Three Dont Tango 8

The shop window; the wistful face looking at the dreams; price tags draped innocently; some unattainable future waiting for tomorrow to catch up with it; a future sitting smugly behind a thick display window: how to get the future to teleport into the living room; how to make the future hers. Her head is tilted, she is thinking hard. She changes her stance.
I am carrying four plastic bags filled to bursting with tedious food and washing powder, and cans of food for the cat. I want to put down the bags, go up behind her, lift her little red skirt, and make love to her as she dreams of her growing home, with her face pushed against the plate glass window, and those reflections in her eyes.
Now she is in a junk shop with the emotive title 'Antiques' scrawled in funny writing on the headboard. She picks up some totally useless piece of rubbish and turns to me. "That's nice. Look how old it is. It's probably worth quite a lot." She replaces the piece of junk, then picks up a silly vase which is perfectly ugly. She smiles, and sucks a lip, then moves her tongue around inside her mouth. "Isn't that sweet!"
"Ummm," I say. What else is there to say? I am bored.
She glances at the pictures. "Grotty rubbish."
"Yes," I agree. Why not. They are absolutely frightful. Or are they just plain boring?
"Ah, some picture frames. I wonder how much they are." Five minutes later we come out with arms full of frames both large and small.
We now have a cooker in the kitchen and a pile of dirty picture frames in the bedroom.
I sit in front of the fire in the evenings leafing through the seed catalogues. I can see my new garden banked into terraces, with aubretia spreading over the rockery, and a finely tailored lonicera hedge tapering in the classical flat-topped pyramid. The shrubs are burgeoning, with panicles of sweetly scented flowers hanging drunkenly over the edge of the new lawn. The delicately sophisticated acacias flutter in the warm summer breeze. I have a white garden up by the greenhouse, and I am sitting on a bench in the moonlight watching the pale light flickering among the dark greens, while shadows play games under the bushes. Outside the kitchen the night-scented stocks are filling my room with their sickly perfume.
I am writing lists and numbers on the back of an envelope. The list is getting ridiculously long. The cost is growing beyond our meagre budget.
The settee is pulled up close to the fireplace. I have been collecting wood from the valley. The logs consist of damp birch which smoulders bad-temperedly in the grate, and we are cold. Upstairs Cephren is asleep in his cot. Annabel is drawing pictures. She is curled up with her legs under her bottom. Her body is curved like the long neck of a swan as she looks down at her drawing. I stroke her white stockinged legs.
I start drawing boxes next to other boxes. This will be our new house. It grows outwards at the back, with Annabel's painting room over the new drawing room. The living room becomes the kitchen; the kitchen becomes my study. I draw, scribble over, re-draw, crumple paper, and stare out of the curtain-less window into the cold black night.
I take another piece of paper and draw the house really big. I want a thirty foot long drawing room so why shouldn't I have it? I draw the front protruding from the old house so as to catch the afternoon sun. French windows will face the southwest. Our bedroom is above. Annabel's room is at the back facing north. She will have the classic artist's north light. The designs begin to gel.
Annabel leans on my shoulder and notices the large room marked 'Annabel',  and smiles. She rubs herself against me and purrs like a large cat. The dreams develop, disintegrate and change, flowing ever outward like a ripple on a pond as another day ends.

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