Growing Up for Beginners

by Claire Calman

  ‘You see I thought I’d said that I wasn’t sure… because of – of – well, partly the seasickness thing, I suppose… but not just that…’ Her voice faded away.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, darling. How many times do I have to tell you? We’re not talking about crossing the Atlantic in a pedalo! This is a state-of-the-art luxury liner. They have stabilisers. You would hardly know you were even on a ship. It’s just like being in a top-notch hotel only with 360-degree views of the ocean. What’s not to like? And there are plenty of excursions ashore. Honestly, it’s not like you at all to be so ungracious. I thought you’d be over the moon. Anyway, you love the sea – you’re always rattling on and on about how much you love it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I—’

  ‘I work incredibly hard for the good of this family – for you – for this house,’ he gestured around him at their capacious living room. ‘You can hardly blame me for wanting a decent holiday every now and then.’

  ‘No, of course not. You deserve a lovely holiday, of course you do.’

  ‘Yes, I bloody well do.’ He leaned back again and closed his eyes.

  She withdrew silently. It was true: he had left the brochure out for her. She should have said something sooner, before he booked it. But she’d thought that he would talk to her properly first as it was so long a holiday and so expensive. They hadn’t discussed it at all; he had talked about it a couple of times and she had listened. But she’d assumed he would raise the subject again and then that would have been the natural opportunity for her to voice any doubts she had. But he hadn’t because… because… well, because he was Roger and he wasn’t prone to doubts. It must be wonderful to be so decisive all the time, always knowing exactly what you wanted without doubting your own judgement, your own feelings, just knowing.

  Eight weeks. She put the leftover chicken and potatoes in the fridge for her lunch tomorrow, transferred the undressed salad leaves to a plastic tub. The leaves looked sad and tired, but they’d do OK for her. Eight weeks. She half-filled the kettle and clicked it on, her body going through the necessary sequence of movements like an automaton. Think of how quickly a single week zips by. Yes, that would be the way to manage it: one week at a time. Never thinking beyond the nearest weekend. I don’t want to go. Sssh. Shut up, Eleanor, you’re being silly. Lots of women would kill for a luxury trip like this. And Roger needs it, he works so hard. And then he would be so much more relaxed, wouldn’t he, and easier, and everything would be nicer, so it was a good thing really, would be a very good thing, of course it would, of course.

  ‘Would you like coffee?’

  ‘Mmm.’ He nodded, half-dozing now.

  ‘So, um – when is the departure date then?’

  ‘January the fourth. I’ll get Linda to email you all the details and a link to the website. Take some time to look at it all properly, darling. They’ve got beauty salons and spas and so on, and you can book yourself some pampering – treatments – have your nails done. I know you ladies love all that. A cinema. Cabaret. Gym. Swimming pools, of course. Plenty of entertainment and things to do if you get bored of lying in the sun. I plan to barely move a muscle myself, other than the heavy lifting of a Mai Tai to my lips.’ He laughed.

  Eleanor has had precisely three facials in her entire life and perhaps half a dozen manicures. Even if she had a manicure every single bloody day on board, that would still leave her about twenty-three and a half hours to fill out of twenty-four. Roger didn’t understand about sketching. She liked to draw the countryside. She liked to sit under a tree, completely still and silent, and draw sheep or cows sheltering by a dry-stone wall, ducks waddling towards a pond, a house hunkered down into the lee of a hillside.

  She wanted to ask if he also thought to take out cancellation insurance but realised that ‘wife doesn’t want to go after all’ was unlikely to count as a legitimate reason to cancel the trip.

  Well, it was nearly two months away. Anything could happen between now and then. She tried to think of reasons why the trip might be cancelled but they were all things involving appalling catastrophes or disasters so she pushed the thoughts away and pulled on her rubber washing-up gloves. She wanted to talk to Sarah, and she didn’t want to talk to Sarah; if she told her that Roger had gone ahead and booked the cruise, Sarah would be bound to give her a hard time for being so feeble. Eleanor knew it was feeble; she was an expert at holding a mirror up to her own shortcomings and berating herself for them, but she wasn’t in the mood to hear Sarah getting exasperated with her. Anyway, it was fine. Or rather it would be fine once she’d had a couple of days to adjust to the idea, that was all.

  Hannah usually did her best to call once a week from the school in a remote highland region of India where she, along with her two friends and two others, were teaching English to local adults as well as the children. There was no mobile signal but if you walked just a couple of miles or so into the village, there was a basic shop-cum-café that had a sporadic internet signal and you could make an internet call and download your emails if you didn’t mind having half the village crowding round watching you while you did it. In another few weeks, the work part of the trip would come to an end and the three girls would travel to south-east Asia where there would be Wi-Fi in more places or at least internet cafés. So far, all their setbacks had been fairly minor: their bus broke down and they had to wait four hours for another, her friend Georgia’s phone was nicked on the journey there; Hannah somehow lost her sleeping bag. But she sounded well.

  ‘Hi, Mum. I just picked up your email. I take it you were having me on about the cruise, right?’

  ‘No. Your dad’s booked it. As a treat. Eight weeks. We’ll get back not long before you do.’

  ‘How is it a treat? He knows you hate boats! You get so sick.’

  ‘Apparently, they have really good stabilisers now.’

  ‘And all those awful people. Being trapped with them and feeling seasick at the same time! God, I’d go mad.’

  Hannah’s words were so exactly a perfect voicing of her own feelings that for a moment Eleanor wondered if she had spoken them herself.

  ‘Well… they couldn’t all be awful, could they?’

  ‘As long as you are sure you’re happy about going, Mum? Honestly, it doesn’t sound like your bag at all.’

  Eleanor shifted uneasily.

  ‘I’m not saying it would be my absolute top choice of holiday, no, but your dad’s been working so hard and he really needs a long break.’

  ‘So send him on his own, then! Honestly, Mum, don’t be such a bloody pushover! Did you tell him you don’t want to go?’

  ‘Yes. No. Sort of. Well, I tried to, but it turned out to be too late.’

  ‘Mum. For God’s sake. You know what Dad’s like. He doesn’t get subtle hints. It’s no good being all sweet and polite about it. You have to look him in the eye and say, “I DO NOT WANT TO GO.” Then give him a large gin and tonic and evacuate the building for a week for the fallout.’

  Eleanor laughed, in spite of herself. Thank God her children were made of sterner stuff than she was herself.

  ‘But it’s all booked now.’

  ‘And what about your job? And your engravings? You can’t do those on a bloody boat, can you?’

  ‘Well, not really, no.’

  ‘Mum? Oh, Georgia, just sod off a minute, will you?’

  ‘Yes, darling. What is it?’

  ‘You sound sad, Mummy. Now I feel sad.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sad, sweet pea. I’m absolutely fine. I’ll muster some enthusiasm and all will be well.’

  ‘If it were me and my husband was trying to bully me into doing something I didn’t want to do, I wouldn’t let him.’

  Eleanor laughed.

  ‘I love it that you can stand up for yourself. I’m very proud of you. But marriage does involve compromise inevitably, otherwise one would never make it past the honeymoon.’

  ‘I get that, OK, I get it, but look who makes all the comp
romises! When did Dad ever compromise about anything? And the point is, Mum, that it’s simply NOT FAIR for one person to get their own way all the time. Is it?’

  ‘No,’ Eleanor said, ‘it isn’t.’

  ‘I have to go, Mum. Georgia has to make a call too. Speak to you soon. It’ll be easier when we leave here because there’ll be internet cafés once we hit the well-worn backpack trail.’

  ‘Take care, Hannah-banna. Love you lots.’

  ‘Love you, too, Mum. Love to Dad and tell him not to be so pig-headed.’

  That night, she has the dream for the first time, and after that it comes almost every night. Always the same. She is on a huge ship, so vast that it blocks out most of the sky. Every window, every porthole is blazing with light; loud music blasts from every orifice. People are shrieking as they splash and cavort in an unfeasibly large number of swimming pools. There are pools by the bar, in the cinema, even in their suite, but all full of hysterically happy holidaymakers. She watches herself from above, sees her head leaning out over the deck rail to look into the sea far below. The ocean looks dark, dark blue, almost black, frothed with choppy waves. She is wearing a long evening dress, covered in black sequins. She kicks off her high heels, thinking how odd, I never wear high heels and I would certainly never wear a dress covered in sequins. Climbs unsteadily up onto the deck rail. Far below, the ocean waits for her and a wave of pure fear surges through her. Still, she stands, feeling the rail solid beneath her. A breath. She raises her arms then and spreads them out wide for a swallow-dive. As she lifts up onto her toes and launches herself from the rail, her dress suddenly shimmers into a swirl of silver, scintillating in the light. And she soars, a bird in flight, sweeping low over the water, laughing at the surprise of it, glittering with life, with relief, with joy. Glances back at the ship for a moment, but falters then, plunging into the icy water. Alone now and freezing in the black ocean, looking up at the huge liner so close it threatens to drag her below to the depths. She wakes up, clammy, breathless, terrified.

  21

  Happy Families III

  1976–1979

  Conrad likes to think that he has been a good husband on the whole. He has always provided for his family, taken out the rubbish (except when he forgot), escorted his wife to innumerable functions and dinners (even when he had really not wanted to go), and allowed her to have her way on most matters relating to the house, holidays and children (although sometimes he had subtly seeded his own idea first so that Marcia could have the satisfaction of feeling she had held sway). Conrad dislikes discord. It drains him. It is an annoyance and a distraction. Although he has an extremely analytical mind, he would not turn that keen spotlight to shine its penetrating beam onto the dark conundrum of his inner life. He desires only his work, his books, his museum or his study; he likes thinking and reading and conversing with other people who are not embarrassed to be serious or clever or erudite. For him, argument means debate – the civilised trading of differing views, using evidence, citing sources to support your stance, assessing the contrary viewpoint, wondering if there might be some merit in it. Arguing over domestic matters – You promised you would mow the lawn… You shouldn’t have left your keys out where Benedict might see them… Do you really have to have the light on half the night to read? – was simply tedious and unproductive. Better to give in, or at least seem to do so, then navigate along a different path next time to pre-empt the point of potential conflict. Conrad, after years of expert manoeuvring in the surprisingly political world of museums, is remarkably adroit at that sort of thing. If he is unable to head off a brewing argument with his wife, his response is usually either to go out for a walk, or to appear to accede by remaining silent.

  On the question of how good a father he has been, however, his steely-eyed judgement is less forgiving. He believes he has always acted with good intent and tried to do his best. The children have never had to go short of anything important certainly: the family lives in a handsome detached house with a very large garden; they have clothes, good food, books, music lessons, holidays, etcetera. They attend decent schools, and he has supervised or helped with homework on request, indeed often prompting Eleanor to think in a deeper, more complex way about her school topics. He has listened attentively to piano practice, and taken them on visits to museums, galleries and historical sites of interest until Benedict’s increasingly wild behaviour stripped such outings of any pleasure.

  Over the last year or so, the volume inside the house seems to have been turned up several notches. Benedict is a door-slammer. When he comes in – slam! Then thundering up the stairs to his room – slam! Thundering down again to the kitchen, demanding fizzy pop – of which Conrad heartily disapproves, other than for high days and holidays – and cake or biscuits. The boy’s appetite is prodigious. The children seem to have become even more polarised in their behaviour and manner. As Benedict has become louder and more obnoxious, Eleanor has become… Conrad can’t quite put his finger on it. There is something elusive about his daughter. More than that – she is almost a ghost of a thing, flitting out of the kitchen, gliding up the stairs, appearing suddenly beside you without your noticing the moment of her arrival. When the family are all together, which is as little as possible, she is near-silent, limiting her speech to polite requests to pass the potatoes please, or asking her mother if she needs any help with anything. Conrad imagines that she would make a convincing heroine in a Victorian novel – patient, yielding, stoic – but he wonders if she is really content to spend her life in the background in this way. At school, by contrast, she glows, quietly excelling in most of her subjects other than sport – most of all English, history, Latin, art, and music. She is in the school orchestra, where she plays the viola, and sings in the choir. At last year’s school concert, she played in the orchestra, then had to walk alone up the steps to join the choir on stage for a solo. Marcia had stayed at home, unfortunately, as Benedict wasn’t feeling well, so he’d gone alone. He could see Eleanor blushing with embarrassment that people were looking at her as she had to take those steps alone, but then, two minutes later, she stood up and sang her solo without a tremor in her voice or body.

  Marcia does not understand Eleanor or, it seems to him when he thinks about it, even like her very much, but still she is a competent organiser and she makes sure the child is fed, clothed, and diligent in the matter of homework, choir practice and so on. Benedict is another matter. From the first, Marcia has indulged the boy. She is… besotted with him. When he was naughty, she scolded him with a smile, so he believed that his actions pleased her in some way. When he pulled Eleanor’s hair or threw her things out of the window, Marcia chastised Eleanor for not keeping out of his way or removing her belongings to a more secure place.

  Now, looking back, as he finds himself doing increasingly often, it is horribly clear that, in the matter of Benedict, both he and Marcia have fallen woefully short. Marcia has indulged the boy and he had shamelessly manipulated his mother with his looks and his charm and his promises to do better. Conrad had largely left her to it. The children were primarily her domain and, when they were little, he frequently felt them to be an annoying distraction away from his work. His shoulders sag at the thought.

  It is Eleanor’s twelfth birthday. Marcia has ordered a rather expensive cake from the bakery, with waves of white icing lapping around the edge, and an edible plaque – marzipan, perhaps? – proclaiming ‘12 today’ in fancy pink script as well as ‘Happy Birthday Eleanor’ in white on the chocolate icing of the cake. It is in the larder now, keeping cool. Conrad glimpsed it briefly as his wife transferred it there from the box. It really is a rather splendid-looking creation.

  Cocooned in his study, he hears the doorbell ring multiple times, then a chatter of excited girlish voices and squeals and fussing over coats and scarves and where to put the birthday gifts and so on. He turns on his radio, tuning it to Radio 3.

  There is a knock, then his wife sweeps in without waiting for a response.


  ‘Darling, please come. I don’t know what to do.’ God, not more interruptions. It is so hard to get anything done in this blasted house with the constant noise and shouting and screeching. Still, there is no point in arguing. He clicks the lid on his pen rather pointedly and rises to his feet without comment.

  Marcia leads him to the larder and opens the door.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  She gestures to the cake. The marzipan plaque has disappeared and the stiff white letters of Eleanor’s name have been picked off and, presumably, eaten. Only the ghost of its snowy footprint remains.

  ‘That bloody boy!’

  Marcia lays a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘You don’t know it was him. It might have been one of the party guests.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous – they’re all in there, playing Murder in the Dark and so forth. Who else would have done such a thing? Rumpelstiltskin? Mice? Or was it an Act of God?’

  ‘Now you’re being silly.’ Marcia looks him in the eye. ‘Perhaps Eleanor did it herself. You don’t know.’

  ‘Now who’s being silly? An Act of God is far more likely than Eleanor’s sabotaging her own cake. Your excessive fondness for the boy is making you irrational.’

  ‘What do you mean – “excessive fondness”? All mothers adore their children. It’s only natural. It’s only because you’re such a bloody cold fish that you think anyone displaying an ounce of affection for their own child is peculiar!’

  Conrad sniffs. There is no point in going down this fruitless cul-de-sac yet again.

  ‘I suggest we focus our attention onto the matter of trying to rectify the damage rather than on examining my faults, which are, no doubt, innumerable and irreparable. Are you able to – to…’ he waves a hand at the cake, ‘… repair it or redo the lettering, something like that?’