Actually, in spite of his tantrum, I had an idea we’d co-exist pretty easily, and of course I’d still have the privacy of my cottage, an escape from the bedlam of Farlings. At least, I thought I would, until I was bathing the twins later that evening and Emma promptly threw up in the bathwater, swiftly followed by her sister. When I’d finally got them into their pyjamas and tucked them up with buckets by their beds, I dashed down to the studio for a quick confab with Joss. He immediately began to tear his hair and look a bit wild about the eyes, so I quickly suggested I could move in and deal with whatever lurgy it happened to be. Cue one huge sigh of relief from the man with the chisel.
As a matter of fact, I didn’t mind. For a start it meant more money for me, and actually when he wasn’t engrossed in the Greek past or being demanding in the present, Joss was very good company, with a dry, almost deceptive wit, so that sometimes it was only later, maybe after I’d shut his studio door, that I’d laugh out loud at something he’d said.
I’d assumed he’d carry on working that evening, but was surprised when he suddenly joined me, as I sat having supper in the kitchen, plate balanced on my knees, glued to the little television in the corner. I felt rather embarrassed at being discovered watching EastEnders and reached for the flicker to switch over to something more cerebral, but he stopped my hand, saying, ‘Hey, no, leave it. I’m intrigued!’ He then watched in cynical, amused silence as I lapped it all up. I had the last laugh though when he suddenly cried, ‘Hang on, I thought she was going out with Grant!’
A documentary and the News followed, and Joss settled down to watch intently, but not in silence. Television for Joss was not, I discovered, something to vegetate in front of, to let the brain off the hook and let the cathode rays take the strain. No, it was a two-way medium. He argued with it, took strenuous issue with it, swore at it, threw shoes, books, and on hearing the words ‘the people’s dome’, one of my chocolate mousses, which took ages to wipe off all the knobs. He demanded to know why he was forced to pay a licence fee to view such insulting drivel, and when some art prize was announced he was almost apoplectic with rage.
‘Bastards! Bastards!’ he screeched, tearing his hair and reaching for a shoe to hurl. ‘How could they give it to him! It must be a joke, it must be!’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ I remarked, watching the winner walk up to the podium to take his prize.
‘But that painting is total trash! Total, unadulterated trash, even a moron could see that. You can see that, can’t you, Rosie?’
‘Thanks,’ I muttered. ‘Um, can’t say I’ve seen it actually.’
‘But you do like art, don’t you?’ he demanded. ‘Most people in this country don’t any more of course, they just play computer games or secretly watch pornography on the network, but you’ve seen the inside of a gallery, haven’t you, Rosie? You don’t just knit, or whatever it is you’re doing there?’
I laid aside the name tag I was sewing into Toby’s school shirt.
‘Yes, Joss, I can and do appreciate art, and frankly I’d like nothing better than to wander around the Tate while someone else looked after my child, but sadly my leisure moments are few and I’ve got all these name tapes to sew on to your son’s clothes. Tell me, do you ever do anything remotely practical, Joss? Do you live in the real world at all, do you decorate, do you put up shelves, do you dig the garden, do you clean your car, or do you just get someone in to do it for you? Because if I had someone to do all those things for me, I daresay I’d get a lot of culture in too.’ A trifle cheeky, I’ll warrant, but I was a little sick of playing the ignorant peasant to the arrogant lord of the manor.
Joss’s eyes widened with delight. ‘Jeez. Didn’t know you had it in you, Rosie. You’ll be telling me exactly what you think of me next!’
One of the twins cried from upstairs and I got up to deal with her. ‘I would,’ I muttered, ‘but I’m not sure I’d have time to do your character justice.’
I flounced out of the room as Joss gave a hoot of laughter. Flounce, blush, flounce, blush, I thought as I stomped upstairs, why did I always do that? What was the matter with me? I was behaving like a bloody adolescent.
When I came back downstairs having mopped a fevered brow and administered copious amounts of calamine lotion and Calpol – the opiate of the infants – I sat down in my chair and picked up the shirt to carry on. The name tape was already sewn neatly into place. Startled, I glanced across at Joss who was watching television with a straight and innocent face. I suppressed a smile, and without saying a word picked up the next shirt and carried on.
The shirts were all part of Toby’s new boarding school trousseau. I’d known of course that he was going to prep school, but the fact that he was going to board had come as a complete surprise to me and, frankly, I couldn’t think of a more unsuitable candidate. I voiced as much tentatively to Joss over breakfast the following day.
‘Are you sure? I mean, d’you think he’ll like it?’
‘Not at first, no, but he’ll settle down. It’ll be good for him, Rosie. He’s stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with only his sisters for company – he needs a little action. Annabel’s very keen for him to get involved in the sporty side of things, you know, have the camaraderie, whatever that means.’
I bet she is, I thought, privately knowing full well she wanted him out of the house and off her hands. Later I canvassed Toby as gently and tactfully as I could for his views on the subject, but he was tight-lipped and resigned.
‘Dad wants me to go, so I have to go, that’s all there is to it. What’s the point of talking about it?’ And with that he slammed out of the kitchen and stomped upstairs clamping his Walkman to his head. He knew better than to express a true opinion or show his feelings, and I knew better than to follow him.
The twins, though, were a different matter. They were dreadfully upset that he was going away and I found both of them sitting on their bedroom floor in their pyjamas, sobbing piteously and cutting all the hair off their dolls’ heads with the kitchen scissors. I watched in amazement as Lucy began Sellotaping the tresses on to an old bathing cap, crying inconsolably the while.
‘Lucy, what are you doing?’ I sank down in dismay next to her.
‘I’m making Toby a wig,’ she sobbed.
‘What on earth for?’
‘Because he’s going to balding school,’ she wailed, ‘and all his hair’s going to fall out!’
‘Oh no, darling, no!’ I hugged her hard. ‘Boarding school. It means you stay overnight, it doesn’t mean your hair falls out!’
A pair of startled, tear-stained faces turned to me. ‘Oh! You mean …’ Slowly they turned back and regarded the row of poor, scalped dolls. ‘Oh!’ gulped Emma.
‘I’ll buy you some new ones,’ I said quickly, before they had time to summon up a fresh flood of tears. ‘In Cirencester. We’ll go and choose them together.’
Emma shook her head. ‘No, it’s okay,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and possibly feeling slightly foolish. ‘We’re too old for dolls now anyway, aren’t we, Luce?’
‘Oh, surely not!’
‘Mmm, we are,’ Lucy agreed, lower lip quivering bravely. She glanced at Emma and then down at the mutants before us and hesitated. ‘Except … maybe one Barbie each?’
‘One Barbie it is,’ I said staunchly, ‘just for old time’s sake. And if we should happen to run into Ken, maybe we’ll have him, too?’
‘Ugh, no, not boy dolls, puke!’
I grinned, pleased to see that they’d recovered their equilibrium and that although they’d outgrown their dolls, they weren’t quite into the ‘Ken’ side of things yet. They seemed much better though, and since no one had been sick for at least four hours, I said they could get dressed and come downstairs. We went down, hand in hand, just as Joss was coming out of his study into the hall. He was holding a sheet of paper in his hand, looking bemused.
‘I’ve just found your school reports, girls.’
‘Oh yes, I meant to tell you,’ I said, ‘Martha told me she’d put them on your desk. They probably got lost under all your papers.’
‘Is mine good, Daddy?’ Emma asked eagerly, hanging on to his arm and jumping up to see. ‘Do I get a prize?’
‘Not bad, but no prizes, I’m afraid, although I must say one entry intrigues me immensely in yours. Under “Music”, your teacher, a Mr Cruikshank, has written, “Very good progress. Emma has mastered tonguing and fingering.”’
I snorted. Joss raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Precisely,’ he murmured. ‘Pray tell, Emma, what exactly does Mr Cruikshank mean by that, do you suppose?’
‘Oh, that’s for the recorder,’ she said proudly. ‘I can play “London’s Burning” all the way up to pour on water now.’
‘Excellent,’ said Joss faintly, ‘so all is revealed.’
I giggled. ‘Gosh, poor old buffer, I bet he had no idea.’
‘Oh, don’t you believe it,’ said Joss drily. ‘These teachers are all there. They delight in a little mischief to razz up the parents. When Toby was little he came home from school once clutching a painting he’d done, lots of brown splodges in a green field, and underneath was written, “My daddy’s bollocks”.’
‘Oh God!’ I giggled.
‘I’ll never forget the gleam of glee in his teacher’s eye when I dropped him off at school the next morning. Oh sure, it’s these little moments that get the poor bastards through the day, it’s their revenge for being imprisoned for hours on end with twenty-five revolting six-year-olds. Why else d’you think they get the class to write “My Weekend News” every single Monday morning, if not to have a good laugh at the poor old parents’ expense? “On Sunday Pop was very very thirsty and then he was sick on his pants and fell asleep on the floor so Mom went to sleep with Uncle Hank.” Hell no, the joke’s firmly on us, I’m afraid. Along with the exorbitant school fees of course.’ And with that he disappeared back into his study, shaking his head gloomily.
The peace was short lived. Two minutes later Lucy was in hysterics again, and this time with blood on her hands. She came running into the kitchen, emitting a piercing scream and looking as if a bottle of tomato ketchup had been emptied on her head. I nearly dropped the vast monkfish pie I was making for the pub, thinking she’d scalped Toby, or even Ivo this time.
‘What?’ I screamed. ‘What’s happened!’
‘It’s Darling-Heart!’ she sobbed. ‘He’s dying! Smelly-Pig bit him on the bottom and he’s got blood coming out of his hole!’
I sighed, wiped my hands, and quickly followed her out to the yard. Darling-Heart and Smelly-Pig were two of the three giant, lop-eared rabbits, the other being called Angel-Baby, who’d been given to the children by Annabel for Christmas (yeah, ta so much, Annabel, Martha had said, guess who has to clean out their cages?). They’d been greeted with rapture by the twins – ‘Oh! How sweet! I’m going to call mine Darling-Heart!’ – ‘And mine’s Angel-Baby’ – and disgust by Toby. ‘Yuk, a stupid tame rabbit. I’m going to call him Smelly-Pig.’
‘You can’t call him that!’ Emma had wailed.
‘Of course I can,’ retorted Toby. ‘I can call him anything I like. There’s a boy at school with three guinea pigs called Hank, Spank and –’
‘Toby!’ I roared. I forbade him to reveal the identity of the third guinea pig but conceded that Smelly-Pig was indeed a softer option.
Unfortunately, from day one, all of the rabbits had loathed the very sight of each other. In fact they only had to get within spitting distance and they were ripping each other’s ears off. Naturally we kept them apart, and a rigorous system of apartheid was created by pinning three pieces of chicken wire down the middle of their runs. Much of their leisure time was spent hurling themselves against this wire in an effort to kill each other but it was too high for any real damage to be done. Until today, that is, when goaded, doubtless, by Darling-Heart’s taunts, Smelly-Pig had clearly hopped just that l-i-ttle bit higher than usual, launched himself up over the wire and, pausing only to spit in his neighbour’s lettuce, had bitten Darling-Heart’s balls off. Blood was pouring from the poor castrated rabbit as I picked him up. I ran inside with him, seized a tea towel from the draining board to staunch the flow of blood and, with Lucy and Emma all the while screaming beside me – ‘He’s going to die! He’s going to die!’ – frantically wrapped it round him.
‘No, he’s not going to die,’ I said, struggling to tie it on, ‘but if he’d just bloody well hold still for a minute I might be able to bandage him up and – damn!’
The rabbit wriggled free, the blood-soaked tea towel trailing him around the kitchen.
‘Use a nappy, use a nappy!’ Lucy cried, seizing one from Ivo’s changing bag. She waved it in my face. ‘Oh, save him, Rosie, please!’
That didn’t seem such a bad idea, and I’d just wrestled the bleeding rabbit to the floor and got him snapped into it when Joss appeared in the doorway to see what all the commotion was about. He frowned as he regarded me huffing and puffing in a pool of blood, then blinked as he saw a rabbit in Pampers.
‘Let me guess,’ he said drily. ‘You’re desperate for another child and even a rabbit will do. Please don’t tell me you’re breast-feeding.’
‘Wrong,’ I said grimly. ‘Smelly-Pig bit his testicles off.’
‘Balls.’
‘No, it’s true.’
‘No, balls, not testicles. I detest genteel words when perfectly good Anglo-Saxon ones will do.’
‘Must you be so pedantic at this precise moment?’ I muttered. ‘He’s haemorrhaging all over the place here.’
‘Well, take him to the vet, for heaven’s sake. Let’s spend a small fortune sewing him up when he would probably heal perfectly well of his own accord. That’s what vets are for, isn’t it?’ And with that he stalked out again.
Swearing and cursing, I found an old grocery box, popped the rabbit inside, taped it up and punched a few air holes in the top for luck. Then, this not being Vera’s day – or mine, come to that – and with Joss apparently incapable of looking after even one child while steeped in Greek mythology, I bundled Ivo, Toby, the hysterical twins and the rabbit into the car and hurtled off to the vet.
Naturally the traffic into Cirencester was very heavy, naturally it was pouring with rain, and naturally, when we finally got there, the queue at the vet’s stretched all the way round the waiting room, out of the back door, and on to the pavement. Bugger that, I thought, pushing my gang ahead of me through the door. We muscled our way into a crowded reception area, packed to the gunnels with a motley assortment of Christmas hamsters, pale-looking goldfish, mournful dogs and eczema-ridden cats. Amid the hostile glares of their owners I hustled my party through this animal lasagne and into a tiny square foot of space that I’d managed to create with my elbows. The twins were still sobbing quietly, but the boys were horribly interested in all the invalids, and I spent my time sounding like Joyce Grenfell as I tried to restrain them.
‘Toby, please don’t touch the snake … because I’m sure its owner wouldn’t want you to … you don’t mind … but he’s a bit unpredictable … Toby, please don’t touch it! … No, Ivo, it’s a tortoise … no, you can’t take its lid off … because it doesn’t come off, darling. Look, a nice doggie instead … oh dear you’re very worried about him, are you? … Silver and gold diarrhoea? No, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that … ah, he ate the Christmas decorations. Ivo, pat the other end if you must … no the other end, darling, because he’s got a bad tummy and – there, you see, that’s why! Oh God, it is a funny colour isn’t it – don’t touch, Ivo! … Alex! Jesus, what a relief.’
The door to the surgery swung open and there stood Alex, looking like a veritable angel of glory in his long white coat, and an attractive one at that. He was clearly under pressure here, but nevertheless the eyes continued to sparkle, the smile was still disarmingly crooked, and the auburn locks contrasted beautifully with his white collar. I’d never seen him in his consulting rooms
before and for a moment I felt a touch of my mother’s Harley Street-itis coming on. Not now, Rosie, not now, old girl. For a moment he didn’t see us, then as I waved frantically from the back of the room, his face cleared. He looked surprised.
‘Sick rabbit,’ I mouthed, pointing down at the box.
He came towards us, squeezing with difficulty through the rain-soaked, steaming throng. ‘Sorry, so sorry. Excuse me.’ He crouched down next to us and peered in the box.
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Nasty bite. Bleeding heavily.’
‘Ah.’ He glanced around, then, ‘Come to the cinema with me next Saturday and you can jump the queue,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
‘You’re on,’ I muttered back.
Alex straightened up. ‘I’m so sorry, everyone,’ he said with a charming smile to the assembled company, ‘but we’ve got a very sick rabbit here. Bit of an emergency, I’m afraid. Won’t keep you a moment,’ and with that he ushered us towards his surgery, amidst cries of, ‘Yeah, an’ I’ve got a very sick gerbil an’ all,’ and, ‘Bleedin’ nerve, I’ve been here all morning!’
‘So sorry … excuse us …’ I muttered as we made our way through the mutinous, glaring throng. Finally the door shut mercifully behind us.
‘Thanks, Alex,’ I gasped with relief, ‘I was getting a bit desperate out there.’
The children and I clustered anxiously round the table as Alex set the box upon it. He carefully lifted Darling-Heart out in his nappy. His mouth twitched in amusement.
Rosie Meadows Regrets... Page 34
