Hens Dancing

by Raffaella Barker

  July 28th

  Weather gloomy, but we are not put off trip to rocky beach with magical green pools. Angelo leads the way, carrying The Beauty on his shoulders and followed by his friend Lowdown whom we found on the sofa next to Giles this morning, and who has not yet removed his wraparound sunglasses. Path to perfect beach meanders through wild flowers, about which flutter butterflies as small and vivid as confetti. My mother and I are beasts of burden behind Lila, who has managed not to carry any of the picnic, but is skipping ahead with the young, pausing to pat cows and sniff at flowers. Drag the wicker basket over a final mound, vowing in future to forfeit style in favour of comfort. Picnics shall come in plastic bags from now on.

  Arms of rock reach out from either side of beach, embracing waves rolling and thundering in. Sun makes grand entrance and beams hotly, and The Beauty dons her exotic red bathing suit and yellow floral hat and sits happily in a rock pool, picking seaweed and catching transparent shrimps. My mother and I spread rugs, after much shuffling around the beach looking for the best spot, and lay food out. Rags hears the rustle of tin foil on sandwiches and bounces over, briny, sandy and wet from the sea. She puts her paw in a treacle tart and is hurled away back into the sea, but not before she has shaken herself briskly and wetly over the pile of towels. Egor is exemplary by contrast, his fear of the sea ensuring that he does not move from the boulder behind my mother.

  ‘Why did we bring that little beast?’ howls Lila, emerging from the sea. ‘You should be able to control her, Venetia.’ Am about to apologise, when Calypso, who has taken against The Beauty because she wants to be the youngest, runs up to her and jumps deliberately in the rock pool, startling The Beauty who is in a trance of pleasure making sand pies, and causing her to bellow.

  ‘And you should be able to control your children,’ I snarl back. This is the wrong thing to say. Lila sniffs and pulls herself up very tall.

  ‘Come, Calypso,’ she says with magnificent hauteur, ‘come, Diptych, we shall find a more peaceful picnic spot for ourselves.’

  Diptych is furious. ‘No way, Mum, Giles and I are going to look for the conger eel; we’ve got fish fingers for it. Anyway, I hate those bean curd sandwiches you make us eat. I’m having a pasty.’

  Lila stamps her foot and flares her nostrils like a small bull preparing to charge. My mother leaps up to create a diversion, clearly not having thought of what to say, but doing the haughty bit with great élan.

  ‘Lila, Venetia, that will do!’ She pauses and glares at us both. ‘Now why don’t we all go and look for the conger eel?’

  The kindergarten approach is successful. When Calypso grabs The Beauty’s cup and swigs her juice, her black eyes fixed defiantly on my face, I am able to rise above it with my own version of magnificent hauteur.

  ‘Venetia, stop looking like a lemon,’ whispers my mother, back on her rug, with no intention of looking for conger eels, and preparing to read the newspaper in the sun with the help of a pair of dark green plastic lenses attached lopsidedly to the front of her specs. Affect deafness and move away to seek out the children, clambering over steep, sleek rocks, shiny with sea spray, with The Beauty clinging like a marmoset to my shoulder. We find the boys perched like statues on individual ledges protruding from a deep, still pool, gazing at the water in silence. Felix has a packet of fish fingers on his rock, and, breaking one, he lowers a large lump into the water. We continue to stare at shadows, and after a while become bored. Just as I am about to return to the picnic spot, Felix gasps and points. At the back of the pool, where shadows meet cavernous rock behind, a streak of lapis blue flashes. The fish finger vanishes, there is a confusion of teeth and jaws and a vast eel glides away, as unstoppable and smooth as an express train, back to his cave.

  ‘Cool,’ whispers Giles with enormous satisfaction.

  ‘Yesssss,’ yells Felix, leaping up and stabbing the air as if he has scored a winning goal. Diptych grabs the fish-finger packet and tosses the rest into the pool, and waits again, his camera poised for the return of Jaws.

  Calypso kick-starts a crescendo of complaint with the time-honoured whine, ‘It’s not fair. I didn’t see it. Mummy, get it back. The boys wouldn’t let me see, they said I couldn’t.’ She hiccups herself into full-blown sobs and kicks Lila while burying her face in her skirt. Lila’s teeth clench.

  ‘That is nonsense. I was with you and the boys did nothing of the sort. They didn’t even know you were there, in fact. Now stop behaving like this.’

  ‘No, I hate the boys, they spoil everything. And that stupid baby.’ More roaring and kicking.

  I raise my eyebrows and carefully arrange my expression to one of sympathy and camaraderie. ‘Dear little thing,’ I say, ruffling Calypso’s wire-wool hair as if I adore her, ‘she’s so passionate. Do send her to play with The Beauty when she calms down.’

  Lila glares, and The Beauty, ever keen to enhance a situation, blows a kiss to the pair of them. The boys and my mother are well into the picnic when we return, wolfing Cornish pasties and recounting big game stories. Anything big appears to count.

  ‘The French are building a giant stick as big as Mount Everest for New Year,’ says Felix.

  ‘It’s not a stick, it’s a French loaf and it’s two miles high and they’ve already done it,’ says Giles, condescension withering every syllable he utters.

  ‘I saw a giant snail at a party once,’ continues Felix, undaunted. ‘It was the size of a hedgehog and it wee’d on my hand with a kind of squirt.’

  Find the tone of conversation uninspiring, so sit down with The Beauty and my mother. My mother hands The Beauty a pasty.

  ‘She’s only eaten sand so far.’ The Beauty says ‘Ha ha,’ and dabs it in the sand before tasting it, giving me a moment to wipe her forever running nose with my skirt.

  A family adjacent to us have a tin foil barbecue and are cooking sausages on it, their well-mannered Labrador not even licking his lips, but sitting with an expression of resigned nobility at the edge of the rug. The Beauty loves Labradors, thinking they are all Digger, and approaches this one waving her pasty. He cannot resist, and it is a repeat of the conger eel show as a flash of pink jaw, white teeth and huge tongue precedes the disappearance of the pasty. The Beauty is delighted by this trick and sits back on her heels, clapping and cooing approval. Her nose is once again a disgrace, and absently I reach for a T-shirt of Felix’s to wipe it on.

  ‘Here, do have this, it’s quite clean. You needn’t bother returning it.’

  The lady with the barbecue proffers a white handkerchief, small and fine, the sort that proper people keep tucked under their watch straps. She smiles understandingly.

  ‘It’s so difficult getting out of the house with everything, isn’t it? I remember just how it is for you; I had four under five myself, although it seems years ago now.’

  Four under five. And I can’t even get a handkerchief organised for one baby, despite having ancient boys and an able-bodied assistant in the form of a mother on holiday with me.

  Barbecue lady is arranging her picnic now. Out of a cool box and a hamper come Tupperware boxes in neat piles, each containing a clutch of different, delicious-looking sandwiches. Don’t like to stare, but have seen enough to know that I wish I was at their picnic. The Beauty has had the same thought, but unlike me, is confident that they have invited her. She squats down and helps herself to a roast-beef-filled roll, stuffing as much as possible in her mouth and saying ‘Mmmmm,’ as if she has been starved for weeks. The woman shakes her salt and pepper hair out from a ponytail and smiles at The Beauty, who beams back and grabs another sandwich.

  ‘Do you let her have beef? I brought a side down with me from our farm, so I can vouch for it completely.’

  Hastily fling a towel over our supermarket pork pies and packet of plastic pre-sliced cheese.

  ‘Oh, in that case I’m sure it’s fine,’ I say airily, and struggling to regain some sense of being adequate: ‘Is it organic? We only eat organic meat now.’


  ‘So sensible, you can be badly poisoned by those supermarket pies and one can’t be too careful with a baby.’ The woman smiles, speaking without a shred of malice, as she blows The Beauty’s nose for the tenth time and gives her a pear.

  How can I become more like her and less like my bag lady self?

  July 29th

  Ceaseless rain and no silver lining in the weather forecast. There is a farm open day inland, and we select it as our excursion for the day. Lila and my mother opt out and go to a supermarket and also a launderette to dry all our clothes. Angelo and I are in charge of the children. On the way have fond fantasies of clotted cream and ‘How to Make Buttermilk’ lessons. Can hardly wait to sample homely cakes and pies which must be for sale there.

  Arrive, brimming with excitement, hunger and anticipation, at huddle of corrugated-iron barns surrounding cluster of Lego brick houses with vast carports. Mud clogs car park entrance and our wheels spin. Felix falls over in a cow-pat as soon as he gets out of the car, and is so covered in excrement and mud that he looks as if he has been dipped in brown paint. Farm open day is quickly exposed as a euphemism for selling show homes, and there is not a lamb or indeed a milk churn in sight. And no cakes. Angelo vanishes with Calypso on a quad ride, and moments later we see them hunched against the rain, creeping up a hill with Calypso locked into a cage on wheels and Angelo hanging on grimly to the bounding quad bike.

  ‘Mummy, I’m frozen and there’s mud in my eyes,’ sobs Felix, who has not stopped crying since he fell over. In desperation he, The Beauty and I force an entry to a show home and find the bathroom. I run the bath and Felix begins to peel layers of mud and clothing.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ A beaky nose peers round the door, followed by a furious face, pearls and a blue rinse. ‘This is disgraceful, you must leave at once.’ The woman marches in and pulls the plug. ‘Now come on, out of here.’

  The Beauty dislikes her tone and gives a loud kung fu shout, ‘Hah!’ before hurling a pink soap brick at the woman.

  ‘Ow, you little monster,’ yells the woman. ‘I shall call the police if you don’t leave immediately.’ The Beauty screws up her nose and growls like a fierce dragon. The woman holds the door open and we depart in deep disgrace, Felix still caked in the only evidence of animals we have found on the farm. No let-up with the rain, and Giles is throwing horseshoes at a pole with evident skill, as he has won two pink fur chimpanzees, each one bigger than The Beauty. Felix bursts into tears again because he wants a pink chimpanzee. I offer to buy him one, but he wants to win it. He throws a horseshoe and it hits a small boy in the back of the knee.

  ‘Your children are a disgrace,’ hisses the child’s mother, deaf to sobbed apologies from Felix. The man who runs the stall says there are no monkeys left anyway, and gives Felix a consolation prize of a small Day-Glo-green alien dressed in a purple nylon robe. Felix yells more loudly and hurls it into the flames of the hog-roast fire. The Beauty, who had her eye on the dear little alien, opens her mouth and bawls too. Am ready to jump onto the pyre myself when Angelo and Calypso finally return from their ride. Calypso is weeping because she banged her head and no one would let her out of the cage.

  We depart, having spent forty pounds. All the children crying except Giles, who is sulking because we had to leave before the welly-throwing contest.

  July 30th

  Last day, and we have organised a babysitter and are succumbing to Angelo’s invitation to the pub and to a party on the caravan site. Try on three different dresses, and finally opt for the very dirty jeans I have hardly taken off all week. Children scarcely see us leaving, as they and their babysitter are building a camp in the garden. Babysitter is tiny, shorter than Giles and appears considerably younger. Can’t face asking her age in case she is only seven, but am comforted by the fact that The Beauty is sound asleep and Giles and Felix are capable of looking after themselves. Just don’t care what happens to Calypso and Diptych, as now loathe them unreservedly and Lila too, particularly when she comes out of the bathroom, having pinched all the hot water, wearing skimpy purple camisole top and a pair of my shorts, cast out of my wardrobe for being too small.

  Angelo is already at the Ploughman, playing pool, and is clearly not going to acknowledge us at all. Thumping music of the sort Giles loves, and terrible Oxford Circus crush, except worse because all the bodies one is pushed against are limber and perfect reminders of own decrepitude. Have strong sensation of being the three ugly sisters as my mother, Lila and I settle ourselves at half a table and try not to notice that the youths at the other half have turned their backs to look out of the window at a row of overflowing dustbins. Angelo wins his pool game and is challenged to another. My mother drains her glass in moments.

  ‘This is ghastly,’ she says. ‘Let’s go.’

  Stand around in car park wondering what to do next. Yearn for manly and capable escort to sweep me, in diamonds, to dinner.

  ‘Shall we go to the Rock Top Retreat?’ Suddenly remember genteel hotel, to which Charles’s partner and wife took us for pregnant-pause-ridden dinner last time.

  Very soon we are sipping martinis, feet snugly buried in lovely powder-blue shaggy carpet, listening to tinkling piano and watching seagulls swerve and bicker above the sea. Much more the thing. Covert observation of others in the hotel bar offers interesting view of proper family life. Mr and Mrs Perfect, in their forties, both suntanned, with big teeth and handsome faces, lounge and manage to look comfortable on the swing seat overlooking the tennis court. On court, their four big-toothed children play doubles without having tantrums or swearing, and the scene is truly an example to us all. Lila, my mother and I are impressed.

  ‘Maybe they’re aliens,’ my mother whispers loudly, observing the eldest toothy as it holds out a hand to help its brother, who has tripped and fallen flat on his face but who is being brave and not crying. ‘None of your children would do that without being bribed.’

  Lila and I glare at her, but know it is useless to argue. Cannot pretend, either, that self and Charles plus offspring ever made such a pleasing and harmonious tableau as the toothy Perfects, who have now all jumped into a huge, very clean Mercedes and driven off smiling, probably to amusing dinner with other faultless folk. My mother, now on her third gin martini and in rollicking form, is quick to point this out.

  ‘How I wish you and Desmond had turned out more like those people,’ she sniffs sadly, acting up with every gulp of gin. ‘What a joy it would have been to have a decent son-in-law who played tennis, not a creep with a crematorium.’

  ‘Well I wish I’d done better and married someone I liked,’ I snap back, goaded. Waving my glass towards the doorway I draw her attention to a spry sixty-year-old woman, sunglasses propped in her bouncy greying hair, immaculately clad in a navy and white striped sailor top and a white pleated skirt, escorted by a tall, courteous man with laughing blue eyes.

  ‘And maybe if you and Dad had been a bit more like that we wouldn’t be so dysfunctional.’

  For a moment my mother inspects her role model, finding her glasses and propping them on her nose like a pince-nez as both the arms are now broken. But instead of looking stricken and gleaning a few fashion tips from this paragon she is unrepentant and speechless with laughter. Lila butts in.

  ‘Look, we’ve got to get back, we said we’d give the kids fish and chips for the last supper, and it’s half-past nine. We’ve still got to clean the cottage and pack and take all the surf stuff back.’

  Holidays. Can’t understand how anyone finds them a tonic. Am sure that marshalling an army across the steppes of Russia is more relaxing.

  August 1st

  Last day in Cornwall. Up at dawn scrubbing and hoovering. Children bicker and whine and ceaselessly remove items I have just packed from cases I have just forced shut. Lose car keys. Am so frazzled that immediately forget I have lost them until everyone is in the car and waiting to go.

  ‘Where are the car keys?’ Yell so loudly that The Beauty, aslee
p in her car seat like an angel, wakes and bursts into tears. Her wailing becomes louder and louder, and I crawl through the cottage on hands and knees looking under beds and chairs for goddamn keys. Sudden silence suggests that The Beauty has been released from the torture zone of the car. Felix rushes in to find me checking the Hoover bag.

  ‘Here they are, Mum, I gave them to The Beauty to play with and then I forgot. Sorry.’

  Count to ten, bite tongue to prevent filthy language and preserve appearance of dignity.

  August 3rd

  David has made everything much nicer than it normally is here. He is unusually tidy for a man. Even outside was improved by him, and we now have a dovecote for the fat pigeons Simon gave us for Easter.

  ‘They’ll probably nest,’ said David as he gathered his things before going. ‘You’ll have a colony to look out at soon.’

  Outside still lovely, and pigeons cooing from their palace, but inside has reverted to usual chaos. Am still excavating damp, fetid suitcases. Find that many clothes are mouldy. Gloomily scrubbing favourite antique lace camisole and failing to remove grey flecked fungus from it when huge van drives up, shiny and red and definitely not the organic veg round. Joyfully abandon the washing and scuttle to the front door to make friends with whoever it may be. Thrilling special deliveries courier waits in the porch, invisible behind man-sized bouquet. It is for The Beauty and is a forest of sunflowers in every colour the sun has ever been, from blackest crimson to bronze and citrus yellow.