Hens Dancing (23 page)

Lila is being a real wet blanket: ‘I'm sorry, I can't drink it; I read that heating cheap wine literally turns it into battery acid and I'm not prepared to run that risk with my metabolism.'

She turns her back to find a clean glass for the wholesome life elixir she has brought with her, and my mother sticks her tongue out. In contrast to grumpy Lila, I am now feeling very much more cheerful than I have for ages. Another swig of the potion creates a woosh of energy and power reminiscent of Asterix, and I dash into the garden to call the children for the games to start.

‘We can't be bothered to wait for the others,' I shout. ‘They can join in later. Let's start with apple-bobbing.'

‘What others? Who else have you asked?'

I turn to answer Desmond and am jolted into a scream. He has changed into vulpine, glistening Count Dracula. The Beauty has had enough, and clutches my hand in terror, hiding her head in her skirt, only emerging to wave her hand and shout, ‘Taxi, taxi,' in a bid for escape when car headlights flare out of the darkness towards us. The car pauses halfway up the drive, and although I cannot see anything save headlights, I can hear the driver laughing at the scene on the lawn. Five buckets filled with water and bobbing apples are
illuminated by the various lanterns, and kneeling at each bucket is a child, his or her head sleek and wet like a seal from immersion in the apple-filled water. My mother, followed by Lila, who has been forced by Calypso to wear a Victorian child's sprigged bonnet, marches between the contestants with her torch, counting apples and administering towels. Beyond the grinning, glowing light of the lanterns, Desmond is dimly visible in the woods, flitting to and fro with torch spectacles on, very spectral with his whited-out face, but also reminiscent of the barn owl.

‘I have never seen such an insane bunch of people, or rather, not since that midsummer party you had, Venetia. How's Digger?' David climbs out of the car leaving the lights on, and saunters over to kiss my cheek. Am taken aback. He doesn't usually kiss me. Perhaps he's drunk. I turn to call Digger out from the kitchen where he has been guarding the sticky buns, but he has already shimmied silently to David's side. So has my mother, proffering a beaker of mulled wine and almost as pleased to see him as Digger.

‘I've been meaning to get in touch with you about those friends of yours with the handbags. Would they like to use my house? I read somewhere that location work is hugely lucrative, and I'm told that—'

‘It's the drink talking,' I whisper, lemon-like, in David's other ear, annoyed because I wanted to hear
about his trip to London, and now he will probably leave while I am putting The Beauty to bed.

He affects deafness towards me and I march upstairs, feeling both martyred and ashamed of myself, to bath The Beauty. But he is still there when I come down. Mayhem has muted now, and the children are eating cheese on toast by the fire David has built, and are listening wide-eyed to my mother reading M. R. James's ‘Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'. David throws more logs onto the fire and comes over to my side by the door.

‘Desmond has challenged Lila to a darts match, so they've gone to the pub. I think it's to the death. Do you want to go as well? Your mother can look after the kids.'

The sitting room is cosy and smells of autumn leaves and the chestnuts David is roasting. The children are agog at my mother's knees, hardly breathing as the suspense mounts. Contentment wraps around me.

‘No, I'd much rather stay here. Let's have a drink, I want to hear about your trip.'

November 2nd

Rose telephones at length to complain about Tristan, who has gone on the Hay Diet and is making her do it too,
and Theo. He won't let her have any breakfast except a fig.

‘We're not allowed pasta with Parmesan cheese or even bread and butter,' she complains. ‘Theo hates it; I have to sneak him sandwiches when Tristan's out, but I have to hide the bread because we're only supposed to have rye bread now. It's frightful. Theo has started jumping out of his cot at night. I'm sure it's because he's hungry. He bit me three times yesterday. Do you think that's a sign of hunger as well?'

I reassure her and suggest she buys another fridge and puts it somewhere Tristan never goes. ‘Then you can fill it with things you and Theo can eat.'

‘What a brilliant idea. A small one will be easy to hide, behind the coats or somewhere like that. Thanks, Venetia, that's so underhand. I love it. Anyway, tell me what you've been up to. How are you coping with the Miracle of the Immaculate Conception? I think it's time you found a new man, you know. It's been ages. I'm going to come down and plan a strategy with you.'

This is a favourite theme of Rose's, and I meet it with my usual response.

‘There aren't any men around.'

Anyway, I don't want one except for wood-chopping and taking the rubbish down the drive. Explain this to Rose.

‘I've had enough of all that emotional angst and
having to look after them. It's as much as I can manage to look after the children. And I couldn't bear not to be allowed pasta and Parmesan.'

Change the subject and tell her about our Hallowe'en party. She is petulant to have missed it.

‘Typical Lila, to get down there for the party. I wish I'd come. Theo would have loved it. We could have covered him in cochineal again. Is David that bloke who came to the midsummer madness night? With grey eyes and great legs? God, why don't you go for him, Venetia? He's delicious, and he must fancy you, he's always hanging around.'

Rose is unshakeably convinced that lust lies behind any male–female friendship.

‘You read too many women's magazines,' I tell her before hanging up.

November 3rd

Spend hours dragging branches and heaping leaves to make a bonfire. Not wishing to leave anything to chance, and remembering Charles telling me that enormous skill and intellect are needed to structure a bonfire, I pour a quantity of petrol over it before attempting to light it. Terrible muffled
woomph
noise, flames leap around me
and am convinced I have been engulfed by them. Hurl myself on the ground and roll back and forth like Rags when she has found a nice old corpse and wishes to be wreathed in its scent. Dare not stop until my clothes are damp and my skin is grainy with earth and crushed twigs. Try opening and shutting eyes and mouth to test whether the top layer of skin is still there. Seem to have miraculously escaped being burnt to a crisp, and the bonfire has already gone out. Resort to firelighters, and slowly a core of orange flame begins to lick the outer branches and I can prod the crackling structure, releasing a puff of blue smoke and a roar as the fire cranks up hotter and hotter.

Much later, putting Felix to bed, I close his bedroom curtains and see the pink glow of my fire still burning. A triumph over unlikeliness.

November 4th

Drive the children to Cambridge through umber-tinted afternoon to take them to Charles. All are sweetly excited, even The Beauty, who has only been allowed to stay with him once before. On the telephone last night he capitulated towards her finally, saying, ‘If she can walk, she can come.' Not only can she walk, she can run, and is
a very fine limbo dancer too. She is a total music-head and is happy on any journey as long as the volume on the tape machine is high and some lovely rap and disco music is thudding out. Her dancing is sublime, wiggling of shoulders like Madonna and shaking of head like Karen Carpenter. She is not at all interested in children's tapes, quite rightly in my view as the singers always have such awful patronising voices. Maybe she does her head-shaking to satirise them. Hope so. We listen to louche rock music by Hole and also to Kris Kristofferson and arrive at Heavenly Petting on radiant form.

The fluffy receptionist is dressed in marshmallow pink, and is markedly more friendly than she was when I came on my own to the meeting. This time she slides out from behind her desk to greet us, her wonderful cleavage gleaming in a nest of softest mohair, and her whole being hourglass-perfect and tiny.

‘Hello, I'm Minna. Welcome, all of you. I've been asked to entertain you for half an hour while Mr Denny finishes his meeting. Would you all like to come into the Reflection Room and have a drink?'

We follow obediently and are led into a thickly carpeted room decorated to look like a bruise or perhaps a sunset. The walls are marbled mauve and lilac, grey and pink, and the sofas are upholstered in yellow fabric. Minna busies herself with glasses and packets of crisps,
her long frosted-blue nails clicking on the cans of Coke as she pours them.

Giles has been watching her intently and suddenly comments, ‘You've got such tiny feet. I didn't know grown-up feet could be that small.'

I automatically shove my great boats back under my chair so no one can see them. Minna tosses her silver-blonde curls and throws him a saucy look.

‘Well, not much grows in the shade, does it?'

Her bosom hovers some distance in front of her as she pirouettes. Giles turns scarlet and suddenly I am enlightened – she is Desmond's Dolly Parton.

‘Minna – of course. You're Desmond's girlfriend, you must be. Desmond is my brother. He came to our Hallowe'en party and told us all about you.'

I babble on, half astonished at the coincidence of finding her here of all places, half to help Giles recover from his embarrassment. The Beauty takes to her immediately, and throws herself at Minna's mini feet, even lying down with her kangaroo on the perfect Barbie blue high-heeled shoes. Minna alights on the arm of a sofa; The Beauty watches her beadily, and sensing a moment when she is preoccupied, displays astonishing deftness in removing Minna's right shoe and placing it on her own small foot. The left follows, and the triumphant Beauty hobbles between the sofas, shouting ‘ha ha' and pointing at her cerulean footwear.

Reluctantly tear myself away from Minna's life story, but not before I have learnt that she is a form of saint. She has thirty-seven cats and fourteen dogs at home, and her mission is to save animals from owners who have succumbed to Charles's rhetoric and to his advertising and have decided to end their little pets' lives, ‘On a Good Note, On a Good Day,' as Charles always puts it.

‘I go along to places like puppy obedience classes, or maybe local pet shows,' she explains, ‘and I talk to the owners about their twilight plans for their older pets. Lots of them are so relieved to have the decision lifted from their shoulders.'

Although Minna's secret mission is at odds with the success of Charles's business and therefore my children's allowance, I am utterly beguiled by her. Finally depart to drive home, leaving her playing monsters with Felix and The Beauty, while Giles, still shy, is referee.

November 5th

In no frame of mind to enjoy the evening I have ahead of me. Vivienne and Simon are taking me with them to a friend's farm for a fireworks party and barbecue. I must go out because it is too dispiriting to sit at home on Guy
Fawkes Night when the beloved children are whooping it up in Cambridge at a vast party on the Backs with carousels and hot dogs and glorious fireworks bursting over water and medieval spires.

They telephone as I am debating whether to wear wellingtons and my filthy waterproof, or to freeze. We have an awful, textbook divorced-children conversation. I may have to ban them from ringing me when they go away in future.

‘Hi, Mum, it's Giles.'

‘Hi, Giles, how are you all?'

‘Fine thanks.'

‘I'm missing you hugely and thinking about you all having sparklers and toffee apples.'

Long pause.

‘Is everything all right, darling?'

‘Yup.'

‘Are you having fun?'

‘Yup.'

Long pause. Then Giles speaks.

‘D'you want to speak to Felix and The Beauty?'

‘Yup.' Oh, God, now I'm doing it. ‘I mean, yes please, darling, have a lovely fireworks party, won't you, and do be careful with sparklers and everything…' He has gone. Conversation with Felix identically awful and stilted. My usually garrulous children have become polite, pretend people with cardboard manners. I also dry up.
After a relatively short silence, Felix says, ‘I'll get The Beauty now.'

Now we have a very lengthy pause, followed by clunking and heavy breathing. I try speaking, by this time torn between hysterical laughter and sobs. The Beauty howls as soon as she hears my voice and is whisked away from the phone. Someone hangs up.

*   *   *

The firework party and barbecue takes place in, on and very close to a large Range Rover. We arrive to find four or five people milling about in the dark with sticks and torches, and a very small, sulky bonfire. Simon immediately takes over as chef and party planner, and discarding the hosts' many Tupperware boxes of food, he starts cooking some steaks he has brought which are oozing blood in Vivienne's basket along with a bottle of sloe vodka, three vast Chinese rockets and a slab of chocolate. The hosts scuttle to do Simon's bidding, and Vivienne and I clamber into the car with brimming glasses of sloe vodka and turn on the heating in preparation for engrossing conversation and gossip. Steadied and cheered from earlier telephone hysteria, I sip the sloe vodka and find its smooth sweetness comforting and medicinal.

Simon's bossing is effective. The display begins with
three delicate bouquets of lacy vivid green and pink Roman candles, followed by a great golden rocket. Even more lovely with a second sloe vodka. And a third. On the way home, having exchanged effusive farewells with co-guests whose names I still have not discovered, am thrilled to find I have hardly thought about the children all evening, and haven't missed them in the slightest. A marked improvement from last time they all went to Charles's.

November 7th

How can I help them? Charles drops the children back late. Felix trudges upstairs, his favourite cuddly toy in one hand, the other plunged into his pocket. He does not look up at me, nor does Giles. Both have crescent shadows of exhaustion beneath their eyes and chalk-white skin. The Beauty is asleep with her mouth open, small, plump fingers clamped around a Smarties tube.