Summertime (15 page)

After lunch, while The Beauty sleeps, I weed the potential new vegetable garden and am suddenly struck with a design for a shirt with a wiggle of string weaving in between the buttons. During the evening, having persuaded the children that they would like roast chicken with bread and mayonnaise for supper, I have time to make this garment using my pale blue linen shirt and a ball of twine. Despatch to Rose with two cardigans (my last, where can I find some more?) and a feather-trimmed skirt, as she says she has girlfriend clamouring for my garments after I sent her the ice-blue pipe-cleaner one which I called ‘Ice Cold in Alice'.

Am enjoying making up names as much as designing the garment itself, and have employed the children at fifty pence an item to make individual labels for them.

May 31st

Am devastated. A parrot arrived this morning. From David, for the children. Another animal to be cared for by me no doubt, is my first Bad Fairy thought upon opening the door to a harassed courier and the acid-green monster. Would have sent it back to the depot, but most unfortunately the children heard it issue a ripe wolf whistle at me, and came running.

‘I'm Gertie,' squawked the parrot. ‘Dirty Gertie, dirty Gertie. Have you got pants on, Missus?' All three of them roll on the hall floor, paralysed with mirth as I grimly sign for it. Am sure it should go into quarantine. In fact, I think it
must
go into quarantine. No need to ring the Foreign Office and disturb them with little daft questions, I'll just book Gertie in. Right now. Why has David done this to me?

June 1st

I am, according to the children, Hannibal Lecter and Attila the Hun and every other ruthless swine to have walked on earth. Gertie is installed at Golden Graham's Pet Haven, a parrot hotel near Cambridge which Charles told me about. I was drawn to it by his saying, ‘Actually, they're among our best clients. Parrots seem to be very difficult to keep alive.'

‘Don't tell the children,' I hiss, ‘but I am very much hoping that Gertie lives out her days there.'

‘I wouldn't be too complacent,' Charles responds, and I can tell that he is enjoying this conversation and especially relishing my desperation. ‘You know they can live to be eighty years old if they're tough, and those green ones are among the toughest. Nice for the children, though. He's a decent chap, that fellow David.' He rings off before I can make a decent retort. I grind my teeth and stand on one leg, arms above the head and other leg folded against inner thigh. However, yogic magic is not strong enough to overcome my outrage. Topple off balance and reach again for the phone, dialling
the numbers I have for David over and over, and listening in despair to the clicks and long tones, but never to his voice on the other end saying ‘Hello'.

June 3rd

The vegetable garden is coming on apace. Sort of. I am interested in it, so is The Beauty, but this morning, when I asked Felix to go and fetch the spade from it, he said, ‘What vegetable garden?' thus giving the game away, and revealing himself to be entirely lacking in spirit of Rousseau.

Rather discouraging to read the seed packets and find that we are two months behind with planting, and have little hope of catching up, so will be eating lettuce in the winter and tomatoes next spring if we plant them now and madly mollycoddle them. The Beauty is keen to do this, and I find a stash of seeds in her pocket when changing her to go out to lunch with Hedley.

Cannot decide what to wear, and cannot remember when any consideration beyond sartorial last occupied my mind for more than three minutes consecutively. Is it, I wonder, a ploy of my brains to prove that my future is as a mover and shaker in
fashion, or is it that I am an airhead? Find the latter possibility much more likely than the former, but am distracted by the more immediate puzzle concerning the whereabouts of my other shoe. Arrive late for lunch, thanks to prolonged, fruitless shoe search. Have had to wear purple high-heeled boots, much to the chagrin of Giles.

‘You're really weird, Mum. You should try to act more like a grown-up,' he says witheringly on the way, deaf to my protestations that there is nothing I would like more than to be serene and adult in every aspect of behaviour and appearance. Still brooding on what exactly being grown-up looks like to disdainful eleven-year-olds, when we reach Crumbly. Hedley is nowhere to be seen, so after ringing the bell, we retreat to lean on the car while Giles aims small stones at an old paint pot by the front door.

Summer is in full frill and flourish. Hedley's house has woods to one side, and untamed vegetation which runs down a small valley before swooping up to a flint church standing on the next mound of high ground. According to Rev. Trev, the gardens at Crumbly were famous in three counties a few years ago, but now nothing but wild flowers remain, and the gnarled shapes of ancient azaleas and rhododendrons which flank a wide ride down towards the common. At the end of this ride, three beehives form a picturesque
boundary, and Giles leads us towards them, stating, ‘Tamsin said that Hedley was always mucking about with the bees. He's bound to be down here.'

And as the words leave his mouth, a startling figure leaps in front of us, swaddled to the hilt in white, his movement curtailed by padded clothes, his face obscured by a broad-brimmed, black-veiled hat. The Beauty is horrified. She shrinks back against me weeping, ‘Mummy, it's a mummy, it's a horrid mummy, not a proper mummy like you,' conjuring the image from the Tintin book I was reading the boys in bed this morning. Her sobs turn to shrieks as the mummy squats down in front of her, and having moved too hastily, loses its balance and tips over to lie, legs and arms wiggling like an upside-down beetle.

‘I hate that thing,' she wails, and yanking my hand, begins to pull me back towards the car. Giles and Felix have run on ahead, but hearing The Beauty's cries, they come back to save her. However, one look at the wriggling figure on the ground and they collapse into unstoppable giggles. The Beauty can never maintain an angst-ridden pose for long, and her tears dry the instant she sees her brothers are unafraid. The mummy's head falls off, as I have been expecting it to for some minutes, and, also as expected, Hedley's reddish face and his black caterpillar eyebrow are revealed.

‘I was just sorting the hives out a bit,' he says, ignoring the mirth of our whole party and concentrating his gaze on Lowly, whom we accidentally brought with us because he was asleep in the car and no one noticed him until it was too late.

‘Let's go and have a drink now, shall we, and after lunch we'll come and see if we can get some honey. I've got more suits somewhere.'

‘How kind,' I hear myself saying, not meaning it at all, as I am allergic to honey and swell up like a balloon if I so much as lick a drop. ‘The children would love to do that, wouldn't you?'

Glare furiously at Felix, panting and sniggering behind us, and aim a kick at Giles when he mumbles, ‘Not really, I don't like bees,' just out of Hedley's hearing.

‘It's such a beautiful day,' I witter as we approach the front door. ‘We've been so lucky with the weather this spring, haven't we?'

Am always quite amazed when I hear platitudes and clichés such as these emerging in an effortless string from my mouth. They are so at odds with image of self as a free spirit and higher thinker. Soothing second thought that the weather is vital as social currency, and it doesn't matter what you talk about as long as you keep talking, enables me to babble on drearily as we enter the house. Hedley departs through a series
of doors off the shadowy wainscoted hall to change out of his bee-keeper's outfit. Felix is spellbound in front of a suit of armour. ‘Look, Mummy, it's real. I love it,' he whispers. ‘How do you get into it?'

‘Don't be silly, you can't just get into armour. You aren't even medieval,' says Giles scornfully. Look round expectantly for signs of other guests and find the dining table laid for seven, which is a big relief. Find Hedley pretty hard work on my own, and cannot depend on the boys at all at the moment as they prefer not to speak to me or indeed anyone, in words of more than one syllable and sentences of more than one word. Doorbell and voices announce the arrival of fellow lunchers. Am delighted to recognise Simon's booming tones.

‘Well, what have we here? The Knight of the Round Table, is it? I say, careful there, old chap. I SAID CAREFUL—' Almighty crash follows and then much wailing. Felix has clearly become closely involved with the armour. He appears wearing the helmet, through one door into the dining room, where The Beauty and I are delicately sipping fruit juice, and Hedley simultaneously enters through the other. Both of them recoil in horror at the sight of the other.

Cannot decide whom to apologise to or for, and beam with extra joy as Vivienne and Simon come in to support us all through the difficult moments of
removing Hedley's precious helmet from the head of an hysterical Felix. Tornado of chaos erupts. The helmet will not budge. The only bit we can open is the visor, which rises and falls obligingly, while the catch at the back which unhooks the neckpiece is stuck fast. WD40 found and applied to no avail, and Felix starts shrieking that he is the Man in the Iron Mask and will never escape, never. The Beauty sobs in sympathy, Vivienne tries to comfort her and earns a black mark from me for giving her a sip from a glass of Coke. The Beauty, canny even in deepest distress, grabs the glass from Vivienne's unsuspecting and therefore limp grasp, and swigs the lot before giving a throaty burp and demanding, ‘More.' Glimpse this displeasing scene out of the corner of my eye as Simon and Hedley yank at poor Felix as though he is a rugby ball, and Giles photographs the drama and makes irritating remarks.

‘Mummy, why did they phase out armour?' Can he not see for himself?

Finally, just as everyone is losing interest and I have picked up the telephone to make the numbingly embarrassing call to the fire brigade, there is a pop like a champagne cork and Felix is free, tear-stained but beaming with relief. ‘It just suddenly came undone,' he says, holding up the helmet.

Ice well and truly broken by this start to lunch and
Vivienne has The Beauty on her lap and is dealing with the wild reprobate fork-flinging and demented expression that the quantities of Coke have caused. I am therefore able to converse freely with anyone I choose to, and to drink several glasses of red wine.

On the way home, driving with flair and vigour, I say to the children, ‘I think Hedley's quite nice really, don't you?'

Felix stiffens next to me. ‘No, he's really grumpy,' he says, adding, ‘I'd rather have gone to the parrot hotel to visit Gertie than go to Hedley-stupid-Sale's for lunch.'

Giles leans over from the back and grins, ‘Guess what!' He pauses for effect. ‘Tamsin says he's got false teeth.'

June 5th

Rose telephones.

‘I didn't tell you because I didn't want to get your hopes up, but I took those things you sent to The Blessing, and they loved them. They want to order ten more. Can you make ten?'

Am overwhelmed. Immediate reaction is to say ‘No way,' but conquer it.

‘What did they say? How much did you say the clothes were? Have they sold any yet? Oh, Rose, do you think I can give up the Vanden Plaz brochure contract now?'

Rose is cautious. ‘No, I think that would be a mistake, but you should be able to if your stuff goes down well. I charged them one hundred and fifty pounds per garment. I know you only said one hundred, but really Venetia, you've got to be able to make something out of this, and don't forget, you have to make the garments.'

Extraordinary. Can Rose honestly think I knitted those cardigans, or cut out and sewed that skirt? Just shows how little idea she has about sewing or clothing manufacture. I think the skirt even had an old label in it from the chain store I bought it in years ago. Still, if that's what she thinks, who am I to disabuse her?

She is still talking, but my mind has wandered. Staring out of the kitchen window, I spot The Beauty flitting behind the washing line, an egg in each hand and three of the most scraggy-looking hens following her. Her voice carries in on the balmy spring air.

‘Come on hens, let's have a boiled egg and soldiers now.'

Suddenly do not want to think about work, so cut Rose short.

‘Sorry, I've got to go. I'll send you them as soon as
they're made, shall I? Bye.' Slap telephone back in its cradle and it immediately rings again. I ignore it and walk out into the yard, growing visibly taller, as taught in my yoga class, by breathing deeply and exhaling and thus experiencing total serenity. For a millisecond. Ghastly wailing indicates that The Beauty's boiled-egg breakfast with the hens has not gone well. Follow the sound round to her sandpit and meet a circus-ring scene. The three hens are lying in a row in The Beauty's sandpit, evidently enjoying a dust-bath. The eggs are neatly placed in the sand in front of them, and The Beauty is prancing about waving a magician's wand and glaring.

That's not right,' she scolds. ‘Don't sit down. Make toast.' Scoop her up and we return to the house where the anwerphone flashes. Play back the message and I almost pass out with the enormity of what I have just missed.

‘Hi there, Venetia. It's David here. How's the parrot? By the way, I ordered it from a pet shop in Norwich, so it doesn't need to go into quarantine, you know. I suddenly realised you would think it came from the jungle. Look, we really need to talk. All our lines are down, but I'm in the nearest town for a couple of days, so I'll call you again.'

How can I have thought I was reconciled to being on my own again? My heart is thudding and rushing
madly. The message finishes too soon, leaving the house horribly empty and far too quiet. I play it again. Kick the hall door, disappointment at missing him spreading like nausea. The Beauty eyes me severely. ‘That's quite enough now, Mummy,' she says. ‘Never do it ever again.'