Hens Dancing

by Raffaella Barker

  Idyll no sooner experienced than lost by cavorting splash twenty yards away. Terror-fuelled adrenalin has me racing for the shore at Olympic speed with Jaws music thudding in my head. Almost die from unusual amount of exertion, and have to lie, as if washed up, just beyond the tide on dry land. Coughing and wheezing, heart palpitating, I stand up to scan the horizon, hoping, now I am safe, to see a great white fin and know I have survived a dice with death. Instead, a smiling puppy-faced seal bobs in the shallows, rolling over to reveal sleek black barrel body and little fins. I half long to run back into the sea and cavort with dear cuddly creature in the manner of youths and maidens in Greek myths, but am too shaken. Wave, and am convinced that seal flaps a fin back at me. The others have vanished. I decide to catch up. Remember Simon telling me that you can get anywhere if you run twenty paces then walk twenty paces. Arrive at the café almost as soon as the others, and hardly puffing. Excellent. This shall be my new gait. Bungaloid and cosy, the café has been a pit stop since Charles and I first came to Norfolk. As I walk through the door, the smell of walnut cake and Camp coffee fills me with indiscriminate nostalgia. Can still dimly remember the days when Charles had turned his back on his army training and was trying to be relaxed. He even liked my family at first, or pretended to. Mention this to Desmond, who looks blank but says ‘Yes,’ enthusiastically.

  We all have crab sandwiches, and marvel at the seal story. My mother unearths a half-bottle of wine from the clear-fronted drinks refrigerator. She is thrilled.

  ‘What luck. Someone must have left it here. It says Thistle Hotels on the label.’

  ‘Stolen from a minibar and swapped for crab sandwiches,’ Lila suggests. Half a bottle is just enough to make our table appear more civilised than it is, as The Beauty blows her chips out of her mouth and across the floral cloth, and the rest of us pay homage to the crab sandwiches by eating them in silence.

  August 14th

  Insane morning spent packing for three children, self and Rags, with The Beauty shadowing me and behaving as if at a jumble sale with all my piles. The whole summer is a disaster. Can’t believe it is holiday time again. None of us wants to go anywhere, especially separately. Begin to weep while counting underpants in Giles’s room. Giles and Felix are going to Club Med in Sicily with their father and the poison dwarf tomorrow, and The Beauty and I are going to Ireland with Rose and Tristan, who have taken a cottage somewhere remote. Rags has been farmed out to Smalls, and we take her there at lunchtime with her bed, bowl and one bone as luggage. Smalls’s address is The House with Blue Windows, and we find it perched halfway up the one street of a tiny hamlet where all the cottages are built from uncut flint and are identical except for Smalls’s window frames. Opening a wooden door, we troop into a garden occupied by three caravans and a number of ducks, basking as if moored, in the shade. Rags bounds towards a large white drake with a pompon on his head, but stops in her tracks when he rises, quacking, and waddles into a wall of hollyhocks. Smalls emerges from the largest caravan, his hands stained blue, his tiny green hat and leather jerkin, making him a convincing leprechaun. ‘Woad,’ he says.

  If only I were not rendered idiotic with exhaustion, would be able to ask him to explain ancient dyeing technique to the children. As it is, just manage to remember Rags’s dietary requirements and areas of neurosis before Rags, like a heat-seeking missile, discovers an ancient, shivering lurcher tucked in a drawer by the kitchen door and wages war. Try to kick Rags, miss, stub big toe, and in great pain mutter to Giles, ‘You sort everything out,’ and retreat to the car, tears welling, to curse and suppress waves of nausea. A few minutes pass and the sound of snarling terrier diminishes. Smalls and the children come out.

  ‘We’ve tied her up,’ says Giles. Smalls opens my door and hands me a tiny brown bottle.

  ‘Basilicum,’ he says. ‘Pour a drop into your palms and inhale the aroma.’ A powerful Mediterranean odour fills the car, and I recognise it vaguely. ‘It’s basil, and it lifts you out of exhaustion and revitalises you after a hard day. People in offices should use it to get rid of sick office syndrome.’ Smalls has never said so many words to me; this is evidently a ruling passion. Try not to look disparaging, but evidently fail.

  ‘Just try it, you look as if you need a boost,’ he urges.

  ‘I will,’ I promise, and drive off rolling my eyes and having negative thoughts. Afternoon of much labour, including stacking logs which were delivered in our absence at Smalls’s, and block access to yard utterly. Why have they come? It’s summer. Who ordered them? Cannot be bothered to discover answers to these questions.

  Boys stay up late packing. Felix is taking twelve cuddly toys, two Beanos and half a packet of chocolate biscuits. Giles has tapes, Walkman, cricket magazine and bat. We watch the news and Sicily has a heatwave of monster proportions. More packing of sun cream, hats and water pistols follows. Wish and wish that I had followed my instincts and said no to Charles taking them away to ghastly caged oven of organised sports. Anxiety and exhaustion now making my legs ache; I fear that self-pity may be about to flood in. Suddenly remember basilicum. Sprinkle it about with vigour and inhale. Superb. Better than sex, as far as I can remember, and much easier to come by.

  August 15th

  Some strange impulse of masochism has placed me on the train with my three children and enough luggage to fill the Titanic. Car has gone for a rest cure with David, who promised to give it an MOT and fix the stereo. Hope he is to be trusted. The Beauty uses the opportunity, and the platform of the table, to perform a range of her finest kung fu noises and air chops before settling down to shred my newspaper. Felix, having mysteriously acquired batteries for his Gameboy, has become an automaton, and Giles wishes to spend all my money on the contents of the buffet trolley. Other passengers pretend not to look as The Beauty flicks the open end of a crisp packet around the carriage, and the contents whirl and settle like snowflakes on seats, briefcases, shoes and the floor. My longed-for plastic cup of coffee cools on the table across the aisle and I dare not even remove the lid in case of accident.

  Suddenly a grey-haired woman bears down upon us, her eyebrows snapped together in dreadful rage: ‘I can’t bear this.’

  I find this unreasonable. My children have made a mess, but they have not been fighting, swearing or even bickering. I bridle, but she brushes me aside.

  ‘My dear girl, you simply must have a chance to have your coffee. Let me hold your baby and you sit there for five minutes.’

  Thank God I didn’t speak. This is an angel disguised as someone’s mother-in-law. Tears of gratitude rush as she gestures to the seat across the aisle, and thrusts me towards it with the sports pages, all that is left of my paper. Plonking The Beauty next to the window with a toy, she takes my place, crunching her Liberty-print bottom onto the crisp-strewn seat, and says brightly, ‘Now then boys, let’s play I Spy.’

  Astonished, Giles and Felix comply. All tension dissolves in me, and has vanished utterly by the time I reach the end of the report of England’s tragic defeat in the Tour de France. The rest of the journey is accomplished in peace, The Beauty having fallen asleep on the table, clutching her kangaroo and surrounded by crisps and the little milk pots given out with tea and coffee.

  Charles meets us at Liverpool Street and is elegance epitomised, tall, straight-backed and immaculate in a pale suit. The army taught him to stand quite still, and seeing him before he sees us as we walk towards the head of the platform, am struck by how unusual this is in the rush and pause that is a crowd in a station. Helena only becomes visible when we are almost upon her, hopping from one little foot to the other, trying to see us over people’s heads. Like the angelic mother-in-law, she is wearing a Liberty-print dress.

  ‘Hello, Charles, hello, Helena. Gosh, what a nice dress, did you make it?’

  Why can I not manage to keep my mouth shut? And why, when I open it, does everything sound wrong? Fortunately the boys create a diversion by hugging Charles. He pats their heads feebly.

&nbs
p; The moment of parting is immediate. I am left by the entrance to the underground watching their backs as they head out through the station to their car and the drive to Heathrow. Had planned brilliant self-defence against the boys going, of pretending I had decided to send them to Scout camp. Thought this would protect me from heart-break of not going on holiday with them. But the back of Giles’s head, hair gleaming and nit-free, as he looks up to say something to Charles, Helena’s nod and Felix turning to wave at me are more than I can bear. They are a family. There they go, up the escalator in a family group. They are off on a family holiday. And I am not. Sit on my case sobbing into The Beauty’s neck while she pats my head and says ‘Aaaah.’

  August 17th

  In Belfast, in McDonald’s. Not a good place to relax; have to change The Beauty’s nappy by squatting on the floor of the ladies’ loo and making my knees into the changing mat. She likes this and lolls her head back, looking up the skirts of those washing their hands. Rose, Theo, The Beauty and I have just eaten three McChicken sandwiches and two Egg McMuffins and we feel a bit sick. Soon forget this in Mensa-level intelligence test of attempting to put hired baby seats into hired car, followed by equally challenging map-reading moment. Eventually we are on our way, heading to Donegal and our cottage on the beach. Tristan will be there when we arrive, having flown direct to a landing strip on the sand, from his meeting in Denmark yesterday.

  As soon as the babies fall asleep, Rose and I regress to teen-hood, with Joni Mitchell in the tape machine and much ground to cover in the fascinating parallel universe of film stars we have crushes on, make-up and clothes. Rose is driving, leaving me to guide us across to the west coast, which despite having no comprehension of left and right, I manage.

  Very underwhelmed by landscape, which is scattered with DIY bungalows and dour grey villages, until we cross the border and climb an uninviting hill to find Donegal billowing ahead of us, wild, empty and romantic. Narrow streams, boulder-ridden and gushing white water rise and vanish again into the hills and still black lochs lie cradled in valleys. The Beauty wakes as we are descending towards the sea, and she and Theo become raucous.

  ‘Ten minutes more,’ pleads Rose. ‘Do you think you can keep them happy?’

  I sing a medley of nursery rhymes, but fail to keep their attention. The Beauty hurls her toy mobile telephone at me, clonking me on the temple. ‘Ow,’ I shriek, and she bursts into tears. Theo tries to be brave, but as The Beauty reaches a crescendo, his lip crumples and he too wails. Mercifully, we spy a petrol station, and I leap out of the car and purchase many bribes and consolations. Rose shakes her head, watching in the mirror as Theo is corrupted with a square of chocolate.

  ‘The Beauty is so depraved,’ she sighs. ‘I suppose it’s having elder brothers. Theo’s never had sweets.’

  I try to rally her. ‘Never mind, he probably won’t like them much.’ Fortunately her eyes are on the road, so she misses Theo thrusting a fistful of marshmallows into his mouth, batting his long eyelashes and grinning.

  August 18th

  Have adapted with ease to fashionable life in cottage with boat as sofa, chairs fashioned from tyres and driftwood, and pretty well everything else hanging from big ropes slung about the beams. Lila would be impressed by simplicity of first-night supper of lobster and scallops, although she might not have drunk three bottles of wine and gone cavorting in silk-warm sea at midnight. Routine-bound motherhood has been hurled out of the window, and The Beauty and Theo stayed up until they fell asleep, curled together in the cushioned boat hull like the Lost Boys in Peter Pan.

  Tristan and Rose still not up although it is eleven, and the babies and I have examined a herd of cows, whose field ends in dilapidated hurdles a few yards from our back door. Boiling the kettle for The Beauty’s dawn bottle, I was taken aback to find a vast bovine face sniffing the window frame, shooting out a long black tongue at the steam marks on the glass. The Beauty and Theo spent half the morning hurling unsuitable items, including The Beauty’s bottle and Rose’s delicious turquoise embroidered slipper, into the cows’ field. Now they have moved round to the sea a few hundred yards in front of the house, and we have made two pilgrimages across the beach already. Theo squeals in delight, running naked into the waves, and The Beauty follows but sits down abruptly when the first breath of water covers her feet. This is baby paradise. Our cottage is just yards from the tide’s highest point, and the sea rolls back over hard wet sand, the colour and texture of fudge. Shallow pools form in pockets by boulders and the waves are delicate as lace, lapping baby ankles. Have huge fun paddling with Theo and The Beauty and can believe again that the boys are at Scout camp.

  August 21st

  A seaside holiday without Giles and Felix is weird, and am riddled with the conviction that I should be enjoying it more than I am. Emphasis much more on eating, and food is laid out like fabulous colour supplement spread. Tristan sees each meal as a chance to flex his creativity, and Rose and I do nothing but play with the babies, plan excursions we cannot be bothered to go on and paint our toenails. Today lunch is to be a picnic with bonfire near a tiny harbour further up the coast. Tristan has brought everything, and sends us off while he sets it all up. He wields his wooden spoon, camp as a television chef in his navy silk scarf and dreadful PVC apron with bosoms on it.

  ‘Go and look at the boats coming in for twenty minutes,’ he urges.

  Am very impressed; he gets full brownie points from me, despite his outfit.

  ‘God, you’re lucky, Rose, it must be amazing to have a husband who can do all this stuff.’

  Rose lifts Theo onto the low wall above the harbour so he can see the boats.

  ‘Well, it comes from his being power-crazed.’ She sounds resigned. ‘I sometimes wonder what I’m supposed to do. I’m not allowed to interfere with the cooking at all, or even buy the food for it. He does everything. He even picks flowers for the table. And he thinks doing it all on holiday and at weekends gives him the right to behave like a total slob the rest of the time. And as for that apron, he wears it because it annoys me. No other reason. Ask him.’

  Gaze out at knife-edge horizon, beneath which the sea is crisp navy blue and above which palest clouds scud about, and try to imagine being annoyed by a husband who does everything but who wears PVC bosoms, when view is eclipsed by hands over my eyes.

  ‘Well hi there, gorgeous girls. What’s grooving?’ Gawain is standing behind me. Rose jumps up to welcome him.

  ‘Gawain, you’re here. How was your journey? That little plane is terrifying, isn’t it?’

  She is not a bit surprised to see him, even though she doesn’t know him as well as I do, and I wonder if I have forgotten that I knew he was coming.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here, Gawain?’ Gawain has expression of joy writ large at the sensation his arrival has caused.

  ‘I ran into Tristan rollerblading in the park, and he said that you lot would be here for a week, so I arranged with him to come and surprise you, Venetia.’

  ‘Well you have.’ Rose is glaring at me; I realise that I sound rude and graceless. Relax lemon face by hugging The Beauty tightly as we walk back to the picnic.

  Gawain is an exotic addition to our party, and I covet his clothes: his shirt is lobster pink and crinkly like cheesecloth and his trousers are purple velvet. He is on excitable form, and dashes to the pub for beers to add to the picnic. We expect him to return in moments saying the bar fell silent when he entered. He does not return.

  Am sent to fetch him, and find him playing darts with two old fishermen whom he has just bought pints of Guinness. In Norfolk his appearance would stop traffic, but in Donegal he is accepted and enjoyed. He finishes a rollerblading anecdote, and, gathering a box of beer cans from behind the door, returns with me to Rose and Tristan.

  The picnic is prawns, shoals of pink curls matching Gawain’s shirt. The Beauty enjoys them hugely, especially when she learns to pull the prawn from its shell, and she eats eleven of them. We return to the hous
e and The Beauty and I collapse in the swinging boat and sleep all afternoon.

  Wake up refreshed and discover Gawain pretending to be domesticated and podding peas on the doorstep. He passes me an envelope. ‘This came yesterday, and I wanted to tell you.’

  Snatch it and tear it open, heart banging because for no reason, am convinced it is bad news about the boys. It is from New York, so can relax, but am too traumatised to be able to read the whole page of close typing.

  ‘I can’t face reading it, Gawain, what does it say?’

  He returns the letter to his pocket and grins saying, ‘We won the portrait prize for the show next month.’

  Much clapping and jumping up and down pleases him, but I can tell I am still not reacting properly. Must show more interest.

  ‘Who is the portrait of? Have you got a photograph of it? Will it make Normal for Norfolk more valuable? Speaking of which, where is my painting, Gawain?’

  Gawain groans dramatically. ‘Christ, you’re a halfwit, Venetia. Have you really forgotten? It’s you. Remember, I took some photographs of you in Norfolk for it, but I haven’t got a snap of it here, I’m afraid.’

  Amazing, delightful news. Surely this must be how Miss World feels, but better, as I did not have to wear high heels and a swimming costume. Rose appears from the beach like a mermaid, wrapped in a silver-green sarong, hair dripping down her back, skin glowing from sun and the sea. She looks exactly as I should like to look when emerging from the waves. I beckon her over to share the glad tidings about the portrait, and we caper about screeching, ‘Hooray!’ until Tristan brings champagne and olives to the doorstep. Am becoming increasingly at ease with this grown-up and civilised way of life. Wonder if I can recreate it at home without Tristan. Doubt it.

  Second glass of champagne and Tristan is becoming ever more my ideal man. He has persuaded The Beauty and Theo to lie down in the boat sofa and is singing Bob Marley to them. About to suggest to Rose that we share him when notice his long yellow toenails for the first time. And he burps at the table to annoy Rose. And, of course, there is the apron. Gawain is crawling around in the sea singing a shanty and resembling a Labrador. It is hard to imagine a holiday romance with him, let alone a life. Why am I even bothering to think pointless thoughts about putting a man back into my life?