Hens Dancing (6 page)

‘What a brilliant idea, and you can help me catch them.'

Armed with a red candlewick dressing gown unearthed in the barn, we set off with The Beauty to catch ducklings. My mother hobbles in an embarrassing fashion, having broken the heel off one of her shoes in the
dogfight. The ducklings are milling about in a bed of euphorbias and look as though they are clockwork as they whirr along behind the duck.

‘We'll head them into this run, then you can throw that thing over them,' says the Christian. It sounds foolproof and simple. It is a fiasco. The mother duck flies straight out of the run and then zooms up and down quacking at her trapped children who keep appearing out of the sleeves and around the edges of the flung dressing gown. Moments later the euphorbias are quivering again, with anxious duck noises emerging. Suddenly the mother duck breaks cover and, head held high, quacking encouragement, she leads her fluffy string past us, through the hedge and out into the water-meadow.

‘They're going to the stream. I doubt if many of them will survive to return with her this evening,' says the Christian in a voice of doom, and she looks at me as though it is my fault. My mother also looks at me reproachfully.

‘We'll try again tomorrow, then.' I try to keep good cheer uppermost in my voice until we are out of hearing. ‘Why did you look at me like that? I couldn't help it.'

My mother shakes her head. ‘Far too hasty in your approach – it's always been your trouble.'

I decide to let this deeply provocative remark go, and ask instead, ‘So what do you think of the bathroom?'

‘Oh, they didn't show me; we were talking about
sculpture. David seems to have a much better idea than that pig thing for my Wilderness. He wants to make a bacchantine temple.' She bends to smell a branch of apple blossom at the bottom of the drive. ‘How lovely spring is,' she muses.

I take deep breaths to prevent the sour-lemon words within me from coming out. I succeed. Instead of saying, ‘Typical, trust him to see what you're made of,' I say, ‘That sounds splendid.'

‘Anyway, I've asked him to come and have a drink tomorrow evening so he can see the garden. You can come if you like.'

‘How kind,' I smile, and my mother gives me a sharp look.

‘It'll do you good to get out without your children. When is That Man having them, anyway?'

‘He's coming with the poison dwarf to fetch the boys on Saturday. They're taking them to Centre Pares for the night.'

My mother snorts. ‘God, how pukesome. Still, a weekend off. I'll have The Beauty, you can go to London and have fun, or do whatever you like.' She sees me trying to think of an excuse and raises a hand. ‘It can be payment for the ducklings if you ever catch them. And think of the bliss of escaping from this junkyard of bath stuff.'

May 16th

Life is a bed of rose oil and I am blissed out after aromatherapy, and only a third of the way through my weekend at heavenly health farm. My friend Rose is joining me this evening for a couple of lettuce leaves and a celery stick, and I have not a care in the world. Even Rags is taken care of; David is house-sitting for me and will get on with drawing up the plans for the plumbing system, which presently resembles the Minotaur's labyrinth sans string and Ariadne. But anyway, I just don't care.

Everyone here wears sorbet-coloured tracksuits, and some sportier folk even have tinted sun visors. I can see three oldsters, backs curved like commas, arms bent into marathon-runner mode, trotting in a little line around the gracious and groomed gardens as I write. One in mint, one in peach and one in plum. Musing as to why the particularly nasty palette of colours for shell suits are always given edible names, I photograph the line as they stagger past. Proof, should anyone require it, that it's not all sybaritism here. No, no, no.

Am feeling so on top of the world, I can't keep still. Book myself into a cranial osteopathy session, remembering the beatific effect this invisible treatment had on The Beauty when she was born. Charles and my mother had been withering in their condemnation of alternative
therapies, and when I summoned the cranial osteopath, Charles left for two days. He said it was as a protest; I now realise it was to go and frolic about with pygmy Helena.

Anyway, Yvette arrived, a true exponent of hippy culture with batik T-shirt, more or less see-through, droopy tits (of course) and yellowed toenails. I was determined not to be put off by her appearance, but Felix, who had popped his head round the door, vanished downstairs yelling to my mother, ‘Quick, Granny, there's a witch in Mummy's room and she's putting a spell on the baby.'

By the time my mother had bustled up, huffing fury at me and Yvette, the treatment was over. The Beauty, who had been yelling, was languid and sleeping, and has scarcely cried since, unless in protest at perceived poor treatment. Even my mother admits that there was something in Yvette's magic. All she did was rest The Beauty's tiny head in her hands. Truly cosmic; I can't wait for it to happen to me.

May 18th

Nature has gone wild during my two days away, and this morning I saw three wild orchids among the many primroses on the roadside, a joyful gathering of flag irises
in a meadow and also a jay. It was dead, unfortunately, but I was nonetheless delighted to see it and add it to my bird count. So far I have heard more than I've seen, including cuckoos, woodpeckers and assorted owls. Since cranial osteopathy I am convinced that my senses have improved, and I am now much like the six-million-dollar man except in muscle power. It is as if I have been put through a car wash and had all the detritus scraped off everything. Even breathing has become a joy, with spring scents mingling and hitting me in the lungs. I am becoming a nose. I mean this in the perfume sense, not physically, thank God, although Giles told me the other day: ‘You'd be really pretty if your nose wasn't so big, Mum.'

This morning's olfactory experience includes a hint of grass cutting, a suggestion of apple blossom, a waft of cow from the field and, best of all, an overriding scent of wet paint. David is finally at the decorating stage with my bathroom. With my new improved eyesight I can tell that I do not like the colour he is using, and despite his insistence to the contrary, I know it is not the one I chose. I wanted Plover's Egg, and I think he has used Dead Mouse. He insists there is no such colour as Dead Mouse; I am sure there is, though. These colours prove their smartness by having eccentric, call-a-spade-a-spade names. There is String, Ox Blood, Cold Cream White and the enigmatic Dirt, but I wish they would be a little bolder and have Phlegm and Fungal Brown as well. And
I would especially like to be able to get hold of Eyeball White for the bathroom ceiling, which needs a blue-white tone to lift it a bit.

May 20th

Felix and Giles return. Charles rings the bell, and I open the door to one former husband, smirking slightly, and two piles of merchandising. ‘The way to a boy's heart is via the shopping mall,' I quip.

Charles jangles his keys. ‘We had some time on our hands yesterday after the boys did well with an early reveille and run.' He allows himself a flash of a smile as I gape in astonishment at this insight into quality time with Dad.

Giles and Felix are not listening, but are burrowing in their shopping bags. Charles coughs self-effacingly and continues.

‘They said they hadn't any clothes, or trainers, and from what you sent with them it seemed true.' A needle of resentment jabs at me. ‘Don't criticise my packing,' I hiss, a line so babyish I wish to bite off my tongue. The boys push past into the house and there is Charles's car with the crown of Helena's head just visible in the passenger seat. I turn to him in reproachful surprise.

‘Oh, Charles, you should have bought her a little cushion while you were shopping.'

He hardly pauses, but swipes right back as he marches to the car. ‘I'll be in touch about next month: I thought I'd take the boys to Wimbledon, I've got tickets for centre court.' Fifteen, Love to Charles. I slam the front door cursing, and am almost sent flying by huge, hugging boys.

May 26th

Thrilling sense of freedom caused by sitting on the train to London reading
Hello!
and being surrounded by other ladies, many of them quite antique, with packets of sandwiches and sensible shoes which say that they, like me, are on their way to the Chelsea Flower Show.

I, however, do not have sensible shoes. By the time I have negotiated the tube as far as Sloane Square and lost half an hour in a delicious ribbon shop, I have two blisters and a throbbing big toe. Trailing an exquisite bundle of pink and yellow satin, which I plan to sew round the edge of a cardigan in the manner of top fashion houses this season, I head for the nearest shoe shop and arrange myself for purchase. Very shaming moment when I remove the silly slingbacks I had thought
appropriate when dressing this morning, and find aroma of Emmental clinging to my feet. Rub them on the shoe shop carpet and move to a different squeaking leatherette chair. How does anyone buy summer shoes? Summer feet are clammy and puffy and have red areas and also grass stains on their soles. They are hideous. They do nothing for the flimsy, strappy shoes so fashionable this year. Regretfully, I opt for a pair of clumpy mulish sandals as worn by biology teachers. These will get me through the flower show in comfort, I tell myself, and turn resolutely away from the shocking-pink kitten heels which beckon and tempt from the shop window.

By the time I have crossed the King's Road I am in agony, and at the entrance to the flower show I am forced to remove the new instruments of torture and go barefoot. I now have seven blisters bubbling on my feet. With savage pleasure I hurl the nerdy cripplers in a bin and hurry into the floral vortex of Chelsea. So glad I paid for them with Charles's money out of the children's account, so have not just wasted £80 of my own. Surely I can now go back for the kitten heels, as I still have no shoes? This uplifting thought carries me barefoot into the throng of well-behaved frocks and hairdos and little notebooks with neat notes.

Two hours later I am sagging beneath piles of catalogues, and the inside covers of
Devil's Cub,
my Georgette Heyer of the moment, are dense with illegibly scrawled
names of flowers and cryptic notes. On the train going home, assisted by a gin and tonic, I decipher ‘Heterosexual Lord Bute trailing clouds of perfume', and give up. Maybe ‘heterosexual' is ‘heliotrope', or ‘hemero-callis'. Or maybe it's a colour code. I don't know, and what's more, I just don't care. For on my feet beneath the Formica table lurks a pair of perfect pink kitten heels. Even the blisters don't hurt any more.

June 1st

Chaos of clothing carpets my bedroom as I attempt to find something to wear. I am going for a drink with David to celebrate the near-completion of the bathroom. Initially refused David's kind invitation, issued just after an outburst on my part at Digger, whom I caught burying a newly bought loaf of bread under the yew chicken. Having stubbed my toe kicking him, I marched round to complain to David, and felt lame and crabby when he spoke first and asked me to go to the pub. Giles overheard me saying rudely, ‘Sorry, I can't. I'm busy', as I stood, arms crossed, leaning on the door of David's ambulance with Digger cowering within. ‘Yes, you can,' Giles interrupted. ‘Jenny can babysit. You shouldn't make up excuses.' Tried to tread on his toe to shut him up but he skipped out of the way, leaving me red-faced in front of David. Had to say yes to diminish embarrassment.

Jenny, who has a gold tooth, hennaed hair and a flourishing business growing coriander and basil in poly tunnels for local supermarkets, arrives with her boyfriend. He is called Smalls. ‘It's a nickname,' Jenny explains, unnecessarily. Smalls turns out to be one of David's
henchmen, and as well as looking like a Warhammer, he is an avid collector of these oddities. Felix and Giles cannot wait to get me out of the house so that they can leap into pitched battle with Smalls and a cohort of wild woodland elves. The Beauty doesn't need me either. She is fast asleep in her cot, exhausted by the arrival of three new teeth this week. Despite being redundant, I hang around at home making myself late and telling Jenny dozens of ways to deal with The Beauty, should she wake: ‘But of course she won't, this is just in case.'

Take short cut to unknown pub selected by David, and become very lost. The Wheatsheaf, East Bessham is somewhere in a valley fringed with bluebell woods, and I soon stop worrying about the time and am enchanted by my route down narrow roads which tunnel through banks scattered with pink campion and buttercups. The evening light is a luxurious gold after a day of energetic sunshine, and I take deep breaths and revive from children's bedtime and am glad that I bothered to wear my ironed skirt and not jeans. Just becoming parched and anxious when the pub appears in front of me, separated from the road by a little stream and enhanced by branches of fragrant lilac waving pinkly over the garden wall. I park the car and dawdle across a peeling blue footbridge, noting its rustic charm and its excellent credentials for the Troll and Billygoat game with Felix. Once within the pub walls I quickly find David on a cropped lawn playing
boules with a gang of men. I pretend to be interested in rules and scores for a few seconds before saying brightly, ‘Let me get you a drink,' and diving into the bar.