Summertime

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘Good morning my dears, good morning,’ he beams, patting dogs and sniffing as if to get his bearings in the noisy, smoky kitchen. He is a big fan of my mother, and has brought her a piece of the Wookey Hole as a memento of his recent visit there. Of course my mother uses his arrival as an opportunity to get the sherry out, and the pair of them lean on the rail of the smoke-blackened Rayburn, chatting and dodging the extended limbs and tails of sleeping cats and drying washing festooned on the rack above.

  The new master of Crumbly has agreed to let the church hold the biannual car boot sale there this year,’ says Reverend Heel, sipping his sherry as elegantly as a man can when it is presented in a half-pint beer mug. ‘He’s a chap called Sale, Hedley Sale. He was old Peter Crumb’s nearest relation, some sort of nephew, I understand. You may have met him, Venetia, he’s your neighbour more than ours, really, isn’t he?’ and Rev. Trev dimples at me and pats a wisp of his grey hair back down across his brow. He continues, ‘I’m glad to see the place alive again, although no one seems to know if he’ll be living here full-time or not. He may go back to America to continue teaching. It’s a shame he can’t do it here.’

  ‘What does he teach?’ asks my mother, more interested in whether there’s any more sherry now that Desmond and I have helped ourselves, than in the man who owns all the fields and woodland we like to walk in.

  ‘I think he teaches Latin and Greek at an American university,’ said the Vicar, ‘I’m not sure which one. But certainly it’s the classics. Your subject, Araminta, if I remember rightly.’ He throws a twinkling glance towards my mother, positively roguish except that he waves an arm as well, and becomes entangled in a trailing and ragged towel from the rack above him, and somehow gets the end in his mouth. Desmond and I exchange a look. Araminta indeed. No one has called my mother anything so informal in years. She perks up no end upon hearing that Hedley Sale teaches classics.

  ‘Oh, good. A classicist is just what we need around here,’ she says, as if it were very useful to the community, like being a fireman or a childminder. ‘I should like to meet him.’

  I am about to say that I have met him, and to give a graphic description of both my encounters with this paragon, when Desmond interrupts, clicking the heel of his cowboy boot irritably, and snapping his fingers in a bid for attention.

  ‘Look Mum, I think we need to get this playlist sorted out.’ My mother and the vicar look at him blankly.

  ‘He means the order of service,’ I translate, moving towards the door. ‘I’ve got to go, but will you remember that Minna’s most favourite song in the world is “Jolene”, by Dolly Parton, and try to incorporate it?

  Maybe it could be instead of the usual Wedding March at the beginning, or what about during the signing of the register? God, I wonder if Minna will wear a red wig? And are you dressing as Elvis, Desmond?’ He grins, pushing me away, whispering, ‘Let’s get this bit over and we’ll talk later.’

  My mother, humming ‘Abide with Me’, sidles over to the sherry bottle. I close the door as she trills, ‘More sherry, Trevor?’

  April 7th

  Everyone is talking about Hedley Sale. Even Mrs Organic Veg, who I always thought was above such things, arrives on her moped with my delivery of spring greens, cabbage, onions and potatoes. Always anxious for a diversion from work, I rush out to help her carry the precious, mud-caked items into the larder.

  ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ I say, as I always do, even if it’s raining, as it is some kind of social reflex with me and anyone who arrives to deliver something.

  She wipes her hands on a big cloth she keeps in the box on the back of her moped and looks up at the sloppy sky.

  ‘Could be worse,’ she agrees cautiously. ‘It was better yesterday, though. The sun came out just as we were meeting with the new Mr Sale. It went very well.’ She pauses for effect, and I deliver the expected encouragement.

  ‘Oh yes, what did he say?’

  She continues, ‘We were only talking about the land we rent, and he offered us the walled garden as well. It’s just what we need.’ Another pause.

  ‘So what was he like?’

  ‘He was a bit excitable, a bit prone to shout when he saw some boys walking round the lake. We had to remind him it’s a public footpath, in fact. But he was nice enough to us.’ Rags wiggles over to sit on her feet and she bends to pat her, adding, ‘I’ve heard his wife ran off with another woman, but you’d never think it, would you? Unless she just couldn’t bear his temper.’

  I agree, without knowing what you wouldn’t think, and return to my study to write a document on the way people spend their money in shopping malls. This is the most lucrative piece of work I have ever been offered, and also the most boring. It outstrips conference brochures by miles for tedium, and is responsible for my work-avoidance techniques becoming refined to the point of insanity. Standing in doorways leads to close examination of the backs of my hands, to be followed, when I am about to burst due to the build-up of disorganisation in my life, with a medley of unnecessary telephone calls to people’s answerphones. If I accidentally telephone anyone who is in, I tend to put the phone down. They then employ 1471 and ring back, puzzled, a few moments later. I think there is another number you can dial to stop anyone knowing it is you who has rung, but I shrink from making use of this, as it is the stuff of perverts and maniacs.

  April 10th

  David has contributed most wonderfully to my work-avoidance programme, by organising access to the information superhighway. He and Giles have sorted it all out in a series of expensive phone calls, and they even got Charles to give me one of his old computers, which is little short of a miracle. It was delivered last week, and we have made great strides in getting it out of its box and up and running with some shooting and chasing games favoured by the boys.

  I have to choose whether to have my email brought to me by Virgin or Demon, Sonnet or Silence. It all sounds so poetic, and romantic. David and I will communicate across the time zones in a highly modern and up-to-date fashion. We will be like the people you see in car and mobile phone advertisements on television, dressed in taupe and slate with lots of hair gel, smiling into green-screened computers as we download crucial documents and send them on. I’m not sure where to.

  Finally select Angel as my delivery company, and persuade them to let me have ‘heavenlybody@Angel.com’ as my email address. I am delighted with my amusing and original idea, until I realise how silly I sound giving this address out to the various corporations I work for. David laughs when I ring him to tell him I have the technology and the address all ready to go.

  ‘You’ll get the hang of it very soon. And Giles and Felix will know what to do if you get in a muddle. But I think you should change your email address to something less provocative. You’ll attract some very odd mail if you give it out indiscriminately.’

  ‘But I can’t. It took hours of nightmare on the telephone to the helpline to get that one, and I’ve given it to loads of people already. It’ll just have to be fine. Or you’ll have to come back and change it for me.’

  He answers in the dead straight, very serious, smoky-voiced way I love, ‘You know I would if I could.’

  What is it about distance that brings resentment so powerfully to the forefront of a relationship? And is it just me, or is David also feeling resentful, but hiding it better?

  Battle to keep truculence out of my voice as I ask, ‘Well, are you coming back for Desmond and Minna’s wedding?’ But it is hard, as I am convinced that the answer will be no.

  The line buzzes and snaps with distance and the strain of the connection, but through it he answers, ‘Well, I was going to surprise you, but actually, I can’t bear not to tell you. Yes, I am. I’ve got a week—’ The line blips and dies. I haven’t had a chance to tell him that the wedding is going to be here, but it doesn’t matter. I’m sure he’ll love it.

  Dance around the kitchen singing hooray, hooray with The Beauty, who is taking after her grandmother as a revel
ler, and pronounces, ‘Let’s have a party.’ She swiftly removes all her clothes and replaces them with an old nightie and a vest covered with pink sequins, bought at a recent jumble sale.

  ‘Do dancing, Mummy,’ she commands, bobbing about in circles like a shuttlecock in her ragged lacy nightdress, undeterred by the lack of music. I obey, doing just as she tells me, anxious to avoid confrontation and thus leave myself free to think.

  The knot garden is waterlogged and swamplike, everywhere else is a mudbath, and there are no flowers anywhere to be seen. In the house squalor reigns, no one has made their bed or picked up any clothes since Easter. There are half-empty baked bean and tuna fish cans in the fridge, as well as certain items of sports equipment, and ants and hens (living, not oven-ready) in the larder, all testament to the slobsville level our domestic set-up has reached. Worst of all, neither Lowly nor The Beauty show any sign of becoming house- or potty-trained. The wedding is on May Day, in three weeks’ time. David will be back in twenty days. We must make efforts to improve by then. Surely it is possible?

  April 12th

  Improvements are making everything a hundred times worse, and very much more expensive. Last week I had an ad hoc underwater garden and lots of nice places for the ducks. This week, although the rain has stopped, and the blue sky is like a clear conscience, the scene at ground level is frightful to behold. At the suggestion of Simon, who couldn’t resist popping in for a bit of bossing on his way to a potato conference, I have hired a pump to suck all the unwanted water out of my garden. The pump arrives, a malevolent mound of grey metal and rubber reminding me powerfully of the rabbit intestines Lowly and Rags left in the kitchen this morning.

  It is delivered on an unnecessarily large lorry, while I am trapped on the telephone, unable to suggest a fitting place for it to be dumped. The driver heads unerringly across the lawn, the only part of the garden looking remotely nice, and dumps the pump in a bush as far away from the flood as it is possible to be in this garden. He then reverses back to the gate, not covering his tracks, and drives off, leaving the lawn decorated with four bolts of herringbone-tweed indentation. Giles and I, assisted by The Beauty in her red mackintosh and bare feet, very excited because she thought the pump was the Teletubbies’ Noo Noo, manage to work out how to turn the thing on, and wrestle with its stinking tubes, dragging them to reach a corner of the flooded knot garden. Flick the switch to start the suction programme and am suddenly in a mudbath.

  Jump about shrieking.

  ‘Oh, my God. Oh, damn. Giles, quick, it’s the wrong way, it’s pumping out, not in! Buggering hell, I’m filthy.’ Am indeed coated with darkest gunge, but find it strangely liberating, so stop whingeing and get on with trying to angle the pump correctly. The Beauty capers about falling into mud and laughing while trilling her new set of swear words, ‘Damn, damn and bugger, bugger. Oh my God.’

  ‘Oh my word,’ I correct her, automatically. She shoots me a filth-coated look and repeats, ‘OHMIGOD’ in a football chant over and over again. Giles is writhing about with the pipe, like Hercules with the Hydra, or was it Pericles? Just cannot remember anything any more. Never mind, it is something to ask Hedley Sale when we next bump into him.

  Wonderful gurgling and squelching sounds indicate that Giles has vanquished the wrong flow, and the knot garden lake begins to subside. Giles and I, both resembling Fungus the Bogeyman in skin colour and scent, stand over the pump, fascinated, as it vacuums up the water.

  ‘Is this what it would be like to work in a sewage plant?’ asks Giles, and I nod.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, but without the smell.’

  ‘Cool,’ he says, and I wonder whether I should be encouraging him in a more white-collar direction.

  Later

  Felix zooms up to the window of my study where I have just written the first sentence of the day, extolling the joys and virtues of shopping malls.

  ‘Mummy, quick, the pump is thirsty, it’s run out of water. I think it’s going to be sick.’

  Jump up, delighted to have a valid reason to escape.

  ‘Gosh, well done for noticing, Felix, I’d forgotten all about it. Let’s go and have a look.’ Follow him round to the knot garden, where a high-pitched whining accompanies a lot of smoke rising from the pump. Just as we reach the machine, the whining falters and drops rapidly in pitch to nought. An ominous silence ensues, broken by the bustling arrival of The Beauty and her pram.

  ‘Look, Mummy, it’s broken.’ She points at the back of the pump, and a crack from which a treacle-dark ooze of water bleeds.

  April 13th

  Driving to the dentist on a glittering spring morning, we woosh through the puddles making the car even more disgustingly filthy than it already is, but delighting The Beauty, who drums her feet against my seat back and shrieks, ‘Faster in the river, Mummy, faster right now.’ We do ‘faster right now’ with disastrous consequences. The car splutters and dies in the middle of a dark and deep-looking puddle.

  ‘You’ve flooded it, Mum,’ says Giles, availing himself of the opportunity to sigh heavily and roll his eyes.

  ‘We’ll just have to wait until it dries out.’ I am serene. The nine o’clock news has not yet come on to the radio, so we are in good time and can afford to loll around in puddles looking at the geese flocked in the wheat field next to us. The young corn shoots are vibrant green in the sun’s path, but fade to grey where the cloud casts a deep shadow, causing some of the geese to appear celestial and the others to seem drab. Recall reading that it was ancient country practice for goose girls to take flocks behind the threshing machines and to steer them about through the harvested fields of yore, and would rather like to put myself forward for such a picturesque career now. The Beauty and I could work in tandem. Perhaps Simon will employ us this autumn? Musings brought to an untimely halt by horrible roaring in the back. Felix is writhing in agony, his hair twisted around The Beauty’s fists and his chest drummed by her little feet.

  ‘Ssshh. Let’s see if we can will the car to start,’ I say, in the manner of a playgroup leader. Giles glances witheringly at me, but Felix is silenced, and praise the Lord, the car coughs then hums into action, just as the news pips sound from the radio.

  April 14th

  Have still not found the opportunity to tell David that the wedding is to be held here. All our recent communications have been about communication, as I attempt to lose my email virginity by sending him a message. There are many bad things about trying to get online, but the worst is that as soon as you sit down with the computer, you know that hours and hours of precious time are about to be wasted, mostly on the telephone to the helpline. Have a phobia about reading instruction manuals which makes it impossible for me to understand anything written in them, so am very dependent on computer-literate friends (seem to have none) and the sodding helpline. David is now hardly reachable, as he is at last on set in the rainforest, and I have had email for days now without managing to send or receive anything at all except bad vibes.

  David has become very important, no longer merely a carpenter as he was here and in Bermuda, but a big cheese with hundreds of telephone numbers, none of which have him on the end of them. Most just ring and ring. One or two have David’s voice jumping down the line, impossibly near, but so far away, droning the usual voice-mail apologies. Finally find a number that is answered by a human, but still not David.

  ‘Hi, this is David Lanyon’s line. May I help you?’ answers a purring Californian voice, belonging to a female, almost certainly with big lips and skin like cream.

  ‘Ummmm, yes. I’d like to speak to David, umm, please,’ I stutter, getting off to a feeble start against his Rottweiler secretary.

  ‘He’s busy, honey, call again sometime,’ she says huskily. I cannot bear to tell her who I am, in case David has not mentioned us at all, and do not wish to reveal to her my email problems. Suddenly wish I had chosen a more appropriate email address than ‘heavenlybody’. Perhaps ‘harassedmother’ or ‘norfolkharridan’
might have been better.

  Manage, with great cunning, to get through to David himself by persuading Felix to ring for me. He has no truck with Big Lips, and tells her firmly, ‘David always wants to speak to me. Why can’t you take the phone to where he is? I want to ask him about the jungle and stuff, anyway.’

  There is a silky silence, which I can hear as I have my head rammed against the receiver next to Felix’s ear, and then Felix grins as David comes on to the line. Felix lounges in the swivel chair by my desk, gazing unseeing at the dancing cobwebs on the ceiling, which I too prefer not to notice, and laughs at something David has said, before barraging him with questions.

  ‘Have you met Tarzan yet? Are there any monkeys in this film? How big are they? What are their names? Do they sleep in the caravans with all the crew? Has Tarzan got a bow and arrow? How many snakes have you seen? Can you send us something dangerous, like a scorpion or some snake’s spit or something?’

  Even though it is ten o’clock at night and Felix should be in bed, I let him talk on, trying not to think about the telephone bill, but about Felix, and how he misses David. This leads to a brief soul-search and the conclusion that I have got it all wrong, and should never have got involved with anyone, no matter how melting his voice or smiling his eyes, unless he could guarantee lifelong commitment to the whole family. Felix passes the telephone, saying, ‘Mum, please can you try to sort out the email so I can send messages and stuff to David? It’s really important. I need to show him the Necromancer stuff on the internet, and I want to download it on to an email. Isn’t it time I was in bed, anyway?’

  Am constantly bemused by the weird ways of children, and suddenly long for a cosy chat with David about all their activities today instead of the stilted conversation which follows.