Hens Dancing (20 page)

October 1st

Leave for Cambridge after dropping The Beauty at Jenny's house and Felix and Giles at school. Had to shove breakfast into them all at arm's length while keeping elegant but no longer fashionable suit unsullied,
and found experience acutely stressful. This is the lot of working mothers. How do they do it? How do they stay clean? How do they put the children in the car without laddering their tights? Do they have special boiler suits for cross-over moments between kitchen and office?

Offer prayers of guilt-ridden gratitude to Heavenly Petting for providing for my children and allowing me to pursue my so-called career from home, as I drive towards its offices through the fog-bound fens. Impossible not to be astonished at the scale of Charles's business now. Pause at gate to be met by courteous, uniformed security.

‘Can I help you, madam? Are you attending a service, or do you need counselling in planning one?'

Am unreasonably irritated that he does not know Who I Am.

‘Neither, I'm here for a meeting,' I snap, and am further infuriated by the double take he is unable to disguise as he steps closer to my dented, muddy, litter-strewn car.

‘You'd better park with the contractors, I think.' He waves me past the director's car park where I can see Charles's car hobnobbing with other sleek and expensive beasts, and sends me round to a space in between a Clean-Your-Crem van and a pick-up truck full of plastic dahlias on plinths. The front doors of Heavenly Petting open automatically as I step onto a doormat with a
pair of hands clasped in prayer woven into it. In the foyer, a high desk dominates, and behind it a Dolly Parton type perches, her smile a well-balanced combination of welcome and sympathy. Am pleased to note that this changes to fear and deference when I tell her my name. I am ushered into the boardroom and away from the hideous loop of piped music, now metamorphosing from the Black Beauty theme tune to ‘Seasons in the Sun' by Terry Jacks.

‘Venetia, how good of you to come.' Charles swoops over and shakes hands, which for some reason seems very odd to me and I have to bite my bottom lip hard to keep a wide grin at bay. Reflect that Charles's manner has always been more boardroom than bedroom as he leads me around the table reintroducing me to the five directors. Knees become unreliable as we tour; have not seen any of them except Henry Loden, Charles's business partner, for a year, and am convinced that they are all comparing me to Helena, who is junior embalmer here now. Wish I had brought The Beauty to protect me. As usual pay no attention to what Charles is saying as he opens the meeting. Am still mulling silently over my clever boardroom/bedroom pun and wondering whether Jenny will remember that Felix has trampolining this afternoon as the meeting begins.

‘… Trading has been extremely healthy, sales are up and the company is showing good margins on paper,
increasingly good margins… although of course… still room for improvement.'

Doodle on the paper provided and make mental note to ask Charles why I am not receiving a bigger dividend if figures are so rosy. Henry Loden is speaking now, running his palm across thinning, side-parted hair as he bulldozes through civilities and motors on to the point of the meeting. Heavenly Petting is extending into the gifts market and the company is starting production of plastic mourning rings to be sold at Pet City, Toys R Us and also at the chain's own crematoria.

Henry has stopped rubbing his pate and is greasing his hands, palm to palm, as his speech climaxes. He is so excited by what he is saying that little bubbles of spit have formed a pearly foam on his lower lip.

‘We hope also to reach the supermarkets to coincide with Valentine's Day next year. We feel that a “Love and Loss” promotion would be a great start for us in this market.' He pauses, slaps his calculator on the table and steps back, hands on hips, ready for admiration. ‘Any questions?'

Am astonished to find that I have leapt to my feet, and am shaking my fist and heckling.

‘Have any of you stopped to think about what you are suggesting? I think it's grotesque. A mourning ring indeed. Next you'll be pretending that the hair in it – if you aren't too cheapskate to put hair in it at all – belongs
to a real animal. Maybe you'll even say it belongs to their own pet. You could do a tailor-made range, a couture version for clients.'

Am on full throttle now, and although furious at the slimy, seamy nature of Charles's latest venture, am really enjoying the effect of my rage. Continue to list details for ever more tasteless rings until Charles hauls himself to his feet and raises a hand to quiet me.

‘Thank you, Venetia, shall we continue this conversation in my office? There are a couple of matters pertaining to the children that we need to go over.' He shepherds me out, pushing me ahead, and then darts back in to say to Henry and the others, ‘Get to work on Venetia's hair and couture ideas right away. I think she's got something.'

I sit down in his office with my shoulder abutting a shelf full of sample coffins for mice, budgerigars and other size A (which means tiny) pets. Charles leans against the door with his arms folded and looks at me levelly.

‘You may complain about the way I make money, but you seem to have no trouble spending it,' he says coldly. I take a deep breath and maintain my cool.

‘And neither do you. Or is yet another holiday for you and Helena a research trip?'

And then he drops his bombshell.

‘Helena is pregnant. She is expecting twins at Christmas and she needs a break. This is her last chance
to fly. When we return, we are moving house, so I can't have the boys until November.'

Extraordinary that I didn't notice at Gawain's exhibition. It just illustrates the terrible truth: I am self-absorbed and unobservant to the point of stupidity. Come to think of it, she was wearing a smock, but I took that to be her interpretation of fashion, and thought nothing of it. Except that it was horrid.

It is not until I am in the car, driving away from Cambridge with the sun like a blood orange streaming in through the back window, warmly caressing my head and my hair, that the shock thaws and I remember that Charles has had a vasectomy. Such was his fury when I announced that I was pregnant with The Beauty that he went to the BUPA hospital that week and made the arrangements, and by the time the bump that was to be The Beauty showed, Charles had done the deed.

‘He's got no lead in his pencil now,' was Henry Loden's revolting, leering remark to me when we met in the hospital lift as I arrived to collect Charles and he was leaving, having visited him.

October 3rd

A freak hot autumn day. The Beauty and I spend the morning picking blackberries on the old railway line
before driving to meet Vivienne for lunch in order to discuss Helena's immaculate conception. Mist has draped fairy cobwebs in the shade beneath great oaks, and the hedgerows are busy with colour and bustling invisible creatures, all intent on gathering what they can before winter. The Beauty trundles ahead, her own choice of spotted handkerchief as headscarf and red woollen jersey giving her a timeless, story-book quality. Beyond the green seam of former railway, with its springing borders of hawthorn and elder, the newly ploughed fields are rich brown and herringbone-striped. A church tower drifts blue on the horizon, its backdrop the last square of golden stubble, shrinking every moment as a tiny toy tractor drags a gleam of plough along it.

By lunchtime we have two baskets of blackberries, black crescents beneath our nails and deep purple lips. The stubble square behind the church is down to one shining stripe and the rest of the gilded world has turned over and taken on the rich chocolate hue of high autumn. Have been weeping and cursing into the blackberries intermittently, and am not sure why.

If Helena chooses to have children, what business is it of mine? Can never get far with this thought before being sidetracked by how she managed it. Perhaps Charles had his operation reversed. Painful, but devoted. Cannot imagine inspiring such a gesture in anyone. Cannot imagine the poison dwarf inspiring it either.

On the way to Vivienne's, am immeasurably cheered and lifted by my first view of the sea, a crisp navy-blue triangle glimpsed through a cut in the headland. ‘Sea saw, sea saw,' says The Beauty, thrilled with her ever broadening vocabulary.

Simon has evidently been alerted to the drama, and his sympathy has manifested itself in a brace of partridge and an invitation for Giles to come beating. A bowl of soup and a bottle of white wine and Vivienne's un-ruffleable presence are great healers. Gradually, Charles and Helena recede until, by teatime, their significance is the size of Mrs Pepperpot and we are giggling over Simon's latest business venture: wormeries.

October 5th

Have become housewifely and apron-wearing in the extreme since The News. Begin to make blackberry and apple jelly, hypnotising Giles and Felix with the sinister sight in the kitchen of an oozing cloth hanging by strings and Rags's lead from the beam while wine-dark drips of juice splash into a bowl on the table beneath it.

‘Cool. Has it got a severed head in it?' whispers Felix, walking around it, almost brushing it with his nose. Giles cuffs him across the shoulder. He shrieks melodramatically
and falls over, and Giles puts one foot on his chest and grins down at him.

‘It looks berry heavy, though, doesn't it?' he says.

Felix rolls under the table, screeching with laughter and repeating, ‘Berry heavy. Berry heavy.'

What a pair of halfwits. Sudden tears spring, causing frantic washing-up, as reality of my role as provider and protector overpowers. Will Charles cease to love them now? How could he?

Am making quince jelly as well as blackberry, and by mid-afternoon it is plain that I have taken on Too Much. Pans of melted sugar everywhere, furry, fragrant quinces rolling about the floor, until retrieved by Giles who takes three outside to juggle with. Finally pour the blackberry and apple goo into pots. All my efforts have amounted to a paltry one and a half tiny pots of the jelly. Gaze disgusted at the results of my labours in scabby-looking jars with half their old labels still unbudging. Total waste of time, sugar and fruit. Would be cheaper to buy gold-leaf jelly (if it exists) from Fortnum's, and more enjoyable.

October 6th

Rose telephones late to discuss Charles and Helena. Am still mad on housewifery, and battling with EU-sized
quince mountain. Still hundreds of them lying, as if part of a Renaissance painting, on a vast red ashet, glowing yellow and amber and softly sensual. I love them, and don't care that they are filthy to eat and useless for anything but jelly. And sponge pudding. Mmmmm. Better not, the children will hate it; I will have to eat it all. Not slimming.

‘I have news for you,' says Rose, ‘big news. Are you sitting down?'

Have come to my own conclusions, and try them out on Rose. ‘Do you think the poison dwarf had an affair?'

‘No, you idiot. Haven't you worked it out? She's done IVE'

The quince jelly chooses this moment to burst out of its pan and slurp across the Aga. More like a B-movie than a Renaissance painting now, it creeps down the Aga and onto the floor, dragging the usual acrid billows of smoke and stench with it. Yank the telephone across to find a cloth, knocking a chair over, unable to leave Rose for a second.

‘How do you know? Are you sure? Whose babies are they, then?'

‘They belong to her and a sperm bank, I suppose. I don't know, but it's definitely true. Henry Loden told Tristan that she and Charles are over the moon. Apparently she's been trying for ages.'

In the inferno of my kitchen, on hands and knees with a wet cloth, a sticky telephone and surrounded by amber jelly, I reach my lowest moment.

October 7th

Three autumn-flowering cyclamen are peeping through fallen leaves beneath the beech tree and a pot of candy-pink
Nerine
have been left on the front doorstep with no card. Or maybe there was one and it blew away. The American hurricane, which was booked for an appearance two weeks ago, has arrived in East Anglia, late but forceful. The hens are most upset and fed up with having their feathers ruffled, so they have stopped laying any eggs and are sulking beneath the yew chicken, making random food runs to the back door whenever it is opened.

October 8th

The Beauty and I take a flask and sandwiches and drive onto the edge of the rugby pitch at Giles's school in order to watch him in the first match of the season. A terrible mistake.

‘Rugby isn't really a game for mothers,' comments
Giles's games master, as a boy from the opposing school is taken off the pitch on a stretcher, teeth clenched, tears spilling down dappled purple cheeks, bravely hiding the pain of a twisted knee and a thigh trampled over by metal-studded boots. Giles has the ball and is thundering towards the touchline for a few glorious seconds before a giant beefcake, supposedly also under eleven years old, but weighing at least nine stone, knocks him flying. I scream inadvertently and leap out of the car, longing to run onto the pitch. In a moment, though, Giles has crawled out from a pile of vast boys and is himself grabbing someone around the waist and hurling them to the ground.

‘They've scored three tries and made two conversions. They're doing really well.' Mr Jensen the dentist materialises at my side; his son is also playing.

‘What's a conversion?' I ask without wishing to know, and drift off as he explains. Am greatly comforted by the professional presence at the match: among the parents watching today there is a doctor, two lawyers and Mr Jensen. All we need now is an ambulance driver and every eventuality is covered. The Beauty has turned on the car stereo and is dancing on the driver's seat, taking a hostess's role when parents pass her.

‘Helloo, helloo,' she warbles to them, waving her hand to communicate that she would like them to pass on to the other end of the pitch while she finishes her
telephone call. She has a calculator, picked up from the floor of the car, clamped like a telephone to her ear, ‘Byeee,' she shrieks, slamming it down on the dashboard before rushing after her guests on the field.