Summertime

by Raffaella Barker

  June 15th

  A taxi pulls up just as I am about to collect The Beauty from nursery. It contains Gertie, her cage and a bill from the parrot hotel for seventy-eight pounds plus the forty-seven-pound taxi fare.

  ‘Hello darling,’ chirps Gertie, swaying rhythmically in the passenger seat. ‘I love this one,’ she adds as the vintage-tunes channel on the taxi radio delivers the opening bars of Andy Williams singing ‘Music To Watch Girls By’.

  Without hesitation I adopt a gormless expression and a thick Scandinavian accent. The driver, scratching his head and reading his directions, is no match for my Norwegian trawlerman voice, and is alarmed by my expression as I approach his side of the car, leering horribly.

  ‘I dunno what they’re playing at, sending parrots all around the countryside,’ he says, hopeless acceptance writ large on his countenance. ‘And this one hasn’t shut up since we left St Neots. It’s got quite a vocabulary too. I reckon it’s spent time in the nick or somewhere else pretty rough.’ He sighs then says, ‘Course, you don’t know what I’m saying, do you, love? I think I’ll take it back to the pet hotel. They’ve got an account with us, so there won’t be a problem with the fare that way.’

  Spirits soar for the first time since I dumped David as I watch Gertie accelerate off down the road again in her taxi, still chatting away. The last thing I hear as they round the bend out of sight is her fruity wolf whistle, and her appreciative squawk to the taxi driver, ‘Nice pants darling.’

  While I am gloating over my quick-witted escape, Charles rings to say he would like the children next weekend.

  ‘I’m surprised you can remember what they look like,’ I remark sourly.

  In the gap that follows I hear him buttoning his lip before replying, ‘Don’t turn into an old cat, Venetia, you can’t afford to.’ Am gobsmacked by this, but unable to think of a riposte because he is so right. Relationships going wrong on all levels now. Have fallen out with everyone except The Beauty, and if the boys find out that the parrot doesn’t need to be in quarantine, and worse still, I have turned her from the door, they will never speak to me again. Must now get on, as The Beauty awaits. Macaroni cheese does not make itself and the boys will be back from school in half an hour.

  June 17th

  Children depart, leaving me wretched. Had forgotten how awful it is when they go away with Charles, as they have not been for months. The Beauty appears not to know who he is, and when he invites her to climb into his immaculate people carrier, she shrinks and clings to my legs.

  ‘I will not go, no, I will not,’ she says stoutly, but is won over by Giles who rustles a packet of sweets from the other side of her car seat. Charles slams the doors and rubs his hands together, smirking like a slave trader with his cargo.

  ‘I expect you’ll be putting your feet up and relaxing for the next couple of days,’ he says to me, managing to make it sound like a gross act of self-gratification, akin to eating forty doughnuts. Manage to smile and make jolly thumbs-up signs as they glide down the drive and away, but when I walk back into the kitchen, the clock ticks loud and slow.

  June 18th

  Get through the day by cleaning out two garden sheds and making a bonfire. Am as manic as Rumpelstiltskin about my business and only stop at teatime because the dogs have joined me in the garden and are taking it in turns to trip me up in order to remind me to feed them. Go into house to do so, and become afraid of the yawning evening ahead. Cannot face doing internal spring cleaning, so hover for a while, reading cereal packets on the kitchen table and eating biscuits from the tuck shop the children have created in a turret of Lowly’s castle. Time crawls, and am finally forced to watch television.

  Enjoy Baywatch hugely. There are mad-looking plastic crocodiles wrestling with butch men, and girls with bosoms that jut like cliffs. Everyone is the colour of maple syrup with proper blonde hair, not former blonde hair like mine. Make a mental note to buy colour-enhancing shampoo next time I am out, as it will be much cheaper than highlights at the hairdresser, and there is no occasion to merit a big spend on hair at present. Baywatch ends while I am thinking about my hair, so I never discover what happened to the crocodile in the lifeguard’s bath. Speculate fruitlessly for ten minutes but give up, and am disappointed to find that the evening has still hardly begun. Telephone my mother to moan, but she is not there. Peta the basket-weaver answers the telephone, and offers me a place in her all-female drumming circle.

  ‘We start at eight with meditation for half an hour. Do come, but leave your ego at home,’ she titters. ‘And do be sure to wear hemp or hessian, we try to be reasonably medieval at all times.’

  How does my mother put up with her? She must be hypnotised, as I seem to be.

  ‘Let me just see if there’s anything on the calendar,’ I mutter, dropping the telephone and charging into the kitchen, brain whirring uselessly. Stare at the wall for a while experiencing ebb and flow of adrenalin but still no excuses, before finally turning to the calendar in a vague hope of escape being offered through its pages. Today’s date leers out at me, and I gaze at it with horror. I am already going out. Hedley has asked me to supper. How can I have forgotten? Should I try to get out of it? I can’t. Anyway, I need something to do. He said he would be on his way back from somewhere and would pick me up at seven-thirty. He is presumably hosting a soigné dinner party. It is seven now and I have crescents of filth under my nails and cobwebs in my hair from the barn-clearing. Must get soignée right now. It is only when I am in the bath that I remember Peta, and the dangling telephone.

  Hedley’s car heater is whirring as I step in, even though the rain of this afternoon has evaporated into milky mist and the air outside is warm.

  ‘It’s stuck on,’ Hedley yells above the roar of the heater. ‘You’ll have to keep your window open.’ Am glad to do so, as a very natural aroma is seeping towards me from Hedley, and a dead rabbit lolls next to me on the seat. Hedley reaches to remove it and it thuds to the floor, disappearing beneath mounds of newspaper and old crisp packets.

  ‘I’ve been doing silage,’ he yells, noticing my shrinking away. ‘The dog caught that just before we came in.

  I’m going to give it to the owl-sanctuary man in the village.’

  ‘Make sure you don’t forget, or your car will become a midden,’ is my only contribution to the conversation. It doesn’t matter, though; Hedley is in high spirits, and hums a bit of La Traviata as we go, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in time. The journey to his house from mine involves a thread of the smallest lanes, high-banked with corkscrew bends and a small unbridged ford. Wood pigeons clap a retreat from the road outside Crumbly as we slow to turn up the drive; they flutter through low-lying mist to vanish into the dusk creeping in from the distant fringe of woodland.

  Hedley unlocks the house and vanishes to change, and I wander through into the hall and on to the sitting room. The house smells of of beeswax and lilac and order; making my way slowly around the books and pictures, I try to imagine what it would be like to lead an existence in such a rarefied atmosphere. Am sure I could become accustomed to it. Peer into the dining room to see how many people are coming tonight, but the room is pitch-black with shutters and curtains barring every chink of light. Clearly this evening is one of those kitchen suppers I always wear the wrong clothes for. Pause to inhale a fragrant bunch on the dresser, and admire the taste of the Constance Spry disciple who has put pale mauve lupins in a jug with flaming orange roses and red-throated honeysuckle. The smell is intoxicating, and I float on it into the kitchen in search of a drink – nectar will probably be available, or some other ambrosial juice. Cloud nine musings suffer a setback in the kitchen, and Hedley following me into the room hears my exclamation.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asks nervously, wiping the front of his shirt as if afraid jelly or gravy has planted itself there. Tear my eyes away from the kitchen table which has been laid with candles, more roses and honeysuckle and two places.

  ‘Just us?’ I
say brightly, and Hedley’s one brow, groomed upstairs to a fine satin-black sheen, flattens like a Plimsoll line, belying his nonchalant answer.

  ‘Oh yes, I just wanted to talk to you about Tamsin, and see if we could organise a pony for Giles to use a bit more.’

  ‘Well that’s very nice, but I have to be home for my babysitter by eleven, she’s got toothache,’ I say, with no planning and no blushing at all. Breathtakingly successful lie. I could have used similar on the basket-weaver and would like to write it down so as to practise the crisp yet regretful tone. Hedley accepts this non sequitur without comment. Hugely relieved, I slug back my first glass of wine and become very overexcited. Half of me is shocked and nervous to be having dinner alone with a man in his house, and half of me is enjoying the fantasy of moving in and becoming chatelaine of Crumbly and never having to write another corporate brochure or plunge the sink myself again. Hah! That would show David. Hah! More wine and malevolence and revenge begin to occupy my whole mind. It would serve David right if he came back to collect his things and we were all living here in the lap of luxury. The fourth glass of wine has me tittering and smirking, talking non-stop, secure in my alcohol-fuelled belief that I am marvellously clever and very attractive. Hedley’s eyebrow begins to slant towards the ceiling as coffee succeeds food and wine continues to flow. Fortunately for self-preservation, the beeper on my watch, which I set in sobriety earlier, goes off at half past ten. Leap up from my seat as if I have been scalded, as does Hedley, who starts running around the kitchen flapping a tea towel.

  ‘It must be a smoke alarm. We must have caused a fire somewhere. Quick, open the window. No, on second thoughts don’t. Keep it shut, and shut all the doors.’

  Like a clockwork toy he whirrs manically about the room, bouncing off doors and walls, gradually losing impetus until he comes to a halt in front of me, an arrested expression on his face.

  ‘You made that noise,’ he says accusingly.

  ‘Yes. I did. I’ve got to go home now.’

  ‘Ahh yes, the babysitter. Come on then.’ Frowning and over-revving the car, he drives me home in silence. Luckily left a few lights on at my house, and am out of the car almost before Hedley has stopped at the gate, so desperate am I that he should not realise that there is no babysitter and no children. Cannot rid myself of the notion that my situation, with family away, is more provocative than that of a woman who lives alone all the time. Why is this?

  June 19th

  A Sunday morning of unsurpassed loveliness, making lounging in the hammock imperative, after which I shall of course set about accomplishing some of the goals I set myself for the weekend. Have actually not got around to doing anything at all and it is already midday. Minna and Desmond, still rose-tinted and holding hands all the time, have just been over. Sticky moment when Desmond said, ‘So is David ever coming back, or has he succumbed to a jungle girl?’

  But managed to answer in similarly light vein, ‘Oh, I dare say he’ll turn up to collect his dog if nothing else.’ And we all laughed. Surely that counts as having told them? And I didn’t cry.

  Spend the afternoon nurturing small seedlings and planting them in rows in my vegetable patch. Straight lines astonishingly difficult to achieve, but vital to the zigzag pattern I am planning for my parsley edging. End up making most satisfying implement with two balls of string on sticks. It looks charming, like a couple of toffee apples with a thread of toffee linking them, and has the extra merit of being free, whereas the one in Horty Hortus costs forty-nine pounds.

  Wind billows warm yet persistent from about three o’clock, and by mid-afternoon rain is pelting down on my bedraggled seedlings. Put my only plastic cloche over the zinnias, having reasoned that as I have only one row of them, they need to be saved, and retire to bed to watch the clock until the children return.

  June 20th

  Blazing heatwave causes ill temper all round. Felix excavates an old stick of chewing gum from the floor of the car on the way to school, and finding it disgusting, attempts to spit it out of the window. Of course, he misses.

  ‘It’s gone down the side, Mum,’ he yells.

  ‘Well get it out.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Shrill crescendo is muffled as he dives between the seats, thwacking my ear on the way. Wish I had a car with a glass partition to protect me from abuse and noise pollution of my children. Bad mood exacerbated by arrival at school, late, and the sight of a group of mothers who have miraculously already acquired suntans and uncrumpled summer dresses and the right shoes. Cannot face going over to them, and doubt that I would make it anyway, as my summer skirt has lost all its buttons and is staying up thanks to The Beauty’s dressing-gown cord. My shoes are last summer’s plimsolls, which I thought were fine when I put them on this morning, but now a horrible smell emanates from them and if I move my toes, their environment is revealed to be squelchy. Make do with a cheery wave and zoom away, hoping I look as though I am very busy. Notice in the rear-view mirror that the one in strawberry pink with freckles sprinkled prettily across her nose is gesturing madly at me, but with iron discipline persuade myself not to be paranoid. Much later, after visiting the village shop and the post office and having a lengthy discussion about strawberries with Mrs Organic Veg delivery, I go to the loo and discover that paranoia was spot on. Felix’s chewing gum is lodged on my shoulder like a small but deformed cousin of the parrot Gertie and no one has told me.

  June 23rd

  Should not be complacent, but am beginning to relax about Gertie. The children enjoyed their visit to her at the weekend, and Charles, who can do no end of selling at the parrot hotel, is delighted to take them there whenever they want. But the boys are perplexed.

  ‘Why does she keep saying, “Call a taxi and take me home”?’ asks Felix. ‘Does she mean here, or does she mean the jungle?’

  ‘The jungle,’ I say emphatically. ‘Was she coughing?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Oh, they cough in the later stages of quarantine,’ I lie glibly.

  June 25th

  Summer morning of spectacular loveliness and we have breakfast in the garden in straw hats. It is Saturday, and my mother is staying. She and I are reading the papers while Giles and Felix are squashed into the same chair reading an email from David. I suppose I can’t stop him sending them, but I have stopped using the computer myself to avoid the anguish of reading his missives. Giles and Felix do it all on their own now. The Beauty has absorbed the scholarly mood of the morning and has found an old copy of Vogue in the log basket. This she hugs to her chest while dragging her small orange chair over to sit next to the boys.

  ‘Is it good news?’ she asks politely as she settles herself with her magazine open but upside down and sliding off her lap. Giles glances at her and grimaces.

  ‘Mum, can’t you do something about The Beauty? She’s getting worse and worse. Look at her.’

  I look. She puts her chin up and turns deliberately away.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ she orders. ‘I won’t have it.’ She has been very keen on headgear since Desmond and Minna’s wedding, and today she has chosen a lime-green tutu, upside down and pushed back like a hairband on her head. This is worn with flower-shaped sunglasses and a swimming costume.

  ‘Very Busby Berkeley,’ says my mother, lowering her newspaper to look, ‘but I don’t see what’s wrong with her, Giles; she looks odd, I agree, but she always looks odd.’

  Find this a bit rich myself, coming from the High Priestess of Odd, who today is sporting an orange turban underneath her straw hat, and a long purple velvet skirt, even though it is baking hot. Am about to say so when am engulfed from behind by Felix, who puts his hands over my eyes for a fragment of a second, then dances off shouting, ‘I’ve got a joke, David’s sent me a new joke. It’s totally cool.’ He rushes back and slumps on the grass at my feet, and shoots a mischievous glance to see if Granny is listening. ‘Mum, Mum, why does Tarzan wear plastic pants?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe to save on l
aundry?’

  Withering look accompanies the answer: ‘No, silly. He wears them to keep his nuts jungle-fresh.’

  ‘Felix!’ Of course Granny was listening, and manages a scandalised expression which no one pays any attention to, as we are all giggling stupidly.

  ‘I like nuts,’ coos The Beauty.

  Pick up the printed-out email from David as it flurries across the grass towards my newly weeded rose bed. He has drawn a cartoon of Tarzan flitting from tree to tree in his plastic pants with an arrow pointing to the trapezes.

  I make these, he has written. I will send you one. Gertie will love to swing on it with you.

  Scrumple the paper up and hurl it on to the breakfast table where it rolls into the butter dish. Has David stopped to think how I will hang his stupid trapeze vine? Or is he secretly mailing a Tarzan, complete with rubber knickers, to do it for me? Doubt somehow that he has thought that far ahead, and comfort myself with the near-certain knowledge that he will never get round to it.

  The hens approach the table, groaning thoughtfully, and fix us with the unwavering gaze of the gormless. Wonder what gormful would look like as I retreat into the cool of the house and await the post. This promises to be most satisfying, as am expecting some new ribbon samples.

  June 27th

  Ribbon, ordered by old-fashioned telephone method, arrives three days late and is all wrong. Am despairing of ever getting my new career off the ground, and have nothing at all left to wear, as all my clothes have been trimmed and sold. Enjoy futuristic fantasy of self aged eighty with gnarled fingers trying to stitch a toothpaste trim on to a neoprene cardigan. Am about to give up on work for the day to follow my instincts into the garden for carrot and radish work and a little rose-tying, when toothpaste notion grabs me again. It could be great. So could neoprene. Especially for surfers. Draw some hopeless pictures, look at them. Realise they are hopeless and so go and get out The Beauty’s Fashion Fuzzy Felts.