March 13th
Mother’s Day begins badly. No one has remembered, and Lowly, the weirdo dog has found one of The Beauty’s dirty nappies in the rubbish bin in the bathroom and has disembowelled it. Glistening white beads of indestructible gel are sprayed like polystyrene snow across the carpet, and there is a malodorous whiff in the air. Instead of lying in bed receiving trays of breakfast, heaps of compliments, kisses and lovely flowers like every other mother, I spend the first part of the morning vacuuming and spraying air freshener in a hygiene frenzy.
It is eleven o’clock and none of the children are visible or audible. This can only mean one thing – the Nintendo machine. Sure enough, I unearth a full complement of offspring in the playroom, their noses pinned to the television screen. Giles, aged eleven, should be old enough to know better by now, but in fact is the child most on the edge of his seat and is air-punching exultantly: ‘Yessss, forty of them as dead as dodos, and we’re on to the next level.’
Felix, who is nine, will never be old enough to know better – it simply isn’t his way. He is draped elegantly along the back of the sofa, a line of squat metal lumps stretched like vertebrae before him to the other end of the sofa back. These are his army men, a cohort of Deathmasters and elves with whom he is locked in a WarHammer bloodbath. Perched next to him, and wearing her beloved purple tutu with red frill over her pyjamas, is The Beauty. She will be three in June, and doesn’t need to know better as she is convinced that she always knows best.
‘Mummy, sit down. Look! It’s Dinosaur Death Run. Such fun,’ she urges in her mad Enid Blyton way. Squalor in the playroom is extreme. Even though the curtains are drawn, I can see strewn orange peel and sweet wrappers all over the floor and also my eagle eye detects that Giles’s toenails need cutting. Glorious sunshine has been barricaded out, but through the gap between the curtains I glimpse our two remaining Bohemian pigeons swooping on a spring breeze, and a twig of cherry blossom scratching at the window pane. The perfection of outside increases my rage one thousandfold. On the television screen some foul-looking dinosaurs are hopping about. Their bloodcurdling roars are nothing like as frightening as mine.
‘Will you turn that thing off. You know it’s banned until after dark. You know I hate it. And it’s Mother’s Day.’
Sit down on a small pink chair, squashing one of The Beauty’s tiny tea parties which are set up all over the house, and burst into tears. Felix rushes to embrace me and Giles hastily removes all Nintendo equipment from within arm’s reach – he is used to this scene, and knows that I may hurl vital components into the bin, or the fireplace, at any moment.
‘We’ve got a surprise for you,’ Felix soothes, patting my shoulder kindly. The Beauty hovers anxiously at his side, proffering a small white handkerchief, either in truce or to blow my nose on.
‘Cheer up Mum,’ says Giles. ‘At least you aren’t forty yet.’
Hadn’t even thought of worrying about that milestone, but can now add it to my list of near-future neuroses.
The Beauty squats in front of me, peering interestedly. ‘Don’t cry. Blow your nose. And get off my cuppa tea,’ she commands, ramming the handkerchief into my face. I have an overpowering sense of panic. I have forgotten how to manage my children on my own.
For the past year I have been mollycoddled and buffered from single motherhood by the presence of my lovely handsome tower-of-strength boyfriend David. Before he moved in I must have managed somehow. The children’s father Charles used to have them for the odd weekend, and still does when he can fit them into his ghoulish schedule running a chain of pet cemeteries and, more recently, setting up an animal funeral service on the internet called deaddog?.com. More than two years on, I now quite like the poisoned dwarf Helena, and am indeed grateful to her for luring him away from our unhappy life together. Less sure about Holly and Ivy-Eff the Petri-dish twins, as they may jeopardise my own children’s position. Their role so far has been gurgling and toddling, but last year’s Christmas card from Charles and Helena (not, of course, sent to me, but shown me by a well-wisher) had Giles and Felix sitting cross-legged on the grass with The Beauty, the twin blobs propped between them. The Beauty’s expression of disdain spoke volumes, as did the larger than usual alimony cheque which arrived for me in lieu of the frightful card. Charles always sends more money when he does something underhand: it is his saving grace.
It was on Christmas Day, when David and I borrowed a boat and chugged across the basin of sea at the head of the creek to Alborrow Sands for a bonfire and picnic, that we decided we would go away, just the two of us, in March. The children were with Charles, my first ever Christmas without them, and David made sure there was no time for me to brood. Up and out on an ice-grey morning to catch the tide, wearing a scarf as soft and pink and warm as midsummer rose petals which he wrapped round me saying, ‘First Christmas present of the day,’ when we reached the harbour. The second present was a bailing bucket, and scooping water from the floor of the leaky boat kept me warm as we crossed. The sun came out and sent dancing golden rays to race ahead of us on the still water and up on to the shore. ‘Elevenses,’ said David, and pulled a bottle of champagne out of the basket he had brought and wouldn’t let me look into.
Fuelled by a cold glass, drunk with our arms round each other, looking out at the horizon, we gathered wood to build our fire on which we cooked steak and baked potatoes. He had even brought a Christmas pudding, and we lit it, holding it up to see the purple-pink sky through the smoky flame, then we ate it fast, with spoonfuls of brandy butter, before the sun went down and we returned to the twinkling fairy lights of the harbour town. And David shouted above the boat engine and the roar of the sea, ‘Today was perfect. Let me take you away somewhere like this but warmer. Let’s go at the end of winter. I’ll organise it, I’ll ask your mother to have the kids. All you will have to do is pack.’ He cut the engine and we floated into the jetty. He climbed out and held out his hand to me. I jumped off the boat and he pulled me into his arms, and the skin of his cheeks was so cold it almost felt hot against mine. ‘I promise it will happen. It’s your Christmas present,’ he whispered.
Huh! is all I can say. The end of winter came, and David got a brilliant job in Bermuda. An old friend of his was out there doing a fashion shoot and set it up. Now David is staying in a house called Pointy Fingers on Banana Patch Road, and will be there for weeks, no doubt. He is building a library for a bloated old screenplay writer, and now he’s been asked to do a colonnade too. Actually, for all I know the scriptwriter may be a lissom twenty-two-year-old, but I prefer to keep my mental picture very hideous. David’s job makes me alternately paralysed with envy and incandescent with rage. Colonnades and libraries and kidney-shaped pools are a million miles from the scene here and now. Norfolk is charmless in March, soggy, grey and mud-ridden. My life has shrunk to a monotonous routine of school run, washing clothes and digging drainage ditches. Cannot bear to think of David lolling next to turquoise swimming pools and sipping cocktails with film stars and moguls. Because he is working flat out, or so he says, I am not able to visit him, so am denied even the fun of being carpenter’s assistant and thus achieving a version of a winter-sun holiday. It is all too much for Mother’s Day.
Sense of ill use carries me into the kitchen to dispense cereal, and is utterly confounded. The children have laid the table with my favourite gold-lustre teapot and cups, and have created a vast cream-puff effect with bananas and yogurt as a breakfast centrepiece. Each of them has made me a card. The Beauty’s offering is very contemporary, a piece of kitchen roll with felt-pen dots of pink and purple in one corner. Giles has drawn Betty Boop wiggling towards a sink full of washing-up which has a big red cross through it. She is batting her eyelashes at a giant balloon in front of her which says, ‘Put your feet up, Mum. Let someone sane take the strain.’ Not sure how to take this, but am overcome by Felix’s vast pink square of cardboard, on which he has written a poem which begins with the couplet
You’re as fast as a cheetah and as pretty as roses I love you Mummy, everybody knows.
More mawkish weeping, and Giles gets out the ice cream to have with the banana Melba to celebrate. Become carried away, and introduce the boys to the inimitable Coke float, favoured drink of my childhood and certain death to teeth.
Open the curtains to a grey morning with frost glittering on the branch of the lime tree outside my window. The view is wrapped in fine mist, and the air is brittle with cold, but the sun is rising. I open the bedroom window and lean out to enjoy the spectral loveliness of my knot garden. Frost is a definite improvement on rain, and the shimmer of the pink sun marbles the sky until it becomes iridescent, and a rainbow of colour drives back the mist and the grey to make a pink morning. Allow myself a few seconds of wallowing in missing David before closing the window and trying to muster enthusiasm for the pre-school rush.
David telephones at seven o’clock, just as I am going downstairs to make myself tea before waking the children.
‘Hi gorgeous,’ he says lightly, ‘how are you?’
‘Fine thanks.’ Am suddenly aware of his voice, the first male voice I have heard for days. I close my eyes and pretend I don’t know him, and try to imagine a face for the sexy voice.
‘I’m about to go to bed, I know it’s school time for you lot. I just wanted to tell you I love you, I miss you,’ he says, and of course, I just imagine him.
‘I miss you too,’ I murmur. I am downstairs now, thanks to the cordless phone, and I want to curl up in the chair by the Aga to talk to him and try to seduce him home. He sounds sad, I bet I can get him to come back. I open the door into the boot room to get some milk from the fridge. Lowly has emptied the rubbish all over the floor.
Forget sodding seduction. Instead shriek into the phone, ‘Buggering hell. Hateful Lowly swine hound! Now I’ll have to clear it all up.’ Become even shriller, not allowing David a moment to speak. ‘Anyway. This really isn’t the moment. I’ve got to get everyone ready for school and the car will be covered in frost. I’ll speak to you later. When you get up, I mean.’
Put the phone down and wish to saw off my tongue. Absolutely no need to be foul to him, he is simply doing his job. He can hardly be blamed for the time difference which means that he is tucking himself up in bed when I am dragging the dustbins down the drive with the dogs licking their lips behind me.
Distracted from the dustbins for a moment by a patch of hellebores next to the front door, nodding graceful pale heads towards a small clump of vivid blue scillas. Remember that the white hellebore is the Lenten rose, or is it the Christmas rose? Anyway, it must be Lent now because it’s March. What shall I give up? Is it too late? Surely a little is better than none as far as self-denial goes.
Can’t see the point of giving up chocolate as I undoubtedly will not be able to stick to it, particularly as the house is practically made of gingerbread like the witch’s cottage in Hansel and Gretel, due to volumes of tuck required for the perpetually starving, always growing boys. Quite impossible to know biscuits, for example, are there in the biscuit tin and not sample one at elevenses or tea, now there is no one else in the house save The Beauty to check up. Biscuit life took a very dangerous turn last week on the discovery of some caramel-covered chocolate digestives on special offer in the supermarket. Stupidly bought them, pretending it would be a treat for the boys, then even more stupidly ate the whole lot.
Toy with the idea of abandoning alcohol until Easter. This too seems unwise, as I might have to attend a sales conference for Vanden Plaz hotels soon, in order to suck up and get more work writing their brochures. This annual evening of frightfulness is made bearable only by the very high quality of food and drink. Generally have about four glasses of champagne and start inviting people I have just met to stay. Last year I asked the whole corporate hospitality team, and the leader seemed very keen. It came to nothing, thank God. Allow myself to imagine the horror of entertaining six strangers for a weekend, and trying to produce food for them while looking like a top-efficiency copywriter who deserves a pay rise. Giving up alcohol may be my salvation.
Return to the kitchen from the dustbins to find the children running on peak efficiency. Giles is making scrambled eggs, Lowly and Digger, David’s Labrador, are eating the eggshells under the table, and The Beauty has dragged a chair over to the sink and is doing the washing-up. Occupying another area of high ground is Felix, who is standing on the window seat watching the second hand of his watch.
‘Well done, Mummy, you’re back within the allotted time. Have you seen my goalie gloves?’
He jumps down, interrupting before I manage to say no.
‘In fact, I think I may have left them in the hen house. Time me.’ He chucks his watch at me and hurtles out of the back door and across the yard to the dilapidated hen house, crouching to open the nesting-box doors then vanishing save for his legs as he leans in to look for gloves, and I hope, eggs. The cockerel sticks his head out of the door to see what sort of day it is, and finding it to his taste, emerges on to the lintel, groaning and clucking to warn us all that he is about to crow.
In order to crow, he needs to feel tall, so he hops on to the handle of The Beauty’s pink tricycle, and manages the first part of the triumphant morning call before losing his balance due to overexertion and splashing in a dust of feathers to the ground again. Felix scatters a few grains of corn and dashes back to the house. I refrain from sending him out again to give the bantams more than just the half-teaspoonful he has found adequate, because I want him to eat his breakfast right now, and because none of the hens has come out yet. There are only three, and I think they have all decided to be broody together, which is tiresome as we shall have no eggs this summer.
The sun breaks through and dispenses a weak dose of uplift as we pass the pig farm on the way to school. The pig farm is often a haven of picturesque loveliness, but not today. Something has happened to the muck heap, and it has avalanched across the road in front of us, so our path is steaming and pungent. Abruptly shut my window and attempt to drive through the slurry, but in moments the wheels are spinning and we are embedded.
‘Phew, it stinks,’ says Giles, turning the radio up, as if he thinks this will make a difference.
I rev the engine once more, to no avail. ‘Hell and buggeration, we’re going to be late.’ Open my door and step out, heart sinking as feet do the same into warm manure. Have not worn my wellingtons, and as I squelch towards the barn, looking for a shovel, bits of straw and soft slime stick to the soles of my shoes and float in over the top to lie beneath my heel. Find a spade, and a broom, but no farmer to assist me, so stomp back to the road in a big rage.
My life seems entirely made up of shit-shovelling episodes, be it dogs, pigs, children or hens. Am fed up with it. Am fed up with David being away, and never being able to speak to him because it’s always the wrong time of day. Whenever he does ring, it is a bad moment and I am in a rush or unable to concentrate and the conversation becomes dyspeptic, or dysfunctional, or just plain disagreeable. He will never want to come back at this rate. Must work out a way to improve this state of affairs, and also my appearance. This is foul, as a few moments in the bathroom after the school run demonstrate. Am loitering in front of the mirror, killing time while The Beauty busies herself with her babies whom she has lined up against the wall and to whom she is administering medicine and dabs of hand cream along with a kindly kiss on the head. This absorbing occupation gives me plenty of time to notice the leaden texture and pallid tone of my skin. Must implement a thorough purification regime forthwith. However, by the time I have wiped all the babies, put away the hand cream and restuffed the whole packet of baby wipes The Beauty has discarded and thrown into her sock drawer, I have lost interest in purification. Dump The Beauty in her cot, praying that she has forgotten that she now knows how to climb out, and retreat to my own bed, promising, ‘I’ll just lie down for ten minutes.’
Surface again at midday, flushed with the sense of achievement which comes from having read a whole Georgette Heyer at one sitting, and spurred by the merry dance of true love in Cotillion, to a more cheerful level of existence.
March 16th
Good cheer is beginning to drain away again as I stare out at the blank sky and try to decide whether it would be more ghastly to do my work or to go to the supermarket. There is no loo paper, no cereal, no washing powder and no milk. After some consideration, choose to do my work, as the shopping option involves more than meets the eye: a multitude of chores will be unleashed by a visit to the supermarket, each one more urgent than the last. Also, it is one thing gliding up and down the aisles with The Beauty, humming away to piped music and wondering which Teletubbies video to buy today, but it is quite another to be back home, dragging vast, splitting bags of stuff out of the car, and into the house where the final insult still awaits in the form of unpacking and putting away, accompanied by a hovering and stamping Beauty who needs her supper. Work, on balance, is the easy option today.
Five minutes at my desk has me riffling through the waste-paper basket and then my diary in search of something interesting to take my mind off the Vanden Plaz Conference Catering brochure. Discover from my diary that Easter is almost upon us, and telephone my friend Rose in London to invite her to stay. She is out, so have to make do with her answerphone. Try telephoning my mother for a spot of work avoidance instead. She is at home and is sniffing back tears. Fortunately they are of joy.
‘Oh, Venetia, it’s so wonderful. I was just about to ring you. You will never believe this – never. Desmond has asked Minna to marry him and she has agreed.’ There is a pause, and the deep intake of breath required for a huge puff on the celebratory cigarette crackles down the line. I am speechless. I must digest this extraordinary news. My brother Desmond is getting married. Surely he is not grown-up enough? He is certainly old enough, and has been for years, but old is not the same as grown-up.
‘Gosh, that’s fantastic. When? How? Where?’
Have a sense of urgency, and a potent desire to have the whole thing sewn up before Minna changes her mind. But perhaps she won’t. After all, they have been together for nearly two years, which is certainly a record for Desmond. My mother’s excitement is gathering force.
‘Wait there,’ she commands. ‘I’ll just pop into Aylsham for a bottle and I’ll come over to tell you everything.’
She arrives with Egor, her bull terrier, hanging out of the passenger window of her car, yapping hoarsely. This sets Rags and Lowly off, and Digger joins in, so there is a hellish cacophony of dog reverberating through the house. The telephone rings, and I leap to answer it. Pick up the receiver but am distracted from saying hello by The Beauty, who has thrown herself at my mother and is warbling, ‘Grannee, Grannee. Come and have a cuppa tea now.’
‘No fear,’ says Grannee, ‘no tea for me. I’m celebrating with vodka and tonic.’
‘Vodka tonic, vodka tonic. No fear,’ parrots The Beauty.
‘… CAN YOU HEAR ME, VENETIA?’ blares in my ear. It is David sounding tetchy. Decide to punish him by pretending I can’t hear him.
‘Hello? Hello? Is anyone there? Oh, well, there must be something wrong. I expect whoever it is will try later.’ I hang up and turn to greet my mother. She and The Beauty have settled at the kitchen table, and are watching in admiration as the bull terrier Egor and his idiot offspring Lowly run in circles of pleasure, holding one another’s tails.
‘Do look, Venetia. They are clever,’ coos my mother, sloshing vodka into two glasses The Beauty has brought her from the cupboard. She sighs, leaning back in her chair, and muses, ‘I must say, I always thought you would be married before Desmond. In fact, I never thought Desmond would be married at all. It’s marvellous.’ The telephone rings again and I battle with my better self, my bad fairy alter ego telling me not to answer it. Better self wins and I grab the phone.
‘Hello, who is it?’
‘Hi Venetia, it’s me, David, missing you already today and I’ve only just got up.’ Decide to ignore this, particularly in view of my mother’s remarks, which have deflated me to the size of a worm. Almost burst getting the words I want to say out without sounding resentful or expectant.
‘Guess what David, Desmond’s getting married!’ The silent jaw-dropping I can imagine down the line from Bermuda is as expressive as any exclamation.
‘Darling, do get off the phone, I want to tell you everything.’ My mother has tired of the dogs and is poised for a chat at the table, and The Beauty has found a straw and is making purposefully towards her glass.
I cut in on David’s laughter and the tumble of questions he is asking. ‘Sorry, David, I’ve got to go before The Beauty starts on the vodka. Call me later, darling.’
Barely hear his resigned ‘OK then,’ before hanging up and moving across to the chair opposite my mother and as far as possible from The Beauty, who is stripping off her red corduroy skirt in favour of a pair of Chinese trousers from the dressing-up box and a pink feather boa from my bedroom. Sip the first delicious mouthful of vodka and tonic, experience great dizziness and rosy glow of well-being, decide there is no room for resentment or jealousy today and get stuck into wedding details.
‘Where are they getting married? I don’t think Minna’s got any parents, has she? What’s she going to wear? When did he ask her? Oh, God it’s so exciting.’ Jump up, grab The Beauty and waltz around the room, dizzy with disbelief that this can be happening to the unmarriageable Desmond.
The ash on the end of my mother’s cigarette has grown as long as a catkin, so lost has she been in silent musings. It is flicked off now, and a businesslike puffing recommences.
‘No, she’s an orphan. I don’t know what happened to them, though. Do you?’ My mother pauses to refill her glass, adding, ‘Actually, I’d rather not know, if you don’t mind. It might be gruesome. Anyway they want to get married here. And I’ve already asked dear Rev. Trev, who doesn’t seem to mind that neither of them are spinsters of the parish.’
‘That’s because he’s got a crush on you,’ I remark cynically, but am ignored. My mother is in full sail, her black beret sliding towards her left ear and giving her the look of a crazed French Resistance officer.
March 21st
Easter weekend looms, and according to the weatherman it will be snowing for the whole four days. I don’t care because Rose is coming to stay, along with her son Theo who is The Beauty’s best friend, but without her husband Tristan, whom she referred to on the telephone as ‘that snake-witted hell-hound’.
Am rather inspired by this moniker, but also worried, as I recognise it as similar to the abuse I frequently heaped upon my ex-husband Charles in the final stages of our marriage. Now I can simply call him dreary, which indeed he has become, and which is a vast improvement on being a hell-hound.
Chugging and loud banging on the front door announces a Parcel Force van with a lumpy package from David. The Beauty falls on it crying, ‘It’s my Happy Birthday,’ and tears at the string and tape binding it shut. Inside are three vast balloons, one for each of the children, and three water pistols shaped like aliens. A note is attached to the smallest of the aliens: DO NOT SQUIRT YOUR MOTHER ON PERIL OF EXECUTION BY GREEN SLIME. The final item in the parcel is wrapped in pink tissue paper.
‘I bet this is for you, Mum, it’s all girly,’ says Felix, handing it over. The tissue unfurls to reveal a pair of sandals with velvet soles and purple and orange flowers garlanded across the top. They are enchanting. I put them on and they fit me perfectly. Burst into tears. Felix groans, ‘God, don’t start crying again. What’s the matter this time? Look, here’s a letter from David. It might cheer you up.’
Darling Venetia,
I think I’ll be home in a few weeks. I’m writing this in my room. The windows are open and rain is crashing on to the balcony, so work is off for the afternoon. I’ve sent Desmond a pair of Elvis shades from the market here to wear at his wedding. They’re Graceland rather than GI, and have thick gold arms with squares cut in them for Desmond’s sideburns to stick through. I bought these shoes for you to walk all over me in. Metaphorically. Mind you, I wouldn’t say no to literally … You are my dreams, xxxx David xxx
Most pleasing. Almost worth him being away if this is the sort of treatment I can expect. Float to Budgen’s supermarket on a cloud of pink pleasure, and still wrapped in unreality, purchase seventeen long tubes of mini Easter eggs for the Easter-egg hunt. Absently proceed to eat two with Felix and The Beauty while waiting for Giles to come out of school. This returns me to earth with a thump of nausea. All of us feel sick, and The Beauty has turned an unbecoming caramel colour all over by the time I realise Giles should be out, and I go into the school to look for him. Find him in a darkened room with other low-lifers, playing on someone’s Nintendo. Cannot understand how the school can allow this form of brainwashing to go on, and stand in the doorway muttering furiously while Giles and his automaton friends continue to perform thumb wars on their consoles. Giles waits until we are out of earshot of his friends before turning to me in raging contempt.
‘God, you’re so embarrassing. None of my friends have mothers who talk to themselves and ban Nintendo. Why can’t you get a grip on your own life and stop interfering in mine?’
Very impressed by his astute summing-up of me, but dismayed not to be in the position of power. Have to regain the moral high ground. But how?
March 23rd
My position as mistress of any high ground, moral or literal, is becoming pronounced fantasy. Am paralysed with agonising pain in my foot, and cannot even drag myself to the doctor who is two miles away. The first twinges occur at lunchtime, after a strenuous morning in the garden with The Beauty. Our mission there is to glean lovely branches and wild flowers to create posies for the bedrooms and magnificent displays of twig and leaf for downstairs. However, it would seem that I have done this once too often. The garden looks as though a plague of locusts has visited it: all the trees are hunched and defensive, lifting their branches out of harm’s way and well above my secateurs, and the few crocuses and grape hyacinths that have bothered to flower so far have been chewed by the hens and cower, soggy and downtrodden, in the mud. Am forced to hop and leap in order to grab a branch of pussy willow (not yet in leaf but in the warmth of the house it soon will be), and this may have contributed to the afternoon’s foot disorder. The Beauty is entranced by flower-picking, and is clad as a mini land girl in pink shorts, knee socks and a T-shirt with a hula-hula girl on it which David sent her. Can’t help feeling that she could do with tights and a cardigan as well, but bitter experience has taught me not to try to elaborate on her sartorial decisions once she sallies forth from her bedroom.
‘Mummy. Do a wee like this,’ she suggests, pulling her shorts down and squatting behind some daffodils in a very earthy fashion. Am saved from joining her by Lowly and Rags, who bustle over and lick her boisterously so she topples into long wet grass. Back in the boot room removing outer garments and tripping into the dogs’ water bowl, I experience the first twinge of pain in my foot, then immediately forget about it in the search for vases, followed by the washing of same to erase terrible cabbage smell and internal coating of green slime. The Beauty has removed the heads from the few primroses and crocuses we have picked, so decide to go for the Zen look and float them in saucers of water. Playschool simplicity of this form of arrangement very pleasing. By the time all the flowers are roughly where they should be, and the house smells green and fresh like spring but still looks like a rubbish dump, the foot has taken over, and I hobble to the telephone to beg my dear kind friend Vivienne to bring the children home from school for me.
The doctor arrives at the same moment as the boys and Vivienne, and far from adopting the bedside manner and extreme discretion we all expect from our GP, he grins broadly and announces to the room at large that I have gout. I am outraged, mainly because Vivienne, and my mother who has materialised quite unnecessarily, both start giggling. The doctor giggles too, eyeing Vivienne appreciatively, drinking in her rippling copper hair and short skirt above long, gout-free legs.
‘I can’t have gout. I don’t drink port, and I’m not old.’
‘Yes you are, Mum, you’re very old,’ says Felix, clearly believing these to be words of comfort, and a reasonable explanation for my condition. Giggling reaches a crescendo, my mother leading the field, delighted with this evidence of my depravity outstripping hers.
‘You’ll have to wear slippers and carry a walking stick,’ she crows, and The Beauty takes this as an order, and fetches my beautiful new sandals and an old cane with a curved handle from the chimney pot in the hall where all cricket bats, tennis racquets and other sporting implements live. She looks very much like Little Bo Peep with a shepherd’s crook, as the stick is taller than she is.
Find myself having to gaze at the floor and set my jaw to stop hysterical laughter or tears brimming over. Fortunately, Giles is hanging around, swinging on the Aga rail. He is hungry and also single-minded.
‘Mum, if you can’t walk, shall I make our supper?’
What a marvellous, responsible child I have produced, ready to step into the breach and be helpful.
‘Oh darling, would you? You can have whatever you like if we’ve got it.’
Just about to turn smug expression towards my mother and Vivienne, and set up camp on high ground, when he adds, ‘Great. We’ll have pizza and ice cream, but I’ll only do it if you let us play on the Nintendo afterwards. For an hour.’ Outmanoeuvred. Last vestiges of strength depart and I feebly nod agreement, hoping none of the adults have noticed the depths to which I have sunk.
Smile sadly but bravely at the doctor as he leaves, hoping he will reconsider his verdict if I am saintly. He scarcely notices me, however, as he is buzzing around Vivienne. He shakes hands with her three times, looking at her as he tells me, ‘You may find it improves tomorrow. If not, maybe a friend could bring you into the surgery and we’ll sort you out with some medication.’ He breaks off, scribbles something then looks over his glasses at Vivienne.
‘You’re a violin teacher, aren’t you?’ he says, without preamble. Vivienne nods, and the doctor is at a loss. He turns briskly back to me. ‘Gout is a serious condition, so don’t leave it without treatment. And no chocolate over Easter.’ He wags his finger as if I am Bessie Bunter and Parson Woodforde rolled into one, and departs. I am hard put not to hurl my stick at him. Only prevent myself because I do not wish to seem any more dyspeptic than I already do. Wish my mother and Vivienne would stop carousing and become solicitous.
Later
After several hours in which I did not become resigned to having gout, I am miraculously healed. Don’t know if it was the arrival of Rose, or the delicious behaviour of the children who put The Beauty to bed, and put on their pyjamas without being asked, or if it was the vile green stew of various herbs my mother concocted, or indeed the massaging effect of velvet-soled sandals, but something has cured me and I must send a postal order to Lourdes forthwith, or at least go to church. Church is probably easier, especially as Easter Sunday is the day after tomorrow.
Vivienne, my mother, Rose and I have eaten fabulous supper of mussels and brown bread. Mussels made even more delicious by the fact that I had no hand in their endless scraping, but sat and talked to Rose about my very unfulfilled New Year’s resolution to find a new career, while my mother and Vivienne slaved over the sink, removing mussel beards and managing not to mention the word gout once. Rose and I decide that with training, I could become a part-time driving instructor, but otherwise am only qualified as a housekeeper, and not if they came and looked at the state of my laundry and storage cupboards. David telephones. I ask him if he thinks I would be better as a driving instructor or a housekeeper. ‘Neither,’ he says without hesitation. ‘You should find something where you can make use of your skills.’ There is something about his voice on the telephone that makes me feel we are having a steamy, intimate conversation, even when we are just talking about the weather in Bermuda.
Have to remember I am in the room with others. Cough and ask him, ‘Well, what are they, and how do I fit them in between school hours and term time?’
He considers for a few expensive moments, then suggests, ‘What about being a lifeguard?’
Choke with laughter and find I am missing him painfully, unless it’s the gout. ‘Oh, come back soon, we miss you badly. I’m wearing the shoes right now.’
‘Well, if all goes to schedule, we’ll be finished by the end of the month, so I’ll be back then. I’ve got to go now, I should be at work.’ He sighs, then speaks again, and it is as if he is right here, next to my ear. ‘Anyway sweetheart, what else are you—’ There is a beep and a click and he is cut off.
March 25th
Easter Sunday dawns with an uncanny heatwave. Bright sunshine beams in through all windows, highlighting the Plimsoll line of fingermarks around the house at Beauty level. She and Theo, Rose’s son, have been up since first light, and show no signs of flagging by church time, as they are engrossed in creating a small tinker homestead inside the dog’s wooden castle. This folly, which David built a year ago when Lowly was small, fills the boot room and most of the hall. Lowly is now much too big to fit through any of its doors, but can be brought in over the battlements if bribed with cheese-flavoured crisps, his favourite form of nourishment. Anyway, The Beauty has made it her own, and I find her inside, with Theo and two pairs of chocolate ears, which suggest that bunny bodies have been devoured. Giles appears at another entrance as I squat and reach in, trying to grab a limb of either The Beauty or Theo, who have tucked themselves into the labyrinthine heart of the castle.
‘Mum, please can I miss church, I just want to finish my book in peace.’ Giles has put on his most long-suffering and yet wounded expression. I know just how he feels. In fact, I feel the same. Decide to be generous-spirited to him, as self must be sacrificed anyway.
‘All right darling, go back to bed. But could you crawl in and get The Beauty out first?’
Squeaky laughter issues from the castle, followed by a cheery farewell. ‘Bye bye Mummy, see you soon. Theo’s such fun, isn’t he?’
Suddenly perk up. I won’t take her. She can stay here with Rose and eat chocolate. Church will be a sanctuary. A whole hour without toddlers or washing-up. See the light. This must be how people get religion. Find vast brown tweed coat of David’s and put it on over my nightie. No time to get dressed now, and anyway, nightie is my favourite garment at the moment, as it is the only thing I have ever managed to dye, and is newly papal purple thanks to Dylon machine wash. Cannot believe that I have allowed so many years of my life to pass without experiencing the joy of dyeing clothes. In fact, I would have continued in this drab and grey existence, but for the happy accident which caused The Beauty to place a tub of dye in my shopping basket as I was selecting nails at the hardware shop. Great excitement and a ceremonial dipping followed, with each of us supplying one garment. Felix chose his school games shirt, and hurled it in before I noticed.
When discovered, he was defiant: ‘It’s the only white thing I’ve got. And anyway, it’s too small so I can’t wear it for school.’ Giles tried not to join in at first, but was seduced by the velvet richness of the colour in the sink and brought a pair of boxer shorts to the dip.
‘Fancy pants, fancy pants,’ carolled The Beauty and Felix when we pulled the now violet underwear out on a wooden spoon.
The Beauty brought two dolls, a nappy, three vests and a pair of shorts to the laundry area, and managed to get all of them in and submerged without me noticing. Keep finding ultraviolet dolls lying around the garden looking as if they have had too much sun, or Ribena, or something. The nappy looks wonderful though. We dried it on the Aga and sent it to the manufacturers with a note saying, Please can we have more like this one? Have not yet received a reply.
Church with just Felix is a treat and we sing loudly and tunelessly at every opportunity. On the way out I force him to lend me his pocket money for the collection, and become convinced that a halo is budding above my head. Am moved to sing a Christmas carol in the car on the way home:
Joy to the world
And joy to you.
Particularly lovely to be singing as we whisk between hedgerows basking in the sunlit morning. Curling primrose leaves rise, new and crisp and green, from the banks, and also vivid spears of daffodil foliage and yellow trumpet flowers.
Joy to the world
And joy to you—
Erupting apparently out of the tarmac is a vast chrome-fronted truck; its bonnet rears above us and my foot flails for the brake. The truck swerves, tyres shrieking, engine roaring; my windscreen fills with bull bars and car bonnet, and all I can think is that this is just like the Dinosaur Death Run game in both mood and soundtrack. Felix bounces up in his seat, shouting excitedly, ‘Look Mum, it’s a Big Foot. Cool. Can we have one? Oww! Stop twisting my arm, we’re quite safe, you know.’
Find I have involuntarily closed my eyes, and grasped Felix with one hand while wrestling to steer with the other, and maintaining a stream of foul language: ‘Shit! Buggering hell and buckets of blood. Felix, are you sure you’re all right? WATCH OUT!’
We have crashed. Not fatally, as we were only going about ten miles an hour, but firmly. Felix whistles under his breath. ‘Yes Mum, I’m fine. Did you mean to do that handbrake turn? It was really excellent.’
The front end of the car is buried in the grassy bank, as if sniffing keenly at primroses, and the body of the car has slewed at ninety degrees across the road. The same has happened to the purple and yellow truck, but the front of his vehicle is facing the other way, so the driver-side windows are next to each other. We both lean out. I am shaking with shock, he is grinding his teeth, flaring his nostrils and flashing his eyes dangerously. In a minute I expect he will begin yanking his hair out by the roots. I say the first thing that comes into my head.
‘Well I don’t know why you’re looking so angry. You could have killed us. And it’s Easter Sunday.’
This is the wrong thing to say.
‘Mum, it was your fault,’ mutters Felix. ‘You were on the wrong side of the road.’
Fortunately, the man does not hear this vital witness evidence as he is struggling to open his door and get out. This is impossible, as the vehicles are too close to one another. He hisses, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ and slides over to the other side to get out of the passenger door. Hear him from beyond the truck cursing, ‘This is absurd. How the hell did we get into this mess?’
He reappears in the driver’s seat, and I notice that his eyebrows are long and thick and join in the middle like the bristles of an old-fashioned carpet sweeper. No wonder he looks so bad-tempered. He is also unshaven and has wild black hair sprouting around a thinly covered crown, and a very earthy-looking jacket with no sleeves, just trails of unravelling string around the armholes. Presume he is a son of the pig farmer down the road, and make a suggestion.
‘What if you walk home and get someone to bring a tractor?’
‘Why don’t you?’ he says, rudely.
Answer very reasonably, rather enjoying the sensation of maintaining calm good humour in the face of his wild wrath, ‘Well, I haven’t got a tractor, and anyway, your truck’s in the way, and I wish you’d move it because I need to get home to cook lunch. We’re having an Easter-egg hunt this afternoon.’
Felix has climbed out of the sunroof and is inspecting the bank behind me. I am certainly not getting out. A nightie is fine for church, but it’s not my garment of choice for a traffic incident. Pull the tweed coat close about me, and wish it was fur. Would then feel grand and Cruella-like, and would be able to get the better of this rudester. His shirt is missing a couple of buttons and he has a melted-looking ring on his wedding finger. In fact, it looks very like one of the mourning rings made by Charles’s company, Heavenly Petting. He grips his steering wheel and the skin on his knuckles seems to slide back until bone white shows. Decide not to ask him about the ring, he looks too cross. He leans towards me through the window again, eyes glinting, and says between clenched teeth, ‘What makes you think I have a tractor?’
I am fed up with all this now, and just want to get home. Am beginning to think that this is not a junior pig farmer at all, but in fact a free-range psychopath, and am anxious to make my escape. Felix pokes his head in through my window like a traffic warden.
‘Mum, if you go backwards first, you can do a three-million-point turn and get out. Hey, look. He’s got one of Dad’s Heavenly Petting rings. It’s one of the ones I designed for small rodents. It costs three ninety-nine and you can buy it in Argos, Asda or any good pet shop.’
Felix is good on the Heavenly Petting sales mantra. I wonder if Charles gets him out on the road with him when he has the children for the weekend. I can just imagine him forcing Felix, Giles and The Beauty to wear ties and carry plastic briefcases full of his wares in order to go doorstepping in Cambridge. He wouldn’t dare do it to the twins, Helena would never allow it, but as ex- rather than present wife, I have no power on weekends away.
Come back to the present to find Felix standing on the truck’s running board, interviewing the driver about his dead animals. ‘Oh, I see. It wasn’t your guinea pig. It was your stepdaughter’s. Did she get a ring for her cat when it died, or did she just go for a garden burial and nothing to commemorate? You know we’ve gone on the Internet now. You can look it up. It’s called deaddog?.com and I thought of it and we’ve registered it and …’
The psychopath is glowering and begins to mutter something about little bastards. It is time to go.
‘Come on Felix, jump in,’ I yell, and inclining my head graciously in a farewell gesture, I grind the gears to begin the three-thousand-point turn.
The psycho-pig starts and yells, ‘Watch out. You’ll tip over. You can’t do—’
Oh, the joy of electric windows.
March 28th
The Easter-egg hangover lasted for three days, and I fear that flashbacks may occur for weeks. The Beauty, who has never been biddable, has become an addict. Her rear, clad in red polka-dot bloomers beneath her customary net tutu, is visible now from my window, as she sifts the garden stalk by stalk, on hands and knees, searching for yet more mini-eggs. Every so often she finds one, and there is a whoop of joy followed by a satisfied silence while she consumes it. This new-found greed makes the garden a wonderful giant playpen for her. She has no desire to follow Lowly and Digger on a dustbin trail, even though she generally enjoys this treasure-seeking mission, nor did she try to get into the postman’s van this morning with Rags, who never likes to miss an outing.
I am able to achieve much domestic satisfaction by repainting the downstairs loo. It is now cream with garnet-coloured woodwork, and looks very Red Cross and businesslike. Become aware, when debating whether to wash the brushes or just leave them to rot in a jam jar of white spirit, along with twenty or so other paintbrush corpses in similar jars, that this is deluxe and advanced work avoidance. Usually find that a bit of mucking out in the kitchen is enough to keep me from my desk, but since Easter have begun to see that clearing up is as bad as work, so have left it and moved on. Hope vaguely that the debris will all just disappear eventually, in the way that unwashed hair goes through the greasy stage and comes out the other side renewed and full of vim. Wonder how long it takes?
March 30th
The Beauty sleeps late this morning, and I’m not surprised. From midnight until three a.m. she was busy reorganising my underwear drawer and conducting a one-woman fashion show. I tried smoothing the pillow for her and turning the light out, but was met with stentorian commands through the darkness at ear level.
‘Light on now, Mummy, or else.’
Where has she learnt this awful threatening vocabulary? Must encourage her to watch more improving television such as Teletubbies, I think.
Finally convinced her to lie down in my bed with me, and four lumpy, cold plastic dolls, her companions for every breath she takes at the moment. She spent the remaining small hours swinging her feet and then her knees and then her dolls into me with the regularity of a clock pendulum. I fell asleep as dawn broke, and just in time to be jerked awake by the alarm clock at seven. Not sure how the boys got to school, as head feels as if it is sewn on backwards today, but cannot go on allowing them to drink Coke and eat cheese on toast for every meal.
Have still not managed to clean the kitchen, and have thus lost the cheering Easter card David sent to all of us. It vanished beneath an avalanche of papers somewhere on the table, where a substratum of stickiness acts as a deterrent to any movement of stuff when the kitchen door is open and fresh, green-smelling spring air pours in. Housewifery has deserted me. Open the fridge and notice Giles’s cricket socks in there. Just cannot think where else I might put them, so shut door again, leaving them there.
March 31st
All is not well. I suspect David of having found new love. Undoubtedly young, certainly without gout, and probably wearing a silver bikini and mirrored Moroccan mules with pale blue linings as seen in the magazine I am toying with in the hairdresser. I am in Blow ’n’ Glow in Cromer, a salon famous among local pensioners for its tinted rinses, and entirely lacking in photographs of fabulous-looking models with cutting-edge hairstyles. I am not having a tinted rinse, although the notion is beginning to appeal, the longer I sit and look at my pale face, lugubrious expression and lank hanks of hair being teased into order by Cheyenne, the troll-like stylist. I have succumbed to middle age and am having a blow-dry. With hairspray. It is very awful to find myself doing this, but how else am I to look presentable for this evening? Vivienne and her husband Simon have asked me to go with them to the Hunt Ball. They are always invited because Simon is a farmer, but I have not done anything so recherché since I was in the Pony Club, and am looking forward to the evening with some dread. Tried to get out of it on the grounds that my mother is coming to stay, as she needs a rest cure from The Basket Weaver, a barefoot hippy who keeps a caravan in her garden, and who is hosting a workshop for the Pedal to Paradise lobby. But Vivienne just says, ‘Good, she can babysit.’ As if life is ever that uncomplicated. However, on this occasion, it seems to be.
‘It’s so ghastly,’ moans my mother when she arrives, somewhat dishevelled and wearing only one shoe. ‘I’ve had to leave home. And I couldn’t find my other shoe. I think Egor must have taken it, he seems to be embracing fetishism in old age. Yes, of course I’ll babysit, anything to keep me away from pious Peta.’
Egor, the bullet-brained bull terrier, bounces into the kitchen, his claws clicking on the tiles, his tongue lolling like a pervert, in search of sustenance as always. I shrink to the other side of the kitchen and continue to apply a layer of vibrant pink nail polish called Siren to my toes. Am trying to do this without being seen by The Beauty, who adores nail polish, and will want to do her own, and the toes of all her babies too.
‘Egor’s gone yellow,’ notices Giles, who is passing through on his way to the larder, but my mother is too distraught to rise to this faint criticism of her beloved.
‘I know, darling. It’s age. We must try Biotex next time we bath him.’ She unwraps a new packet of cigarettes with the practised ease displayed by a croupier opening a deck of cards in a Las Vegas casino, and lights one before continuing, ‘That woman is a menace. She’s trying to construct a basket-weave yurt for Desmond’s wedding reception. I don’t know how to stop her, and he particularly said he was having a perfectly normal tent, so he’ll be rude to her, which I just can’t stand. And when she’s not designing that, she’s busy bullying me to give up my car. She’s found some hopeless man to be her boyfriend and she makes him dress up in a gold diving suit, with a helmet like a goldfish bowl, and sends him off to walk to Aylsham wearing a placard saying, Cut out the car crap – pedal to paradise.’
‘So why doesn’t she make him ride a bicycle instead of walking, Granny? Hasn’t he got one?’ Giles is back, eating a cold sausage and a hard-boiled egg, so he won’t need supper in my view. Granny is much struck by this question. She turns to face Giles and fixes him with an intent, gimlet-like expression. The Beauty appears in the doorway like Isadora Duncan, trailing three pastel chiffon scarves and wearing a hair band with fluffy antennae, a small pink-headed doll clasped to her bosom.
‘Oooh, Mummyyy, nails! Polish me. Polish my baby. Oooooooh, Mummmyyy,’ she yells, charging towards me.
I leap like a limber goat or sheep on to the table, shrieking, ‘Grab her, Giles. Quick.’
Granny remains impervious to the new layer of chaos in the kitchen. ‘Why indeed, Giles? Why indeed? I think you’ve provided me with some ammunition to use against St Peta at last. Thank God. She keeps trying to make me ride that old bicycle of The Gnome’s, and hiding the keys to my car. I was only allowed to drive here today because I told her Egor has a heart condition, and she’s on every animal awareness committee in existence.’ Granny pauses for a second, then adds a final lament: ‘Oh, how I wish The Gnome hadn’t gone to live on Uist, he was a much easier lodger.
Planets are so much less annoying than baskets to have around the place. They take up so little room.’ Granny takes a comforting puff of her cigarette and, like her dog, looks around for sustenance.
‘The sun appears to be over the yardarm now, Venetia,’ she says, glancing at the clock, ‘so how about a small glass of something?’
‘I’ve just got to finish these,’ I whisper, waving a set of neon-pink toenails at her and keeping my voice down so as not to alert The Beauty, who has gone with Giles to make a larder raid. ‘Help yourself.’
With the first sip of wine, a pleasant thought occurs to my mother, and she smirks, ‘Don’t let me forget to tell Peta that you are going to the Hunt Ball. She’ll be horrified. Such a shame David isn’t here to go with you. Although maybe he’s anti-hunting. What do you think?’
‘I must go and change.’ I rush from the room, not wishing to speak of David the Rat. Would not have had to go to ancients’ hairdresser or bother to paint toenails this early in the year if David hadn’t rung at crack of dawn to say his plans have changed. He sounds distant, which is understandable, but distracted.
‘I’m not going to be back home at the end of the month, I’m afraid, and I’m not sure when I will be able to come home. The thing is, I’m going to the Brazilian jungle to build sets for a massive new Tarzan film. I was incredibly lucky. The guy they originally hired to do it has got malaria and has had to be taken off the job at the last minute.’
‘Doesn’t sound to me as if you’re lucky, it sounds to me as if you’re about to get malaria,’ I interrupt in Doom Queen mode. He scarcely hears me, though; he is finishing his spiel.
‘I hate leaving you for so long, but it’s fantastic money and a really great project. We’ll all be able to live in clover when I come back.’
An expectant pause follows, which I am clearly supposed to fill with, ‘How wonderful, clever old you.’
Instead I just say, ‘God, I can’t think of anywhere more horrible than the Brazilian jungle. If you don’t get malaria you’ll be bitten by a snake or a tiger. Can’t you say no?’
David’s voice is frosted glass as he replies, speaking very slowly as if to an alien, ‘They don’t have tigers in South America. Look Venetia, I’m not going to say no because I really want to do this. It’s a chance to get into film work and I can’t turn it down. It will be the right thing for all of us in the long run, I promise you. Please don’t make a scene. After all, it won’t be for more than a few months, and we can speak on the phone. We can get you hooked up on to email, too.’ My jaw sets in Desperate Dan solidity, and I muster all my determination in order not to make a scene and not to cry.
‘Fine. Good. Have a lovely time and we’ll speak soon.’ I am pretty pleased with this as a last line, and quickly slam the phone down. A few months in Brazil in the jungle. He must be mad. Or it’s a ruse to disguise his new romance with a nubile film star. And is it surprising that he craves a new life when the height of my weekly achievements is a visit to the hairdresser? Having half decided not to go, I am now determined to attend the Hunt Ball for three reasons:
1 To show that I can.
2 To meet and flirt with men in red coats.
3 To be able to drop snippets about these fantasy flirtations and a long list of new male admirers airily into my next telephone conversation with David.
Have arrived at the hunt ball, where I am failing utterly to flirt with anyone in a red coat. They all have red faces to match, and are either bobbing about in vats of alcohol, or chasing the teenage girls who are selling raffle tickets around the room. Had not reckoned on anyone here looking fashionable, and am thus vastly put out to walk slap into Bronwyn Butterstone, a school mother whom I loathe, wearing the same dress as I am. Face to face at the bar, her prominent blue eyes bulge towards me in my long, pink-sequinned tube with purple fluff at hem and décolletage, and my own orbs bulge back at her.
‘Oh, Venetia, it is you, isn’t it? I’m never sure,’ she shrieks, and I am irritated to note the flatness of her stomach, but remark some flab on the underarm to savour.
However, do not wish my own body to be scrutinised, so mutter, ‘Gosh Bronwyn, great minds think alike,’ before scuttling away behind my feather boa which I have positioned as if it is a fig leaf and I am Eve.
Find Vivienne talking to the Master of the Hunt, who has assumed the glassy, blissed-out look that all men, particularly those in positions of authority, get when they talk to Vivienne. She is suitably sympathetic, and dismisses the Master with smooth good manners before following me towards the door where I am skulking.
‘Poor you, I’m sure Bronwyn feels awful too, and particularly as you look so great in it.’
‘Not as great as her,’ I wail, dragging Vivienne out into the dark and across to the ladies’ Portaloo. ‘Come on, we’ll have to adapt it.’
I arrange myself expectantly, standing on the loo seat, looking down at Vivienne. She turns me round in a full circle, frowning, then dips into her handbag to pull out a tiny pair of scissors. So brilliant, just like a Georgette Heyer character. I am charmed.
‘Wow, a reticule full of useful things.’
Vivienne snaps the air with the scissors, giving an impression of utter competence at dress redesign in public lavatories.
‘Let’s cut it off above your knees, and tie your boa around your neck like a choker,’ she suggests sadistically. Have no choice but to comply, but for me the evening never recovers, and my knees, which I was not expecting to have on show, become a preoccupation. The purple velvet boots from the charity shop which seemed beyond chic when peeping from beneath a long dress, now contribute to my Euro-vision Song Contest look and make me feel like a New Seeker.
As the dances slow, and the red coats lasso their now intoxicated prey into cheek-to-cheek shufflings on the dance floor, my eyelids begin to droop and I could weep if I had drunk more, so great is my longing for David to be there to take me home. I am deeply relieved when Vivienne and Simon at last approach, holding hands in a touching manner which only contributes to my big-kneed ugly-sister feeling. I should have brought a date. I shouldn’t have come here alone. David should have been here.
Teeter out behind Simon and Vivienne, nursing self-pity as we thread through the long grass and cow pats. I am tired, sober and relieved to be leaving without having injured myself. The only glimmer on the horizon is that Bronwyn Butterstone has been removed in an ambulance, having fallen off the dance floor and into a pothole. I did not see this, being too mesmerised by the sight of the blacksmith, who is the size of three usual human beings, on the Bucking Bronco and then upside down with his legs wiggling like a vast beetle, on the giant mattress on the floor. Vivienne fills me in.
‘She’s sprained her ankle quite badly, and Brian, her husband, is furious because he’ll have to look after the children on his own.’ She pauses to negotiate a deep rut in the ground, then continues: ‘He was even crosser when he realised she was so drunk she couldn’t even feel any pain.’
‘But she will after they’ve operated,’ I point out, forcing my face out of its spreading smile with some difficulty.
‘She is going to feel so foolish in the morning,’ remarks Vivienne, and both of us shake our heads, revelling in our own sobriety. Wish I had a crocheted shawl around my shoulders to complete the effect of ascetic old harridan, or else a vast bottle of whisky to glug, to anaesthetise myself from the gruelling effects of rural debauchery.
Thumping music and the shrieks of those unwise enough to have a go on the electric Bucking Bronco accompany us out through crisp darkness to the car park, where orange licks the windscreens in small tongues of reflected light from guttering wax flares.
Simon is ahead of us, shouting back, ‘There’ll be a bit of a frost tonight, but not enough to worry the blossom. Now where’s our damned car?’ He suddenly stops, and exclaims to the ground ‘Goodness. Who’s there? Do you need a light?’ Peering past him, I dimly detect a black hump moving about on the grass. Vivienne and I sweep up our skirts, or what is left of them, tilt our noses skywards and prepare to walk past this drunkard without a second glance. Simon can never resist a chance to boss someone around, and squats next to this hapless soul, intent on helping him find his feet. Much heavy sighing from me and Vivienne, shivering in our feather boas. I am particularly cold owing to the lack of knee coverage, and wish I had kept the extra length of stretchy fabric to wrap round my legs like a muff in the car, instead of throwing it into the bushes behind the Portaloo. We lean on the car bonnet, clucking and becoming more crabby and old ladyish by the minute.
‘Why can’t Simon just mind his own business,’ sighs Vivienne. Sighing turns to catlike hissing when Simon approaches us with the man.
‘This is Hedley Sale. Hedley, my wife Vivienne and our friend Venetia Summers.’
Can’t see the point of shaking hands with someone so drunk they have been crawling about at my feet, so ignore the stranger and address Simon crossly. ‘Come on Simon, we’re freezing …’ Tail off as Vivienne nudges me and nods her head towards the stranger, who is trying to shake hands with us. He starts to speak in tongues.
‘Cum redeunt, titubant et sunt spectacula vulgi, et fortunato obvia turba vocat.’
The whites of his eyes gleam blue in the moonlight and I struggle to remember whether this is a sign of health or lunacy.
‘What’s going on, Venetia? Who is this man?’ Vivienne whispers, interrupting Simon, who overrides her with his loud translation of the tongues.
‘Ovid.’ He scratches his head, presumably to stimulate his brain cells. ‘Something about staggering home and a sight to behold,’ he says reflectively. ‘Funny, I haven’t heard that for years, but recognised it instantly—’ He is interrupted by the drunkard, who is doing English now.
‘And the crowds that meet them call them privileged.’ He turns to Simon. ‘Yes, Ovid. It’s the springtime orgy, which was held in mid-March. The point of it was to get very drunk, as the theory was that each drink prolonged your life.’
Simon has unlocked the car now, and I am halfway in, but can’t resist muttering: ‘Well, not much has changed, but I’d like to go home before I die of cold rather than lack of alcohol.’ I sound about as glamorous and well read as the chief jam-maker of the Women’s Institute, but am long past caring. Simon pushes me on to the back seat, then directs the sozzled loony to sit next to me. He settles down, and leaning back he closes his eyes and prepares for slumber.
Simon, avuncular to the last, pats my knee and whispers, ‘He’s lost his car keys in the grass, so I said we’d give him a lift home as he’s practically your next-door neighbour, Venetia. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t met before.’
I am not surprised. I am not in the habit of hanging around speaking Latin on street corners, or rather in fields. Feel nervously out of my depth and wiggle as far from him as possible while trying to pull the shreds of dress down to knee level.
‘Nice legs,’ he says, in English, and I realise that his eyes are not shut at all, but that he has been watching me trying to organise myself, and that I have met him before. He is the car-crash man.