Family Album (17 page)

Dad is not like other people’s fathers; one has always known that. Fair enough—you wouldn’t want an assembly-line father. He never did father things like playing football with the boys. Looking back, he is there but also not there, you somehow didn’t take difficulties to Dad, though to be fair he would be quite onside when it came to questions about school things. Other people’s fathers go out to work; Dad goes into his study. And out of his study, in due course, comes a book.

Katie has tried to read a couple of Dad’s books. She finds that it is the kind of reading where you follow the words, punctiliously, line by line and page by page, and suddenly you realize that they haven’t added up to anything of which you could give an account. Which is your fault, of course, you are not bright enough, or old enough.

We are not a usual kind of family, thinks Katie. There are so many of us, and Mum does most of the parenting, but is that because she wants to and Dad is kind of an accessory, or is it that Dad opts out? And we have someone who is sort of the au pair girl but also isn’t because she has always been there, which I suppose looks odd from outside.

But it’s other families who are strange. Two children and synchronized parents. Where you are is what is normal.

Charles is suffering from proximity. The proximity of his family, which is so much more so here than in the relative spaciousness of Allersmead; the proximity of the sea, which should lend itself to the pursuit of Romanticism, but does not. It occurs to him, irritatingly, that most of the Romantics lived in extreme proximity with family, and seem to have managed. So does he have a problem?

Oh yes, he does. He knows that. He is a man to whom family has happened, unstoppably, or so it seemed, and yes, of course he is responsible, he has begotten this tribe, and in his way he loves them, if anything happened . . . that time Paul fell off the cliff he was berserk. But he is a man also who needs solitude, who needs silent communion with language, with ideas. Just now, silent communion is not on offer. Two days ago, he bought a half bottle of whisky from the hotel and took it for an evening walk. He came back anesthetized, and full of self-disgust. No, he must not succumb to that again. That way lies disaster, as he well knows.

Roger finds a butterfly blenny. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Sandra and her boy have another go; there is marked improvement.

Paul scores on a street corner in Bude.

Clare perfects her backflip, discards Emma, and takes up with Lucy.

The holiday is into its third week but where Charles is concerned it is a continuous present, without chronology. Since he seldom acquires a newspaper, he seldom knows what day it is. This does not particularly matter—though the absence of a paper does. What does matter is that he is not getting much work done. This is partly because he has no proper study but seems also to do with an onset of mental inertia. He is bored with Romanticism. This present undertaking is one of a series of brief books on concepts, for the aspirational reader; probably he should never have agreed to do it, or should have picked a different concept. Fascism would have had more bite.

As it is, he reads perfunctorily, rapidly mired by Coleridge, maddened by Wordsworth, only too willing to put the rest of them down after five minutes. What is the matter? He is not a man who reads perfunctorily; he is a man who reads with application, with perception, with absolute attention. This was a misguided project, no question, but he is stuck with it now. It is a short book, an inessential one, to be honest—the only thing is to get on and deal with it.

Which is what he seems unable to do. During the day, when it is fine and everyone else is out and about, the house is relatively peaceful, but he is still unable to apply himself. He goes for walks, to clear the head, or at least that is the intention, but instead the head becomes further muddied by idle observations of gulls, plants, the moody sea, which offers a different humor each day—wild and wave-whipped, calm and contemplative. Pathetic fallacy stuff—the sea is not moody, it simply is. This is what comes of immersion in the Romantics.

Charles is irritable; that is the state of his own humor, just now. This is not unusual, and he is aware of this, and would challenge any man in similar family circumstances who claimed to be otherwise. But holiday conditions somehow exacerbate things; back at Allersmead, he can keep his irritation contained, indeed quite often he is not irritated at all. He is able largely to ignore the vicissitudes of family life, and indeed to take a genial interest when that seems appropriate. But down here in this wind-rattled house with its monstrous furniture, where there is a fine grit of sand on every floor (why doesn’t someone sweep it up?) and heaving marine life in buckets outside the back door (he has tripped over one of these), the annoyance level is ratcheted up to new heights. Alison is overconcerned about Paul, and permanently distracted. Gina is determinedly argumentative, which is not in itself a fault and Charles is well disposed to discussion but somehow she seems always to outmaneuver him. He has been conscious of losing face on occasion. This taciturn Scandinavian has appeared; there is no question of losing face where he is concerned, but there is not much point in offering one’s views to someone whose only reply is a compliant smile. Ingrid is tiresomely smug.

All in all, Charles would like to go home. But one must sit it out. At points he wonders if he is having some sort of midlife crisis (he has learned this term from casting his eye over the sort of article by women journalists that he does not usually read). He would like to think himself superior to that sort of weakness, but we are all human, and he is conscious that he suffered a brief lapse of sanity some years ago, which will never be forgotten.

So he tramps the cliff paths, exchanging polite greetings with other walkers; on one occasion he comes across a pair of teenagers canoodling behind a gorse bush, and passes quickly by. There is something vaguely emotive about the back of the girl’s head, but he is lost in his own discontents.

Jan leaves. After he has gone, Katie says to Roger, “Ask Ingrid if she is going to marry Jan.” “Ask her yourself,” says Roger. “She won’t tell me,” says Katie. “She’s more likely to tell you because she’ll know you’re not particularly interested.” Roger shrugs: “OK, then.” And in due course, he throws this casual query at Ingrid when he comes across her alone, sunning herself on the beach. Ingrid laughs. “Jan is not a person you marry,” she says. Roger does not pursue the matter, and is told off for this later by Katie.