Green Grass

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘Oh come on, Mother, that’s what they used to call the maids who worked between the kitchens and the rest of the household. You can’t have forgotten.’

  Laura hates herself as she utters the last sentence, but she cannot help it. In her family, a piece of knowledge imparted is a prize beyond gold. Throughout her childhood her mother, a history don specialising in The Age of Enlightenment, dispensed argument and raised questions, instead of cooking roast chicken and mashed potato. Of course Hedley and Laura, and their vague wispy father, were fed, but food was never meant to be enjoyed, not when there was reasoning or language to relish.

  Clouds of steam billow above the stove as Inigo removes the lid from a pan of boiling water and begins to slide lengths of spaghetti beneath the surface. Dolly drifts into the room. Her hair is tousled, she has no shoes on, and is yawning mightily, as if she has just got out of bed. In fact she has been lying on the floor in the sitting room with her headphones on and her homework open in front of her, making a pyramid out of paperclips.

  ‘Lay the table could you, Doll,’ says Inigo, glancing up at her with a smile from his cooking. ‘I doubt I’ll get Fred to do it, he’s too angry with me.’

  From the tether of the telephone, Laura sees the troubled look on Fred’s face as he glances between his father and his sister, and sensing his need of support, she says to her mother, ‘I must go, I’ll tell you about Hedley and his plans for Tamsin’s birthday tomorrow.’

  Inigo pours a trickle of oil into the bubbling pasta, laughing with Dolly over an incident at school. His glance flickers up to Fred and away again: he is punishing him with exclusion. Laura’s temper rises fast, irritation spilling over so she has to bite her lip not to shout at Inigo. Maybe it would be better if she did shout at him, instead of shielding him from the frustration his behaviour causes. Fred scowls and sits down at the furthest seat from his father. Laura sits next to him, rumpling his hair and winking at him as Inigo serves them. It is Inigo’s idea that they all sit down to eat together each evening. He likes to preside over his family, and he likes to be appreciated by them; without praise, Laura often thinks he would cease to function.

  ‘Mmmm, this is delicious,’ she says, half because it is true and half because she knows that Dolly and Fred will not be commenting on their food; instead, both are rolling it around their plates, Fred creating a mound of food in the middle, Dolly spreading hers into spaghetti waves like a nest around the rim of the plate. Fortunately, Inigo is discussing some final details for the torn-up paper event in Hyde Park, which is to be staged next week.

  ‘We’ll have to have a press release saying that spring is officially late this year,’ he is telling Laura, ‘and that the equinox in March didn’t count because the weather was too bad. I don’t think anyone will mind, do you?’

  ‘No one you know will mind,’ agrees Laura, ‘but let’s not make a big thing of it or we’re going to look arrogant and stupid.’

  Fred, who has given up toying with his food, tipping his chair back, humming a song and looking catatonically bored, perks up at this interchange.

  ‘Could I come and help with the installation? I could miss school if Mum wrote me a note. They said any projects I did outside school were good anyway.’

  This is just the sort of thing that cheers Inigo up, and he does not harbour grudges, particularly when he is receiving praise or attention. Grinning like the Cheshire Cat, licking his thumbs to remove the last traces of Parmesan cheese, he turns towards Fred. ‘Do you think you’d like to help? I’d love to know how you think we can spread the stuff. There is literally tonnes of it coming on trucks.’

  Suddenly Fred and Inigo are talking loudly across the table. Both of them have pushed their plates aside, and they are an advertisement for a perfect father and son act. Wondering if she will ever become used to the schizophrenic speed with which children – and of course Inigo – can mood swing, Laura leaves them discussing whether to use shovels or a wind machine to disperse the paper across the park. Drifting into the kitchen, she makes a mental list of her own more mundane activities, the most important of which has only just occurred to her. The press will have a field day on art as litter unless she can contain this whole, hugely energetic display somehow. Imagine twenty tonnes of torn-up paper swirling on the April breeze. The mess will be appalling.

  Laura is at the sink, looking out at her small hemmed-in garden, soft green in the April dusk, every plant dripping from the recent shower. A chaffinch dives out of the cherry blossom on the wall and into her mind flashes the long-ago image of the summer kitchen garden at Alf Harvey’s derelict house. The walls were tumbling on one side, but along the other three were planted huge, laden, espaliered cherry trees, and in her mind’s eye, Laura can see Guy up on a ladder draping them in fruit nets to keep the birds out. That’s what I need, she thinks suddenly, miles of fruit netting. I’ll ring Guy tomorrow and ask where to get it.

  Laura’s heart thuds as if she is making a clandestine plan. Why is the thought of making a call about fruit nets clandestine? And what about Guy? How will she get hold of him? It would be odd to ask Hedley for his telephone number. Maybe he’s in the book. She knows that Guy still farms the land around his father’s house, and lived nearby until the old man died. Now he lives in a watermill he converted near Crumbly village, and has turned the pastures around it into his thriving organic vegetable business. Laura knows what it looks like because Hedley had a brochure from Guy’s place in his study, complete with a small drawing of a pretty farmhouse set on the water. She tries to imagine life inside this picture-book house with Celia. But even imagining Celia herself presents difficulties. Laura cannot believe that Guy is married; she can’t really believe he isn’t still the boy next door whom she left behind when she went to America. Perhaps she should call Directory Enquiries now, so she can get the whole thing over with? No. She shouldn’t be thinking so much about someone else’s husband. What if Celia answers? She must remember to ask for the business number. And she’s got her own family to consider, too. She must do it when they’re all out, but there’s no harm in getting the number now, is there?

  Inigo and Fred have gone down to the computer to make a diagram for the Paper in the Park show; Laura can hear their voices rising and falling in bursts of animation as they draw it up on the screen. They will be hours. Laura goes in search of the telephone and finds it on the floor in the sitting room next to Dolly, who is lying flat on the carpet as usual, propped on her elbows, gazing glassily at the silent television. Suppressing an urge to kick the television screen or even Dolly to create some animation, Laura picks up the phone and dials, leaving the room. She bends forward and does a small and unchallenging yoga stretch, focusing on her breathing to try and eradicate the neck tension she is feeling due to her continued belief that what she is doing is illicit. It doesn’t work.

  ‘Hello, Directory Enquiries, this is Nicola speaking. What name is it?’

  There is something about Directory Enquiries which maddens Laura. Provoked, she replies, ‘“What name is it” simply doesn’t make sense. Do you mean “Whose number would I like?”’

  A pause, signifying that Nicola is registering her as a nutter, before her flat nasal voice tries again. ‘What name is it?’

  Laura sighs. ‘Harvey, Guy Harvey. Maybe Guy Harvey Organic actually.’

  ‘How are you spelling that?’

  ‘T.H.A.T.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m spelling “that” T.H.A.T. but if you want to know how to spell Harvey, it’s H.A.R.V.E.Y.’

  ‘OK,’ says Nicola listlessly. ‘What street name have you got?’

  Laura speaks through tight lips. ‘I haven’t got a street name, I expect it’s in the middle of fields. It’s an organic vegetable farm. They supply lots of restaurants, you know. They’re big news—’

  Nicola cuts in, bored with this promotional aside. ‘What town have you got then, madam?’

  ‘I haven’t got any town, it’s in Norfolk. It’s
near the sea. I told you, it’s an organic vegetable farm. You must have lots of them.’

  ‘Sorry, I can only go by the name, and there’s nothing listed unless you can give me a town.’ Nicola is becoming more animated as the possibility of giving Laura the number recedes.

  Laura thinks for a moment, remembering the different stations the local train stopped at, wondering which is Guy’s station now. ‘Sheringham,’ she announces at last.

  Nicola sighs with faux regret. ‘Sorry, we’ve nothing listed for that name anywhere in the Sheringham area. Goodbye.’

  Before Laura can suggest another name from the branch line Nicola’s nasal voice has gone. Cursing, she slams the telephone down in its cradle, resolving to find out the number from Hedley tomorrow.

  The doorbell rings. Dolly sweeps past her to open it, muttering, ‘It’s for me, Mum. Don’t touch it – I said it’s for me.’ Her transformation is staggering. A few moments ago she was supine with dull, empty eyes, now she is prancing through the hall, swishing her hair, and opening the door to coo, ‘Hi, Rebecca, I’m ready, let’s go.’ She leans back into the house to grab her jacket off the bottom bannister and is gone, rippling laughter following her and the equally animated friend. Dolly waves and shouts back to Laura on the doorstep, ‘I’ll be at Rebecca’s, and I’ll be home at eight-thirty. Byeeee.’

  Laura waves back, hugging her arms around herself because there is no one else to hug now. They’re leaving home, this is the first stage and then they will be gone. I’ve got to get a life, she thinks, eyes fixed on the swinging gate Dolly has not shut. Laura steps out to do it herself, and pauses at the gate, looking up at the mauve-rinsed evening sky, still watery and heavy with cloud but sparkling in the glimpse of evening sunshine. The flowering cherries in the street are all out now, and a foam of bridal blossom gives a festive air to the closed windows and gates of the neatly ranked houses. Laura and Inigo have lived here for ten years, ever since they came back from America, and although she knows who lives in the flats opposite, and in the divided houses next door on each side, Laura often feels that if she and her family vanished one day, none of their neighbours would notice they’d gone.

  A raindrop splashes on the pavement in front of her, and another dollops onto her forehead, then there is a pause in which Laura hears before she feels the whisper of another veil of rain pattering up the street. A man turns the corner from the main road, his head bent, his hands in his pockets, legs scissoring fast towards her. Because his head is bowed, Laura sees the red scar like a fold on the top of his bald white scalp. She holds open the door.

  ‘Hello Jack, what brings you up here after hours?’

  Jack Smack makes sure he is well out of the wet before he removes his hands from his pockets and brushes his cheek against Laura’s in greeting.

  ‘I’ve come to see Inigo. We’ve got to sort out the New York show. We’ve already postponed it and they want him out there as soon as possible.’

  ‘What a surprise, Jack.’ Inigo and Fred have come up from the basement to stand like Jack with their hands in their pockets. Inigo slaps Jack jovially on the arm, but then returns his hand quickly to his pocket. Laura notices how simian the posture of males can be, toes out-turned, shoulders hunched, heads forwards. Feeling light and airy as thistledown among them, she ducks past and into the kitchen, suppressing an urge to thrust her own hands into the pockets of her jeans and lurch about in parody.

  Fred comes through, his demeanour crestfallen. ‘I don’t think Dad will be doing the paper thing,’ he says. ‘Jack wants him to go to New York tomorrow to set up the show.’

  ‘But he’s not meant to be there for another two weeks – we’ve postponed!’ Laura is aghast. ‘And I’ve spent ages convincing the Parks Committee that we can do our paper installation …’ She tails off, remembering it is nothing to do with Fred, and stalks back through to Inigo and Jack in the sitting room. Inigo is explaining the two elements of the New York Show.

  ‘First there is a cake.’ He pulls a white paper model out from behind the bookshelf. ‘Look, this is how I see it.’

  ‘But it’s a house,’ says Jack, gazing perplexedly at the model which indeed is an architect’s scale model of a modernist house.

  ‘I know.’ Inigo grins, twirling his pen on its nib like a pirouetting ballerina. ‘Actually it’s my parents’ house, or rather it’s the house they lived in before they split up. I made this at art school, but now I’m going to recreate the structure by making a cake tin to follow the floor plan and then filling it with cake-mix. The idea is that when it’s been baked and turned out, the whole space inside will be full and impenetrable instead of empty and cavernous. It represents the conflicts of security and suffocation in a family home, and explores the nature of survival. It’s called Caked.’ He looks up at Jack measuringly. ‘What do you think?’

  Laura leans in the doorway. She is particularly keen on this project, and wants to persuade Inigo to do a whole show called You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It with all exhibits made of cake. It seems to Laura that this theme emphasises all that is absurd about conceptual art and delivers it with the supreme silliness of Marie Antoinette’s famous cry, ‘Let them eat cake.’ Jack, however, is less keen.

  ‘How can we sell this cake house?’ he demands. ‘Even your most avid collectors will balk at buying a cake.’

  Fred, who has been sitting cross-legged on the floor, his chin resting on his hands, butts in, ‘No, they won’t. Everyone likes buying cakes.’

  Jack casts him a look of mild dislike. ‘Not at twenty thousand dollars a pop they don’t,’ he says. ‘And I don’t feel we can offer your work any lower than that, or we’ll have people saying you’re going out of fashion.’

  ‘I don’t think the cake should be for sale,’ Laura offers. ‘It’s a statement of artistic integrity, it doesn’t have a price on it.’

  Jack’s eyebrows whip up to where his hairline would be if he had one; he sees potential for publicity here.

  ‘Yessss,’ he drawls. ‘I like that a lot, I really do.’

  Laura beams; she is delighted, and surprised that Jack is so easy to convince. Pressing on while she is on the high ground, she adds quickly, ‘But Inigo, if you go to New York tomorrow, what will we do about the Paper in the Park idea?’

  Now Jack’s look of dislike is directed at Laura. ‘We haven’t got time for that,’ he interrupts, before Inigo can speak. ‘And anyway, it was only an installation. We can’t sell it. Now Inigo, what about the rest of the New York Show. How is Death Threat?’

  Inigo pulls a tiny silver figure of eight out of his pocket and holds it up. ‘Just fine, thanks, Jack. Here’s the baby, my smallest ever Möbius strip, and I’ve been working on rolling-pin projections for weeks. I’m ready to install this show now, but I wanted to finish Paper in the Park first. I think it will speak to the inner child in a lot of people, and spring is the moment to unleash that element.’

  Jack’s expression says very clearly that he thinks Inigo is talking nonsense, but that he can see a way to make mileage out of it.

  ‘OK, we’ll do it. We’ll get you back from New York for it and you can arrive in the park in a helicopter. That way we’ll get maximum publicity.’

  ‘That way you’ll wreck the whole thing before Inigo’s even arrived,’ says Laura tartly. ‘The helicopter will send the paper everywhere.’

  Fred interrupts, hoping from foot to foot with excitement. ‘No, it would be totally cool,’ he says. ‘The helicopter can be the paper-spreader. Could I go in it too?’

  Even Jack is impressed by this notion, his eyes flashing like cash registers as he imagines the storm of media excitement such a venture would create. Laura can hardly believe they are all being so stupid. Quite apart from the cost of hiring a helicopter, there is the small issue of permission. Royal Parks have taken a dim enough view of the whole project already. This would finish them off utterly. She opens her mouth to pour all this cold water on the project then closes it again. Why should she
always be the voice of reason, the killjoy? Let them find out for themselves. The whole notion had always seemed pretty half-baked to Laura and now it has become truly preposterous.

  She retreats upstairs to have a bath, armed with a weepalong novel and some bath essence Cally sent her, wrapped up in a large maple leaf and with a note saying ‘Sugar is hot, xxx Cally.’

  The bottle is long and narrow, like a test tube. Laura pours a few drops into the bathwater and, slightly horrified by the sickly smell, holds up the tube to read the ingredients.

  This is Sugar Beet Intenscent, distilled to perfectly capture the organic, healthy scent of sugar; sweet and earthy as though the root has been freshly plucked from the soil, this is a polarising essence. You will love if you’re hot, loathe if you’re not.

  Sugar beet? How is it possible that anyone has decided to make bath oil from sugar beet? It is a depressing and filthy feature of farm life, or it used to be. Now it has become a glamorous, sought-after beauty potion ingredient. Perched on the side of the bath, Laura giggles, rereading the label, much enjoying the preposterous tone. She turns it round, and on the back is a small picture of a millhouse. It is Guy’s millhouse. Laura stares at the test tube in astonishment. Can Guy really be responsible for this drivel?

  ‘What’s going on, Mum?’ Fred puts his head round the door. Laura waves the test tube.