Family Album (6 page)

The family, this morning, gets up according to personal taste. Sandra takes a bath, using Bliss bubble bath, and keeping others out of the bathroom for too long. Paul wipes his face with a towel and leaves it at that. Alison showers while wondering how many of them will eat ratatouille if she plays down the garlic. Charles cuts himself shaving, and comes down to breakfast with a flake of Kleenex on his chin, which makes Clare giggle.

Ingrid does her hair in a complicated braid, which means that she is down rather later than usual. Katie, who precedes her, finds that the dog has made a mess in the cloakroom, and cleans up so that it will not get into trouble.

Roger does handstands in his bedroom until chivied by Alison. Gina continues to listen to the radio while she dresses in jeans and a red jersey, and decides to write a letter of protest to Mrs. Thatcher.

Charles is only partially in the here and now, which accounts for the shaving cut (Alison has advocated an electric shaver for years but Charles has his preference). He is on chapter twelve of his book, which deals with adolescent rites of passage in primal societies. The book itself is a general study of the cult of youth, in time and space. He is pleased with it. He has only a few more months of work to do, then the polishing and refining and checking, then the footnotes, then off to the publisher, and he can start thinking about the next, which so far is just a gleam in his eye but which will be a discussion of the concept of nostalgia. Charles prides himself on his eclecticism; he never writes the same book twice; he is known and regarded for his range, his ability to turn his mind to fresh fields. Not for him the carapace of a discipline; not for him some dusty academic label. Thank goodness. He tried a stint in academia once, and got out quick. Thanks to a godfather who made a fortune out of household cleaning products in the early part of the twentieth century, Charles has the cushion of a modest private income—not a princely one, but enough to keep them all if they are careful, when bolstered by what the books earn. Thank goodness for Vim and Dettol and Brasso.

So this morning he is thinking about male initiation ceremonies in sub-Saharan Africa, and about puberty in Samoa and New Guinea, and how to slot in the discrediting of Margaret Mead, and that he is minus a rather crucial reference, which means that he must go to the library this morning, instead of battening down in his study right away. Never mind—he can get back to the chapter in the afternoon. And then there is this drip of blood from his chin, which he barely notices, intent upon the day and what he will do with it.

On Saturdays, Charles eats breakfast with his children. Weekdays, the kitchen is a maelstrom of departure for school—of mislaid sports kits, of forgotten homework, of haste and crisis; he tends to snatch toast and coffee and seek the shelter of his study. At the weekend, he remains at the head of the big table, reading the paper, and from time to time paying benign attention to the conversation, to opinions, reports, demands, exchanges.

Gina announces that she thinks this war is crazy. The Falklands war. What is the point of people killing one another over some islands stuck out in the Atlantic where no one in their right mind would want to live anyway? Charles remarks that this can indeed be seen as a point of view, a not unreasonable one, but that there is an issue of international law, of sovereignty.

Roger is doing a school project on the ancient Greeks. Does Charles have a book with a picture of the Parthenon that he could copy? Charles ponders, and says that he does not think that he has. All those books you’ve got, and nothing with the Parthenon, says Roger, disgusted.

Clare tells the table that she has a loose tooth.

Katie tells Roger her year did that project too, and you don’t
have
to have the Parthenon, any old temple will do.

Sandra needs to go shopping. She needs a blue tank top. She needs a haircut. Will Alison drive her into town?

Paul is rather silent. When, once, he asks for the bread, Charles is startled by his hoarse voice, as so often nowadays. His eldest son is mutating, becoming someone else. Charles finds this vaguely surprising, but he is not dismayed like Alison, who would like to tamp him down, to arrest development. She does not like this growing-up business. She was aghast when last she put Paul against the measurement wall.

Gradually, everyone seeps from the breakfast table. Except for Alison and Ingrid, who are clearing up. Except for Paul, who sits eyeing his father. Charles is immersed in this distant forthcoming war, in this new language of Exocets and exclusion zones. Eventually he becomes aware that Paul has spoken.

“Well, can I?”

“Can you what?” says Charles.

“Can I go to Amsterdam for a weekend with Nick and some other people from school?”

“Why?”

“Just to hang out there. See things and stuff.”

“How much?”

“Thirty quid? Less, probably.”

“No,” says Charles, returning to the Exocets.

Alison, at the sink, is silent but evidently attentive. She seems about to speak, but does not. Ingrid removes Charles’s empty cup, sweeps a damp cloth across the table.

“Nick’s parents are letting him,” says Paul. Sullen. Resentful. His voice now a growl.

Charles folds the paper, glances at Paul, and then at his watch. “Do you have a particular interest in van Gogh?”

“Who?”

“Quite,” says Charles. He gets up, turns to Alison: “I’m going to the library, but I’ll be back for lunch.”

Paul is glaring at his father. “So it’s absolute no?”

“ ’Fraid so,” says Charles, quite kindly, “I can see no sensible reason for yes.” He leaves the room.

Paul takes a great swipe at the table leg with his foot. “Shit!” The table rocks. Ingrid makes a tutting sound.

“I do understand, dear,” says Alison. “But you
are
only fourteen and I’m not sure that Amsterdam is entirely . . . I mean, possibly a little trip to the coast sometime with your friends, Brighton perhaps . . . I’m surprised actually that Nick’s parents . . . You’re quite sure about that?”

“They said maybe,” snarls Paul. “Maybe if I’m allowed to.” He adds, conversationally now, “I hate Dad.” He stalks out.

Ingrid says, “The milk is all finished. I shall go to the shop. Or will you go to Sainsbury later?”

Alone in the kitchen, the sunlit spring kitchen, Alison thinks food. At one level, she thinks fish fingers and beef burgers and chips, macaroni and cheese, toad-in-the-hole, bubble and squeak; at another she rather wistfully conjures up coq au vin and cassoulet and the ratatouille that she proposes to infiltrate into this weekend’s menu. There is family food, and there is grown-up food, which is what Alison would like to focus upon if that were feasible, but it is not because there would be trouble in the ranks. The ratatouille may just about pass unqueried, and she feels pretty sure she can get away with the lemon chicken, which is borderline between child-acceptable and properly grown-up. So she sits at the table, jotting down items, and realizes that she is short of this and that, which will necessitate a supermarket trip—tiresome on a Saturday.

Alison is a homemaker, a housewife, that now outmoded figure, but her management skills are not highly developed. She does not plan ahead enough, she runs out of things, she forgets to get the boiler serviced or the windows cleaned, children berate her because they have grown out of their school uniforms or she did not give them the money for the charity raffle. Ingrid is frequently reminding her (“What
would
I do without you?”); Charles merely looks resigned, and detached.

She is aware of these deficiencies but not particularly concerned. After all, everyone is fed, everyone is housed and cherished and listened to and helped and supplied with pocket money and birthday parties and love and attention and a real four-star family life, which is what matters, isn’t it? Never mind if there is the occasional blip; never mind if this is not one of those homes that are run like a machine, what matters is being part of a family, isn’t it? One lovely big family. For Alison, Allersmead is a kind of glowing archetypal hearth, and she is its guardian. This is all she ever wanted: children, and a house in which to stow them—a capacious, expansive house. And a husband of course. And a dear old dog. And Denby ovenware and a Moulinex and a fish kettle and a set of Sabatier knives. She has all of these things, and knows that she is lucky. Oh, so lucky.

Alison is not long alone in the kitchen. People come and go. Gina wants to know what Mrs. Thatcher’s address is. Alison supposes 10 Downing Street, and is shown the draft of Gina’s letter, which is brief and to the point. Gina thinks this task force is a stupid idea and this war is a waste of money and people. She warns Mrs. Thatcher that she will not be voting for her when she is eighteen. Clare has lost her scissors, her cutting-out scissors, and wants to use the kitchen ones, which Alison forbids because they are real scissors, sharp, and Clare is not yet allowed to use real scissors. Clare gets petulant, and is diverted by Ingrid, who arrives at that moment: “Look, we will make pastry men.” Clare becomes happy with flour and water and a rolling pin, and is only distracted by Roger and Katie, who drift in, dump themselves at the table, and start to play that game with open hands, closed fists, and snapping fingers—paper, stone, scissors. Clare wants to play too. Katie explains, patiently: “Scissors cut paper, paper wraps stone, stone blunts scissors.” Clare chooses scissors every time.

Sandra requires money for the bus. She is grumpy because Alison has refused a lift to the shops: Alison is going to the out-of-town supermarket later, which is in the opposite direction, and that is all the driving she proposes to do today.

Paul is not seen, but is heard slamming out of the front door, presumably in search of one of his local chums.

Charles does not have a good morning at the library. In fact, he is frustrated. The reference section is inadequate and fails to meet his needs. He does not much use the local library—he goes up to town to the British Library—but for some basic fact checking you would think a decent public library should serve the purpose. He pads around crossly for a couple of hours, harasses a librarian, and comes away dissatisfied. He should have gone up to town. Too late now—he will have to do so on Monday, and fill in some crucial points later. He is twitching to get back to that chapter; he is in a writing frame of mind, the thing is flowing, he must seize the day. This particular day.

So he goes home, in time for lunch, which he smells as he opens the front door—an oveny, lemony smell. The dog (a sort of Labrador, from Battersea Dogs Home—Alison will only have rescue dogs) greets him, subservient and respectful in a way that his children never are. He turns left into his study to dump his briefcase, and finds Gina there, opening a drawer of his desk.

Gina is out of order. Right out of order. No child is allowed in the study. They are forbidden to disturb him when he is in there (“What if the house was on fire? What if Mum had dropped dead?”) and under no circumstances do they go in if he is not. But here is Gina in front of an open drawer.