Summertime (12 page)

May 2nd

Email to David – jolly nice of me under the circumstances:

Still have confetti in my hair and marabou trim on my mind post-wedding. Also, can feel a new career burgeoning, as about ten people asked me where did I get my cardigan and five of them have commissioned me to make them one as soon as possible. Am I perhaps dreaming or still drunk? Somehow, the tangled muddles and tensions of yesterday morning dissolved, and Desmond and Minna's wedding was a most moving, joyous, glamorous occasion. Minna was the ultimate Jane Austen heroine for the twenty-first century, radiant and ethereal (and humorous with the pom-poms) while Desmond was twice as large as life and wildly excited, punching the air as Rev. Trev said, ‘I now declare you man and wife.'

Many tears shed by Granny and self as the darling little bridesmaid tripped down the aisle with her brothers, her tiny ballet shoes twinkling with
sequins, her dress an angelic ivory with the strawberry marabou around the hem, and her virtuous expression defying anyone to chastise her for hurling her bouquet into the font as she passed it. Granny's sniffing intensified at the touching sight of Egor following the bridal procession, a blue satin bow around his neck and his little pink eyes matching the apple blossom tucked into his collar. Coming out of church, he took charge and led the procession down the village, only stopping to pee once on a parked car.

Cannot bear to think how the party might have then sagged and collapsed due to an inaugural free-form dance performed by Peta and two of her sidekicks in the middle of the tent. Minna, in her new role as wife, took a firm line and hissed at an astonished Desmond, ‘Get that freak show out of my party,' before turning on her heel and walking out to stand beneath the drifting confetti-pink petals of the cherry tree. Atmosphere not helped by the unconscious form of Bass, the creep who put the tent up, rolling out from under a table as revellers sat down to lunch. Managed to deal him a swift and savage kick while pretending to pick up a napkin. Placement not all it should be, as I was next to two empty spaces, one which should have been
filled by you, and the other by Hedley Sale, the guy who let us use the field. As neither of you showed up, I looked very unpopular until my mother beckoned me over to where she and Rev. Trev were quaffing wine and toasting everything in sight.

Speeches were made. Desmond's best man, thanks again to your absence, was his drummer in Hung Like Elvis. He bounced on to the stage in his chalk-thick pinstripe suit and black shirt with dark glasses on and a cigar in his mouth. He made a perfect, short and funny speech, bowed, but thought better of leaving the stage at the end and bellowed into the microphone, ‘Thanks guys, and here's one for the toast to the happy couple:

Hooray, hooray, the first of May

Outdoor fucking begins today.'

As you can imagine, it didn't go down that well with everyone. Rev. Trev said he must remember to add it to his sermon notes and there was a lot of fidgeting and muttering, during which the sound system whined and expired. Then Siren, the girl version of Bass the tent creep, wafted up to the stage in a long yellow paper toga which looked
like lavatory paper, and stared expectantly at a loudspeaker. Terrible moans and squawks filled the tent as Peta and her friends, who turned out not to have been expelled by Desmond earlier, leapt to fill the sensory void with their fiddles.

All appeared lost, and even the sun departed to be replaced by drizzle, when there was a clopping noise outside, and Hedley Sale, the landowner, arrived in a pony trap with his stepdaughter Tamsin. It was just what was needed; Tamsin leapt out, bowed to Minna and Desmond and lowered the tiny step to the little brass-decorated door. Minna was thrilled and got into the trap, with Desmond looking acutely embarrassed, and they did a lap of honour round the outside of the tent, observed by all because I had taken the panels off earlier when it was hot.

Someone did something to the sound system and it boomed back to life, and the whole party became more relaxed. Two of Minna's friends from the hen party came and admired my cardigan. They couldn't believe I'd made it myself, or rather decorated it myself, and one of them said she thought it came from that shop Rose loves called The Blessing. I was, as you can imagine, thrilled, as even though I have never been there, and never will, as you have to be a
member of their club to get in, it is the height of chic.

And as if by divine intervention, the weather changed, the drizzle spluttered, paused, then coughed and became a deluge, accompanied by timpani thunder and much flashy lightning.

‘Splendid good luck to have this happen,' agreed the redoubtables from the older generation who had wanted to leave moments before.

The party really got going, and then didn't stop. Have to admit, I got pretty exhausted and retreated to the playroom with The Beauty where we watched
Grease
. Music still pounded from the tent as darkness fell, and a few people like my mother and Rev. Trev and Hedley Sale came into the house to eat boiled eggs. The Beauty fell asleep on the sofa with her posy clutched close to her, and Giles and Felix, now changed into their usual sludge-grey clothes with logos, vanished out into the party. At midnight, I decided I had had enough, and carried The Beauty up to my room. Horrified to discover the door locked and whispering and giggling going on in there. Yelled, ‘Will you please open my door,' and was ignored. The Beauty woke up and began to yell, and I was about to give up and go and sleep in her room with her, when Hedley (Sale) who was
drinking brandy with my mother and the vicar in the kitchen, came bellowing up the stairs like a bull and started hurling himself at the door, bawling, ‘Get out of her room, scum.'

Very impressive. The door was opened in seconds and two very young and embarrassed tousled blondes came out, the boy one covered in lovebites. Felt about a thousand years old as I nodded in graceful acceptance of their apologies, and Hedley frogmarched them away. Rather wanted to change my sheets, but was prevented by the sight of Minna's friend Cascade asleep in the airing cupboard. God knows what had happened to her bedroom.

Anyway, today was spent picking up glasses and finding things in strange places. One of my shoes was on the village signpost, looking so depraved this morning, and I discovered a table lamp in the freezer when burrowing for ice cubes for Bloody Marys.

Wish you hadn't been in the wrong place,

Love Venetia xxxxx

May 4th

Email from Minna and Desmond, saying could I fax their wedding certificate, as they need it for the second hotel they are going to in order to secure the honeymoon suite. Cannot find it, but use it as an opportunity to get the boys out of bed and usefully occupied in searching the church, the tent, the house and then the dustbins for it. Gout has recurred. Most depressing to be hobbling with a stick, but pain too great to soldier on. I limp around the kitchen trying to clear up, thankful that everyone has left and none are there to see me fall victim to antique disease. Couldn't face the school run, so have given the children the day off, and am washing up in a daze, half the time seared with pain and the other half floating as if I am a meringue, fluffy on the outside and gooey in the middle on a cloud of fatigue brought about by three sleepless nights with The Beauty in my bed.

She, however, is buoyant, and has been getting married to her imaginary friend Generous since first light. Watch her parading around with a tea towel on her head, singing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle'.

Searching again for the wedding certificate, this time in The Beauty's sock drawer, I have a strong sensation of having missed my chance. This pursuit of someone else's marriage contract is as near as I
will get to being married now. The Beauty is moving inexorably to the centre of the stage, and I must accept that from sister-in-law of the bride, my next move can only be downhill. How many years before I am mother of the bride? As for me being the bride for a change, fat chance. Shake off mawkish thoughts, and attribute them to gout. Giles finds the certificate in a packet of Shreddies he is trying to eat, and we fax it immediately. Sense of achievement this brings is colossal.

May 6th

Gout is receding now, thanks to a foul diet of vinegar and potatoes. Decided to try this torture after reading that it was popular with Byron. Am not sure that he had gout, but feel confident that he must have, and am in any case desperate. Will try anything I can think of, and no one more contemporary seems to find gout a problem. Cannot even find it on the internet. Am therefore planning to become an internet millionaire with a site called gout.com. Have not yet convinced anyone that this is a good idea.

May 7th

Have not had an email or telephone call from David since before the wedding. Am coldly furious with him.

May 8th

A pea-green knitted hat and shoulder bag set I mail-ordered weeks ago have arrived, but do not give me the dash of hippie chic I had hoped for. Their inadequacy encourages me to believe that there is a market for my designs. No matter how I position my head and arrange my expression, the hat looks like a hot-water bottle, while the bag must surely have been a pyjama case in a previous incarnation. Even my new-found enthusiasm for trimming things founders on these depressing items. They must go.

Spend three-quarters of an hour rewrapping them and trying to find the address to return them to. Hang endlessly on the telephone listening to Vivaldi's
Four Seasons
in an attempt to speak to the mail order company. No one answers, although the music is occasionally interrupted by an electronic voice promising, ‘An operator will be available shortly.' Spend almost forty minutes waiting for
said operator, tethered by the spiral wire to the telephone. Finally give up because my ear overheats, I am on the brink of tears, and it is time to collect The Beauty from nursery school.

Take horrid hat and bag and post them on the way to the nursery, addressed to an unconvincing PO Box number. In sending them back, I experience happy sensation of having unspent, and therefore saved money. This quickly changes to a belief that I have in fact made a profit by returning the goods. I am therefore quite justified in not working too hard on my cider brochure today. Just as well, as The Beauty's return from nursery tends to limit creative flair on my part.

Wander into the garden to inhale balmy scent of spring and to seek inspiration for my cardigan commissions. Am instead assailed by dreadful old sock and sick aroma. The tent is, of course, still here. Bass and Siren have not been seen since they were piled into a motorbike sidecar and driven at speed from the wedding party. Their camper van is also here, and has become a new second home to The Beauty and her coterie of dolls and dogs.

It does not take more than thirty seconds of suspicious sniffing to realise that the tent is the source of the disgusting smell. Why or how I do not care, I just want it to go. Even though the tent is in the field
and not technically my responsibility, I cannot wait for someone else to get round to removing it, the smell is too bad. Open the gate to the field and half-heartedly tug at a guy rope for a moment before deciding that I must call a team of demolition men to do the job for me. Go inside to consult the Yellow Pages, but am diverted by the telephone ringing.

It is Hedley Sale. Having the same thought about the tent.

‘Venetia, hello, I wondered if you'd got rid of that tent yet on my field, mmm?' He sounds a little irritable, but I decide to try being blithe.

‘Well, put it this way, Hedley, I don't suppose you know how to take a tent down, do you?'

He laughs. ‘Well, it shouldn't be too difficult, although those people of yours who brought it should really take it down. It's their property on my property, you see. I'll come by later and have a look.' He gives a little yip of laughter and rings off.

The Beauty and I are engaged in some very engrossing role-playing when Hedley arrives. I have been tucked up in the camper van bed, and am being given my medicine as I am, according to her diagnosis, ‘Streemly ill.'

Hedley's blaring voice reaches us in our van from the other side of the house. ‘For Christ's sake, Venetia, what the hell are you and those hippies playing at? This tent is ancient. And rotten. It probably dates
from the Crimean War, for Christ's sake. It'll take a crane to get those poles down, or at least a tractor. That long-haired fellow must have been as strong as an ox to get this lot up. I haven't got time to deal with it now, but you should get rid of it fast. The grass is rotting underneath it and apart from the smell, I want to put my bloody sheep back on this field.'

The Beauty and I cower in our bed, not liking to interrupt the lava flow of fury. The Beauty begins to whimper, and presses her hands over her ears, and I remember from the end of my marriage to Charles how much children loathe shouting voices.

‘What the hell are you doing in there?' Hedley is peering in through the door of the camper van at us. ‘Honestly Venetia, you are an ass. Why didn't you tell me you were having trouble with the guy who owns it? I can sort him out.'

Don't really like the familiar way he calls me ‘Venetia', although I don't know how else I want him to address me. ‘Duchess', perhaps, or if that's too bovine, ‘Ma'am' would do.

‘I didn't think of getting in touch with you. Why would I?' I mutter, but he is not listening. Beckoning crossly, he marches us over to the field. The Beauty lags, pausing to crouch over a snail. This increases his pent-up rage. Suddenly lose patience with him and snap, ‘Look, I don't see why you need to be
so angry, you don't have to live with the smell.' His brow shoots up to meet his hairline and he shuts up for a moment, then sighs and stomps away around the tent, occasionally slowing to kick a flap of canvas. He returns, monobrow now diving down between nose and forehead.

‘Where are the imbeciles who put it up anyway?' he demands. ‘They must come and take it down. It's too bad, it really is.'