Summertime (31 page)

Yesterday's storms have not broken the taut line of low cloud above the water meadows, and although the sun is out, its light is heavy and indolent, creating rich tones in the tawny trunks and green-gold leaves, but absorbing any movement to leave the view still and silent, glowing as if it has just been painted. Autumn is creeping in on the faint mauve mist above the stream which threads through the fields, and in the soft smoke tint the wood beyond has assumed. Voices bounce off the trees around, recalling me, and the echo and the flurry of feet falling in leaves fills our small wood with more than just the children and me. I look towards the house. The windows are lit orange in every pane, flames licking the stretched glass. Everything inside me lurches in dizzy horror and I fling down the pickaxe. I almost run back across the lawn to save the house, but, before I
have finished forming the thought, I have stopped again. The house is melting in the low evening light, burning the reflected sun as it sinks to the horizon.

The children rush up behind me, and Felix grabs my skirt and crows, ‘I'm safe. Mum is base.' Giles runs away to hide again. His voice swoops laughter back towards me. In the still moment while Felix counts, a pigeon claps up into a branch and begins to coo.

School starts tomorrow, and we will fall back into the ritual of routine. I will miss them in the day, but The Beauty will attend her nursery three days a week, unless she is expelled, and I can work. My life is not in pieces, as I have sometimes thought recently. It is a happy whole. Apart from having these corpses to deal with.

I am about to turn back to the wood, with the half-hearted compromise that I will bury one shoebox tonight, when Felix has finished hugging me and counting. The dogs stop hurtling in circles on the lawn, and suddenly charge as one beast to the gate, barking manically. They fall silent as if they have been switched off, and I swing around, my heart pounding as I hear a step on the gravel and a man's voice saying, ‘Down. Come on you lot, it's me.'

Digger has rolled over and is lying panting with pleasure, his legs wiggling like a centipede's. It can
only be David. My hands become clammy, and I stand staring, not even able to breathe, as still as stone with a bumping heart. But it isn't David. It's Desmond. Snap at him most unfairly.

‘What are you doing here, and why did you walk?'

He gives me a severe look. ‘One of these days you're going to turn into a real old curtain-twitching busybody,' he says. ‘I walked because Minna and I are having a drink in the pub, and there's a fantastic cricket match going on. I thought the boys might like to come down and watch it.'

The boys are already on their skateboards, Giles towing The Beauty who has climbed into her pram, and they are out of the gate and on their way to the village.

‘Hurry up Mummy,' commands The Beauty. ‘You can have Coke and crisps if you like.'

‘But we haven't buried the rabbits,' I wail. No one answers.

‘Come on Venetia,' urges Desmond, ‘it's only a drink. I'll go and shut the dogs in. You go on ahead.'

My mother and Minna both look slightly aghast when they see me, but they quickly explain that it is only due to my staggering gait, caused by broken flipflops. Minna goes into the pub to procure drinks for all.

‘Isn't it time you got some sensible shoes?' asks my mother. ‘You're supposed to be a businesswoman.'

Decide not to rise to deliberate provocation as am so enjoying the restful, civilised air of the evening.

‘You're not the first person to say that,' I remark amiably. ‘I'm going to change my appearance completely when the children go back to school tomorrow.'

‘The end of summer,' muses my mother.

‘And not a moment too soon,' I retort tartly, grabbing a drink off the tray Minna is placing on the table. We sip gin and tonic and watch the cricket, all of us bathed in the last glow of the sun, while dark blue shadows creep from across the green towards the cricketers. Desmond joins us, smirking unnecessarily, and sits down next to Minna.

He passes me an envelope.

‘This is for you.'

‘Oh, right. Thanks.' Take it, and assuming that it is a bill or similar, put it in my pocket without looking at it. Have another slug of gin, and notice that everyone at our table is looking at me, not at the cricket. Even my children have all stopped cramming their mouths with crisps and are gazing, unblinking, at me. Creeping sense of disquiet tingles in my fingers and begins to course through my body, no doubt causing my face to turn scarlet. No one speaks. They all continue to stare at me. I can bear it no longer; I am now
experiencing non-specific guilt. Stand up and glare back at them all.

‘What? What have I done? Why are you all looking at me like that?' Gesture towards The Beauty. ‘And why is
she
looking at me like that?'

‘I'm not
she
. I'm
me
. How dare you,' mutters The Beauty crossly, breaking the tension because both my mother and I snort with laughter. Giles leans on me.

‘Mum, why don't you look at the envelope Desmond gave you.'

Pull the envelope out of my pocket again and look at it. It is just an envelope. Sealed, but blank. Glance up to say, ‘So what?' and find they are all at it again. Staring.

Have now completely had enough. Slam the envelope on the table and march off, shouting over my shoulder, ‘You've all gone mad. I'm going to the loo for some moments of sanity. Could you please all be normal when I come back.'

Lock myself into wonderful chamber of peace and contemptation and begin a leisurely perusal of old copies of
Hello!
. Some time passes. I must take the children home and clean them up for school. Am just flicking through a fifth magazine, promising to myself that it will be the last, when there is a fumbling at the door, and the now battered envelope creeps in, pushed by a small hand from the other side.

Yell, ‘Oh, for God's sake,' and hear the familiar echo of The Beauty relishing her favourite blasphemy as she trails back to my mother. Grinning, I picture her shaking her head and muttering, ‘Godssake, godssake, godssake,' all through the pub. Anyway, opening the envelope is a good delaying tactic. Inside is not a bill. Instead there is a letter from Giles to me. Weird. Scan it quickly. Then read it again. And again.

Dear Mum,

I don't think you wanted me to do this, but I told David you were going to marry Hedley in an email and he said I shouldn't intafere but I've done it again. I told him you weren't going to marry Hedley after all, and now he's come home. He's at home at our house right now, and he wonders if you would like to marry him instead. I know it would be better if he asked you, but I thought I'd better write it down in case he didn't get round to it again. He says he must be mad not to have done it before this summer ever happened. Sorry I intafered. Granny said I should, but that's no excuse is it? Sorry.

Love Giles

ps David said he would bury the rabbits.

Only because I am locked in the loo and no one knows can I admit that my first coherent emotion, as numb shock passes and the light fades, is huge relief that the rabbits have been dealt with. Otherwise am utterly pole-axed and suddenly coy about returning to the table outside the pub and my mad, staring family. Concoct a cunning plan involving climbing out of the loo window in order to return home by the fields, but am thwarted by heavy breathing and a loud thud on the other side of the door. It is Felix, the family emissary.

‘Come on Mum, we know you're in there. Granny wants to go home now. Can we all go with her and watch
Grease?
Is The Beauty allowed to stay up? Please, she'd love it and I want to see her dancing along to the songs.'

The heavy breathing ceases while The Beauty announces kindly, ‘Course I am.'

I must pull myself together. Open the door, blinking in the bright strip lighting outside the cubicle, and inspect the watch on Felix's wrist. Oddly, it is still early.

‘All right, you can go. I'll come and collect you in an hour. You can miss baths. We'll just pretend you're very suntanned at school tomorrow.'

‘Cool,' yells Felix, and hurtles back outside to the others who are already packed into my mother's car.

Wave, and walk back to my house through the dusk, suppressing hysterical excitement, determined to be the poised epitome of languid sophistication when I see David. In the event, this is not possible.

Raffaella Barker, daughter of the poet George Barker, was born and brought up in the Norfolk countryside. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels,
Come and Tell Me Some Lies
,
The Hook
,
Hens Dancing
,
Summertime
,
Green Grass
,
Poppyland
,
A Perfect Life
and most recently,
From a Distance
. She has also written a novel for young adults,
Phosphorescence
. She is a regular contributor to
Country Life
and the
Sunday Telegraph
and teaches on the Literature and Creative Writing BA at the University of East Anglia and the Guardian UEA Novel Writing Masterclass. Raffaella Barker lives in Cley next the Sea, Norfolk.

Come and Tell Me Some Lies
The Hook
Hens Dancing
Phosphorescence
Green Grass
A Perfect Life
Poppyland
From a Distance

COME AND TELL ME SOME LIES

Gabriella lives in a damp, ramshackle, book-strewn manor in Norfolk with her tempestuous poet father and unconventional mother. Alongside her ever-expanding set of siblings and half-siblings, numerous pets and her father's rag-tag admirers, Gabriella navigates a chaotic childhood of wild bohemian parties and fluctuating levels of poverty. Longing to be normal, Gabriella enrols in a strict day school, only to find herself balancing two very different lives. Struggling to keep the eccentricities of her family contained, her failure to achieve conformity amongst her peers is endearing, and absolute.

Come and Tell Me Some Lies
is Raffaella Barker's enchanting first novel – a humorous, bittersweet tale of a girl who longs to be normal, and a family that can't help be anything but.

‘Funny … Clever and touching'
Guardian

THE HOOK

Christy Naylor was forced to grow up quickly. Still reeling with anger after the death of her mother, she abandons college in order to help her father uproot from suburbia and start a new life on a swampy fish farm out in the sticks, a prize that he won in a shady game of poker.

Amid this turmoil, looms the mysterious Mick Fleet, tall, powerful and charismatic. Unsettled and unsure of herself, Christy is hooked on his intense charm. She knows nothing about him yet she feels like she is being swallowed up in his embrace and she plunges into a love affair blind to the catastrophe he will bring…

‘Stylish and insightful … With the pace and verve of a thriller'
Independent

HENS DANCING