Green Grass

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘It’s so far away,’ he explains, waving another piece in Laura’s direction. ‘You can’t run a business or find your creative voice among fields. The countryside has too much of its own agenda with all the cows and nature and stuff. It gets in the way.’

  Laura opens her mouth to disagree, but Inigo, his eyebrows drawn low and fiendish, pushes a powdered lump of stickiness onto her tongue.

  ‘We all need the pulse of the pavement,’ he says.

  ‘You are ridiculous,’ Laura laughs, but icing sugar hits the back of her throat, and she chokes instead. Her eyes water and she turns away. In the midst of her discomfort, a small voice in her head is saying: ‘How long can you go on putting up with him?’

  Chapter 4

  ‘Hello. Whoisit?’

  Dolly answers the phone. She has been sitting next to it all evening making arrangements with her friends, painting her toenails and occasionally glancing away from the television and towards the French vocabulary list teetering on the arm of her chair. The only reason she is in the room and using this phone is that her mobile has been confiscated at school. Laura was supposed to get it back, but she was too late to see Madame King the French teacher. Dolly has not yet decided to forgive her for this.

  ‘Mum, it’s for you. It’s Hedley.’ These are Dolly’s first words to her mother since she came in. Laura smiles in recognition of the truce, and reluctantly Dolly allows her mouth to rise a millimetre at the corners. But a call from her mother’s brother in Norfolk holds no interest for Dolly; she flops her wrist back and lets the telephone fall on the cushion beside her, shifting her long legs slightly to allow Laura room to perch on the edge of the seat to speak, while she continues to rake her fingers through her hair and chew gum. Fred zaps the television with the remote control to kill the sound, earning a grateful look from his mother.

  ‘Hi, Hedley, how are you? I’m sorry I haven’t rung you. I got your messages, but it’s been so hectic. Inigo’s off to New York soon to set up his new show, and someone’s leaked the title, which is bad news.’

  ‘What is the title of his show?’ Hedley asks, glad that Laura cannot see that he has been reduced to making telephone calls from the airing cupboard in order to have privacy from the tyranny of Tamsin his teenage step-daughter.

  Laura sighs. ‘Hedley, honestly! What did I just say? I’m not supposed to tell you or anyone else anything about it.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now because it’s already been leaked,’ Hedley points out.

  Laura laughs capitulation. ‘All right, I’ll tell you. It’s called Death Threat, and the central image is the shadow of a giant rolling pin towering over a tiny pastry-cutter-sized Möbius strip. It was meant to have an embargo on it until the middle of March, as the show doesn’t launch until April—’ She breaks off, arrested by the muffled noises from Hedley’s end. ‘You sound very peculiar. Where are you?’

  Her brother, trying to arrange himself for comfort as well as security on the second from bottom shelf, answers reluctantly, ‘I’m in the airing cupboard.’ He shifts a sprigged eiderdown from behind him and breathes, ‘Aah, that’s better. Isn’t it time Inigo moved on from Möbius strips, or should the plural be Möbii? I shall look it up.’ Hedley is always ready to be distracted by a bit of research. Laura cuts in, recognising the signs of her brother drifting away on a new tide of thought.

  ‘You can’t. It isn’t Latin, remember? It’s a German called August Ferdinand Möbius.’ Laura’s voice gathers exasperation. ‘You know that, Hedley, you’ve always known that – and why are you in the airing cupboard anyway?’

  Fred, bored by what he can see is going to be an extended interruption to his television viewing, hurls a cushion at Dolly to liven things up. His twin shrieks as the blue nail polish she has been applying in squiggles on a base coat of pink skids across her hand and gloops onto her French exercise book.

  ‘Fred you stupid creep, don’t bloody do that,’ she howls.

  Laura flails her hands, screwing up her eyes into menacing slits, hoping to mutely indicate terrible punishments if they don’t start behaving at once. Fred and Dolly ignore her and hurl themselves into a full-scale cushion bashing session. Laura can hardly hear her brother, and isn’t listening anyway, as her ears are straining to discover whether Inigo has heard the chaos from his cocoon of peace in the basement with the computer.

  ‘… and I thought this would be the best place to come to talk to you,’ her brother is saying. ‘Actually, it’s quite nice in here. Do you remember, we used to play Sardines here when we were young? I wish children now did that kind of thing. All Tamsin seems to want to do is stare at the television or talk on the telephone. I’d still rather play Sardines, wouldn’t you?’ Hedley sounds happier and more relaxed than he has done for weeks; hiding in the airing cupboard must be a good thing.

  ‘How is Tamsin?’ Laura asks, able to concentrate better now she has dragged the telephone, yanking the cord, out of the sitting room and into the hall away from the muffled thuds and squeals of the fight.

  Hedley’s voice wobbles with suppressed frustration. ‘I cannot believe that parenting can ever be as difficult as my job of step-parenting,’ he says.

  Laura is silent, remembering the outraged agony of her brother when his wife Sarah told him she was leaving. She had met someone else. ‘And it’s not even a man, it’s a female gym instructor,’ Hedley had bellowed, adding in disbelief, ‘And they’ve taken Tamsin.’

  A year later though, Tamsin was back, with teenage hormones racing, a very different prospect from the child Hedley thought he knew. And Sarah has moved to a women only commune in Turkey to find her inner self. That was eighteen months ago, and she still shows no sign of coming home.

  This is a classic instance of it; I’ve been trying to call you all evening but Tamsin wouldn’t give me the telephone. She had it locked in the bathroom with her from six o’clock onwards.’

  ‘Why don’t you get her a mobile?’ Laura asks, unable to stop herself being practical.

  Hedley sighs. ‘Oh, she’s got one, but she’s run out of money on it and I’m in trouble for refusing to take her to get another card at the garage. It’s seven miles, for Christ’s sake. I don’t want to drive fourteen miles there and back at this time of night.’

  Much goaded, he carries on, ‘I don’t seem to be able to get through to her at all – we don’t speak, she won’t look at me, we don’t even eat together any more. She spends every moment that she isn’t at school in the bathroom. She even eats in there – I found a plate of ancient peanut-butter sandwiches in the laundry basket this morning. I don’t know what to do about her. I understand that this could go on for years.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure it will be better soon.’ Hedley telephones Laura for advice three or four times a week, and it is clearly on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she will have Tamsin for a prolonged stay. A pink-faced giggling Dolly rushes past her up the stairs, waving the television remote control above her head. Fred follows, jaw set, furious. ‘You loser, Doll,’ he is shouting. ‘If you put that in the bath, you’ve had it.’

  The thump and hurtle of the twins’ progress through the house is the same as it has always been, but there are other signs of impending teendom, and Laura is aware that life is becoming more dramatic every day – or certainly as far as Dolly is concerned. Taking her lead from Inigo, the biggest baby of all, Dolly hurls and slams her way through life. The tantrums over whether her jeans are clean or not are only eclipsed by mood swings over Dolly’s rights. These vacillate between tragedy – which is anything to do with her mother, and comedy – which is anything to do with her teachers. Fred is easier to predict, more like a satisfying one-act play than the full-blown opera in a new language that is Dolly. Mystifying. Perhaps through Tamsin, Laura can find a way to talk to Dolly too?

  Cheered by this optimistic thought, she suggests, ‘Why don’t we all come to stay with you in Norfolk this weekend? Inigo could do with the break, and frankly so coul
d I. We haven’t been to see you for ages. And I really mind that we don’t come there enough. I’ll talk to Tamsin a bit over the weekend and see if I can find out anything that might make her happier.’

  Hedley appears to like this plan, but merely grunts, ‘What about me being happier?’ before adding more enthusiastically, ‘Actually, it’s a great weekend for you to come. I could do with some extra pairs of hands as we’ve got several hundred trees to plant.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Laura, not much liking the role of underling woodsman. ‘I think I might steer clear of that.’

  ‘What about Inigo?’ asks Hedley hopefully. ‘You could tell him it’s like going to the gym, really good for muscle toning and all that.’

  Laura is doubtful. ‘You tell him,’ she says, adding, ‘Fred can help you too. Are you staying in the airing cupboard for the night?’ She moves the phone away from her head to yell, ‘THAT’S ENOUGH!’ up the stairs following a shuddering crash from the top floor.

  Fred’s face appears at the top of the stairwell, rosy, his eyes cerulean, his expression worryingly angelic. ‘Mum, quick, come up here. Where’s Dad? There’s bright turquoise water seeping out of the washing machine. We didn’t do anything, honestly.’

  Laura shouts, ‘See you on Friday, Hedley,’ and sprints up the stairs, or rather the first flight. By the second flight she is panting. Vowing to take up some form of exercise beyond not achieving yoga positions and watching other people walk their dogs, she hauls herself to the top of the house in time to witness the death throes of her washing machine. It has not enjoyed its role in her underwear dyeing project.

  Chapter 5

  When Inigo drives on the motorway, Laura sleeps. She knows she should be a support and talk to him, in fact she would enjoy this companionable way of conversing, side by side, the eye drawn ineluctably onward through the changing landscape, but she can never stay awake for more than five minutes. When the twins were younger, their needs occasionally roused her from slumber, and she would twist round in her seat to buy their silence with fruit or drinks, or lead them through the endlessly repeated chorus of ‘Oh My Darling Clementine’ and ‘Sweet Molly Malone’ (adapted, except for the death verse, to ‘Sweet Dolly Malone’.)

  However, the twins prepared for this journey with CDs and Dolly’s new mobile phone. They have books and computer games, and Laura can see from the moment they leave home and Dolly and Fred both plug their ears with headphones and their mouths with gum, that they want no part in their parents’ conversations. Inigo doesn’t care whether he talks or not, because what he wants to do is drive, as fast as is humanly possible. He sees each notch he moves up on the speedometer as a personal victory against time, and he likes this crescendo of speed to build up through stirring highlights of epic opera – Aïda or The Ring Cycle are both a spur for Inigo’s driving.

  Laura dozes, floating in lovely time off. Today has been nerve-wracking. Inigo, having seen Dolly off to a disco the night before, decided to use strobe lighting to illustrate the story of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Even an hour in the studio, with the blackout blinds drawn and light pulsing, not to mention the incessant repetition of the opening aria from the opera, left Laura with eye strain and a bad temper. Thankfully, at the end of that time, Inigo pinged up all the blinds and said, ‘This doesn’t work,’ before removing himself to the computer for an afternoon stress-busting on Super Mario Karts.

  Working with Inigo, in the same space all day, every day, talking, arguing, and endlessly listening can be suffocating. Sometimes at dusk, Laura leaves the twins glued to the television and goes out for a walk, gulping air, her ears singing with the peaceful joy of not being needed. This walk, through the winding down late-afternoon streets, past shops closing and restaurants opening, lit, at this time of year, by the friendly glow of amber streetlights, could become a necessity if only she had a dog. She must persuade Inigo.

  Half-asleep in the car, she turns to look at him now. His profile is not encouraging. It is almost dark outside, but the glow of the instruments on the dashboard cast a green light up towards Inigo’s jaw, highlighting the dark pits of new bristle growth on his chin and up towards his ears. Inigo’s mouth is slightly open; it has been pursed to whistle disapproval at the low-slung sports car which ricocheted past a few moments ago, and soon it will be folded neatly shut, but right now Laura can see his teeth, and the set of his mouth, pulled back in perpetual, slight grimace. Inigo’s nose is beautiful, and in profile is the best way to see it. Face on, his eyes are too close to it, but in profile the nose sweeps out of his brow without indentation at the level of his arching eyebrows. It sweeps nobly on, but midway is interrupted by a bump, which should mar the perfection, but in fact serves only to enhance the fine length and proportion of the nose.

  It is a boxer’s nose, and it made Laura weak and breathless with longing when she first saw Inigo seventeen years ago, having bolted into his exhibition in Mercer Street in New York to escape a sudden summer downpour. Laura had been in New York for a year, studying film at NYU. She had another year to go, and she was missing home like crazy. She even missed her brother. Laura was on her way home from a class on creating the defining moment in a plot. She felt low and despondent; New York was breathless and humid, her apartment had no air conditioning, and her workload was greater than she could bear. She had no one to talk to about it, her fellow students were all so determined, so untrammelled by crises of confidence. Laura had a sneaking feeling this course was not for her. But what was? The humidity today was extreme; she held her hair up as she walked to let any small movement in the air play on her neck. She had a headache and was halfway home before she realised she’d left her coat in the seminar room. A clap of thunder and the hiss of summer rain invaded her thoughts, and she ran for shelter.

  Inigo Miller was twenty-one that summer, and still wondering what on earth he was meant to say to justify his being here. He felt a fraud, but was in fact a success. His degree show had been lifted straight from art school and transported here, and it had opened with a queue around the block. Jack Smack, a creepy British agent, had offered to represent him, and since selling his soul to this whip-thin smooth talker, Inigo had hardly slept or stopped to draw breath, so constant was the round of interviews, meetings and exhibitions. Inigo made the most of every minute, convinced that he would be exposed as no big deal and shipped home at any moment.

  Now he was talking to a smiling brace of Japanese art agents who smoothed their hair and nodded fervently when Inigo said he was thinking of taking his show to Tokyo.

  ‘I want to have everything turned upside down. To re-examine it all from the perspective of another culture will be fascinating. I like to challenge my own perceptions,’ he was saying, his tongue in his cheek. He didn’t take it all so seriously then. Planning an escape as soon as possible, he glanced longingly at the door and saw Laura. In fact, he saw the back of Laura standing in the open doorway, smoothing the rain from her hair.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Inigo said to the Japanese. ‘There’s someone I—’ He didn’t finish his sentence because he had already gone. It was late June, and the hot streets streamed and steamed from this torrent of rain, and the smell of wet leaves hung in the air at the door of the gallery, making Laura shiver with nostalgia for her parents’ garden and her childhood.

  Inigo stood behind Laura, admiring her shoulders, her hair – everything about the back of her suggested the front would be wonderful. He couldn’t think of anything to say to her, and he was afraid she might suddenly dart out into the rain again, and be gone without him seeing her face. The only thing to do was to go out and then come back towards the door and hope that if he smiled and said, ‘Hello,’ a conversation might develop.

  Laura, glooming in the rain and relishing feeling sorry for herself, paid little attention when someone brushed past her to leave the gallery. But then he came back, presumably because he had forgotten something, and Laura looked up from her contemplation of the torrent swirling by the kerb to see Inigo, wet
but smiling and suggesting hopefully: ‘Hello, would you like to come and have tea with my Japanese agent?’

  ‘What sort of Japanese agent?’ Laura asked, smiling now, unconsciously reaching up to unknot her hair, shaking it onto her shoulders, unable to stop herself gazing at him.

  ‘Successful, I hope,’ said Inigo, grinning delightedly; it was easier than he had thought to speak, now he had started, and she was better, even better than he had dared hope from seeing only the back of her beautiful neck. Best of all, he hadn’t missed his moment and watched her walk away without ever seeing her face. She was here, with him now. She was part of his success.

  In the car Laura wonders if it’s worth broaching the dog thing, and decides against it. Inigo is sulking anyway, partly because he had not wanted to spend the weekend at Hedley’s house, and partly because Laura still hasn’t got a new washing machine, despite the old one having broken five days ago. The fact that one is to be delivered in the middle of next week in no way placates him, nor do the neat piles of laundry in his drawers and cupboards. Inigo is a control freak, and no washing machine to him equals a worrying decline in standards at home and the eruption of chaos.

  Laura is half-relieved that none of Inigo’s clothes were caught in the turquoise flood which killed the washing machine – he would be unspeakably angry. It would almost be worth it though, for the entertainment value of seeing him in frivolous beach blue. Inigo does not like to wear bright colours. Indeed, he only really likes dark green, and the odd streak of grey. He hates patterns, and Laura has come to notice that there is an element of Star Trek in the close-cut way he wears his clothes. She suspects that this predilection for polo-necks is fostered by his view of the low standards at home. Inigo knows that if he had shirts, he would not be able to persuade anyone to iron them for him. He has no intention of ironing them himself, so it is not worth having shirts. With some effort, Laura withdraws from her musings about Inigo’s laundry. It is time her mind became better occupied, but with what? For years now she has been looking after her family’s interests and has forgotten how to have any of her own.