Three Dont Tango 24

It is morning again. The white sun sparkles on the wood anemones. The bluebells are growing rapidly up to the light. Soon they will spatter the wood with their mass of blue; but now the tricholoma with their starch-white plates are hiding in the brushwood. Crystal balls are twisting and twinkling in the blades of grass, splitting the light with a dozen different stained glass globules. At the bottom of the valley the sun is tumbling down the ladder of trees, step by bright step over space by dark space, and falling headlong into the stream with a great white splash.
The birds are practicing short sprints from bush to bush, the baby rabbits poke their heads above the grass, lollop about, half nibbling at grass, half playing in the sun, and for day after day there is a happy care-free hero bouncing across the fields, scrambling up the steep sides of the valley, and staring down through the tall trees, through the shafts of sunlight, across the blue-green grasses, into the woods on the other side of the stream.
The valley is mine, all mine, and the sounds are the small telephone conversations of the birds and the itchy little sounds of insects scuttling in and about the dry sticks and the new grass.


It is morning again. The world is a giant game. I throw a six and get out of bed. I bound downstairs and draw back the curtains. The sun is not above the hill yet, and the rooms look dull.
Throw the dice and move up to the back garden, beyond the rockery. Stand on the white stone slab, and the sun reaches down to me, and into me. I am safe on this square. I can miss two turns and let the morning come to me.
It is my move again. I throw a double six. I jump the little stone wall between the swimming pool and the field while the day is early and new. I follow the pathway the cows have flattened along by the top hedge. I am high up, I am in control. I can see right across my domains. Behind the copse rises the gable end of the house. Somewhere inside is a sleeping Annabel. How absurd, when there is a whole new bright world outside to play with.
I throw the dice again, and jump to the next square. Into the bracken under the trees. I pick morels and tricholoma, putting them into the white plastic bag. I shall eat them for breakfast. Further and further into the sunbeams, through a column of motes, over the small animal pathways, under the secret flight paths, into a secret world where all the secrets are known to me, even if I do not understand them.
I clamber up to a partly fallen beech tree and swing into the bowl of the trunk, and sit with a leg swinging, my back against the warming bark. I have reached another safe square. I shall wait here until the white queen rushes through the wood with her devil clock, and then I shall race her home, and have breakfast ready on the verandah before Annabel has hooked on her bra and buttoned up her blouse.
It is my go again. I have a choice. I can throw the dice or take a card. The card may be disadvantageous, but it may give me something I need which I cant get from running round the board. My batteries feel charged. Perhaps I should simply stop playing this game. Do I play a different game? I stare across the woodland, wondering what my next move should be.
I decide that particular game is over. Something else now awaits my attention. I walk gaily home and put my bag of mushrooms on the table. I cut and clean them, and throw them into a pot with a smidgeon of olive oil, a dash of salt, and a sprinkle of pepper, and put them on an incredibly low gas for twenty minutes to steam into a gorgeous catsup for breakfast.
After breakfast Cephren comes across the lawn looking very serious. He has been exploring the ruined house on the corner. "Dad. Can I borrow your wheelbarrow?"
"Whatever do you want that for? You're not going to take up building surely? I would have thought you'd learned from me to keep well away from building."
But he is not amused. "No, I want to bring home a television."
"A television? Where from?"
"The ruined cottage."
"Oh." I assume he has found a discarded machine, probably in the cellar, but I suppose if he gets off on the pretence, we can handle a spot more junk on the premises. I shrug my shoulders. "Sure. Do you think you can get it into the barrow on your own?"
His eyes light up. "Yes. I tried to lift it just now, and I can manage it." And he goes off with the barrow; Mini trailing him.
The sun is high above the beech trees which tower over the ruined farmhouse, as Cephren and Mini plod off with the wheelbarrow, looking like a couple of cartoon children.
Fifteen minutes later, looking very puffed and red in the face he lets the barrow down in the middle of the driveway. On top is a large old t.v. From a distance it looks okay, but some of the insides are missing. The screen is still intact, and that is the important thing.
"I think I'd better get it upstairs for you." Once up in his room I am not quite sure where to put it, but then I get a brain wave. "I know, how about building your own little house in the bedroom?"
All eyes grow large and the kids jump up and down. Just the thing. Their own little house. What fun.
What an idiot I am. I get some batons, and cut them into four foot lengths. Each wall will be four feet long and four feet high. I screw the batons into the corner of the room, and in about half an hour I have constructed a skeleton house. On the mezzanine floor of Annabel's painting room are loads of cardboard boxes, kept just in case they may possibly one day be of some use. Annabel gets them down, and carefully cuts along the edges so the cardboard unfolds to its fully flattened extent. We drape the cardboard over the frame, and staple it down, and hey presto we have real walls.
The kids are inside, and immediately start dragging everything in sight into their new home. They need a carpet, stools to sit on, a table, a bookshelf, and a large shelf for the prize exhibit: the t.v. Mini insists on having a curtain for the door, and they are complete. They have moved into their house. They have set up home on their own. We simply don't see the children again.
At supper time we creep upstairs. It is very quiet in the bedroom. I knock on the wall of their new house.
"Who's there?" The curtain is drawn.
We peep inside. They are sitting side by side on little stools staring at the blank television set.
They whizz down for a hurried supper, and then belt hell-for-leather upstairs again to their little house, ostensibly to watch more t.v.
They are busy all week. Everyone in the house is playing silly games, and it looks as though everyone is winning, and, try as I might, I cant see any cheating going on.

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