Hens Dancing - Hardcover

Barker, Raffaella

 
9780375503863: Hens Dancing
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0375503862 ISBN 13: 9780375503863
Verlag: Random House Inc, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Ten years ago, when Venetia Summers abandoned her life in London for marriage and a move to the countryside, it seemed that her future was set. But when her husband leaves her for his masseuse, suddenly she's a single mother of three, with no particular skills, living in the sticks and calling upon all her wit and resourcefulness to hold together her newly lopsided family. Hens Dancing follows Venetia's diaries over the course of a year as she tries to make the best of things, for her children and for herself. Venetia's battles are everyday ones - the house is crumbling and the garden a disaster, joint custody is traumatic for everyone concerned, and there's never enough money. But there are consolations: the kaleidoscopic loveliness of the Norfolk seasons, a houseful of animals, nighttime picnics, the regal serenity of Venetia's baby daughter - called simply The Beauty - and a new family closeness that has flowered amid the chaos. And perhaps, unexpectedly, the promise of new love.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Raffaella Barker has a monthly column in the British magazine <i>Country</i> <i>Life </i>and is a regular contributer to the <i>Daily Telegraph</i> and the <i>Sunday Telegraph </i>newspapers. She lives in Norfolk, in rural England, with her husband and three children.

Aus dem Klappentext

rcee finds herself marooned in the countryside, surrounded by clutter, children, and hens. This charming, wickedly funny, exuberant novel is the talented young author's U.S. debut.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

February 14 - Seven Valentine cards have been delivered to the house this morning by the postman, and not one of them is for me. Three are for Giles, who is eight and therefore at an age where the bolstering effect of a Valentine card goes unnoticed; two are for Felix, six, who is in a big rage that anyone has dared to be so sissy as to send him any; and two are for Charles, forty-one, who had not planned to be at home, but an airport strike prevented his business trip to Paris.

"How did they know I'd be here?" he murmurs, a smirk of smug spreading over his face. He drops the one his secretary always sends him without opening it and looks at the other. It is not from me.

"The postmark is smudged. Can you read it, darling?" he says to me, and, hating to miss an opportunity for one-upmanship, adds, "Did you really not get any cards? How odd."

Scrutinizing his envelope, I drop it in the washing-up water.

"Oops, sorry, Charles, it's a bit soggy now."

He looks at me with loathing. I smile sweetly.

Breakfast is an orgy of martyrdom on my part, as usual unnoticed by spouse and offspring, who according to age and inclination are reading their Valentine cards/the Beano comic/the cereal packet. I clear away, deliberately not asking for help, and return to bed. The telephone clicks a couple of times, and I know better than to pick it up. Charles has a sixth sense for an overheard conversation and will insist he's simply checking in with the office. I think he's having an affair, and am shocked to find that I don't care. Even being five months pregnant doesn't make me care; in fact it cushions me from any feeling toward Charles stronger than mild dislike. So glad the hysteria and throwing things phase has passed.

After an hour or so of luxuriating with a romantic novel, Regency Buck (my second-favorite by the peerless Georgette Heyer; I have just finished my namesake and favorite, Venetia, for the seventeenth time), I am renewed and can face the day, so rise again with a view to gardening. Downstairs, the boys hover in an aimless fashion, kicking things and playing "Greensleeves" repeatedly on the piano. Their father is still on the telephone. They need fresh air.

"Come on, I need help, you two," I urge. "Please will you come and clip the yew hedge with me?" Giles continues to play "Greensleeves" in various keys. Felix shoots at me with a bow and arrow but misses and loses his arrow behind a painting which is propped against the wall, still waiting to be hung.

"Do we have to?" he whines, hurling himself backward onto the sofa. "I hate outside, it's really cold. I want to play cowboys in here with Dad."

"Dad is going outside too," I say firmly, as Charles sidles toward the serenity of the drawing room with his newspaper. He glares, but complies. Felix is won over by the discovery of a magnificent pair of secateurs in the conservatory. Thus armed, he takes a stepladder to my token topiary, a gloriously sculpted ten-foot-tall chicken, and prepares to strike. Charles is passing at this moment, and although he fails to register the chicken crisis, he wants to use the stepladder, so Felix and his flashing blades are diverted to ground level and a less precious bush. Giles, having condemned me as "really sad" for asking him to help, is forty feet up a tree, shouting instructions to the rest of us about where to find the wheelbarrow, the rake, and all the other garden implements he can see scattered in the long grass, relics of last weekend's attempt to get the children to help outside.

"Mummy, you've completely missed that spade; go back ten paces and then a little to the right and you'll see the trowel as well."

It is pointless to ask him to come down—he won't, and an unseemly shouting match will ensue from which he will emerge victorious and possessor of the high ground—literally. Can't help wishing that instead of encourag- ing him to think of himself as one of life's commanders, his school would exercise a few more Victorian dictums. "Seen and not heard," "polite to elders and betters," "helpful and courteous at all times" could all be drummed in to great effect. Sour-lemon thoughts are interrupted by his appearance from the tree with a spray of cherry blossom, a joyful hint of pink in its tiny buds.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Mummy," he says. February 14—One Year Later Woken by the doorbell instead of The Beauty, and dash down to find the postman, grinning, with a handful of cards.

"Happy Valentine's, love," he says. "You're a bit popular, aren't you?"

Leafing through them in the kitchen, am relieved that he did not notice the names on them: four are for Giles, which seems excessive to me, two for Felix, and one for The Beauty. None for me. Can't help remembering last Valentine's Day. Improvements since then include having become mother of The Beauty (now eight months old), and having shed faithless husband (divorce now three weeks old), but still no Valentine cards. So much for the glamorous life of the divorcée.

Spluttering and growling noises similar to those made by a small lawn mower announce over the intercom that The Beauty has woken and will require breakfast. So will the boys, now clumping downstairs uttering the usual litany of "Mum, where are my shoes? Is there any food? Can we get a Nintendo Sixty-four?"

Felix freaks out when presented with his cards. "I hate them; I don't want anyone to send me Valentine cards. They're for girls. You have them, Mum." He hurls his spoon into the porridge saucepan, and porridge rises like a tidal wave and slops onto the Aga hot plate.

"But one is from Dad," says Giles. "Look, it's definitely his writing."

Felix is placated by this, but I am irritated. The school run mother of the day arrives and the boys depart like a mini tornado, books, biscuits, and pencil cases whirling around them, closer and closer until they vanish into rucksacks. The Beauty waves regally, bouncing on my hip as we let the hens out and throw them a few scraps. The air is steel-cold and heavy on the lungs; the hens, plump in ruffled feathers, groan and cluck a bit, then troop back into the henhouse. They are protesting against the weather, and none of them has laid an egg since October. February 17 Odd communication from Charles asking me if I want to sell my shares in Heavenly Petting. He will give me a markup on their value. Instantly suspicious as Charles is the ultimate nipcheese, so send his letter straight to Maurice Salmon, my lawyer.

Heavenly Petting began life in an old electrician's workshop on the Bedford Road in Cambridge and came into being because Charles was keen on shooting and wanted to employ a taxidermist to stuff various bird corpses. While investigating taxidermy, Charles became morbidly obsessed with dead animals and quickly recognized a business opportunity. As he had never liked live animals at all, I couldn't take the idea seriously, but he persevered, working day and night to build his first crematorium, before moving out into the local streets to chat up the old ladies who lived in the terraced houses which fanned out from Cambridge into the fens. His first client was a blue budgerigar called Billy. Charles charged Mrs. Day £7 for Billy's funeral service and a cardboard box containing his ashes. The funeral service comprised handing Mrs. Day a piece of paper with Billy's name, type, and age on it, then standing with her in the whitewashed workshop for three minutes listening to a tape of Albinoni's Adagio.

"We will bring you the ashes a little later. We like to check up on the bereaved to make sure we have done all we...

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Verlag
Random House Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2001
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0375503862
ISBN 13 
9780375503863
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
280
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Purmerul LTD
https://strengholt.nl/en/

22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9
Plovdiv
Bulgarien

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