Free Hens Dancing by Raffaella Barker Page A

doing his primitive man bit with the meat. Giles and Felix and Lila’s children, Diptych and Calypso, have made the most of the dressing-up box and also my make-up bag, and are paid-up members of some Indian tribe. They have adorned the tents with my zebra skins and Felix is wearing the fur coat I bought in a charity shop for a fiver. They are splendidly non-PC: I am amazed Lila hasn’t noticed and tried to ban them. All very elemental, and I look forward to Druid work and chanting taking place soon.
    The rugged outdoor life stops there, however. In the kitchen, Rose, Lila, David and Vivienne offer a contrasting existence of hedonism. All the girls have plainly raided Rose’s wardrobe, and are semi-clad in slivers of skirt and skimpy T-shirts in colours as vibrant as poppies. David is still wearing his cricket whites and is making tequila slammers. The table is awash with crushed ice and on the ice, little lemon-wedge boats are marooned here and there. My favourite musical medleysof the moment are movie soundtrack CDs, and one is blasting from the drawing room. Everyone is already flushed and half drunk, even Lila, who is so relaxed that she forgets to ask if the lemons are organic. I gulp my first tequila slammer and enter the fray.
    June 22nd
    Never. Ever. Again.
    June 25th
    The Beauty is one today. To make the most of the occasion, she rises at five-thirty a.m. beaming and beady of eye, and immensely pleased to have become the kind of person who can stand up in her cot when I go in to get her up. She has her bottle in my bed and I drink tea and stare half-wittedly out at the milky, misted morning. Sunrays which began palest lemon are now radiating jolly and vigorous beams at the mist, and by the time we go downstairs, the diaphanous veil has vanished and the garden sparkles with dewdrops, and is truly a paradise for The Beauty to enjoy. This she does with aplomb. It is stilltoo early to wake her brothers, so I take her out and she stamps around holding my hands because it is too wet for her to crawl. She loves this new feely sensation, and lifts each small, fat foot high, pointing her toe before plunging forward with her next unsteady step. We pick a very gratifying bunch of pink and amber roses with which to adorn the birthday tea table this afternoon.
    Present-giving is a huge success. The Beauty gets the hang of unwrapping straight away, and has no truck with the ‘babies like the wrapping paper best’ theory. Felix gives her a Teletubbies ball and Giles a drum. The Beauty is enchanted, and crows and slaps her thighs in a new swashbuckling way of indicating pleasure. Rose has triumphed and has sent, by courier, a doll-sized version of The Beauty’s very old-fashioned pram. She straightaway sees the point of it and insists on being wedged in, becoming very Mabel Lucie Atwell with seraphic face appearing vast due to miniaturisation of her chariot. Charles arrives as Felix and Giles stage a pram race on the lawn with The Beauty in the toy pram against Rags in the real pram. The Beauty finds this huge fun and laughs like a squeaky toy as she is hurtled towards the pond by Felix. Rags, however, is terrified, and ruins Giles’s chances of victory by leaping out of the pram and scuttling back to the house.
    Charles parks and leans against his sleek bullet-like car wearing his usual smirk. He is dressed as an alien as faras we are concerned, in grey flannel trousers, polished slip-on shoes and a beige polo-neck sweater. No dog hairs or fluff balls have clung to him, and everything he is wearing is either brand-new or ironed so that it looks as though it has just been unfolded from its purchase pack. The boys abandon The Beauty and run towards their father. I am guilt-ridden and shocked by how much I mind that they are thrilled to see him. Giles reaches him first.
    â€˜Dad, come and have a race. Will you push me in the pram?’ Charles sucks in his ribs and arches away backwards like a crab,