Summertime (6 page)

Desmond sees this as a signal for a break, and stands up to put the kettle on, his quiff of hair brushing the low ceiling of the cottage kitchen.

‘I keep telling you,' he shouts, goaded by exasperation into making coffee for all of us instead of just himself, ‘None of my generation was around in the sixties. We were innocent children playing with Action Man, while you were acting out your crazy fantasies. None of us took purple hearts. They just weren't for us. Neither was acid. It's just your gang of tripped-out old hippies we'll have to look out for. Or what's left of them, rather.' He turns to me, slopping milk into a mug with two spoonfuls of instant coffee, his raised eyebrow a command to listen, as he cranks himself further into righteous mode.

‘You know, I reckon at least half of Mum's friends from the sixties have fried their brains with some
substance or other. Look at The Gnome – what planet must he be on to want to go and live on a rock off the coast of Scotland? Apparently he's got a teepee instead of his caravan now.'

Mention of The Gnome brings mistiness to my mother's eyes, and she absently ignites another cigarette, forgetful of the one she already has smouldering in her bull-terrier-shaped ashtray.

‘I like teepees,' she muses. ‘They're better than Peta's yurt, at any rate. At least they're small.' She gazes into the middle distance, then jumps up. ‘Oh, how I wish I still had The Gnome here. That woman Peta is driving me insane. She's put a healing arch up by the stream and she's decorating it with cottonwool blobs and red felt. She says it's going to be the centrepiece for a festival to celebrate the cat.' She pauses and drags on her cigarette with feeling. ‘The
cat
, for heaven's sake. It would be different if it were the bull terrier, or even The Beauty, but
cats
– who cares? I wish she'd just stick to basket-weaving.'

‘And I wish you'd stick to your job of sending invitations,' snaps Desmond. ‘You know we've got to get the whole lot in the post tonight, before Minna gets here, and we're seeing the vicar in a minute.'

Anxious not to get back home to do any work, I offer to help and am given my own small pile of purple
hearts. I do three in a quick burst of efficiency, then, exhausted, slow down to read the wording.

Yelp and drop my pile.

‘Mum, Desmond, there's a mistake. Why has it got my address on it? I thought you were having the wedding here. What's going on? It must be a typing error.'

My mother sidles towards the dresser to find glasses and ashtrays for the vicar, should he require them. She smirks at me unapologetically, and directs a look of faux reproach at Desmond.

‘Oh, Desmond, I thought you'd told Venetia.' Her pretence at anger is transparent. I drum my fingers on the table and wait to hear what she has to say. She blinks, piously, several times and says, ‘We've decided it's best to have the party at your house because the garden is flatter than this one for the tent. We told Giles, when we came over to look and you were out somewhere. He must have forgotten to pass it on. It'll be such fun for you, darling, and it'll look so pretty.'

Desmond rushes over, hurling himself down on one knee, his eyes drooping meekly, hands clasping mine.

‘Oh please, most wonderful sister, don't say no. I meant to ask you, I kept meaning to ask you, and suddenly it mattered too much, and I couldn't risk asking you in case you said no.'

I swat him away impatiently. ‘Oh God, please don't touch me. I need to think. I can't believe you did this, you two, it's so unscrupulous.' My mother simpers, attempting a look of innocence and extreme scrupulousness and managing only to look cross-eyed. I am utterly pole-axed by the nerve of them, but also obscurely flattered. My own wedding, without the bother of being the bride. Cannot make out whether this is a good thing or not, but the bite and the fight have been knocked out of me.

‘Oh, well, I suppose it's too late to do anything, so I haven't any choice. The invitations are all printed, and you've even sent some already, haven't you?' My mother nods, head on one side, doing her meek look. I shall get some form of reprisal. I must. I have achieved all the H surnames on the list, and am looking forward to I, which only contains one person, a mysterious-sounding ‘Incie Wincie I-Boy', who lives ‘c/o White City Greyhound Stadium', when there is a knock on the door and the Reverend Trevor Heel slithers in past a cacophony of barking, licking dogs. He, unlike any of the canines, is wearing a collar, and it peeps crisply above his grey flannel shirt.

‘Good morning my dears, good morning,' he beams, patting dogs and sniffing as if to get his bearings in the noisy, smoky kitchen. He is a big fan of my mother, and has brought her a piece of the Wookey
Hole as a memento of his recent visit there. Of course my mother uses his arrival as an opportunity to get the sherry out, and the pair of them lean on the rail of the smoke-blackened Rayburn, chatting and dodging the extended limbs and tails of sleeping cats and drying washing festooned on the rack above.

The new master of Crumbly has agreed to let the church hold the biannual car boot sale there this year,' says Reverend Heel, sipping his sherry as elegantly as a man can when it is presented in a half-pint beer mug. ‘He's a chap called Sale, Hedley Sale. He was old Peter Crumb's nearest relation, some sort of nephew, I understand. You may have met him, Venetia, he's your neighbour more than ours, really, isn't he?' and Rev. Trev dimples at me and pats a wisp of his grey hair back down across his brow. He continues, ‘I'm glad to see the place alive again, although no one seems to know if he'll be living here full-time or not. He may go back to America to continue teaching. It's a shame he can't do it here.'

‘What does he teach?' asks my mother, more interested in whether there's any more sherry now that Desmond and I have helped ourselves, than in the man who owns all the fields and woodland we like to walk in.

‘I think he teaches Latin and Greek at an American
university,' said the Vicar, ‘I'm not sure which one. But certainly it's the classics. Your subject, Araminta, if I remember rightly.' He throws a twinkling glance towards my mother, positively roguish except that he waves an arm as well, and becomes entangled in a trailing and ragged towel from the rack above him, and somehow gets the end in his mouth. Desmond and I exchange a look. Araminta indeed. No one has called my mother anything so informal in years. She perks up no end upon hearing that Hedley Sale teaches classics.

‘Oh, good. A classicist is just what we need around here,' she says, as if it were very useful to the community, like being a fireman or a childminder. ‘I should like to meet him.'

I am about to say that I have met him, and to give a graphic description of both my encounters with this paragon, when Desmond interrupts, clicking the heel of his cowboy boot irritably, and snapping his fingers in a bid for attention.

‘Look Mum, I think we need to get this playlist sorted out.' My mother and the vicar look at him blankly.

‘He means the order of service,' I translate, moving towards the door. ‘I've got to go, but will you remember that Minna's most favourite song in the world is “Jolene”, by Dolly Parton, and try to incorporate it?

Maybe it could be instead of the usual Wedding March at the beginning, or what about during the signing of the register? God, I wonder if Minna will wear a red wig? And are you dressing as Elvis, Desmond?' He grins, pushing me away, whispering, ‘Let's get this bit over and we'll talk later.'

My mother, humming ‘Abide with Me', sidles over to the sherry bottle. I close the door as she trills, ‘More sherry, Trevor?'

April 7th

Everyone is talking about Hedley Sale. Even Mrs Organic Veg, who I always thought was above such things, arrives on her moped with my delivery of spring greens, cabbage, onions and potatoes. Always anxious for a diversion from work, I rush out to help her carry the precious, mud-caked items into the larder.

‘Lovely day, isn't it?' I say, as I always do, even if it's raining, as it is some kind of social reflex with me and anyone who arrives to deliver something.

She wipes her hands on a big cloth she keeps in the box on the back of her moped and looks up at the sloppy sky.

‘Could be worse,' she agrees cautiously. ‘It was
better yesterday, though. The sun came out just as we were meeting with the new Mr Sale. It went very well.' She pauses for effect, and I deliver the expected encouragement.

‘Oh yes, what did he say?'

She continues, ‘We were only talking about the land we rent, and he offered us the walled garden as well. It's just what we need.' Another pause.

‘So what was he like?'

‘He was a bit excitable, a bit prone to shout when he saw some boys walking round the lake. We had to remind him it's a public footpath, in fact. But he was nice enough to us.' Rags wiggles over to sit on her feet and she bends to pat her, adding, ‘I've heard his wife ran off with another woman, but you'd never think it, would you? Unless she just couldn't bear his temper.'

I agree, without knowing what you wouldn't think, and return to my study to write a document on the way people spend their money in shopping malls. This is the most lucrative piece of work I have ever been offered, and also the most boring. It outstrips conference brochures by miles for tedium, and is responsible for my work-avoidance techniques becoming refined to the point of insanity. Standing in doorways leads to close examination of the backs of my hands, to be followed, when I am about to burst due to the build-up of
disorganisation in my life, with a medley of unnecessary telephone calls to people's answerphones. If I accidentally telephone anyone who is in, I tend to put the phone down. They then employ 1471 and ring back, puzzled, a few moments later. I think there is another number you can dial to stop anyone knowing it is you who has rung, but I shrink from making use of this, as it is the stuff of perverts and maniacs.

April 10th

David has contributed most wonderfully to my work-avoidance programme, by organising access to the information superhighway. He and Giles have sorted it all out in a series of expensive phone calls, and they even got Charles to give me one of his old computers, which is little short of a miracle. It was delivered last week, and we have made great strides in getting it out of its box and up and running with some shooting and chasing games favoured by the boys.

I have to choose whether to have my email brought to me by Virgin or Demon, Sonnet or Silence. It all sounds so poetic, and romantic. David and I will communicate across the time zones in a highly modern and up-to-date fashion. We will be like the people
you see in car and mobile phone advertisements on television, dressed in taupe and slate with lots of hair gel, smiling into green-screened computers as we download crucial documents and send them on. I'm not sure where to.

Finally select Angel as my delivery company, and persuade them to let me have ‘[email protected]' as my email address. I am delighted with my amusing and original idea, until I realise how silly I sound giving this address out to the various corporations I work for. David laughs when I ring him to tell him I have the technology and the address all ready to go.

‘You'll get the hang of it very soon. And Giles and Felix will know what to do if you get in a muddle. But I think you should change your email address to something less provocative. You'll attract some very odd mail if you give it out indiscriminately.'

‘But I can't. It took hours of nightmare on the telephone to the helpline to get that one, and I've given it to loads of people already. It'll just have to be fine. Or you'll have to come back and change it for me.'

He answers in the dead straight, very serious, smoky-voiced way I love, ‘You know I would if I could.'

What is it about distance that brings resentment so powerfully to the forefront of a relationship? And is it just me, or is David also feeling resentful, but hiding it better?

Battle to keep truculence out of my voice as I ask, ‘Well, are you coming back for Desmond and Minna's wedding?' But it is hard, as I am convinced that the answer will be no.

The line buzzes and snaps with distance and the strain of the connection, but through it he answers, ‘Well, I was going to surprise you, but actually, I can't bear not to tell you. Yes, I am. I've got a week—' The line blips and dies. I haven't had a chance to tell him that the wedding is going to be here, but it doesn't matter. I'm sure he'll love it.

Dance around the kitchen singing hooray, hooray with The Beauty, who is taking after her grandmother as a reveller, and pronounces, ‘Let's have a party.' She swiftly removes all her clothes and replaces them with an old nightie and a vest covered with pink sequins, bought at a recent jumble sale.

‘Do dancing, Mummy,' she commands, bobbing about in circles like a shuttlecock in her ragged lacy nightdress, undeterred by the lack of music. I obey, doing just as she tells me, anxious to avoid confrontation and thus leave myself free to think.

The knot garden is waterlogged and swamplike, everywhere else is a mudbath, and there are no flowers anywhere to be seen. In the house squalor reigns, no one has made their bed or picked up any clothes since Easter. There are half-empty baked bean and tuna fish
cans in the fridge, as well as certain items of sports equipment, and ants and hens (living, not oven-ready) in the larder, all testament to the slobsville level our domestic set-up has reached. Worst of all, neither Lowly nor The Beauty show any sign of becoming house- or potty-trained. The wedding is on May Day, in three weeks' time. David will be back in twenty days. We must make efforts to improve by then. Surely it is possible?

April 12th

Improvements are making everything a hundred times worse, and very much more expensive. Last week I had an ad hoc underwater garden and lots of nice places for the ducks. This week, although the rain has stopped, and the blue sky is like a clear conscience, the scene at ground level is frightful to behold. At the suggestion of Simon, who couldn't resist popping in for a bit of bossing on his way to a potato conference, I have hired a pump to suck all the unwanted water out of my garden. The pump arrives, a malevolent mound of grey metal and rubber reminding me powerfully of the rabbit intestines Lowly and Rags left in the kitchen this morning.