Green Grass (25 page)

‘You can't,' protested Laura.

Dolly burst into tears and rushed from the room screaming, ‘You're a heartless bastard, Uncle Hedley, and I'm going to become a vegetarian from now on.'

Fred, hearing her as he came in, shook his head in amazement, and held up his ferret until he was looking into her glistening black eyes.

‘Don't worry, Vice, I won't let that crazy veggie anywhere near you. She might spike your roadkill with tofu mix.'

Laura, forced out of her most enjoyable perusal of a plant catalogue by Dolly's slamming and sobbing, sighed, steeled herself and rang Guy to ask if he knew a goat sanctuary Grass could be sent to. Guy's suggestion that he could time-share the goat himself was one of rare nobility. ‘And if we get bored of each other I can put her in that paddock Hedley made you,' he had pointed out.

It is hard, Laura admits to herself, dressing with out speaking and carrying the Teasmade past the
glowering Inigo, to keep him on the pedestal he likes to occupy, when others are acting with so much more generosity of spirit.

By the time Laura has given everyone breakfast, and helped Dolly make an outdoor milking parlour for Grass, the morning is half over. Guy telephones,

‘Hi, Laura, I've finished sorting the junk; I thought you were probably a bit too busy to fit it in. I've been up all night making plans.'

He sounds brittle and not himself. Laura takes her phone upstairs and looks out of the window at her vegetable plot bright with marigolds, borage and vivid green pyramids of peas, trophies from a plant sale for a neighbouring church.

‘What's the matter, Guy?' She notices she hasn't removed the labels, and wanders out into the garden, still on the phone.

He laughs wildly. ‘Oh, Celia has won. She wanted to keep the name of the business – my business – for her disgusting sugar-beet potions. She's done what she hoped to – she's taken something that matters hugely to me, just out of spite. I've got to find a new name and frankly, I'd like to jack it all in.' He sighs, miserable and bitter.

‘I'm sorry,' says Laura, and something inside her deflates, leaving a sense of loss that makes her want to sob.

‘Anyway, I'm going out to Greece for a bit to look at some farms there. I'll see you in a few weeks. I'll miss you, Laura.'

Laura switches off the phone, and walks back to the house, not liking the gloom that has settled on her with this call. What should she do now? She's been pretending it's fun to be useful, organising this table-top stall, when in fact it's been fun to hang around with Guy. If only Inigo would take more of an interest in what she has done here. Guy understands; and Guy is leaving. Inigo just doesn't care about the Gate House as a place. Nothing exists for Inigo unless it's related to his work. With a pang of guilt she recalls his cry that she isn't interested in his work any more. Keen to make up for this, Laura sets off down the road to find him. He has been gone for some time, armed with a digital camera and a notebook. She meets him on his way back; Inigo is bouncing with good humour.

‘This is good,' he shouts to Laura. ‘The village is so primitive. The inhabitants are so friendly.'

Laura winces. ‘You could just call them people,' she suggests.

‘Oh, don't be so ridiculous and politically correct,' he roars. ‘Now then, let me have a look at this milking business.' He marches over to Dolly, who is browning her back in a purple halter neck while Grass stands
in the shade of a large silver canopy. ‘That's my light reflector,' protests Inigo.

‘I know, it's really good for getting a suntan,' grins Dolly.

Instead of making a fuss, Inigo crouches to film Dolly's hands as they flex around the long hot udder. ‘God, it looks like a pair of those bloody sweet potatoes, or maybe brown parsnips,' he mutters. ‘It's the weirdest shape I've ever seen.'

‘Poor Grass, don't listen,' says Dolly, who has entered a halcyon phase with Grass since she stopped being shut in her shed and became a free, laidback goat with a field.

Later, Inigo finds Laura harvesting a row of salad leaves and dreaming of opening a salad bar in the village with Guy.

‘It's great,' he says, stepping over her neatly edged beds to hug her, all the fury of the morning forgotten now. ‘I've got a new project. It's called
Nanny State
and it's opening with the milking shots really close up. I'm going to explore udders, breasts and milk.'

‘Oh are you? Great!' says Laura, speaking enthusiastically to hide her guilt, and actually thinking it sounds a bit kinky at this early stage.

‘Yes. It will be my entry for the National Academy Award this year. Where's Hedley? I need him to take me to look at some cows' udders.'

Thrusting her feet into a teetering pair of heels, Laura winces. It would appear that her feet have put on weight during the summer. She wriggles her toes and, for good measure, her bottom, and stands on tiptoe in front of the mirror, leaning forwards to try and see her whole reflection. The top bit, her face, is fine, but Laura is uneasy about everything else. The black chiffon dress she has chosen is meant to wrap over, leaving a delectable cleavage and the occasional flash of leg, but no amount of wrapping in either direction achieves the desired effect; Laura is either entirely exposed as if she is wearing a porn star's nightdress, or hidden up to her chin with suffocating fabric.

How can this be? Last time she wore it, it worked. That was the summer evening she and Inigo drove to London for dinner with Manfred. Laura was reluctant on that occasion because she was discovering the joy of jam-making, a form of cooking which seemed so different from creating meals that she lost her
inhibitions and entered into it with gusto and success. That success has clearly not rolled over into dressing, Laura thinks crossly now. Pulling the ties, turning herself sideways, holding her stomach in, she observes her reflection critically. It's no use, the dress, chosen because it is her celebration outfit, has sensed her doubt. It will not fall into place for this party and persists in making her look like a folded pancake.

Inigo's selection as Artist of the Year by the National Academy will be announced this evening at a party in an old test-tube factory in East London. Inigo already knows the result because Jack, his agent, had a mole in the selection committee, and has used this knowledge to ensure television coverage of the announcement and the beginnings of a sponsorship contract for Inigo with a rubber company. Even now, Inigo is sitting in a limousine hired by Jack, heading for the party along with Carl the rubber magnate and his long-legged blonde assistant who, now Laura comes to think of it, was wearing a successfully draped wrap-around dress with tassels falling provocatively across her thighs as she wriggled up to make room for Inigo in the car. Laura wonders, belatedly, what they do with their rubber.

Inigo, suave in his giant fly dark glasses, managed to shake hands and appear urbane climbing into the cream leather interior of the car, despite Zeus, who
escaped from the house and hurtled to the car to join his master in keen pursuit of fun and adventure. However, Zeus failed to achieve the necessary momentum to get him into the car, and could only stand on his hind legs, tongue lolling, pleading to be lifted in. Laura, in her dressing gown getting ready, ran out to fetch him, biting the inside of her cheek hard to stop herself giggling at the absurd spectacle of so much power confounded by so little a dog. Inigo and his entourage drove off with much back-slapping and the clamping of large wet mouths (Carl's and Jack's) around cigars. Laura is very glad to be travelling separately and hopes to be able to find the announcement of Inigo's triumph properly thrilling by the time she gets there.

To be frank, the news that Inigo has won a giant silver-plated painter's palette and a lifetime's free entry to any of the Academy's shows doesn't thrill her to the soul. It is not, after all, the first time that Inigo has received this particular accolade; indeed, the palette from his previous success ten years ago would still be cluttering up the basement had Fred not added it to the jumble of items at the table-top sale a few weeks ago in Norfolk. Venetia Summers's mother Araminta bought it, as far as Laura remembers, for one pound fifty, to give to her friend the vicar.

‘Rev Trev will love this,' she had enthused, handing
over her money to Fred. ‘It's like a communion plate but bigger. I think there could be a chance that he'll use it for the collection on busy Sundays. I don't suppose you've got a lovely goblet to go with it, have you? So nice for a drop of wine now and then.'

Laura smiles at the memory and has to force herself back to the present and Inigo's big celebration. With every new success, the gulf between them is widening. Inigo's world is his work, and it is no longer Laura's. He was always going to be extremely successful, and Laura thought that was all she wanted. For a while, Inigo's work defined her as much as it did him. But now satisfaction is increasingly to be found in her vegetable garden. She is even beginning to enjoy cooking; it creates such a good send-off for the things she has grown to be praised and then eaten. Inigo himself admits that Laura's broad bean soup is peerless.

She peels off the wrap dress and wriggles into a plunging, saucy milkmaid outfit with a low-cut bodice and frills around the hem. Made of bright yellow and pink floral crepe, it is jaunty and rustic-looking. Inigo loathes it because it is not streamlined and elegant; Laura loves it because it is cheerful and makes her feel curvaceous, like Betty Boop. The addition of a coat should stop Inigo making unpleasant comments.

Leaning into the mirror, Laura drags a crimson-dipped brush across her bottom lip and closes her mouth to stain the top lip too. She can summon little enthusiasm for the evening ahead; it would be a lot more fun to be going to the pub in Crumbly with Guy and Hedley and having a game of pool. Probably with Araminta and the vicar. Laura blinks at her reflection, and picks up her bag from the small chair beneath the window. There is a thump on the bathroom door and muffled cursing; it is Dolly.

‘Mum, Mum, Fred's hogging the computer looking up ferret rubbish. He's been doing it for hours – can you come and get him off?'

In the tiny pause where Dolly draws breath, Laura answers, ‘No, I can't. I'm going out.'

Dolly doesn't for a moment slip from thinking about herself to noticing what her mother has said. ‘And I can't find my pink T-shirt, and I've looked everywhere, and you said we would take Zeus to dog training tonight. Just you and me on our own.'

The self-centredness of teenagers is truly breathtaking. Laura opens the bathroom door, not for Dolly, but because she is now running late and must leave. Dolly is there on the threshold, tall now, so she is eyeball to eyeball with her mother. Draping a friendly but demanding arm around her neck, Dolly accompanies her down the stairs, leaning into her,
whispering pleas. ‘Fred won't mind being left here on his own while you and I go to dog training. I just think it ought to be two of us not three, but can we just look for my T-shirt? I think it might be—'

‘Dolly, DOLLY.' Laura turns to face her at the bottom of the stairs, disentangling herself from the tentacled grasp, waving an exasperated hand in front of her face. ‘I'm going out! Look! I'm wearing lipstick and party clothes. I'm going with Dad to a party. We can't go to dog training tonight, I'm sorry.'

Breathing shallow and fast Laura shrugs her coat on. Trying to ignore the gloom gathering on Dolly's face, in the droop of her shoulders, the slump of her body against the banisters, Laura kisses her briskly. ‘Come on, darling, I did tell you days ago that I had to go to this thing.'

Dolly shakes her head. ‘No, you didn't. You never tell me anything.' She gives her mother an evil look. ‘You just aren't interested in anything any more that isn't to do with your stupid life in Norfolk.'

Laura sighs. Dolly is showing all the signs of working herself up into a hysterical frenzy and the party will be in full swing by now. Laura should be there. She pats Dolly's head, flashes an instant smile and picks up her keys, ready to depart. She looks at her watch and suggests soothingly, ‘Watch a movie in my bedroom, and have a look in the ironing pile. I think I
might have seen your pink T-shirt there this morning. Bye, darling. Look after Fred.'

Retching sounds issue from the sitting room, faintly accompanied by Fred's indignant voice. ‘Don't be so sad, Mum! I'll puke if she tries to look after me. I can do it myself, thanks.'

Fuelled by guilt and a strong sense of inadequacy as a mother, Laura reaches the mystifying address in the East End. ‘X Building, Work House Street, Hoxton' reads the invitation. Laura is convinced that the only reason the National Academy chose this place was its name; and locking her car, this conviction grows. It is a damp September evening and the slice of sky Laura can see is bruised purple above the yellow glow of the city. The street she is in has the empty silence of a film set – few cars parked along its narrow length, no lights in the dirty windows of five floors of warehousing in front of her, and at the end of the building, a grey block that must be the factory.

Regretting her choice of the yellow milkmaid dress when black, no matter how badly wrapped, would have been so much less conspicuous, Laura crosses to the factory and walks its length looking for a door. There isn't one, nor is anyone else arriving. A car alarm throbs in the distance but Laura can hear no voices, no footsteps, no music. Nervously, she reaches into her bag to check the address on the invitation,
and on the
A to Z
, in case she has gone mad. Looking up again, she notices a ramp beyond the end of the building. It would be so much more enjoyable to get back into the car and drive home at this point, but it isn't even worth considering. Laura turns the corner and walks down the ramp towards a pair of big brown metal doors, one of which has a small opening like an up-ended letter box flooding light onto the ramp. A constellation of fairy lights Laura recognises as The Bear because she has seen it labelled as such in the National Academy shop, twinkles above the narrow doorway. Evidently, she has arrived.