Summertime (25 page)

August 14th

Terrible lowness, caused mainly by the departure of Felix, Giles and The Beauty for their annual week's holiday with Charles. The Beauty has been looking forward to this high spot of the year, and has had a small pink suitcase packed and waiting since May. However, when Charles arrives to collect them, two hours late and wearing a forbidding and disagreeable expression, she changes her mind, and clings to the banister howling.

‘Sorry about the time,' Charles coughs, locking his car with a remote-control key, quite unnecessarily as it is parked in our garden, outside our front door. ‘I had to take Helena and the twins to the seaside, and we couldn't find anywhere to buy a parasol. It
seems absurd, there are plenty of umbrellas for sale, but Helena insists on a proper parasol.' He looks at our sun-baked faces and shakes his head. ‘It's not something you would have that I could borrow?' he asks hopefully.

‘Dad, this is Norfolk, not the Bahamas,' says Giles witheringly, throwing down his case by the car and holding out his hand for the keys. ‘That's why they sell so many umbrellas.'

Cannot help noticing the nervous way Charles glances at each of the children when they are not looking, or how out of place he looks among them with his knife-creased slacks and newly trimmed hair and nails. Giles and particularly Felix have ragged Man Friday hair and frayed T-shirts and look as if they are off to Junior Glastonbury rather than Club Med in France. The Beauty has beaded plaits and is still wearing her pebble on a string, which contrasts with her glittery Barbie clogs, bought from Woolworths this morning to replace the shoes she lost a week ago in the sea.

‘Mummy come too, don't make me go,' she howls, embarrassing Charles profoundly. Wedge her into her seat in Charles's giant people-moving vehicle, where she perks up, taking the air-freshener smell and individual seats as an indicator that she is at the hairdresser, a place she loves.

‘Shall we have a haircut, Mummy?' she asks politely. ‘Or just a trim?'

Giles climbs into the front, retunes the radio to pulsing dance music and closes his eyes. Felix, grumbling about sitting next to The Beauty, suddenly gasps, ‘Cool. You've got TV in the car. Now I won't have to buy more batteries for my GameBoy.'

Charles's mouth is now fully downturned with irritation and disappointment. He mutters, ‘Yes, in fact they're computers too. I had to buy a new vehicle to transport you and the twins this summer.'

‘Nice one, Dad,' says Giles, scrambling into the back next to Felix and The Beauty. I stand back, feeling rather sorry for Charles in his role as chauffeur to these three children whom he no longer really knows, but to whom he is bound by his sense of duty and some wavering cord of love. Am sure my own sense of relief at having nothing to do with him any more must seep down to Giles and Felix.

It certainly informs The Beauty, now quite happily munching crisps and watching the screen in front of her. She waves an airy hand at me, then kicks the back of Charles's seat, shouting, ‘Come on.
Drive
me.' Must try to present Charles in a more positive light when they return.

Wave them off, craning to see the car disappear round the bend and out of the village, my awful, fixed
smile made more rictus-like by imagining the horror of their journey to Cambridge with sandy, sticky toddler twins. The only mitigation is the air-conditioner in the person mover (cannot understand why they can't just be called cars: is it because they need to sound bigger?), and Felix's astonishing discovery of the individual computer screens in the back of each seat. Splendid that Charles should have installed such a feature, as it will act as a defence against the awful barbed comments that Helena can never resist.

Last time it was, ‘Do send nappies for The Beauty, won't you, Venetia. I don't always remember now the twins are potty-trained.' This was particularly below the belt as the twins are nothing of the sort, they can't be, they're not even two, and The Beauty is a year and a half older than them. My private fantasy of Helena, arch pushy mother, telling absurd lies just to mortify me and being caught out, is confounded by Giles.

‘Mum, when is The Beauty going to learn to go to the loo? It's so embarrassing now that Holly and Ivy can do it, and Helena always points it out just to be mean.' Perhaps there are potty-training classes, like puppy-training classes, that I can take the Beauty to. Thinking of puppies reminds me that the dogs are still languishing at the kennels. May as well leave them just for the moment, as I need to do a bit of gardening now the children have gone.

Later – three hours later

Made the mistake of drifting into my study, where I thought I had left my secateurs a few days ago, and have only just surfaced. It is six o'clock, and now too late, once again, to get the dogs. Resolve to set my alarm clock early and be there before kennel breakfast in the morning. Session in study is partly rewarding. Opened avalanche of post to find three different cheques for my clothes. Hooray. I am a top businesswoman. Humming and planning vast spend-up in every area, including leaving the dogs at kennels for another week, I continue to open post. Euphoria is short-lived. Horrible reminder from accountant that second instalment of tax should have been paid two weeks ago. The total amount the Inland Revenue wants me to give them is three pounds more than I have just received in cheques. So unjust. All plans are as dust. Particularly dashing as I had moved on from selfish mental purchase of frocks, pedicures and hairslides, to new bikes for all three and even a tiny stipend to be set up for paying Vivienne to do some sewing and thus expand my business.

Abandon the post and my study, without bothering to look at email as there will only be nothing and I will become more depressed. Notice the flashing
answerphone and set it to listen, idly wondering if it is the kennels. It is not. It is David. Had quite forgotten how sexy his voice is.

‘Hello there, all of you. Thanks for the latest email, Giles, and don't worry, I'm on the case. We're getting close to a wrap on the film, but there are one or two projects being discussed that I have to sort out. Call me, or email. Bye.'

Burst into white-hot, rage-filled tears. Have to go outside, where marching up and down like Lady Macbeth only redoubles my confused misery. He shouldn't still be leading the children on in this way. They think he's coming back to us, and he's not. Nothing about me. I am not even mentioned in the message.

I am working myself up into a frenzy of vengeful fury now, and have conveniently forgotten that it was not David who ended our relationship, but me. He must have found someone else. And why not? He is free after all, and I have found someone else. This thought is curiously unedifying.

Fortunately, as the children will not be back for a week to puncture my self-absorption, the garden looks so bedraggled and untended that pacing and sobbing quickly becomes heavy breathing and crouching. An urgent desire for horticultural order eclipses my emotional turmoil, and I start pulling thistles out of
a plump clump of Johnson's Blue geranium. Delicious smell of damp earth mingles with that of evening dew on grass, and very soon thistles are heaped around me as I discover a pair of gardening gloves under a water butt and become absorbed in a task I should have completed weeks ago. Most satisfying to grasp a large thistle at the base of its stem, twist and then pull a long parsnip-like root out of the ground. Tension and worry simply ebb away. Amazing and emancipating to be able to do repetitive job for hours on end without interruption, and it is not until darkness has cloaked the garden and spread across the lingering sunset that I can tear myself away.

Lie in the bath, steam dripping from the ceiling, enjoying the bath lotion Rose has sent me. It is called ‘Air Dry', and according to the label promotes ‘a sense of well-being by taking you back in time to the days when laundry was dried Outside'.

I love the idea that ‘Outside' has become a luxury commodity, and plan a cardigan to complement this bath range. It will be palest blue with tiny phials of ‘Fresh Air' sewn on as buttons. In fact, I have all the stuff here, as I can use tiny homoeopathic pill bottles as phials, so I may as well start it after my bath.

August 15th

Cannot believe how easily I go off the rails without child-led routine. Work on the cardigan kept me up into the small hours, and have now woken late, and once again missed kennel breakfast. Is it worth collecting the dogs today? I can't feel that it is, as I have no dog food, and will therefore have to go and buy a sack of Canine Gold or similar. The sack will cost fifteen pounds, and the dogs' day rate at the kennels is only seven pounds fifty for the three of them. Work out that I may as well leave them there for two more days as an economy measure, and fax the kennels accordingly. Anyway, Gertie is enough of a business to look after. Come to think of it, I wonder where she is? Haven't seen her at all today. Begin rushing into rooms shouting for her, heart pounding because even though I hate to admit it, I adore her now as much as the children do. She suddenly squawks up from behind the sofa, where she has been preening in a patch of sun. ‘What is it, darrr-link?' she asks, solicitously, in her Hedda Gabler voice. ‘Would you like a pink drrrink?' Recognise The Beauty's influence.

The day continues to loom ahead, empty of events now that I have dealt with the dog issue. Would like to do hours of gardening, but the thistle-pulling has made my back ache, and jabbing away with a
trowel after breakfast results in another ailment I christen Gardener's Wrist. Apply smart white towelling wrist-support bandage belonging to Giles, and am investigating a persistent nappy smell in the drain outside the kitchen window when Hedley appears, on foot.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I'm looking down the drain,' I reply, madly irritated by his appearance, for no particular reason.

He slaps my bottom, irritating me further, and laughs, ‘So you are. I thought I'd walk over and see if you would like to have lunch with me,' he continues, wiping his face with a handkerchief, somewhat out of breath and pink with heat in his thick checked shirt. ‘There's something I want to ask you.'

I find that curiosity overrides most other emotions, and so agree straight away. ‘Oh yes please, that would be lovely.'

‘Good. I'll pick you up at twelve.' He stares at my feet, apparently lost in rapt contemplation of them. In turn, I stare at his neck, at the point where the black hairs sprout from beneath his shirt collar to meet drops of perspiration below the scalp's hairline. Am about to suggest that he gets a hat before lunch, when he looks up, monobrow concertinaed in a frown, and barks an embarrassed cough.

‘I think you should find some shoes by then,' he says
hastily, before turning on his heel and marching out of the gate again. Finish looking at the drains, and begin rodding them, all the time musing as to why he wants me to wear shoes, and why I mind.

August 16th

Curiosity killed the cat. Have not slept for a single second. Am trying out ways of making the following words palatable or believable:

I have agreed to marry Hedley.

Hedley asked me to marry him.

Hedley and I are getting married.

I am engaged to Hedley.

Still haven't collected the dogs. This sentence does have the ring of truth.

August 17th

Have not adjusted to my new status as fiancée yet, and have told no one. Have also refused to see Hedley, but have telephoned him six times today to check that he has not told anyone either.

‘I must tell the children first,' I insist, voice wavering pathetically because I am missing them so badly. In fact, am in no rush to tell them, and keep hoping that whole proposal thing was just a nightmare. How did it happen? I must have been drunk. I should have known when he said the word ‘shoes' that the outing was a mistake. We went to lunch in a restaurant which was part of a country club, and the look with which the receptionist greeted my flip-flops confirmed my worst fears.

‘Would madam like to select more appropriate footwear, or does she have something in the car?' asked the manager, opening a cupboard to reveal three pairs of Queen Mother shoes for midgets. None of them would go on, despite vigorous pushing on the part of the manager. I did not have anything in the car, and feeling very like an Ugly Sister, I followed Hedley and the manager to the table selected for us. We were placed, with much ceremony, in the corner of the room behind a partition with a swing door opening into the men's loo next to us. Shrank in horror from the dainty table display, with swan-sculpted butter and napkins folded like waterfalls, or perhaps water lilies, the heavy crystal glass and the cloth carnation in a narrow vase.

‘Urgh, Hedley, I think we should go. This sort of place gives me the creeps.' Assumed he would feel
the same and that we would giggle and depart, but he was sitting down, unfolding his napkin with a satisfied smirk.

‘What was that, Venetia?' he said. I shook my head, realising it was useless, and sat down. Our small talk lasted for about three minutes, and then, in the silence which followed the waiter taking our order, Hedley suddenly leant towards me and seized my hand.

Thinking he was about to chastise me for shredding the petals of the carnation, I tried to snatch my hand back, muttering, ‘Sorry, sorry.'

He didn't let go. Surprised, I tugged more, and met his gaze. It was ardent. And with a terrible sense of inevitability, I knew what he was about to say, and I understood why we were here. The moment before he spoke hung, suffocating, between us, broken by the waiter's return with two fizzing glasses which I would rather contained Alka Seltzer than celebratory champagne.

What is so odd is that I didn't say no. I thought about rodding the drains, I thought about Lucinda at the fête and I thought about being married instead of being single with my children. I saw my computer empty of emails to me from David, and I said, ‘Yes.'