And that’s how it happened that between March and mid-October Natalie lost a husband, a home and her children, and gained a flat in Wells and a lover from Eddon Gurney. That’s how it happened that, by the end of October, Natalie was earning one hundred and twenty pounds a week working on the WAEADA carnival float in the big barn adjoining the Avon Farmers’ depot. She’d struck up quite a friendship with Flora’s Bernard. She would paint and hammer and upholster and he’d filch paint remover from his shelves so she could clean her hands, and tools to make her life easier. The advantage of an organization like Avon Farmers is that they don’t account too carefully. They rake in the money without too much fuss. Bernard would bring her his worries, along with their wares. She was an older woman, but not so old he didn’t enjoy her company.
‘Do you think I should walk out of this job?’ Bernard asked Natalie one day. Her mouth was full of upholstery tacks. She was making a swan-shaped stool in white velour, on which Mrs Housewife Princess was to sit. ‘And not just wait till it happens?’
‘Why in particular?’
‘New Wonder Bio-Eater. Sounds like a soap powder but it isn’t. Mix with water, one part to twenty, allow five minutes to work. Twenty millilitres makes 250 gallons. Must be quite strong, don’t you think?’
‘They wouldn’t allow it if it wasn’t safe,’ said Natalie piously. Everything I told her about the world had just passed in and out of her head. She was doing nicely, thank you. She’d got her freedom and her youth back; she was earning well: she was having a riotous sex life and not caring one whit about her lover’s wife. She was never one to think very far beyond her own interests. ‘Bio-eaters eat antibiotics. Farmers give penicillin to sick cows. The sick cows give milk. The milk’s full of penicillin. The Milk Marketing Board tests for it. If they find any in the tanker they send it back, won’t pay for it. But with new wonder Bio-eater – in goes the milk into the tanker, in goes a spoonful of Bio-eater, and five minutes later – everyone’s happy. The cow, the farmer and the MMB.’
Natalie thought a little.
‘But mightn’t that be bad for the person who drinks the milk?’
‘Farmers don’t drink milk,’ said Bernard, ‘that’s all I know.’
‘If you don’t do this job,’ said Natalie, ‘someone else will.’
‘You mean let them get nerve poisoning,’ said Bernard, ‘not me. Take a look. Are my hands trembling?’
He held them out for her inspection, and they were indeed trembling. She took them in her own to steady them. ‘Just nerves,’ she said, and then rather hastily let his hands go. If it hadn’t been for Flora, if it hadn’t been for Angus, both reckoned they’d have gone off in the bushes together sooner or later, but neither said anything to the other about that. The sun shone, birds sang (a few), farmers came and went, and paid Bernard over the odds for his trouble, heaving the dusty sacks as he did onto their trucks, and he put off handing in his notice for another week, and Natalie sang as she hammered. That’s what a little response from the other sex will do. Or from the same sex, come to that.
Arthur came up to look at the float, but looked at Natalie instead.
‘So, how are you doing?’ he asked. ‘You’re looking just fine. Why don’t you come by and see me some time?’
‘Angus wouldn’t like it,’ said Natalie.
‘Angus doesn’t own you,’ said Arthur.
‘Yes he does,’ said Natalie, firmly.
‘He’s married,’ said Arthur.
‘So are you,’ said Natalie.
‘That’s different,’ said Arthur. ‘My wife doesn’t understand me.’
And he laughed, and she laughed, politely. Arthur went away and told Angus that Natalie would never have the float ready in time: she’d need reinforcements. He’d felt obliged to try his luck, so charming had Natalie looked, in her white, painters’ overalls, her role changed once again, no longer a deceitful wife but taken a step or so back into little-girl dependency, so that she seemed altogether new and fresh. Just as well, of course, not to tread on Angus’ toes, but life got boring, and Sandra was becoming too serious, and had taken to calling Jane at home and putting down the receiver when she answered. Natalie would never have done a thing like that.
Angus went zooming up in the Quattro to inspect the float and was concerned by its state of unreadiness.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Natalie. ‘It’ll be all right on the night.’ But he knew it wouldn’t be.
The float was ninety feet long. At one end, fifteen feet high and roughly hewn out of balsawood, but not yet painted, was the image of a kindly estate agent. He held a giant key in an outstretched hand, which would slowly rise and fall as the float moved. Over the other end loomed a noble auctioneer, whose hammer would similarly rise and fall, as its owner turned his smiling head from side to side. Standing firm enough along the edges of the float were ranged the frontages of ideal homes, but not yet completed with the expected lace curtains and pot plants. Standing behind each house was to be an ideal housewife (circa 1955) in frilly apron waving a feather duster (not yet acquired) with a happy smile. They were not yet organized. A thousand light-bulbs, not yet strung, were to burn overhead: music, not yet selected, would come from the loudspeakers. ‘Our House’ (Madness) was Natalie’s favourite, but had a satirical edge that worried WAEADA, so no decision had been made. ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’ (Crosby) was another possibility with ‘Old-Fashioned Girl’ (Kitt) coming up fast on the outside. The theme of the float was to present WAEADA as an altruistic body whose only concern was good housing and happy marriages untroubled by serious debt. ‘WAEADA – the Housewife’s Friend’ was yet to be emblazoned along the side of the edifice. But the conch throne was elegantly and beautifully finished in silky white. Fluted swan’s wings curved up and over it. ‘Isn’t it lovely!’ sighed Natalie, and how could Angus be cross? He kissed the back of her neck and went off with her into the paint shop behind the barn. Bernard gritted his teeth and sold another packet of New Wonder Bio-Eater without a single twinge of conscience. ‘We’ll have to get you helpers,’ said Angus to Natalie.
Arthur had offered Flora the role of Mrs Housewife Princess: she who was to sit on the throne. She’d come up to the shop one day with rather a nice painting she’d found on the skip outside her front door, up at the rubbish tip.
‘Who, me?’ she said. ‘A housewife? You must be joking. What am I housewife to? A caravan?’
‘We’re not fussy,’ said Arthur. ‘No one will mind. You’re liked round here.’
‘I’m not even married,’ said Flora.
‘Who is, these days?’ he asked.
‘You, for one!’ she said. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘me sit on a white throne? You have to be a virgin to do that, and I’m no virgin.’
Her instinct was right. Only virgins should sit on white thrones, and even then it’s tricky. In the early days of the carnival they’d like as not burn their chosen virgin to death. At first on purpose – later on by accident on purpose. That was the point of the event. Burn a virgin, fire a barn, drown a witch. Clear old scores and start afresh! What do you think the carnival is about? Fun and games? Oh, no.
‘We can do without a virgin,’ said Arthur, taking her pretty white hand. ‘We can’t do without you!’
‘You give me back my hand,’ said Flora. She was looking particularly pretty that day. She had gold sparkle in her hair and silver dust on her smooth cheeks, and wore one of Bernard’s leather jackets over a shabby suede miniskirt, and high, though broken, stiletto heels. He feared for his floor.
‘You just give me a proper price for my painting,’ she said. ‘That’s all you’re here to do. You leave all that other to younger, sillier folk than you.’
He did not take offence. He liked Flora. He looked a second time at the canvas – maple framed, thick with grime but with quite a nice flower painting lurking beneath, and saw that it was better than he’d at first assumed. He thought it might even be worth putting into auction. He offered her a tenner.
‘Bernard says,’ observed Flora, ‘that if you get offered a tenner it’s probably worth five hundred. If you get offered between two and five, then it’s worth about twenty.’
‘Bernard doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’ said Arthur, but Bernard did. The more you offered, that was the trouble, the more the public thought you were cheating them, and the more likely you were to be doing just that.
‘A tenner,’ he repeated, ‘and I’m doing you a favour.’
‘It’s a really nice picture,’ she said. ‘I know it is, and if there was room in the caravan I’d hang it up.’ He believed she would, and it endeared her to him, even more than her long slightly bowed legs and her wide eyes and her glitter-dusted brows. If only Jane had appreciated antiques, liked beautiful things, how happy they might have been!
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ll put it in auction, I’ll take 10 per cent dealer’s fee, and you be Mrs Housewife Princess.’
‘It’s a deal,’ she said. She didn’t believe the bit about only 10 per cent – 90 per cent would be more like it, and how could she ever check – but she was hungry.
‘If you want a job,’ he added, ‘go on up to Avon Farmers and help them out on the float. One pound the hour.’ She went. Arthur thought she was wasted on Bernard; he always had.
And that’s how it happened that Natalie, Sonia, Flora, Ros, and presently Arthur’s Jane were all up at Avon Farmers working on the float in the first week of November just to get it ready. The weather was closing in. The barn was draughty, wind swept the rain across the fields outside in visible sheets, but inside there was warmth and camaraderie, 90p the hour and no questions asked and so what if Flora was getting a pound. Sonia’s and Ros’ children warm in school, with the State paying the heating bills. Something to do. There were no complaints, not at first.