Hens Dancing

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘I’ll leave the rest of the vodka. I’ve just had one small shot myself, but you don’t really need visitors, do you? You just need a big bowl by the bed.’

  ‘Why don’t you send him back to London in an ambulance?’ she demanded downstairs. ‘You’ve got enough to do looking after the children without sick artists as well.’

  Shocked by her lack of sympathy, although secretly agreed, but felt I must be hospitable for as long as Gawain required a bed. His image as Corinthian superhero was a little tarnished by the sick bowl, and I discovered that Florence Nightingale will never be a role model.

  * * *

  Return from dropping Gawain at the station and on the way decide that autumn is the perfect time to reread Anna Karenina. The thought of lovely wicked Vronsky speeds my path through the puddles and mud to home. Yum yum. Can’t wait.

  October 23rd

  Must go on a date or similar excursion for fun and frivolity, with or without member of the opposite sex. Am becoming set in lemon-faced, lone-parent ways and need to get out. Have not been out for the evening since London trip. This cannot be healthy. Who can I go with and where can I go? Vivienne and Simon are on holiday, David is not answering his telephone, my mother is having her hair dyed in Cromer. I have no one to play with. Cabin fever takes possession of my brain and makes me choose a class with Fabrice Wrath’s Seven Rhythms Ecstatic Dance Group as my outing. Must not admit the depths to which I am sinking to my mother, so ask Jenny to babysit and make her swear to secrecy and to tell anyone who rings that I am at the cinema.

  Jenny arrives with a large bag of washing and two small tubs of dye.

  ‘Is it OK if I use your washing machine to dye my clothes?’ she asks. ‘I thought I could do some tie-dyeing with the boys too.’

  ‘What a wonderful idea, they’ll love it.’ Am jealous. Why do I never think of creative and stimulating things such as tie-dyeing to do with the boys? Could I join in and learn new skill from Jenny rather than having to drive ten miles in the dark?

  Dress in boring black and grey clothes as usual, but a different configuration of them. Hopes that I resemble a nubile extra in Flashdance are dashed when I go in to say goodbye to Giles and Felix. They are immersed in the vile PlayStation and can scarcely bear to look up.

  ‘Go away,’ growls Felix from between gritted teeth.

  Giles finishes his go, so has a small window of time for me before his next turn. He hugs me and I am engulfed in a huge, loving smile too.

  ‘Mum, you’re so silly, you’ve forgotten to take your trousers off. You’ve got a skirt on as well. It looks totally sad.’

  Why did I bring them up to believe in freedom of speech?

  The ecstatic dancing takes place in a village hall, and is led by a man with a straggle of long green hair and cringe-making white ballet tights. He looks like a spring onion. The participants are two wan, middle-aged women wearing bedroom slippers and macintoshes, and a skinhead in boxer shorts and a singlet. I take my place among them, clammy with embarrassment and very conscious of my yellowed toenails. Should have made time to apply nail polish before leaving home. A strip light falters into action, washing the hall and the five people in it in harsh white light. No one is at all ecstatic. Silence is heavy between us. Onion Head puts on his music. Horrible rasping wails fill the hall, backed by spooky pipes of some sort and a fast drumbeat. I begin to feel nauseous.

  ‘Let the music seize you from inside,’ urges Onion Head, and shutting his eyes, he bends his knees outwards like a Cossack and begins to bounce from side to side. The strand of tired green hair flaps across his forehead, and his legs are stringy and knotted with veins. No one else even attempts the squatting bounce. One of the ladies sheds her mac to reveal a clinging mauve tracksuit. Her lips are a ruby slash in between dumpling-fat cheeks. She starts marching on the spot, her eyes fixed above the bouncing form of Onion Head, her hands moving, twirling an imaginary baton. She may not be wearing a pleated miniskirt or bunches, but she is clearly an American cheerleader, a bobby-soxer. The skinhead has also been seized by an inner ecstasy. He teeters on the tips of his trainers, every leg muscle taut and forcing him taller and straighter. His arms shoot in and out from his shoulders, faster and faster, and this impulsion soon has him bouncing, while his face turns puce and scarlet like Zebedee in The Magic Roundabout. The non-cheerleading middle-aged lady and I are spellbound. Zebedee, Onion Head and the Cheerleader are bopping away at full speed, while the two of us shift uneasily from foot to foot. I catch her eye just as Onion Head changes gear and begins hurtling around the hall in a kind of squatting solo waltz. The cheerleader has developed a more elaborate routine too, now, involving head-tossing and pouting, while Zebedee is a veritable dervish. We both explode laughing, and cannot stop. Soon we are leaning against the stage, legs crossed, dying for the loo but still wrapped in mirth.

  October 24th

  The excitement of the ecstatic dancing causes me to wake today renewed. Sides and stomach ache from unusual exertion of non-stop laughing, but no other ill effects. Will not, however, be returning to Fabrice, as he announced at the end of the class that he is going to India for the winter, and has to be there before the clocks change. Am not sure if this is valid, as time zones make clock-changing meaningless anyway. Or do they? Am, as usual, confounded, caught out and depressed by the end of British Summer Time. And by the vast heap of manure which has been deposited in the yard by Mr Loins.

  ‘You ordered it last year, and said I wasn’t to forget you, I had the cheque and everything. You said you were getting ahead with the garden.’ He cackles in triumph when I object to the fulsome trailer load.

  All very well for the garden, but have no volunteers for shit-shovelling save self. Wallow for a bit in self-pity as I recall the optimistic day last year when I ordered the manure from Mr Loins. Remember saying to him, ‘Oh, I’m sure there will be someone around to help me,’ when warned that there would be an awful lot of it.

  October 26th

  Half-term enables me to enlist Giles and Felix as helpers. Both are keen to earn money, so I offer them fifty pence a barrow load. Perhaps too lavish. I have been appointed barrow-pusher, and the morning passes slowly for me. Giles stands at the muck heap with a fork and tosses treacle-brown dollops into the barrow. When it is full, I trundle it to Felix, who waits, leaning on another fork by the flowerbed. He then flings feathering sprays of manure out of the barrow and somewhere near the bed and I trundle the empty barrow back to Giles. By elevenses, I have become a Russian peasant from Kitty and Levin’s farm, and am almost enjoying the wrung-out, strung-out exhaustion. My red wellingtons are heavy and bristling with muck so I am forced to shuffle, and Giles and Felix have earned five pounds each.

  ‘That’s practically plutocrat rate,’ I inform them.

  They are sitting on the back doorstep, sipping scalding hot chocolate and watching The Beauty climb over me. She is refreshed from her rest and is a land girl in khaki trousers which I found in the dressing-up box. Recognise them as Felix’s from toddler days, and suspect that they have been inside out in the dressing-up box since he took them off five years ago to put on his cowboy suit. I cannot move. Am collapsed on the grass beside the boys. My back is in a spasm of protest against the ten barrow loads of muck I have moved, and is building up a painful resistance to doing any more. Am otherwise keen to continue and get rid of the Mount Rushmore muck heap; it is black, ugly and it smells. Rather like Digger, who appears, jangling his collar as he pauses to scratch and then lift his leg on the newly planted wallflowers under the kitchen window. Refrain from yelling obscenities at him or throwing anything, as Digger equals David, and David equals assistance. Hooray, shall not now have permanently crooked back or long-term muck monolith.

  David is on his way to London and wants to leave Digger here.

  ‘I wonder if you would have him, Venetia; he hates the traffic and I can never get him out of the dustbins, so it takes hours even to cross a road with him. He’s brought you a present
to try and bribe his way in.’ He thrusts a bottle of red wine at me and turns to greet The Beauty. Nod absently, as am transfixed by the snappiness of David’s outfit. The glamour of a white shirt should never be underestimated. The black corduroy suit is the kind of thing I used to try to get Charles to wear, without success, and only the silver trainers are recognisable as David’s wardrobe. He does not look eligible for shit-shovelling. And I have not got the nerve to ask him; he is dazzling in his splendour. Am unfortunately dazzled enough to agree to Digger.

  ‘Oh yes, of course we’ll have him. It’ll be fine. When are you back?’

  ‘On Saturday, in time for Hallowe’en,’ says David. ‘I’ll see you then.’

  He puts The Beauty down and saunters out of the yard. We resume our labours.

  October 28th

  Am turning over a new leaf. Recent phase of gloom and shit-shovelling is to be replaced by spirit of optimism, some new shoes and many treats. Am throwing an impromptu Hallowe’en party, spurred on by competitiveness with Charles, who is having the boys for Guy Fawkes Night. He says he does not want The Beauty, and has not had her overnight since the early summer. She will be supplanted in his affections by the Saucer Babies. How can I protect her from this? Have been ghastly, whingeing lemon-face mother for weeks now, and have not told the boys why. Am convinced that it is Charles’s job to break baby news to them, not mine, although wish that they could be spared. Futile half-hour of ‘if only’ thoughts follows, staring out of the kitchen window at shivering trees desperate to keep hold of leaves now past their prime and yellowed. Am only distracted from my torpor by Rags, who is whimpering and turning circles in a crescendo of excitement because I am standing near the back door. Capitulate and take her out.

  Tramp along the edge of the newly ploughed back field, with Rags zigzagging at a distance, nose to the ground and hopelessly excited. The Beauty rides high on my shoulders in her rambler-baby backpack, and we swing up to the brow of the hill, out of breath and yearning for the view.

  October 31st

  Is there time for fudge or jelly to set before the party? Where are The Beauty’s black velvet bloomers? When will I be allowed out? Am zipped into the yellow pop-up tent with the tiny tyrant. She is wearing a silver plastic knight’s helmet with the visor up; I am wearing a kind of wimple made from a roll of kitchen towel. My Knight in Shining Armour keeps blowing her nose on the wimple, and is engaged in sucking apricot face cream from a tube she refuses to surrender. She has a will as tough as any armour, and the voice to assert it. I may be here for hours. The Beauty hands me a pink thimble.

  ‘Tea,’ she says, breathily. In fact, I could be here for days.

  Rescue appears in the form of Desmond and my mother and a vast pumpkin from The Gnome’s vegetable plot. My mother also has three red plastic tridents. She adores parties and is already very excited. She engulfs the kitchen in a puff of smoke from her special black Hallowe’en cigarettes and arranges her wares on the table. It takes the united effort of me and Desmond to get the pumpkin into position.

  ‘This is bigger than the piglets. We could put one of them inside and cook it,’ I suggest.

  ‘We thought it would make a good carriage for The Beauty,’ says my mother, settling down in the tent with the delighted Beauty. ‘You chop the top off and scoop it out like an egg. Desmond is going to dress up as Dracula and hide in the coal shed. We must make some cocktails, I’ve brought black food colouring for them, and some should be green.’

  Am tying a string across the kitchen and suspending sticky willy buns from it when Lila rattles up the drive in her Beetle.

  ‘Ah, the witches are convening,’ says Desmond, watching her leap from the car and begin frantically to wipe its seats clean of journey crumbs while yelling at her children.

  ‘Either you tidy yourselves up or we go straight back to London. I have had enough of you two and your lippiness, so don’t bother answering back…’ Her haranguing head vanishes into the boot space in the bonnet of the Beetle. Desmond whistles under his breath and opens a can of lager.

  ‘She’s going to be one to avoid this weekend,’ he whispers to me as Diptych bursts into the kitchen in a warty monster mask.

  The relationship between Desmond and Lila broke down irretrievably when Desmond’s decapitated finger went septic after his third night on the marble slab. Despite Lila’s fevered application of much organic, prepacked mud, pond weed and other oozing lotions, Desmond insisted on going to hospital. Antibiotics and twenty-four hours of potential amputation were the final passion killers. The finger survived, but Desmond left to go to Reading in August, vowing never to get mixed up with anything New Age again. His band, Hung Like Elvis, were the success story of the festival, and at other venues throughout the summer. Now, at last, after seven years as a joke, they are considered a happening band, and Desmond has shaved his sideburns, groomed his eyebrows and found a Dolly Parton lookalike girlfriend called Minna whom he met at a gig. Minna loves Tupperware and having her nails done, and believes in supermarket prefab food. Wish Minna could have joined us for Hallowe’en, as I long to meet her. Have to make do with grumpy Lila instead.

  The kitchen is becoming a cauldron. The windows have steamed up, something foul is bubbling on the Aga and The Beauty stands on the table with a wooden spoon, stirring the hollow in a gap-toothed turnip lantern. She and my mother have excavated three turnips, two swedes and are about to start on the giant pumpkin. Felix has found a bottle of white foundation and is slapping it onto his face to complement the gruesome red felt-tip line he has drawn around his throat. He is freakish in the extreme to look at, with just his eyes and his school uniform indicating that he is human. He removes the school uniform in favour of a black cloak and a pair of flashing devil horns, and hurtles into the garden with Diptych and Calypso to play at being Undead. Giles has taken it upon himself to blow up twenty orange and black balloons, and is lying in the kitchen armchair panting. No amount of coercion or pleading will persuade him to dress up this evening.

  ‘It’s too babyish,’ he says dismissively, and as if to prove his point, the leering, disguised faces of the other three crystallise for a second at the back door before they vanish again screaming and shouting into the steel-cold dusk.

  ‘Try this and tell me if it needs more nutmeg.’ My mother thrusts a steaming cup at me, and another at Lila, and stands back, as if observing an experiment. Glance uneasily at the potion, which is the colour of old blood and has black bits floating beneath a foam of bubbles. My mother looks even more unnerving than her concoction, having run her hands through her hair several times without realising that pumpkin seeds have attached themselves to her. Her hair now stands completely on end and is adorned with the seeds, while her mascara has smudged around her eyes. Her Hallowe’en costume, however, is immaculate, if overpowering, in its suggestion of an endless sweep of viridian-green satin under festoons of black lace.

  ‘It’s mulled wine, but I added some cherry brandy and a few other new ingredients. Do you like it?’

  Suppress sissy urge not even to try it, and imbibe. Molten alcohol bursts down my throat; I choke and spout teardrops from swimming eyes. Croak, ‘It’s great,’ and gulp the rest as if it is a frozen vodka.

  Lila is being a real wet blanket: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t drink it; I read that heating cheap wine literally turns it into battery acid and I’m not prepared to run that risk with my metabolism.’

  She turns her back to find a clean glass for the wholesome life elixir she has brought with her, and my mother sticks her tongue out. In contrast to grumpy Lila, I am now feeling very much more cheerful than I have for ages. Another swig of the potion creates a woosh of energy and power reminiscent of Asterix, and I dash into the garden to call the children for the games to start.

  ‘We can’t be bothered to wait for the others,’ I shout. ‘They can join in later. Let’s start with apple-bobbing.’

  ‘What others? Who else have you asked?’

  I turn to answer Desm
ond and am jolted into a scream. He has changed into vulpine, glistening Count Dracula. The Beauty has had enough, and clutches my hand in terror, hiding her head in her skirt, only emerging to wave her hand and shout, ‘Taxi, taxi,’ in a bid for escape when car headlights flare out of the darkness towards us. The car pauses halfway up the drive, and although I cannot see anything save headlights, I can hear the driver laughing at the scene on the lawn. Five buckets filled with water and bobbing apples are illuminated by the various lanterns, and kneeling at each bucket is a child, his or her head sleek and wet like a seal from immersion in the apple-filled water. My mother, followed by Lila, who has been forced by Calypso to wear a Victorian child’s sprigged bonnet, marches between the contestants with her torch, counting apples and administering towels. Beyond the grinning, glowing light of the lanterns, Desmond is dimly visible in the woods, flitting to and fro with torch spectacles on, very spectral with his whited-out face, but also reminiscent of the barn owl.

  ‘I have never seen such an insane bunch of people, or rather, not since that midsummer party you had, Venetia. How’s Digger?’ David climbs out of the car leaving the lights on, and saunters over to kiss my cheek. Am taken aback. He doesn’t usually kiss me. Perhaps he’s drunk. I turn to call Digger out from the kitchen where he has been guarding the sticky buns, but he has already shimmied silently to David’s side. So has my mother, proffering a beaker of mulled wine and almost as pleased to see him as Digger.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you about those friends of yours with the handbags. Would they like to use my house? I read somewhere that location work is hugely lucrative, and I’m told that—’