Postcard from Rose arrives with picture of a dolphin on it. ‘Darling Venetia, you must have one of these new massages. It will make you feel like a dolphin. This is your late birthday token. Ring me to activate it and a pint-sized masseuse will arrive bearing table and swaddling gear. Prepare for meltdown.’
December 2nd
Do I want to feel like a dolphin?
December 4th
Am now an astral body and live on an astral plane where nothing matters and calm is deep and blue like the sea. Have been pummelled, kneaded, unravelled, unwound, stroked and filleted. Am more like an ear than a whole skeleton, being boneless now, and lacking any tension anywhere, so I could just slide through a wedding ring if anyone wanted me to. Thankfully, my mother is collecting the children and has The Beauty, for I am fit for nothing but silken sleep. Mmmmmm.
December 6th
Silken sleep was short-lived, but state of blue calm lasted forty-eight hours. It has now evaporated and been replaced by hysteria and also dogged determination. I have a puncture and I don’t know how to fix it. More importantly, I do not want to find out how to fix it. I want someone else to do it. Am keen to master a variety of physical skills, including how to get rid of garden moles and how to syphon petrol, but not punctures. Have reached the age of thirty-five and had three children and, briefly, a husband, all without knowing how to change the tyre on a car. Anyway, I would be bound to do it wrong and the wheel would come off round a bend and cause a terrible accident.
Stand idiotically on the side of the road, next to a very smart triangle I found in the car boot. The triangle has an exclamation mark in the middle. Am sure that it makes me look efficient and in control. A silver car with blacked-in windows and throbbing music radiating from it stops. A greasy-haired creep gets out.
‘’Allo, sweetheart. Need rescuing, do ya?’
His neck is wider than his head, giving him the appearance of a gorilla. But not a friendly one. He leers and chews gum aggressively. Wish I had a big dog or a gun. The Beauty has taken charge inside the car, and stands on the driver’s seat twiddling knobs and wiggling the steering wheel. Her lip trembles when the creep approaches, and tears well. I lean against the door, shielding her from him, and make a feeble excuse.
‘I think I’ll just wait a minute. Someone’s coming to pick me up soon, anyway. I can manage. Thank you for stopping, but there’s no need for you to wait, my friend will be here any minute.’
This is a big lie, but as I utter it, it becomes true. A throaty chugging sound heralds David’s ambulance. It pulls up, menacingly close to the creep’s car, the brakes squealing a protest like the fruitcake pigs.
David leans out, his face hard, angry, with his jaw clenched, and says to my would-be rescuer, ‘OK, mate, thanks for your help but I’ll sort this one out.’
Am most impressed by his aggressive stance as he swings out of his vehicle and moves over to stand protectively next to me and my puncture. Have to fight impulse to giggle weakly and hide head in his manly biceps. The creep narrows his eyes, rolls his jaw as if moving marbles in his mouth and evidently cannot think of anything cutting to say. He curses under his breath and spits his gum into the road before slamming himself back into his car and roaring off. Look to David to make fun of this interlude, but find he is grinding his teeth and wearing thunderous expression, not unlike that of thwarted creep, in fact.
‘How can you be so stupid, Venetia? What if I hadn’t come along? You are here on your own, in the middle of nowhere, with a baby. It’s getting dark. Christ only knows what you’ve done with Giles and Felix, but presumably they’re waiting for you somewhere. And don’t even pretend that you know how to change that tyre. I know you don’t and I’m going to show you now, so this cannot happen again.’
Mouth gapes, arms hang slack in astonishment and I keep quiet until he has finished and is scrabbling about in the boot looking for something. He doesn’t find it, and slams the boot but starts rummaging in the Land Rover instead. Have an urge to vent my own spleen, and do so.
‘I don’t want to learn how to change a bloody tyre. That’s what men are for. I would have easily got someone to do it by now if you weren’t standing here giving sanctimonious lectures. And actually the boys are with Vivienne and we’re on our way to meet them and have tea.’
He misses most of this, as his head is in the bowels of the Land Rover.
‘You need a jack first. Your car hasn’t got one, which is peculiar. You must buy one.’
‘I don’t want one.’
‘You will when you know what to do with it.’
‘I don’t want to know what to do with it.’
‘Grow up.’ The crisp delivery of these words leaves me smarting. David looks round to see why I am not answering back, and continues smoothly, passing me a weird-shaped bit of metal.
‘Now I want you to do this yourself. This is the jack. Put the jack here behind the wheel and twist the handle clockwise. I said clockwise…’
On and on he goes, bossing me about as if I am five. The Beauty waves occasionally from her snug disco scene within the lopsided car, but is mainly oblivious to any humiliation and David’s smug and patronising manner.
‘… And you just check for one last time that each nut is tight before you put the hubcap back on.’
It is almost dark now, and my fingers are blunt and without feeling. I am cold, tired and depressed. David, on the other hand, appears overjoyed, and his former flintlike expression has given way to a wide grin.
‘Well done. It wasn’t so bad, was it? I’m really glad you made the effort, and I know you will be too. Next time it’ll be so easy for you.’
His good cheer radiates through the dark and it is impossible to go on being cross. Instead I have a go at being graceful.
‘It was very considerate of you to teach me how to change a puncture, and I really appreciate it.’
He laughs and climbs into his car, switching on the engine and letting it idle a little.
‘I’m sure you don’t. But you will. A single woman needs to be practical. I’ll teach you now to split logs with an axe next.’ He chugs away, missing a selection of filthy language which The Beauty copies.
‘Oh, bugger off. Oh, bugger off. Bugger, bugger, bugger, HA HA!’ she trills all the way to Vivienne’s. There, just for good measure, she tries her new word on Simon. Finding him watching television, she homes in on him, patting his arm, smiling angelically and announcing, ‘Oh, bugger,’ in her breathiest voice. Simon’s response is pleasing.
‘That’s really splendid, isn’t it? Such a shame about the fog. Come and watch the local news, my dear.’ He pats the seat next to him and The Beauty, sensing a kindred spirit, climbs on and becomes absorbed in the teatime news and weather.
Sidney is ill. His coat stares and his eyes are dull. Dare say he has swallowed a fishbone or half a pheasant, but take him to the vet anyway, as work-avoidance exercise. It backfires. The journey is ghastly. We have no box, so he flits about the car miaowing and shedding hair. Finally subsides, emitting a menacing whine and flurrying hair, under my foot. Have to kick him to avoid crashing into a sugar-beet lorry. Vet gives him a pill, says, ‘He’s got worms,’ and charges me £28. Wish I had Pet Plan, as recommended by Charles.
December 10th
Hurtling towards Christmas now, and am in deepest disgrace with Felix for not having the skill to make his costume for the nativity play. He is Joseph, and he has to sing a solo.
‘All the other mothers are making costumes. They come to the school and sit in the library and sew and have coffee and stuff.’ This outburst accompanies a session in the charity shop where I attempt to put together an Galilean carpenter’s outfit scaled down to seven-year-old size; Felix refuses to have anything to do with me.
‘I am not wearing that,’ he hisses, when I hold up a matted purple knitted tunic.
I am reluctant to let so charming an item go without a fight: ‘But it would look great over something long. Like a tabard.’
‘I hate tabards. And I hate all this sort of thing.’ He flings an expansive arm wide to include everything in the shop. Realise that I am not sure I know what a tabard is. Never mind. The big thing is to get out of the charity shop without either of us having a tantrum.
December 11th
Am at the sewing circle. Sewing. Badly. Try to rise above the frightfulness as Felix is very pleased with me, and skipped into school today making sure all his friends and their mums noticed his own immaculately behaved parent.
‘Mummy’s doing sewing today. She’s making costumes,’ he told Peregrine. Peregrine has a Roundhead haircut and is the most pampered boy in the school due to his mother having been forty-two and very rich when she had him, and because he is her only child after twenty years of trying.
‘Tho what?’ lisps poisonous Peregrine, ‘my mum hath been thewing ev’wy day and my coth-thume hath got sequinzth on it.’
Peregrine has been wildly miscast as the Angel Gabriel. His mother, Trisha, is a hell-cat, and is only attending the sewing circle to interfere in other people’s work. Of course, she finished hers days ago, and it hangs on a rail at the end of the room, an example to us all, twinkling like something Gary Glitter might have worn in the seventies. She lords it over us for a while, then seizes my cloth and needle.
‘That is not blanket stitch, Venetia. This is how you do it.’
As she hems the brown nylon, fashioning it, I hope, into a tabard, she sighs and glances at me contemptuously from beneath long, blue-mascaraed lashes. But what care I? She is my salvation, and makes the whole Joseph outfit for me. Hooray. Am now confident that Felix will be pleased with his costume for the play.
December 14th
Am sure that Christmas party invitations should be flooding in by now, and also seasonal cards to display on the mantelpiece, and if very popular, to hang on strings around the room. Today’s post yields only the telephone bill and a children’s gift catalogue. Resolve to do all my Christmas shopping right now from this catalogue. How splendid it will be in a minute, when I have chosen everything and dispatched the order. Getting along famously, and have just selected a Truth Machine for Charles, when I turn the page and recoil in horror. Utterly trashy, gaudy trembly letters announce Charles’s clockwork coffin, updated since the one Felix had, but no less loathsome. A whole page is devoted to parading its virtues.
HEAVENLY PETTING ENTERPRISES
brings you memories to treasure when Poochy
passes on or Cheepy tweets his last. No pet will ever
leave you with our clockwork mini coffins. Pop a pinch of
your pet’s ashes in through the plastic opening lid and you
have a personalised memento. It’s as easy as that!
Wind the key and listen to evocative music,
chosen to bring your pet back to life.
Gasp at this brazen lie, then notice very small letters almost vanishing off the page: ‘In your mind and heart, if not in person.’
This high treat costs £20. Charles is plumbing new depths. Telephone his answering machine to register disapproval, and get Helena instead.
‘Hello, Venetia, how are you?’
‘Fine, thanks.’ God. I sound just like the children. Must do better.
‘And how are you, Helena? When are the babies due?’
A long pause, then Helena’s voice like acid down the line.
‘I thought Charles had told you. They’re due in ten days’ time. On Christmas Eve. They’re being induced so we don’t have to wait until after the Christmas break.’ She sounds as if she is talking about the arrival of a pair of curtains.
I babble back, ‘Gosh, what a good idea. Bye, then.’ Slam the telephone down and burst into tears. Must stop being so pathetic about all this. Is a shrink needed? Telephone Rose for guidance.
December 16th
Giles and Felix depart for school staggering beneath mountains of costumes and Rice Krispie cakes. Party season has begun for them with a vengeance, and after the dress rehearsal for the nativity play, Felix is going to a cast party, while Giles is doing the same after the choir’s final carol service rehearsal in the chapel. Wave them off, propping The Beauty on the windowsill, and remain rooted for some time, not wishing to turn back towards the squalor of the breakfast table. Enchanting bird activity brings the yard to life. First, two bluetits swoop out from the eaves of the barn, and alight for a second to peck at the hen food Giles scattered earlier. They are joined by a chaffinch, rose pink and mauve and pretty as a flower, and a pair of yellow-hammers. A drab lady blackbird is next on the scene, and once she has tested the food, she calls to her mate, who swanks over, glorious in his glossy black plumage with show-off yellow beak. Wagtails, a gaudy cerise bullfinch and a group of greenfinches all gather too, and flutter low to scoop a morsel of food before lilting back up into the plum tree or into cosy nooks in the roof of the barn. The Beauty and I are enchanted. She keeps quite still, whispering ‘Chicks,’ delightedly every few minutes, sensing that to raise her voice will disperse them.
Tell the boys at bathtime that Daddy and Helena’s babies will be there for Christmas. Have steeled myself for this moment and even bought special cereal with free trolls as a treat to give them in their pyjamas afterwards and so cheer them up.
No need. Felix, cocooned in a towel being an egg, is the only one to register that I have spoken. His voice is muffled, but as he slowly extends each limb, hatching from his towel shell, he answers, ‘Yeah, I know. I’m making them a football team, but they’ll have to share one because I haven’t got time to colour in two. Will they like Arsenal? I’m not doing Cambridge United, they’re sad.’
Giles, already in his pyjamas, is cuddling Rags in the bathroom armchair.
‘Mum, Rags is really fat. I think she’s got worms. Sidney had them, didn’t he?’
‘Let’s give her a pink pill. I’m sure there’s one left from last time I had them,’ suggests Felix.
December 17th
My mother just pips Charles to the post, and her car hiccups and lurches up the drive in front of his. They exchange stilted greetings in the yard and The Beauty and I emerge before an embarrassing silence can set in. The Beauty is effusive in greeting her relations and blows kisses, keenly aware of the majestic effect she creates in her cherry-red velvet coat with ermine trim and her white fur hat. Charles salutes my cheek and opens the door of his car.
‘I’m not going in that sports car,’ shrills my mother. ‘And neither is The Beauty. What’s wrong with my car?’
Charles shrinks, clutching The Beauty awkwardly and shuddering.
‘It stinks,’ I reply, ‘and Egor’s in it and he’s white. His hairs will go all over everyone’s clothes and we need to look smart.’
My mother bridles at the hint of any criticism of Egor, who is drooling away inside the car and wagging his tail, delighted by the mention of his name. Charles deftly proffers a solution.
‘Let’s go in Venetia’s car. It’s got the child seat in it anyway.’
‘All right, but I’m sitting in the front,’ insists my mother.
Not surprisingly, we are late for Felix’s nativity play, and are forced to sit in the front row because those are the only places left. This pleases Felix. A broad grin spreads beneath his matted-wool Joseph beard when he arrives on stage. I smile back, sniffing, having wept silently through his solo rendition of ‘Away In A Manger’, performed in darkness as the cast assembled. My mother, on the other side of Charles, is also much affected, and mops her face with a huge pink silk handkerchief. Charles glances at both of us, sighs, and tries, unsuccessfully, to look relaxed. None of us has a camera. Peregrine’s mother leans over, fluttering her eyelashes (purple today) at Charles.
‘Shall I make copies for you?’ she whispers, pointing at her camera. Irritated, I pretend not to hear, but Charles accepts eagerly.
‘How kind. Venetia appears to have forgotten to bring a camera.’
‘There was nothing to stop you bringing one,’ I hiss, too loudly, as the Angel Peregrine twinkles across to deliver the good news to Mary.
‘Sssshhhhh!’ says Charles, enjoying my being in the wrong.
I seize an opportunity in a million.
‘It’s just like Helena’s immaculate conception, isn’t it?’ Charles presses his lips together. If looks could kill… Ha ha. They can’t.
‘Oh, bugger and bye bye,’ shouts The Beauty, jumping up as Felix leaves the centre of the stage to help some infant sheep find their positions. Dissolve into silent, stifled giggles. Shaking shoulders beyond Charles suggest that my mother has done the same.
Mince pies and coffee afterwards and Charles disassociates himself from us and works the room. He hands one of his cards to Peregrine’s mother, and another to the headmistress. Overhear him offering to come and talk to the children.
‘For of course they must prepare for grief, even at this age.’
‘God, he makes me sick,’ I snarl to my mother. ‘In fact I’m glad he’s having more children, it means he won’t have to see mine so often.’ Choke on a mince pie as an arm and a gentle hand rests round my waist for a moment. Turn to find David behind me, and am struck by the contrast between him with his red felt shirt and easy, wide smile and the many pale-faced, balding and besuited fathers in the room. He has Felix in tow and they are both eating tangerines.
‘Hi, Venetia, I’ve just hauled this young star out from backstage; it’s time to go to Giles’s carol service, and Felix has promised to get me a seat in the gallery if I’m early, so I’m taking him now.’ Hardly have time to kiss Joseph-I-mean-Felix, before they are gone.
‘I suppose the children must have invited him,’ muses my mother. ‘Jolly nice of him to come.’
By the time we arrive at the chapel, it is dusk, and snow is falling as if in silent slow motion. Inside, the smell of wax and holly and oranges and expensive scent mingles with the excitement and expectation in the air, to create an immediate sense of Christmas. We find seats at the back, and can just make out David’s red shirt next to Felix’s small, craning head at the other end. The rustle of coats and murmur of voices subsides as the lights dim for the candlelit procession. A silver-voiced boy sings ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, and sends a shiver up my spine. The service is uplifting and joyous, and as we queue to leave I am able to smile pleasantly at Charles and to introduce him to David.
‘I think you may have met sometime at the house. Or maybe not,’ I add.
Charles has not enjoyed his afternoon, although he did look pleased when Felix sang, and now slips Giles a fiver, saying, ‘Use it for something fun for you and Felix. You did well.’
He turns to David and smiles briefly.
‘Good of you to come,’ he says, as if he had personally invited him, then looks at me. ‘If you don’t mind, Venetia, we should be going. I have to be in Cambridge in time for dinner.’
‘Can we go with David and get fish and chips, please, Mum?’ begs Giles.
‘And a video,’ adds Felix. ‘You said we should see Goldeneye next. And David and Granny both really want to see it too. They said so.’
Bundle Charles into my car, hastily agreeing to everything in order to make my getaway without Charles learning too many of the slobbish details of our domestic life.
‘That fellow seems very familiar,’ he comments. ‘Cosy set-up he’s got with the boys. I should watch yourself there, Venetia.’
Am so angry that I cannot speak, so resort to Radio One to torture him for the ten-minute drive home.
December 20th
First buds of the hyacinths I planted and left in the airing cupboard have now opened, releasing a tide of bluebell scent through the house. Very thrilling, as I left them in the dark much longer than recommended and thought they might not recover in time for Christmas.
December 22nd
Excitement at fever pitch. Felix and The Beauty have taken every sock in the house and laid them in a line from the fireplace in the dining room up to their bedrooms. No one is allowed to wear any of them until they have chosen their Christmas stockings. Giles, who was given a personalised stocking with his name embroidered on it at birth, ignores the sock queue and continues to sew lavender bags and make giraffe-skin purses. Like any convert, he is far more zealous than those who always thought it a good idea to make a few presents. His mission is to avoid spending any of his own money on Christmas. Can’t help admiring his resolution as I write the fifteenth cheque of the day, this one to the sewage man who has chosen this moment for his annual servicing of the cesspit.
December 23rd
According to Delia Smith, I am too late to start cooking Christmas dinner. I should have begun a month ago. Hate her smug line on preparing chestnut purée and getting up at seven a.m. to stuff the turkey and put it in the oven. Read her four essential shopping lists and realise that I am so inadequately equipped I may as well give up. Have no lattice cutter, no fuse wire or fuses, no spare set of Christmas-tree lights and no Tupperware. But I do have a Christmas cake, made by me and Felix a month ago (although Delia recommends three months, which would mean almost making it in the summer holidays). I have been spiking it with brandy every day, and am very proud of it. Giles fetches it from the larder and we peel off the layers of greaseproof paper to ice it. I can scarcely believe that we have made something so textbook.
‘Let’s do an arctic battle on it,’ suggests Giles. Twenty minutes pass while four favourite Warhammers and three pink-haired trolls are placed in exact formation on the snowy royal icing.
We charge on through our pre-Christmas rituals, and go out to gather holly and mistletoe in the glittering bite of the frosty late afternoon, all bundled up in scarves and hats, boots and gloves. The children have red cheeks and bright sparkling eyes in an instant. Perfect, story-book afternoon, I think to myself, watching them dash to and fro as a vast pink sun descends to the horizon. Idyllic, and so much better than Delia’s thirty-six-hour countdown to Christmas spent tied to the cooker. How I love my life in the country with my brood. It has all been worthwhile.
‘Mummy, we haven’t got a tree.’ Felix hurls down a branch of holly in the lane and begins to howl. He’s right. I have forgotten the Christmas tree. It is a disaster.
‘Oh, God, how can I be so stupid? I knew I’d forgotten something. Quick, into the car, we’ll go and find one at that roadside stall we saw yesterday. They had lots, don’t worry.’
Felix sobs all the way and it begins to rain. Our heaps of holly will be soaked. We will not be able to decorate the house with it. The stall is packing up, and has no Christmas trees left over three feet tall.
‘We can’t have those, they’re tiny,’ screams Felix. ‘The presents won’t fit under them.’
I think of the mountain of unwrapped presents hidden in my study, the heap of washing-up in the sink, the forest of holly outside the back door and the unlaid and unlit fire in the drawing room. I, too, begin to weep. Giles pats my hand.
‘Let’s go and see if there are any at the garage, and if there aren’t, let’s ring David. He’ll be able to find us one.’
Am very impressed by Giles’s calm competence. Do exactly as he says, and moments later am sitting outside a telephone box while he makes a deal with David. He comes back to the car looking delighted.
‘He’s going to bring it round in an hour,’ he says. ‘It was really lucky, he said he was about to go out and then we wouldn’t have got a tree at all.’
Felix maintains a distrustful silence until the tree is standing in its bucket next to the fireplace and David is testing the lights. Astonishingly, they work. Calm and good cheer return, and Felix begins sorting decorations and hanging them. The stress of the episode leaves me light-headed and heavy-limbed with exhaustion. A drink is called for. I offer one to David.
‘Please stay and have a beer or a whisky or something. It was so brilliant of you to save us.’
‘It’s fine, it was easy.’ David laughs it off, and turns to accept a pink sock The Beauty has brought him. Giles jumps onto the sofa arm next to me and whispers, ‘He said I mustn’t tell you, but David’s given us his tree, and now he hasn’t got one, so I think you should ask him to Christmas here.’
Am mortified to think of him in a house barren and empty of twinkliness for Christmas, but somehow balk at inviting him here. Can’t face letting him in on the spectacle of us all in paper hats, and each wearing every item of clothing we are given on top of our Christmas Day outfits, in time-honoured family tradition. Will give him a present instead. Leave the room to rootle through my carrier bags. There is nothing suitable. I can’t give him the orange nylon beard I bought for Desmond, or the snooker cue planned for Giles. Shuffle some more, and into my hands falls the delicious purple shirt. Perfect. Could have been made for him. He will look lovely in it. Wrap it in a bit of wallpaper and return to the sitting room. Hiss at Giles, ‘Let’s give him this to say thank you,’ but Giles doesn’t hear; he has sidled over to where The Beauty and David are untangling a wooden apple from a tiny carved angel.
‘We’d really like you to come here for Christmas Day, David,’ he says, before I can stop him.
I interrupt, hoping to deflect him from answering and saying yes.
‘Here. We’ve got you this.’ I thrust the parcel at him.
Try to avoid his eye, but fail, and he is watching me intently, catching my expression of frozen embarrassment. He knows I don’t want him to come. Oh, it’s too awful. Maybe I do. Help. We’re too badly behaved for strangers to cope with, and there’s already Rose and Tristan. There won’t be room. David is still looking at me, doubtless reading all these thoughts as they flit through my tiny, transparent brain. Am so embarrassed, and have flushed crimson; can feel it above my polo neck. Must look like a beetroot-head. David squeezes my hand, then coughs, giving himself time to choose his answer, and somehow manages to convey huge pleasure and no noticeable offence.
‘No room at the inn,’ he says lightly. ‘But yours is the best offer I’ve had for Christmas, thank you, Giles, and all of you. I would love to, but I can’t. I’m going to see my parents in Newmarket, so I’ll open your present there. But thank you for asking me.’
I slump onto the sofa, relieved but a little deflated.
December 24th
Rose, Tristan and Theo burst into the house at a moment of high squalor. The Beauty has emptied a packet of icing sugar onto the kitchen floor and is making patterns with it, unnoticed because Rags has just given birth to a black puppy and is in the midst of squeezing a second one into the world.
‘I thought she just had worms, Mummy, but she was pregnant. I think they’re Digger’s. How sweet. Black Russells. Can we keep them?’
Giles and Felix are ablaze with excitement, following me around, taking it in turns with the puppy, which they have wrapped in one of The Beauty’s T-shirts. The second puppy is scarcely given a moment with its mother before it is tucked into one of those blasted socks which are still all over the house and not in any sock drawers. The telephone rings incessantly, the answerphone is bleeping and shouting in my study and a medley of Christmas carols plays in the sitting room, put on at breakfast time and now repeating for about the seventieth time.
‘Let’s call them Holly and Ivy,’ suggests Felix, as ‘The Running of the Deer’ warbles through the house.
‘Let’s call them The Ghost of Christmas Past and hope they’re just a bad dream,’ I mutter under my breath. I’ll kill David. I’ll kill Digger, the foul, sodding brute. Am now running on empty as far as goodwill goes.
‘Hello, darlings,’ says Rose, swooping all of us into her fragrant, silken embrace. Tears smart in my eyes. I have never been so pleased to see anyone in my life. Giles has ducked out of the collective hug to answer the telephone. He leaves it dangling and charges over to me, grinning.
‘Mum, Mum, it’s Dad. They’ve had the twins and they’re going to call them Holly and Ivy. It’s just like the puppies. It’s totally cool.’
Tristan gauges the situation as soon as he walks in, dumps the heap of expensively wrapped presents and interesting carrier bags he is carrying and reaches into one for a bottle. The cork cracks against the ceiling and rebounds into The Beauty’s icing sugar, creating a powder fountain. Doubled up with manic, hysterical laughter I manage to reach the telephone to congratulate Charles.
‘Well done. How lovely to have two little girls. Send Helena our love.’
Only when I get off the telephone do I realise that I truly am happy for Charles and Helena. I harbour not an ounce of bitter lemon about it, and while I can see that for them, their news is good, it is not half as engrossing as ours.
‘Mum, Mum, look. She’s just had another one. It’s white and it’s got legs about the size of a shrew. Let’s call it Lowly.’
It is a positive relief to find there is no wood left in the stack by the fire. Peaceful ten minutes in the barn kicking logs is just what I need to restore equilibrium.
December 25th
‘Gently lead those with young.’ My mother cannot stop singing this reference to pregnant sheep from the Messiah. She is enchanted by the puppies, and likes Lowly best because he is not a Black Russell, and even at this early stage shows signs of having the chiselled profile and loglike physique of Egor.
‘It is extraordinary that they can do that,’ she muses.
‘Do what, Granny?’ asks Giles, lurking by the puppy basket taking photographs.
‘Oh, you know, mating and stuff,’ she replies vaguely. Giles is not easily put off.
‘You mean have two different fathers for one litter of puppies?’
‘Yes, darling.’ She smiles fondly at him through lopsided specs, relieved that he already understands.
‘People can do it too,’ continues Giles, with relentless logic. ‘Or do Daddy’s new babies count as another litter?’
My mother effects deafness and hurries towards the drinks tray. We drink toasts to all the young, including Holly and Ivy-Eff, as Tristan has christened the Cambridge twins. The toasts involve three bottles of champagne among Rose, Tristan, Desmond, my mother, The Gnome and me. We need the buffer of alcohol to be able to cope with the noisiest array of Christmas presents ever. The Beauty and Theo have a trumpet and a drum. Dreadful. They are laying waste to the architect-designed toy kitchen, and have posted a lot of black plastic spaghetti into the video recorder. It turns out that Tristan is in fact the architect who designed the kitchen.
‘I could have got you that for free,’ he says, and is kicked hard on the shins by Rose. She glares murderously at him.
‘That is such an annoying thing to say.’
Worse than Theo and The Beauty’s noise is that of the CD player Gawain has sent the boys, along with ten garage and house CDs. Hopes that they will not master the instructions are soon dashed. We cower for a while, then banish them to a bedroom.
‘They’ll come down when they’re cold, and it won’t be for hours,’ says my mother gleefully, pulling her chair closer to the fire and tipping a good measure of red wine into her glass. The Gnome is very overcome, and having chosen a small chair close to my mother with a good view of the Christmas tree, he sits in silence, smiling, but with a fat emotional tear strolling occasionally down his increasingly pink cheek. He usually spends Christmas Day alone with a nut roast in his caravan, but this year my mother insisted that he come here with her.
‘I just couldn’t bear the thought of his little face, woebegone at the window,’ she explains.
The Gnome contributes a dish of lentils and some fifty-five per cent proof vodka which he makes into jellies with a packet of Rowntree’s raspberry. We sample it before lunch, and it improves the cracker jokes no end. Felix’s is the best, put to my mother who sits next to him.
‘Granny, listen. How do hens dance?’ Granny is puzzled.
‘I don’t know, you tell me, Felix.’
Felix shoots her a brimming look. ‘Chick to chick,’ he said triumphantly.
Giles appears in my room at an ungodly hour, hair dishevelled, face lit with excitement.
‘Mum, quick, look out of the window.’
It has snowed heavily in the night, and the garden is a chaste sheet of gleaming white, undulating slightly where lawn meets drive, but otherwise pure. ‘I’ve woken Felix. Will you come and help us build a snowman?’
Giles is evidently in a hurry; he is eating bread and peanut butter and is already wrapped in three jerseys, a scarf and a pair of woolly gloves. His face is scarlet from two minutes in my warm bedroom.
‘Out you go,’ I propel him towards the door. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
The Beauty is convinced that the white floor show has been laid on especially for her, and dances on the doorstep, a genial gnomic figure in her bobble hat and glittering green wellies. She refuses to come out further, making blowing noises and shaking her head when coaxed. Instead she drags her deckchair onto the doorstep and climbs into it, hugely pleased with the spectacle of her mother and brothers rolling a vast white snowball in a shrinking spiral around the lawn. When the snowball is taller than Giles, we wedge it in the middle of the garden.
‘It’s got to be on a kind of rugby-ball tee,’ explains Giles, who is operations manager. ‘Now for the head.’ Another ball, another spiralling pattern on the broken-up snow.
‘In art, at school, we have to make heads one-fifth the size of the body,’ announces Felix. He inspects the ball doubtfully. ‘Or maybe one-third for snowmen.’
Putting the head on the body requires Herculean strength, and is finally achieved by the brilliant placing of a plank onto the snowman’s shoulders. I applaud the engineer.
‘Well done, Giles, I would never have thought of that.’
Am dispatched into the house for an outfit. In the kitchen, The Beauty has been giving Rags some tips on mothering. Or maybe she is baby-snatching. The puppy Lowly has been removed from the basket with the other puppies, and is in The Beauty’s pram, next to her dolly. Both are wrapped in napkins. Manage to prevent her from picking Ivy up by the tail, and swap Lowly for a toy rhino, hoping she will not notice the difference. We must make a gate to protect Rags and her children from The Beauty’s nannying.
Giles and Felix have gone to spend New Year with Charles and Helena and all-night television. They are very pleased not to be coming with me to my mother’s party, chiefly because her television is very small and they might be made to join in with embarrassing dancing and singing. The Beauty has not been asked to Cambridge, but she will enjoy a bit of Granny’s party until her bedtime. Accordingly, she arrives in Dalmatian pyjamas and dressing gown. My mother is similarly clad, but not with Dalmatians.
‘I’m just going to change,’ she says. ‘Come and talk to Minna and Desmond.’
Follow her through the hall, and in the glare of the naked bulb there, notice something odd about her head.
‘What have you done to your hair? Why is it purple?’
My mother dips her head and accelerates out of the hall and into the dining room.
‘Because I dyed it. Actually, it’s gone a bit wrong. It’s more blue than I intended. I thought I’d read the instructions, but I missed out the gungy stuff, so I added it at the end.’
Minna and Desmond are snogging in the dining room. My mother squawks briskly and they separate, greet me, and continue with their job of laying the table. My mother hovers, moving candlesticks, fiddling with strands of ivy and trying to find a light for her cigarette. She can’t face going to get dressed because she will have to dry her hair and it will be the colour of blueberries or worse.
‘You know, I think it’ll be a really wonderful colour when it’s dry, and it’ll look great with your blue velvet dress,’ I say, thrusting her towards the stairs. ‘Go on, or everyone will be here.’
‘She’s asked twenty people and there are only two chickens and some of The Gnome’s lentils,’ Desmond hisses, as soon as she leaves the room. ‘They’ll all get paralytic long before midnight.’
‘I’ve brought some vol-au-vents,’ soothes Minna. Desmond grimaces. ‘Well you won’t catch me eating them. I’m going to use up that ham and turkey we’ve still got right now and have a sandwich to keep me going.’
Minna rolls her eyes.
‘He’s always ravenous,’ she says complacently. I wish I made someone feel ravenous all the time.
Desmond and I always become nostalgic in my mother’s house. In fact Desmond seems unable ever to leave, and lives there in an impromptu fashion, insisting he is on his way back to London. Crammed with ephemera from our childhoods, including every clay or wood figure either of us ever made and brought home, and every macaroni-and-doily calendar, the house slopes and sags like the Moomintroll’s residence. None of the doors shuts properly, and none of them has a key. My mother likes it like this, and although she keeps a bread knife beneath her mattress, she maintains it is for insurance purposes, and not because she is afraid.
Her friends, all aware of her doorkeeping policy, let themselves in, and we find a throng in the kitchen. The blue hair has worked a treat, and is now a heaped confection adorned with old silk roses, so tall that my mother has to curtsey at each doorway, as if in the court of Marie Antoinette. The only person taller than her hair is David, and his glamour in the shirt I gave him is astonishing. Had not expected it to have such a film star effect, and am quite overcome when he takes his jacket off and the shirt is on show.
‘He’s nice,’ Minna whispers, as she passes drinks round. ‘He’s got such lovely broad shoulders. I like that in a man.’
‘So much better in a man than in a glass of rum punch, for example,’ agrees Desmond, who likes Minna to look at him alone. He is sporting a black eye this evening from a confrontation at the pub last night over whether Minna could be bought a drink by a man enamoured of her ankle chain. David leans against the mantelpiece with a rapacious woman called Verika.
‘Tell me some things about wood and its uses,’ I hear her ask him. God, the depths to which some people will sink. Especially Verika. She has been a friend of my mother’s for ever; she was a famous model, or so she says, and always wears false eyelashes and a feather boa to hide the fact that her neck has turned to scrawn. Her skin is the colour and texture of a pickled walnut. She is very drunk and is trying to pick David up, making eyes at him and licking her rubber lips. Yuck. Nonplussed by the way she keeps bobbing her head and flicking her fringe about, he asks if she has a headache. She throws back her head, revealing perfect pearly teeth, and laughs loud and long. David keeps talking, but begins to shift nervously from foot to foot. Desmond and Minna, who have been sipping the rum punch as they circulate it, tumble over Egor and land on top of me on the sofa, giggling.
‘Come on, Venetia. Find someone to dance with. Get David away from Verruca the Vampire and come with us. We’ve cleared the room next door and cranked up Mum’s gramophone. Listen.’
Above swelling, rolling conversation, music swirls across the room. And David is pulling me to my feet, bowing and saying, ‘Shall we dance?’ Twirling, spinning, rock ’n’ roll. As usual, Desmond is hurling his partner about the room. Luckily Minna only weighs about as much as a bunch of flowers, or he’d have a hernia. Am pleased I wore my floating tulip-red skirt and not the chic black trousers I had planned for a sophisticated and grown-up look. That idea was scuppered by The Beauty before we left home; ever the fashion leader, she clearly thought they were wrong for a party and dropped them into the bath, choosing a moment when I was concentrating on my make-up.
January 1st
It is dawn. Haven’t gone to bed. Am delighted to be so advanced. Desmond, Minna, The Gnome, my mother and David are all still up too. Am feeling expansive and adoring. Adore them all. We toast the silver light of next year with sloe vodka. Then we toast Rags’s puppies. David cannot stop laughing as my mother tells the story of all the Christmas Eve miracles. I smoke my twentieth cigarette of the night. Delicious. I haven’t done anything this daring since before I had children.
January 2nd
Still hung-over. Thank God the boys aren’t back until tomorrow. Light the fire, put on bedsocks and watch Marilyn Monroe films all afternoon with The Beauty and Minna. We eat a whole tin of Quality Street. David has taken Desmond to a football match. How wholesome men are.
January 4th
Dull grey sky and iron cold set in two days ago, and with no wind, or any form of weather at all. Can see no end to it. All the children are ill, chalk-faced with exhaustion and coughing like seasoned smokers. I can hardly do my jeans up, and can only wear one skirt with an elasticated waist because every other item of clothing is too tight. Also have a spot on my chin. It is the only totem of youth on a face otherwise careworn, dissipated and wrinkled. Too cold to try a face pack, so must put up with scaly, sallow skin and pensioner looks until the sun shines. Must rouse myself from torpor and try to persuade the children to write their thank-you letters. Wonder if I can still fake their handwriting? It would be so much easier to do it for them and skip the inevitable battle.
Fatness peaks this morning, as I try to make myself respectable for first day of term and initial appearance in the school car park. Carefully ironed navy pinstripe trousers slide on with no trouble, although I do have to hold my breath to do them up. The effect is pleasing and businesslike until stooping over The Beauty to wedge her into her shoes. Ping. The button flies across the room, and my midriff, caught unawares, sags like a hammock. Can’t find any safety pins, or a belt, so tie Rag’s lead around the waist and untuck my shirt so it doesn’t show. Why am I bothering? Who will care what I look like?
‘Mum, Holly’s pooed by the Aga and I trod in it.’
Felix limps into the hall, waving a shoe to which a chipolata of puppy shit is attached. Have to turn my face to the wall and force myself to take deep breaths to avert temper overflow.
School car park teems with clean cars and mothers who have had time to put make-up on and who have evidently been to health farms and also the Caribbean during the holidays. Trisha, mother of Peregrine, rushes over to me.
‘Hello, Venetia, such a shame not to see you at Bronwyn’s coffee morning. I was sure you’d be there, being so local. Did you forget?’
She blinks a hedge of emerald mascara at me and smiles.
‘I wasn’t asked,’ I reply, hoping to sound disdainful and yet polite. She carries on blithely.
‘It was such a hoot. She’s having another one next week, and someone is coming to show us all some jewellery. Why don’t you come, Venetia, it would do you good to get out a bit. I’ll see if I can persuade Bronwyn to invite you, shall I? I’m sure one more wouldn’t make much difference.’
God, how I loathe her. To my horror, I hear myself saying, ‘Yes, that would be such fun, please do.’
January 8th
To Norwich, to purchase fun items in the sales and to find Felix some birthday presents. Wish I had been more organised with family planning and had given birth to him some other time, rather than just after Christmas when everyone is broke and it is difficult to muster energy for making more jellies. The sales are horrible, thronged people with sharp-edged bags barge into us and make The Beauty cry. Am about to brave the toy shop before lunch, in order to purchase Felix yet more bits of plastic to clog up the vacuum cleaner, when The Beauty squeals, ‘Oooh, look!’ and points, smiling across the crowd. The object of her attentions is tall and wears a plaid jacket and sheepskin-lined hat. Standing in front of the jewellery shop window is David. Amazing that The Beauty identified him, as his face is almost invisible between collar and hat, and there are far too many people milling about on the pavement.
‘Venetia, what a surprise. This is hell, isn’t it? Let’s go and have some lunch. I owe you a treat as two of those puppies of yours seem to be Digger’s. I dropped in and had a look at them this morning, but of course you were out. Here, I suppose.’
He swings The Beauty up onto his shoulders and leads me through a courtyard entrance I had never noticed before and into a restaurant. Enveloped in warmth and quiet, my senses invaded only by the murmur of conversation, the clink of glasses and the aroma of delicious food, I sigh with huge relief.
‘What a treat. Will they mind The Beauty?’
‘No, not at all. A friend of mine runs this place and he’s got two kids of his own about her age. And I know that today’s special is going to be fantastic – a tip from the chef.’
How wonderful: I don’t even need to think about what to have. All decisions removed, my idea of bliss.
‘Davey, Davey, give me your answer do,’ sings The Beauty, nestling up to David. She thinks this song is his theme tune, to be sung whenever he appears, as if he is a Teletubby or similar. David sits her on his knee and posts bread into her mouth. She lolls against him, chewing dreamily for a few seconds, then, revived, sits up straight and bounces. Sip my wine and watch them, enjoying the picture they make, and happy not to have the ceaselessly moving Beauty on my knee for once.
Delicious lunch of lemon risotto and crunchy vegetables; hardly fattening at all. In fact quite possibly a Hay Diet lunch. So cheered by this thought that I have orange sorbet for pudding. A business lunch, as well as being slimming, as David is going to build a bunk bed for The Beauty and a safety zone for the puppies in the back of the hall. Am not sure if this is what he wants to be doing for the next few weeks, but when he hesitates, I just remind him that Digger’s children need peace and space to grow up in. He agrees with alacrity.
‘Of course they do. I’ll just sort out a few things and be along next week.’
David’s presence and the consumption of a bottle of Rioja over lunch eases the birthday shopping ordeal. We find a very excellent construction kit for Felix, with real cement and bricks. The Beauty buys a six-pack of trolls for him, and David chooses a projector with torch and clock. It comes in a complicated nylon suit and is for camping, I think. It is the kind of present I hate. I cannot make head or tail of its instructions, and become irritated.
‘What’s the point of giving him something no normal person can open?’ I demand, just resisting to urge to stamp my foot. Am sure David is laughing at me, although there is not a quiver in his voice as he replies.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll come and set it up with Felix. It really is very simple, you know. But you won’t have to have anything to do with it at all.’
He can also help Felix build the little brick house. One look at the instructions, which include a section called, ‘How to make floor plans to scale’, has convinced me that I will have to retrain as an architect, or one of the three little pigs, to understand it. What a relief that The Beauty spotted David today.
January 10th
Cell-block-style cement skies and non-weather have given way to swirling sleet and hail. Cobwebs swing and flutter in the house, making sure that we cannot forget the draughts for a moment. I have taken to wearing three scarves, one around my waist, another to protect my neck and a third to keep my bottom warm. Odd how cold a bottom can get. I thought fat was supposed to insulate. Bronwyn telephones.
‘I am sorry, Venetia, next week we simply haven’t the space for anyone else. But would you be interested in setting up your own Cabochon coffee mornings?’
‘No. I’d rather die.’ Oops. Not very graceful. Minus fifty brownie points, and Felix will be furious if he finds out. Take my mind off it with virtuous behaviour. Order packets of seeds from catalogue with no pictures and only Latin names. Jolly pleased with myself for coping with it. Cushion of smug deflates, however, when I add up the total and find I have spent £147. Try editing, but how can I get rid of any of these precious gems? My favourite is Papaver somniferum, Hen and Chickens, described thus in the catalogue.
Flower-arrangers won’t be able to wait to get their hands on this unusual strain of poppy, with its large, pale lilac flowers and curious seed-pod arrangement in which the central pod has arising from its base several little seed pods, giving the impression of a mother hen surrounded by her brood of chickens. The pods are very decorative when dyed and dried.
In fact, shall order two packets of this one, and create unique gifts for all next Christmas. Very pleased to have thought ahead for once.
Felix is eight today. Lovely cosy breakfast with pancakes and chocolate topping is marred by frightful weather invading kitchen through the glazing bars. Torrents of icy water woosh onto the window sill, causing Felix’s cards to curl up at the bottom. Roll up tea towels and balance them on window frames, then telephone David and ask him to bring a putty syringe when he comes and hope he is impressed with my expert knowledge. He says he is not coming until next week. This puts me in a filthy temper. Have to go outside and feed hens to recover and remind myself it is Felix’s day.
Felix is much more excited by the troll six-pack and a PlayStation game given to him by Giles, than he is by my construction kit. Try not to mind, and get on with cake, which is to be in the shape of an Orc Chieftain and is to be the centrepiece of the party tea table tomorrow. Felix has chosen to throw a full-scale children’s party, deeming that to have a couple of friends for the cinema is useless.
‘I would hardly get any presents, Mum,’ he explains, outraged that I can have made such a stupid suggestion.
Arctic conditions prevail, and none of the ten children invited to the party has shut a single door since they arrived. Rather, they have opened them all, and a few windows, and are engaged in tramping quantities of mud and snow through the house. My mother and The Beauty are gathering objects to place on a tray for a memory game. The Beauty selects a lump of coal and a lavatory brush before tottering outside to join in the game of British Bulldogs on the lawn. My mother peels a lychee and adds it to the treasures on the tray, which include a scouring pad, a silver sugar shaker and a Boglin.
Grass-stained and flushed, the children troop inside as dark falls and more rain sets in. Lucille, a nasty piece of work from Felix’s class, regards the tray with disgust.
‘What horrible things,’ she pipes. ‘You have a really weird house, Felix.’
My mother grabs his wrist to prevent him from punching her, and winks.
‘Lucille. You seem to know a lot,’ says my mother in her best phoney-granny voice. ‘Shut your eyes and let’s see if you can guess what I am putting into your hand.’
Lucille adores the spotlight, and a mimsy smile plays around her lips as she obeys. My mother drops the lychee into her hand. Lucille freaks, and dashes out of the room yelling. My mother watches her go, her brows arched in surprise, then turns to Felix.
‘Oh, dear,’ she says, ‘listen to Lucille’s squeals.’
January 17th
Frozen mud and freeze-dried grass is the garden look at the moment, but the dreariness is broken on the edge of the wood, where a wintersweet is in full, fragrant flower. Go down there and close my eyes, inhaling deeply to absorb essence of vanilla and jasmine and wallflower all mixed together to make the unforgettable fragrance of wintersweet. Cut an armful and bring it into the hall, where the fragile flowers, like stars on black twigs, waft their scent through the house.
January 18th
Cannot believe that we are still only halfway through January. Am so fed up with winter that I went on a sunbed today while Vivienne took The Beauty swimming. Bliss to lie naked in the heat, and pretend to be in the Seychelles rather than Cromer Fitness Centre. Freckly afterwards, but not brown. Booked another straight away, then cancelled it for fear of becoming addicted and getting skin cancer.
January 20th
House almost uninhabitable now as David has finally started building Camelot-sized dwelling for the puppies. Far from keeping The Beauty out, he is tailoring it to her requirements. The twin turrets are her boudoir and kitchen, safe places for stashing jewels stolen from my dressing table and biscuits from the larder, as no one over three feet tall can get in. The puppies have a throne room in the castle keep, and The Beauty likes to crawl in and raise the drawbridge in order to spend quality time with them. The whole construction is larger than my bedroom, and sprawls through from the utility room into the hall and kitchen. Cannot see why David needs to have Smalls and his other henchmen here. All they do is make cups of tea and leave doors open.
Retreat to bed for the afternoon to escape frenzied sawing and hammering and cup-of-tea-making. Force The Beauty to have a rest, and keep her quiet with a packet of raisins and another of Jelly Tots. Bed is splendid. Electric blanket, lots of pillows and the last pages of Anna Karenina. Am weeping over Anna’s tragic destiny and comforting myself at the same time by stuffing Smarties into my mouth, when there is a knock on the door. Hide the Smarties, but cannot get out of bed as have taken off trousers, so cannot pretend to be hard at work, dusting or folding clothes. Opt for lying down flat, as if ill.
Quaver, ‘Come in,’ and David’s head appears, his hair haloed with sawdust. We look at one another for an eternity.
‘Can I turn the electricity off?’ he says.
‘Yes, do.’ I keep my eyes half-closed, and hope mortification is not spreading pink across my cheeks. He tiptoes into the room, now keeping his eyes averted from my listless form. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to get to the fuse box. Can I bring you anything? I think Smalls is making some tea. Or would you rather be left in peace?’ he adds solicitously.
‘I’m fine, just shut the door.’ So unfair. Bloody hell. Why does the sodding fuse box have to be in my bedroom? David flicks a switch and I hear the answerphone click and bleep as dark and silence envelope the house. Groan atmospherically. David glances again at my slumped form.
‘We’ll keep the noise down, you rest,’ he says kindly. ‘You need to get your strength up.’ He leaves the room laughing, I am sure. Turn over and see that the Smartie tube is not under the blanket at all, but next to me on the pillow. I am revealed as Bessie Bunter figure rather than glamorous consumptive type.
January 25th
Burns Night. My mother telephones and recites ‘Wee sleekit timorous beestie’ to Felix and Giles in turn. She wants them to learn it off by heart. They sound as if they are speaking in tongues, but Giles assures me, ‘It’s the proper Scottish accent for the poem. Robbie Burns used to talk like that. Granny said so.’
Anniversary of my divorce. Is it something to celebrate? Can’t decide if it would be tasteless. Charles has no such qualms, but this is because he has forgotten all about it. He telephones briskly from the office. Minna puts us through, but chats for a moment first. She and Desmond have been to the Canary Islands to escape the weather here.
‘Yeah, it was windy, but I managed a bit of topless most days, which isn’t bad for January.’
She needs no prodding to talk about Charles’s business.
‘The clockwork coffins have generated ever such a lot of attention,’ she tells me, ‘and the demand for them is huge. I think Heavenly Petting could give up frying dead animals and move into the ghoulish gift market full time. I’ll put you through to Mr Denny. Ask him.’
Charles does not want to talk about business, however. Nor about our divorci-versary.
‘Venetia, hello. Helena’s frantic that the twins should not be vaccinated. I say they should. She’s pretty het up about it, so I said I’d ask you. What did you do about The Beauty?’
‘Charles, you can’t ask me to get involved in your decisions with Helena about your babies. I can’t remember what I did about The Beauty, anyway. But she doesn’t have a nut allergy.’
He is perplexed. ‘Why should she have a nut allergy?’
‘Oh, it’s another thing people get very het up about. You’ll soon see. Do you know what day it is?’
‘Yes, of course I do. It’s Burns Night.’
‘Anything else?’ I use my most dulcet tone, but it is ill received.
‘Yes. Yesterday the twins were one month old, so as you can imagine, I’m exhausted and not in the mood for playing calendar guessing games with you.’
Hang up, delighted to think of Charles being forced into unfamiliar, murky waters of babycare.
January 28th
Giles has refused to go and stay with Charles and Helena this weekend. I ask him if he is upset about the babies. He is sitting on his bed, looking tired, his shoulders sagging and his voice small and sad.
‘It’s not that. It’s more difficult to explain.’
Hug him and sit closer on his bed, heart palpitating, awaiting awful traumatic revelation.
‘Dad’s house is different from here,’ he says, diplomatically averting his eyes from the shredded newspaper stuck to my shoe, and the dark patches of cleared-up puppy pee on the carpet. ‘And I feel homesick there, even though I’m with Dad. I’d just rather wait until everyone stops thinking about Holly and Ivy-Eff all the time.’
‘All right then, I’ll tell Dad. But remember, never call her Ivy-Eff when you’re with Dad.’
Revived miraculously, Giles sits up. ‘It’s only so we know which ones we’re talking about,’ he cajoles, and then, in a much stronger voice, ‘And can I have our Holly and Ivy up here? Felix and I are doing an episode of Animal Hospital. David’s helping us and he’s lending us his digital camcorder. Look, I’ve already got Lowly.’
He pulls back his duvet to reveal the slug-shaped dome of Lowly’s belly as he lies on his back, paws beneath his chin, sound asleep on the pillow.
February 1st
Very cross-making day of being utterly ignored by everyone, even the puppies. The episode of Animal Hospital turns quickly and surreally into a tiny film for real television. House fills with gaffer tape, cables and huge fluffy brooms held upside down. All this equipment, and the stupid idea of putting the dogs and the children on the local news, comes from marvellous Marion, a so-called friend of David’s who is a producer for the local television station. Try to get Giles to find out if marvellous Marion is David’s girlfriend. Giles grins at me.
‘I know she’s not, because David said to me, “I bet your mum thinks Marion is my girlfriend.”’ Giles is silent for a moment, watching Marion’s lithe frame leaning over to show David a shot she might use of the puppies’ castle. ‘But I think she’d like to be, don’t you, Mum?’
‘Honestly Giles, I am depressed by the coarse tone of your mind.’
‘What about yours? You’re the one who asked.’
All supremely irritating. David should not use my house as a pick-up joint for lissom journalists. Huh.
February 3rd
Letter from Charles announcing possible merger and subsequent flotation of Heavenly Petting with a pet shop chain. Visualise this as Noah’s-ark-style manoeuvre, with rickety and antique animals sailing away with all Charles’s money. In fact it means the opposite. Charles will become a squillionaire. Wonder if I will too. Hope so, but doubt it. Can’t even remember how many shares I have. Resolve to become literate in pension schemes, life assurance and shares this year, and purchase the Financial Times in Aylsham. Spend a happy hour reading the classified advertisements and eating doughnuts at the kitchen table. The advertisements are top quality and include blissful-sounding holidays. Indulge in fantasies for a while, then flick through the headlines without seeing anything I need to know, and use the rest of the paper to line the puppies’ castle keep. They look sweet nestled in the pink newsprint. Have a brilliant idea. Compose an advertisement to sell them and fax it to the FT classifieds. Most efficient morning.
February 6th
Charles collects the boys and takes them to Centre Pares for the night. They are thrilled to have him to themselves, and all three of them drive off very animated, talking about what they will do first and whether they can go dry skiing. Wave them down the drive, scanning conscience to detect any lemon-faced feelings. There are none. This is what I wanted for them when Charles left. His twins have been a catalyst to change, and he is beginning to see the point of having Giles and Felix to himself. Not quite sure about The Beauty, but am convinced she will cope. Return to the kitchen to find her standing on the table surveying the wreckage of breakfast. Lips pursed, she shakes her head in disapproval.
‘Tut tut tut,’ she says, and, brandishing a dustpan brush, she begins to clear the table. Crockery catastrophe is averted by Sidney, who jumps onto the table to scavenge and distracts her. Sidney insinuates his way towards the butter dish. The Beauty joins him. Sidney shoots out a long pink tongue and achieves a slurp of butter. The Beauty extends a dainty finger and dips its tip in, alongside Sidney’s tongue.
‘Mmmmmm, yummy yummy,’ she smiles.
February 9th
Marvellous Marion telephones to ask if she can use the puppies’ castle as a location for a children’s programme.
‘Which one?’ Hold my breath, hoping and praying that she will say Teletubbies.
‘It’s called Soppy Dog. It’s about a Cabbage Patch dog with learning difficulties, but a lovely, gentle, funny character.’
‘Sounds ghastly,’ I bark, and realising I sound like some old sergeant major, add, ‘I mean, it sounds wonderful, and we’d love you to film it here. Will it be a series?’
‘Yes, it will take about a week to shoot. Would ten thousand be all right?’
Just manage not to scream, but say airily, ‘Ten’s fine for that, yup.’
Put phone down and dance about, singing with joy. Must ask David to build some more things immediately. We will become like Shepperton Studios. Hooray. Rich, rich, rich. Must give David a cut, in fact, or go into business with him. Where is David? He is supposed to be here.
Sudden landscaping interest has arisen today, because marvellous Marion has sent a lorry load of box-hedging plants to say thank you for Soppy Dog. Having no artistic flair myself, am flummoxed by all this evergreen twiggery. Telephone Rose.
‘You must have a knot garden,’ she says. ‘I’ll get Tristan to draw a plan and I’ll fax it to you.’
Awful Zen fax arrives with absurd garden nothing like mine, having very straight lines, lots of tiny white chip gravel and smooth concrete paths. Look out of the study window at weed-strewn wilderness and become despondent. Take fax to David, who is in overdrive and is now creating a grotto in The Beauty’s room. He is hammering and singing ‘Sorrow’ by David Bowie. It is one of my favourites. Stand behind him, listening, mesmerised by the rhythmic hammering and murmured song.
‘The only thing I ever got from you was sorrow.’
He knows all the words, and carries on through the verses until Digger, curled on The Beauty’s bed, notices me and thumps his tail. David turns his head and smiles a greeting. Have astonishing sensation of being quite naked with him looking at me. So powerful is this feeling that I find myself glancing down to make sure my jeans are still there. Start blabbering to hide my confusion.
‘I wonder – I don’t suppose – would you be interested? No. What I mean is, can you make a knot garden?’
He looks utterly blank. I pass the fax. He stares at it and then at me again. Fear I have offended him somehow.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll just go and plant the trees any old how. It can’t be hard.’
Rush outside in a chaos of irritation that David is not making the knot garden for me. Why am I so neurotic that I can’t even have a conversation now without thinking I’m naked? Must change my life and get out more. Or not. Perhaps I am one of nature’s hermits. David shouts out of the window at me.
‘Sorry, I got the wrong end of the stick. Of course I’ll make you a knot garden. Don’t do any digging now. I’ll draw a plan and do it for you. But I can’t for a few days. So just leave it or you’ll do your back in.’
‘All right. I’ll just do this row of plants before it’s time to collect the boys,’ I yell back, relieved that I no longer feel naked, and enjoying the hot physical exertion of the task. Once again have become a peasant from Anna Karenina. Dig a satisfactory square for my seventh tiny box plant, and am heaving taupe-coloured clay wodge into the wheelbarrow, when shooting pain cleaves my spine at the waist. Ping, just like a trouser button, except that instead of the midriff sagging, my vertebra has turned red hot and spiked. Stagger inside shrieking for help and collapse in agony on the kitchen floor.
In bed officially now, with two Florence Nightingale attendants, one with purple hair, the other about two feet tall. Drug haze clears enough for me to identify them as my mother and The Beauty. Both have acquired starched aprons, red crosses and little hats like napkins. They flit and glide about my room, plumping cushions, tweaking the bowl of snowdrops and black hellebores and generally ministering. Have been given elephant tranquillisers or equivalent, so am in mad pink-edged, soft-focus world, and have no cares or responsibilities at all.
February 13th
Telephone interrupts fluffy thoughts. It is a minion from the Mo Loam Temple to Beauty.
‘Mrs Denny, you have missed your appointment and must pay the full fee of a hundred and twenty pounds immediately. There is a waiting list here, you know.’
‘But I’ve already paid a deposit,’ I protest, still on cloud nine, but coming back to earth with a bump.
‘This is immaterial,’ drones the minion. ‘Shall I book you another appointment to redeem your deposit, or shall we call it a day?’
‘Do what you like.’ Slam telephone down and weep for several minutes. The Beauty brings her kangaroo over to comfort me.
February 14th
Valentine’s Day again. Am allowed to get up today, but can’t be bothered. Self-pity has overtaken backache, thanks to wonder drugs, and I lie in bed with no prospect of being sent any cards and the future as a crippled old mother of three before me. Not even a beauty treatment glistens on the horizon. My mother is still installed, looking after the children. She will probably have to stay for ever. Through my bedroom door I hear muffled voices and pattering feet. The gravel crunches beneath car tyres, heralding the postman. Must get up. Pattering feet get louder and louder.
‘Mum, Mum, even Rags has got a card. Felix hates his again this year. The Beauty’s got two. Look, look.’
Quite absurd at my age to mind so much about Valentine’s Day. I shall rise above it. But I want a card. Why has everyone except me got one?
The children swarm into the room, a bundle of envelopes coloured blue and pink and green like sugared almonds in their hands. Felix waves a duck-egg blue one. It has tiny gold stars dusted across it, and it encapsulates everything that I love about stationery.
‘Look, Mum. This one is for you,’ he says. Giles has opened Rags’s card and is reading it to her.
‘Mummy, it says “Two out of three ain’t bad.” What does it mean?’ Have no interest in cryptic canine messages.
‘Oh, I expect it’s from Digger. It must mean the puppies,’ I suggest. Dress at top speed, staring at my card without opening it. Savouring the fact of having it. It is here. It is mine. It is, undoubtedly, a Valentine’s Day card. How I have longed for this moment.
The boys depart, leaving twists of torn pastel paper, and charge downstairs to show my mother Rags’s card and to see what The Beauty got. Hear them all clattering and shouting in the kitchen. Heart thuds madly as I approach the card. Feel exactly as I did when opening my A-level results, tight in the throat, my skin electric, my teeth clenched. Pick it up, turn it over, but am too overexcited to read the envelope, even though I know I should be poring over the postmark. Tear the envelope wide open. No card. This is terrible. No blooming effusions or lines of poetry. I wanted it to be Byron. I wanted someone to have chosen:
She walks in Beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and light
Meet in her aspect and her eyes
But no one has. A slip of paper falls out and onto the floor. Tears well and swim in my eyes as I pick it up.
Admired Venetia, look out of your window.
Thrilling, just thrilling. Rush to the window, fling open the curtains and look. There below, where I was digging in deepest mud a few days ago, is heaven. A tiny, intricate knot garden, gravel gleaming between the curves and swells of the hedging, and seats with backs like scallop shells at either end. Four slender trees stand among the box, their branches naked save for a thread of silver stars. The whole garden is not much bigger than my kitchen. It sparkles, still damp with morning dew; precious and perfect as a jewel.
The back door opens, and Giles and Felix, in wellingtons, charge into the yard, The Beauty riding piggyback on Giles’s shoulders. They run through the orchard, scattering a trio of hens who are making a meal out of some worms in a molehill. The boys pause beneath my window and survey the knot garden critically.
The Beauty, sensing a celebration, claps, and shouts, ‘Hooray.’
‘Cool,’ says Giles. ‘He managed to get it finished in time after all.’ Felix sits down on a bench.
‘Mum will probably cry when she sees it,’ he remarks. ‘I would if I were her.’
‘What do you mean? I think she’ll really like it,’ Giles is indignant.
‘I mean that kind of crying she does when she’s happy. You know, like at the school play.’
‘Oh, yes. She will.’ Both fall silent for a moment. ‘Come on. Let’s go inside. It’s freezing.’
The first sun for days struggles through and dances on the leaves and stars and branches in my new garden. I lean in from the window and turn to go downstairs. David is on the threshold of my room.