Summertime

by Raffaella Barker

  The auctioneer opens the cage, reaches in to grab the occupant and holds the hapless creature up for a quick last-minute look before beginning his melodious bidding murmur. Giles looks at me.

  I nod, weakly, relieved he isn’t attempting to buy the ferrets, and whisper, extremely generously as I perceive it, ‘But not more than five pounds.’

  ‘OK.’ He hoists The Beauty on to his shoulders to wait for the bidding to open.

  The auctioneer, a fellow parent at The Beauty’s nursery school, grins in an avuncular fashion, wipes his face with a red spotted handkerchief and begins, ‘Three-fifty, who’ll give me three-fifty, three-twenty then.’

  The Beauty’s hand flies up and she yells, ‘Me. I’m doing it. Shuddup Giles.’

  The auctioneer winks at her and accepts her bid, and we are off: ‘Starting at three-twenty with the young lady, three-twenty, three-twenty, thank you, three-fifty, three-fifty, three-seventy, four.’ A thin man with blurred pale skin and yellow dyed hair is bidding against her.

  The Beauty glares balefully at him, and Felix tugs my sleeve to whisper, ‘That man looks like a banana.’

  Felix and I begin to snort with laughter, distracting those around us and, most fortunately, the banana man, who misses the final bid. ‘It’s four-four, four-fifty, five-five, five – any advance on five pounds? Five pounds then, selling at five pounds … sold to the young lady.’ The auctioneer whacks his hammer against the cage and moves on.

  We stand, flooded with euphoria, looking at our purchase. Bunny has resolutely turned her face to the corner of her cage and shows no sign of wishing to meet us.

  ‘It’s called Fat Rabbit,’ says The Beauty. ‘But it’s a bit lonely. Shall we get another one? Right now?’

  ‘She’s right, Mum, it’ll be lonely on its own. We should have two, you know. There are some really sweet lop-eared ones just coming up now.’ Felix could be a rabbit social worker with the level of concern he is displaying. I am completely taken in by the pleading, serious expressions on all three children’s faces, but make a last-ditch attempt to save myself.

  ‘Who will do the mucking out? Who will feed them and gather hogweed every day?’

  ‘We will, Mummy, honestly. We’ve always wanted some rabbits,’ says Felix.

  ‘But you never take the dogs out,’ I remind them.

  ‘We’re older now,’ coaxes Giles, ‘and anyway, you never ask us to take the dogs out. We look after Gertie.’

  ‘Well that’s because Gertie likes doing what you do. She even eats cereal with milk and sugar now.’

  ‘No she doesn’t, she eats—’

  ‘Look, look, what a sweet poppet rabbit,’ shrieks The Beauty, pointing as a small grey lop-eared bunny is hoisted from its cage. The bidding has already started, but Giles and Felix insinuate themselves like smoke into the tight-pressed crowd around the auctioneer. They push The Beauty forwards and she shoots up her hand as the bidding reaches three-fifty. Praying they will stop at five, and quite unable to squeeze myself past anyone to be near them, I hang around at the edge, trying to see over a dirty baseball cap to where the children are.

  ‘Sold, to the young lady and her brothers for nine pounds,’ shouts the auctioneer. I hear him in disbelief. Nine pounds? They can’t have bought a rabbit for nine pounds, it’s absurd. I told them they could only go up to five pounds. What are they thinking of? I raise my hand to try to lodge a complaint, but the children emerge at my side, lit with excitement and clutching three small grey rabbits.

  ‘Fat Rabbit can be yours, Mum. We’re having one of these each. And there are two more in the cage, which I thought we should give to The Beauty’s nursery when term starts again,’ says Felix.

  ‘That was why it was nine pounds,’ explains Giles, stroking the ears of the rabbit disappearing into his crooked elbow. ‘Actually it’s a real bargain. Five for nine pounds is less than two pounds each.’

  Six rabbits. How ghastly. ‘Can’t we just leave a few of them here?’ I ask hopefully. ‘I’m sure some nice person would rescue them.’

  Giles and Felix both look shocked. ‘Mum, you couldn’t abandon them in the saleroom, could you?’ asks Felix.

  Have to do deep breathing and struggle to reach a higher spiritual plane in order not to snap back, ‘Yes, I bloody well could.’

  Beaten down, and keen to leave before we purchase any other life-changing errors, I meekly suggest that we take them home to settle them in.

  August 30th

  The rabbit house is palatial. Giles suddenly remembered his museum, untouched for several months and now home to several mice and probably a few rat squatters too. The construction, cocooned by cobwebs and dust, consists of four chest-high walls made by David and painted to look like a Roman temple, with glass cases found in a junk yard propping them up from the inside. The rabbits were installed yesterday and immediately vanished behind the artefacts we gave them to play with. The boys too vanished, muttering something about skateboarding into the village, and promising vaguely to do the rabbits later. The same has happened today.

  Take comfort from the fact that The Beauty is still interested, and we have had the bunnies at home for a whole twenty-four hours. She will not come out of their run, but is sitting on a small chair she has dragged in, breathing heavily and looking around for rabbits to boss. She spies a cottontail behind the tattered Mary Poppins umbrella that was one of the feebler museum exhibits and shrieks, ‘Aha! Found you. Don’t worry, sweet poppets, I won’t tell anyone.’ She bends forward to talk to them, hands clasped in her lap in the manner of a playgroup leader. Three of the rabbits hop over to her and sit up on their back legs. One places a tentative paw on The Beauty’s knee. Am really coming round to the sweet little fur bundles. Am sure I have read somewhere that it is good for stress to have something to stroke. I shall have a rabbit as my executive toy, and stroking will start immediately. It works. Ten minutes of calm rabbit-stroking and I am ready to face anything.

  Telephone my mother and ask her to come and oversee the children.

  ‘I’ve got to go and see Hedley, and I’m sure they won’t want to come, given their views, so I wondered if you would like to drive over and let them show you their new rabbits?’

  ‘Rabbits, how awful,’ she says. ‘I expect the dogs will eat them. God, no. Don’t take the children with you. Absolutely not,’ she adds with feeling. ‘Have you spoken to David, though? I really think you should.’

  Surprised to hear myself snap back with a blatant lie, ‘I know what I am doing.’

  She ignores me. ‘All right, I’ll come. But I will not hold the rabbits. I hate rabbits. I’m not gathering any dandelions for them, or putting water into those awful bottle things they have.’

  ‘No, no, the children will do that. See you later.’

  ‘When have your children ever looked after their animals?’ she retorts before hanging up.

  Horrible hourglass sensation of stomach sinking into shoes has faded now, thanks to bunny-cuddling session. The Beauty is busy burying Barbie in her sandpit, the boys are not back from the village and I am able to arrange myself in the hammock with the newly developed photographs I collected this morning. Hammock creaks in protest but does not give way, and the dappled canopy of the tree is soothing. Tear open the pack of photographs in happy anticipation of reliving the camping trip, and instead find myself staring at David. David, very brown, his eyes clear silver-grey, grinning broadly in front of a log cabin. Goose pimples rise on my arms and my heart leaps thumping into my throat as I flick through the snaps, not stopping to look at any one picture properly because I so desperately want to have seen them all, to know what is in there. Reach the end and sigh; apart from the first one, they are all of monkeys, parrots and other jungle miscellanea. Recall a postcard arriving some time ago rolled around a film. These must be the pictures he sent the boys of life in the jungle. Throw the photographs on to the ground and lie back with the David picture in my hand. Am very shaken by seeing him where I did not expect him. Or
am I shaken by seeing him at all? Had forgotten the electric effect of his smile, and the particular way he inhabits a crumpled white shirt.

  ‘Mummy, what you doin’?’ Brought back to earth by the piercing gaze of The Beauty, and find that I have the photograph almost resting on my nose, so closely am I examining it. Hurl it to one side and hug The Beauty tight, making her squeal. While she waves her toes and coos, I reach my arm out in an impossible stretch and grab the photograph, stuffing it in the pocket of my skirt. My mother appears, fanning herself with a straw hat.

  ‘Just go,’ she sighs. I go.

  ‘Who is he smiling at? Who took the picture?’ These questions create the rhythm for the short journey to Hedley’s house, and wrestling with them occupies every scrap of ingenuity I possess. Sniffing vaguely, I park my car, wondering whether anyone ever takes Hedley’s rubbish out for him, or if it always smells like this here at the end of the summer.

  Hedley struts out of the front door, shouting into a telephone, gesticulating wildly. He sees me, his gestures become more expansive to include me, and his brow tilts up to the left. The brow appears to have got bushier in the days since I last saw him. Mobile, as it is now, due to the frenzied conversation he is having, it reminds me of those fluffy neon worms on transparent wire that they sell in joke shops.

  ‘Well get it moved today or he’s toast,’ yells Hedley, and jabbing at the off button he hurls the phone into the heart of the vast heap of manure I have finally noticed.

  ‘Oh, God, no wonder it smells here,’ I exclaim. ‘Still, it’s useful for the garden, although I wouldn’t normally start doing mine this early. It’s not as big as I thought it would be, though. Have you got him to take some away again?’

  This is the wrong thing to say. Hedley’s eyes bulge, and he is about to scream at me when the phone begins to trill from the depths of the muck heap.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Hedley yells, charging like a tiny bull at the muck heap, and burrowing into its steamy heart. He finds the phone without much difficulty, but the ringing has stopped. Wiping it on his trousers he advances towards me, clearly expecting to kiss me.

  ‘Now Venetia, tell me what you’ve been doing, dear heart,’ he beams. I dart backwards behind my car, trying to make light of my desire to escape.

  ‘Oh goodness,’ I gabble, ‘I think you need a lovely glass of something to cool off, don’t you? Let’s go and look in the fridge.’ From behind the car it is a simple stride in through the front door, and I am on my way to the kitchen, Hedley in pursuit, smelling fulsome and delivering a monologue against lawyers who insist on sending weedy letters instead of allowing action.

  ‘… And I told them I meant it, and I am prepared to tie myself to the railings for my principles,’ he fulminates, leaning against the sink, shedding crumbs of well-rotted manure around his feet. The kitchen has the celestial and yet clinical smell and appearance of a room which has just had the benefit of a cleaning lady’s bleach-and-mop technique, and the aroma of Hedley is unbearable in it, as indeed is the sight of him coated in pig sewage in this pure, contemplative space. Pour him a glass of iced water from a jug in the fridge and open the kitchen door into the garden, taking a reviving gulp of air before turning back to him.

  ‘Come on. Let’s go and sit outside.’

  Hedley follows me into the garden, mumbling, ‘Why on earth can we not just stay in one place?’ I pretend not to hear him. I sit down at a table brushed by the skeletal leaves and flowers of a herbaceous border, which is in collapse now until autumn.

  ‘Actually, this bed could be dug over now, you know,’ I say brightly, but Hedley is not taking the bait.

  ‘There’s something on your mind,’ he says brusquely.

  With the sense of stepping out over the edge of Cromer Cliffs, I shut my eyes and hear myself answer, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t marry you.’

  Am actually quite amazed, as I had thought I was coming to confess that I had not yet told David I was getting married, and that I must do so before Hedley and I could fix a date, so would he mind waiting a bit. I was going to talk about slowing everything down, allowing time for adjustment and then maybe a wedding next year sometime. And yet here I am, saying it all over again.

  ‘We’re not suited, Hedley, and my children would drive you insane.’

  He swallows, shakes his head, and clasps his hands tightly together. He coughs.

  ‘I don’t think they would,’ he says quietly.

  This is terrible. He and I are stuck in his garden, with shock and silence between us and the sun burning angry through the trellising and on to Hedley’s face. I do not know what to say, or how to leave. My sense of relief is overwhelming. Part of me would like to leap up and dance around the garden, but I also have a sense of hot shame at causing this mess. I stand up, and the heat on my skin breaks into dots of perspiration. My throat closes in claustrophobia. I must leave. I am shaking, and my mouth is dry.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Hedley. I’m sorry,’ I mutter, and without touching him, I turn and walk up through the garden to the green door in the wall which leads to the front drive and my car.

  August 31st

  Drain-rodding is not usually an evil of the summer, but this morning finds me lying in the yard with my arm down a manhole, wiggling the rods in what feels like treacle. I am tentatively enjoying my freedom, but am wondering if I will ever have a moment to think about it properly. The weather has changed abruptly, and a brisk cool wind is catching the yellowed leaves and twirling the first of them off the trees and down on to the lawn. The Beauty, appropriately clad for wet work in her rubber ring and dark glasses but no clothes, is helping me, oblivious to the mottled blue of her limbs. Two of the rabbits are galumphing around us. Giles glides past on his skateboard, faintly interested in my work, and surprised to see the rabbits, whose existence he has still not acknowledged since their return home from the auction.

  ‘What are they doing here?’

  Scrabble to my knees to make the most of a chance for an acid riposte.

  ‘You bid for them at the auction,’ I say sweetly, ‘and now they live here. They have two meals a day, non-stop water and a hogweed delivery during the morning.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he says vaguely, and scooping one foot along the ground he skims away towards Felix, who is sitting on the doorstep strapping pads to his knees. ‘Come on Felix, you don’t need those.’

  ‘I know I don’t, but I like ‘em,’ Felix grins back, ‘and I need to wear them before we go to Dad tomorrow, in case they don’t fit and I have to get him to take them back.’

  They swoop off down the road towards the village, their voices a low murmur, occasionally amplified when one makes the other laugh. I watch them until they slide round the corner, and return to the drains, grinning goofily with pleasure at their friendship.

  Am under a spell of love for them at the moment, which makes me oddly benign in view of their useless animal husbandry. I just don’t care. They were both so gentle and solicitous when I told them I was not marrying Hedley, that I wept. They hung around me, hugging and offering to bring me Rescue Remedy, and I howled.

  ‘Mum, you can still change your mind if you really want to, you know,’ said Giles, passing me a handkerchief after a couple of minutes of my sniffing sobs. ‘We’ll manage.’

  And in his determined voice I could hear his fragility and his strength, and I wept even more.

  ‘We’ll find you someone else,’ said Felix, stroking my limp hand against his cheek. ‘There’s bound to be someone nice, a bit like David but here more of the time.’ He sighed. ‘It would be really good if David could just come back, actually.’

  Sobbed for several moments more, during which time Giles kicked Felix, grimacing and trying to prevent me from hearing him as he whispered, ‘Don’t go on about David.’

  Recovered by stages, until I could sit up and smile at the two of them and The Beauty anxiously watching me. I blew my nose and took a deep breath. ‘We’re fine on our own, aren’t we?
’

  And in the same way that uttering the words ‘I can’t marry you’ to Hedley informed me and set my fate on a new course I was not aware of seeking, asking this of the children, watching their vigorous agreement, confirmed it for me. We are fine. We will continue to be fine and I am free, and both lucky and happy to be with my children.

  The Beauty potters by my side and I experience a real sense of empowerment and fulfilment that is increased by the removal from the drain of one shoe (The Beauty’s), one rubber gnome (the neighbours’), and a pair of sunglasses which I know were once mine, and very expensive. Glugging noises and a foul smell suggest that the drain is now functioning properly, and in triumph The Beauty and I remove to the bathroom for a deep-cleansing session. This takes longer than expected, as The Beauty insists on washing my hair for me, and it is only as we come downstairs again much later, that I remember the rabbits. They are loose. So are the dogs.

  Empowerment splinters, dread surfaces and I race into the garden expecting genocide. However, a miracle has been worked. All three dogs are lying under a tree panting, flat out on their sides, dead to the world. The rabbits, who had been assisting us with the drain-rodding, are hopping on the grass beneath the washing line, looking like exemplary Beatrix Potter rabbits, perfect in every way. The others are snug in their Roman palace, with no murder by the Senate or other high-ranking notaries having taken place at all. Adrenalin returns to normal levels and, having put the rabbits away, The Beauty and I return to the house to pack for their weekend with Charles and Helena, the first since the not-to-be-spoken-of holiday.

  September

  September 1st

  Charles comes early to collect the children. Am just performing an experiment with some pairs of silk long johns I have dyed. Inspired by The Beauty’s sartorial genius, I am trying to make soft pants to wear as alternative leggings or pedal pushers. Have washed these to shrink them, and have paid Giles and Felix a pound to model them for me while I decide how to adapt them.