Summertime (20 page)

‘Well done, Mrs Summers, two minutes forty isn't the last,' she tells me encouragingly. ‘But Mummy does it in one minute fifty-two, so you'll just have to keep trying.'

She smiles sweetly and turns to her next victim, an unsuspecting father wearing a linen suit, who looks as though he has never seen a washing line before, but is guffawing away, ‘Marvellous, must have a go and see if we can't beat the ladies at their own game.'

Have to move away to watch Splat the Rat to avoid the ignominy of this chauvinist pig eclipsing me at my own sport. Bronwyn Butterstone, her helmet of tawny hair immaculate, her legs like tweezers, long and bandy in gingham pedal pushers, is marching up and down with a megaphone bossing people around. Shrink away as she accosts my mother, but their encounter is short-lived. My mother is more than a match for La Butterstone, and we go to find tea with her puffing indignation.

‘She wanted volunteers for the Red Cross stall which she's supposed to be running. Or rather, Red Crawss
as she calls it. She said she could see I was a pillar of the community.' My mother stops in her tracks to rummage for a cigarette in her handbag. She exhales the first puff with a ‘Pah!' and continues, ‘Pillar indeed. It makes me sound like a colossus.' She broods darkly on Bronwyn's iniquities then adds, ‘That woman is enough to turn all of us into hardened criminals.'

We find a table and sit under the green crêpe shade of a vast cedar tree, planning hideous embarrassments for Bronwyn. The Beauty removes her T-shirt and skirt, then uses the skirt as a napkin to wipe cake crumbs off her mouth. I tell my mother about David's vines, adding a final soliloquy about the hellish parrot. She shoots me a sharp look, as I foul-mouth him and his absent indulgence of the children.

‘Just make sure you know what you're doing,' she warns. Am about to ask her what she means when the conversation on the next table distracts me. It is between another adult mother-and-daughter combination, recognisably related by their hooked noses and almost non-existent chins. Am looking at them, wondering which feature my mother and I obviously share, when I suddenly find myself tuned into them.

‘Well everyone is saying that Hedley Sale will either marry or leave,' booms the senior one. ‘And if you play your cards right, Lucinda dear, there's no reason why it shouldn't be you.'

Lucinda mutters, ‘Mummy!!' in deepest embarrassment, but the mother booms on. ‘Nonsense, dear, no point in beating about the bush. You've got little Archie to think of too, don't forget. And you know, don't you, that now that monstrous excuse for a man, your ex, has stopped the alimony, you've got to sort something out.' Lucinda nods, and I could nod with her, so close do I feel to the situation.

‘I could be very happy spending his money,' she laughs, changing the tone. This time, I do nod. My mother nudges me reprovingly.

‘Stop picking up fag ends,' she hisses. The megaphone booms the news that the presentation of the prizes is about to take place. Felix and Giles appear by our sides, and Bronwyn Butterstone starts drawing the raffle. None of us is listening. I am engaged in trying to persuade The Beauty to put her clothes back on, and in digesting the new version of Hedley as seen by other neighbours. Maybe they don't mind the temper. Or maybe he doesn't show it to them.

Suddenly Felix nudges me. ‘Mum, it's you. Go on.' Bemused, I stand up, and find that the headmaster is beckoning me over and presenting me with a box of chocolates. Carmel Butterstone puts a hand on my arm.

‘Sorry Mrs Summers, I made a mistake with the timing of your washing on the line. In fact you did
it in
one
minute forty, which is twelve seconds faster even than Mummy. She said you must have done an awful lot of washing in your day!'

Lucinda and her mother join in the general mirth at this sally, and I am unable to think of anything at all witty or mordant to say. Victory can be the most poisoned chalice.

July 11th

My vegetable garden is of textbook loveliness when viewed from a distance with partially closed eyes. Splashes of orange and yellow from the marigolds I bought at a roadside stall last week dance out against a background of silver-green sage, bright lettuce leaves and feathers of rocket and parsley. Have taken the modern approach as far as sweet pea and tomato canes are concerned, and have a line of aluminium wiggles, each about five feet high, which make my potager appear half traditional and half like a meeting place for aliens. This, at any rate, is Felix's view. The Rousseau fantasy has long been abandoned, and I am under no illusions that my garden is for anyone but me, and of course a multitude of snails, slugs and the hens. Giles is away on a cricket tour, and I have tried
to convince Felix and The Beauty that we can have quality time after tea in the vegetable patch.

‘But I hate vegetables,' protests Felix, ‘and I hate being made to work in my time off. I have to work hard enough at school.'

‘Eughhh,' agrees The Beauty, picking up the general tone of discontent and running with it. ‘It's really gross and gosting out there. I will not go. I will not.' She shakes her head in regret.

Am at a loss. Should I insist that they help me, thus creating a Solzhenitsyn-style work camp, or should I bow to their ‘disgost' and let them do as they please? Mothering skills, including tolerance and especially cooking, are at an all-time low.

Am becoming like the shoemaker elves of fairy tale in having to sew or rather glue my adornments on to garments after the children are in bed in order to meet Rose's demands for the clothes before the school holidays begin. Have no sense of achievement now in finishing one jersey, as all it means is that I must do the next one. Every spare moment is occupied with the search for more outlandish trims. Yesterday I struck a rich seam when an ear of corn attached itself to my skirt while I was walking the dogs. Imagined how ravishing it would look when laid carefully on a pale blue skirt (courtesy of the Aylsham charity shop) and picked a huge bunch. Dry the wheat to a pleasing
greeny-gold colour and crackling texture on the Aga, then attach stalks all around the hem, thus creating ‘Free and Easy', so named because it was both.

July 13th

Mid-evening, high summer, and I would like to be out in the garden inhaling the nostalgic sweetness of night-scented stocks and contemplating my white flowers which float, perfect and ethereal, on their dark leaves at this gloaming time of the evening. However, I have just put the children to bed and am in the kitchen, sewing and listening to
Sounds of the Seventies
on the radio. Am just thinking that I may as well go the whole hog and invest in a rocking chair and crocheted blanket when the doorbell rings. Jump as if scalded, but am too late to do anything except throw a blanket over Gertie's cage to stop her saying something appalling about pants, and Hedley appears in the kitchen holding a bottle of wine. Very embarrassing to be caught in such fogeyish pursuits, as if I am some old biddy in a Trollope novel rather than a contemporary chick with my finger on the pulse.

‘Hello, Hedley.'

His one brow rises quizzically as he notes the
trappings of antiquity I am surrounded by. ‘Venetia, what are you doing?'

‘Oh, I'm listening to contemporary rock and throwing a few shapes on my kitchen dance floor,' I reply, as Don MacLean's most soppy chocolate-box song, ‘Starry Starry Night' drifts out of the radio. ‘What are
you
doing?'

Startled, and nervous, he shifts from foot to foot, fumbling in the pocket of his sagging trousers for a folded page of newspaper.

‘Well, I thought you might like to watch the stars. Here, I've got an article about them. There's a comet exploding somewhere miles away, and we are in for a glorious shooting star show in about an hour.'

‘Ohh, that must be why they're playing this song,' I remark, very pleased with my sleuthing. Hedley puts his bottle of wine down on the table and holds out the article for me to read. Bottles of wine and shooting stars. What next? Have never been pursued in this textbook fashion before, and am nonplussed. Does he think I am encouraging him? What about Lucinda from the school fête? Or maybe that is more in her mother's dreams than in any reality. That overheard conversation has certainly made me think of Hedley with new respect. But the monobrow … the temper … the thinly disguised dislike of small children …

On the other hand, here I am, working my fingers to the bone over a hot needle, with a mental list of chores a mile long for which a man is needed, and I'm sitting alone at the height of summer with just the radio and a parrot to keep me company. What sort of life is that?

Sneak a surreptitious glance at Hedley, who is fiddling with a corkscrew, lips pressed together, trying to yank the cork out of the bottle without removing the foil first. Perspiration beads on his forehead and upper lip, and his jaw is tensed in concentration. His combination of choleric temperament and small, hairy and dark physique may not be ideal, but I'm sure he is quite kind, as well as cross, and his house is big enough to escape from him in anyway. But most importantly, he is here. Now.

‘Have you had any supper?' Immediately wish I had. Summon an X-ray vision of what lies behind my fridge door, and it is not good. Half a tin of tuna-flavoured cat food, rejected by Sidney the cat, a cucumber, three dough sculptures made by The Beauty and Felix, and some sinister-looking sausage rolls. Luckily, Hedley has eaten. I, however, have not. Gulp down the glass of wine he passes me as if it is orange squash and have a head-rush of intoxication and recklessness. With it comes a weird sense of being outside my body, and it is from above that I see myself throwing back my
head to maximise a ripple of laughter when Hedley says something extremely unwitty, along the lines of, ‘It's time to watch the shooting stars now, according to the radio.' I drink another glass, this one in slower, smaller sips, thank God, but the damage is done. From far above, I look down on the top of my head, much too close to Hedley's, which has a reddish bald patch like a monk's tonsure. I try to warn myself about this bald patch, but the news is mere cannon fodder in the face of an arsenal including a summer night, a battery of shooting stars and too much alcohol. As inevitable as any wish, the monobrow looms in front of my eyes, swimming closer, and then I am in Hedley Sale's arms, kissing him as the first star bursts over the water meadows and is followed by seeping indigo stillness until the next.

July 14th

Dawn. And with it, crumb-headed sobriety. Am now fully back in my body where self-loathing and an air of defiance are at war. I sent Hedley home before anything X-rated happened, but I still kissed him. For hours; it was the middle of the night when he left, and it took all my will-power to make him go. Just could
not face the idea of any of the children finding him here. Now I don't know what will happen. It really wasn't too bad. I enjoyed kissing him. (Why am I sounding so surprised?) And I very much appreciate his enthusiasm for me and for doing whatever I want him to. In fact, it reminded me of Lowly, as did the longing look in his eyes when he kissed me goodbye.

‘I'll ring you later, Venetia,' he murmured, and I feigned great yawns as I put the glasses into the dishwasher, to avoid having to say anything. If he had a tail, he would have wagged it.

As soon as he left, I sprang to life. Not sleepy, I made tea in the kitchen where the clock was ticking in its friendly way, and Sidney was curled up in his favourite warm spot in the fruit bowl on top of three lemons and a pineapple. It was all as usual, and I was not. I took teapot on tray up to bed to think, tiptoeing in the hope that The Beauty would not hear me and come and interrupt.

I often set my alarm clock for very early, like four in the morning, thinking it would be so nice to do precisely this, and to absorb the unique golden loveliness of the dawn, but natural sloth-likeness always causes me to turn it off, so I miss these moments of tranquillity. Dunk a digestive, defiantly, and think: What am I playing at?

What will happen next? I am out of practice at this sort of thing. David became a part of our lives so easily, none of us could imagine him not being there from the very beginning. Anyway, David and I went away on holiday together and he moved in when we came back, so the children got used to the idea of us together in our absence.

But now, the children don't know we've split up. They are in touch with David every day, they adore him. But that is no basis for a relationship. Am becoming deeply anxious about what to do next, and in desperation, try to sleep. Just as I have almost managed to relax and doze and dawn is streaking the sky outside my uncurtained window, The Beauty totters into my bedroom, her hair tousled and fluffing over sleep-smudged blue eyes. She peeps at me, pushing back her hair with a Marilyn Monroe flourish, and says breathlessly, ‘It's a lovely day, darlink. I'd like a pink drink.' Guilt becomes white hot, bed fills with sharp pins and we have to get up, even though it is only five-fifteen.

July 15th

Heatwave. The Beauty and I spend the whole day
lying alternately in the hammock and the paddling pool. Much silent agonising and metaphorical moon-howling has strengthened my instinctive resolve to be an ostrich. If I tell no one, and make Hedley promise never to refer to the interlude again, surely I can pretend it never happened and get on with my life as a mother of three with no plans.

July 16th

Too hot to sew. I ring Vivienne to ask her to come and advise me on how to make fake turf look like vibrant living grass around a narrow skirt I am planning to make from one leg of the plus fours. After our conversation, I put the telephone down and congratulate myself for revealing nothing. Have become really discreet at last. Hooray.

July 18th

Vivienne appears. Before we have even sat down with cups of tea to look at the fringing, I have confessed. In fact I confess about one second after she passes
through the front door, saying politely, ‘So how are you?' She listens in silence, then bursts into peals of laughter.