Summertime

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘Fancy pants, fancy pants,’ carolled The Beauty and Felix when we pulled the now violet underwear out on a wooden spoon.

  The Beauty brought two dolls, a nappy, three vests and a pair of shorts to the laundry area, and managed to get all of them in and submerged without me noticing. Keep finding ultraviolet dolls lying around the garden looking as if they have had too much sun, or Ribena, or something. The nappy looks wonderful though. We dried it on the Aga and sent it to the manufacturers with a note saying, Please can we have more like this one? Have not yet received a reply.

  Church with just Felix is a treat and we sing loudly and tunelessly at every opportunity. On the way out I force him to lend me his pocket money for the collection, and become convinced that a halo is budding above my head. Am moved to sing a Christmas carol in the car on the way home:

  Joy to the world

  And joy to you.

  Particularly lovely to be singing as we whisk between hedgerows basking in the sunlit morning. Curling primrose leaves rise, new and crisp and green, from the banks, and also vivid spears of daffodil foliage and yellow trumpet flowers.

  Joy to the world

  And joy to you—

  Erupting apparently out of the tarmac is a vast chrome-fronted truck; its bonnet rears above us and my foot flails for the brake. The truck swerves, tyres shrieking, engine roaring; my windscreen fills with bull bars and car bonnet, and all I can think is that this is just like the Dinosaur Death Run game in both mood and soundtrack. Felix bounces up in his seat, shouting excitedly, ‘Look Mum, it’s a Big Foot. Cool. Can we have one? Oww! Stop twisting my arm, we’re quite safe, you know.’

  Find I have involuntarily closed my eyes, and grasped Felix with one hand while wrestling to steer with the other, and maintaining a stream of foul language: ‘Shit! Buggering hell and buckets of blood. Felix, are you sure you’re all right? WATCH OUT!’

  We have crashed. Not fatally, as we were only going about ten miles an hour, but firmly. Felix whistles under his breath. ‘Yes Mum, I’m fine. Did you mean to do that handbrake turn? It was really excellent.’

  The front end of the car is buried in the grassy bank, as if sniffing keenly at primroses, and the body of the car has slewed at ninety degrees across the road. The same has happened to the purple and yellow truck, but the front of his vehicle is facing the other way, so the driver-side windows are next to each other. We both lean out. I am shaking with shock, he is grinding his teeth, flaring his nostrils and flashing his eyes dangerously. In a minute I expect he will begin yanking his hair out by the roots. I say the first thing that comes into my head.

  ‘Well I don’t know why you’re looking so angry. You could have killed us. And it’s Easter Sunday.’

  This is the wrong thing to say.

  ‘Mum, it was your fault,’ mutters Felix. ‘You were on the wrong side of the road.’

  Fortunately, the man does not hear this vital witness evidence as he is struggling to open his door and get out. This is impossible, as the vehicles are too close to one another. He hisses, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ and slides over to the other side to get out of the passenger door. Hear him from beyond the truck cursing, ‘This is absurd. How the hell did we get into this mess?’

  He reappears in the driver’s seat, and I notice that his eyebrows are long and thick and join in the middle like the bristles of an old-fashioned carpet sweeper. No wonder he looks so bad-tempered. He is also unshaven and has wild black hair sprouting around a thinly covered crown, and a very earthy-looking jacket with no sleeves, just trails of unravelling string around the armholes. Presume he is a son of the pig farmer down the road, and make a suggestion.

  ‘What if you walk home and get someone to bring a tractor?’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ he says, rudely.

  Answer very reasonably, rather enjoying the sensation of maintaining calm good humour in the face of his wild wrath, ‘Well, I haven’t got a tractor, and anyway, your truck’s in the way, and I wish you’d move it because I need to get home to cook lunch. We’re having an Easter-egg hunt this afternoon.’

  Felix has climbed out of the sunroof and is inspecting the bank behind me. I am certainly not getting out. A nightie is fine for church, but it’s not my garment of choice for a traffic incident. Pull the tweed coat close about me, and wish it was fur. Would then feel grand and Cruella-like, and would be able to get the better of this rudester. His shirt is missing a couple of buttons and he has a melted-looking ring on his wedding finger. In fact, it looks very like one of the mourning rings made by Charles’s company, Heavenly Petting. He grips his steering wheel and the skin on his knuckles seems to slide back until bone white shows. Decide not to ask him about the ring, he looks too cross. He leans towards me through the window again, eyes glinting, and says between clenched teeth, ‘What makes you think I have a tractor?’

  I am fed up with all this now, and just want to get home. Am beginning to think that this is not a junior pig farmer at all, but in fact a free-range psychopath, and am anxious to make my escape. Felix pokes his head in through my window like a traffic warden.

  ‘Mum, if you go backwards first, you can do a three-million-point turn and get out. Hey, look. He’s got one of Dad’s Heavenly Petting rings. It’s one of the ones I designed for small rodents. It costs three ninety-nine and you can buy it in Argos, Asda or any good pet shop.’

  Felix is good on the Heavenly Petting sales mantra. I wonder if Charles gets him out on the road with him when he has the children for the weekend. I can just imagine him forcing Felix, Giles and The Beauty to wear ties and carry plastic briefcases full of his wares in order to go doorstepping in Cambridge. He wouldn’t dare do it to the twins, Helena would never allow it, but as ex- rather than present wife, I have no power on weekends away.

  Come back to the present to find Felix standing on the truck’s running board, interviewing the driver about his dead animals. ‘Oh, I see. It wasn’t your guinea pig. It was your stepdaughter’s. Did she get a ring for her cat when it died, or did she just go for a garden burial and nothing to commemorate? You know we’ve gone on the Internet now. You can look it up. It’s called deaddog?.com and I thought of it and we’ve registered it and …’

  The psychopath is glowering and begins to mutter something about little bastards. It is time to go.

  ‘Come on Felix, jump in,’ I yell, and inclining my head graciously in a farewell gesture, I grind the gears to begin the three-thousand-point turn.

  The psycho-pig starts and yells, ‘Watch out. You’ll tip over. You can’t do—’

  Oh, the joy of electric windows.

  March 28th

  The Easter-egg hangover lasted for three days, and I fear that flashbacks may occur for weeks. The Beauty, who has never been biddable, has become an addict. Her rear, clad in red polka-dot bloomers beneath her customary net tutu, is visible now from my window, as she sifts the garden stalk by stalk, on hands and knees, searching for yet more mini-eggs. Every so often she finds one, and there is a whoop of joy followed by a satisfied silence while she consumes it. This new-found greed makes the garden a wonderful giant playpen for her. She has no desire to follow Lowly and Digger on a dustbin trail, even though she generally enjoys this treasure-seeking mission, nor did she try to get into the postman’s van this morning with Rags, who never likes to miss an outing.

  I am able to achieve much domestic satisfaction by repainting the downstairs loo. It is now cream with garnet-coloured woodwork, and looks very Red Cross and businesslike. Become aware, when debating whether to wash the brushes or just leave them to rot in a jam jar of white spirit, along with twenty or so other paintbrush corpses in similar jars, that this is deluxe and advanced work avoidance. Usually find that a bit of mucking out in the kitchen is enough to keep me from my desk, but since Easter have begun to see that clearing up is as bad as work, so have left it and moved on. Hope vaguely that the debris will all just disappear eventually, in the way that unwashed hair goes through the greasy s
tage and comes out the other side renewed and full of vim. Wonder how long it takes?

  March 30th

  The Beauty sleeps late this morning, and I’m not surprised. From midnight until three a.m. she was busy reorganising my underwear drawer and conducting a one-woman fashion show. I tried smoothing the pillow for her and turning the light out, but was met with stentorian commands through the darkness at ear level.

  ‘Light on now, Mummy, or else.’

  Where has she learnt this awful threatening vocabulary? Must encourage her to watch more improving television such as Teletubbies, I think.

  Finally convinced her to lie down in my bed with me, and four lumpy, cold plastic dolls, her companions for every breath she takes at the moment. She spent the remaining small hours swinging her feet and then her knees and then her dolls into me with the regularity of a clock pendulum. I fell asleep as dawn broke, and just in time to be jerked awake by the alarm clock at seven. Not sure how the boys got to school, as head feels as if it is sewn on backwards today, but cannot go on allowing them to drink Coke and eat cheese on toast for every meal.

  Have still not managed to clean the kitchen, and have thus lost the cheering Easter card David sent to all of us. It vanished beneath an avalanche of papers somewhere on the table, where a substratum of stickiness acts as a deterrent to any movement of stuff when the kitchen door is open and fresh, green-smelling spring air pours in. Housewifery has deserted me. Open the fridge and notice Giles’s cricket socks in there. Just cannot think where else I might put them, so shut door again, leaving them there.

  March 31st

  All is not well. I suspect David of having found new love. Undoubtedly young, certainly without gout, and probably wearing a silver bikini and mirrored Moroccan mules with pale blue linings as seen in the magazine I am toying with in the hairdresser. I am in Blow ’n’ Glow in Cromer, a salon famous among local pensioners for its tinted rinses, and entirely lacking in photographs of fabulous-looking models with cutting-edge hairstyles. I am not having a tinted rinse, although the notion is beginning to appeal, the longer I sit and look at my pale face, lugubrious expression and lank hanks of hair being teased into order by Cheyenne, the troll-like stylist. I have succumbed to middle age and am having a blow-dry. With hairspray. It is very awful to find myself doing this, but how else am I to look presentable for this evening? Vivienne and her husband Simon have asked me to go with them to the Hunt Ball. They are always invited because Simon is a farmer, but I have not done anything so recherché since I was in the Pony Club, and am looking forward to the evening with some dread. Tried to get out of it on the grounds that my mother is coming to stay, as she needs a rest cure from The Basket Weaver, a barefoot hippy who keeps a caravan in her garden, and who is hosting a workshop for the Pedal to Paradise lobby. But Vivienne just says, ‘Good, she can babysit.’ As if life is ever that uncomplicated. However, on this occasion, it seems to be.

  ‘It’s so ghastly,’ moans my mother when she arrives, somewhat dishevelled and wearing only one shoe. ‘I’ve had to leave home. And I couldn’t find my other shoe. I think Egor must have taken it, he seems to be embracing fetishism in old age. Yes, of course I’ll babysit, anything to keep me away from pious Peta.’

  Egor, the bullet-brained bull terrier, bounces into the kitchen, his claws clicking on the tiles, his tongue lolling like a pervert, in search of sustenance as always. I shrink to the other side of the kitchen and continue to apply a layer of vibrant pink nail polish called Siren to my toes. Am trying to do this without being seen by The Beauty, who adores nail polish, and will want to do her own, and the toes of all her babies too.

  ‘Egor’s gone yellow,’ notices Giles, who is passing through on his way to the larder, but my mother is too distraught to rise to this faint criticism of her beloved.

  ‘I know, darling. It’s age. We must try Biotex next time we bath him.’ She unwraps a new packet of cigarettes with the practised ease displayed by a croupier opening a deck of cards in a Las Vegas casino, and lights one before continuing, ‘That woman is a menace. She’s trying to construct a basket-weave yurt for Desmond’s wedding reception. I don’t know how to stop her, and he particularly said he was having a perfectly normal tent, so he’ll be rude to her, which I just can’t stand. And when she’s not designing that, she’s busy bullying me to give up my car. She’s found some hopeless man to be her boyfriend and she makes him dress up in a gold diving suit, with a helmet like a goldfish bowl, and sends him off to walk to Aylsham wearing a placard saying, Cut out the car crap – pedal to paradise.’

  ‘So why doesn’t she make him ride a bicycle instead of walking, Granny? Hasn’t he got one?’ Giles is back, eating a cold sausage and a hard-boiled egg, so he won’t need supper in my view. Granny is much struck by this question. She turns to face Giles and fixes him with an intent, gimlet-like expression. The Beauty appears in the doorway like Isadora Duncan, trailing three pastel chiffon scarves and wearing a hair band with fluffy antennae, a small pink-headed doll clasped to her bosom.

  ‘Oooh, Mummyyy, nails! Polish me. Polish my baby. Oooooooh, Mummmyyy,’ she yells, charging towards me.

  I leap like a limber goat or sheep on to the table, shrieking, ‘Grab her, Giles. Quick.’

  Granny remains impervious to the new layer of chaos in the kitchen. ‘Why indeed, Giles? Why indeed? I think you’ve provided me with some ammunition to use against St Peta at last. Thank God. She keeps trying to make me ride that old bicycle of The Gnome’s, and hiding the keys to my car. I was only allowed to drive here today because I told her Egor has a heart condition, and she’s on every animal awareness committee in existence.’ Granny pauses for a second, then adds a final lament: ‘Oh, how I wish The Gnome hadn’t gone to live on Uist, he was a much easier lodger.

  Planets are so much less annoying than baskets to have around the place. They take up so little room.’ Granny takes a comforting puff of her cigarette and, like her dog, looks around for sustenance.

  ‘The sun appears to be over the yardarm now, Venetia,’ she says, glancing at the clock, ‘so how about a small glass of something?’

  ‘I’ve just got to finish these,’ I whisper, waving a set of neon-pink toenails at her and keeping my voice down so as not to alert The Beauty, who has gone with Giles to make a larder raid. ‘Help yourself.’

  With the first sip of wine, a pleasant thought occurs to my mother, and she smirks, ‘Don’t let me forget to tell Peta that you are going to the Hunt Ball. She’ll be horrified. Such a shame David isn’t here to go with you. Although maybe he’s anti-hunting. What do you think?’

  ‘I must go and change.’ I rush from the room, not wishing to speak of David the Rat. Would not have had to go to ancients’ hairdresser or bother to paint toenails this early in the year if David hadn’t rung at crack of dawn to say his plans have changed. He sounds distant, which is understandable, but distracted.

  ‘I’m not going to be back home at the end of the month, I’m afraid, and I’m not sure when I will be able to come home. The thing is, I’m going to the Brazilian jungle to build sets for a massive new Tarzan film. I was incredibly lucky. The guy they originally hired to do it has got malaria and has had to be taken off the job at the last minute.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound to me as if you’re lucky, it sounds to me as if you’re about to get malaria,’ I interrupt in Doom Queen mode. He scarcely hears me, though; he is finishing his spiel.

  ‘I hate leaving you for so long, but it’s fantastic money and a really great project. We’ll all be able to live in clover when I come back.’

  An expectant pause follows, which I am clearly supposed to fill with, ‘How wonderful, clever old you.’

  Instead I just say, ‘God, I can’t think of anywhere more horrible than the Brazilian jungle. If you don’t get malaria you’ll be bitten by a snake or a tiger. Can’t you say no?’

  David’s voice is frosted glass as he replies, speaking very slowly as if to an alien, ‘They don’t have tigers in South
America. Look Venetia, I’m not going to say no because I really want to do this. It’s a chance to get into film work and I can’t turn it down. It will be the right thing for all of us in the long run, I promise you. Please don’t make a scene. After all, it won’t be for more than a few months, and we can speak on the phone. We can get you hooked up on to email, too.’ My jaw sets in Desperate Dan solidity, and I muster all my determination in order not to make a scene and not to cry.

  ‘Fine. Good. Have a lovely time and we’ll speak soon.’ I am pretty pleased with this as a last line, and quickly slam the phone down. A few months in Brazil in the jungle. He must be mad. Or it’s a ruse to disguise his new romance with a nubile film star. And is it surprising that he craves a new life when the height of my weekly achievements is a visit to the hairdresser? Having half decided not to go, I am now determined to attend the Hunt Ball for three reasons:

  1 To show that I can.

  2 To meet and flirt with men in red coats.

  3 To be able to drop snippets about these fantasy flirtations and a long list of new male admirers airily into my next telephone conversation with David.

  Have arrived at the hunt ball, where I am failing utterly to flirt with anyone in a red coat. They all have red faces to match, and are either bobbing about in vats of alcohol, or chasing the teenage girls who are selling raffle tickets around the room. Had not reckoned on anyone here looking fashionable, and am thus vastly put out to walk slap into Bronwyn Butterstone, a school mother whom I loathe, wearing the same dress as I am. Face to face at the bar, her prominent blue eyes bulge towards me in my long, pink-sequinned tube with purple fluff at hem and décolletage, and my own orbs bulge back at her.

  ‘Oh, Venetia, it is you, isn’t it? I’m never sure,’ she shrieks, and I am irritated to note the flatness of her stomach, but remark some flab on the underarm to savour.