Rosy Cheeks turned purple and looked like she was about to cry. I tried to point out how entirely undangerous the situation was for all concerned, and that I was positively grateful that my children had been allowed to go bare-headed. ‘It’s nice to feel some wind in the hair occasionally,’ I said. Which was perhaps a little provocative. Or maybe not. In any case, at that point the Pipecleaner turned her great ire solely onto me. This wasn’t about danger, she sneered. Danger had nothing to do with anything. It was about liability. ‘And you…people…always sue.’
Do we? Do I?
Anyway Ripley and Dora were forced to dismount, which they did with great stoicism and dignity, I thought. Ripley gave the old bag his most baleful glare, but she didn’t appear to notice. And we left the stable yard under a great cloud of disgrace. We headed back to our car, past all the super-mummies standing white-knuckled with fear while their precious offspring, in full body armour, plodded clockwise round the schooling ring.
They stared at us as we scuttled by—at my hatless children in pity, I think, and at Rosy Cheeks and me as if we were murderers.
Dora giggled. ‘I don’t think she liked us at all,’ she said.
I opened up the sun roof as we drove away. I think I must have been doing it to bait, because I knew the children would immediately poke their heads out of the top. I ordered them to sit down. But I didn’t really mean it, and the children could tell. They rolled back their hatless heads and roared with laughter.
Ripley and Dora now say they want to go riding again, which is good in a way, I suppose, but also slightly depressing. Unless, of course, I can ferret out an alternative riding school, where the super-mummies and their fun-sucking safety obsessions haven’t yet cast a pall.
Hatty, Damian and the Psycho Kids just left. Thought I’d feel a bit wistful, seeing them head off back to the Old Smoke. But no. Far from it. Truth be told I was quite relieved to see the back of them. It’s been a long weekend.
Poor Hatt. She and Damian aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye at the moment. In fact, now I think of it, I’m not sure they even glanced at one another for the entire weekend. And Damian’s a pretentious little git. (Even Fin agrees, and I can’t usually get Fin to be horrible about anyone.) But there’s no denying he’s handsome. Now that Hatty can’t even bring herself to look at him, I don’t see how she can draw any pleasure from their partnership at all.
Damian writes screenplays for a living. Rather, he writes screenplays. He does about two hours’ work a day, according to Hatt, and never, in all the time she’s known him, earned a single penny from it—or from anything else, either. He spends most of his energy whining about President Bush, and then, when he’s drunk a bit more (which he usually has), whining about the creative strain imposed on him by always having to scrounge off Hatty. Hedge Fund Hatt. She earns a fortune, it has to be said. But still.
So Damian doesn’t really work, and he doesn’t help much, either. He sat tight on that bony little arse of his the entire weekend. Didn’t lift a buttock. Didn’t clear a coffee cup. He barely spoke at lunch or dinner, and even in between times he didn’t move from the kitchen table. He just sat there silently, occasionally clicking his tongue over the right-wing bias of the newspapers and calling for cups of tea.
It occurs to me suddenly that he may be suffering from depression. People often get fixated with current affairs when they’re depressed. Or maybe it’s the other way round. In any case, poor guy, I’m sure he didn’t used to be quite so dismal. In fact, when he first came on the scene, and he was still full of ambition and hope and spunk and all, I have a fuzzy memory of his occasionally even being quite attractive.
As for the three children (‘the Psycho Kids’, as Dora calls them), I’m not sure what their excuse is. They have a nanny with more qualifications than a neurosurgeon during the week, and an adoring mother who dedicates herself to their every need at the weekends—and, truthfully, they’re awful. They refuse to eat anything except bread and ketchup; they won’t address a word to anyone but Hatt; and they never go to bloody bed. On Saturday afternoon Hatty and I took them for a walk by the stream, and Lucia (aged 8) got her boot stuck in a puddle. For some inexplicable reason it sent her into a blood-curdling tantrum, the like of which I have never witnessed. I would have left her there, frankly. We were only a couple of hundred yards from home. But Hatty, who deals with tens of millions of pounds every day, or probably does, and is without doubt the most effective human being I know (as well as being my best friend), was almost in tears about it. Anyone would have thought the girl had trodden on a landmine, not in a puddle. In the end Lucia managed to make life so unpleasant for everyone we all had to turn round and go home.
…Hard not to feel a bit conceited about Ripley and Dora by comparison. All those years of slapdash, badtempered parenting and intermittent bargain-basement childcare seem to have done them the world of good.
So. That was our first attempt at weekend entertaining. I discover it’s not quite so easy. Partly, I suppose, because we haven’t really unpacked yet. But mostly because the whole process takes a hell of a lot more work than I’d realised. It’s nobody’s fault—certainly not Fin’s, who more than pulled his weight—but I feel like I’ve been skivvying pretty much solidly since they arrived on Friday night. We spent £200 on food and slightly more on alcohol, I’m exhausted, and not even specially convinced anyone had a very nice time.
Other news…
Hatty’s been muttering for ages about raising funds to put one of Damian’s unwanted screenplays into production, and I never really took her seriously. But I forgot: Hatty isn’t like other people. One way or another she’s now pulled together £50,000. She says she’s raised it through her work connections, but I have a feeling she’s saying that to protect Damian’s feelings. I think she’s raised it from her own bank account. In any case, it’s enough to get the script for his five-minute short, called Goodbye Jesus, turned into screen reality, and with Hatty at the helm it looks like it might really get made.
Not only that, it turns out that Hatty’s sister went to school with somebody who claims to be the best friend of the great Paul Bettany, and Hatty seems convinced that on the strength of that—let’s face it—pretty feeble connection, Paul Bettany is going to play the lead part in Goodbye Jesus, and for free! Under normal circumstances I’d laugh, but knowing Hatty she’ll probably pull it off.
Anyway she’s been asking Finley for advice about filmmaking all weekend, which—I can’t help noticing—he’s been more than happy to provide. Now she’s asked him over for dinner next week, in London. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said to me, and she was grinning. It was meant to be rhetorical. A joke. Of course.
‘Mind? Moi?’ I cried, laughing uproariously.
But I do mind, actually.
Two months away from London, and already I’m turning into a neurotic, jealous hausfrau. Too much time surrounded by fields, I suppose. Too much time to think. Hatt’s my oldest friend, for Heaven’s sake.
Seriously. How pathetic is that?
Fin got into London an hour late this morning because the earlier train was cancelled. He’s already called me twice to complain about it. But what am I supposed to do?
He said it meant he was forced to miss a very important meeting, but—as I so hilariously pointed out to him—he has at least thirty very important meetings every day. Can it really matter if he misses one of them? I was being funny. I think. On second thoughts