Hens Dancing (16 page)

‘They love having their backs rubbed with a stick,' says Vivienne, and Giles and Felix set to work at once, scrubbing away.

‘Mummy, look,' Felix shrieks, and his piglet succumbs and collapses, front legs buckling first, until it is flat on its side and grunting blissfully, Felix still scratching away at the back of its neck.

August 28th

We love the piglets so much that Giles and Felix are moving in with them. They have cooked supper, sausages unfortunately, on a little fire just outside the electric fence, and are now snuggled down in a row with the ginger
piglet and two pinks in the pig shack. Giles and Felix have sleeping bags, but are sprawled on top of them, sound asleep. Dusk is giving way to a hot, still night, and I hover with Rags between the house where The Beauty slumbers and the pig shack, unsure as to whether I should sleep out with the boys. Golden harvest moonlight glimmers on the pond, and, inhaling deep calm, I smell the nicotianas I planted rather late on and hear distant squawk of a tawny owl. Wonder if I might be nervous with just a few pigs and a tiny terrier to protect me and my children from spooks and worse. Distant squawk comes closer and up the drive, apparently preceded by Salvation Army tambourine. Out of the shadows cast by trees at the gate steps David, rattling a biscuit tin and followed closely by three piglets.

‘I found this lot on the green, and I thought I'd better get them back to you before anyone saw them. They aren't allowed to go anywhere without a licence, you know.'

The three piglets are grinding their teeth and salivating expectantly at our feet. I chuck the biscuits into their corral and they spring over the fence in pursuit. This must be how they escaped, but cannot imagine how I failed to notice their absence; anyway, am delighted to see David.

‘Thank God you saw them. Would you like to stay the night now you're here?'

David's face is black and white like an old movie in the moonlight; he laughs.

‘Why?'

I point to snoring boys and piglets.

‘I wondered if you might sleep out here with them because I can't make up my mind whether I should be here or inside with The Beauty.' As the words leave me I realise that the request is ambiguous and that I may have propositioned him. Blush scarlet, but probably appear grey in moonlit night. David does not seem enthusiastic or eager. I make it all worse.

‘If you stayed, I wouldn't have to sleep outside.'

‘No, you wouldn't.' He glowers through the dusk at me, then capitulates. ‘Oh, all right then. Have you got another sleeping bag and a tent, or do I have to go in the pigsty as well?'

Fall over biscuit tin in hopping excitement and grovel happily. ‘No, no, I'll get you some stuff. Would you like a camp bed and a pillow as well?'

Withering glare, and David mutters, ‘Don't push it, Venetia, just give me the pillow and forget the bloody camp bed.' I run to the scullery to unearth the tent, congratulating myself on my good fortune. Now that I do not have to do it, can acknowledge sensation of utter terror at prospect of spending night outside and in charge. Pimple tent is erected in moments and I crawl around inside making it cosy by laying out a pillow and
lime-green sleeping bag in which David will look like a glow-worm.

‘What would you have done if I hadn't come?' David is sitting on the steps by the pond smoking a cigarette. Sit down next to him and am instantly bitten by three midges, so start scratching.

‘I don't know, I think I'd have had to drag the boys back inside, or else spend the whole night patrolling between here and the house.'

‘Don't, you'll make it worse.' His hand is warm over mine on my leg, stopping my absent-minded scratching. My heart is hammering away and we look at each other for half a second which feels like several hundred years. Leap up, unable to cope with suspense and anything more significant, and scuttle off to the house shouting, ‘Ni-ight, sleep well,' very casually over shoulder.

August 29th

Breadcrumb-head and peeled-eye sensation caused by night listening to the hall clock ticking and wondering how to face David in the morning. Needn't have bothered as he is not here. The Beauty makes straight for the pig zone before I can even get her bottle from the kitchen, and peeps into the tent in the hope of action. Finding
none, she crawls into the sleeping bag to make sure, but all is empty. The boys crawl out from their shack, shaking off straw and yawning. The Beauty is diverted and heads off to be a piglet in a dust-bath just vacated by one of the fruitcakes. Giles clambers carefully over the electric fence.

‘Did you see David, Mum? He's gone to look for a frying pan. What's he doing here anyway?'

David arrives back brandishing the pan and crouches to light the fire.

‘I rounded up your pigs in the village last night and when I got here and saw you two looking so comfortable, I decided to join in.' He turns to me.

‘Good morning, house dweller, will you join us for breakfast?'

No time for embarrassment as we try to consume bacon and marshmallows without the piglets finding out and becoming cannibals.

August 31st

Truly hideous day spent buying trainers, pants and socks for Giles and Felix in Norwich. Purchasing the stuff is bad enough, worse is the fact that I will have to sew name tapes onto it all. Must remember to write to school governors with my brilliant idea. Have long believed that
all school uniform should be pooled. Each parent could pay a set amount at the beginning of their child's school career and that amount could pay for another set of clothes to go in the pool. With no name tapes and no ownership of items, there would be no lost property and no ghastly clothing list to upset mothers at the end of each holiday. It is all part of Utopian dream, like free bicycles in Cambridge, and just needs setting up to become a huge success.

Dawdle in the Games Workshop, mystic temple to Warhammer, and am forced to sit in corner while Giles is given a demonstration in painting the Blood Thirster by the whey-faced, black-clad shop assistant. Felix, a box of Dwarves in one hand and another of Boar Men in the other, is in a trance of indecision at the counter. Hope he chooses the cheapest ones, as his Warhammer collection spends much time scattered across his bedroom carpet and then in the Hoover bag waiting to be rescued, and so is not good value for him. Giles on the other hand has gone bigtime with his. The Blood Thirster is a hefty purchase. He has been saving up for it since the beginning of the holidays. Curious to see this object of desire, I get him to show me one in the shop. It does not look, as I had imagined, like an orange squeezer, but is a lump of moulded metal in the shape of the ghoul in Munch's
Scream
but with skeletons and sundry corpses dangling.

Wish my children would spend their pocket money on
something more wholesome, but am comforted a little by the thought that it could be worse. Charles is bringing out a line called Heavenly Pets, a range of plastic toys inspired by too many visits to McDonald's with his children. Preying upon susceptibility of small, grief-stricken owners, he plans to sell tiny take-home wind-up coffins with pet of your choice within, ready to pop out when wound up. Only discovered this atrocity when Felix finally unpacked his bag this morning. Charles had given him a prototype hamster coffin.

‘Look, Daddy's going to sell these and I helped him decide what colour they should be.' The purple coffin, playing ‘Merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream' opens slowly to reveal an orange nylon blob, presumably the hamster, reclining on cushion-effect plastic bed. As the tune finishes, the blob levitates, hovers and flops back and the coffin closes again. Utterly repulsive and tasteless. Felix loves it. I send a postcard in complaint, and only notice as I am posting it that I have used the one of the mummified cat from the British Museum.

September 1st

Greatly looking forward to term-time and also to wearing jerseys again and lighting fires. Summer still lingers, though, and combine harvesters bumble through the last cornfields creating herringbone tweed patterns as they cut. Out for the evening and the road is a neat centre parting between smooth golden stubble. Dust and heat follow me down it on my way to have dinner, or rather ‘kitchen supper', at the Sampsons. Zoom along with windows down, hair flying and the plangent twang of Deborah Allen on the tape machine. She gets to my current favourite song and up goes the volume. I sing along with gusto, especially when we reach the chorus to which I have learnt all the words and all the instrumental flurries. Tap the steering wheel and shriek ‘Yeehah' a few times. Excellent stuff.

Vast copper beach trees around the Sampsons' lawn increase autumnal mood, their shadows long and inky across springy grass. Getting out of the car, am covered in goose pimples within seconds, having chosen to wear tiny lime-green and lemon-yellow sundress, purchased today from a market stall on impulse because it was so cheap.
It is made of nylon and causes me to leap with static whenever I touch anything. It is most unsuitable, and, worst of all, I am convinced it would look better on a fourteen-year-old.

Sir Nicholas is passionate about his lawns and employs a man full-time to roll them, mow them, pull dandelions out of them and water them. Passing the pool, I glimpse a hunched figure on all fours behind a wiggle of box hedging: it is Sir Nicholas, sent out by Hilary to find mint, and overcome by a desire to be at one with his sward. I wave and call a greeting.

‘The grass here is wonderful, Sir Nicholas, mine has become a tundra now, so it's lovely to remember what grass is supposed to look like.'

He bounces up, ‘Venetia, come through, my dear, how splendid to see you.'

He leads me in through a French window to the drawing room, where a handful of people are sipping tiny drinks from eggcup-sized glasses and trying to look relaxed. Hilary introduces me to the others, but not one of the names sinks into my head as I am crackling with static and embarrassment, both caused by my unsuitable dress. On top of the dress is fashionable boiled-wool shrunken cardigan. As an advance treat to myself for doing the name tapes, I persuaded Jenny the babysitter to sew puce ribbon around the edge of this cardigan last week and have been longing to try it
out on an audience ever since. This audience is not appreciative.

‘Dear me, it is so irritating when the daily shrinks one's clothes,' says a well-meaning middle-aged woman in a piecrust frill and pleated skirt, watching me fumble to do up a button on my cardigan in an attempt to hide as much of the silly dress as I can. She has a daughter at Giles's school, and she shows off about having bought and name-taped all her uniform at the beginning of the holidays.

Can think of nothing at all to say except, ‘Oh.'

Kitchen supper is pretty fancy, and delicious. I dispose of my goat's cheese log in two mouthfuls and eat three pieces of bread while my neighbour prods his first course unenthusiastically. Having not listened to any introductions, I plunge in.

‘Which is your wife?'

He looks baffled. ‘Oh, I'm not married,' and then, as if it follows, ‘I'm in the army.'

Of course, this is why I have been asked. Remember my mother telling me that Sir Nicholas was taking an interest in my single status and thought something should be done about it. Particularly thoughtful of him to provide an army man for me, like Charles but newer model. On my right, Sir Nicholas is busy with his other neighbour, the piecrust, and is not talking to me. The army man gives up pretending to eat the goat's cheese,
and concentrates on the large amount of my thigh visible despite my primly spread napkin.

‘What was your husband's rank and regiment?' he asks.

‘I can't remember,' I reply, graceless but truthful. Am immediately ashamed. Of gracelessness. Now I will have to ask him about his rank and regiment to make up. He drones away and I fiddle with my ribbon and listen to Hilary's conversation with the splendid husband of piecrust. His hair is almost blue with snowiness, and he sports a beautiful tweed jacket and shoes polished until they gleam like walnut wood. He is judging the cattle classes at the local agricultural show. I would love to know about this, and cannot bear to miss the conversation, so apologise to army man.

‘I hope you don't mind, I just need to know about cows.' He is very understanding.

‘Of course, I do see. Why don't we swap places?'

Soon I am leaning in my plate, topping up my wineglass and learning how to tell if a cow has championship potential or not. Arrive home late, determined to purchase a small bovine as soon as possible, preferably at the show tomorrow, and to keep it in the orchard and milk it in the manner of Marie Antoinette. Small green dress will become milkmaid outfit and will therefore be useful.

September 2nd

Almost negligible hangover in no way diminishes my enthusiasm for bovine purchase. Giles and Felix groan about it being the end of their holidays and wanting just to be at home, a line which I used to fall for but now recognise as euphemism for playing on the Gameboy and watching advertisements on television. It is raining as we depart for the agricultural show, and The Beauty is wild-eyed and dangerous with new teeth causing trouble. She throws all toys on the floor of the car and shouts fiercely all the way there, shattering my nerves. At the show, cannot bear the queue to enter, so deviously convince car-parking youths that we are members and drive straight to the main ring. Just as well, as downpour commences, to coincide with the Belgian Blue class. We watch from the warmth and comfort of the car, with the windscreen wipers on, as a slow procession of white cows with big blue ink spots and terrible shaven buttocks shuffle past us. Many of the bovines are creating cowpats as they go, and many others are walking through them, cloven hoofs squelching. Suddenly do not wish to own a cow.