Summertime (19 page)

He picks himself up from the teddy chaos on the lawn and says, ‘Those are all really chod, Mum. Why can't we go out somewhere?'

‘OK then, where would you like to go?'

Expect hours of indecision, but Felix answers instantly, ‘Let's go to the Badlington Tank Collection. It's my favourite place. And can I have some money to buy an Airfix, please?'

The Beauty also adores the tank collection, and a happy afternoon is spent among the trappings of war until The Beauty climbs up a ladder into a cappuccino-coloured tank, a relic of the Gulf War, and therefore camouflaged for dust and desert rather than mud and rural fields like the Second World War ones, and vanishes. Felix and I, inspecting a glass case in which the Charge of the
Light Brigade is taking place, complete with puffs of smoke and sound effects, do not notice her absence until an elderly blazer-wearing man taps me on the shoulder.

‘I think the noises in that tank are less than authentic,' he says, winking. We turn to hear Miss Bossy Boots, her voice booming as if from the bottom of a well: ‘I need to do the driving. It's my car and we're going to London.'

Felix collapses in a heap of horror. ‘God, Mum, why did we have to bring her? She'll break it and we'll have to pay for it.'

Am distracted by this. ‘I wonder how much a tank costs?' I muse.

Thudding sounds from within the tank suggest that The Beauty is now charging up and down and we are about to find out the price of one Gulf War relic, until recently in perfect condition.

‘Wheee! I'm bouncing about. It's like a boat, isn't it!' confirms this, and Felix begins to resemble one of the wounded soldiers in the Light Brigade, rolling on the ground groaning.

‘She's ruining it, she's ruining it.'

I am pretty sure that even The Beauty's demolition skills are no match for a tank, but am as keen as Felix to get her out before anyone official sees her. As I begin to climb what I hope are the main steps, she appears in
a gun turret, a tiny frontierswoman in her Liberty-print apron and smocked dress, selected as Sunday best by me this morning. Am about to coax her down, when someone behind me causes her to cackle a mad ‘ha ha' and disappear again like a puppet.

‘She is the original for
Annie Get Your Gun
, isn't she?' Hedley, wearing a khaki windcheater with a suspicion of dandruff on his shoulders, appears from behind a giant cannon. His hands are behind his back, but I catch a glimpse of a helmet which he is trying to conceal beneath his jacket. Am less astonished than I should be to see him here; this is his sort of place. Wonder what his excuse is, though.

‘What are you doing here?'

Hedley looks at the sky, looks at the ground and looks at the tank. ‘Ummm,' he says.

‘Come on, Sale, we've got a platoon to command.' Another voice issues from beyond the cannon, followed closely by a snowy handlebar moustache decorating a large bluff face. ‘Ahh! That's where you've got to.' There is a smart clicking of heels, and the moustache and I turn expectantly to Hedley, awaiting introduction. Social grace is not Hedley's thing. Instead of introducing us, he scuttles up the tank steps muttering, ‘That child should not be in there.'

He opens a lid and, reaching in, pulls The Beauty out like a prize in a lucky dip. She is outraged, and
immediately spouts tears, while roaring and drumming her heels against Hedley.

The moustache is appalled, taking a swift step back as Hedley, holding The weeping Beauty at arm's length, descends the steps. ‘Christ, Sale, I thought you were well out of all that juvenile stuff. Come on now, we've got to get back to the war.' He doffs an imaginary hat to me, and turns on his heels, anxious to put a decent distance between himself and The Beauty.

Both Felix and I are engulfed by giggles. Hedley thrusts The Beauty into my arms and attempts to follow his friend, but Felix grabs him in a rugby tackle to the legs. ‘You're playing war games, aren't you? Please can I come and do it with you? I love war games, I've always wanted to play it. What's your friend called? Can you ask him for me? Please,
please.'

Hedley is turning redder and redder; I can tell that he would love to deliver a swift kick to disentangle himself from Felix, but luckily doesn't dare to.

He manages a twisted smile and says to Felix, ‘Look, we can't do it now, but I'll make a date for you and Giles. Now be a good chap and let go.'

Felix has radar sensitivity to adult intonations, and recognising both finality and desperation in Hedley's, he allows him to depart to his game, shouting after him, ‘All right then, but I'll hold you to it,' before
turning to me and whispering, ‘He's left his helmet.'

July 5th

Rose has no idea of the pressures of single motherhood. She has left me a bossy message saying I am too slack, and she thinks I should give up the business and get a job as a supermarket checkout woman as I clearly have no ambition and no entrepreneurial drive. Irritated, I unpack the over-the-head charlady aprons I had previously discarded as too depressing and decorate them with tinsel and fun fur. Send them to Rose with a label saying ‘Production Line', and take The Beauty to the sea for an afternoon of sandcastles and ice cream.

July 7th

Extraordinary. Rose
loves
the aprons. She has left a mad message saying, ‘Please let's do more pregnancy wear. I think we should call the whole label Production Line. Clever you. I've sold them to The Blessing for one
hundred and twenty pounds each. They're heaven. Can't wait for whatever comes next.'

Ego only slightly punctured by attempts to harvest a bowlful of peas from my recently rather neglected vegetable garden. Thought there would be enough to freeze superior spares in the manner of Captain Birdseye, but in fact a whole Production Line apron pocketful of picked pods yields only a saucer's worth of peas. Thank God for Mrs Organic Veg, as the purpose of the pea harvest was to show off when Vivienne comes to supper tonight. Ha ha, can still do so.

Give Vivienne delicious pea and mint soup and home-made bread, also made this afternoon especially to impress her. It does. Unfortunately, we are both still hungry, and as I neglected to plan further than this course, we leave our elegant table under the lime tree and head for the fridge, where we find some frankfurters. ‘Oh look, is this one of the aprons?' Vivienne asks, picking a garment up from the vast laundry pile.

‘Oh yes, I managed to find a whole box of them in a charity shop.'

Vivienne has been grilling me on my business, and through her own fascination, revealing that I know shockingly little about how to run anything properly. Am quite embarrassed, and would much rather talk about Guy Clarke, my new favourite country
singer, discovered in the same charity shop as the aprons.

‘It's amazing how attractive a cowboy hat can make men look,' I say to stop her banging on, and I start to hum ‘Desperadoes Waiting For A Train'. She looks at me very severely.

‘I've been meaning to talk to you about this, Venetia,' she says, sitting down at the kitchen table to eat her frankfurter. Clearly, the stylish part of our evening is over, and I am quite sure she is not about to start listing her favourite cowboys.

‘Simon and I are very concerned about you being on your own. You've got to grow up and stop living in a romantic fantasy, you know. Just because David is good-looking, and yes, all right, he's good with the children, and great company—'

Am astonished at this sudden list of his attributes, as had always thought Vivienne didn't much like David, but find the shock of hearing him talked about is breathtaking.

Vivienne continues, enunciating carefully, as people do when they are determined to say something that they feel has to be said but they know will go down very badly, ‘And what it really all comes down to is this, Venetia. Do you really think he is still going to come back?'

So unfair to ask me that, just as I am pulling myself
together and taking my first mouthful of hot dog. Go off it completely and put it down.

‘We've split up,' I say bleakly. Vivienne, poised for her own second mouthful, stops, her hot dog oozing unnoticed ketchup in dollops on to the table.

‘You haven't!' she says in amazement, and then, as my efforts at putting on a brave face crumple and slide, she comes round to where I am standing, leaning on the Aga, and hugs me. ‘Oh, don't cry, Venetia. I know it seems hard now, but it will be for the best, you know. You'll find someone older who'll marry you, not dump you to pursue his own career. More stable.'

‘You mean less sexy,' I say, blowing my nose. We both laugh as she tries to get out of that one.

‘Well,' she says, ‘you can't go on throwing your heart after cowboy carpenters, can you?'

Do not confess to her how very much I wish I could do that, nor do I tell her that it was me who dropped David for precisely the reasons she was outlining. Cannot cope with the searchlight on my emotional life, and can't wait for her to go home now that she has had her say, so I can go and sit in the dusk in the garden and immerse myself in plangent cowboy music.

July 8th

Two long rubber vines arrive by Parcel Force in a wooden crate. The delivery man is clearly the last in a long line of handlers who have all been convinced that the box contains live reptiles. He hurls it on to the doorstep, beeps his horn for a signature and drives away twice as quickly as usual. Giles staggers in with the box. It is plastered with labels which say things like
Toxic
, or
Not to be touched by humans
, or
Customs Alert
.

‘It's probably another parrot,' I say, eyeing the crate suspiciously.

Giles and Felix, eyes popping with excitement, prise open the lid and speak as one. ‘Snakes. Cool, man.'

I grab The Beauty and retreat to the kitchen, shrieking, ‘Call the vet. No, call the police. Call the fire brigade. Call the zoo. Call Charles and have them incinerated. Get them out of here at once. No.
Nooo
. Don't. Don't touch them.'

Have utterly forgotten that David promised swinging vines, so when Giles opens the kitchen door with a length of sinewy rubber coiled around his neck, am paralysed with dread and convinced it is a boa constrictor, suffocating him.

‘It's all right, Giles darling, stay calm, Mummy will come,' I shriek, untruthfully, as I am dashing backwards out of the room. Only my brain still whirrs,
with a craven desire not to have to be involved in a tussle with a snake, but to have someone else deal with this new drama.

‘Can we put these in the trees and have a quick swing before school?' Giles is manhandling the so-called snake, flipping it about nonchalantly. Felix drags another in, and intelligence flickers once more as I perceive the true nature of these lengths of rubber. But how do we put them into any of the trees? Apart from a topiary yew chicken and four small crab apples in the knot garden, the trees around here are vast and gnarled. A cursory inspection from the back doorstep suggests that even the lowest branch is twenty or so feet above the ground. A more thorough investigation of the crate in which the vines arrived reveals a hastily scrawled note:

Make sure you put these on a SAFE branch. Get an adult to test first. They need to be at least fifteen feet above the ground, so mind you take care. Gertie will love these. I'll build you a platform to swing from when I come home xxx David.

And which adult does he have in mind for branch-testing and vine-fitting? Look from the note to the upturned, expectant faces of the boys and compose
withering mental email to send to David along the lines of ‘Hanging is too good for you.'

July 10th

Vines unhung, email unsent, as yesterday was spent helping set up Giles and Felix's stall for the school fête which takes place this afternoon. Arrive with my mother and The Beauty to discover that we have to join a queue to get anywhere near the boys. They have created a bar with a long slippery surface, and the challenge is to try to slide a tankard full of beer along to the other end.

‘It's not really beer, it's just a mixture of old tea and liquorice water so it won't smell too bad,' I hear Felix comforting a small girl with bunches, who has spilt this substance down her front.

‘Oh good, a pub,' says my mother, brightening considerably from a slight sulk she was in because I wouldn't let her enter The Beauty into a ‘Guess the weight of this item' stall near the entrance to the fête. ‘Can we keep the drink if we win?' she asks Giles, handing him her money for a turn.

‘If you must,' he says, ‘but it's harder than it looks, so be careful.'

‘I know what I'm doing. I've been to rather more bars than you have,' Granny responds, and slides three tankards in quick succession down to the end of the bar.

Felix leaps about excitedly. ‘Well done, you've got the best score so far, Granny. Did you once work in a saloon bar?'

Duck away with The Beauty as the headmaster approaches. Do not feel equal to discussing saloons and nightclubs with him, Felix and my mother. The Beauty and I notice a washing line, and intrigued, approach the stall, which is manned by Carmel Butterstone, sister of Giles's friend Byron.

I proffer my fifty-pence piece. ‘What do you have to do?'

Carmel simpers a reply. ‘Mummy thought of this one. You have to see how quickly you can hang out the basket of washing on the line. The quickest wins a place in one of Mummy's Cabouchon groups, or a box of chocolates.'

How ghastly. Just do not want to have anything to do with Bronwyn Butterstone's jewellery parties, but the game sounds perfect. Amazing, though, that something so un-pc is allowed. Am very keen for a go, and am sure I will triumph and win the chocolates for The Beauty. After all, I have spent most of my life hanging out washing, so should be of Olympic standard by now.

Carmel blows the whistle and I begin, The Beauty trotting behind, handing me pegs and garments. ‘Here, Mummy, do this hanky now.' Find myself fumbling a little with the first vest, but years of practice kick in and in moments I am pegging with easy rhythm. Finish, I am sure, streets ahead of all others, and return to Carmel with confidence in every step.