“He will not mind at all,” says Ingrid.
People stare. Sandra claps her hand over her mouth; she is impressed—well! Who’d have thought it!
Alison blinks. “Oh. Yes—right, then.”
Charles alone does not react. Perhaps he did not hear.
Alison is oppressed by age. Not her own. The children, who are no longer children, except for Clare, and perhaps Roger, who is on the cusp. The others are disappearing over the horizon, and she is aghast. This should not be happening. Not yet. Oh, of course they grow up but somehow one had always felt that that was way, way off. And now, suddenly, this summer, it no longer is. It is not just their size, their new concerns—it is the sense that they are moving into foreign territory, places of which she knows nothing. Once, they were infinitely familiar, predictable; now they are alarmingly volatile, one does not know what they are thinking, or, half the time, what they are doing.
Paul. He has been led astray, undoubtedly. He has fallen in with some bad types at that college place. He has been turned into someone else. This is not the old, known Paul—a bit naughty sometimes but nothing you couldn’t cope with. Evil outsiders have fed him drugs and distracted him from his studies and turned him into a person who takes buses to Bude all the time instead of being part of the lovely family holiday.
Sandra and that boy on the beach.
Katie does not exactly give cause for alarm, but she is disconcerting all the same, in a different way. She is as tall as Alison, she has breasts, she has her own quiet decisiveness. You feel that you can’t tell her what she should do anymore. She has probably already done it, or done something else.
And Gina. The way she talks now. Sometimes Alison feels that Gina is in fact much older than she is. Much cleverer. Knows much more. Gina takes Charles on—argues with him, has opinions of her own. It’s not that she’s rude or anything, just that she has become this person. This person who seems only tenuously connected to child Gina, and who makes Alison feel inadequate. One is somehow on the edge of things now, trying to get a word in, trying to be listened to. Time was, they needed you, even Gina. Now, they do not. They are not just self-sufficient, they have raced off to some other incarnation; there are moments when Alison hardly recognizes them.
Ingrid.
This man. It’s not going to be like that time back then, is it?
Oh, this holiday is running off the rails. She has lost control of it; there are daily subversions, intrusions. After all the careful planning—the house booked way back in January, the lists of stuff to bring, the Volkswagen serviced, the rail tickets sorted, the excursions noted.
Alison stands at the kitchen table, rolling pastry and watching the rain that snakes down the windowpane and reduces the hillside opposite to a quivering green blur. At least when it rains you know where everyone is. Paul is still in bed, the rest are scattered around that uncompromising sitting room, walled off from one another by bulbous furniture. Gina has her feet up on a sofa, reading. Roger is on the floor with his nature book and his notebook and one of those buckets that are supposed to be left outside. Katie is writing a letter. Sandra is painting her toenails. Clare is in the only open space, jiggling about to the tinny racket that emanates from the Walkman she has borrowed from Sandra.
Charles is in their bedroom, which has to serve also as his study.
Ingrid is peeling potatoes at the sink and humming to herself. This is not a familiar sound. What has she got to hum about?
Alison cuts the pastry lid to size and fits it over the dish already filled with steak and kidney. She crimps the edge, arranges a pastry flower in the center, slashes a couple of air vents. Then she washes and dries her hands, and takes off her apron.
She walks across into the sitting room; bright, brisk, in charge.
“What about a game of Scrabble?”
Alison and Ingrid are in the kitchen, assembling the next meal. Alison drops her knife; she is on edge, it seems.
She says, “Of course, Jan is charming, but what is it that he does in London?”
Ingrid replies that he is studying.
Alison expresses surprise. She had thought that, well, he’d have a job, he’s over thirty, isn’t he? But of course some people do go on with studying for quite a while. What is it that he studies?
“He is studying linguistics,” says Ingrid.
Alison supposes that Ingrid has, well, seen something of him when she goes up to London?
Ingrid has been going up to London quite a lot recently. It was understood that she had developed an interest in art, and was visiting galleries.
Ingrid says blandly that she has seen much of Jan. “We like to go to exhibitions.”
Is linguistics something to do with art? Alison decides not to pursue this, and also to be cheerful, and neutral. “Well, that’s nice,” she says. “Now, have we done enough potatoes?”
Jan is large and silent. He has blond stubble all over his face and a surprisingly weathered look for someone so devoted to his studies. He arrived riding an elderly motorcycle, on which he and Ingrid sputter off on expeditions, Ingrid clutching a little metal hoop in front of the pillion seat. Jan smiles a great deal but says little. Cornwall is very beautiful, he agrees. Yes, he likes the sea very much. After the initial astonishment at Ingrid’s coup nobody except Alison is much interested in Jan. Most people have other fish to fry.
In a turfy hollow up on the cliff, well screened from the path by some bushes, Sandra loses her virginity. The event is a bit of a letdown: hurried, messy, and faintly embarrassing. She hopes this does not mean that sex is just not what it is cracked up to be, but suspects that he is as inexperienced as she is, though he suggests otherwise. Probably they will get better at it.
Gina is reading, writing, and waiting. She is waiting for the results of her A levels, on which depends her place at York, and in the meantime she is reading War and Peace, because this is the last chance—she’ll be too busy from October onwards, possibly for the rest of her life—and she is writing a diary. The diary is not a confessional one but a record of her reactions to current events. She is thinking these days that she just might want to become a politician, in which case she needs to sort out where she stands on various contemporary issues. She is seriously deprived of news material down here; she has her radio but newspapers are hard to come by in Crackington Haven, and she needs print stories. The village shop does not stock the Guardian, the few copies of the Telegraph have all been snapped up by five past nine, and in any case Gina wouldn’t be seen dead with the Telegraph. She asks Paul to bring her back a paper from his forays into Bude, but he usually forgets.
At night, before they put the light out, Gina is at the battle of Borodino, while Sandra is immersed in Cosmopolitan, locked behind her Walkman. They get on best if they don’t much bother to talk. Silence can be really quite amicable. And Sandra is in excellent humor. Gina knows why. She knows about Sandra’s boy. You could hardly fail to—they are inseparable, snogging behind the rocks, or mooching around the cliff path. They have been to Bude together—he has his driver’s license, and was allowed to borrow the family car. Bude is where the action is, says Sandra—insofar as you can call it action—in Cornwall.
It occurs to Gina that this is probably the last family holiday, or at least the last in which she will be involved. This time next year she will be a student, and when you are a student you spend the vacation back-packing on the Continent, don’t you? That’s what Paul should be doing, by rights, if he wasn’t grounded because of the fuss at his college place, no cash flow, no option but to stick to home. Gina is sorry for him, but also concerned. He has been on drugs, no question, and probably still is, given half a chance. There was a scheme to find him a summer job, and indeed he did a week stocking shelves at the supermarket at home until he was cheeky to the manager and got fired.
“That was stupid,” she told him. “You should have stuck it out.”
He shrugged. “It was a crap job. What’s the point?”
<
br /> “Cash,” said Gina. “Gainful employment. It’s what we all have to come to.”
Paul rolled his eyes. “Not just yet, for Christ’s sake.” He grinned at her. “How about you take me to the pub after supper? We can tell Mum we’re going for a walk.”
Gina reckons something will have to be done about Paul, sooner or later, but she is not her brother’s keeper, and she has enough on at the moment anyway, what with the looming A level results, and the prospect of York—fingers crossed—and this realization, both heady and sobering, that she is at a brink, that she is about to step into a new world, a new life, in which there will no longer be August in Cornwall, and the smothering embrace of Allersmead.
Katie is worried. She worries about these spots she gets, she worries about her math—she’s sure she’s going to flunk math at GCSE, she worries because Mum’s so het up this summer, not that anyone else ever seems to notice. She worries also about this worrying; she does too much of it, she should be more laid back, like Gina and Sandra, or indeed Paul, who is practically horizontal and that’s not particularly good either.
Mum is in a lather about Paul. He keeps schlepping off to Bude and she can’t stop him. He’s not supposed to have any money but somehow he has; he says he’s going surfing but Paul has never shown the faintest interest in surfing before. So Mum agitates each time until he gets back. Plus, she is for some reason fussed about Ingrid having this man turn up. She is lavishly nice to Jan, and to Ingrid too, but it’s clear enough that she is not happy about things. Does she mind that they are, well, obviously having a relationship? Surely not. Ingrid is a grown-up person, after all, very grown-up you might say. Does Mum think that Ingrid is going to go off? Like that time (which Katie remembers only rather vaguely), and after all she came back, didn’t she?
And Mum is fidgety too about Sandra and her boy. The amount of time they spend together, what they may be getting up to—and that’s clear enough, frankly. They’re doing it; Katie feels pretty sure about that. So of course Mum is in a stew in case Sandra gets pregnant. Katie is a bit anxious about this too. That would be a serious problem. Except that once there was a real-life baby Mum would simply take it over and digest it into the family, wouldn’t she? But it won’t happen, because Sandra will see that it doesn’t, somehow. Girls like Sandra do not get pregnant.
Is Dad even noticing any of this? He seems to be aware of Jan, but only because he’s someone different to talk to at meals, except that Jan doesn’t talk back. Dad gives his views on whatever and Jan nods and says, “Ah, indeed yes.” Mum made sure that Dad got drawn into the first row with Paul about Bude but one notes that it is not he who is always asking where Paul is, has anyone seen Paul? Sandra’s boy is not even on his horizon.
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.
Jan is not a person you marry because as it happens he is married to someone else. This suits Ingrid well enough, and presumably it suits Jan also. Neither wishes to change their present circumstances—just, it is nice for Ingrid to have a friend in London, and nice too for Jan to have some solace while he pursues his studies. There is no need for explanations, to anyone.
Sandra’s boy is becoming a touch possessive. He wants to continue their arrangement after the holiday, and is full of plans for further meetings. Sandra is evasive. She has now got the measure of sex, which was the whole point. If her period arrives as it should at the end of the week, she thinks she may well call a halt, very sweetly and kindly. It’s all a bit risky, she doesn’t want to have to go on watching the calendar indefinitely, she likes him but not enough to go for broke with him. She will have to tell him that this was a holiday romance and that is all, it’s been fantastic, so no hard feelings, right?
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