Hens Dancing

by Raffaella Barker

Of course, this is why I have been asked. Remember my mother telling me that Sir Nicholas was taking an interest in my single status and thought something should be done about it. Particularly thoughtful of him to provide an army man for me, like Charles but newer model. On my right, Sir Nicholas is busy with his other neighbour, the piecrust, and is not talking to me. The army man gives up pretending to eat the goat’s cheese, and concentrates on the large amount of my thigh visible despite my primly spread napkin.

  ‘What was your husband’s rank and regiment?’ he asks.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ I reply, graceless but truthful. Am immediately ashamed. Of gracelessness. Now I will have to ask him about his rank and regiment to make up. He drones away and I fiddle with my ribbon and listen to Hilary’s conversation with the splendid husband of piecrust. His hair is almost blue with snowiness, and he sports a beautiful tweed jacket and shoes polished until they gleam like walnut wood. He is judging the cattle classes at the local agricultural show. I would love to know about this, and cannot bear to miss the conversation, so apologise to army man.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, I just need to know about cows.’ He is very understanding.

  ‘Of course, I do see. Why don’t we swap places?’

  Soon I am leaning in my plate, topping up my wineglass and learning how to tell if a cow has championship potential or not. Arrive home late, determined to purchase a small bovine as soon as possible, preferably at the show tomorrow, and to keep it in the orchard and milk it in the manner of Marie Antoinette. Small green dress will become milkmaid outfit and will therefore be useful.

  September 2nd

  Almost negligible hangover in no way diminishes my enthusiasm for bovine purchase. Giles and Felix groan about it being the end of their holidays and wanting just to be at home, a line which I used to fall for but now recognise as euphemism for playing on the Gameboy and watching advertisements on television. It is raining as we depart for the agricultural show, and The Beauty is wild-eyed and dangerous with new teeth causing trouble. She throws all toys on the floor of the car and shouts fiercely all the way there, shattering my nerves. At the show, cannot bear the queue to enter, so deviously convince car-parking youths that we are members and drive straight to the main ring. Just as well, as downpour commences, to coincide with the Belgian Blue class. We watch from the warmth and comfort of the car, with the windscreen wipers on, as a slow procession of white cows with big blue ink spots and terrible shaven buttocks shuffle past us. Many of the bovines are creating cowpats as they go, and many others are walking through them, cloven hoofs squelching. Suddenly do not wish to own a cow.

  ‘Mummy, look, his balls are massive.’

  Felix is standing with his head out of the sunroof and is waving a large pink umbrella with ‘Voo Doo Dolls’ written on it. One of the Belgian Blues shies as he trudges past us.

  ‘Felix, put it away,’ I hiss, shamefaced to be found with such an accessory among the countless weather-proofed oilskins in assorted puddle and mud colours. The umbrella and Felix hurtle to the ground beside the car.

  ‘It doesn’t work as a parachute, Mum,’ he tells me.

  ‘So I see.’ Two passing ponies shy and the judge in the ring breaks off from his inspection of a bulging blue backside to glare at us. ‘Let’s go and look around,’ I suggest, and am deaf to pleas for ice cream as we stagger to the dog ring, The Beauty’s pushchair becoming a snowplough in effect as it gathers clods of mud and straw in its wheels. These no longer turn, and I am eventually forced to drag the buggy, with The Beauty moaning piteously and struggling to escape. In the dog ring, a low-slung collie is whisking and skulking around a small herd of white ducks shaped like folded umbrellas. A jovial commentator booms away and the crowd titters and claps. The Beauty pulls her socks off and hurls them over the rope and into the ring, in the manner of a medieval damsel bestowing her colours on a favoured knight. The ducks waddle up some steps and down a slide. Ice cream beckons.

  September 3rd

  Haircuts. Jenny the babysitter’s mother Enid is a travelling hairdresser. She zooms up to the house in a convertible Morris Minor with pulsing music issuing from her car stereo, and impresses Giles and Felix hugely. Sensing a kindred spirit, Giles brings his radio into the kitchen where the haircuts are to take place.

  ‘Do you like this?’ The volume is increased and I abandon the kitchen, leaving The Beauty standing on the table bobbing up and down in time to the music and holding hands with Felix, while Giles and Enid sing along to a very fast rap song. Spend very enjoyable half-hour with hose, using high pressure to zap the wheels of The Beauty’s pushchair and remove the huge cakes of mud, straw and cowpats collected at the show. Scrub away, employing toothbrush for awkward bits, and experience great calm and happiness in completing the task and in having lovely shining pushchair to hurl back into the car with all the spilt earth, inexplicable gravel, sacks of hen food and crunched crisps that live there. Return to the kitchen to find two sons with terrible shorn patches of felt like Action Man instead of hair.

  ‘We’ve had number twos,’ Felix shouts, ‘and The Beauty’s going to have hers done now.’

  Enid, clearly a fanatic, has strapped The Beauty into the high chair and wrapped her in a red towel. Only her head is visible. She pats her hair and beams at Enid, ready to lose her jaunty topknot, which is bound by a scarlet velvet bow and is especially fetching today. Enid’s broad pink rear sways rhythmically behind the high chair, keeping rapid time with the music as she combs and dances, her scissors snapping and chattering in anticipation about The Beauty’s head.

  ‘No, don’t!’ I scream above the music, and The Beauty bursts into sobs. ‘Turn that bloody noise off.’

  Cannot believe that Giles and Felix can look this ghastly, and scarcely recognise them. The Beauty is furious to miss out, and writhes in my arms, as, shaking with rage, I pay Enid ten pounds for having turned my sons into aliens. She leaves, and I return to the kitchen from seeing her off, preparing to counsel the boys gently and supportively through the first glimpse of themselves in the mirror. No need. They have turned up the music even louder, and have got the mirror out of my make-up bag and are taking it in turns to stare admiringly at themselves in the tiny glass.

  ‘This is the coolest haircut we’ve had in ages,’ says Giles, reaching to run his palm over Felix’s scalp. I clutch The Beauty tightly and swallow to stop myself weeping. They are thrilled; I must be supportive. I must be positive. It will be easy to deal with nits. Thank God there is no need to photograph them for some time.

  September 5th

  The Beauty and I are making the most of a balmy, late summer evening by cleaning out the greenhouse, and Giles and Felix have gone to the final cricket session in the village. Have found plangent country song on Radio Two and am singing along loudly and inaccurately as it is not one I know, but one I wish I knew. The Beauty is dressed for gardening in her first pair of wellingtons, green and glittery and found by my mother at a jumble sale last week. She is also wearing a crocheted cyclamen-pink and royal-blue dress sent by Lila who purchased it on a trip to the West Indies, and looks utterly eccentric. I must encourage self-expression, though, and let her look like a mini bag lady if she chooses to. Have given her some potting compost and a trowel, and she is making mud pies and eating them. I assume that Fisons peat compost is perfectly healthy and leave her to it, while I repot an exhausted pelargonium and take cuttings. Musk and lemon scent from the leaves create a feel-good aroma and the sky blazes pink and orange as the sun sets. Am at one with serenity and joy. Neil Diamond’s song ‘I Am’ is next on the radio and I join in. Suddenly, though, pleasure evaporates as Digger trots past the greenhouse with a chicken in his mouth. Not a feathered one, an oven-ready one. The chicken I had defrosted for supper.

  Erupt from the greenhouse screeching, ‘Why is that bastard dog here? Rags must be on heat. She’s always on heat. Sodding hell! Where is David?’ Digger has vanished, leaving the chicken upside down and very naked in the newly t
urned border. Pick it up muttering and march round house to the front where I can hear Giles and Felix, and, I hope, David. There they all are, playing cricket and laughing, enjoying their own reverie without interruptions from scavenging bastard dogs.

  ‘Why do you have to bring that creep with you?’

  David, Giles and Felix all assume expressions of hurt astonishment, and glance at one another wondering which of them is the creep in question.

  ‘Mum, David can stay to supper, can’t he?’ Giles ignores my stamping fury and tosses me the ball in his hands. Of course I miss it, even though I instinctively drop the chicken to be prepared to catch it.

  ‘Yes, and he can bloody well cook it.’ Pick up the chicken and hurl it at David, irritation rising even higher when he catches it easily. Giles is rolling on the grass giggling. Felix frowns.

  ‘Mum, why have you brought the chicken outside?’

  I retreat, slamming the door into the house, and take The Beauty up for a soothing bath.

  September 6th

  Last dregs of the holidays arrive not a moment too soon. After ten weeks Felix and Giles are as delighted as I am by the prospect of school, both having been supplied with huge quantities of new clothing and gumshields, and being keen to replace a nagging mother with enthusiastic and understanding friends. The gumshields are a particular triumph, and have been worn non-stop since we collected them from the dentist, making my formerly attractive children look like a pair of Neanderthals, particularly when combined with the new felt-head haircuts. I hate the gumshields especially because they represent a total outlay of almost one hundred pounds, which is three-quarters of a cashmere cardigan. The Beauty loves them, and has made one of her own with a wedge of apple, which she clamps between pursed lips, before grimacing fiercely and blowing the fruit hard across the room. Her manners are becoming atrocious, and she has learnt a lot from watching The Simpsons with her brothers. This she does with gusto, plumping herself on the armchair next to the television, biscuit in one hand, beaker in the other, sitting up straight and bouncing excitedly as the credits roll. Whenever Bart Simpson farts or does anything remotely ill-mannered, she cackles and claps, making sure that the boys are sharing the joke too. In the kitchen, or indeed a supermarket or other shop, she shouts a crescendo of ‘Oh! OH! OHH!’ when she wants something, and grabs my skin in a pinch-and-twist torture movement if thwarted. Am covered in scabs and gouges from my dealings with her, and wish she could go to school with her brothers on Tuesday, too.

  September 7th

  The last day features a medley of favourite treats, with a brief and painless moment at the dentist for The Beauty thrown in. This happens straight- after breakfast and is her first time in the chair. She takes to it well, hurling herself back several times before taking up a relaxed position perched on the arm. She bops Mr Jensen on the nose with her purple plastic sunglasses and stands up to caper about as piped music fills the surgery. Mr Jensen hovers over her head for about thirty seconds, making tentative dabs with his lollipop mirror and wooden icecream stick.

  ‘Lovely teeth,’ he says, tugging at the stick which she has clamped between them. ‘Don’t be in too much of a hurry to bring her back. A year is fine.’

  We troop out. Felix manages not to say, ‘Can we have some sweets?’ until we are on the pavement outside.

  Crab-fishing is next on our list, time-honoured end-of-summer ritual and another first for The Beauty. She is not an asset, and has to be trapped in her pushchair, where she roars in red-faced rage. Turn her to face the sea lavender and the clanking wind-chime masts of moored boats, and she instantly falls asleep.

  ‘Mum, Mum, there’s no bacon. Where’s the bacon? Did you bring it?’ Of course I didn’t. We are four miles from any shop, with the sea on three sides of us and a silver-veined grid of creeks and mud on the other. Very soon our crab dyke will vanish with the tide. Felix bursts into tears and I curse my constant fallibility as a mother, and general hopelessness as a human being. Saved by Giles, who produces bacon from his pocket in repulsive, slimy plastic bag.

  ‘I thought I’d better be in charge of this; Mum always forgets to bring the bacon,’ he says with a smirk. Must stop comparing him to Charles, although I suppose it’s not harmful so long as the comparison remains in Giles’s favour. Sit on the bank of the creek untangling orange-handled crab lines and cheering as the boys fill their bucket with snapping, glaucous crustaceans. By the time the tide turns, there are enough crabs for a Grand National race. Giles draws the starting line, scoring the black mud with the handle of his net, and Felix follows him, dropping the runners well back so they can set off at speed. The Beauty wakes just in time and her throne is turned to face the track. In an instant they are off, sixteen crabs and one inert anemone scuttling sideways back towards the creek.

  ‘How come they always go the right way?’ asks Felix. ‘Can they see the sea or do they smell it?’

  ‘It’s primeval because crabs are really old,’ Giles explains kindly, and I nod enthusiastically, delighted not to be taxing my brain.

  Le Moon in Cromer for eating Chinese food with chopsticks is next, and requires a complete change of clothing for all of us. This is effected on the street outside the hideous breeze-block edifice which houses the boys’ favourite restaurant. Felix presses his nose to the steamed-up window, savouring the prospect of being inside.

  ‘Hooray, there’s no one else there. Look at the aquariums, Mum, I wish our house could be more like Le Moon. I want silver and red wallpaper like that in my room.’

  He has a point; it would be great to have a room like Le Moon, with vast paper lanterns and gold and red tasselled lamps and huge clean aquariums with bubbling water and frisky fish, rather than our tiny, miserable tank where Pesce the fairground fish gapes at a bare wall through murky brown water. Make mental note to track wallpaper down, from God knows where.

  We enter and are straight away seated beneath a three-dimensional gold-framed painting of a swan on water, and automatically begin cramming prawn crackers into our mouths where they stick to our tongues. The Beauty becomes high on monosodium glutamate and creates a fun game piling pancakes on her head. Have noticed that she has recently taken to Hair Protests. Anything wet or sticky, crumby or flaky is rubbed into her scalp, accompanied by a manic smile. Chastisement, or even the most gentle suggestion, is met with a defiant lift of the chin and increased dollopings onto the hair. Muse about The Beauty’s problem-child behaviour for a while and resolve nothing. Hair protest is better than dirty protest and, anyway, I am powerless to stop her. I have no control.

  September 10th

  Joy. Peace. Calm. A whole afternoon of silence. My mother has taken The Beauty as her companion to a wine and sausage-roll party she has been forced to attend by The Gnome.

  ‘It’s to raise money for a hostel for artists,’ she groans. ‘I’m only going because I hope it will be built soon so that The Gnome can go and live there instead of in my garden.’

  Her new autumn look is formidable, and includes a cone-shaped fur hat given to her by a Russian sculptor who came to stay with her and with whom she consumed two bottles of vodka in one fourteen-hour session. She had to wear dark glasses for a week afterwards, and has only just removed them today. The Beauty and she swoop away like a pair of Tsarinas in their chariot, both now wearing hats, The Beauty having donned a damson velvet beret with turquoise beadwork. I wave them off, and struggle to stop myself curtseying and throwing rose petals.

  The hours loom drearily. A corporate hospitality brochure awaits, my brief being to turn it into readable English. I can’t bring myself to read it, and instead plunge into my file of autumn plant catalogues. Order a dozen roses, including one called Spanking Prudence, a hideous cake-pink standard tea which I shall give to Gawain because his last girlfriend was called Prudence. The new postman turns up, four hours late and swerving much too fast up the drive. Can’t see what the rush is for, as all he has brought are two Reader’s Digest envelopes emblazoned with lies about
vast sums of money I have almost won.

  Work crawls, brain is like a very stale loaf of bread, crumbling, bone-dry and non-receptive. Finally decide to relax officially for a few moments, and lie down under my desk, with no pillow or rug so I don’t give an impression of slacking. Extreme discomfort does not prevent me from nodding off, and am woken by crunching of gravel and the arrival of the organic vegetable delivery. A further, and legitimate, respite from work, hooray. Dash out to assist in carrying box of goodies to larder and am drawn into conversation with Mrs Veg about gassing bananas. Am aghast when she shows me picture of piteous bananas suffocating in poisonous blue polythene and limply dangling from trees. Tomatoes also apparently wretchedly treated. Offer to join support group, but am secretly relieved when Mrs Veg says there isn’t one. Wave her off and return to house, reflecting on ghastly banana situation and also on own increasing dependence on people who arrive in vans to deliver things. Even quite fancied the new postman when he finally arrived. Return to work, and try to muster enthusiasm and extended vocabulary to describe the Van Den Plas suite of Organza Delaney’s conference centre.

  Must have nodded off again, as am suddenly jolted awake by plaintive gulping noise of my computer asking me if I want to save what I have done. Have only written four words, but save them all the same. Searching brain’s hidden depths for a fifth word to add to my total when I notice a tiny Silvanian-style mouse gliding about on my zebra-skin rug. Teetering on mini-twig legs, it heads off towards the hall. Follow it, heart palpitating, convinced that if I lose sight of it for a second it will instantly conceive and bring forth a multitude of baby mice. Or, more likely, Sidney will get it.

  Stalk it, and effect brilliant mouse coup outside the downstairs loo. Am tiptoeing speedily towards the back door with the poor, sweetie-pie mouse cupped in my palm when needle-sharp pain jabs my hand. Shriek ‘Ow,’ and drop vile little brute on hall floor. It has drawn blood. Dare not lick it off in case wound is contaminated with mouse spit. Have probably been poisoned. Do mice have rabies? Can’t remember having read about it, but have read about them having hepatitis; or was that monkeys? In an instant, a sensation of warm lunacy is coursing through my body. The mouse uses the opportunity to vanish into the kitchen where it will doubtless meet and marry its dream lover at any moment. Can’t worry about that, though, as am convinced that I have Weil’s disease and will die in a few seconds. Remain rooted in hall, observing minutest changes in mind and body. Feel as if tripping, and experience faintness, dizziness and heavy breathing. Limbs now leaden. Have to harness every ounce of courage to take my socks off and look to see if my feet are beginning to go black. Impossible to tell due to Blackcurrant Dream polish on each toenail. Hyperventilation averted by David’s arrival.