Summertime

by Raffaella Barker

  Theo and The Beauty have found an anthill and are playing God the Old Testament way with the inhabitants, re-routing ant motorways and pouring water, laboriously gleaned from the sea in small Barbie buckets, over ant villages. Gertie potters around them, cracking open her supply of pistachio nuts and heavily into character now. We have taught her ‘What shall we do with a drunken sailor’, and also the words to ‘In the Ghetto’. The latter is performed as a duet with Felix, whose mission this week has been to learn to strut and gyrate like Elvis. To this end, he has requisitioned the only pair of sunglasses, a pink glittery pair belonging to The Beauty, and performs several times a day, usually wearing swimming trunks and using a baguette as a microphone.

  Rose and I lie on the shingle, and the warmth of the sun on the stones penetrates my shirt as the shingle shifts slightly with the contours of limb and spine. Mention to Rose that it feels like a particularly sybaritic New Age health treatment.

  ‘If you call this sybaritic, remind me never to do anything spartan with you,’ retorts Rose, putting a stop to any delusions of sophistication I had been harbouring. Have to take this lying down as I am so grateful to her for not having begun an open campaign to embarrass me with Hedley. However, almost as the thought enters my head, she lifts her head and peers around. Finding that we are quite alone, she stops behaving herself and launches into me.

  ‘So what’s really going on?’ she demands. ‘You’ve got to do something about your situation, you know, Venetia. You’re not getting any younger, and your boyfriend is on the other side of the world. You don’t know when he’s coming back, or even if he’s coming back. It would be different if you were married, but as it is now, you may as well cut your losses and go for Hedley. His eyebrow really isn’t too bad, especially if he wears a hat.’

  I squirm like a salted slug as she continues, half furious that she’s speaking to me like this, and half miserable at the jabbing accuracy of her observations. The marriage bit is particularly below the belt, and I just manage to prevent myself saying in retaliation how disgusting I find Tristan’s toenails. On Rose goes, talking about responsibility to my children and them deserving the security and role model of a happy relationship. She stops when she sees I am in tears, and hugs me.

  ‘Don’t worry Venetia, something will happen, you’ll see.’ The sympathetic version is definitely worse. I wonder if she’s been talking to Vivienne?

  August 9th

  The last night. We have to leave at an ungodly hour tomorrow in order to do our refugee thing with the boat and all the stuff. Have packed up the house, taking with us pockets full of stones, bladderwrack and old crabs’ legs, and now we are sitting around the fire, trying to dodge the wind which has the ability to blow in every direction at once in the manner of a localised whirlwind, even though the rest of the Sand Bar basks in a silk-still evening. The babies are in bed, Tamsin and Giles are stalking an oystercatcher to find her nest, following one of these comical birds with its orange road-cone beak as it totters through the heather to its babies. They have already helped another one’s chick out of its egg, and are diligent in their midwifery. Felix is toasting marshmallows on the campfire, gloating because he has got a whole packet to himself and there won’t be any left by the time Giles and Tamsin come back.

  The rose-petal sun, veiled by diaphanous heat haze, slips towards the sea, sending a ribbon of pink dancing across petrol-blue waters. A couple of miles to the east the sky darkens to violet and grey above the cliffs, the stormy light bringing vivid depth to a fringe of grass above the dusty chalk face, and all the way up the length of beach from the cliffs to where I stand, the sun sweeps a gold velvet beam, like a searchlight across the sands. Thunder rolls in the distance, but the clouds are moving inland and will not come here.

  I strip quickly and run into the sea, splashing and dispersing the pink path to the sun. Am swimming in a pair of David’s old boxer shorts and one of Giles’s T-shirts, having lost my swimming costume, and several other beloved garments some months ago, when I became muddled and sent the wrong pile of clothes to the orphans in Hungary. Have been unable to face the grim prospect of buying, then acclimatising my body to another since then, and am rather pleased with my casually flung-together alternative, which is comfortable, and, I like to think, makes me look like a relaxed supermodel. Wallow unrestrainedly, enjoying the flung sounds of Tristan and Hedley building up the fire, and the murmur of Rose and Felix talking. Colour is fading with the sun, and although the storm clouds have gone inland to unburden themselves, most of the light has gone from the beach now, and I hear Tamsin and Giles walking on the shingle before I see them. Am just about to call out when Giles speaks.

  ‘I don’t mind Mum and Dad being divorced, but I think Mum needs to be married to someone. I don’t know why David’s left her, but she can’t go on saying he’s working in South America, can she?’ Tamsin says something I can’t hear, and Giles replies, ‘I know. She’s always trying to be young, but she needs to get on with being grown-up and being married and stuff. Even our Uncle Desmond is married now, and he’s wild. I had to be a pageboy, it was sordid.’

  The sea is suddenly full of lights. Shaken by Giles’s remarks, I think I am giving off electrical charges into the water, but steady myself and remember it is just phosphorescence. I lift my arm and liquid green runs down. Everywhere the tiny plankton dance in an underwater galaxy. I splash my way towards Tamsin and Giles, gasping, mouth full of water, and trying to hold up the slapping weight of my boxer shorts. Gravity proves too much for the aging elastic, and the waistband pings, adding sagging trousers to my traumas. Rush to the shallows, interrupting them. ‘Hi there, you two, where did you spring from?’

  Tamsin shrieks, ‘Urgh! What’s that? Why is it luminous? What’s it doing?’ and grabs Giles’s arm.

  He rolls his eyes and says in a despairing voice, ‘Oh my God, it’s Mum,’ and I know I have let him down in every way possible.

  August 10th

  Inevitable result of all the home truths was that I became very drunk. Rose’s wine is paint stripper with cochineal in it, but it also contains a merciful dose of oblivion. Cannot remember saying anything untoward, but Giles is not speaking to me. Rose is not much better; her demeanour is that of a brisk but kind nurse, and all I can get out of her is the odd flashing smile and the promise to deal with me later. I fear I must have done something awful to Tamsin or Hedley, as they couldn’t wait to leave, and went on the boat with Tristan when he took the first load of our stuff back to the car park.

  Have noticed that the main symptoms of hangover are an itchy nose and an air of irresponsibility comparable to that of being a teenager. The latter earns a sharp ticking-off from Tristan when he returns to get us and sees The Beauty, who is playing cat’s cradle with a crab line.

  ‘For God’s sake, Venetia, look after that child, or we’ll be in hospital.’

  Everyone is against me. It is time to take stock and improve. Shall do so at home this evening.

  August 12th

  Very peculiar to be living in a house again. Everything eerily clean, except us. Have had to start wearing a turban, as hair has become hideous floss, like a hank of sheared sheep wool. Something has happened to the colour as well as the texture, so instead of lovely white-blonde elegance of my dreams, have yellowing rug which looks as though the dogs have wee’d on my head. Have only just remembered the dogs, and have decided not to collect them yet, as doglessness at home is like an extended holiday. None of my shoes fit any more, as my feet have become giant and black-soled. The boys say the same, and we all pad barefoot across the gravel without feeling it. All four of us have pronounced freckles, mad, staring eyes and smell dank and muddy. This is a reasonable price to pay for a superb and healthy energy which comes from all that ozone. Cannot get over the heavenly comfort of my bed after a week sleeping on my yoga mat, or the civilised, pampered silence of a summer country garden compared with rushing waves, crunching shingle, the wild sea wind and the constant cry of
gulls. The children are similarly lulled; none of us woke up until nine this morning, a lifetime record for The Beauty.

  August 14th

  Terrible lowness, caused mainly by the departure of Felix, Giles and The Beauty for their annual week’s holiday with Charles. The Beauty has been looking forward to this high spot of the year, and has had a small pink suitcase packed and waiting since May. However, when Charles arrives to collect them, two hours late and wearing a forbidding and disagreeable expression, she changes her mind, and clings to the banister howling.

  ‘Sorry about the time,’ Charles coughs, locking his car with a remote-control key, quite unnecessarily as it is parked in our garden, outside our front door. ‘I had to take Helena and the twins to the seaside, and we couldn’t find anywhere to buy a parasol. It seems absurd, there are plenty of umbrellas for sale, but Helena insists on a proper parasol.’ He looks at our sun-baked faces and shakes his head. ‘It’s not something you would have that I could borrow?’ he asks hopefully.

  ‘Dad, this is Norfolk, not the Bahamas,’ says Giles witheringly, throwing down his case by the car and holding out his hand for the keys. ‘That’s why they sell so many umbrellas.’

  Cannot help noticing the nervous way Charles glances at each of the children when they are not looking, or how out of place he looks among them with his knife-creased slacks and newly trimmed hair and nails. Giles and particularly Felix have ragged Man Friday hair and frayed T-shirts and look as if they are off to Junior Glastonbury rather than Club Med in France. The Beauty has beaded plaits and is still wearing her pebble on a string, which contrasts with her glittery Barbie clogs, bought from Woolworths this morning to replace the shoes she lost a week ago in the sea.

  ‘Mummy come too, don’t make me go,’ she howls, embarrassing Charles profoundly. Wedge her into her seat in Charles’s giant people-moving vehicle, where she perks up, taking the air-freshener smell and individual seats as an indicator that she is at the hairdresser, a place she loves.

  ‘Shall we have a haircut, Mummy?’ she asks politely. ‘Or just a trim?’

  Giles climbs into the front, retunes the radio to pulsing dance music and closes his eyes. Felix, grumbling about sitting next to The Beauty, suddenly gasps, ‘Cool. You’ve got TV in the car. Now I won’t have to buy more batteries for my GameBoy.’

  Charles’s mouth is now fully downturned with irritation and disappointment. He mutters, ‘Yes, in fact they’re computers too. I had to buy a new vehicle to transport you and the twins this summer.’

  ‘Nice one, Dad,’ says Giles, scrambling into the back next to Felix and The Beauty. I stand back, feeling rather sorry for Charles in his role as chauffeur to these three children whom he no longer really knows, but to whom he is bound by his sense of duty and some wavering cord of love. Am sure my own sense of relief at having nothing to do with him any more must seep down to Giles and Felix.

  It certainly informs The Beauty, now quite happily munching crisps and watching the screen in front of her. She waves an airy hand at me, then kicks the back of Charles’s seat, shouting, ‘Come on. Drive me.’ Must try to present Charles in a more positive light when they return.

  Wave them off, craning to see the car disappear round the bend and out of the village, my awful, fixed smile made more rictus-like by imagining the horror of their journey to Cambridge with sandy, sticky toddler twins. The only mitigation is the air-conditioner in the person mover (cannot understand why they can’t just be called cars: is it because they need to sound bigger?), and Felix’s astonishing discovery of the individual computer screens in the back of each seat. Splendid that Charles should have installed such a feature, as it will act as a defence against the awful barbed comments that Helena can never resist.

  Last time it was, ‘Do send nappies for The Beauty, won’t you, Venetia. I don’t always remember now the twins are potty-trained.’ This was particularly below the belt as the twins are nothing of the sort, they can’t be, they’re not even two, and The Beauty is a year and a half older than them. My private fantasy of Helena, arch pushy mother, telling absurd lies just to mortify me and being caught out, is confounded by Giles.

  ‘Mum, when is The Beauty going to learn to go to the loo? It’s so embarrassing now that Holly and Ivy can do it, and Helena always points it out just to be mean.’ Perhaps there are potty-training classes, like puppy-training classes, that I can take the Beauty to. Thinking of puppies reminds me that the dogs are still languishing at the kennels. May as well leave them just for the moment, as I need to do a bit of gardening now the children have gone.

  Later – three hours later

  Made the mistake of drifting into my study, where I thought I had left my secateurs a few days ago, and have only just surfaced. It is six o’clock, and now too late, once again, to get the dogs. Resolve to set my alarm clock early and be there before kennel breakfast in the morning. Session in study is partly rewarding. Opened avalanche of post to find three different cheques for my clothes. Hooray. I am a top businesswoman. Humming and planning vast spend-up in every area, including leaving the dogs at kennels for another week, I continue to open post. Euphoria is short-lived. Horrible reminder from accountant that second instalment of tax should have been paid two weeks ago. The total amount the Inland Revenue wants me to give them is three pounds more than I have just received in cheques. So unjust. All plans are as dust. Particularly dashing as I had moved on from selfish mental purchase of frocks, pedicures and hairslides, to new bikes for all three and even a tiny stipend to be set up for paying Vivienne to do some sewing and thus expand my business.

  Abandon the post and my study, without bothering to look at email as there will only be nothing and I will become more depressed. Notice the flashing answerphone and set it to listen, idly wondering if it is the kennels. It is not. It is David. Had quite forgotten how sexy his voice is.

  ‘Hello there, all of you. Thanks for the latest email, Giles, and don’t worry, I’m on the case. We’re getting close to a wrap on the film, but there are one or two projects being discussed that I have to sort out. Call me, or email. Bye.’

  Burst into white-hot, rage-filled tears. Have to go outside, where marching up and down like Lady Macbeth only redoubles my confused misery. He shouldn’t still be leading the children on in this way. They think he’s coming back to us, and he’s not. Nothing about me. I am not even mentioned in the message.

  I am working myself up into a frenzy of vengeful fury now, and have conveniently forgotten that it was not David who ended our relationship, but me. He must have found someone else. And why not? He is free after all, and I have found someone else. This thought is curiously unedifying.

  Fortunately, as the children will not be back for a week to puncture my self-absorption, the garden looks so bedraggled and untended that pacing and sobbing quickly becomes heavy breathing and crouching. An urgent desire for horticultural order eclipses my emotional turmoil, and I start pulling thistles out of a plump clump of Johnson’s Blue geranium. Delicious smell of damp earth mingles with that of evening dew on grass, and very soon thistles are heaped around me as I discover a pair of gardening gloves under a water butt and become absorbed in a task I should have completed weeks ago. Most satisfying to grasp a large thistle at the base of its stem, twist and then pull a long parsnip-like root out of the ground. Tension and worry simply ebb away. Amazing and emancipating to be able to do repetitive job for hours on end without interruption, and it is not until darkness has cloaked the garden and spread across the lingering sunset that I can tear myself away.

  Lie in the bath, steam dripping from the ceiling, enjoying the bath lotion Rose has sent me. It is called ‘Air Dry’, and according to the label promotes ‘a sense of well-being by taking you back in time to the days when laundry was dried Outside’.

  I love the idea that ‘Outside’ has become a luxury commodity, and plan a cardigan to complement this bath range. It will be palest blue with tiny phials of ‘Fresh Air’ sewn on as buttons. In fact,
I have all the stuff here, as I can use tiny homoeopathic pill bottles as phials, so I may as well start it after my bath.

  August 15th

  Cannot believe how easily I go off the rails without child-led routine. Work on the cardigan kept me up into the small hours, and have now woken late, and once again missed kennel breakfast. Is it worth collecting the dogs today? I can’t feel that it is, as I have no dog food, and will therefore have to go and buy a sack of Canine Gold or similar. The sack will cost fifteen pounds, and the dogs’ day rate at the kennels is only seven pounds fifty for the three of them. Work out that I may as well leave them there for two more days as an economy measure, and fax the kennels accordingly. Anyway, Gertie is enough of a business to look after. Come to think of it, I wonder where she is? Haven’t seen her at all today. Begin rushing into rooms shouting for her, heart pounding because even though I hate to admit it, I adore her now as much as the children do. She suddenly squawks up from behind the sofa, where she has been preening in a patch of sun. ‘What is it, darrr-link?’ she asks, solicitously, in her Hedda Gabler voice. ‘Would you like a pink drrrink?’ Recognise The Beauty’s influence.

  The day continues to loom ahead, empty of events now that I have dealt with the dog issue. Would like to do hours of gardening, but the thistle-pulling has made my back ache, and jabbing away with a trowel after breakfast results in another ailment I christen Gardener’s Wrist. Apply smart white towelling wrist-support bandage belonging to Giles, and am investigating a persistent nappy smell in the drain outside the kitchen window when Hedley appears, on foot.

  ‘What are you doing?’