Family Album (13 page)

It is Gina, on the whole, who devises the cellar games, whether it is home life in the packing case or a bout on the high seas. She directs the narrative, such as it is, and proposes who does what and when, though others have an input here. Paul requires plenty of action, while both Katie and Roger have been known to object if their roles are too insignificant or too challenging.

“I don’t want to play,” says Katie.

“You have to,” says Paul kindly. “Everyone has to. You know that.”

“I’m not going to be the one who gets eaten by the sharks.”

Gina intervenes. “She can get rescued. We throw her a rope.”

Paul frowns. This spoils things. He does not have an anticlimax in mind. “Clare, then.”

Clare beams. She is not sure what a shark is.

Actually, Clare can be a problem. She is inclined to start doing her own thing, to introduce an element of four-year-old mayhem. She has only recently been included at all, and has not yet grasped the imperative requirement for teamwork. There is a form of democracy in operation—people can raise objections about what is demanded of them personally, they can make suggestions and proposals, but nobody may go off on a tangent, introducing their own subplot or, indeed, engaging in some completely different operation. They may not—Clare may not—start to play with the stack of jam jars on the shelf of the broken bookcase, or go off to jump on the mattress that is not a mattress but a boat or a covered wagon or a sled. It is just as well that the cellar has its own hidden malevolence, and Clare is aware of this; she does not like spiders and wood lice, still less does she fancy the snakes that she has been told lurk in dark places, let alone the invisible Daleks. Clare has to hide behind the sofa during
Doctor Who
. So, on the whole, Clare stays close to everyone else and does what she is told, frequently bemused about what is going on.

Sometimes visiting children are obliged to play the cellar game. Usually, they do not enjoy it. There is the feeling that you are on the edge of things, you do not quite understand, you are inadequate, you are an outsider. And when it comes to forfeits they find that they would like to go home.

“Eat a spider!” orders Paul. There are gasps. This is new, and harsh. Everyone looks at Sandra. Will she decide to take a penalty? Evidently not: “OK,” she says calmly. She goes over to the cobwebby place under the window. She searches.

Forfeits are not quite the whole point of the cellar game. On some occasions, no forfeits arise. Rather, they are a kind of embellishment, a peak of creativity and excitement that things attain from time to time. Someone will overstep the mark—deliberately as often as not, provocatively—and there will be no alternative. In the house game, one of the children will be subversive, disobedient, and must be brought to heel. Or there will be mutiny on the ship, or someone fails a test of bravery. Some forfeits are mild enough; sit blindfolded for ten minutes, squat for five minutes, walk right around the house in nothing but your knickers, sing “God Save the Queen.” Others are more demanding: go into the back garden and dig up a worm and bring it back, steal one of Mum’s hairpins, stay in the Dalek corner for five minutes. Forfeits are both challenge and entertainment. The challenged will win status by accepting and successfully carrying out the forfeit; the spectators will be diverted but also titillated by the thought that next time it might be them.

There is an escape route. Anyone can refuse to accept a forfeit, but in that case they must take a penalty. They lose face, and their penalty mark is chalked up on the board, to be there in perpetuity. Clare has never really understood about this, and her penalty marks are in double figures, despite the fact that her penalties are customized. “No,” she says. “I don’t want to do a somersault. Not now.”

There is a continual search for new forfeits. Paul’s various proposals involving matches and lighters have been vetoed; some primitive instinct about health and safety seems to operate.

“Show us!”

“It’s in my hand,” says Sandra. “If I show you it’ll get away.”

“How big is it?” demands Roger.

Katie is worried. “I think this is cruel. It’s really cruel to the spider.”

Paul says, “I don’t believe you’ve got one at all.”

Sandra eyes him coolly. “Suit yourself,” she says. She raises her hand to her mouth, opens it. She swallows, gags dramatically, stares at them in triumph.

Gina realizes that they will never know. Did she or didn’t she?

The appeal of the cellar game is privacy and secrecy; it is never mentioned aboveground, no grown-up knows what goes on. If it has been noticed that they have gone down there, Paul, or Gina, or Sandra will say airily, Oh, we go down there and read to the little ones. Reading always earns brownie points at Allersmead. Or, We’re making a museum down there (creative, cultural, good). Or, We thought we’d tidy it up a bit (positively virtuous). Alison does not care for the cellar and virtually never visits it. Charles is perhaps barely aware that it exists.

The cellar is their territory. And the cellar game is an alternative universe into which, occasionally, they withdraw. It has nothing to do with real life; they are licensed to become other people, though their aboveground status and personalities continue to direct and inform the game. Paul is still the eldest, and thus entitled to pull rank. Gina supplies the most productive ideas, and devises story lines and props. Katie and Roger remain something of a unit, and like to have roles that reflect this. Sandra is wayward and independent; if she feels like rocking the boat, she will. And Clare is occasionally a liability, an uncontrollable element.

Today it is the family game. Gina is mother. Paul has shot a bison, so Gina has served bison bangers and mash, and now it is storytime. “Are you sitting comfortably?” she says.

Sandra groans, and gets a look to kill.

The story begins. It is a story about six children, who sound eerily familiar. There are smiles and nudges. There is an episode in which they swim the Channel; Clare is nearly drowned, Roger carries out a valiant rescue. And then the story veers in an unexpected direction. Everyone has grown up. Katie has eight children. Roger is a British Airways pilot. Clare is a pop star. Paul is prime minister (much hilarity at this point). Sandra . . . Sandra is a head teacher.

“I absolutely am not,” says Sandra. “Absolutely no way.”

Gina is firm. “In the story you are.”

“Then I’m not in the story,” says Sandra.

Paul says that she has to be. Paul is inflexible, when it comes to rules.

Sandra shrugs. “You can have this head teacher if you want to, but she’s not me. And anyway, what are you?”

Gina says that she is a writer. She is telling the story.

“Then you can’t be a very good one,” says Sandra. “It’s obvious I’m not the sort of person who is ever going to be a head teacher.”

Gina is getting angry. “In the story that’s what you are. And anyway you don’t know what you’re going to be like when you’re grown up.”