Family Album

by Penelope Lively

  Ingrid and Paul return, and hand out mugs of coffee.

  “Actually, I’d thought the good cups and saucers, for Christmas,” says Alison. “But never mind. Do you all remember that Christmas when Roger claimed he’d swallowed the sixpence from the pudding but of course he hadn’t really, wretched boy. And that time that Sandra fell off the stepladder, putting up paper chains, such a bruise on her leg. And when I forgot to take the bird out of the freezer and we had to thaw it in the bath. Oh, you know I can remember all the Christmases, right back to when everyone was small and some of you weren’t even here, back to when there was just Paul, just Dad and me.” She appeals to Charles. “Doesn’t that seem a funny time now?”

  “Indeed,” says Charles. “An age of innocence. Prelapsarian. Eden, I suppose.”

  Sandra looks up from a parcel she is opening. “So who’s the snake, Dad?”

  “Me, presumably,” says Paul. “The shape of things to come.”

  Clare laughs. “All of us. One snake after another. Maybe he never wanted children.” She has put the sheepskin slippers onto her narrow feet and inspects them with a tiny frown; perhaps they are not quite her.

  “I think in the Bible there is only one snake,” says Ingrid. “Also Adam and Eve have just boys, no girls, I think.”

  “Dead right, Ingrid,” says Paul. “And one bumps off the other—isn’t that right? So watch it, Roger.”

  Alison bangs her coffee mug down on the table. “Stop being so silly, all of you. I don’t know what you’re all talking about but it’s just too stupid. And of course Dad wanted children, Clare, that’s a silly thing to say, everyone does, I mean, I suppose a few funny people don’t but it’s not something I can imagine, I always, ever since I can remember, and thank goodness . . . we’ve been so lucky and Dad feels that way too . . .”

  Alison’s voice soars. Possible meltdown, thinks Gina. She breaks in: “Absolutely, Mum—I say, look, here’s another you haven’t opened.” She thrusts a parcel at Alison.

  Alison stares at the parcel, puts it down. “I mean, it’s the natural and normal thing, wanting children, I always, a real family life is such a privilege, you’re still too young to realize I suppose, I mean, can you imagine not growing up at Allersmead, with all of you, and when Dad and I got married naturally the assumption was . . .”

  Gina glances at Charles. Impassive. Impervious?

  “. . . and whatever happened, I mean whatever, as far as I was concerned family life came first, that was what really mattered, family, and of course Dad felt the same, didn’t you, the important thing was for people to grow up in this lovely big family and a lovely home, and that always came first, whatever, one’s own concerns were neither here nor there, well of course they were but I never . . . what mattered was the family, always, when you’re a parent that’s how you feel, one day you’ll understand that when you have your own children, Dad knows what I’m talking about, and of course he’s always felt, haven’t you . . . ?”

  She is pink-faced, has run herself into the ground. She stares at Charles.

  He does not look at her. He puts the ivory-handled paper knife on the table. “Any contribution would be superfluous. You apparently know how I feel.”

  It is said quietly, courteously even. He gets up, walks out of the room. No one speaks. Seconds later they hear the slam of the front door.

  Down in the cellar there was a different Mum, thinks Gina. In the cellar game. Me. I reinvented her. I made a person who never cooked anything but somehow bangers and mash simply appeared, who told stories, who turned old bedsteads into boats and a cindery floor into the Antarctic. I made a kind of archetypal ur-mother who did nothing but around whom everything revolved. And Paul, now I come to think of it—he had his own concept of what a father is. Well, well.

  In Johannesburg, Gina checks her e-mail. There is one from Philip.

  He says: “I seem to have been unable to say this over the last few days. Don’t know why. Attack of nerves. Stupid. Anyway, here it is.

  “I would very much like it if we got married. An early reply would be appreciated.”

  CLARE

  My mother was not my mother, says Clare. And the person who was my mother wasn’t, if you see what I mean. Well, no—how could you? My father was my father, so that at least is straightforward enough. And my brothers and sisters were apparently my brothers and sisters, as indeed they were, or half were.

  I don’t know why I’m telling you about all this. I don’t talk about it. Pierre knows. He’s been to Allersmead a couple of times. He finds it all rather peculiar but he just shrugs; well, he’s French.

  I’m a bit French myself by now. Ten years based in Paris. And a bit Spanish and a bit Dutch and a bit Chinese—we’re multicultural, in the company. And of course a bit Scandinavian by birth. Which bit? I wonder. The hair, certainly. The hair was always a giveaway.

  My not-mother has rather frizzy hair—brown once, gray-brown now. I remember stealing Mum’s hairpins when I was small, to play with. My father—goodness, I can’t see his hair, somehow. Nondescript male hair, no particular color, thin on top.

  Ingrid’s hair is mine. Dead ringer. I like it, I’m glad I’ve got it, but it can be a pain to do—it’s so fine and slippery.

  There were six of us, six children in that great big house. Allersmead. It was one of the first words I learned, I’m told, taught by Roger and Katie. “Where do you live, Clare?” “Allersmead.”

  Paul, Gina, Sandra, Katie, Roger, and me at the end—that’s the age order.

  Do you really want me to go on?

  All right, then—you can always go to sleep.

  Ingrid? Well, yes—you’ve got it. Ingrid was—is—my mother. The au pair. So you see it’s an unusual family background, to put it delicately.

  Clare is in bed with a man not her husband. She does not make a habit of this; indeed, this seldom happens, just once in a while, like now. In fact, strictly speaking, she is not in bed with him, but sleeping with him. Alex is in a separate bed, this being a twin-bed hotel room, and a somewhat Spartan hotel at that.

  Alex is just about her best friend in the company. Alex is gay. The hotel—or the company manager—has cocked up and there are not enough rooms to go around, so some people must share. Clare and Alex are happy enough to oblige. They are both still a bit hyper after the performance and not ready to sleep, so they lie there talking. Alex tells Clare about his parents’ divorce, when he was seventeen, which he found quite upsetting, and now his mother has a new man, and Alex, who is twenty-five, hasn’t yet come to terms with this but guesses he will have to. People don’t talk much about family stuff in the company, perhaps because the company itself becomes family in some odd way—a new family. Clare is older than practically everyone, and she goes back ten years with the company, so she is a veteran and when people want to tease her they call her the den mother.

  Alex says, “Are your parents divorced? You never talk about them.”

  “Don’t I?” Clare is vague. “No, I don’t, do I? They’re a rather odd setup, as parents go. My mother was not my mother . . .”

  How do I feel about Ingrid? says Clare. Well, she’s Ingrid and always has been, she’s always been there, one can’t imagine Allersmead without her. I don’t think mother, if that’s what you mean, I just think Ingrid. I’m fond of her. I’m fond of them all, but they seem so far away now. So long ago.

  Yes, Ingrid’s always been at Allersmead—except one time, apparently, when she went off for a few months, but she came back. And of course one wonders how it’s been for her. She’d never say. Ingrid’s quite—buttoned-up. She doesn’t do emotion. You couldn’t have a heart-to-heart with Ingrid.

  No.

  No, really—I know it seems odd. I’ve never talked about it with her. Never. Or with the others. We all kind of stashed it away and left it at that.

  Well, yes, I suppose there was a point when I somehow realized . . . but it’s very cloudy now, I can’t exactly remember . . . just somehow
cottoned on, sort of saw things differently but it didn’t really change anything, things went on the same, they were the same people, just there was this new slant, only one didn’t think too much about it, preferred not to go there, I suppose, and anyway by then all I cared about was dancing, how to be a dancer, how to get to dance school, I was already moving away from Allersmead as it were, it was getting less relevant . . .

  Clare sees that Alex is asleep, one hand under his cheek, like a child.

  Bless. He’s such a lovely guy.

  Here and there, the clouds get thinner, and there is clarity, of a kind.

  The hair, of course. She is trying to get it into a coil—it is quite long now—and she says to Sandra: “My hair’s just like Ingrid’s—isn’t that funny?”

  What does Sandra say? From far away and long ago Sandra says something about people often looking like their mother.

  Their mother?

  Clarity, of a kind. Allersmead seems to swing a little, and reassemble itself differently. Clare cannot now remember what she said in reply, if anything. Perhaps Sandra has simply confirmed something that has floated in her head, that has shiftily been there maybe always.

  There is another rent in the clouds, at some other point. This time Gina is involved, the other big sister, knowledgeable, confident. They have been to church. Allersmead is atheist, so this is unusual, but an exception is made for the school carol service. The Lord’s Prayer is in Clare’s head: “Our Father, which art in Heaven.” Our father. She says to Gina: “Is our father my father?”

  Gina looks at her. Gina’s look knows everything, understands everything. “Yep. He is. All of us’s father. Forget it, right?”

  So she forgets. Sort of.

  She forgets but she also knows. This knowledge is tucked away somewhere deep in the mind, digested, received perhaps rather than accepted, seldom taken out for examination.

  I suppose some people would have rushed screaming to an analyst long ago, she says to sleeping Alex. But I’ve never been that way inclined. I think when I first began to realize I just pushed the whole thing away, it was too confusing, too much of a challenge, maybe that’s partly why dancing became such an obsession. Wanting to be a dancer shoved anything else aside. And since—with adult eyes—I just see it as all pretty weird; what were they thinking of? How was it for them? One has no idea, none at all. They’re like some other species, when you think about them that way. But also they’re exactly the same. Mum and Dad and Ingrid.

  Ingrid knows that I know. Don’t ask me how I know that—I just do. She knows and she doesn’t propose to talk about it, that’s been the message. Ingrid’s come up with surprising things, occasionally, but never anything touching that—the main issue. Other things, once in a while. Sudden revelations. I was complaining about Dad—it was just her and me in the kitchen at Allersmead, when I was back once from dance school, and there was some fuss with Dad about the money I needed for my flatshare. We all used to complain about Dad being tightfisted—actually now I just see him as a man with rather a lot of children.

  “He’s so mean,” Clare complains.

  Ingrid makes no comment. Her face, as ever, registers little but there is perhaps the hint of a smile.

  “You cut up his book that time,” says Ingrid.

  Clare gasps in astonishment. The destruction of Dad’s typescript is family legend. “I did? I don’t remember anything. How do you know?”

  “I saw you. I saw you come out of the room, with the scissors. You were not allowed to use scissors. You were six.”

  Clare laughs. “Wow! Did I really!” She is struck by a thought. “Did he ever know? Does he know?”

  Ingrid shakes her head. “Only I knew,” she says with satisfaction. “And now you.”

  When I look back at them—look back in a grown-up, detached way—what you can’t work out is who was the sufferer, who was exploited. All of them? Nobody?

  INGRID

  Ingrid no longer thinks in her own language. Somewhere within, she has this other resource, this speech that she could call on at any point if she so wished, and that does sometimes well up spontaneously—in a dream, or making some comment—but it is shut away, set aside, it refers to pre-Allersmead days, which are now very long ago. It refers to young Ingrid, girl Ingrid.

  Ingrid today is far from that other Ingrid, who seems indeed like a person who speaks a different tongue. And that person is succeeded by yet another—an Allersmead Ingrid who is still bilingual, just, but subsumed within Allersmead culture, gone native. Ingrid today is still in touch with that alter ego; from time to time that other Ingrid surfaces and bears witness.

  I was amazed, when I saw Allersmead first. I did not know there were such homes. I had no home then, my mother was dead more than a year, I was living in a hostel, doing waitress work by day.

  And before that there were the different places with my mother, the bedsits and the flats, here and there wherever she decided to be, and sometimes the man who was my father coming for a bit but not much, and in the end he went. My mother had men friends, different ones, many, and they would be there, and then go again. I remember faces, the one with the beard and the one with tattoos. I remember being in bed, and noises of drinking and shouting next door. Often my mother was drunk. She was drunk I think when she walked into the road that night and a car got her.

  I came to England I think because I did not know what to do next, and that agency offered jobs, and you would learn to speak better English. I had English from school but not so good then.

  The agency sent me to Allersmead, and there was Alison, she was young too but very much a mother, as though that was what she was always meant to be, and there was just Paul then but Alison said, of course another soon, and more. Laughing. She always laughed a lot, Alison. And it was all so far from what I had known, my mother, and the men, and those not nice flats and bedsits and always moving on, and the next place just as bad. I began to forget all that, and now I can hardly remember, it is like looking at old photographs gone brown. I was not going back there, I knew that, I was at Allersmead now, and Alison saying, Ingrid you are such a treasure, I couldn’t manage without you.

  For Alison it was children, children—husband I think was necessary but not so important. Back in the first years, with Paul small, and Gina, and Sandra, I thought it was odd she was not so interested in Charles, odd they talked so little, I thought perhaps that is just how English people are, when they are married. I saw Charles must be very clever, with his books, and Alison is—different.

  Six children is many, but for Alison not. For Alison it is family that matters, and more family is better. So there were babies, another and another and Allersmead is a big house so there was space, and for him to go in his study and shut the door and you must not disturb him. I do not know about his books. I have looked but I do not read books like that. So he was writing his books, and Alison was having babies and soon there was the family and always Alison said of course you are part of the family, Ingrid, what would we do without you? And I suppose that is what happened. Only perhaps more than she meant then.

  I did not like him so much, in the beginning. Alison, yes. With Alison it is very easy to get along, there is no difficulty—she is always talking, yes, but you do not need to always listen, and we have worked together very well. There was much work then, with all the children young.

  Much work, but it was good. For me, Allersmead was what a home should be. I had never known anything like that—the big house, and the children, and the garden and the dog and food like Alison makes.

  Perhaps it was not so much that I did not like him. I did not know how to relate to him. I did not understand the way he sometimes talks that you think is perhaps to be funny but it is not. You get used to that, it is just his way, it is sarcasm, so there is no need to pay attention. I was very young. It’s hard to reach back to when you were young—that person is someone else. I was someone else. I think he too was someone else.

  He loo
ked at me. I saw that he began to look at me. I had not had much to do with men. There was a boy before I came to Allersmead, but that was nothing much.

  I think now that was a bad time for him, for Charles. He was drinking sometimes—you would see the bottle and the glass on his desk. Alison was busy, busy with the children. Perhaps his work was not going well.

  And he saw me in a new way, I suppose. And I saw him, as a man.

  We were having sex for a short while only. Some weeks, I think. The first time, I was surprised, I hardly understood what had happened. Then I felt bad. So did he—I know that. He was a little bit crazy then, I think. And I was young, I was confused, I knew he should not, I should not, and then he said this must stop, he was sorry, he had done a bad thing and we must try to forget it, and I suppose that has been done, but there was Clare.

  Alison arranged everything. Where I would go and how I would come back after and what would be told to the children. This is a family, she kept saying, and Clare must be in the family, and that was what mattered. So that is how it was, and they were all quite young still so they did not much ask questions not then and not later except that later I think they somehow knew, her too. It would not be good to talk about it with her, it is best left the way it is. Perhaps she knows, I think she knows. To talk would be to open up that time and I do not want that. It is over now, finished, a mistake. Except that there is Clare, and a person cannot be a mistake, she must never think that, so it is better never to talk.