Green Grass (15 page)

‘Are you lost? I can help you, I work on the Formula Three track over there. I know my way around here like the back of my hand.'

Dolly rolled her eyes. ‘I don't believe it. We're getting sympathy from racing drivers now. This is so uncool. What is Mum like?'

‘It's getting worse,' hissed Fred. ‘She's asking him to let us follow him.'

Dolly shook her head. ‘No. She can't. She wouldn't.'

But she could and she would. Laura, beaming relief, drove smoothly and calmly the last thirty miles through the fog to Cambridge escorted by a twenty-year-old racing driver and two cringing children. Inigo had laughed and pulled her into his arms when he heard.

‘I love the way you have no shame,' he cried, kissing her forehead. Laura couldn't see what there was to have shame about; she was just glad to be alive.

Since that occasion, when she can be bothered, Laura has been practising breathing exercises and Pilates, and she is sure they will both help immeasurably. She has also taken the precaution of purchasing a tape
version of
White Fang
, the only choice, among various hip and thigh diets and Engelbert Humperdinck collections, in the petrol station that could appeal to all three of them. She, Dolly and Fred thus arrive at Pug Paradise, the beguilingly named home of Cavolo Nero's offspring, emotionally shattered and a little afraid of canine capabilities.

It immediately becomes clear that Pug Paradise, a small pink house surrounded by fields of sheep outside a sleepy town in Suffolk, is a very wonderful place. Laura peers through the wicket gate and up a path between white narcissus, red tulips and little blue grape hyacinths to the kitchen door. Without having met her, Laura longs to have the life that Marjorie the pug owner leads almost more than she wants the pug itself.

Marjorie greets her, a dead pigeon swinging in one hand as she comes through the gate, the other positioned ready to shake with Laura.

‘Hello there. I'll just feed this to the ferrets and then we can start. You two could do with a bit of fresh air, couldn't you,' she says, nodding at Dolly and Fred as they climb out of the car stretching and yawning, rubbing tired eyes before they can compose themselves and grunt a greeting. Marjorie clearly has little truck with teenagers, and folds her lips in disapproval, looking at them measuringly. ‘Why
don't you come and help me give this bird to the ferrets. Can either of you pluck?'

‘I can,' says Fred, rushing to catch up with Marjorie who is climbing steps up to a thatched barn and a line of dog kennels. ‘How many ferrets do you have?'

Dolly holds back, scowling at her mother. ‘Why are we looking at ferrets? We're here for the pugs and I want to get to Hedley's in time for
Top of the Pops:'

Laura has got out her camera and is photographing the flower beds, and a trio of enchanting lavender-coloured hens who are pecking about next to a tub of primroses. The scene is exquisite and desirable. She has to breathe deeply to prevent herself from panting with longing.

‘This is so lovely. I think we should try and do something like this at the Gate House. It's got a garden, I think.' Then, as Dolly's remark sinks in, she lowers the camera, saying anxiously, ‘But you know we aren't staying with Hedley, don't you? We've got our own place now. Hedley has lent us some old beds and we're moving in tonight. And I'm afraid we haven't got a television.' Laura braces herself for the wrath of Dolly to engulf her like a tidal wave, but nothing happens. She realises she has instinctively closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders for impact. With no little effort she shakes off the
fear of teen rage and quickly stands tall, wiping her hands over her face and assuming an alert,
Blue Peter-ish
expression, very glad that Marjorie is off doing something gruesome with ferrets and hasn't seen her being idiotic.

Dolly's fury has been curbed by the appearance of five teeny pug puppies on the lawn. ‘Look, Mum, have you ever seen anything so sweet? Please, please can we have one? You can have all my lunch money for next term and the one after to pay for it.'

Laura can't help thinking that at two pounds a day, the lunch money isn't going to make a lot of headway into the gigantic pug debt they will have if she succumbs. Dolly is on her knees beside the puppies and they are climbing over her, wriggling and snuffling, yapping their delight. Two are jet black, and in the evening sunlight they gleam exotic and irresistible, while the three brown ones (known as fawn, Laura remembers reading) are a blur of soft cuteness. Tears start at Laura's eyes. She wipes them away as Marjorie and Fred approach, Fred carrying a chocolate-coloured ferret.

‘Mum, this is Vice. Marjorie's husband rescued her from Budgen's car park and they've taught her all sorts of tricks and she doesn't bite like Precious and if you get a pug, couldn't I have this dear little ferret – please, Mum, please.'

Laura puts both hands behind her back, determined not to be bitten by this creature. Her thoughts stray to Inigo, and how much he is annoying her at the moment. Marjorie looms, a brisk, kindly presence, with a good, no-nonsense approach to life, illustrated by the one short conversation Laura has had with her. Marjorie would never stoop to using animals as a tool to defy her husband; Marjorie would never allow herself to be blackmailed by her children.

Laura coughs, and gingerly reaches to stroke the ferret. ‘Slow down, Fred, we need to think about all this very carefully.'

Marjorie rests a hand on her arm and whispers importantly, ‘I must tell you, your son is very gifted with vermin. Very.' She blinks, and her watery gaze slides back to Fred. ‘I don't often like to recommend ferrets to children, but he is exceptional.'

Reflecting on what a simple and effective ploy it is to praise a child to its mother, Laura nods and almost agrees to the ferret. With an effort she manages instead to say, ‘Yes. Well, let's see when we've talked about the pugs. Which are the ones needing homes?'

Marjorie suddenly squats on the grass, then rolls down until she is lying full length, an arresting spectacle with her laced-up shoes and pleated skirt. She calls out, ‘Bruschee-etta, Aaa-ïoooli, here, pups, here
now!' And from the tumbling mass on Dolly's knee, the smallest black, and one fawn puppy pounce up to Marjorie and hurl themselves on her chest.

‘Bruschetta is the bitch. Aïoli is the black dog. Both perfect pugs. Faultless.' Marjorie sits up and taking each puppy in turn, fondles them, turning them over, pinching their ears gently, splaying the pads of their paws. ‘And you know all the pug protocol, of course, so I won't go into that with you, but do look, they're responding to training awfully well, and they're only seven weeks old.'

Marjorie topples them onto their backs and they loll, tongues protruding pinkly, looking absurd and like Chinese lions on the springy grass. Laura finds that her mouth is hanging slack and open with longing. Fred prods her; even he has been beguiled by the snub-nosed enquiring faces of the baby pugs.

‘Come on, Mum, you know you want one – that's why we came. It's just what we need to catch the rabbits in Norfolk. Just choose.' Laura realises he must be smitten to imagine that a pug could catch a rabbit.

Dolly rushes up to her mother, yanking her arm, begging with tears in her eyes, ‘Oh Mum, I think it would be such fun,' she whispers.

Laura imagines herself in the garden she believes to exist at the Gate House. In her mind's eye, she is
sitting at a small table under a lilac tree in full bloom. A few hens, just like Marjorie's in fact, scratch about nearby, and a manly figure, perhaps even Inigo, can be seen doing something useful and not balancing things, over to the right, while to the left Dolly is picking a perfect bunch of fragrant flowers in happy animation instead of sulky torpor and Fred is leading a chocolate ferret through a tiny box hedging maze and teaching it to remember its way, as a true ferret whisperer does. The tea tray is there, and so is the pug, smug and black on a cushion at her feet. The picture is perfect. Highly camp perhaps, but perfect.

Laura, with the sensation of walking off a cliff, shuts her eyes and says firmly, ‘Marjorie, we'll have Aïoli, the boy, if we may. Oh, and the ferret too. We'll collect them next weekend.'

Laura and the twins depart, very much poorer and none the wiser as to what ‘pug protocol' might be.

‘Oh, we can look it up on the Internet,' says Dolly, embracing as much of her mother as she can without garrotting her from the back seat. ‘Let's get going to Crumbly now, we've got to make a dog room immediately.'

‘And a ferret house,' adds Fred.

Laura, accelerating northwards, is so touched and
delighted by her children's excitement that she has no remorse at spending Inigo's money on something he will detest. Adolescent enthusiasm is a quality beyond price.

Enthusiasm fuels Dolly, Fred and Laura all the way from Suffolk and right up to the front door of the Gate House, where it runs out abruptly.

‘We can't get in, there's no key,' moans Dolly from beneath a pile of pillows and clothes. ‘I can't carry all this and there's nowhere to put it down.'

This is true. Looking around, Laura is surprised by how her memory had pruned and weeded the garden, which in reality is a seething mass of early sprouting nettles and brambles with a few bright yellow daffodils dropping their petals into a small dank pond. It is dusk, and the air is damp and cold; a low white mist, which Laura remembers is the sea har, creeps into the further reaches of the garden. Shivering, she dumps her box of food on a rickety old chair by the weed-strewn path and kneels by the front door, feeling with her hands for a stone under which a key might lie.

‘Mum, quick, there's a goat here, and its udder is
massive. Shouldn't we milk it?' Fred rushes from the back of the cottage where he has been exploring, his trousers dark up to the knees with wet from the tangled grasses.

‘I didn't know we were having a goat,' says Laura faintly. ‘I just want the key.' She looks up at the darkening sky and, astonishingly, sees a key dangling from a piece of string tied to the old apple tree. ‘What a weird place for a key,' she marvels.

Dolly snatches it. ‘Oh thank God, let's get inside and then we'll think about the sodding goat.'

From the state of the garden, Laura had been dreading what might be in the house, but to her relief the electricity is on, and Hedley has clearly been making an effort. A small and ancient Rayburn stove is lit and giving off delicious heat. Dolly and Fred rush as one to lean against it, both wrapped in duvets, their lips tinged blue because the warmth of today has left them bare-legged and unprepared for a chilly evening. In front of the Rayburn is a chipped red gloss painted table and four multi-coloured chairs that Laura remembers decorating one teenage summer. On the table is a jam jar of tulips and a note.

Welcome Laura and family
.

I've sorted the house out a bit. Sorry about the goat, I had her at home, but she kept getting out
and coming back here. I think she's missing Mrs Jenkins. Could you just keep an eye on her and I'll make plans for her next week? Her name is Grass. I'll drop by to see you all at breakfast-time, with Tamsin if I can get her up. Love, Hedley
.

Laura presses her hands over her eyes. ‘We're acquiring animals as if it's it's Christmas,' she says bleakly. ‘A pug, a ferret – and now a goat. She's called Grass and I think we'd better try and milk her before she explodes. It doesn't sound as though Hedley has even thought of it.'

‘How, how, how?' clamours Fred, hopping with excitement at the prospect of an interactive animal. He and Dolly rummage for boots in one of their dustbin bags of clothes. Laura, frustrated by trying to choose what anyone might wear, finally packed everything by pouring all the contents of the children's drawers into black bin liners. Surely it will be a perk of having her own house that she will leave country clothes here? Inigo will love that degree of domestic organisation, it might make up for the dog. Or the goat. But definitely not for the ferret. Nothing will make up for the ferret.

Dolly and Fred vanish out into the dark wielding a cup and a saucepan, Fred's torch dancing a beam
before them. Laura looks helplessly at the tide of clothing chaos spreading across the bumpy tiled floor of her new kitchen. She needs to get all this stuff put away, but there is nowhere to put it. In the end she drags it in a heap to the bottom of the stairs and dumps it. They can sort it, she decides, hearing their voices as they pass the window.

‘Here we come, Grass. Don't worry, we're highly qualified milkmen,' yells Dolly.

‘I'm going to aim the milk so it goes into the cup first and then flows over and into the pan,' boasts Fred.

‘Fat chance,' laughs Dolly, and Laura grins, as they move away towards the shed busy answering the call of nature instead of indulging in their usual evening activities which include zapping life away on a computer game. It is, she muses, a proud moment for a parent when offspring choose to milk a goat over watching
Top of the Pops
. Not that choice had much to do with it, of course, as there is no television, but Laura takes great pride in the fact that they haven't even mentioned
Top of the Pops
since they arrived here.

Twenty minutes later, when the twins still haven't come in and she has cooked three rather rubbery omelettes and made lovely unhealthy Angel Delight for pudding, Laura heads outside to find them. She has a candle in a jam jar, but still she stumbles through the now inky night, regretting the lack of
a streetlamp glow in the countryside for the first time in her life.

‘Ow, bastard,' she curses as a bramble spirals around her ankle.

‘Mum, are you there?' Dolly's face, ghostly pale in Laura's candlelight, appears over the half-door of the shed. ‘Grass kicked Fred and it's bleeding into the milk and Fred knocked the pan over so we've only got a tiny amount.'