Hens Dancing

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘Mrs Denny?’

  I must have closed my eyes and gone to sleep. Opening them now, there is a face where there had been sky. Slate-grey eyes laugh, but a polite and serious voice says, ‘I’m looking for Mrs Denny.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s me.’ I must get up, but how? He is still looking at me from beneath dark, arched brows.

  ‘I’m David Lanyon,’ he continues. ‘You rang me last week about some work on your bathroom.’

  I don’t in fact hear him say much of this; I am wrestling with rosy embarrassment and trying to get up without showing my pink face. Am convinced that my mouth was open when I was asleep, and I may have been snoring. Glimpse a wide grin, and buy time for myself by pretending to pull a thistle from the grass.

  ‘Yes, yes. It’s in the house. Do go and have a look at it.’ He doesn’t go. Instead he holds out a hand to help me up as though I am a thousand years old.

  ‘Will you show me where it is?’ I probably seem antique to him. He is about my age but not careworn and wrinkled by responsibility. Can’t help staring at his unlined countenance, his straight nose and then at his trainers which have silver ribs and are very unrustic. Suddenly realise that once again he has been speaking and I have missed it.

  ‘… Could be the best way to approach it for now, if you agree.’

  ‘Oh yes, I agree absolutely,’ I start to gabble. ‘I’m so glad we agree about that, and everything.’

  He looks surprised. ‘But I haven’t shown you the prototype yet.’

  ‘No, but I’m sure it will be lovely.’

  Thankfully we have now reached the bathroom, pausing on the way for me to shed boots and awful exterior layers in the hall. Underneath not much better. Why didn’t I notice that my shirt is missing most buttons when I dressed this morning? How can my standards be so low? Must reform and refine my wardrobe immediately.

  I show him into the bathroom with a flourish of my arm and just stop myself making a trumpet-call sound. It transpires that he wants to build a majestic bathroom with cupboards and so forth, completely free, if I will allow him to have it photographed for publicity and for his brochure. My only cost will be paint when it is finished. This is fantastic. I agree, and wildly say I don’t even need to approve the sketches. He shakes my hand fervently and capers about saying what perfect proportions the bathroom has. After he has gone I begin to regret having relinquished any control, but cannot think of a way to unsay it without seeming rude and untrusting.

  April 23rd

  Lie about groaning for most of the morning due to hangover. This was caused by an evening alone with a bottle of wine and a mirror. Not a good combination. At eleven p.m. Kris Kristofferson and I were alone together and he was reminding me that:

  Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, And nothing ain’t worth nothing if it’s free.

  Copious weeping on my part as I faced the terrible drunken truth: I am doomed never to be attractive to anyone and will never find a fling, let alone a boyfriend, again. I am old and mouldy now and have missed my chances. At midnight I was juggling the household accounts and failing to find funds with which to go to health farm and/or buy cashmere cardigans. At twelve-fifteen I noticed that the wine was finished and the fire was out, and took myself to bed to sleep off self-pity.

  The children have ice cream and Rice Krispies for breakfast because I am enfeebled and there is no milk. Not my day for the school run, so thrust them into another mother’s car with scarcely a kiss and retreat to the security of the Aga rail. Dump The Beauty back in her cot as soon as decently possible after breakfast, where she wails loudly and causes my head to whirl and bounce horribly. The hangover retreats but not the cause of it, as I can see only too clearly in the bathroom mirror when I finally decide to brush my teeth. Distracted from detailed survey of my skin’s dry rot and subsidence by the doorbell. It is the postman, with a fat pile of letters, probably all bills. He could easily have put them through the letter box, but has chosen to summon me and is now smiling fondly, as if at his favourite football team, at my droopy nightie and crimson toenails.

  ‘You’re late,’ I snarl.

  A mistake, giving him the opportunity to reply, ‘But you aren’t up anyway, are you?’ He winks, then turns back to his van and drives off whistling and revving the engine. This is all very trying and sends me huffing and muttering back to my room. I am not at all cheered by the postman’s interest in me. I do not wish to have a Jack Nicholson/Jessica Lange empathy with him. I nestle back against the pillows for further wallowing and watch Teletubbies. An excellent programme. The Tubbies are all skipping about singing, ‘Telescope, telescope’.

  They give me the boost I need. I telephone Mo Loam’s Temple to Beauty in London and book myself an appointment. The earliest available one is in six months’ time, and an hour with the high priestess slapping unguents onto my face will cost £120. I put the telephone down with that shaky, nauseous guilt feeling that comes with wanton extravagance. Feel sick for a while before realising that it will cost the same as half an hour with my lawyer. Plainly a bargain.

  April 26th

  Spring pours in through every window on a tide of blossom-scented air. One of the hens, Custard, or perhaps Flustered, has hatched three chicks and they bowl about after her, tiny blobs of apricot cotton wool beneath the apple blossom. The Beauty is very taken with them, and makes her way towards the orchard any time she is not under close surveillance. Her new shuffle, on her bottom with rowing action from her legs, is speedy, and I am constantly having to leave the telephone dangling from its rubber spiral, or damp laundry spewing from the washing machine, to follow her as she scoops herself down the drive with Rags. Giles offers to look after her this morning, but becomes engrossed in Billy Whizz; The Beauty eats three geranium heads and is sick.

  ‘She’s been sick, Mum.’ Giles wanders off, reminding me unpleasantly of his father. The Beauty takes advantage and vanishes. This time I discover her with Felix. He is attempting to climb a small flowering tree with her, but has not yet got far up it. He is doing well. The Beauty is wedged into a fork in the branches and squeals and claps with delight as Felix climbs up past her then reaches down to lift her onto her next perch. There she rests, a vision of rustic charm, in her green jersey with ladybirds on it, waving a fat hand at me from behind a spray of apple blossom.

  Mustard the cockerel is in attendance. He is a control freak and polices the garden daily to make sure that all is as it should be. He likes to find The Beauty in her pram under a tree, and hops onto the handle to cast a beady eye over her as she sleeps. Sometimes he cannot resist spoiling everything, and crows mightily from this vantage point, startling The Beauty awake and causing her to yell. This morning he is not pleased to find her flitting about in treetops, and perches himself at a cautious distance on the swing to watch while emitting a ghastly slow groaning noise.

  April 27th

  What was to have been a lazy Monday morning due to the boys having the day off, is shattered by the shrilling of the doorbell and pounding on the door at seven-fifteen. It is David Lanyon and two carbuncled henchmen, one with a bobble hat, one without.

  ‘Hi, I hope you don’t mind, I’ve brought Digger.’ He gestures towards the garden where a muscular black Labrador is aiming a jet of steaming urine at my green tulips. David is a shining example of health, optimism and clean laundry; he has on a washed-out red guernsey and jeans faded to the point that I always long for mine to reach. He chats to the boys, who are hanging around in the hall in their pyjamas. Giles and Felix bond with him instantly.

  ‘Mum, have you seen David’s trainers? They’re excellent. Can I have some?’ His helpers are less fragrant, and look like a couple of Scaven Dwarves from the boy’s Warhammer armies. I begin to feel utterly invaded as they tramp in and out with toothy saws, rolls of cable and sagging metal toolboxes. David’s car, an old Red Cross Land Rover with logo still intact, is reversed right up to the door to speed the unloading process. The postman arrives, and e
ven though he only has one thin card reminding me of The Beauty’s vaccination dates and the door is wide open, he finds it necessary to ring the bell and express concern.

  ‘Hope nobody’s been badly hurt,’ he says, and I smile as disdainfully as I can with sheepskin slippers, bare legs and a helping of Ready Brek plastered over my shoulders.

  ‘Not yet, but that may change.’ My taut, brooding delivery is faultless, and he drives off very alarmed.

  later

  The bathroom is a cross between a potential Little Mermaid’s sea palace and Stig’s dump. Sticks of MDF and little piles of sawdust lie among the stacks of castellated wood and odd lengths of gleaming copper piping. Plastic tubes, sand, insulating foam and baskets of mottled shells fill every spare inch, and there is no way anyone will be able to use the room for at least a week.

  The two Dwarf Warriors have gone, David is teaching Giles and Felix how to slow-bowl on the lawn and The Beauty is having her bath in the kitchen sink. This is huge fun. She puts a green flannel on her head and delivers her mad, squeaky laugh. As I lift her out, Digger trots past the window with a blur of feathers in his mouth. Wild rage surges. I scream, ‘You bloody bastard shithead dog.’ The Beauty’s face crumples and her mouth becomes a square of misery.

  Am heading out to kill Digger when Giles runs in, breathless. ‘Don’t worry, Mum, it isn’t a hen, it’s a pheasant from the meadow, David just got it with Felix’s catapult. It was such a cool shot, I wish you’d seen it.’

  I joggle The Beauty about and she begins to coo again, so sanity can now return. ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’

  Giles giggles. ‘We could hear you swearing from the other side of the garden. You must have left The Beauty’s intercom outside. David said I should run and tell you before you burst a blood vessel.’

  ‘What a disgusting image.’ I turn crossly and flounce upstairs to give The Beauty her bottle. When I come down half an hour later, Giles and Felix are watching a video of Calamity Jane and David has gone. I settle down on the sofa in time to sing along with Doris Day to ‘Take Me Back to the Black Hills of Dakota’.

  May 1st

  Dawn finds me crawling around in the garden with bits of wet grass on my face, having washed it in dew for increased possibility of great beauty. This is an economy drive, and virtue propels me about beneath the apple trees which are bowing and quivering in arctic winds. I could be paying large sums of money to a mail-order beauty company whose boast is that their products ‘give the complexion the glow of a country walk, the texture of a sun-drenched apricot’. I can’t wait to achieve this loveliness, and am convinced that nature can do as well as Agnés b in assisting me.

  May Day is traditionally riven with ice storms and hailstones of record-breaking proportions and today is no different. I do not linger in the orchard, but dash inside to a mirror. A red nose and mud-strewn cheeks are the only sign that I have been involved in a beauty treatment, otherwise the usual pallor prevails. My skin looks nothing like a sun-drenched apricot: the economical rustic beauty treatment is wanting. But I did try. Virtuously, I write a plump cheque to Agnès b make-up and post it off. Within twenty-eight days I will achieve the longed-for apricot look with the assistance of Super Silk tinted moisturiser. Until then I shall avoid being seen in strong sunlight. Pretty easy, if this freakish and foul weather continues.

  May 4th

  Terrible cabin fever this week, caused by the work in the bathroom. All day drills whine, saws rasp and hammers bang until I am forced out into the garden to escape. Have therefore achieved a lot of weeding and no work. Weeding is second only to hanging the washing out in my tally of chores that give job satisfaction. For me, the washing line is as good as any piece of contemporary art. Indeed, when married I could always irritate Charles a lot by telling friends of my plan to take a washing machine, a line, some pegs and a few days’ laundry down to Cork Street and set myself up as a one-woman show. I still think it’s a good idea, and often expand my thesis. A narrative statement could so easily be found in the separation of whites (innocence) and darks (death). The coloured wash can represent anything – sin, love, family life, fertility or joy; even a disaster such as colours running can be turned on its head so that all the grey vests symbolise politics or our cultural identity or something similar.

  Whenever I start thinking about this again I am reminded what a brilliant idea it is. Promise myself that tomorrow I shall take photographs of my washing line and send them to Charles Saatchi. Increasingly, planning and fantasy are replacing any social life in the evenings. It is six months since Charles lived here, and even then he was only around at weekends because in the week he was in Cambridge at the head office of Heavenly Petting. I realise, with horror, that I am no longer civilised. Have not spent ordinary, companionable evenings with a husband or similar creature for years. I don’t know how to any more. Quickly telephone Rose to discover what she is doing now, it being mid-evening. Reassuringly, she is eating Twiglets and will be having cereal to follow. Tristan is apparently watching a programme about war and weaponry and has not said a word to her since he came home from work.

  ‘Have you had a row?’

  ‘Oh, no, he just doesn’t speak most of the time.’

  ‘Have you fed him?’

  ‘He made himself a foul-looking jam and peanut butter sandwich and then said he didn’t want any supper.’ She yawns. ‘I’m going to bed now, actually; Theo is getting more teeth so I’m bound to have a bad night with him. Let’s speak tomorrow when they’re all out of the way.’

  It does not sound like much of an improvement on my evening. Immeasurably cheered, I ring off and get back to my plans for the laundry exhibition.

  May 9th

  Heady, scented day makes chores impossible.

  ‘Let’s go for a picnic,’ says Giles. We arrange to meet my mother in the bluebell wood and become carried away with picnic fare. While I am dressing The Beauty, Giles makes forty-two egg sandwiches and Felix climbs onto the Aga to finish stirring the custard for the rhubarb fool. He then adds the rhubarb and pours the whole lot into a blue bowl and places it carefully at the bottom of the picnic basket.

  ‘You can’t take a china bowl,’ I shriek. ‘It weighs a ton and it’ll break if—’ I bite my tongue. Felix’s eyes are strained with tears.

  ‘You always make it in this bowl when we go to the bluebell wood. And Dad always used to carry it so it didn’t matter how heavy it was.’

  I grit my teeth, recalling Charles’s vile and draconian discipline on picnics, when the boys were supposed to carry rugs and keep up with his ex-army speed-march through glades we should have dallied in. He carried the basket, so insisted that he could decide when we stopped, resulting last year in a picnic nowhere near bluebells but overlooking a gibbet. Felix, of course, has forgotten all this.

  ‘We’ll manage it,’ my best Brown Owl voice booms from somewhere, and we bustle on again, leaving the awful gap which I cannot fill for them behind us.

  The scent of bluebells and wild garlic hits us as we approach the wood through a tunnel of cow parsley. Giles has run far ahead, but Felix saunters just in front of me, his hands lost in the froth of cream flowers. Rags is wild with excitement in the adjacent field, her ears appearing sporadically above speartips of young corn as she bounces in pursuit of rabbits.

  Just as Felix starts to dawdle, we round a corner and walk into a scented sea of blue framed by beeches, their leaves neon green above soft silver trunks. We spread our rugs, and it is impossible not to crush a thousand flowers in doing so. The boys throw themselves down on their backs and stare up at the sky. The Beauty, released from the backpack she loathes, copies them, waving her feet in the air and catching her toes with her hands. I lie back and sigh, releasing all tension as taught by Alaric the yogic, and experience a moment of perfect calm.

  ‘Hi, chick, how’re you doing?’ My brother Desmond leaps from behind a tree and into my tranquillity, an urban troll with sideburns and a leather jacket. I groa
n, sit up and an explosion of hot breath erupts in my ear. Egor, my mother’s bull terrier, bounces through the bluebells followed by my mother, bearing three helium balloons with acid-bright Teletubbies on them, and a wine box.

  ‘What a perfect day. Hello, my darlings.’

  ‘Mum, why are you carrying those balloons?’

  ‘Well I brought them for The Beauty, and then I had a brilliant idea.’ She lights a cigarette and puffs triumphantly. ‘I realised that if I tied them to the wine box it wouldn’t be so heavy.’ She produces three plastic beakers from her pocket and struggles with the tap on the box for a moment. ‘And do you know, it really worked.’

  Desmond stretches next to us and reaches for a beaker. He has a black eye, much to the delight of Giles and Felix, and the mauve and yellow bruising blends fetchingly with the bluebells.

  I open my mouth to comment, but my mother hisses, ‘He’s too stupid and annoying to speak to. He’s been banned from the pub. He’s going back to London tomorrow and the band are playing on Tuesday evening, so he’s going to be teased quite enough then.’

  Desmond is in a rock band called Hung Like Elvis, and is also a session musician, specialising in making recordings for commercials. This career suits him to a tee, enabling him to work infrequently for large sums of money which he can then spend in the pub and on his vinyl collection. He is also a rabid football fan, and is keen to brainwash Felix and Giles into his team’s support club. Today he has brought each of them an Arsenal item: for Giles a backpack, for Felix a hat.

  ‘Totally cool,’ shrieks Felix, unwrapping his hat from its polythene bag and chucking the rubbish on the ground.

  Giles is a little more restrained. ‘Thanks, Desmond. Did you see the match on TV last night?’