“We’d have liked two,” says Mary. “But we’ll see how it goes with one, first. I was an only and James says I’m self-centered. You had masses of brothers and sisters, didn’t you?”
Sandra smiles. “Indeed. And I’m the soul of generosity and self-sacrifice in consequence. On the contrary—it’s in a large family that you learn to fight dirty and look after number one. I pushed my older sister into a pond when I was seven, it seems.”
“Really? Is that the one who’s on telly sometimes?”
“Gina. Yes.”
“Well, she seems to have done all right, despite that.”
“And we used to go down into the cellar, among the spiders and black beetles, and fantasize. I used to fight my brother over who was James Bond.”
“Bliss,” says Mary. “Heaven. Weren’t you lucky!”
Was I? Were we? Sandra looks across the table at Mary but is transported back to the Allersmead cellar; the murk, the damp, and that atmosphere of thrill and intensity, removed from reality, disbelief suspended, plunged into other worlds, pretense but also not pretense, nothing since has been so all-consuming. Shark-infested seas, wolves howling on the prairie, hunched shadows of the Daleks in their corner. “Eat a spider!” says Paul. Did I?
Sandra shrugs. “Well, I don’t advise six. My mother was . . .” She pauses.
“Frazzled,” says Mary. “Laid out, I bet. No, no—I’ll stick with one. Two conceivably.”
You’ve got it quite wrong, thinks Sandra, but never mind. Neither frazzled nor laid out. Triumphant, on the whole. Fulfilled. Numbers matter—we were her bank statement. Quantity counts. We were the largest family on the street, in the school—in the town I daresay. She was unchallenged. And of course the little local glitch was a family matter. Who was to know? Who does know? Just us—we’ve never gone in for spreading the news around. The family closes ranks. She considers felling Mary with a conversational ace: actually, one of us wasn’t hers.
“You do that,” she says. Suddenly she is bored with all this. She would quite like to describe to Mary the black marble bathroom that she and Luigi have so lovingly designed, but knows better. Property development is not an occupation that impresses others, unless it be other property developers. It is seen as a touch indecent, too commercial, rapacious indeed. As perhaps it is. But she does not feel rapacious. She feels—creative. The bathrooms, the kitchens, the dulcet shades of paint. And the satisfaction when the figures too are creative—when x + y has become x + y + z. If this is rapacity, then she could make a case for rapacity as an art form. And the money is, after all, mythical money. You never see it, handle it—it merely ticks away on screens. A market trader is closer to the real thing. Even the boutique, where credit cards are flourished. The boutique is commerce; figures do indeed flower. But they do not flower with such simplicity, such elegance.
So she puts her primary concern to one side and allows the conversation to drift, agreeably enough. The meal over, they embrace, and part. Sandra watches Mary make her way along the street, her bump cheerily emphasized by the skintight, wasp-striped top that she is wearing over her jeans. She suspects that she and Mary will see even less of each other in the future.
Few of Sandra’s friends have children. They are childless, like her, by inclination, or frequently, by omission—life has somehow rushed by, too busy, too demanding, and they have never got around to it. In Italy, it is a somewhat unusual position. Children are endemic, here. Well, a Catholic country—most people are at least nominal Catholics. A family of six would be unremarkable. Indeed, you soon realize that Italy is a land of teeming youth—the streets flow with the young, the air rings with their confident voices. The buzz of their scooters deafens you. Youth teems elsewhere. Of course. In Brixton or Bradford or Glasgow. But the young of Italy are more insistent, more pervasive. From the putti that gambol on fountains, that float on ceilings, to the streams of today’s schoolchildren who occupy the pavements, hold up the traffic, the city seems to be in defiant, flamboyant production, regeneration.
My mother would approve, thinks Sandra, held up in revving traffic as a seemingly endless file of pinafored tots is ushered over a crossing. But of course she never came to Rome. They never traveled, did they? No holidays in the Algarve for us.
And anyway, was it that she liked children for themselves, or just her own children as validation, as endorsement, as proof of her maternal prowess? Her own children? Clare? Clare was treated just the same as anyone else, I don’t remember so much as a flicker of discrimination, ever. And of course the facts of the matter were kept under wraps. We were the family, and that was that.
The tots are safely across the street, and the traffic roars ahead, taking Sandra with it. La famiglia is pretty sacrosanct in Italy, which is one good reason to keep the involvement with Mario in check bearing in mind that appalling mother. Don’t worry, Mama, I’m not planning to snitch your little boy, and no way would I enter your suffocating embrace. At least my mother doesn’t call up to report that she is about to go to the shops, or that the window cleaner has been.
Sandra is still thinking about family, the family, Allersmead, when she climbs the stairs to her apartment—the apartment that she shares with Mario, for now. The apartment has big windows with a wide view over a park and a slice of golden Rome; it has cool stone floors and a huge pale leather sofa and a low glass-topped table on which there are always flowers. It is stylish, tranquil, there is no mess, no clutter, pictures are precisely hung, the paintwork is in mint condition. It is a million miles from Allersmead.
When Sandra was still at Allersmead, still a child, she had glimpsed such alternative worlds in magazines. The dentist’s waiting room had been a revelation. She had scrutinized these amazing interiors: so this was how people could live. And had known that she would do so herself, in due course.
But the apartment, this afternoon, is overlaid by Allersmead. She wanders around that virtual-reality place, so intimately known—the sitting room with its shabby chintz-covered sofas and chairs, the faded blue curtains, the kilim rug in front of the fireplace, the kitchen with that great battered table, scene of a thousand family meals. She wanders—not in the spirit of nostalgia but of curiosity, of surprise, even. It seems odd that she was ever here, was here for so long, without, as it were, noticing.
But I probably noticed first, she thinks. I remember thinking—we are not like other families, we are not a normal family. Mum and Dad hardly ever talk to each other, and there is Ingrid who is family but is not, and there is Clare. Gina did a bit of thinking too, but we didn’t much exchange views. And by the time I was—seventeen or so—I noticed all the time. Oh, not the decor, the general Allersmead ambience, that was neither here nor there by then—I noticed that this was a pretty weird sort of family, a seriously odd family, a screwball family.
What did I feel? Well, kind of exasperated. I felt sorry for Clare. I thought someone should sit down and talk it through with her. And with the rest of us, for that matter.
Now, I see it all differently. I see three people for whom things had gone dramatically wrong, who probably should never have been together anyway. I see them muddling on, because no one could face up to doing otherwise. Condemned to cohabitation.
The phone rings, and virtual-reality Allersmead evaporates, along with Sandra’s thoughts. That was then, this is now, and now is on the line. Sandra’s deputy at the boutique is unable to mollify a customer whose ordered garment has not arrived when promised. Sandra knows this customer well—the wife of a wealthy industrialist, a woman for whom shopping is a career; you do not offend such customers. She speaks to the woman herself, assures her of immediate, violent action; she is placatory, flattering, unctuous even, and afterwards she is contemptuous—of herself. That woman is a vapid parasite, Sandra despises her, and her like. But the fashion world is full of them—it is for them that the fashion world exists.
That is the problem with fashion. Sandra spotted this long ago, when first fascinated by cloth
es and what could be done with them. The products of fashion are intriguing and entrancing—the fabrics, the styles, the ingenuity of design. They are craft of a high order, and a craft furthermore that determines what the woman on the high street will look like this year, or next. This manipulation is itself remarkable—that an idea, a concept, a sketch can blossom, can send tentacles worldwide, can decide the contents of a million wardrobes. The whole edifice of fashion is impressive—the way in which a catwalk garment priced for plutocrats will reappear, modified and made accessible to the populace. Fashion percolates downwards, until it becomes relevant to anyone. What a clever trick, and how nicely it thus contrives to make lots of money for lots of people.
And that is the trouble—the people. The consumers on the front line, like the patrons of the boutique, the lettuce-leaf ladies with no thoughts but of self-gratification, and the entire frenetic army of those who cater to them, the task force of designers, and vendeuses, and PR girls and buyers, all of them stupefied by the glamour and significance of their calling.
Such as Sandra? She would admit readily that this was perhaps the case way back, when first she found herself in the heady world of magazines, awed by the brittle, assertive older women and those who danced attendance—the slick photographers, the other besotted acolyte girls. Disillusion set in long ago—it was all right to be a part of all this so long as you stayed sane, and saw it as a sort of lunatic circus, playing to an audience of turnip heads. And the clothes could be mesmerizing—the hang of a skirt, the elegant conceit of a trimming. Plus you have to earn a living somehow.
But today even the clothes are losing something of their charm. Sandra still loves (ah, that labored word)—enjoys—the glorious touch of silk, the pleasure of some new unfamiliar weave, the interest of a clever cut or a challenging design. The fascination persists, if a touch diluted, but there is increasingly the sense of déjà vu, the catwalks have become a yawn, the entourage more and more of a pain. Luigi is better company, marble bathrooms more inspiring.
Well, it is not too late to jump ship. If this current project works out, sells well, and the next—then maybe she’ll say goodbye to the boutique, go all out for . . . marble bathrooms. One might well go back home, to England—rumor has it that you can do well there in the housing market, and she has never seen Rome as more than a phase.
Sandra believes in following her nose. If things become stale, in love or in work, then sniff the air and move on. Twenty years in fashion is perhaps enough. The determined eighteen-year-old who got a foot in the door is someone else; a different Sandra is ready now for change. She remembers her father’s curled lip when she announced that she had a job with this magazine and would be leaving home.
“A fashion magazine?” cries Alison. “Well, my goodness, I suppose if that’s what you want . . . But why not go to university, like Gina?”
Because—Sandra thinks but does not say—because that takes three years and I haven’t got the time. And that’s what Gina’s doing, so I am not.
Charles says nothing. He simply looks, which is enough.
Dad would never have seen a magazine in his life, whether it was Vogue or Country Life or Yachting News. That is, he would have laid eyes on them, in the newsagent or wherever, but he would not have seen them because they were not within his sphere of interest. Dad did not notice TV sitcoms, rock music (unless from Paul’s room), our clothes, our friends, much of our conversation. And that was just Allersmead. Beyond Allersmead, he was unaware of football-league tables, bingo halls, horse racing, coarse fishing—anything indeed that was irrelevant to his concerns. Which were? Well, the books—whatever he was writing at that particular time. So, mostly, Dad let the world pass him by—he looked the other way.
Sandra has inspected the books. She has stalked into his study in his absence; she has eyed titles, browsed within. If she put her mind to it, sat down and gave her full attention, she could follow well enough. She is not stupid. She got good marks at school, when she wanted to. When she wanted to show that she could match Gina, if she felt so inclined. “Sandra has a good mind . . .” school reports used to say—teacher talk for not stupid—“. . . but does not always choose to apply herself.” School was a pain one was simply enduring, waiting for release.
A fair number of people must have read Dad’s books—bought them, taken them out of libraries. He got money for them. Sandra glimpses suddenly a host of strangers—a kind of person she does not know, people who seek the sort of book she does not read. There is something oddly tantalizing about this—you do not like to think that you are shut off from a whole section of society, even if people you perhaps couldn’t be doing with anyway. Dad’s customers. Unlike the boutique customers, that’s for sure. But one can’t abide the lettuce-leaf ladies.
Have I missed out? she wonders. If I had got down to it and read Dad’s books, and similar books, would I be someone else, consorting with unimaginable strangers?
People like him? No, no, there can’t be a whole horde of Dad clones. And if there are, he never knew them. Dad didn’t have friends, colleagues, people who dropped in, rang up.
She sees in detachment this solitary figure, and feels a kind of compunction. There he was, one lived with him all those years, and one knows nothing of him.
He tells her that if she were an African girl of twelve she would have scars on her cheeks. He makes some comment about her green fingernails, so Mum notices.
He comes into the kitchen with ribbons of paper streaming from his hands. “Who did this?” he roars.
Who did, by the way?
Gina has given him a paper knife for Christmas, and he asks if he is to stab his enemies with this?
He walks that cliff path at Crackington Haven, alone, staring at the sea. He does not see them.
His physical presence is eminently retrievable. That slight stoop, the strong, rather beaky nose, the way he wrinkles it to hunch up his glasses. Oh yes, the glasses—always opaque, in desperate need of a wipe. His clothes—vivid still, item by item. Those shirts with button-down collars (frayed)—the blue denim ones and the red one and the green checked one. The brown cardigan thing with suede front. The gray sweater and the black one. The tweed jacket with elbow patches. The fawn belted raincoat.
Actually he was—is—rather good-looking. Strong features. Women—some women—are said to seek a man in the image of their father. Surveying her own men, Sandra sees no one bearing even the faintest resemblance. So much for that. Rejection? Tell me about your relationship with your father, Sandra.
What relationship? When she tries to isolate herself and Charles, to find a connection that is personal, specific, she is unable to do so. Of course, there is presumably a finite amount of paternal attention, and in his case you have to divide by six. One-sixth of maybe rather cursory paternal attention. Sandra trawls back, in search of the flavor of her personal sixth. When, and in what way, did one feel that he was my father rather than our father? What little jokes did we have, just him and me? What chats? Oh, come on, you know he neither joked nor chatted. What conversations, then? But Allersmead conversations tended to be collective, a free-for-all around the kitchen table at mealtimes; when Dad spoke he spoke to—or at—everyone, on the whole. We argued with him, oh yes—Gina most of all—but his end of the argument seems oddly dispassionate, in recollection, neutral—a general response, not customized, not: now, Sandra, you and I must have a good talk about this.
So even the one-sixth of Dad is somewhat impersonal, one-sixth of this father figure, our father, our father who art in his study and do not disturb, a father type who nevertheless defines what a father is, must be, how could they be otherwise? A father is Dad, because that is what one has known.
What did I feel about him? Awe? Respect? Well, not really—you took care not to provoke him because you didn’t like the way he would respond. Sarcasm—though you didn’t then know the word. Mostly, you skirted him, ignored him as though here were some inconvenient feature of the landscape.
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And now? When Sandra returns to Allersmead today she seems to be visiting some historic site, which is entirely strange, entirely surprising, and yet at another level infinitely familiar. Both Charles and Alison are startling—is this really how they are, how they speak and behave?—but also disconcertingly normal. Of course, this is how it was, how it is; the shock is that it still goes on, parallel to the world of today, the life of now.
Enough, she thinks. She has been lying on the sofa in the Rome flat, flicking through a kitchen installation brochure, with Allersmead swirling all around. Enough of this, there is work to be done, phone calls to make, messages to check. She gets the laptop, starts to go through the e-mails, and stares in shock.
There is an e-mail from Ingrid. When Allersmead chooses to communicate in this way it is Ingrid who does so. Alison has never got the hang of the computer; Charles probably does not know what it is.
Ingrid is brief. Brief and bald—a statement. Sandra reads and rereads, frowning.
MOTHERCRAFT
Alison is a little disappointed that the Mothercraft class does not seem to be catching on. It is an offshoot of her cookery classes, which have been going strong for nearly twenty years now, oversubscribed; you can’t sensibly have more than seven or eight under instruction in the Allersmead kitchen so there is often a waiting list. She had thought Mothercraft such a brilliant idea, so much what young mothers need, surely, but so far only five have turned up, and she finds them oddly unresponsive. They want to know how to stop their babies crying at night and what to do about two-year-olds’ tantrums, and sit impassive while she tells them that the important thing, the really crucial thing, is a real family life with lots of love and attention for everyone, all the time, and plenty of family rituals, birthday parties and everyone belonging, and of course lovely home-cooked meals. On the first occasion, a girl had interrupted: “Actually, if you don’t mind my saying, Mothercraft sounds a bit odd, it’s Parenting now, really.” When Alison had pointed out that it’s mothering that counts, I mean that’s the really central thing, isn’t it, the mother’s role, there had been a ripple of dissent. Apparently they don’t see it quite like that. Someone else said, “One’s not on call twenty-four/seven, I’ve got a job, and it’s turn and turn about with my partner.” They bring their babies and toddlers, of course, and the idea had been that Ingrid would run a sort of crèche, but Ingrid hasn’t seemed all that enthusiastic, and Alison had rather forgotten how chaotic it can get with a few little ones around.