Hens Dancing (3 page)

March 20th

Nits have staged a comeback. A posse is installed on Giles's head, smaller ones grouped behind the ears, grading up to the crown of his head where the field-marshal nits, creatures on the scale of an insect Arnold Schwarzenegger, have settled. Felix has them too, and as usual I start scratching as soon as I spy theirs.

I am an old hand at nit work, and am expert on different methods. The doctor used to give us highly toxic lotion which a) didn't work, and b) has since been condemned as brain-damaging. We keep away from orthodox cures now and have adopted a series of treatments through discussion with other infestees. Tea tree shampoo and conditioner is the current success story, combined with vigorous use of a nit comb, although here opinion is divided. My mother, despite insisting that my brother Desmond and I have never had nits, swears by the plastic comb, while Lila snorts in disbelief at the idea and waves her metal-toothed one as if it is a magic wand. We use both, and it is gratifying in the same awful way that
picking spots is gratifying, to see the nits lying helpless on the comb and then to guillotine them with a sharp fingernail.

I forget to de-nit myself and remember on the way to the hairdresser. Arrive there in a welter of embarrassment at what they may find. Mercifully Emily, my usual coiffeuse, is in a trance of gloom and stares at the ceiling without speaking once during her twenty-minute assault on my hair. This technique does not make me looked groomed and expensive, but at least it saves me the hideous humiliation of being outed as a nit carrier.

March 29th

Easter Sunday, and we have lunch with my mother. Roast lamb, mint sauce, apple crumble. This has been Easter lunch ever since I can remember, and is the high point of my mother's culinary calendar. We find her painting her fingernails alternate red and blue stripes.

‘It won't be ready for a bit,' she says, ‘probably an hour. Go and see what you can find in the garden.'

She has a large carrier bag behind her back, and as we follow the children outside, she surreptitiously reaches into it, replenishing stocks of miniature coloured eggs on garden seats and steps. ‘Come back, you've missed some,'
she calls to Giles, now vanishing into undergrowth at the bottom of the garden. Then she turns to me.

‘I've hidden a few miniatures and a couple of packets of Silk Cut as well. Just to make it fun for us geriatrics and The Gnome. Come on, let's go and find them, it's time for a pre-lunch drink.'

The Gnome, my mother's lodger, emerges from his caravan, called from his star maps and astrological calculations by whoops of triumph from outside. He is particularly Hobbit-esque today, with ink smudges on his face and a short brown suede jacket with brass buttons and a belt. All he lacks is a pointy hat. Felix crawls out from under the caravan step and charges towards the Gnome's front door.

‘Oh, no, dear child.' The Gnome is so softly spoken that his voice has been recorded and used to signify conscience and also dew, on local radio productions. I can never believe that anyone can hear him, but somehow they do. The Gnome smiles, bestowing watery good tidings on the boys.

‘Don't go in there, it's just a mess. Here, the Easter Rabbit asked me to pass these on.'

He holds out two toffee apples with long brown felt ears. Felix and Giles thank him and vanish behind the caravan. My mother beckons to him.

‘Come in for a drink, or rather out. I've put a table down by the stream.'

The Gnome looks pleased, and follows us down a winding path to the tiny fairy stream, where my mother has arranged three small chairs and a table. Water chatters over blue and brown pebbles in the one-foot-wide ripple of river as it makes its way through the garden. A pink jug and bowl lie on the bank, and a small pair of pink wellington boots. My mother sinks into one of the chairs and lights a cigarette.

‘It's really for The Beauty, but we may as well sit here for a minute with her and see how many of those miniatures we can spot. They've got ready-made Bloody Marys in them.'

The Beauty, like an empress, sits by the water's edge, chewing chocolate and wiggling her boot-clad feet. We, her subjects, drink Bloody Marys straight from little cold bottles, and absorb spring birdsong in the pale sunshine.

April 1st

Suspicions should have been aroused by the arrival of Giles and Felix by my bedside.

‘Hello, Mummy, we've made you some tea.'

Dear little tousled children with pyjamas on. Kiss them as I struggle into wakefulness, and do not even mind that it is six-thirty and still dark, thanks to British Summer
Time, because I am touched by their kindness. Nestle against pillows with darling sons on either side. Both very smiley. Sweet. Sip daintily at my tea.

‘Euugh! Who on earth taught you to make tea? This has got salt in it, you twits.'

‘Ha, ha, April Fool.' They dance around my bedroom squealing and laughing. ‘Tricked you, tricked you. We wanted to make an apple-pie bed, but there weren't any apples.'

Become helpless laughing myself, and with their Exocet instincts for a weak moment they wring a promise of apple-pie-bed instruction from me.

‘Then we can do it to Daddy, next time we go to stay.' An excellent notion.

April 8th

Vivienne and Simon, local farmers and stalwart friends, arrive for tea with three pigeons, a pair of ducks and a mother hen with chicks.

‘Happy Easter,' beams Simon, kissing my cheeks on the threshold, leaning in through the back door and swinging a pigeon from each hand.

Giles has been up a tree overseeing the nest-building activities of various small birds. He slithers down, having
spotted the pigeons, and helps Simon mend the holes in the wire netting of the henhouse.

‘They can all live together in there,' pronounces Simon, ‘but we'll have to get rid of some of those young cocks. You've got more than you have hens, you know.'

‘Venetia, don't let him bully you. He loves killing things, and will find any excuse,' Vivienne intervenes, as Simon marches towards the henhouse with a broom in his hands.

‘I'll leave it until dusk, then they'll be in the house. It's easier when they're asleep.'

I am unkeen on this cold-blooded murder. ‘Can't I just give them away?' I plead.

‘Don't be feeble,' says Simon briskly. ‘No one wants cockerels except to eat, so you may as well eat them yourself.'

Fortunately, the execution is forgotten in a sudden flurry of activity. A car's wheel bowls into the yard, hotly pursued by my mother's car.

‘Does she not know where the spare tyre lives?' jokes Simon. It transpires that the wheel has fallen off the car.

‘It happened just by your gate. Thank God. I could have been on the superhighway.' My mother clambers out of her seat and stands in the yard, huddled around a comforting cigarette.

‘She means the main road,' Felix whispers to Vivienne.

My mother continues, ‘It just kept rolling, and I thought it was better to stay with the wheel than to stop. Odd that the car didn't tip up. I was rather impressed by it. I suppose they balance them in case of this sort of thing.'

‘I don't think car manufacturers expect the wheels to fall off their vehicles,' says Simon drily, his voice wafting from beneath the car, where he is examining the axle.

April 17th

The financial struggle is exacerbated by the non-arrival of Charles's usual cheque. When I telephone him, he says that he forgot to post it this week because he and Helena were skiing. However, he will send it now. Then he coughs and says, ‘And maybe to help finances, you might have Helena's aunt to stay tomorrow night. She's bringing her bloodhounds to Norfolk for some filming. The film company will pay you.'

Even though they are related to Helena, I cannot resist the idea of film-star bloodhounds and agree to have them. When I put the telephone down I am irritated to realise that I accidentally let the skiing holiday through without comment.

April 18th

The bloodhounds arrive with Val, aunt of the poison dwarf Helena. They leap, with sinewy grace, from a brand-new Range Rover, at precisely the moment that Rags returns from her excavation of the rubbish bags at the bottom of the drive. She launches herself at the nearest one, her absurd, clockwork yaps ricocheting off the door panel. The bloodhounds retreat in horror, but the larger one is too slow: Rags leaps and embeds her teeth in its voluminous and probably very valuable lower lip. It yowls and runs to its car for comfort with Rags dangling from the mighty jaw. Luckily Val thinks it's funny, otherwise we could be facing a vast bill for trauma and surgery to the film star.

Felix and Giles throw sticks for the bloodhounds and Rags dashes to and fro yapping, determined not to be left out. Val comes to life wondrously at the offer of a gin and tonic and I pump her for
Hello!
-style information about the famous people she has met. She can only remember films by the animals and doesn't know who anyone is.

‘Oh, yes, they used Jane Bentley's horses for
Sense and Sensibility,
and three of my pugs. Chris Dowell was the lucky one on that – two hundred white doves she took down there and they never got them out of their cages. She got paid two grand just for being there.'

‘But did you meet Alan Rickman?'

‘Who? Oh, you mean the bloke with the black-saddle horse. No… he didn't look much once he got off the horse. I'd be hard put recognising him, to be honest.'

There is evidently no point in pursuing this line with her, so I try a different tack.

‘Could Rags do film work?' Val laughs more than I feel is necessary at this, and I am hugely relieved when she asks if there is a local pub she can eat in. I offer to babysit for the bloodhounds and am accepted. Wonder if I can charge extra for this service.

April 21st

Garden work is badly needed right now, or the whole thing will bolt and be gone for the summer. I do wish I had not sown so many seeds. The conservatory is littered with trays: they are in the cold frame and perched in the back kitchen where Sidney, the cat, instead of using them as a litter tray as one might expect, sleeps in them, crushing the struggling seedlings straight back into the dirt from whence they came. I must plant them to save them from suffocation by cat.

I array myself in an anorak caked with plaster and dog hair and an orange bobble hat and step gingerly out into the elements. I do not look fetching and have picked
a bad day for gardening; dirty grey clouds spit rain in flurries and the bullish wind pushes me around. I would give up, but my mother has taken The Beauty for the day, and I must seize this opportunity to have uninterrupted access to soil, compost, rose thorns and other items unacceptable to a baby. I am sidetracked, as I wheel numerous seed trays towards the borders, by my short red wellingtons. They are on my feet, but I keep glimpsing them out of the corner of my eye, and they make me uneasy. I am pretty sure that they look absurd, and even foul. Still, no one can see me, so it doesn't matter and I won't wear them again. I plant a row of black pansies and the sun rushes out from behind a cloud, the wind drops and a waft of spring warmth envelops me. Spreading my arms wide, I throw myself on the grass and gaze up at the infinite blue.

‘Mrs Denny?'

I must have closed my eyes and gone to sleep. Opening them now, there is a face where there had been sky. Slate-grey eyes laugh, but a polite and serious voice says, ‘I'm looking for Mrs Denny.'

‘Oh yes, that's me.' I must get up, but how? He is still looking at me from beneath dark, arched brows.

‘I'm David Lanyon,' he continues. ‘You rang me last week about some work on your bathroom.'

I don't in fact hear him say much of this; I am wrestling with rosy embarrassment and trying to get up
without showing my pink face. Am convinced that my mouth was open when I was asleep, and I may have been snoring. Glimpse a wide grin, and buy time for myself by pretending to pull a thistle from the grass.

‘Yes, yes. It's in the house. Do go and have a look at it.' He doesn't go. Instead he holds out a hand to help me up as though I am a thousand years old.

‘Will you show me where it is?' I probably seem antique to him. He is about my age but not careworn and wrinkled by responsibility. Can't help staring at his unlined countenance, his straight nose and then at his trainers which have silver ribs and are very unrustic. Suddenly realise that once again he has been speaking and I have missed it.

‘… Could be the best way to approach it for now, if you agree.'

‘Oh yes, I agree absolutely,' I start to gabble. ‘I'm so glad we agree about that, and everything.'

He looks surprised. ‘But I haven't shown you the prototype yet.'

‘No, but I'm sure it will be lovely.'

Thankfully we have now reached the bathroom, pausing on the way for me to shed boots and awful exterior layers in the hall. Underneath not much better. Why didn't I notice that my shirt is missing most buttons when I dressed this morning? How can my standards be so low? Must reform and refine my wardrobe immediately.

I show him into the bathroom with a flourish of my arm and just stop myself making a trumpet-call sound. It transpires that he wants to build a majestic bathroom with cupboards and so forth, completely free, if I will allow him to have it photographed for publicity and for his brochure. My only cost will be paint when it is finished. This is fantastic. I agree, and wildly say I don't even need to approve the sketches. He shakes my hand fervently and capers about saying what perfect proportions the bathroom has. After he has gone I begin to regret having relinquished any control, but cannot think of a way to unsay it without seeming rude and untrusting.

April 23rd

Lie about groaning for most of the morning due to hangover. This was caused by an evening alone with a bottle of wine and a mirror. Not a good combination. At eleven p.m. Kris Kristofferson and I were alone together and he was reminding me that: