strappy ink-blue dress. Size ten. Completely unsuitable for me, being the wrong size and totally impractical. It also costs more than a washing machine. There is no way I can have it. What the hell, I may as well try it on. It slides onto my body and hangs from my shoulders, a vision of chic slenderness, a caress of wondrous fabric. I love it with all my heart, mostly because it is size ten, but also because it is truly heaven. I must have it. I must. In a fever of adrenalin I dress myself and rush to the cash till brandishing my credit card. The girl slides the card through the machine and stands surveying her perfect nails while the machine grunts and sighs. Affecting disdain, I too survey my nails and try to control my panting breaths. Am sure something will prevent me from having this scrap of pleasure, this tiny size-ten indulgence. Sure enough, Perfect Nails is calling for assistance.
‘Your card has been declined. Do you have any other means of paying?’ The paper bag with my dress inside it is on the counter between us. She taps her fingers on it possessively. I try to look nonchalant again.
‘Oh dear, what a bore, I can’t think why that’s happened. There’s plenty of money in my account. Masses, in fact,’ I lie, beginning to perspire in my red wool jacket. ‘Can I write a cheque?’
The girl arches her perfect brows. ‘Not if this is your cheque card,’ she says softly, her tone especially designed to make me feel like a Category A criminal. Am now close to tears and cannot think what to do. Fumble for a tissue as my nose begins to drip. Can’t find one. Use the back of my hand.
‘What’s the matter, Venetia? Why are you taking so long?’ Had utterly forgotten Rose’s existence from the moment she popped out to the chemist until now, when she has popped back in looking alarmed. Salvation. Explain my crimes to her and stand at her elbow watching with ill-suppressed delight as she flings her card at the assistant.
‘Here, I’ll do it. You can write me a cheque, Venetia.’ Could swear that Perfect Nails is disappointed; she would rather lose her commission than see me walk out with the dress.
‘Let’s go and drink cocktails and look at everything,’ says Rose, and I hurry after her through the streets and into a bar, rejoicing that it is six in the evening and I have no childcare ahead of me. No bathtime, no de-nitting, no evening of ironing. I can drink Americanos in smart hotels until dawn if I like. I do like; so does Rose.
September 24th
Thumping hangover not improved by the arrival of Theo at my bedside at seven in the morning. He is clutching a book, a pair of red wellingtons and a plastic train.
‘Thomas the Tanker. You read it and take me for a walk,’ he urges. ‘Come on. I say you read it.’
Groan and turn over. ‘Go and find Daddy, Theo, he’ll read it, he didn’t get drunk last night.’
‘You’re a silly old lush,’ says the tiny tormentor before departing. Am rather impressed by his vocabulary and repeat his words to Rose when we meet some time later in the kitchen. She rolls her eyes.
‘He copies everything. He heard Tristan saying it to me because I couldn’t get up this morning.’
A morning at the Royal Academy with Lila prancing about in ballet pumps and a black polo neck as if she is Audrey Hepburn does nothing for the hangover, but an afternoon at Rose’s health club sees it off. Am able to approach Gawain’s party with poise and courage thanks to the hour spent sweating out poisons in a seaweed wrap. New dress and new hair give the final boost, and I arrive at the gallery with Rose and Tristan, my heart thumping in excited anticipation at the thought of the ravishing, prizewinning portrait of me.
The show is in a room much less intimidating than the Concept hairdressers’, more like a big sitting room and painted the colour of wet sand. I see Gawain at the other side and begin to thread confidently between throngs of guests to greet him. Feel as if I do this all the time, and, more importantly, am sure I look as if I was born to go to cocktail parties. Hooray, am ready for a top-notch evening, and will flirt with everyone. Huge fun. A shadow looms, quite literally, and Charles appears in my path, blocking my view of everything except his ghastly sidekick. Helena bobs and titters like a small tugboat at his elbow.
‘Charles. How weird to see you here.’
‘Not as weird as seeing yourself will be,’ he smirks, ‘look at this.’
He takes my arm and steps to one side. And I am met, face to face, by myself. Experience shivering breathless-ness, as if iced water has been poured down my back. Cannot stop staring at the haunted, horrible version of myself. Me as I do not like to think of me, with bags under the eyes and a too-small shirt with buttons missing gaping pinkly over my stomach. Me with sadness in my eyes and a sunburnt nose. Me with lank strands of hair hanging around a tired, lonely face.
‘It’s a marvellous piece of veritas,’ says Helena, her beady eyes fixed on me, drinking in my horrified reaction.
‘God, it’s depressing,’ is all I can say. I grab a glass of wine from a passing tray and gulp it in one.
‘Darling, beautiful Venetia. I’m so glad you came.’ Warm hands are on my back replacing iced water sensation, and I am engulfed by Gawain hugging me, kissing my shoulder and grinning delightedly. ‘There’s a photographer here who wants to take a picture of you with your portrait for the Standard. Come and meet Vernon, the gallery owner, and the sponsors. In fact, come and meet everyone. You look gorgeous. It’s great to see you.’
And Gawain sweeps me off, away from Charles and hateful Helena, and over to an important-looking table where there is champagne instead of the usual gallery white wine, and flashbulbs are popping like balloons at a children’s party. Immediately become overexcited. All this attention is astonishing, and compares favourably with an evening at home doing the ironing. I try this line on one or two people who look at me with mild distaste as though I have mentioned haemorrhoids or boils or some other defect. Decide to pretend from now on that I lead an exotic life and am usually sinning on tiger skins in the manner of Elinor Glyn and wearing silk camiknickers. Try out this version on a Young British Artist friend of Gawain’s; he scuttles away in terror. It is perhaps best not to admit to any form of existence beyond the here and now.
Events speed up. People, compliments and glasses of champagne whirl like a carousel until it is late, the lights are low and I am dancing in a nightclub with Gawain. Don McLean is singing ‘American Pie’. Rose and Tristan are arguing by the bar. I have no husband to argue with and therefore not a care in the world. I lean on Gawain and close my eyes. Surely there can be no better sensation than that of having someone’s arms around you? Particularly someone as handsome as Gawain. Can’t believe that I’ve never noticed this before. Handsome and talented. Why did I never take him up on all those propositions he has put to me through the years? ‘Gawain Temple is a genius, and this is the picture which shows it’, was the headline in today’s newspaper preview. Lucky I didn’t see it before the show or I would never have come. Loved the party, though, after Charles and the poison dwarf had gone, and spent much of it nodding and trying to appear artistically worthy. All very intoxicating. Just as well I am catching the nine-thirty train tomorrow morning and can’t join Gawain and his friends for a party on a houseboat at lunchtime.
Drift off to sleep in the indigo darkness of Rose’s super-minimalist study-cum-spare room, conjuring an image of myself as a Tess of the D’Urbervilles type, tending the fruitcakes and their piglet siblings with my rosy-cheeked children all wearing cheesecloth blouses and breeches. Gawain can be Angel. Can’t remember his role, so have to change the plot to Georgette Heyer. Fall asleep while deciding which Regency hero he could possibly resemble.
September 28th
Back in the school run rut, a million miles from my life as a glamorous artist’s model, I seem to be no closer to Tess or Georgette Heyer either. Terribly stormy weather means we are all wearing cagoules and wellingtons rather than cheesecloth, and the piglets have become malevolent; a pink bit me yesterday morning when I attempted to give it an apple. The Beauty and Felix are both festering with my vile cold and are now at the streaming-snot and raised-temperature stage. Giles has no symptoms, so he and I rise at dawn to prepare for school. Rather wish he was ill too so that I wouldn’t have to bother. I have the light-headed, carefree sense of not having been to bed, which I know will later turn into wrung-out-rag fatigue, caused by a night of pouring Calpol and cough mixture into alternate children, with a few minutes of sleep between each pharmaceutical call. The bathroom mirror confirms that all the benefits of two nights in London and the squandering of a fortune on my appearance are now as dust, and I have developed a tic in my left eye which I fear is permanent. Irritation rises while in the bathroom because David has still not mended the dripping cold tap and I know nothing of washers. Will ask Giles to find out how at school. In Home Economics. Bundle the ill people into the car in their pyjamas, and pass Giles a small surgical mask.
‘Here, put this on so you don’t inhale the germs from those two.’
Giles stares at me in horror. ‘No way, Mum, I hate masks. I won’t catch their germs, I’m in the front. Why do you keep winking like that? It makes you look evil.’
Cannot believe his intransigence. He should be deeply impressed at my foresight and top-class parenting. He should not mention my tic.
‘Please wear it, Giles. I’ve got one too, I’ll wear mine if you wear yours.’ I put it on and mumble, ‘See, it’s fine.’
He is flattening himself against his door now, cringing away from me, only partly as a joke.
‘Mum, you’re crazy. You can’t drive around with a mask on. And your eye winking. You’ll be arrested.’
Felix interrupts from the back seat.
‘Mum, Mum, you’ve got to wipe The Beauty’s nose. It’s like toffee, it’s really gross.’
Turn around to look with the mask on and both The Beauty and Felix burst into tears.
A day for the gas oven, but I do not have one. Instead put my head in the Aga to retrieve a baked potato at lunchtime, and manage to burn my forehead on the door. Leap away immediately but ghastly scrunching, singeing noise suggests that damage has been done. Back to the mirror, where worst fears are confirmed. I now have a sore like a streak of strawberry jam across my temple, too big to hide with hair. The baked potatoes are also burnt. No lunch. The ill ones choose this moment to trail into the kitchen in their pyjamas, both clutching teddies, both with white faces and purple smudges beneath their eyes. They range themselves in front of the Aga and deliver a monstrous array of coughs, one after the other. Sidney, perhaps in sympathy, goes into a paroxysm himself under the kitchen table and regurgitates a skinless shrew at my feet. I need help. I send an SOS message to my mother forthwith.
She arrives, twenty-four hours later, in her wellingtons and appears to have become twice her usual size due to her costume of yellow rubber fisherman’s jacket. Felix and The Beauty are still coughing and corridor-creeping at night, and I am a zombie, beyond gas ovens.
‘I’ve been bailing out the pub,’ she announces. ‘They lent me this coat.’
Scrutinise her closely, but can detect no signs of red wine or other beverages. Mystifying.
‘Why aren’t you drunk, then?’
She draws herself up to express innocence outraged, and looks down her nose at me.
‘That is not my way,’ she says piously. ‘The pub was flooded and we had to form a human chain with buckets to empty it and then pile sandbags in the doorways. I’m worn out, and when I got home, I found that that fool Desmond had left the bath running while he went to answer the telephone, so the ceiling below has fallen in. I left him dealing with it, and I’ve come to stay until he has mended it.’
Divested of her coat, she is back to her usual proportions except that she has a hot-water bottle tucked into her skirt. Decide not to mention it, as she may feel I am being critical.
Felix is delighted to see her. ‘Hooray, Granny’s here,’ he shouts, and The Beauty runs and buries her face in her skirt, murmuring, ‘Granneee, Granneee.’
Granny is astonished by the strength of their feeling. ‘Have you been torturing them or something?’ She looks more closely at me. ‘Goodness, perhaps you’re the one being tortured. What happened to your head?’
Depart to collect Giles, early for once to avoid explaining, and purchase two bottles of red wine as bribes to prevent her changing her mind and going home. Listen to Willie Nelson on the way to school and brood on my inability to lead a grown-up life without prop of mother to keep me going. Should I by now be standing on my own two feet, or does divorced status confer special privileges usually reserved for the sick?
Catapulted into grown-up level of hysteria upon reaching home again. Charles has telephoned in my absence to say I am needed at a very urgent meeting of the directors and shareholders of Heavenly Petting on Thursday, and can he please cancel having the children next weekend as Helena is worn out so they’re going to Barcelona. My mother prowls back and forth in front of the Aga, and delivers this message with a snarl. We put the children in the playroom with a video of Some Like It Hot in order to have a therapeutic anti-Charles session in peace. Both bottles of red wine are consumed as we rant and fantasise. Charles will be humiliated, his constant dipping into capital for holidays, new golf clubs and cars will be revealed and he will be made to apologise. I wish.
September 30th
Have evicted three superwasps from Giles’s bedroom this evening and have painted my toenails water-lily-leaf green. Fire lit, hair washed, mother returned to her own home, Aga burn healing. Have borrowed Giles’s school briefcase for the meeting, but have not yet thought of anything proper to put in it. Giles suggested tuck, so it contains a Penguin biscuit and a carrot so far. Might put my book in as well, as I’m sure I won’t finish Frederica tonight, and am immersed. It is an especially fine example of Georgette Heyer’s ease with the mayhem of Regency family life. I am poised and businesslike and ready for Heavenly Petting tomorrow.
October 1st
Leave for Cambridge after dropping The Beauty at Jenny’s house and Felix and Giles at school. Had to shove breakfast into them all at arm’s length while keeping elegant but no longer fashionable suit unsullied, and found experience acutely stressful. This is the lot of working mothers. How do they do it? How do they stay clean? How do they put the children in the car without laddering their tights? Do they have special boiler suits for cross-over moments between kitchen and office?
Offer prayers of guilt-ridden gratitude to Heavenly Petting for providing for my children and allowing me to pursue my so-called career from home, as I drive towards its offices through the fog-bound fens. Impossible not to be astonished at the scale of Charles’s business now. Pause at gate to be met by courteous, uniformed security.
‘Can I help you, madam? Are you attending a service, or do you need counselling in planning one?’
Am unreasonably irritated that he does not know Who I Am.
‘Neither, I’m here for a meeting,’ I snap, and am further infuriated by the double take he is unable to disguise as he steps closer to my dented, muddy, litter-strewn car.
‘You’d better park with the contractors, I think.’ He waves me past the director’s car park where I can see Charles’s car hobnobbing with other sleek and expensive beasts, and sends me round to a space in between a Clean-Your-Crem van and a pick-up truck full of plastic dahlias on plinths. The front doors of Heavenly Petting open automatically as I step onto a doormat with a pair of hands clasped in prayer woven into it. In the foyer, a high desk dominates, and behind it a Dolly Parton type perches, her smile a well-balanced combination of welcome and sympathy. Am pleased to note that this changes to fear and deference when I tell her my name. I am ushered into the boardroom and away from the hideous loop of piped music, now metamorphosing from the Black Beauty theme tune to ‘Seasons in the Sun’ by Terry Jacks.
‘Venetia, how good of you to come.’ Charles swoops over and shakes hands, which for some reason seems very odd to me and I have to bite my bottom lip hard to keep a wide grin at bay. Reflect that Charles’s manner has always been more boardroom than bedroom as he leads me around the table reintroducing me to the five directors. Knees become unreliable as we tour; have not seen any of them except Henry Loden, Charles’s business partner, for a year, and am convinced that they are all comparing me to Helena, who is junior embalmer here now. Wish I had brought The Beauty to protect me. As usual pay no attention to what Charles is saying as he opens the meeting. Am still mulling silently over my clever boardroom/bedroom pun and wondering whether Jenny will remember that Felix has trampolining this afternoon as the meeting begins.
‘… Trading has been extremely healthy, sales are up and the company is showing good margins on paper, increasingly good margins… although of course… still room for improvement.’
Doodle on the paper provided and make mental note to ask Charles why I am not receiving a bigger dividend if figures are so rosy. Henry Loden is speaking now, running his palm across thinning, side-parted hair as he bulldozes through civilities and motors on to the point of the meeting. Heavenly Petting is extending into the gifts market and the company is starting production of plastic mourning rings to be sold at Pet City, Toys R Us and also at the chain’s own crematoria.
Henry has stopped rubbing his pate and is greasing his hands, palm to palm, as his speech climaxes. He is so excited by what he is saying that little bubbles of spit have formed a pearly foam on his lower lip.
‘We hope also to reach the supermarkets to coincide with Valentine’s Day next year. We feel that a “Love and Loss” promotion would be a great start for us in this market.’ He pauses, slaps his calculator on the table and steps back, hands on hips, ready for admiration. ‘Any questions?’
Am astonished to find that I have leapt to my feet, and am shaking my fist and heckling.
‘Have any of you stopped to think about what you are suggesting? I think it’s grotesque. A mourning ring indeed. Next you’ll be pretending that the hair in it – if you aren’t too cheapskate to put hair in it at all – belongs to a real animal. Maybe you’ll even say it belongs to their own pet. You could do a tailor-made range, a couture version for clients.’
Am on full throttle now, and although furious at the slimy, seamy nature of Charles’s latest venture, am really enjoying the effect of my rage. Continue to list details for ever more tasteless rings until Charles hauls himself to his feet and raises a hand to quiet me.
‘Thank you, Venetia, shall we continue this conversation in my office? There are a couple of matters pertaining to the children that we need to go over.’ He shepherds me out, pushing me ahead, and then darts back in to say to Henry and the others, ‘Get to work on Venetia’s hair and couture ideas right away. I think she’s got something.’
I sit down in his office with my shoulder abutting a shelf full of sample coffins for mice, budgerigars and other size A (which means tiny) pets. Charles leans against the door with his arms folded and looks at me levelly.
‘You may complain about the way I make money, but you seem to have no trouble spending it,’ he says coldly. I take a deep breath and maintain my cool.
‘And neither do you. Or is yet another holiday for you and Helena a research trip?’
And then he drops his bombshell.
‘Helena is pregnant. She is expecting twins at Christmas and she needs a break. This is her last chance to fly. When we return, we are moving house, so I can’t have the boys until November.’
Extraordinary that I didn’t notice at Gawain’s exhibition. It just illustrates the terrible truth: I am self-absorbed and unobservant to the point of stupidity. Come to think of it, she was wearing a smock, but I took that to be her interpretation of fashion, and thought nothing of it. Except that it was horrid.
It is not until I am in the car, driving away from Cambridge with the sun like a blood orange streaming in through the back window, warmly caressing my head and my hair, that the shock thaws and I remember that Charles has had a vasectomy. Such was his fury when I announced that I was pregnant with The Beauty that he went to the BUPA hospital that week and made the arrangements, and by the time the bump that was to be The Beauty showed, Charles had done the deed.
‘He’s got no lead in his pencil now,’ was Henry Loden’s revolting, leering remark to me when we met in the hospital lift as I arrived to collect Charles and he was leaving, having visited him.
October 3rd
A freak hot autumn day. The Beauty and I spend the morning picking blackberries on the old railway line before driving to meet Vivienne for lunch in order to discuss Helena’s immaculate conception. Mist has draped fairy cobwebs in the shade beneath great oaks, and the hedgerows are busy with colour and bustling invisible creatures, all intent on gathering what they can before winter. The Beauty trundles ahead, her own choice of spotted handkerchief as headscarf and red woollen jersey giving her a timeless, story-book quality. Beyond the green seam of former railway, with its springing borders of hawthorn and elder, the newly ploughed fields are rich brown and herringbone-striped. A church tower drifts blue on the horizon, its backdrop the last square of golden stubble, shrinking every moment as a tiny toy tractor drags a gleam of plough along it.
By lunchtime we have two baskets of blackberries, black crescents beneath our nails and deep purple lips. The stubble square behind the church is down to one shining stripe and the rest of the gilded world has turned over and taken on the rich chocolate hue of high autumn. Have been weeping and cursing into the blackberries intermittently, and am not sure why.
If Helena chooses to have children, what business is it of mine? Can never get far with this thought before being sidetracked by how she managed it. Perhaps Charles had his operation reversed. Painful, but devoted. Cannot imagine inspiring such a gesture in anyone. Cannot imagine the poison dwarf inspiring it either.
On the way to Vivienne’s, am immeasurably cheered and lifted by my first view of the sea, a crisp navy-blue triangle glimpsed through a cut in the headland. ‘Sea saw, sea saw,’ says The Beauty, thrilled with her ever broadening vocabulary.
Simon has evidently been alerted to the drama, and his sympathy has manifested itself in a brace of partridge and an invitation for Giles to come beating. A bowl of soup and a bottle of white wine and Vivienne’s un-ruffleable presence are great healers. Gradually, Charles and Helena recede until, by teatime, their significance is the size of Mrs Pepperpot and we are giggling over Simon’s latest business venture: wormeries.
October 5th
Have become housewifely and apron-wearing in the extreme since The News. Begin to make blackberry and apple jelly, hypnotising Giles and Felix with the sinister sight in the kitchen of an oozing cloth hanging by strings and Rags’s lead from the beam while wine-dark drips of juice splash into a bowl on the table beneath it.
‘Cool. Has it got a severed head in it?’ whispers Felix, walking around it, almost brushing it with his nose. Giles cuffs him across the shoulder. He shrieks melodramatically and falls over, and Giles puts one foot on his chest and grins down at him.
‘It looks berry heavy, though, doesn’t it?’ he says.
Felix rolls under the table, screeching with laughter and repeating, ‘Berry heavy. Berry heavy.’
What a pair of halfwits. Sudden tears spring, causing frantic washing-up, as reality of my role as provider and protector overpowers. Will Charles cease to love them now? How could he?
Am making quince jelly as well as blackberry, and by mid-afternoon it is plain that I have taken on Too Much. Pans of melted sugar everywhere, furry, fragrant quinces rolling about the floor, until retrieved by Giles who takes three outside to juggle with. Finally pour the blackberry and apple goo into pots. All my efforts have amounted to a paltry one and a half tiny pots of the jelly. Gaze disgusted at the results of my labours in scabby-looking jars with half their old labels still unbudging. Total waste of time, sugar and fruit. Would be cheaper to buy gold-leaf jelly (if it exists) from Fortnum’s, and more enjoyable.
October 6th
Rose telephones late to discuss Charles and Helena. Am still mad on housewifery, and battling with EU-sized quince mountain. Still hundreds of them lying, as if part of a Renaissance painting, on a vast red ashet, glowing yellow and amber and softly sensual. I love them, and don’t care that they are filthy to eat and useless for anything but jelly. And sponge pudding. Mmmmm. Better not, the children will hate it; I will have to eat it all. Not slimming.
‘I have news for you,’ says Rose, ‘big news. Are you sitting down?’
Have come to my own conclusions, and try them out on Rose. ‘Do you think the poison dwarf had an affair?’
‘No, you idiot. Haven’t you worked it out? She’s done IVE’
The quince jelly chooses this moment to burst out of its pan and slurp across the Aga. More like a B-movie than a Renaissance painting now, it creeps down the Aga and onto the floor, dragging the usual acrid billows of smoke and stench with it. Yank the telephone across to find a cloth, knocking a chair over, unable to leave Rose for a second.
‘How do you know? Are you sure? Whose babies are they, then?’
‘They belong to her and a sperm bank, I suppose. I don’t know, but it’s definitely true. Henry Loden told Tristan that she and Charles are over the moon. Apparently she’s been trying for ages.’
In the inferno of my kitchen, on hands and knees with a wet cloth, a sticky telephone and surrounded by amber jelly, I reach my lowest moment.
October 7th
Three autumn-flowering cyclamen are peeping through fallen leaves beneath the beech tree and a pot of candy-pink Nerine have been left on the front doorstep with no card. Or maybe there was one and it blew away. The American hurricane, which was booked for an appearance two weeks ago, has arrived in East Anglia, late but forceful. The hens are most upset and fed up with having their feathers ruffled, so they have stopped laying any eggs and are sulking beneath the yew chicken, making random food runs to the back door whenever it is opened.
October 8th
The Beauty and I take a flask and sandwiches and drive onto the edge of the rugby pitch at Giles’s school in order to watch him in the first match of the season. A terrible mistake.
‘Rugby isn’t really a game for mothers,’ comments Giles’s games master, as a boy from the opposing school is taken off the pitch on a stretcher, teeth clenched, tears spilling down dappled purple cheeks, bravely hiding the pain of a twisted knee and a thigh trampled over by metal-studded boots. Giles has the ball and is thundering towards the touchline for a few glorious seconds before a giant beefcake, supposedly also under eleven years old, but weighing at least nine stone, knocks him flying. I scream inadvertently and leap out of the car, longing to run onto the pitch. In a moment, though, Giles has crawled out from a pile of vast boys and is himself grabbing someone around the waist and hurling them to the ground.
‘They’ve scored three tries and made two conversions. They’re doing really well.’ Mr Jensen the dentist materialises at my side; his son is also playing.
‘What’s a conversion?’ I ask without wishing to know, and drift off as he explains. Am greatly comforted by the professional presence at the match: among the parents watching today there is a doctor, two lawyers and Mr Jensen. All we need now is an ambulance driver and every eventuality is covered. The Beauty has turned on the car stereo and is dancing on the driver’s seat, taking a hostess’s role when parents pass her.
‘Helloo, helloo,’ she warbles to them, waving her hand to communicate that she would like them to pass on to the other end of the pitch while she finishes her telephone call. She has a calculator, picked up from the floor of the car, clamped like a telephone to her ear, ‘Byeee,’ she shrieks, slamming it down on the dashboard before rushing after her guests on the field.
The final whistle blows and the boys line up to shake hands. Giles approaches, grinning and mud-spattered, as if he is auditioning for a soap-powder commercial.
‘Mum, we won twenty-nine to ten and I scored a try. James Lascelles scored one too, and Tom Jensen got a conversion.’
He is inured to my ignorance now, and always gives me a quick debriefing on the game on the way back to tea so I don’t embarrass him when chatting to masters and other parents about it. Wish they didn’t change the game every term; just as I think I have got the hang of one – cricket, for example – they have all switched to hockey or rugby and I have no hope of knowing what’s going on. This term’s mystery item is studs. Giles needs some safety studs. How does one come by such things, and how does one know that they are needed in the first place? And anyway, what are they?
‘Oh, I’ve got a bag of studs for Tom and he doesn’t need them all,’ says Mrs Jensen. ‘Giles can have some if he comes to the car to fetch them.’ Thus my ignorance is left intact and Giles achieves his studs. Maybe I will learn when Felix needs them.
Gawain is coming to stay. He rings to deliver his verdict on Charles.
‘Must have cost him a bit to sort Helena out. Those Petri dish babies are a few grand. You’d better watch out that he doesn’t start defrauding Heavenly Petting and cutting down on alimony.’
‘Oh, he isn’t that bad, Gawain. He’s a good father.’
Very odd to be protecting Charles. It seems to help maintain my new relaxed Just Don’t Care attitude, which is becoming more authentic every day. Off to the spare room to make it fit for a guest. This is always a fine work-avoidance scheme, and unlike washing-up or folding clothes, has novelty value. Open the door and discover it to be stuffed with numerous garments which were until now missing presumed lost. Had utterly forgotten that this was to be laundry room, and after initial enthusiasm for dumping piles of washing in here, have not been in for weeks. Tempted to throw all the clothes into the bin forthwith, as we have managed fine without them, but miserly instinct prevents me. Instead, put them back in piles dotted about the landing.
Make bed, plumping pillows and so forth, trying to achieve magazine-like appearance of comfort and elegance in the room. All going well until I notice the chair. Or rather, what is on the chair. A most antique cat poo in the shape of a question mark. There can be no doubt about whose it is. Sidney specialises in lavatorial humour in the spare room.
‘Bastard filthy cat, Sidney. God, how I loathe and despise you.’
Rant around the room, venting spleen for a bit, then fetch rubber gloves and paper to clear it up. No need for either. The fossil comes away easily and is a worthy exhibit for the boys’ museum. Have usual guilt pangs at the thought of the museum: it is drastically underfunded, and so far has only a cigarette butt belonging to George Harrison (courtesy of Rose and Tristan who met him and snatched it from the floor where he dropped it) and a piece of cake with a bite out of it. The missing mouthful went down the Prince of Wales’s throat when he came to open a local old folks’ home. Felix, having watched His Royal Highness closely for signs of regality, whispered, ‘How do you know he’s real if he isn’t wearing a crown?’ but was convinced enough to put the cake in his napkin and smuggle it home.
In the barn, which houses the museum, a house martin’s nest has been added to the exhibits. Remember David promising a glass case to the boys last time he was here. He has not been around for ages. Must ring him.
Ring him. He has been in London, making furniture for film sets. Why is everyone else’s life more glamorous than mine? Even Digger went to London, where he enjoyed the dustbins hugely.
‘What have you been up to, Venetia?’ Some men’s voices are neither here nor there on the telephone; others achieve a richness and depth of timbre which brings out flirtation. David’s is one such voice. Find I am standing on one leg, winding the other around it and giggling.
‘Oh, nothing much.’ Cannot in fact think of anything at all I have done, except clear up cat shit. Catch sight of The Beauty on tiptoe, reaching for a flowerpot in the garden, and have to cut short the conversation.
‘Oh, come over any time, we’d love to see you. I must go. Bye, David.’
‘Bye, Venetia. I’ll fix up the glass case and bring it over at the weekend.’
October 14th
Purchase two hundred wallflower plants, rust and crimson according to the bundles they are in. Plant them along the front of the house. It takes all morning. Spend the afternoon worrying that it will look like a municipal roundabout when they all flower in the spring. But at least I remembered them this year. A sign of success for sure. Although I did forget to sow the seeds I bought in February. Oh well, there’s always next year.
October 15th
Power cut at teatime reminds me of the three-day week in the seventies. We still have the Aga, but Giles and Felix elect to make supper on the open fire anyway. We toast teacakes and wrap potatoes in foil and throw them in. Start gathering candles in the hall as night falls, and torches too. Hugely enjoy this, as Georgette Heyer often has meaningful interludes when the spirited heroine is handed her candle by a gorgeous Corinthian with whom she is involved in tempestuous dispute over something. Give an impromptu living history lesson by explaining to the boys that hundreds of years ago the family living here would all have met in the hall to be given their candle by the man of the house.
‘We haven’t got a man in our house,’ wails Felix, for whom the excitement is wearing off.
‘Oh, yes we have. Two, in fact,’ says Giles, who has run to the window on hearing a car. ‘David’s here and so is Gawain. Gawain’s getting out of David’s car. I didn’t know they were friends.’
Our cosy firelit evening is abruptly invaded, and the peaceful pre-bath, post-tea house erupts in a chaos of stamping boots and voices and two tall, broad figures with the evening chill rising from their coats. David drops two of Gawain’s bags at the bottom of the stairs, and addresses me coldly.
‘Would you prefer me to make another date to do the museum? I imagine you would like to spend this weekend in peace with your guest.’ He appraises Gawain. ‘I saw him at the station, and he asked me how to get here, so I offered him a lift.’
‘Thank you,’ I reply. ‘Presumably you’ve introduced yourselves to one another. Gawain is Felix’s godfather.’ Why should David be interested? Oh, well.
Gawain wraps me in a bear-hug. ‘Good to see you, gorgeous. How’s the gang?’ He has brought Felix a longed-for PlayStation, and is as desperate as Felix is to get it up and running. Try to tell him about the electricity, but he ignores me, and despite having to take a candle, remains touchingly oblivious as he heads up to Felix’s room with a huge box of computer leads under his arm. ‘We’ll be going places with this any moment now. Let’s hit the controls, Felix.’
Such is Felix’s excitement at this longed-for moment that he too has forgotten about the power. Giles and I roll our eyes to heaven and sit down again by the fire.
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ David extracts himself from The Beauty, and her game on the rocking horse with him, and stands up to go.
‘Oh, not yet,’ pleads Giles. ‘Come and see how we’ve got on with the tree house since you were last here. It’s brilliant.’
David’s protests are brushed aside and Giles drags him into the dusk. A moment of quiet, then Felix and Gawain erupt into the drawing room through another door, Gawain hopping with excitement and reminding me of Tigger in Winnie-the-Pooh.
‘God, Venetia, this is so primitive. There’s no electricity. How long has it been like this? It’s great.’ Gawain throws himself down on the sofa and opens a can of Red Stripe which he pulls from his pocket. ‘Where’s that guy gone? I asked him in for a beer to say thanks for bringing me, but he said he knew you anyway and was on his way here.’
‘He’s with Giles, outside.’
Firelight and candles suffuse the room with rosy, cosy glow. David and Giles finally come in again. Gawain leaps up to shake David’s hand.
‘Listen, I’ve twisted Venetia’s arm. We want you to stay and have supper.’
David’s brows swoop up. He looks at me, hardly smiling.
‘How cosy, but I’m afraid—’
‘Oh, please stay. Please, David. It won’t be fun without you.’ Giles and Felix drag him onto the sofa, and laughing, he takes off his coat and agrees.
‘I wish we never had electricity, it’s much more fun,’ says Felix when he is finally dragged up to bed, adding, with glorious inconsistency, ‘Can David and Gawain stay so we can do the PlayStation tomorrow?’
Seems to me that David and Gawain are unlikely to go anywhere. An hour with Gawain at his most bombastic has thawed David utterly, and exhausted me. They are playing poker, two candles in Wallace and Gromit candleholders illuminate the cards for them and the scene is deliciously rakish. David wins the first hand, and they are dealing again within seconds, scarcely aware of me as I begin to gather up plates, glasses and the ketchup bottle from the gloom beyond the firelight. Am light-headed with tiredness and with relief that David is here and I do not have to shoulder the burden of Gawain’s machine-gun energy. I slink off to bed as the first candle gutters and is replaced with another.
October 16th
Set off on a mushroom-picking expedition with my mother. Gawain carries The Beauty on his shoulders, earning himself thousands of brownie points with me because I can saunter along with a spring in my step as if I am seventeen, untrammelled by the pushchair or worse, the backpack. However, Gawain loses all the brownie points again as soon as we get into the woods. Forgetting The Beauty, he forges through hanging foliage. A terrible roar alerts me, and I turn to see The Beauty, peering red-faced from a frond of chestnut tree, her arms wrapped around it while her feet drum in frustration and fury on Gawain’s collarbone.
‘Ow, stop it. You can’t do that to me, I’m carrying you, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Don’t be such an idiot, Gawain, you’ll drop her.’
I reach the sobbing Beauty as she is wrenched from her branch, and snatch her from Gawain. Scowling, he marches off into curling golden bracken where my mother is inspecting a fairy ring of fungus. Fury blasts my cheeks. I crouch to let The Beauty climb onto my back. She cannot. Making the most of a dramatic opportunity, she continues to sob woefully into my shoulder. We follow the others slowly, and her spirits lift with every sighting of Giles and Felix, now way ahead, dark blurs racing through the copper leaves, weaving between smooth grey beech trunks and moss-covered heaps of piled logs.
It is Wednesday and Gawain is finally departing. He has not had a restful sojourn, but has survived. His relationship with The Beauty has deteriorated still further, and she will not now be in a room with him without bursting into tears. Am glad he is not her godfather, and that he lives miles away and will not be dropping in too often. He is a pitiful sight, leaning out of the train window to wave. Half of his face is hidden by reflecting sunglasses, but the bits above and below the shades are pale green and damp and spasms of trembling occupy him every few minutes. The doctor said this was to be expected, and that Gawain would be better within a week.
It is all my mother’s fault. She administered a highly toxic mushroom in an omelette on Saturday night and poisoned him. For three days his life hung in the balance, or so it seemed from the fuss he made; the doctor said there was no danger at all.
‘I’m so glad you aren’t dead,’ were my mother’s bracing words when she came to view him in his sickbed. ‘You could be. I thought they were wood mushrooms, but I’ve looked them up and they’re yellow staining agarics, which are very similar but horribly toxic.’ Her smile was sepulchral. ‘I’m amazed it hasn’t happened before, actually.’
Moderately contrite, she salved her conscience with a packet of orange and lemon cupcakes, presented, along with a half-bottle of vodka, to the invalid. Still too enfeebled and sensitive to look at them, he cringed away, shuddering. My mother ate all except the final orange-flavoured cake. This was given to The Beauty who was peering round the door, anxious that Granny might be in danger from the dreadful creature. My mother sipped briefly from the vodka bottle, then rose to leave.
‘I’ll leave the rest of the vodka. I’ve just had one small shot myself, but you don’t really need visitors, do you? You just need a big bowl by the bed.’
‘Why don’t you send him back to London in an ambulance?’ she demanded downstairs. ‘You’ve got enough to do looking after the children without sick artists as well.’
Shocked by her lack of sympathy, although secretly agreed, but felt I must be hospitable for as long as Gawain required a bed. His image as Corinthian superhero was a little tarnished by the sick bowl, and I discovered that Florence Nightingale will never be a role model.
* * *
Return from dropping Gawain at the station and on the way decide that autumn is the perfect time to reread Anna Karenina. The thought of lovely wicked Vronsky speeds my path through the puddles and mud to home. Yum yum. Can’t wait.
October 23rd
Must go on a date or similar excursion for fun and frivolity, with or without member of the opposite sex. Am becoming set in lemon-faced, lone-parent ways and need to get out. Have not been out for the evening since London trip. This cannot be healthy. Who can I go with and where can I go? Vivienne and Simon are on holiday, David is not answering his telephone, my mother is having her hair dyed in Cromer. I have no one to play with. Cabin fever takes possession of my brain and makes me choose a class with Fabrice Wrath’s Seven Rhythms Ecstatic Dance Group as my outing. Must not admit the depths to which I am sinking to my mother, so ask Jenny to babysit and make her swear to secrecy and to tell anyone who rings that I am at the cinema.
Jenny arrives with a large bag of washing and two small tubs of dye.
‘Is it OK if I use your washing machine to dye my clothes?’ she asks. ‘I thought I could do some tie-dyeing with the boys too.’
‘What a wonderful idea, they’ll love it.’ Am jealous. Why do I never think of creative and stimulating things such as tie-dyeing to do with the boys? Could I join in and learn new skill from Jenny rather than having to drive ten miles in the dark?
Dress in boring black and grey clothes as usual, but a different configuration of them. Hopes that I resemble a nubile extra in Flashdance are dashed when I go in to say goodbye to Giles and Felix. They are immersed in the vile PlayStation and can scarcely bear to look up.
‘Go away,’ growls Felix from between gritted teeth.
Giles finishes his go, so has a small window of time for me before his next turn. He hugs me and I am engulfed in a huge, loving smile too.
‘Mum, you’re so silly, you’ve forgotten to take your trousers off. You’ve got a skirt on as well. It looks totally sad.’
Why did I bring them up to believe in freedom of speech?
The ecstatic dancing takes place in a village hall, and is led by a man with a straggle of long green hair and cringe-making white ballet tights. He looks like a spring onion. The participants are two wan, middle-aged women wearing bedroom slippers and macintoshes, and a skinhead in boxer shorts and a singlet. I take my place among them, clammy with embarrassment and very conscious of my yellowed toenails. Should have made time to apply nail polish before leaving home. A strip light falters into action, washing the hall and the five people in it in harsh white light. No one is at all ecstatic. Silence is heavy between us. Onion Head puts on his music. Horrible rasping wails fill the hall, backed by spooky pipes of some sort and a fast drumbeat. I begin to feel nauseous.
‘Let the music seize you from inside,’ urges Onion Head, and shutting his eyes, he bends his knees outwards like a Cossack and begins to bounce from side to side. The strand of tired green hair flaps across his forehead, and his legs are stringy and knotted with veins. No one else even attempts the squatting bounce. One of the ladies sheds her mac to reveal a clinging mauve tracksuit. Her lips are a ruby slash in between dumpling-fat cheeks. She starts marching on the spot, her eyes fixed above the bouncing form of Onion Head, her hands moving, twirling an imaginary baton. She may not be wearing a pleated miniskirt or bunches, but she is clearly an American cheerleader, a bobby-soxer. The skinhead has also been seized by an inner ecstasy. He teeters on the tips of his trainers, every leg muscle taut and forcing him taller and straighter. His arms shoot in and out from his shoulders, faster and faster, and this impulsion soon has him bouncing, while his face turns puce and scarlet like Zebedee in The Magic Roundabout. The non-cheerleading middle-aged lady and I are spellbound. Zebedee, Onion Head and the Cheerleader are bopping away at full speed, while the two of us shift uneasily from foot to foot. I catch her eye just as Onion Head changes gear and begins hurtling around the hall in a kind of squatting solo waltz. The cheerleader has developed a more elaborate routine too, now, involving head-tossing and pouting, while Zebedee is a veritable dervish. We both explode laughing, and cannot stop. Soon we are leaning against the stage, legs crossed, dying for the loo but still wrapped in mirth.
October 24th
The excitement of the ecstatic dancing causes me to wake today renewed. Sides and stomach ache from unusual exertion of non-stop laughing, but no other ill effects. Will not, however, be returning to Fabrice, as he announced at the end of the class that he is going to India for the winter, and has to be there before the clocks change. Am not sure if this is valid, as time zones make clock-changing meaningless anyway. Or do they? Am, as usual, confounded, caught out and depressed by the end of British Summer Time. And by the vast heap of manure which has been deposited in the yard by Mr Loins.
‘You ordered it last year, and said I wasn’t to forget you, I had the cheque and everything. You said you were getting ahead with the garden.’ He cackles in triumph when I object to the fulsome trailer load.
All very well for the garden, but have no volunteers for shit-shovelling save self. Wallow for a bit in self-pity as I recall the optimistic day last year when I ordered the manure from Mr Loins. Remember saying to him, ‘Oh, I’m sure there will be someone around to help me,’ when warned that there would be an awful lot of it.
October 26th
Half-term enables me to enlist Giles and Felix as helpers. Both are keen to earn money, so I offer them fifty pence a barrow load. Perhaps too lavish. I have been appointed barrow-pusher, and the morning passes slowly for me. Giles stands at the muck heap with a fork and tosses treacle-brown dollops into the barrow. When it is full, I trundle it to Felix, who waits, leaning on another fork by the flowerbed. He then flings feathering sprays of manure out of the barrow and somewhere near the bed and I trundle the empty barrow back to Giles. By elevenses, I have become a Russian peasant from Kitty and Levin’s farm, and am almost enjoying the wrung-out, strung-out exhaustion. My red wellingtons are heavy and bristling with muck so I am forced to shuffle, and Giles and Felix have earned five pounds each.
‘That’s practically plutocrat rate,’ I inform them.
They are sitting on the back doorstep, sipping scalding hot chocolate and watching The Beauty climb over me. She is refreshed from her rest and is a land girl in khaki trousers which I found in the dressing-up box. Recognise them as Felix’s from toddler days, and suspect that they have been inside out in the dressing-up box since he took them off five years ago to put on his cowboy suit. I cannot move. Am collapsed on the grass beside the boys. My back is in a spasm of protest against the ten barrow loads of muck I have moved, and is building up a painful resistance to doing any more. Am otherwise keen to continue and get rid of the Mount Rushmore muck heap; it is black, ugly and it smells. Rather like Digger, who appears, jangling his collar as he pauses to scratch and then lift his leg on the newly planted wallflowers under the kitchen window. Refrain from yelling obscenities at him or throwing anything, as Digger equals David, and David equals assistance. Hooray, shall not now have permanently crooked back or long-term muck monolith.
David is on his way to London and wants to leave Digger here.
‘I wonder if you would have him, Venetia; he hates the traffic and I can never get him out of the dustbins, so it takes hours even to cross a road with him. He’s brought you a present to try and bribe his way in.’ He thrusts a bottle of red wine at me and turns to greet The Beauty. Nod absently, as am transfixed by the snappiness of David’s outfit. The glamour of a white shirt should never be underestimated. The black corduroy suit is the kind of thing I used to try to get Charles to wear, without success, and only the silver trainers are recognisable as David’s wardrobe. He does not look eligible for shit-shovelling. And I have not got the nerve to ask him; he is dazzling in his splendour. Am unfortunately dazzled enough to agree to Digger.
‘Oh yes, of course we’ll have him. It’ll be fine. When are you back?’
‘On Saturday, in time for Hallowe’en,’ says David. ‘I’ll see you then.’
He puts The Beauty down and saunters out of the yard. We resume our labours.
October 28th
Am turning over a new leaf. Recent phase of gloom and shit-shovelling is to be replaced by spirit of optimism, some new shoes and many treats. Am throwing an impromptu Hallowe’en party, spurred on by competitiveness with Charles, who is having the boys for Guy Fawkes Night. He says he does not want The Beauty, and has not had her overnight since the early summer. She will be supplanted in his affections by the Saucer Babies. How can I protect her from this? Have been ghastly, whingeing lemon-face mother for weeks now, and have not told the boys why. Am convinced that it is Charles’s job to break baby news to them, not mine, although wish that they could be spared. Futile half-hour of ‘if only’ thoughts follows, staring out of the kitchen window at shivering trees desperate to keep hold of leaves now past their prime and yellowed. Am only distracted from my torpor by Rags, who is whimpering and turning circles in a crescendo of excitement because I am standing near the back door. Capitulate and take her out.
Tramp along the edge of the newly ploughed back field, with Rags zigzagging at a distance, nose to the ground and hopelessly excited. The Beauty rides high on my shoulders in her rambler-baby backpack, and we swing up to the brow of the hill, out of breath and yearning for the view.
Is there time for fudge or jelly to set before the party? Where are The Beauty’s black velvet bloomers? When will I be allowed out? Am zipped into the yellow pop-up tent with the tiny tyrant. She is wearing a silver plastic knight’s helmet with the visor up; I am wearing a kind of wimple made from a roll of kitchen towel. My Knight in Shining Armour keeps blowing her nose on the wimple, and is engaged in sucking apricot face cream from a tube she refuses to surrender. She has a will as tough as any armour, and the voice to assert it. I may be here for hours. The Beauty hands me a pink thimble.
‘Tea,’ she says, breathily. In fact, I could be here for days.
Rescue appears in the form of Desmond and my mother and a vast pumpkin from The Gnome’s vegetable plot. My mother also has three red plastic tridents. She adores parties and is already very excited. She engulfs the kitchen in a puff of smoke from her special black Hallowe’en cigarettes and arranges her wares on the table. It takes the united effort of me and Desmond to get the pumpkin into position.
‘This is bigger than the piglets. We could put one of them inside and cook it,’ I suggest.
‘We thought it would make a good carriage for The Beauty,’ says my mother, settling down in the tent with the delighted Beauty. ‘You chop the top off and scoop it out like an egg. Desmond is going to dress up as Dracula and hide in the coal shed. We must make some cocktails, I’ve brought black food colouring for them, and some should be green.’
Am tying a string across the kitchen and suspending sticky willy buns from it when Lila rattles up the drive in her Beetle.
‘Ah, the witches are convening,’ says Desmond, watching her leap from the car and begin frantically to wipe its seats clean of journey crumbs while yelling at her children.
‘Either you tidy yourselves up or we go straight back to London. I have had enough of you two and your lippiness, so don’t bother answering back…’ Her haranguing head vanishes into the boot space in the bonnet of the Beetle. Desmond whistles under his breath and opens a can of lager.
‘She’s going to be one to avoid this weekend,’ he whispers to me as Diptych bursts into the kitchen in a warty monster mask.
The relationship between Desmond and Lila broke down irretrievably when Desmond’s decapitated finger went septic after his third night on the marble slab. Despite Lila’s fevered application of much organic, prepacked mud, pond weed and other oozing lotions, Desmond insisted on going to hospital. Antibiotics and twenty-four hours of potential amputation were the final passion killers. The finger survived, but Desmond left to go to Reading in August, vowing never to get mixed up with anything New Age again. His band, Hung Like Elvis, were the success story of the festival, and at other venues throughout the summer. Now, at last, after seven years as a joke, they are considered a happening band, and Desmond has shaved his sideburns, groomed his eyebrows and found a Dolly Parton lookalike girlfriend called Minna whom he met at a gig. Minna loves Tupperware and having her nails done, and believes in supermarket prefab food. Wish Minna could have joined us for Hallowe’en, as I long to meet her. Have to make do with grumpy Lila instead.
The kitchen is becoming a cauldron. The windows have steamed up, something foul is bubbling on the Aga and The Beauty stands on the table with a wooden spoon, stirring the hollow in a gap-toothed turnip lantern. She and my mother have excavated three turnips, two swedes and are about to start on the giant pumpkin. Felix has found a bottle of white foundation and is slapping it onto his face to complement the gruesome red felt-tip line he has drawn around his throat. He is freakish in the extreme to look at, with just his eyes and his school uniform indicating that he is human. He removes the school uniform in favour of a black cloak and a pair of flashing devil horns, and hurtles into the garden with Diptych and Calypso to play at being Undead. Giles has taken it upon himself to blow up twenty orange and black balloons, and is lying in the kitchen armchair panting. No amount of coercion or pleading will persuade him to dress up this evening.
‘It’s too babyish,’ he says dismissively, and as if to prove his point, the leering, disguised faces of the other three crystallise for a second at the back door before they vanish again screaming and shouting into the steel-cold dusk.
‘Try this and tell me if it needs more nutmeg.’ My mother thrusts a steaming cup at me, and another at Lila, and stands back, as if observing an experiment. Glance uneasily at the potion, which is the colour of old blood and has black bits floating beneath a foam of bubbles. My mother looks even more unnerving than her concoction, having run her hands through her hair several times without realising that pumpkin seeds have attached themselves to her. Her hair now stands completely on end and is adorned with the seeds, while her mascara has smudged around her eyes. Her Hallowe’en costume, however, is immaculate, if overpowering, in its suggestion of an endless sweep of viridian-green satin under festoons of black lace.
‘It’s mulled wine, but I added some cherry brandy and a few other new ingredients. Do you like it?’
Suppress sissy urge not even to try it, and imbibe. Molten alcohol bursts down my throat; I choke and spout teardrops from swimming eyes. Croak, ‘It’s great,’ and gulp the rest as if it is a frozen vodka.
Lila is being a real wet blanket: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t drink it; I read that heating cheap wine literally turns it into battery acid and I’m not prepared to run that risk with my metabolism.’
She turns her back to find a clean glass for the wholesome life elixir she has brought with her, and my mother sticks her tongue out. In contrast to grumpy Lila, I am now feeling very much more cheerful than I have for ages. Another swig of the potion creates a woosh of energy and power reminiscent of Asterix, and I dash into the garden to call the children for the games to start.
‘We can’t be bothered to wait for the others,’ I shout. ‘They can join in later. Let’s start with apple-bobbing.’
‘What others? Who else have you asked?’
I turn to answer Desmond and am jolted into a scream. He has changed into vulpine, glistening Count Dracula. The Beauty has had enough, and clutches my hand in terror, hiding her head in her skirt, only emerging to wave her hand and shout, ‘Taxi, taxi,’ in a bid for escape when car headlights flare out of the darkness towards us. The car pauses halfway up the drive, and although I cannot see anything save headlights, I can hear the driver laughing at the scene on the lawn. Five buckets filled with water and bobbing apples are illuminated by the various lanterns, and kneeling at each bucket is a child, his or her head sleek and wet like a seal from immersion in the apple-filled water. My mother, followed by Lila, who has been forced by Calypso to wear a Victorian child’s sprigged bonnet, marches between the contestants with her torch, counting apples and administering towels. Beyond the grinning, glowing light of the lanterns, Desmond is dimly visible in the woods, flitting to and fro with torch spectacles on, very spectral with his whited-out face, but also reminiscent of the barn owl.
‘I have never seen such an insane bunch of people, or rather, not since that midsummer party you had, Venetia. How’s Digger?’ David climbs out of the car leaving the lights on, and saunters over to kiss my cheek. Am taken aback. He doesn’t usually kiss me. Perhaps he’s drunk. I turn to call Digger out from the kitchen where he has been guarding the sticky buns, but he has already shimmied silently to David’s side. So has my mother, proffering a beaker of mulled wine and almost as pleased to see him as Digger.
‘I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you about those friends of yours with the handbags. Would they like to use my house? I read somewhere that location work is hugely lucrative, and I’m told that—’
‘It’s the drink talking,’ I whisper, lemon-like, in David’s other ear, annoyed because I wanted to hear about his trip to London, and now he will probably leave while I am putting The Beauty to bed.
He affects deafness towards me and I march upstairs, feeling both martyred and ashamed of myself, to bath The Beauty. But he is still there when I come down. Mayhem has muted now, and the children are eating cheese on toast by the fire David has built, and are listening wide-eyed to my mother reading M. R. James’s ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’. David throws more logs onto the fire and comes over to my side by the door.
‘Desmond has challenged Lila to a darts match, so they’ve gone to the pub. I think it’s to the death. Do you want to go as well? Your mother can look after the kids.’
The sitting room is cosy and smells of autumn leaves and the chestnuts David is roasting. The children are agog at my mother’s knees, hardly breathing as the suspense mounts. Contentment wraps around me.
‘No, I’d much rather stay here. Let’s have a drink, I want to hear about your trip.’
November 2nd
Rose telephones at length to complain about Tristan, who has gone on the Hay Diet and is making her do it too, and Theo. He won’t let her have any breakfast except a fig.
‘We’re not allowed pasta with Parmesan cheese or even bread and butter,’ she complains. ‘Theo hates it; I have to sneak him sandwiches when Tristan’s out, but I have to hide the bread because we’re only supposed to have rye bread now. It’s frightful. Theo has started jumping out of his cot at night. I’m sure it’s because he’s hungry. He bit me three times yesterday. Do you think that’s a sign of hunger as well?’
I reassure her and suggest she buys another fridge and puts it somewhere Tristan never goes. ‘Then you can fill it with things you and Theo can eat.’
‘What a brilliant idea. A small one will be easy to hide, behind the coats or somewhere like that. Thanks, Venetia, that’s so underhand. I love it. Anyway, tell me what you’ve been up to. How are you coping with the Miracle of the Immaculate Conception? I think it’s time you found a new man, you know. It’s been ages. I’m going to come down and plan a strategy with you.’
This is a favourite theme of Rose’s, and I meet it with my usual response.
‘There aren’t any men around.’
Anyway, I don’t want one except for wood-chopping and taking the rubbish down the drive. Explain this to Rose.
‘I’ve had enough of all that emotional angst and having to look after them. It’s as much as I can manage to look after the children. And I couldn’t bear not to be allowed pasta and Parmesan.’
Change the subject and tell her about our Hallowe’en party. She is petulant to have missed it.
‘Typical Lila, to get down there for the party. I wish I’d come. Theo would have loved it. We could have covered him in cochineal again. Is David that bloke who came to the midsummer madness night? With grey eyes and great legs? God, why don’t you go for him, Venetia? He’s delicious, and he must fancy you, he’s always hanging around.’
Rose is unshakeably convinced that lust lies behind any male–female friendship.
‘You read too many women’s magazines,’ I tell her before hanging up.
November 3rd
Spend hours dragging branches and heaping leaves to make a bonfire. Not wishing to leave anything to chance, and remembering Charles telling me that enormous skill and intellect are needed to structure a bonfire, I pour a quantity of petrol over it before attempting to light it. Terrible muffled woomph noise, flames leap around me and am convinced I have been engulfed by them. Hurl myself on the ground and roll back and forth like Rags when she has found a nice old corpse and wishes to be wreathed in its scent. Dare not stop until my clothes are damp and my skin is grainy with earth and crushed twigs. Try opening and shutting eyes and mouth to test whether the top layer of skin is still there. Seem to have miraculously escaped being burnt to a crisp, and the bonfire has already gone out. Resort to firelighters, and slowly a core of orange flame begins to lick the outer branches and I can prod the crackling structure, releasing a puff of blue smoke and a roar as the fire cranks up hotter and hotter.
Much later, putting Felix to bed, I close his bedroom curtains and see the pink glow of my fire still burning. A triumph over unlikeliness.
November 4th
Drive the children to Cambridge through umber-tinted afternoon to take them to Charles. All are sweetly excited, even The Beauty, who has only been allowed to stay with him once before. On the telephone last night he capitulated towards her finally, saying, ‘If she can walk, she can come.’ Not only can she walk, she can run, and is a very fine limbo dancer too. She is a total music-head and is happy on any journey as long as the volume on the tape machine is high and some lovely rap and disco music is thudding out. Her dancing is sublime, wiggling of shoulders like Madonna and shaking of head like Karen Carpenter. She is not at all interested in children’s tapes, quite rightly in my view as the singers always have such awful patronising voices. Maybe she does her head-shaking to satirise them. Hope so. We listen to louche rock music by Hole and also to Kris Kristofferson and arrive at Heavenly Petting on radiant form.
The fluffy receptionist is dressed in marshmallow pink, and is markedly more friendly than she was when I came on my own to the meeting. This time she slides out from behind her desk to greet us, her wonderful cleavage gleaming in a nest of softest mohair, and her whole being hourglass-perfect and tiny.
‘Hello, I’m Minna. Welcome, all of you. I’ve been asked to entertain you for half an hour while Mr Denny finishes his meeting. Would you all like to come into the Reflection Room and have a drink?’
We follow obediently and are led into a thickly carpeted room decorated to look like a bruise or perhaps a sunset. The walls are marbled mauve and lilac, grey and pink, and the sofas are upholstered in yellow fabric. Minna busies herself with glasses and packets of crisps, her long frosted-blue nails clicking on the cans of Coke as she pours them.
Giles has been watching her intently and suddenly comments, ‘You’ve got such tiny feet. I didn’t know grown-up feet could be that small.’
I automatically shove my great boats back under my chair so no one can see them. Minna tosses her silver-blonde curls and throws him a saucy look.
‘Well, not much grows in the shade, does it?’
Her bosom hovers some distance in front of her as she pirouettes. Giles turns scarlet and suddenly I am enlightened – she is Desmond’s Dolly Parton.
‘Minna – of course. You’re Desmond’s girlfriend, you must be. Desmond is my brother. He came to our Hallowe’en party and told us all about you.’
I babble on, half astonished at the coincidence of finding her here of all places, half to help Giles recover from his embarrassment. The Beauty takes to her immediately, and throws herself at Minna’s mini feet, even lying down with her kangaroo on the perfect Barbie blue high-heeled shoes. Minna alights on the arm of a sofa; The Beauty watches her beadily, and sensing a moment when she is preoccupied, displays astonishing deftness in removing Minna’s right shoe and placing it on her own small foot. The left follows, and the triumphant Beauty hobbles between the sofas, shouting ‘ha ha’ and pointing at her cerulean footwear.
Reluctantly tear myself away from Minna’s life story, but not before I have learnt that she is a form of saint. She has thirty-seven cats and fourteen dogs at home, and her mission is to save animals from owners who have succumbed to Charles’s rhetoric and to his advertising and have decided to end their little pets’ lives, ‘On a Good Note, On a Good Day,’ as Charles always puts it.
‘I go along to places like puppy obedience classes, or maybe local pet shows,’ she explains, ‘and I talk to the owners about their twilight plans for their older pets. Lots of them are so relieved to have the decision lifted from their shoulders.’
Although Minna’s secret mission is at odds with the success of Charles’s business and therefore my children’s allowance, I am utterly beguiled by her. Finally depart to drive home, leaving her playing monsters with Felix and The Beauty, while Giles, still shy, is referee.
November 5th
In no frame of mind to enjoy the evening I have ahead of me. Vivienne and Simon are taking me with them to a friend’s farm for a fireworks party and barbecue. I must go out because it is too dispiriting to sit at home on Guy Fawkes Night when the beloved children are whooping it up in Cambridge at a vast party on the Backs with carousels and hot dogs and glorious fireworks bursting over water and medieval spires.
They telephone as I am debating whether to wear wellingtons and my filthy waterproof, or to freeze. We have an awful, textbook divorced-children conversation. I may have to ban them from ringing me when they go away in future.
‘Hi, Mum, it’s Giles.’
‘Hi, Giles, how are you all?’
‘Fine thanks.’
‘I’m missing you hugely and thinking about you all having sparklers and toffee apples.’
Long pause.
‘Is everything all right, darling?’
‘Yup.’
‘Are you having fun?’
‘Yup.’
Long pause. Then Giles speaks.
‘D’you want to speak to Felix and The Beauty?’
‘Yup.’ Oh, God, now I’m doing it. ‘I mean, yes please, darling, have a lovely fireworks party, won’t you, and do be careful with sparklers and everything…’ He has gone. Conversation with Felix identically awful and stilted. My usually garrulous children have become polite, pretend people with cardboard manners. I also dry up. After a relatively short silence, Felix says, ‘I’ll get The Beauty now.’
Now we have a very lengthy pause, followed by clunking and heavy breathing. I try speaking, by this time torn between hysterical laughter and sobs. The Beauty howls as soon as she hears my voice and is whisked away from the phone. Someone hangs up.
* * *
The firework party and barbecue takes place in, on and very close to a large Range Rover. We arrive to find four or five people milling about in the dark with sticks and torches, and a very small, sulky bonfire. Simon immediately takes over as chef and party planner, and discarding the hosts’ many Tupperware boxes of food, he starts cooking some steaks he has brought which are oozing blood in Vivienne’s basket along with a bottle of sloe vodka, three vast Chinese rockets and a slab of chocolate. The hosts scuttle to do Simon’s bidding, and Vivienne and I clamber into the car with brimming glasses of sloe vodka and turn on the heating in preparation for engrossing conversation and gossip. Steadied and cheered from earlier telephone hysteria, I sip the sloe vodka and find its smooth sweetness comforting and medicinal.
Simon’s bossing is effective. The display begins with three delicate bouquets of lacy vivid green and pink Roman candles, followed by a great golden rocket. Even more lovely with a second sloe vodka. And a third. On the way home, having exchanged effusive farewells with co-guests whose names I still have not discovered, am thrilled to find I have hardly thought about the children all evening, and haven’t missed them in the slightest. A marked improvement from last time they all went to Charles’s.
November 7th
How can I help them? Charles drops the children back late. Felix trudges upstairs, his favourite cuddly toy in one hand, the other plunged into his pocket. He does not look up at me, nor does Giles. Both have crescent shadows of exhaustion beneath their eyes and chalk-white skin. The Beauty is asleep with her mouth open, small, plump fingers clamped around a Smarties tube.
Charles hangs around while I put them all to bed. He doesn’t come in, but hovers at the front of the house in the dark, unloading the luggage, brushing the seats, removing The Beauty’s throne. By the time the children are tucked up, his car has reverted to its customary state of luxury, and there is no trace of squalor, or of the children.
‘They are not talking to Helena,’ he says. ‘She is very upset.’
We are on the doorstep, having a conversation I hate already. My throat is tight with anger, and adrenalin courses through my veins as if on the Cresta Run.
‘They’re upset too. Your news was bound to be difficult for them. They’ll be fine when the babies are born.’
‘Oh, do you think so? I’ll tell Helena; it’ll cheer her up.’ He shuffles his feet and looks wretched.
‘I think you should make some plans for your time with them that are separate from Helena and the babies. Just for a while.’
He nods, his brow clearing as though he has confessed and been absolved, and salutes my cheek before driving off. There are not many people these days who still salute a cheek. Charles does it with the driest brush. It is painless to receive, and about as thrilling as a roll of kitchen towel.
November 10th
The only flower in my garden is a white chrysanthemum, given to me last year by a school friend of Giles’s as a thank you for having him to stay. Not being a big chrysanthemum fan, I let it hang around in the porch until it had finished flowering, then planted it without thinking, on the edge of the drive. Now, when the rest of the garden slumbers beneath a thick carpet of manure, and leaf interest is everything, it has burst into soggy flamboyance. Keep catching sight of it when arriving or leaving the house, thinking it is a collection of discarded tissues or other litter, and having mini-apoplexy. Similar temper caused daily by Rags, who is loving the easy access to well-rotted pig shit and rolls in the flowerbeds before coming in to lie on the sofa every morning. No matter how many tuberose joss sticks I burn, the house remains sty-like in ambience. Odd how a bad smell can affect appearance also. House is becoming trailer-park and tawdry. Shall not be discouraged or dragged down myself, but will improve everything. First, the chrysanthemum must go.
November 14th
Desmond’s birthday. Fortunately he is in Sri Lanka, washing elephants, so don’t have to give him a present.
My mother’s birthday. The children give her a Glamorous Granny mug with transfer of Dolly Parton/Minna type on one side, and, mysteriously, a large dog on the other. I give her a purple inflatable chair and a pair of yellow ankle-length gardening boots like my red ones. We make a cake in the shape of a Teletubby and take it to her house for lovely family tea. She is out. We telephone the pub. She and The Gnome are there. Their words are slurring. Return home in giant lemon mode.
November 16th
Poison pygmy Helena’s birthday. Send her a pair of outsize knickers from Woolworths.
November 17th
Travel many miles under cover of darkness to procure bargain of the century – a proper snooker table for fifty pounds. Find this covetable item in the free paper and have to bribe Jenny the babysitter with double time to get her away from her seed germination trays in order that I can be first on the vendor’s doorstep with the cash in my hand. It is to be Giles’s birthday present, and must therefore be erected tonight. More bribing of Jenny, and the presence of Smalls, are the only way to get the vast slab into the house. It takes hours, during which there are many moments of tight-lipped silence, and bursts of strong language. Comforting to think that the rows are nothing to what they would have been if we had all been married to one another. At last it is up. The glossy balls beckon in a neat squad on acres of smooth green. A quick game is called for to celebrate, and a few beers to relax us. Totter to bed at three in the morning, with muscles seizing up after unnatural exertion of becoming a removals woman, and crone-like curved spine setting in. Sleep is scarcely achieved when The Beauty begins her matutinal calls at six o’clock in the morning.
November 18th
Giles’s birthday. He tears downstairs to open his cards, and tries to look grave and don’t care-ish that his present pile consists only of Silly Putty, a pair of Superman socks and a book token from a great-aunt.
‘Oh, it’s great,’ he says of the Silly Putty, ‘I’ve always wanted some.’
The rest of us, having festooned the snooker table in ribbons while Giles was getting dressed, cannot bear the suspense. Before he can finish his bacon, Felix has blindfolded him and he is being propelled by The Beauty, through rather than around furniture, to the playroom.
‘Surprise. Happy Birthday!’ Felix and I shout, and Giles opens his eyes. The hugest grin splits his face.
‘Wow, wow, wow,’ he gasps. And then hugs me and Felix, patting The Beauty’s head, trying to thank all of us at once. ‘Thank you, Mummy.’
Weep mawkishly into a tea towel as he and Felix purr and exclaim at the top-notch present. Charles has supplied cues, a triangle, many blocks of blue chalk, one of which The Beauty is keenly sucking, and some bar towels. Why bar towels? Instantly find a use for them, though, and ambush The Beauty with a towelling rectangle saying ‘Carlsberg’, before she can leave the room to smear blue slug trails from her fingers and face onto everything.
Six boys come back from school to stay the night. None of them sleeps, preferring to play snooker and watch videos of The Full Monty, The Simpsons and Fawlty Towers all night. Following Giles’s instructions to the letter, I feed them marshmallows, Coke, Twiglets and slices of processed cheese. I am banned from going into the attic, which they have made their lair, but have to communicate via walkie-talkie.
November 19th
The tallest of Giles’s friends thanks me for a lovely time and for being ‘a totally chilled mother’. My day is made.
November 23rd
My birthday. As usually, totally birthdayed-out by this point and have reached a point far beyond civility or even partying. Elect to go to the cinema with my mother and Simon and Vivienne in the evening. Giles and Felix are adorable and make me breakfast in bed. Scrambled eggs, toast, strawberry Nesquik and Toblerone arrive on a tray with three home-made cards. Felix’s has a zebra on it wearing sunglasses. It has a cartoon balloon wafting above its mouth announcing: ‘It’s a Stripy Day’. The Beauty’s is more abstract with just a smear of butter and a couple of crumbs, and Giles’s is a still life of a tennis shoe. There are presents too.
‘We bought them with Granny in Budgens,’ explains Felix, wrapping one leg round the other and overbalancing in anticipation. He has given me a packet of chocolate cornflakes.
‘How delicious, Felix, how did you know that I love these the most?’
He is terribly pleased with this reaction. ‘Do you? That’s really good. I chose them because they’ve got Space Trolls inside, and I wanted one.’
Giles kicks him; he howls.
‘Shut up,’ says Giles. ‘You shouldn’t give people things just because you want them.’
‘Shut up yourself. You didn’t even buy Mummy something in Budgens. You—’
Wave my arms and yell as forcefully as possible from trapped position beneath my tray. ‘Come on, you two, let’s not have a row. Let’s see what Giles has given me.’
It is a false arm.
‘It’s meant to be like The Thing in The Addams Family,’ says Giles, watching me keenly and trying to gauge my reaction. ‘I got it in the shopping mall in Cambridge.’
The arm wears a white sleeve and likes to be draped out of pianos or car doors. Am nonplussed. Fortunately Giles has stopped looking at me. He has seized the arm and is demonstrating its skill at dangling from my knicker drawer. Following the success of this interlude, the arm is accompanied out of the room and around the house, until it is finally given some peace when it is posted through the letter box.
‘Mum, will you take a photograph of the postman when he sees it?’
The Beauty gives me a pair of false eyelashes and a leather diary.
‘How smart and kind. What a thoughtful—’
Am interrupted by the return of Felix. He picks up the diary.
‘Oh, no! You can’t have this, Mum. You’ll be arrested. The Beauty stole it. In fact, she shoplifted it. What’s the difference?’ Felix pauses to glare at his sister.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, anyway, Granny didn’t notice it in the pushchair when we came out of the newspaper shop. It’s a crime, and I said I’d take it back and I forgot. Will she be in trouble?’
He removes the stolen goods. Am very impressed by the high moral tone, but also disappointed; a new diary would be perfect. Perhaps I can sneak it back when Felix has forgotten about it again.
My mother meets me at the cinema with a green furry hot-water-bottle cover and a bunch of white roses made of satin and adorned with plastic dewdrops. David is with her. Immensely cheering, as Simon and Vivienne cannot come, and three are always better than two at dealing with Cromer.
‘Happy Birthday, Venetia.’ David kisses me and proffers a selection of gifts. ‘I couldn’t decide what to give you, so I brought all the things I had available.’
Not quite sure how to take this. There is a leopard-skin lead for Rags, who never has one, with a label saying, ‘Love from Digger.’ There is a scarf with poppies and anemones on it, and a glass scent bottle with a crystal stopper.
‘Oh, David, how lovely. And how girlie.’
Eyes begin to smart with emotion and excitement. Suddenly realise what a thrill it is to receive girlie things, and how I have missed it. Hug him, accidentally dropping my hot-water-bottle cover into a puddle.
After the film (most satisfactory, being a costume drama with many horses, spirited heroines plus swashbuckling men, almost all of Georgette Heyer or Tolstovian quality), we scuttle down the High Street to the Indian, which apart from Le Moon, is the only restaurant to stay open beyond nine o’clock. Order Tiger beers and piles of poppadoms from a waiter who looks like a parrot with a curved nose and shaggy hair in a crest from his crown to his shoulders. Mouthwatering smells of grilling chicken and sauces seep from the kitchen and we eat all the poppadoms while admiring the disco decor of black velvet walls with hanging baskets of neon-green plastic plants and gold foil ceiling. David is wearing a grey shirt of extreme softness and loveliness, cut to emphasise broad shoulders. Cannot stop looking at it, coveting it and the notion of having someone to give it to. Wonder who gave it to him. Don’t dare ask. We stay at the restaurant until one in the morning and drink quantities of Bailey’s Irish Cream liqueur.
Driving my mother home, am engulfed in warm joy.
‘This was an especially nice birthday,’ I enthuse, but am met with a deep exhalation of breath. She is asleep in the back seat, propped up against The Beauty’s throne, having refused to travel in the front because of my driving.
November 27th
Winter, as always, sets in as soon as the birthdays are over, and a sharp frost last night has left the hens’ water bowl frozen and the car windscreen sparkly and groovy to look at but impossible to see through. Pour kettle of boiling water over it; very pleased with myself for remembering this practical tip. The piglets are going to the butcher today, so I cannot bear to be at home. We gave them apple crumble and fish fingers and macaroni cheese for their last supper. During this melancholy half-hour, one of the fruitcakes bit Giles, while a pink scraped the top layer of skin from my shin with its razor-sharp hoof, so their departure is not all bad.
Drop the boys at school and take The Beauty shopping in Norwich. Appalled to discover that Christmas is in full swing a mere twenty miles from my home, and all shops are decked with tinsel and piping carols. The Beauty has huge fun dancing along to ‘Ding Dong Merrily’ in the Marks & Spencer’s ladies’ changing room, where I try on and reject three depressing, matronly skirts, and finally select a knee-length pink felt one from the children’s section. Marks & Spencer fourteen-year-old girls are the size of normal adults. Must be the delicious oven-ready meals. Buy many of these, especially the puddings. Supper with the boys tonight will be great, we shall have chicken Kiev with ready-washed new potatoes and chocolate bread-and-butter pudding.
‘Mmmmmm. Yummy, yummy,’ says The Beauty, who is most interested by the shopping and has climbed onto the conveyor belt to help me. Think about doing Christmas shopping, like everyone else, but am too daunted to begin. Have made no lists as yet, so am paralysed. The Beauty and I spend the afternoon in the toy shop testing different kitchen sets. She likes the most expensive one. It is an architect-designed cooker and surface set based on a highly fashionable restaurant, and has lots of organic-looking plastic veg on shelves and sheaves of black spaghetti. It also has heavenly miniature enamel implements, and a set of saucepans I could share with The Beauty. They would be big enough for boiling a bantam egg or making hot chocolate for one. Very practical. Very economical. Am so relieved that she doesn’t like the soppy Cabbage Patch kitchen that I buy the architect-designed one for her. It costs more than I can believe; all the props are extra, but I am in too deep and just pay up. It will be delivered the week before Christmas. Hooray. One down, just a few more now. Pity it cost all my money.
Head for home, but pause at a groovy men’s clothes shop, attracted by my favourite Willie Nelson track reaching its crescendo on the shop’s sound system. A completely beautiful purple shirt beckons from the first rail. Simultaneously, The Beauty and I reach out and touch it.
‘Aaah,’ she says.
‘Ooh,’ I agree.
Buy it, and on the way home wonder why. Who can I give it to? Desmond, I suppose. What a waste. Maybe I can keep it myself.
November 29th
Sunday morning is spent arguing with the children. Their view of Christmas shopping is that I should take them to a shop, let them run riot and then pick up the tab. Mine is that they should choose very tiny, inexpensive items for everyone and pay for them with their own money. Cold War; no compromise is reached.
In despair, I make cheerful Blue Peter suggestion: ‘I know, why don’t you make a few things instead?’ Giles is horizontal under the table, throwing tiny blobs of Blu-Tack at the underside of the tabletop above him. He drips sarcasm.
‘Like what? I suppose you think it’s easy to make a remote-control aeroplane which flies, or a size four rugby ball? You’re on totally the wrong wicket, Mum.’
Pleased to know roughly what his slang means, and to note that ‘wicket’, popular when I was a child and in P. G. Wodehouse books, is making a comeback.
‘No, I mean things like lavender bags and furry purses like we saw at that craft fair.’ Felix takes the bait.
‘Yes,’ he says, already getting overexcited, ‘we can do giraffe-skin frames, too. Mum’s got some giraffe skin, haven’t you?’
I nod, scanning my memory hastily to see if I can remember where I put the large fake-fur slices I bought last Christmas to make cuddly toys and did nothing with.
Felix continues, his tone now one of serious responsibility, ‘But I don’t think we should use the zebra skin because it’s whole.’
Giles continues to kick furniture and look cross. We ignore him and assemble excellent items including glitter glue, fake fur, sequins, dyed feathers, gold spray and bubble wrap. These are irresistible. Before Felix has finished cutting his first strip of giraffe, Giles is at the table, expression now friendly and interested, demanding to be shown how to spray bubble wrap. Am able to enjoy fully the smug sense of being a Blue Peter kind of mother with Blue Peter children until I remember The Beauty. She has been occupied in silence, in the playroom, for some twenty minutes. Disaster. I have wronged her. She is in her tent with a Superman cape flung over her shoulders and a Red Indian headdress round her neck. On her head she has a suede cap with a foil hoe sticking out of the top, a relic from Felix’s school play. Her tiny feet are wedged into the long toes of a pair of red velvet stilettos with one stiletto missing. When I look in, she is leaning towards a hand mirror dabbing at her face with a paintbrush.
‘She’s getting ready to go out and she’s dressed up, just like you do, Mum,’ laughs Felix.
The Beauty glances round at us and bats her eyelashes before turning back to her toilette.