Laura takes off her shoes and curls her legs under her, wondering how far from the point Inigo will go this evening. It doesn’t matter. She too wants to avoid talking about what is happening to the small safe unit of their family. And what about the new animals? Can he possibly have accepted them?
‘I’ll look it up tomorrow, or later tonight on the internet.’ Inigo has finished with that topic. He stands up, and moves towards Laura and puts his hands on her shoulders. ‘Let’s go to bed now,’ he says, his eyes darkening as they do when he gets passionate. He leans down and lifts her hair from the nape of her neck, breathing in the scent of her, his breath on her skin making her shiver with irritation more than pleasure. He is trying to control her again. Inigo kisses her forehead, then her eyes, obliging her to close them. ‘Just give me the dog woman’s telephone number first, will you?’ he murmurs. ‘I’ll send them a donation and thanks in the morning, but you can’t have the dog, it won’t work. The house I can deal with, even the goat, but not a bloody dog, or one of those foul feral beasts. I won’t have it.’
Laura leaps up as if he has poured scalding water on her back. She twists round to face him, scooping her shoes back on because subconsciously she wants to be taller for this. ‘It doesn’t matter what you won’t have because you won’t be here,’ she says quietly, and she can’t look at him because there is pain and panic all over his face and it makes her hurt too.
‘I might not take the fellowship.’ Inigo moves to stand leaning on the fireplace, looking down into the empty grate, his back hunching and knotting as he flexes his fists in his pockets and clenches his jaw to stop himself turning around to reach out for Laura.
Oddly detached, as though this is all happening on television and not to her, Laura steps forward to lean on the fireplace next to him.
‘Look, why don’t we just let things run for a bit,’ she says. ‘You’re busy with Death Threat, whether or not you take the fellowship, and I want to try a bit of rural life while the children are still at an age where I can get them to come with me. I think it will be good for them.’ She puts both hands around his arm, hoping he will turn to face her. ‘I think it will be good for all of us.’
The silence is enormous. Laura isn’t sure what she has just said, but she has stood her ground. When Inigo moves round to look at her, she meets his gaze steadily, her face grave. Unexpectedly, she sees a slow smile at the corner of his mouth. Honestly, he is impossible; now she’s grinning back and it should be awful right now, not funny. He hasn’t taken her seriously. As if he can hear her thoughts, Inigo whispers, ‘You’re just so irresistible when you’re serious.’
Laura gives up. She links her hands behind his neck and kisses him slowly. Later, in bed, fitted against him in a coil of sheets, she remembers the pug is still on order. Most pleasing.
Chapter 14
Laura has owned a dog for three weeks now, and while she would say without hesitation that her own life has improved one thousandfold, Inigo has told his analyst that their life as a couple has become unspeakable. Laura is never at home, or indeed at work. She is either on the Heath with Zeus, as Aïoli has been rechristened, or she’s at puppy training or at dog psychology sessions. Indeed, Inigo has decided to see an analyst mainly out of jealousy because Zeus was seeing one. Inigo’s counsellor finds this most interesting, and is using Inigo as a case study for his book on regression. Laura pays scant attention because she is house training Zeus, and can’t think of much else.
In protest, and because he needs to be there, Inigo has gone to New York. There, everyone is making a huge fuss of him, most particularly those who want to appear both international and intellectual. He is the toast of the town, but Laura has no issue with his absence and certainly has no idea when he may be back. Her domestic life has vanished with Inigo, and she very much enjoys not having to cook proper meals or having to keep the house rigorously tidy. She finds it a huge relief that the eggs are just in their box now, not balanced precariously, and that no magnets are suspended between doorways, nor are candles teetering askew on the mantelpiece. The space left by the absence of his glittering, restless energy is comfortable and easy. Laura, folding clothes she doesn’t bother to iron with Inigo away, imagines how cross he would be to think of her settling comfortably into his being away as if it were a pair of slippers, huge padded slippers in the shape of Garfield. How Inigo would loathe the idea. She almost feels guilty for enjoying it.
Laura sorts the clothes into piles and takes a small heap of rainbow-bright garments into Dolly’s room. Swinging open the door she is too vigorous and the handle bumps the shelf behind, dislodging a pile of books which thud down onto a rack of CDs. The discs spin out across the floor, slicing silver blue as they skate beneath the bed, under the chair, everywhere. Cursing her clumsiness for catching her out here where it matters, rather than in Fred’s room where it wouldn’t, Laura drops the clothes and kneels down. A throb of exhaustion, familiar accompaniment to all her clearing up, pulls at Laura’s shoulders, and she sighs. Dolly is missing Inigo horribly. Laura alone is not enough parent for her, and not the right one for her baleful, leg-swinging insolence. Impotence wells daily as Laura tries to get Dolly to do her homework, or run down the street for a pint of milk.
Later that afternoon, Dolly plonks herself and her school bag on the kitchen table and drinks milk out of the bottle, her eyes on Laura even as her head is tilted back, and in them a wordless challenge. Laura takes a deep breath and turns away towards the window, hugging Zeus with ridiculous tears hot behind her eyes, ashamed that she has no idea what to do, or what to say to her daughter. The idea that she can help Hedley with Tamsin is a joke now. Her own daughter has become a hormonal teenager almost overnight, and none of the preaching works in practice. Dolly’s answer to the smallest request is to flick her hair and reach for the telephone to call Inigo. As she does this at any hour of the day or night with no regard for the time lag, her relationship with Inigo is volatile. A curt ten seconds during a breakfast fracas over whether or not Dolly would eat anything other than crisps before school had her in tears.
‘He said, “It’s three in the morning so this had better be bloody important,”’ she sobbed to her mother, wilting and pulling her jersey down over her pulled-up knees.
This moment is the catalyst for Laura suggesting she brings a friend with her to Norfolk, a breakthrough moment so satisfying in its effect on Dolly’s deportment and her mood that Laura decides Fred must have someone too.
Locking the car on the Heath road high above Hampstead village, Laura gulps the summer air hungrily. The tantrums Dolly indulges in at the moment are suffocating; it is a relief to get her to school and take Zeus out for his daily stroll. Everything Laura imagined about having a dog is true; and that it should be true about an almost toy dog is doubly pleasing. Walking Zeus is a vital release from life at home, and she is fascinated and entertained by the dog-walking fraternity she has befriended. Conversations with them involve no questions or observations relating to anything but the dogs, and are thus very soothing.
This morning, Laura is pleased to see Lola, a woman who walks a pack of eight dogs most days. Lola is on the slope below the Plague Pit, giving her gang a good run off their leads. Laura greets her, noticing that Lola’s plum-coloured wig is a little lopsided today.
‘Hello there, Zeus,’ says Lola, stooping to pet him. It is usual on the Heath to greet the dog, not the owner. She nods at Laura and then down at her own clothes. ‘I’m all muddy because at ten to seven this morning, I saw Sue Whippet coming towards me – she’s a loose cannon now, that woman – she used to walk with me sometimes but I changed my times.’ Lola nods vehemently, and the tangle of dog leads round her neck jangles. ‘I did. I can’t stand her, I’m just not up to it at that time of day. You know what she’s like?’
Gripped, Laura shakes her head, keeping her eyes on Zeus as he pings between Lola’s dogs, rolling over and jumping with them in the springy grass.
‘She’s one of th
ose types who say, “If you can’t afford a Bosch fridge, you shouldn’t have an Italian greyhound because they can open all the cheaper models.” Her whippets are like hell hounds—’ Lola breaks off as she and Laura approach the Men’s pond and lets rip an earsplitting cry; all her dogs come racing up from their distant points of play. Without breaking the stride of her conversation, she attaches each one to the correct lead and gives them a chocolate drop.
‘How do you audition the dogs you walk?’ Laura asks.
Lola sucks in both cheeks, and assumes a haughty expression. ‘All the dogs I take on have to work together, and I don’t like collecting them from apartment blocks.’
‘What do you mean?’ Laura asks blankly.
Lola clucks. ‘You know, all those big marble entrance halls and closed-circuit cameras – you can imagine what it’s like going up in the lift to fetch the dog with this lot in tow. Mayhem. Specially on the way home. I like a dog with his own front door.’
Laura can’t stop herself saying proudly, ‘Zeus has his own front door.’
Chapter 15
There is no electricity and an ominous dripping sound echoes wetly from the bathroom in the Gate House, accompanied by a bad smell. Zeus has been sick three times in the car, and Vice the ferret is loose and has gone to ground somewhere under the back seat. This is Laura’s first attempt at going to the country alone since moving there. What she imagined would be a lovely bonding adventure for herself and the children is turning into the usual mutiny, with herself as chauffeur, slave and pack animal. Airily planning to buy food for supper on the way at a wholesome farm shop, Laura forgets that such outlets shut at five, and has to resort to a petrol station. There, fantasies about home-baked bread and organic lamb cutlets are subsumed by a reality of three half baked rolls and a sweaty hunk of cheese. Laura hurls her bags onto the kitchen table and turns to welcome the guests with a big fake smile.
‘So this is it,’ she beams. ‘Rural bliss,’ she adds unconvincingly. Dolly’s friend Rebecca and Fred’s friend Shane back nervously out of the door, trying not to let her see that they are holding their breath to ward off the awful smell. Dolly comes in to get a jug to milk Grass and scowls at Laura.
‘Mum, this place stinks. How could you do this when I’ve got Becca staying? And I’ve sprayed my deodorant and your scent in the car but I can’t get the smell of sick out, or the smell of that disgusting ferret.’ Dolly points her chin accusingly at her mother and swirls out of the door, slamming it as she goes.
Laura and her one adult guest, Gina, look at one another but say nothing for a moment. Gina reaches into the carrier bags of shopping and pulls out two cans of ready mixed gin and tonic. She passes one to Laura. ‘I’m bloody glad I had the sense to get a six-pack of these at that God-awful garage. I had a funny feeling we were going to need an instant hit. Does she always treat you like that?’
Laura swigs her drink. ‘Yup. Well, more and more of the time anyway. I wonder where the fuse box is?’ She gazed around hopelessly.
Gina, unpacking the ten Pot Noodles Dolly insisted on buying at the garage, discovers the fuse box in the larder and restores electricity with one flick of the trip switch. ‘Right, that was easy, let’s find the smell now,’ she says, and marches into the bathroom wielding a bottle of bleach. Laura watches her go, obscurely irritated by Gina’s swamping practicality. She hadn’t intended to ask her, in fact she hadn’t asked her. Gina, cousin of Cally and new occasional friend, walked past as Laura was packing the car.
‘You shouldn’t be doing that,’ she observed after several moments of watching Laura attempt to heap suitcases into the tiny space left around Dolly and Fred and their friends, all sitting like waxworks in the car, their four pairs of headphones separating them from the world.
Gina poked at a pair of boots disparagingly. ‘No girl should be doing that. What’s the point of feminism if it doesn’t get rid of things like car packing? Where’s your delicious husband?’ Laura turned to face her and missed catching her own open suitcase which fell, spilling books, her alarm clock and underwear across the road.
‘In New York,’ Laura sighed. Gina’s eyes narrowed. She knew Inigo had left for the States weeks ago; she’d been with Laura to the cinema directly after he left. They’d seen a truly awful art film about a family in Taiwan in a high-rise block. It went on for four hours – long enough, as Laura had pointed out, to get to Paris and have supper much more enjoyably.
‘Still?’ Gina drawls, draining the word of every last drop of inference.
‘Yes, still,’ agreed Laura, beginning to retrieve her belongings from the pavement.
‘Your poor thing,’ said Gina, in a pitying tone which suggested that she, as a divorcée, knew just what ‘Still’ meant. Hovering, unwilling to leave Laura, Gina tiptoed forwards and picked up a very tired-looking bra, her perfect midriff on show above low-slung jeans, so toned it didn’t even crease as she bent.
‘Here you are. Mmm, this does look like an old favourite, so don’t leave it, will you.’ She draped the bra carefully over the roof of the car, and caught sight of the car’s occupants. She peered in at them for a moment before turning to Laura, her face crumpled with concern.
‘Oh darling, you’re all on your own with THEM.’ She shuddered. ‘I tell you what, why don’t I come with you to the country? I’ve been longing to see your place and I’m free this weekend. You’ll need back-up with THEM or you’ll never survive, you look exhausted already. Poor love.’ She leant forwards to hug Laura across the spilled suitcase, her bracelets jangling, her arms thin and cold but strong as wire. ‘Just wait a moment and I’ll get a few things. What fun we’ll have being girls together. I love the country.’
Laura began to mumble, ‘There isn’t room,’ but Gina, moving surprisingly fast on her slingback heels, was already out of earshot. Laura could have jumped into the car and driven off without her, but there was no other way of avoiding Gina’s company. Gina came.
‘Mum, can we shoot some pigeons?’ Fred appears, Shane hovering behind, shrouded like a spectre in his hooded sweatshirt. Both boys are armed with giant catapults. The catapults look like advanced and kinky torture instruments with black rubber grips and dolloping lengths of nude-coloured rubber tubing, but Fred has assured his mother that ‘all they do is kill birds and stuff – nothing worse, I promise, Mum.’
The boys rush off, tailed by the snuffling, bouncing pug, the ferret leering from Fred’s pocket like a glove puppet.
‘Don’t forget you’ve got Zeus,’ Laura calls after them. ‘He’s got no sense of direction so you’ll need his lead if you go far.’
Alone for a moment, she half-guiltily leaves the unpacking, preferring to head for the garden, where the last of the evening sun spills its warmth onto her back. Soaking up the peace she turns and tilts her face, closing her eyes, and leaning back on the wall. At first the only sound is her own breath slowing then, as if she has reached the point of trance in a textbook meditation session, Laura’s head fills with the gentle coo of doves, the rustle of leaves and the distant honky tonk of an ice-cream van. All tensions dissolve and she opens her eyes, blinking at the bright paradise of her garden. And the weeds.
Gina, having dealt with whatever it was in the bathroom, and earning Laura’s undying gratitude for not telling her about it, wanders out to the garden to join Laura crouched in her newly dug vegetable patch, planting salad leaves beneath a swinging row of old CDs Fred has set up to scare the pigeons away. Laura is immersed, singing to herself, all monstrous details of the journey erased by the long June evening, her children’s voices happy and, even better, not too close, a can of gin and tonic finished beside her and the promise of more as Gina approaches, shedding her shirt to reveal a pink and purple bra which hardly covers her voluptuous bosom.
‘Gosh, how wonderful not to be overlooked, and the sun really is warm, isn’t it?’ she cries, tripping through the daisies and settling herself on a small stool Laura likes to think she will sit on to view her garden bu
t never does. Laura sprinkles water over the last of her seeds and stands back to view the Beatrix Potter loveliness of her vegetable plot. This area, an eight-foot square of freshly turned earth with neat edges and hospital corners, is in marked contrast to the rest of the garden. Laura is about to launch into a poetic explanation of happiness and its link for her with the soil, when there is a scream from the shed and Grass bounds out bleating and trots straight across the middle of the vegetables. Becca, waving a rope like a lasso, follows, breathless.
‘She bit Dolly and stamped on her foot,’ she pants, ‘but we’ve got loads of milk.’
‘She’d be better as goat curry,’ Laura mutters, as Gina, almost topless, sets off in pursuit of Grass who has swerved out of the gate and is heading down the track towards Crumbly, still bleating balefully. Dolly hobbles towards her mother, pink-faced and swearing fluently. Laura decides it’s best to pretend she can’t hear Dolly’s language and begins a soothing litany. ‘Don’t worry, darling, let me see. Ooh, how painful. Shall I kiss it better?’
Dolly pushes her away impatiently, reaching into her pocket for her mobile phone, today fetchingly clad in a fluffy pink cover, and begins stabbing the keys. ‘Oh shut up Mum, I’m not a baby. I hate that fucking goat. Why can’t Hedley take it away? It isn’t even ours and I’m never milking it or going near it again. I’m texting Tamsin, and Becca and I are going to see her right now, and I don’t know when we’ll be back.’
Dolly rushes into the house to complete her tantrum with the required hefty door slam. Becca skulks behind, feebly prodding her own more conservative pale blue plastic mobile. She sends her message then looks up at Laura whispering, ‘Umm, sorry Laura,’ before she too whisks into the house. God, the opera of Dolly’s life is becoming more gothic every day, Laura thinks, but before she can decide whether to follow her, there is a shout from the gate and Hedley, grinning hugely, enters with a swagger, dragging the still bleating Grass.
Green Grass Page 15