That kind of need is not much around in Gina’s circle, but it certainly obtains elsewhere. Gina has recorded the dire circumstances of women whose husbands have been slaughtered in Rwanda, in Sudan—women left with a clutch of children to feed and no provider. It prevails indeed in Glasgow or in Brixton. Forget social status, the wife needs a man for sound practical reasons. Only in the clear blue air of well-paid jobs for the girls is that need eliminated.
Gina needs Philip, she finds, but she does not need a child, want a child. Not particularly. If a baby arrived—well then, one would make the best of it, no doubt—end up rejoicing, perhaps. But as it is she’ll pass quite happily, like Philip. Her own mother’s evident lust for children is therefore mysterious to her; she simply cannot imagine feeling like that. She remembers the evident distaste of Corinna—Aunt Corinna—each time she visited Allersmead and had to wade through the melee of nephews and nieces. She didn’t care for children and made no bones about it, thinks Gina. Does that make me like Corinna? Perish the thought. Dried-up academic Corinna—surely I’m more human than that? Corinna was my patron—the Allersmead term for godparent—but her patronage was limited to a book token at birthdays and Christmas, and the occasional display of benign interest since. Journalism is barely on Corinna’s radar—she is impressed only by achievements within her own rarefied sphere. I don’t write studies of nineteenth-century poets so I am beyond her remit. She gave me her own book about Christina Rossetti for a birthday present when I was sixteen: “I feel you’re perhaps old enough for it now, Gina.”
Gina remembers Corinna’s ill-disguised contempt for Alison. Women like Alison were throwbacks, retards, stuck with the mind-set of another age, mired in child care and cookery, not even conscious of the fresh air beyond—that was Corinna’s view. She ignored Mum, thinks Gina, she let Mum wash over her without listening. And, thinking this, she can conjure them up, both of them, they are in her head, clear as clear, she sees and hears them. Extraordinary, she thinks, the way we are stuffed with other people, all milling around in the mind, their faces, their voices, preserved like wraiths, incorporeal but unquenchable.
Alison is at the head of the kitchen table, pouring tea from the big blue pot. She is wearing something made of brown needlecord, one of those waistless garments that she favors; Ingrid makes them for her, from a worn-out Butterick pattern. Her hair flies out in wisps from the bun into which it is unsuccessfully twisted. “Milk, Corinna?” she says. “Do take a slice of the walnut cake.”
Corinna wears a crisp white shirt under a blue jacket; there is a silver brooch on her lapel, a Celtic knot that matches her earrings. Her short straight hair has been cleverly cut. She is talking to Charles, holds out her hand for the tea but does not take any cake. She is telling Charles about her new project on Swinburne: “So underrated, don’t you agree? I’m going to put him back on the map.” She has to raise her voice to compete with the chatter around the table; the family is assembled. Charles is apparently studying his teacup.
Alison breaks in from behind the teapot. “Is he someone one learned by heart at school? I’m hopeless at names. Roger, don’t do that with your feet—we can’t hear ourselves speak. Of course, they don’t learn by heart now but I do think there was a point. I’ve got yards in my head, ‘The boy stood on the burning deck . . . , ’ ‘Lars Porsena of Clusium, by the nine gods he swore . . .’—now who was that by? You’d know, Corinna. Clare, not sandwich and cake both at once. I do think poetry is so important. You know they write it now in school instead of learning it. Gina did a lovely poem for homework last week, she had to read it out in class. Gina, get it to show Corinna.”
Charles speaks. He says, “No sadism at the tea table, for heaven’s sake.”
Alison frowns. “I don’t understand, dear. Gina, wouldn’t you like to . . .”
Gina glares at her.
“Macaulay,” says Corinna, without looking at Alison, turned still to Charles. “I’m thinking of trying the OUP with this one. Have you published with them? Or maybe they aren’t commercial enough for you?” A roguish smile. “Mercifully one doesn’t have to think about that too much, the priority is a well-produced book, and of course the academic library subscription is guaranteed.”
Charles sends his empty teacup down the table to Alison. “How fortunate. Though those of us dependent on a readership still quite like our books to look nice.”
He is wearing a black sweater over a gray shirt with frayed collar. One arm of his glasses is held on with a piece of sticking plaster.
He floats thus still in Gina’s head. So does everyone.
Gina has not seen Sandra for years. Nor Katie, nor Roger. She talks to Paul quite often, and has always done so. She sees him at Allersmead now, and before that whenever he turned up and suggested meeting for a drink.
When Clare’s dance company—based in Paris—comes to London, Clare too will call. Gina has seen Clare dance a number of times, and is always startled by the lithe professional who has sprung from child Clare, from teenage Clare doing the splits in the Allersmead sitting room. She is startled also by the young woman who talks in a matter-of-fact way of retirement before long. Clare is thirty-two. You burn out around then, in her trade. Clare’s dance company is not that of tutus and Tchaikovsky; hers is the world of modern dance, all shape and style, as far a cry from Diaghilev as James Joyce from George Eliot, thinks Gina, as Picasso from Stubbs. Gina has watched with appreciation, though this would not be her chosen art form. But she likes the grace and athleticism, the inventiveness, the element of shock and surprise. When she spots Clare onstage she sees her as a creature quite unrelated to that once-Clare, that child in her head. And again, over coffee or lunch, that child will be there again, subsumed within this elegant, delicate woman at whom people glance. Thin as string, and that corn-colored hair still swept into a coil on her neck. Ingrid’s hair, but that is never mentioned, not even now, nobody goes there, the matter is sealed up, tamped down out of harm’s way.
“Retire?” says Gina. “Christ! Then what?”
“Teach probably,” says Clare with a shrug. “Retrain as a probation officer?” She laughs. “Go rural, maybe. Pierre fancies a vineyard in Languedoc.” Clare’s partner is an IT consultant. She eyes Gina. “Do you people just go on forever?”
“Dear me, no,” says Gina. “Plenty of ageism in my business. You go on until shouldered aside by the young turks coming up behind.”
“You’re so clever to do what you do.”
“I think you’re pretty smart,” says Gina. They grin at each other.
Clare has just been down to Allersmead. “I can’t believe I was there for years and years. It seems like a foreign country now. They’re just the same, aren’t they? Except a bit kind of . . . faded. Mum kept hinting about grandchildren.”
Gina considers Clare. It is hard to see how a baby could fit into that sparse body. “Will you oblige?”
Clare shakes her head. “Probably not.”
“Genetic drive seems to have died out with our generation,” says Gina.
“Actually, I really don’t much like children. Is that awful?”
“I used to feel the same myself, back at Allersmead.”
They laugh.
“We’re a pretty assorted lot, aren’t we?” says Clare. “Flown off in all directions. All doing quite different stuff.”
“True. It doesn’t say much for our nurture.”
They consider each other, across the table; two women operating in vastly different worlds, but sprung from the same source.
“None of us having kids,” says Gina. “Except possibly Rog, I imagine, in time. Most of us gone global, except for Paul.”
“How is Paul?”
Gina pulls a face. “OK. Insofar as he’s ever going to be.”
Clare sighs. “What happened there?”
A small silence. “Who can say? Nurture, nature? Mum smothered him, didn’t she? The favorite. And he’s—well, feckless, I suppose. And the rest of us are
not. And he wound Dad up, so Dad practiced sarcasm on him. Recipe for—well, loss of self-respect?”
Clare nods. “And he ends up the only one still kind of tethered to Allersmead. So are we others flung far and wide because of Allersmead?”
“No. You’re where you are because you’re a brilliant dancer. I’m doing what I do because I stick at things and I’m fairly pushy and I love foreign assignments, and Rog is a career doctor and”—Gina spreads her hands—“we are what we are.”
“All the same, we’ve rather—gone away, haven’t we? So much for family. Mum’s iconic family.”
Mum.
“Mum,” says Clare, lifting an elegant eyebrow. Smiling. “I know. But what else would I say?”
Gina is taken aback. That of which we do not speak. She is silenced, for a moment. Then: “Should we all have sat down and talked about it, years ago? Sat them down—made them confront it?”
Clare shakes her head. “No. Muddle was better, to my mind.”
“You must have felt . . .” Gina trails into further silence. She has not much idea how Clare must have felt, she realizes.
“Muddled? Oh yes, indeed. I remember asking you if our father was my father. After a carol service. You assured me that he was.”
“Did I? I remember . . . sort of realizing . . . way back. Then putting it aside, not knowing where else to put it.”
“Exactly,” says Clare. “As we all did. Them too. All three of them.”
“Ah, them. And there they still are. What’s left of the family. Ironic, or what?”
They stare at each other. “Whew!” says Gina. “We should have done this before. But you . . . are you all right?”
Clare smiles. “I’m probably more all right than one would expect.”
“And . . . Ingrid? Do you . . . ?”
“No. Never. She doesn’t do emotion. You may have noticed.”
Gina nods. And then, before more can be said, the waiter arrives, there is discussion of who wants coffee, and what kind, Clare remembers that she is meeting Pierre in half an hour, she starts to talk about her company’s new production, they are off on another tack.
“This new dance sounds intriguing,” says Gina. “A geometrical theme . . . And what are you? Definitely not a square.”
“I have been reading one of your father’s books,” says Philip.
“They’re out of print, I’d have thought.”
“What is the Internet for? Three-fifty, slightly scuffed, minus the wrapper.”
“Which one?”
“The study of youth. Adolescent rites in Namibia, and all that. I can see that you would have been horrified, peeking at his typescript that time.”
“I wonder why my father intrigues you so?”
“Probably because he’s so unlike mine.”
Philip’s father is a retired accountant, a man whose inoffensive days are marked out by dog walking and the crossword. He and his wife do the washing-up together in a silence so companionable that speech would seem superfluous. Gina has been struck by this; it was silence of a special quality.
“Do you feel that you know your parents?” she says.
“Of course not. I assume you ask this because you are thinking of your own?”
“I suppose so.”
“People from different planets. My parents would be astonished by yours.”
“Aghast, I should think.”
“Oh, come on,” says Philip. “They can be seen as a trifle eccentric perhaps. Hardly outrageous.”
“I believe they’ve given me a distorted view of marriage.”
“Ah,” he says.
On the flight to Johannesburg Gina works. She goes through the briefing papers that she has been given; she discusses a schedule with the camera crew. They are doing a series of reports on the incidence of AIDS in the townships. When she has finished all that she needs to do, she settles down to sleep, but, unusually, sleep does not come. Gina is adept at snatching a kip whenever and wherever, so what is the problem?
Somewhere, subliminally, Philip is the problem, but she is not allowing herself to think about this. Why has he been so quiet, this last day or two? Distracted, in some way, offhand, almost. Is he . . . ? Are they . . . ? No, no.
So she is not thinking about Philip, she mustn’t. It is association that is the problem; she can’t sleep because while flicking through the duty-free magazine her eye fell upon a perfume advertisement—a full-page, free-floating bottle of Miss Dior—and at once she is at Allersmead, that Christmas. Which is of course absurd—the juxtaposition of Allersmead and a bottle of perfume. But there you go—that’s how memory works.
Alison unwraps the bottle and stares at it. “Oh, goodness,” she cries. “Scent. But I never really . . . How lovely—scent. Who . . . ? Where’s the label? Oh, it’s you, Sandra. But I don’t know, dear, really, that I’d ever ...”
“If you don’t want it,” says Sandra, “I’ll take it back and change it for a five-year supply of washing-up liquid.”
“Can I smell?” says Clare. “Ooh—gorgeous. I’ll have it.”
The Allersmead sitting room is awash with people, with crumpled wrapping paper, with each person’s stash of unopened presents. The Christmas tree presides over the depleted pile of parcels; it drips tinsel, its branches glint with balls and bells, the angel leans from the top, as she has done for years and years. The dog has keeled over in front of the fire, its fur all but scorching. The family is complete. Fission has taken place, all are gone, even Clare, now at dance school, but the departures are not finalized; everyone still comes back for Christmas. Through the open door, from across the hall, comes a blast of roasting turkey.
Gina eyes the bottle of Miss Dior, which Alison is now gingerly sniffing. A loaded present, suggesting what Mum might be instead of what Mum is. But then many presents are loaded, are they not? Alison has given Charles a Black & Decker drill (“I just thought, you never know, he might find it fun to put up shelves or something”); Charles has given Alison a nineteenth-century edition of Mrs. Beeton, at which Alison has gazed in bewilderment: “Oh, old-fashioned cooking, isn’t that interesting?”
This is the only present that Charles has acquired and wrapped for himself. The rest of his giving is subsumed into Alison’s—a swathe of gifts chosen by her: “Happy Christmas from Mum and Dad.” And “. . . from Alison and Charles”: a Shetland sweater for Ingrid.
The Shetland sweater does not seem particularly loaded. Ingrid puts it on immediately.
“Lovely,” says Alison. “The color’s just right for you—I thought it would be. I havered a bit—there was a green as well, but no, the blue is right. Roger dear, if those socks are too small . . . I still can’t believe you’re man size. Gina, have you opened yours yet?”
Gina’s present is a tea set: pretty pink patterned china, cups and saucers, teapot, milk jug. “I thought, for your flat. I know you’re sharing with another girl so keep it for yourself, it can be the beginning of your bottom drawer.” A merry laugh.
I see, thinks Gina. My trousseau, which people no longer have—Mum is a trifle out of touch. Definitely a loaded present; one that says, settle down and get married, attend to the essentials.
Sandra has a fluffy white angora cardigan. “I couldn’t resist it.” Alison beams. “It’s the sort of thing I longed for at your age, but no such luck.” Sandra and Gina exchange glances, momentarily at one.
The sheepskin slippers allocated to Katie and Clare seem unexceptional, but Paul stares in perplexity at his tennis racket. “You were really rather good when you were at school, dear, and I thought—he should take it up again, join a local club or something, so good for you and you’d meet nice people.”
Paul is not much heard from these days. There is concern and complaint from Allersmead, from Alison.
“Thanks,” says Paul. “That’s great. Thanks.” He gets up and tries a forehand drive.
Alison glows. “I knew you’d like it. And you know you could always come home at week
ends and go to the country club—we’d pay for membership, wouldn’t we?” She turns to Charles.
Charles inclines his head. “I’m sure Paul would be an asset to the country club. Just the kind of member they’re after.”
Paul studies his father. “That wouldn’t be sarcasm, would it, Dad?”
Some rogue element has tiptoed into the room, bringing silence. Alison laughs: “Don’t be silly, dear. Dad’s just joking.”
“He does not make jokes,” says Ingrid. “Not so much.” Everyone looks at her. She rises: “Shall I bring coffee?”
Alison’s voice is a notch higher, always a bad sign. “Yes, please do, dear. And could you have a look at the turkey? I must take it out soon.” She reaches for a parcel. “Now who’s this from? Oh—Corinna and Martin. I sent them a nice little garlic press. I thought Corinna would find it handy. Roger and Katie, I don’t know why that’s so funny.”
“Sorry, Mum,” says Katie. “It’s just the thought of . . .”
“Corinna savaging garlic cloves,” says Roger. “Pull yourself together, Katie.”
Gina dives into the pile of parcels. “Here’s yours from me, Dad.”
Charles unwraps an ivory-handled Victorian paper knife. “Ah. To stab my enemies with, is that?”
“It’s for opening letters,” says Gina.
“As he well knows. I believe that really was a joke,” says Paul.
“Stop it!” cries Alison. “Paul, go and help Ingrid with the coffee. She can’t carry everything.”
Gina watches Alison. She knows the signs. Alison is revved up, primed. Christmas is the very peak of family life, after all, the signature day, the moment of ultimate cohesion; it is Alison’s greatest challenge—the food, the decor, the presents, the ceremonies. Fridge and freezer are stuffed; the house is rampant with holly and ivy; they sang carols last night, even though Paul hadn’t yet arrived, Sandra was busy washing her hair, and Charles had gone out, for some reason. Alison is at pitch point, tight-wound, this is the culmination of her year, of the family year, everyone is here, this should be her moment, instead of which she is on edge, at risk, volatile.
Family Album Page 18