Green Grass

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘The thing is, they should always have a toast of some sort in the church,’ says the woman, waving her cigarette and casting a trail of ash onto her skirt and the white bull terrier nestling close to her. ‘Champagne is good, but if you want a change there’s nothing wrong with a nice bracing vodka and tonic in the morning, is there?’

  Tamsin has taken off the shaggy coat she was wearing this morning to reveal an outfit made up of the sleeves of a navy blue jersey without any middle bit. Instead of the middle bit she has on a tiny camisole. Impressed, Laura wonders if these are the modern equivalent to leg warmers. Tamsin beckons her over, waving the pink drink she is sipping from a Teletubbies plastic beaker. She is perched on the back of a sofa near the music, with a boy about her age and another a bit younger with an ice-cream moustache.

  ‘Hi Laura, these are my friends,’ says Tamsin, simpering sweetly, her voice a soft coo, and a million miles from the grunts she usually favours her family with.

  ‘These are Venetia’s sons Giles and Felix,’ adds Guy, introducing Laura, and she grins at them and wishes she had brought Fred and Dolly.

  ‘Hello,’ says Felix, the younger one, not looking at her but staring at her shoes. ‘Mum’s got some shoes like that,’ he says, dreamily extracting a piece of chewing gum from his mouth and clamping it to the side of his cup. ‘She says they’re bloody agony,’

  ‘They are,’ laughs Laura.

  Giles pokes his brother. ‘Felix,’ he hisses, ‘you’re not supposed to swear at christenings.’

  ‘Well, we’ve had the christening, and Harry made such a racket in my ear I think I’m a bit deaf now. I don’t know why Mum bothered having another baby. There were enough of us already.’ Felix’s chin sinks forward almost onto his chest, and he stares more fixedly at Laura’s shoes.

  Giles tries to jolly him out of this gloomy train of thought. ‘Oh come on, Felix, Harry’s all right, he’s only a baby and he can’t help it. They did give us a trampoline when he came.’

  ‘Yeah, but I wanted a PlayStation much more.’

  Giles rolls his eyes at Tamsin and gives Laura an embarrassed grin. She touches Felix on the shoulder and says, ‘Do you think my son Fred could come and play on your trampoline some time? He would love to meet you, he wants a PlayStation too.’

  Felix brightens. ‘Does he? Mint! Maybe we can save up together. I’ve got seventeen pounds and I’ve asked Mum to pay me all the pocket money she owes me for the whole of my life which is twelve years of one pound a week because she never gives me any, which is …’

  ‘Don’t get in a psyche about pocket money,’ warns Giles.

  Guy brings Venetia over to meet Laura.

  ‘Mum, look, she’s got the same shoes as you and her son wants a PlayStation,’ says Felix.

  ‘I got them in a junk shop yesterday,’ Laura says, looking doubtfully at the shoes.

  Venetia giggles. ‘The one just beyond the village? In the barn?’

  Laura nods. Venetia carries on, ‘Then I bet they are mine – I sold him a chest last week and all my shoes have disappeared and Giles has just told me that The Beauty – that’s my four-year-old, the one outside with the parrot – was making it into a shoe shop. It’s my own fault, I was so stupid not to look inside it.’

  Laura laughs. ‘Well, you must have them back now, as long as you don’t mind a barefoot gate-crasher, or perhaps I could borrow some wellies.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ answers Venetia, sloshing wine into two glasses and passing one to Laura. ‘It’s such a good sign, I wouldn’t dream of taking them back. They’re yours now.’

  She moves off to speak to the vicar. Laura looks around the colourful room, full of laughter and friendly-faced people, and compares it to the Private Views and parties she usually attends. At these, everyone is one age – forty – and pretending not to be. Invariably they are clad in black, no one smokes, only a few defiant people drink, and hardly anyone laughs. Sipping her drink, she admits that in London Inigo is the best person to talk to at parties, the only irreverent voice. His favourite trick, last employed at a dinner given by the National Art Fund with the Home Secretary present, is to draw naked cartoons of other guests and pass them to Laura while she is talking to someone.

  ‘Here, I need you to hold onto my inspiration,’ he whispered on that occasion, and tucked a drawing of the Home Secretary in all his glory folded like a paper aeroplane into her belt.

  Laura gazes around the christening party. Without knowing Venetia at all, she is sure that this is how she would like her life to be, conveniently forgetting that yesterday she wanted it to be like Marjorie the pug lady’s. But no matter how idyllic Marjorie’s garden and animal life is, this house has all the vibrancy and chaos that a family home should have. From where she is standing, Laura can see through to a kitchen painted vivid yellow, pictures by the children stuck haphazardly over the walls, and a fat white dog asleep on a black feather boa in front of the red Aga. Laura thinks of her own white and steel London kitchen, and of her new mould-speckled one at the Gate House. Could she create a vivid world like this one? And it would have to be her own creation. It would be perfect and easy to get Dolly and Fred over here now, but there’s Inigo. She tries to imagine him here, perhaps talking to the vicar about fund-raising for the new bell, as Hedley is doing, but it is impossible. Inigo would be uncomfortable here, where a toddler has just stuck a finger into the chocolate christening cake, to the huge amusement of Venetia and her mother standing together toasting baby Harry. He would not appreciate a life where every situation is beyond control, and every surface is covered; he would create an atmosphere. He is too different a species.

  Laura moves across and makes a space for herself on the window seat, squeezing in next to a large cat and a pile of what look like more of Tamsin’s sweater sleeves with no middles. Outside, the wetsuit wearer and the parrot have dragooned Guy into helping them, and the paddling pool is filling fast. The little girl flourishes a bottle of bath essence and pours a long gloop of blue into the water. Bubbles rise; she and the parrot caper about shouting, ‘Hubble Bubble, Hubble Bubble.’ The clouds, threatening all morning, are now lower and menacing. A wind whisks up, and Guy persuades the two bathers to come inside with him just as rain bursts from the darkest cloud onto the road and the garden. Laura thinks of Inigo and the scythe, Dolly and Fred and the goat, and decides it is time to go; the only trouble is that she will be drenched. There is an embarrassing Pac-a-Mac in her handbag, but no weather could be foul enough to persuade her to put it on anywhere near this house full of flowers and colour. Indeed, she is determined from today onwards to become the kind of person who doesn’t even know what a Pac-a-Mac looks like. At least she didn’t choose it, it was Inigo who bought the mac; always on the lookout for ways to waste money, he was delighted to find something so mundane at such a price in Bond Street one day when they were looking at Cork Street shows together. He tucked it into her bag, joking, ‘Here’s something for a rainy day.’

  As she hovers by the front door, watching the sky, waiting for a moment to dash, Guy appears.

  ‘Can I give you a lift back to Hedley’s?’ he asks, chivalrously flourishing a Barbie umbrella he has pinched from an overcrowded chimney pot in the hall. He holds it over her head and they set off into slapping cold rain. Laura bumps against him as they negotiate the gate, and her heart beats in her throat. Guy’s neck and chest are wet where rain has crept down his open shirt.

  ‘I’m not staying with Hedley, we’ve just moved into the Gate House.’

  They have reached the car now. Guy unlocks the door for her and bundles her in. Laura scrambles to stuff the Pac-a-Mac to the bottom of her bag in case he sees it. His shirt is wet through across the shoulders. Laura rubs the raindrops off her bare arms and legs and shivers.

  Guy turns the heating up and starts the car, murmuring almost to himself, ‘So you’ve moved into the village have you? Now I’ll believe anything. You said you’d never be back, do you remember?’


  ‘Well, I’m not back.’ Laura shifts crossly, yanking her seat belt over her. ‘Not full time anyway, but we love the Gate House. And I’m very excited to be here again. At last.’

  Nearly twenty years ago, Guy had driven her to the tiny local station and said goodbye. She was dreading the possibility that they might be the only people waiting there for the train, and they were. Guy stood on the platform next to her, and the glass windows of the railway house on the opposite side of the track reflected him back, his hair shaggy over his eyes, face obscured because he was looking down at a stone he scuffed with his shoe on the platform. Laura saw herself next to him, her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans, biting her lip, not speaking but restless. She pulled her hands out of her pockets, accidentally brushing against Guy’s bare arm. They both jumped as if electrified and stood a little further apart, not looking at one another. Laura rolled back on her heels and prayed the train would appear right now out of a hole in the earth.

  She swayed and tried to whistle, wrapping her arms around herself, making herself narrower and less visibly there on the platform with Guy and the flooding sadness of the September light. Her throat was dry and she couldn’t whistle, nor could she speak; no words came into her mind to fill the loud silence.

  ‘Saying goodbye is a mistake, you know,’ she said quietly. ‘You should go now.’

  ‘Will you come back?’ Guy knew that whatever he said would be wrong, but surely this was the worst? How needy, bleating and desperate he sounded. He watched Laura’s reflection, her hair whipped across her face by the sun-baked breeze, edged now with the chill of autumn. He saw her glance up at him, angry and upset.

  ‘I can’t. I don’t belong here. I need the city. This is your place. I can’t come back.’ Her words were cruel, harsher than she ever meant them to be, and her eyes were bright with tears.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ said Guy and the reflection of him and Laura standing side by side on the platform blurred and smeared in his hot eyes as the train arrived, grinding and hissing as if it were steam. Laura’s hands were cold and stiff when he held them to kiss her goodbye.

  Chapter 13

  The conversation Laura has been dreading since Inigo walked into the Gate House on Sunday morning does not occur until they are back in London and ensconced in weekday ritual and routine. Cally calls to find out if Laura has got a life yet.

  ‘Yes, I think I have, but Inigo hates it.’ Laura should be at the studio when Cally rings, but she is avoiding Inigo, and pretended to have a dentist appointment this morning.

  ‘How do you know?’ Cally’s bracelets jangle against the phone and Laura imagines her lighting her cigarette.

  ‘He’s avoiding me as much as I am him. He doesn’t like the fact that I’m doing my own thing.’

  ‘Well, whose fault is that?’ demands Cally. ‘You’ve spent years pandering to him and giving in, so this will be a horrible shock.’ She laughs. ‘Even I feel a bit sorry for him,’ she says.

  ‘I heard him telling his mother he had to come home early from doing the installation for Manfred because he was so freaked out about the goat,’ Laura confesses. ‘He went straight to the airport without bothering to check on the flights out and he’d missed every single one. He had to spend the night in the departure lounge and catch the first flight in the morning.’

  ‘Serves him right,’ says Cally stoutly, hearing guilt in Laura’s voice. ‘Look, you must need a change if you’re making these big decisions without him now. You’re angry with him, and you’re right to be. Tell him he shouldn’t have tried to railroad you about that Met offer in New York. Stand up to him, Laura – it’ll be better for both of you in the long run.’

  Laura nods slowly. ‘You’re right, but it’s not easy.’

  In her mind is Inigo at the Gate House, or as he phrased it, ‘The godforsaken pit you are so keen to call home.’ Laura could see what he was thinking as clearly as if he had said it: she, Laura, seemed to have regressed to the nursery, surrounding herself with unsuitable animals – well, a goat at any rate – and wandering off with strange men in sports cars without explanation whenever she felt like it. Confounded, he struggled to be helpful and supportive, but without much idea how, as the place seemed good for nothing but demolition. His instinct when the balance of his family is rocked like this must always be to try to realign it. But how? And he doesn’t like squalor. He sees Laura enjoying squalor and it makes him uneasy. Even returning to London from the Gate House has not dispelled his unease. Inigo is biding his time, Laura is sure.

  So when Laura reaches for the telephone in the middle of their discussion about whether a cottage in the country is sustainable, with Inigo about to go and work in New York for a year and Laura unable to decide whether she and the children should go too; when she reaches for the phone and calls the blacksmith in Norfolk to ask him to make a tether for the sodding goat, Inigo does not shout, stamp or whirl himself into a frenzy of rage, he sits calmly in the white kid chair across from Laura, spreading his hands over the soft arms and waiting. He wonders if Laura knows that the chairs they are sitting on are made from the hides of tiny goats like Grass. The thought gives him savage pleasure, but he is pretty sure she will hate to be told. Laura puts the phone down with a sigh, and crosses something off in the big green notebook she has with her all the time now.

  ‘Sorry, I had to do it now. I’d totally forgotten and Grass must have a tether by this weekend so we can start getting the garden under control.’ She smiles apologetically at Inigo, very much as if they are mild acquaintances at a parish council meeting, and clasps her hands, blinking encouragement. Clearly Laura has not been trying to imagine herself in Inigo’s shoes, as he has just been urging her. Inigo is crestfallen and at a loss.

  Making the most of his morose and abjectly confused air, Laura announces, ‘I think you should know that we have a ferret and a pug on order. I’m picking them up on Friday.’

  Inigo is gob-smacked. He opens and closes his mouth several times, but that’s all. Laura is hugely relieved. Really it has gone rather well. She lies back in her chair relaxing her hands; she’s been twisting her handkerchief since she and Inigo got home from work; she hardly stopped to eat supper, and even then it was spaghetti so she twisted that instead. It has been a burden, concealing the truth from Inigo, and she’d hoped he would be back in Germany for at least another week. It’s not that she doesn’t miss him, it’s just his absences create such a welcome break in routine, as well as unlocking spare hours Laura never thought she’d see again. These spare hours are more precious than ever now she is embarking on a new and rapturous love affair with Norfolk.

  She leaves the room under the pretence of making tea, but forgets what she’s doing when she gets to the kitchen. Her thoughts are running away with her, and she couldn’t bear for him to know that she is thinking like this. It feels like treachery to acknowledge that if Inigo had been in England when Hedley offered her the Gate House, she would never have dared to take it. She is longing for him to go back to New York and get on with making his biscuits for the Death Threat show. In fact, despite the outrageous way he broke it to her, Laura cannot now think of one good reason why Inigo shouldn’t take the fellowship at the Met. Of course he should. It would be marvellous. But there’s no way she’s going with him.

  It’s odd that he hasn’t seemed keen to discuss it; instead he harps on about the Gate House and whether it needs damp proofing and how to get gas there. She never thought it could happen, but a bit of Inigo is turning into his mother, the home and hearth bit, already quite pronounced enough in Laura’s view. Look at him now, flicking through a magazine to find a new cooker for the Gate House. It’s madness. It’s got a perfectly good Rayburn. OK, so it needs to be filled with coal three times a day, but that’s fine. Hedley lights it the afternoon before they come, to give it a few hours to get up to speed, and if the house is a little smoky, there are windows which can be opened. Honestly, Laura can’t see what Inigo is f
ussing about.

  She can, however, see the spirit of his mother Betty, her fat short hands raised in alarm at the prospect of putting up with something old when you could have a new one, nail polish dripping blood red as she stabs her fingers through her hair and shakes her head, fussing and worrying about every breath the twins took until they were five and she began to find them a bit much. A widow, she remains unceasingly anxious about Inigo, her youngest child, her only son. Inigo’s two sisters fled the suffocation of their mother’s love in their late teens and both emigrated to Canada, but Inigo couldn’t leave her, he knew it would break her heart. When he had his first show in New York and was away for months setting it up and travelling, Betty lost two stone, mainly from her upper arms, as she willingly showed anyone who would look. She would have pined away entirely, had Inigo’s gallery not taken pity on her from her daily phone calls, and sent her a ticket to come over for the opening night. Inigo was not pleased. Laura met him the day Betty left again, and Inigo was ripe for freedom and for fun.

  That was a long time ago, however, and while Inigo hasn’t started to look like his mother, he has already inherited her old-ladyish fussing skills. On balance it is better he fusses like her than looks like her, given that Betty has black-rooted platinum hair and immaculate make-up, incorporating shimmering blue on the eyelid and a slick of rhubarb pink on the mouth. Inigo has not inherited her gait either – although the scampering trot with which she approaches life is, Laura is convinced, caused by the effort it costs her small feet, never encased in shoes without heels, to support her colossal bust on an otherwise sparrow-like frame.

  Inigo is bashing the page of a magazine now with one finger, reading out the copy for the cooker of his choice. ‘Yes, you see it says here that it has an electric oven and gas hobs, and if we could just get gas there – or wait – what if we get an industrial cooker …’ He is off, flipping thorough the magazine again.