Green Grass (10 page)

Guy was an only child, fifteen and still missing his mother painfully. He began to mend the fences, lay hedges and unblock the choked stream so water could meander through the low-lying water meadows instead of flooding. Six months after his father and he moved in, Guy let his first field to a pig farmer; a year later he grew a patch of peas and another of strawberries. By the time he met Hedley and Laura, he had left school and was letting and farming the whole two hundred acres around his father's house and even making a small profit, driven by a barely recognised desire to create order.

Laura had never met anyone, save her Uncle Peter, whose livelihood came from the land. It was both quaint and impressive. She didn't know anyone of seventeen, either, who had left school. Guy, for his part, had never met a girl who found his life glamorous. They fell in love with the exoticism of one another.

Back in London, it takes some days for the aroma of ferret to be eradicated from the car and every item of Fred's clothing. And as much as the smell clings to him, he clings to the memories of the weekend and the hope that Precious the ferret will have babies and he will be given one of his own.

‘Anyway, Hedley said I could keep it there, so it's nothing to do with you AT ALL,' he roars defiantly at the end of a heated conversation with his father.

Inigo, stirring rusty sweet-smelling tomato sauce at the stove, is at his most implacable. For his weekly cook-athon he is wearing an apron Laura's mother Anne once gave him. It is made of yellow oilcloth with a red logo saying Camp Coffee, beneath which is a picture of a jaunty soldier marching about with a coffee cup. Inigo wears this apron every Thursday and for most of the weekend as he slices and chops vegetables, kneads and mixes dough and batter and cooks and cooks and cooks, laying waste to the kitchen and
becoming more theatrical with each finished, and perfectly presented, dish. These are the meals for the week, and those that are to be frozen are carefully labelled and wrapped, and then placed in the freezer in chronological order of when they are to be eaten. All food preparation is taken out of Laura's hands.

There are people who are envious of Laura for having such a domesticated husband; indeed, her mother who telephones in the midst of the ferret discussion, reminds her, ‘Of course it's marvellous he's such a cook, even if he does hate animals. It must be a price worth paying. After all, just imagine how awful it would be for everyone if you had to do it all.'

Laura appreciates the double edge of this thrust, and grins invisibly into the phone, thinking, ‘Touché', but saying, ‘I know, I realise it's extraordinary. It's one of his compulsions. He can't help it, it's the Jewish momma in him trying to get out. The maddening thing is that the children don't like the wild flavours he creates, and of course he won't listen or adapt. He's a megalomaniac in the kitchen. I have no role beyond skivvy. I'm a tweeny, in fact.'

Laura's mother is baffled. ‘A tweeny? Are you? Do you mean the ones on television? How odd of you.'

She sounds displeased. Laura is not living up to expectation at all with nonsense about children's
television characters and a husband who cooks better than she does. Not that Anne herself ever brought Laura up to cook. Oh dear me no. She was destined for the halls of academe where filthy food is served to intellectuals who use it merely as fuel for the engines of their minds, and have no sensory pleasure in it. Such a shame she decided not to pursue her studies further. Anne had always hoped Laura would stay in America and do a PhD after her master's degree, but of course she met Inigo. Maddening, but there we are. She wasn't doing anything proper like history after all, but a PhD in film – well, it would have been something for Anne to tell her colleagues at Trinity. She listens to Laura again.

‘Oh come on, Mother, that's what they used to call the maids who worked between the kitchens and the rest of the household. You can't have forgotten.'

Laura hates herself as she utters the last sentence, but she cannot help it. In her family, a piece of knowledge imparted is a prize beyond gold. Throughout her childhood her mother, a history don specialising in The Age of Enlightenment, dispensed argument and raised questions, instead of cooking roast chicken and mashed potato. Of course Hedley and Laura, and their vague wispy father, were fed, but food was never meant to be enjoyed, not when there was reasoning or language to relish.

Clouds of steam billow above the stove as Inigo removes the lid from a pan of boiling water and begins to slide lengths of spaghetti beneath the surface. Dolly drifts into the room. Her hair is tousled, she has no shoes on, and is yawning mightily, as if she has just got out of bed. In fact she has been lying on the floor in the sitting room with her headphones on and her homework open in front of her, making a pyramid out of paperclips.

‘Lay the table could you, Doll,' says Inigo, glancing up at her with a smile from his cooking. ‘I doubt I'll get Fred to do it, he's too angry with me.'

From the tether of the telephone, Laura sees the troubled look on Fred's face as he glances between his father and his sister, and sensing his need of support, she says to her mother, ‘I must go, I'll tell you about Hedley and his plans for Tamsin's birthday tomorrow.'

Inigo pours a trickle of oil into the bubbling pasta, laughing with Dolly over an incident at school. His glance flickers up to Fred and away again: he is punishing him with exclusion. Laura's temper rises fast, irritation spilling over so she has to bite her lip not to shout at Inigo. Maybe it would be better if she did shout at him, instead of shielding him from the frustration his behaviour causes. Fred scowls and sits down at the furthest seat from his father. Laura sits
next to him, rumpling his hair and winking at him as Inigo serves them. It is Inigo's idea that they all sit down to eat together each evening. He likes to preside over his family, and he likes to be appreciated by them; without praise, Laura often thinks he would cease to function.

‘Mmmm, this is delicious,' she says, half because it is true and half because she knows that Dolly and Fred will not be commenting on their food; instead, both are rolling it around their plates, Fred creating a mound of food in the middle, Dolly spreading hers into spaghetti waves like a nest around the rim of the plate. Fortunately, Inigo is discussing some final details for the torn-up paper event in Hyde Park, which is to be staged next week.

‘We'll have to have a press release saying that spring is officially late this year,' he is telling Laura, ‘and that the equinox in March didn't count because the weather was too bad. I don't think anyone will mind, do you?'

‘No one you know will mind,' agrees Laura, ‘but let's not make a big thing of it or we're going to look arrogant and stupid.'

Fred, who has given up toying with his food, tipping his chair back, humming a song and looking catatonically bored, perks up at this interchange.

‘Could I come and help with the installation? I
could miss school if Mum wrote me a note. They said any projects I did outside school were good anyway.'

This is just the sort of thing that cheers Inigo up, and he does not harbour grudges, particularly when he is receiving praise or attention. Grinning like the Cheshire Cat, licking his thumbs to remove the last traces of Parmesan cheese, he turns towards Fred. ‘Do you think you'd like to help? I'd love to know how you think we can spread the stuff. There is literally tonnes of it coming on trucks.'

Suddenly Fred and Inigo are talking loudly across the table. Both of them have pushed their plates aside, and they are an advertisement for a perfect father and son act. Wondering if she will ever become used to the schizophrenic speed with which children – and of course Inigo – can mood swing, Laura leaves them discussing whether to use shovels or a wind machine to disperse the paper across the park. Drifting into the kitchen, she makes a mental list of her own more mundane activities, the most important of which has only just occurred to her. The press will have a field day on art as litter unless she can contain this whole, hugely energetic display somehow. Imagine twenty tonnes of torn-up paper swirling on the April breeze. The mess will be appalling.

Laura is at the sink, looking out at her small
hemmed-in garden, soft green in the April dusk, every plant dripping from the recent shower. A chaffinch dives out of the cherry blossom on the wall and into her mind flashes the long-ago image of the summer kitchen garden at Alf Harvey's derelict house. The walls were tumbling on one side, but along the other three were planted huge, laden, espaliered cherry trees, and in her mind's eye, Laura can see Guy up on a ladder draping them in fruit nets to keep the birds out. That's what I need, she thinks suddenly, miles of fruit netting. I'll ring Guy tomorrow and ask where to get it.

Laura's heart thuds as if she is making a clandestine plan. Why is the thought of making a call about fruit nets clandestine? And what about Guy? How will she get hold of him? It would be odd to ask Hedley for his telephone number. Maybe he's in the book. She knows that Guy still farms the land around his father's house, and lived nearby until the old man died. Now he lives in a watermill he converted near Crumbly village, and has turned the pastures around it into his thriving organic vegetable business. Laura knows what it looks like because Hedley had a brochure from Guy's place in his study, complete with a small drawing of a pretty farmhouse set on the water. She tries to imagine life inside this picture-book house with Celia. But even imagining Celia herself presents
difficulties. Laura cannot believe that Guy is married; she can't really believe he isn't still the boy next door whom she left behind when she went to America. Perhaps she should call Directory Enquiries now, so she can get the whole thing over with? No. She shouldn't be thinking so much about someone else's husband. What if Celia answers? She must remember to ask for the business number. And she's got her own family to consider, too. She must do it when they're all out, but there's no harm in getting the number now, is there?

Inigo and Fred have gone down to the computer to make a diagram for the
Paper in the Park
show; Laura can hear their voices rising and falling in bursts of animation as they draw it up on the screen. They will be hours. Laura goes in search of the telephone and finds it on the floor in the sitting room next to Dolly, who is lying flat on the carpet as usual, propped on her elbows, gazing glassily at the silent television. Suppressing an urge to kick the television screen or even Dolly to create some animation, Laura picks up the phone and dials, leaving the room. She bends forward and does a small and unchallenging yoga stretch, focusing on her breathing to try and eradicate the neck tension she is feeling due to her continued belief that what she is doing is illicit. It doesn't work.

‘Hello, Directory Enquiries, this is Nicola speaking. What name is it?'

There is something about Directory Enquiries which maddens Laura. Provoked, she replies, ‘“What name is it” simply doesn't make sense. Do you mean “Whose number would I like?”'

A pause, signifying that Nicola is registering her as a nutter, before her flat nasal voice tries again. ‘What name is it?'

Laura sighs. ‘Harvey, Guy Harvey. Maybe Guy Harvey Organic actually.'

‘How are you spelling that?'

‘T.H.A.T.'

‘Sorry?'

‘I'm spelling “that” T.H.A.T. but if you want to know how to spell Harvey, it's H.A.R.V.E.Y.'

‘OK,' says Nicola listlessly. ‘What street name have you got?'

Laura speaks through tight lips. ‘I haven't
got
a street name, I expect it's in the middle of fields. It's an organic vegetable farm. They supply lots of restaurants, you know. They're big news—'

Nicola cuts in, bored with this promotional aside. ‘What town have you got then, madam?'

‘I haven't got any town, it's in Norfolk. It's near the sea. I told you, it's an organic vegetable farm. You must have lots of them.'

‘Sorry, I can only go by the name, and there's nothing listed unless you can give me a town.' Nicola is becoming more animated as the possibility of giving Laura the number recedes.

Laura thinks for a moment, remembering the different stations the local train stopped at, wondering which is Guy's station now. ‘Sheringham,' she announces at last.

Nicola sighs with faux regret. ‘Sorry, we've nothing listed for that name anywhere in the Sheringham area. Goodbye.'

Before Laura can suggest another name from the branch line Nicola's nasal voice has gone. Cursing, she slams the telephone down in its cradle, resolving to find out the number from Hedley tomorrow.

The doorbell rings. Dolly sweeps past her to open it, muttering, ‘It's for me, Mum. Don't touch it – I said it's for me.' Her transformation is staggering. A few moments ago she was supine with dull, empty eyes, now she is prancing through the hall, swishing her hair, and opening the door to coo, ‘Hi, Rebecca, I'm ready, let's go.' She leans back into the house to grab her jacket off the bottom bannister and is gone, rippling laughter following her and the equally animated friend. Dolly waves and shouts back to Laura on the doorstep, ‘I'll be at Rebecca's, and I'll be home at eight-thirty. Byeeee.'

Laura waves back, hugging her arms around herself because there is no one else to hug now. They're leaving home, this is the first stage and then they will be gone. I've got to get a life, she thinks, eyes fixed on the swinging gate Dolly has not shut. Laura steps out to do it herself, and pauses at the gate, looking up at the mauve-rinsed evening sky, still watery and heavy with cloud but sparkling in the glimpse of evening sunshine. The flowering cherries in the street are all out now, and a foam of bridal blossom gives a festive air to the closed windows and gates of the neatly ranked houses. Laura and Inigo have lived here for ten years, ever since they came back from America, and although she knows who lives in the flats opposite, and in the divided houses next door on each side, Laura often feels that if she and her family vanished one day, none of their neighbours would notice they'd gone.