Green Grass (16 page)

‘Oh well, I don't think we were planning to make ice cream with it.' Thankful to be able to see where to go, Laura steps over the last few brambles and enters.

‘No, but I thought we could make goat's cheese and we could sell it at the school fair next week.' Dolly's arms, and even loose strands of her jaunty pony tail, droop with disappointment. Laura hugs her.

‘What a good idea. I hadn't thought of goat's cheese.' She is beginning to see the point of Grass.

Dolly and Fred have hung the torch on a hook in the roof, creating a well of light at the centre of the shed. Madly illuminated, with vast threatening shadows, Fred, nursing his bleeding hand, is squatting on the straw next to the goat. He and Grass look to Laura like extras in a voodoo horror film. Grass chews a mouthful of leaves placidly, her long yellow eyes unblinking and expressionless until Fred leans
forward to touch her udder; she then aquires a look of evil cunning and a back leg springs like a piston towards Fred's face. He dodges and tries again, this time successfully grabbing her. There is a satisfying hiss and Laura imagines a foaming stream of milk hitting the pan, swirling creamy and full.

‘Mmm, wonderful,' she says, not noticing that she has stepped onto a pile of goat shit, black pellets round and coarse like peppercorns.

‘It's not going very well, Mum,' says Fred, passing the tin saucepan to show her. Laura is surprised and disappointed to see that the milk hardly covers the bottom of the pan and what they have is gruesomely tinged with pink. ‘It takes forever and she hates it. I'm starving and I've had enough. I wish I hadn't spilt some.'

Laura rubs his shoulders sympathetically. ‘I would have spilt it too,' she says. ‘Let's give up now. You've done so well, and I should think that getting any out is a bonus for her. We'll try again in the morning. She'll be better then because it's when you're meant to do milking.' Laura is pleased with this notion, it makes sense. She is doing well so far as a countrywoman, and with the prospect of goat's cheese in the morning, is pretty convinced that soon they will be self-sufficient. Congratulating herself and her children silently, she unties Grass who promptly steps back onto her foot,

squishing it deeply and painfully into another pile of droppings. So great is the pain that even a combination of fluent swearing and karmic deep breathing takes several moments to soothe Laura.

‘Shit. Oww. Bugger. Literally shit,' she groans. ‘I wonder if this bodes ill for all our animal husbandry? We'd better buy a goat manual tomorrow.'

‘Let's call Dad and tell him what we're doing,' says Dolly, holding her mother's arm and guiding her back towards the cottage as if she is a very ancient person. Laura rather enjoys this.

‘Mmm. Yes, we must,' she agrees, while thinking, He'll go spare. He thinks this is a decent centrally heated holiday cottage with double glazing; and he hates all animals, so he's not going to like hearing that we've already got a goat.

She sits down for supper with the children and lights a festive candle in a jam jar. ‘But let's not talk to him right now,' she adds. The omelettes are a small triumph; they taste much better than they look. This is an improvement on the last time Laura made omelettes, when no one could eat them because they were so full of eggshell and grease from the cooking oil she used in place of butter. She is bullish now, fuelled by two glasses of wine and feeling not unlike Elizabeth David. Defiance grows as she washes up in the ancient green-stained stone sink and thinks, What
the hell, it's time I did what I want to do for a bit. He always does, let's ring him and tell him.

She calls Dolly away from her self-imposed chore of decorating the loo door with the family photographs Laura has brought with her. These photographs span the whole of the twins' lives and are kept permanently in the back of the car in an old box. Laura likes to have them with her wherever she goes, as she has a longstanding fantasy that she is going to stick them into an album, thus editing her family life to an existence of magazine glamour and happy smiling picnics.

Dolly has begun her collage with a picture of Inigo baking, his arms a blur of flour, his expression relaxed, almost beatific, and nothing like it will be when Dolly tells him what they are doing. Next to it is one of Laura bathing the two-year-old twins, dishevelled with drops of water, pushing back her hair from her face and laughing. The tiny twins are laughing too. Laura stares at the snapshot, and feels nostalgia for that moment and a hundred like it. They were still in New York then, and life was simple. Inigo was a struggling young artist and Laura looked after the babies, none of this working together nonsense which now engulfs her life.

Dolly, waving a phone in search of a signal, climbs onto a chair. ‘Hello? Hello, Dad. It's me, Dolly … What? Oh bugger, the signal's gone.'

The chair wasn't good enough, and now Dolly is standing on the kitchen table, towering over Fred who is carving a handle for a stick he found in the garden. The light from the one dusty lamp is dim, and Fred has his torch precariously balanced between the bread and a mug to illuminate his work. Dolly, redialling, crouches suddenly and makes a platform for the torch, securing it so no matter how she moves on the table, it remains stationary.

Fred grins, she stands up again, shouting, ‘Dad, can you hear me? We're at the Gate House. It's like really medieval, there's green stuff dripping in the bathroom – it's so cool like a dungeon to look at but I so don't want to ever have a bath in there, and we've got a goat, it's like really adorable—'

‘I think that's enough for him to get used to for this evening,' Laura interrupts hastily, reaching up for the telephone. ‘Hello, Inigo? Inigo?' She can hear nothing.

Dolly shakes her head. ‘It doesn't work, Mum. All he said was “Fuck” and then he got cut off. We'll have to ring him from a land line tomorrow. Where do you think there is one?'

Relieved, and virtuous because she has tried, Laura heads for bed, earlier than the children who are listening to a band called Wet Biscuit or similar on the radio. They are listening to the radio together. Laura
allows herself a small smug moment. It's like
Cider with Rosie
. Well, all right not exactly, because that was set in the West Country; maybe
The Go Between
, which was definitely set in Norfolk. Actually, not
The Go Between
– that repressed-love thing isn't quite right. Anyway, this moment is very good and it's definitely like a rite of passage novel set in the twentieth century in Britain but not
Trainspotting
. Laura loves it all, especially the fact that she is suddenly remembering snatches from so many books. Wishing to keep the cosy mood alive, she finds herself a Fair Isle jersey in her own dustbin bag, to wear on top of her nightie.

Laura's bedroom is small and in the eaves above the Rayburn. Despite the warm chimney breast, the temperature in the room is bracing, and it looks as if it will remain so, as the low casement window is jammed open and obscured now by thrusting clematis stems and a tangle of roses thorns. Hedley has added some homely touches in here, Laura notices. Two balding skin rugs from the attics at Crumbly have been hurled onto her floorboards, and another smaller skin inadequately covers the large mattress. The window is at floor level, and Laura drags her mattress into the middle of the room, positioning it so that she will be able to see out in the morning. A large beetle bursts through the foliage at the window and scrambles across the ceiling towards the light bulb, buzzing
crossly. It misses and bounces off to swerve at Laura. She shrieks and hides her head in her hands, turning off the light and jumping onto the bed, hating the late-night business of lowlife creatures. In the dark she fumbles for socks and a scarf to add to her night attire, and would complete the outfit with a woolly hat if she could be bothered to go downstairs to get one. Making a mental note to buy hot-water bottles tomorrow, Laura falls asleep.

She awakes with a start. There is no thump of music from downstairs, so Dolly and Fred must have gone to bed, but there are loud trundling noises near her head. Outside an owl hoots mellifluously, adding to the eeriness of the moment. Laura's heart beats violently, she is stiff with fear; it takes an effort to relax her shoulders enough to move her arm. Holding her breath, she slowly reaches out to turn on the light. Two mice look at her for a moment, then whisk out of sight, scampering beyond her bed and under the skirting board. Laura presses her hand against her mouth and manager not to utter a sound. She leaps off the mattress and runs down to find a woolly hat, the horror of the notion that the mice might build a nest in her hair pumping through her veins so she feels wide awake. It is almost light by the time she can relax enough to fall asleep again, and in the darkest moments, Laura admits to herself that Norfolk has
a long way to go before it can compete properly with London. She drifts off amid happy thoughts of restaurants, shoe shops, florists and cinemas with not a mouse to be seen anywhere in the light, mud-free streets of the West End.

Sleep is short-lived. Laura is woken by raucous birdsong. She tries stuffing a pillow in the window casement, but the dawn chorus continues unabated. By seven o'clock she is dressed; she stands on the doorstep with a cup of tea, watching the sun begin to sweep between the trees beyond her garden. It is impossible not to smile. Laura is suffused with a sense of peace, and holds onto this moment while her tea cools, before wandering out to have a proper look at the garden. Surrounded by a small wooden fence, and facing a clearing on the edge of the beechwood, Laura's Gate House is like a child's drawing, squat with a pointed gable above the front door and castellations like steps meeting at the top above her bedroom window. The garden at the front is neat, with a central path from the gate to the front door, and another path leading round the back, past a small orchard and an overgrown vegetable patch, to the shed where Grass lives. Beyond that is an area of rocketing nettles and long grass, a small silted-up pond, and then the path reappears by a dilapidated greenhouse, bringing Laura back to the front garden again.

I can walk around my house, she thinks, when she has done it. What an amazing feeling. Laura and Inigo's house in London is terraced, her parents' house in Cambridge was a semi-detached villa, and Crumbly, although it isn't joined to any other house, is impossible to walk round because of the hedges and barns which abut the building. Laura does it again a few times, reminding herself of Pooh and Piglet's search for the Woozles as she follows her own footsteps through the long grass and back to the front door. On her third perambulation she notices that the drain under the kitchen window is blocked and she stoops to prod it with a stick. A frog, glistening bright green, scrambles for cover. Laura crouches to see where he has gone, and is startled to find a community of them leaping and darting away from her.

‘Aah, I see. You are migrating to water. You need the pond to be cleared so it can fill up.' Laura sets to this task with vigour. It is much more satisfying than unpacking clothes, and more necessary. Another frog leaps from a tussock as Laura heaves sedge and old netting from the pond. She hopes he will spread the word.

She is in the kitchen, making a bacon sandwich – the most effective sensory alarm clock for rousing her children – when Hedley arrives.

‘You look the part,' he says, taking in Laura's mud-covered jeans, her boots flung across the doorstep. She turns to him, wreathed in smiles.

‘Oh Hedley, it's so wonderful, thank you for this. It's going to be so great.'

‘It is a repairing lease,' says Hedley, feeling that this euphoric moment is the right one to slip in the small print. ‘I've got the papers here for you and Inigo to sign.'

‘He's not here – he had to go to Germany. Anyway, this is my thing, and I want to be the leaseholder.'

Hedley raises his eyebrows. ‘Well, I suppose you can sort that out between you,' he says. ‘But let's get it done now.' He moves to clear a space for his papers. ‘Eugh, there's a toad on the table. Is it Inigo, here after all, in his country attire?' Hedley enjoys his own joke hugely, nudging Fred who has appeared, rubbing his eyes.

‘Oh very funny,' says Laura. ‘Actually it's one of my frogs. It's waiting for me to finish cleaning out its pond.'

Hedley groans. ‘It is so typical of you to start managing pondlife, isn't it?' he remarks. ‘But you know these aren't frogs, they're toads and they don't need a pond, the drain is fine.'

Laura remains defiant. ‘Well, I want to make them a pond. Anyway, I'm not making it, I'm restoring the
one that's there. How high do you think the water table is here?'

‘Not very high, the soil is too sandy. Now this is what you sign, Laura.' Hedley flourishes his pen; his sister takes it and is about to sign when a thought occurs to her.

‘Actually, I don't want to seem untrusting, but can we sort out the goat first?'

Hedley reaches across to the plate of bacon, as does Fred.

‘We're keeping the goat, Mum,' says Fred. ‘She's part of the Gate House furniture.'

Laura senses that she is in a losing position with this argument. ‘Oh all right, we'll keep her until Inigo comes.'

Dolly appears, tousled in the doorway, clutching her phone.

‘God, do you sleep with that thing glued to your ear?' Fred asks, pouring cereal into a cup and filling it to the brim with milk before sliding several heaped spoonfuls of sugar in for good measure.

Dolly ignores him. ‘Mum, Dad just called. He's coming back tomorrow and he's coming here.'

Hedley groans. ‘I wonder if he'll want to come too?' he says half to himself. ‘Laura, I was going to ask you all to come with me to a christening tomorrow, but I don't think Inigo would like it.'

Laura is quite sure he is right. ‘No, Inigo doesn't believe in what he calls the bourgeois patina of religion that you get in the Church of England. It's one of his pet subjects, like farming.'