Green Grass (20 page)

Laura can't stop herself saying proudly, ‘Zeus has his own front door.'

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 but 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.

‘Found your house guest in distress,' he smirks, turning to help Gina over the tiny step up to the path, clearly much too difficult for her to manage alone, and taking some time to remove his appreciative gaze from her cleavage.

‘Darling Laura, I just couldn't manage to catch her until these charming men appeared.' She bats her eyelashes at Hedley and murmurs to Laura, ‘Honestly, everyone in the country is so ruggedly handsome, especially your delicious brother. Why didn't you tell me about him?' Laura stares, incredulous, but there is no guile in Gina's expression, just good old-fashioned come-hitherance, and it is directed at Hedley. Amazing. Laura has no time to think more because the garden is suddenly full of people as Guy and then Tamsin follow Gina in through the gate,
and Fred and Shane, liberally covered in bits of twig and leaf, abseil on a frayed rope down from the big oak tree.

Laura has a sense of her whole being unravelling from the top of her head downwards as everybody begins shouting their business at once:

‘Mum, Mum, Zeus got his head stuck down a rabbit hole in that field and I didn't dare pull him by his legs in case—'

‘Laura, that goat is impossible! It tried to eat my bra, thank God your brother came to my rescue—'

‘Laura, d'you know where Dolly is? I wondered if she'd like to come to the disco in the village hall—'

Guy grins across the wall of sound at her, apologetically shifting a basket of vegetables from one hand to the other, and handing her a bunch of fragrant sweet peas. ‘Hedley said you would be here this weekend, so I came to check on the goat, and I thought you might need some veg, but I can see you're already growing your own—'

Laura thanks him, wishing that she, like Gina, was wearing a lovely girlie bra instead of baggy jeans with mud caked on the knees and a shapeless old T-shirt of Dolly's with Elvis wrinkling with age on the front. Gina and Hedley are standing so close together it's surprising they can see one another to speak, but from the shouts of laughter, they are clearly
managing fine. A piercing scream from Dolly's bedroom window penetrates the clamour, and Laura's heart misses a beat then pounds in terror. Everyone stands as if petrified for a millisecond. The screaming continues, on a crescendo, and there is a stampede towards the house. Hedley, made omnipotent by the vision of Gina in her small amount of clothing, is first in, choosing to climb onto the roof via the water butt and enter through the window of his niece's room. Laura, huffing up the stairs, is convinced she is about to die of a heart attack and makes a mental note to sacrifice all pleasures starting with tinned gin and tonic, and to become super-fit and virtuous if only Dolly is still alive when she gets to her. At the bedroom door she takes a deep breath, but Hedley is there first and opens it from the inside to greet her.

‘She won't stop screaming, but I think this is the cause.' He waves Vice, the ferret, above his head, and Fred leaps to reclaim her.

‘Oh, I wondered where she'd got to.'

‘She was in Dolly's knicker drawer,' whispers Becca, herself on the verge of tears. ‘And I think she bit Dolly. After the goat I think it was the final straw. Dolly says she's going back to London and never coming here again.'

Fred rolls his eyes, tucks his ferret into his pocket
and says without rancour, ‘Dolly's mental. She's always in a psyche nowadays – she thinks it makes her seem older, but I think it's sad.' This pithy summary of his sister's character does not help, and he is bundled out of the room by Laura.

Everyone looks with interest at Dolly, including Grass, whose unwelcome presence upstairs in the house Laura notices with a rising sense of panic. Grass, masticating busily, coughs, and spits out a pink thong. Recognising Dolly's favourite underwear, Laura whisks it behind her back and stuffs it in her pocket.

Becca translates the next scream, staring at the floor, discomfort scarlet on her face. ‘And she says she hopes Inigo leaves Laura and that she can go and live with him in New York and never see another animal as long as she lives.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake!' Laura has really had enough of this absurd scene and is beginning to think that Dolly is doing it on purpose to punish her for Inigo's absence. He's been away for two weeks now, and even Laura, still fed up with him, is beginning to long for his return.

Guy edges into the room and walks up to Dolly, standing rigid and hysterical next to a drawer full of tangled underwear, both Tamsin and Becca draped protectively around her. He takes both her hands in
his and rubs them. ‘Come on Dolly,' he says gently. ‘You need to snap out of this.'

Laura has to clench both fists and press her arms to her sides to stop herself rushing forward and slapping her daughter, but to her immense relief, Guy is getting through to the three girls and Dolly's screams begin to subside until she is sitting sniffing on the edge of her bed with her arms around her attendant nymphs, both of whom are murmuring gently and stroking her hair. Drained, Laura creeps away towards the stairs, keen to get Grass out before Dolly notices her. Grass has other ideas, and digs her hooves in, snaking her neck to snatch at the white muslin curtains Laura hung in a fit of domestic enthusiasm last time she was here.