Family Album

  Alison enjoyed giving birth. She couldn’t understand why some people made such a fuss about it. All right, it hurt a bit but not that much, none of hers had taken long, just a final hour or so of ouch! and heave, and there you were, with the dear little bundle. She had loved sitting up in the Allersmead bed, displaying the bundle to its siblings, and to Charles. There had been such a sense of achievement, and being the center of a wonderful primal ritual, the woman in the home having a baby; the house around her was grateful, she used to feel, as though she had adorned it, made the one superb addition to its furnishings. Hospital was a fearful letdown: strangers all around you, other women with their bundles and their noisy relatives, nurses clattering up and down, clamping the baby to your breast as though plugging an appliance into a socket, the assembly-line doctors and midwives, hauling babies out, so many per day.

  There is no record of total Allersmead births, but it must be assumed that small Edwardians let out their first yell here, in the age of innocence before 1914, and later there must have been infants of the 1920s and 1930s, and then perhaps on into the war years, adding up to a collective howl of outrage, the universal greeting to a cold and dazzling world. These cries are buried in the walls, along with everything else that the house has heard and witnessed; the babies have grown up, and gone, and some of them are dead, but somewhere there may be a pair of elderly eyes for which the first sight was an Allersmead ceiling, and which first blinked at the light through Allersmead windows.

  Allersmead fathers of times past no doubt did the traditional thing and paced up and down while people busied themselves boiling kettles, and the doctor hurried up the stairs with his black bag. Charles did not pace; he got on with some work, distracted by the comings and goings and the generally portentous atmosphere. He felt uncomfortably aware of having the supporting role, of being inevitably involved, but also at this point superfluous. Exasperating midwives would refer to him as Daddy, inadequate meals were perfunctorily flung together by Ingrid, the existing children roared around the place quite out of hand. When the drama had reached its conclusion, he would go upstairs (“Someone’s ready to see their Daddy now”) and do duty at the bedside, while Alison beamed, and the bundle squirmed and snuffled, and seemed to him quite remarkably inhuman. He always thought of the pig baby in Alice, while trying not to.

  Alison looks back with nostalgia at those halcyon early years. You had babies, and there were small children and a baby forever, it seemed, and just those manageable problems—teething and croup and a spot of sibling jealousy—except that it was not forever, not at all, there was this unruly race up the measurement wall, and suddenly no more pliable little figures but instead an entourage of wayward people who are both deeply familiar but also dismayingly unknown. Allersmead has been fingered by some alien outside force, mutation has taken place, and Alison is helpless.

  Alison responds. She reinvents herself. She sees that she is now the guardian of their security. They still need Allersmead, they still need her; they are not fledged, just flapping.

  So the halcyon years are succeeded by those more challenging times. Alison finds that she can adapt, and Allersmead does the same. The babies’ high chair goes up to the junk room on the attic floor. Tricycles give way to bikes flung down by the front steps; the nursery gramophone (“The farmer wants a wife, the farmer wants a wife . . .”) is overtaken by Paul’s stereo, Sandra’s Walkman. The garden swings grow moss; the sandbox is buried in dead leaves. It is all right, it is fine, everything is as it ever was, except different. Alison has faced down the passage of time, and emerged, if not triumphant, then afloat, on course.

  And there is more. Much more. There has been white water; she has navigated, and come through. She has kept her head and been sensible and firm, however difficult, however much she felt let down, betrayed; she has kept her sights fixed on the one thing that matters: this is a family, this shall always be a family.

  I said, this is what we are going to do. This is what I have arranged. I told her. I told him.

  Well, I said more than that, quite a lot more. I can’t remember exactly now. I know I talked a lot, because it helped somehow, and nobody else did—there wasn’t much for others to say, was there? And of course the children mustn’t know, not then, not ever, so the talking had to be done when they weren’t around, which wasn’t often, in those days. Roger was only two.

  I talked mostly to Charles—well, at Charles is more what it was, I suppose. Charles didn’t say much. He’d sit there staring sort of through one in that way he does, and you’re not sure if he’s listening or not. I told him that however hurt I was and however he’d let us down all that mattered was the family. The children. All of them—the one that was to come just as much. And Ingrid. Her too. I never for one moment wanted her to go—I told him that straight off. That was out of the question, I said. I told him it was a silly, stupid mistake and I realized that—now we all had to live with it, for always. And the only way, the best way for everyone, was to live with it together, as a family. Except of course that the children didn’t have to know, they mustn’t know, none of them, not even . . . Clare. I’d thought of what to tell them, and they’d be told, and that would be that. They could just forget about it, and there’d be six of them then, and that would be fine. And there need be no more talking about it, ever again, we were talked out now, at least I was, everything was settled and we were just going to make the best of it. Do you see? I said to him. You understand? And he went on staring and I don’t remember what he said. Nothing much.

  It was the only way. The only way to deal with it. They’ve never known, the children. I’m sure they haven’t. Sometimes I almost forget about it myself. Sometimes.

  And it is all a long time ago now. Alison is someone else; she is no longer a young mother in flowing Laura Ashley with mousy brown hair that tumbles from restraining grips but a sixty-five-year-old mother in cord shift dresses with gray-brown hair that does the same. She is still first and foremost a mother, but motherhood is emblematic now; therein resides her status but it is no longer her occupation. Her days are busy with Allersmead—Allersmead is still demanding, it still requires servicing, policing—and with the kitchen. There are still people to be fed; twice a week there are the cookery class women, who can be taught how to feed others. Women have come and gone—indeed, over the years they have merged, for Alison, into a sort of conglomerate kitchen greenhorn who keeps on bungling her hollandaise and collapsing her soufflé. There have been highfliers, graduating with honors. And there have been those whose personalities have left a permanent impression, whose comments and glances are stored, much as she would like to wipe them away. These women wear choice clothes, their hair has received attention, they have waistlines and good complexions, and, by implication, well-appointed homes and attentive husbands. Alison has been made aware that if she were not the cook that she is, they would not notice her, that, for them, she is some kind of subspecies. They have made her wonder if she really likes other women.

  Alison has fewer friends these days. In the past, when the children were at school, she had a circle of neighborhood friends, the other mothers with whom she consorted, who delivered offspring to play at Allersmead, before whom she could not resist preening herself. No one else had six. From no other house came such a rich procession, each school day, no other house so rang with child life, was so redolent of family. Back then, Alison felt that she queened it—graciously, tactfully—over friends and acquaintances less well endowed.

  But they seem all to have evaporated now, those other mothers.

  Old familiar faces have vanished (their offspring grown, the house too big) and been replaced by the hobbling inhabitants of the nursing home, the fly-by-day owners of the expensive cars. There is no pausing for a chat in the street, these days.

  Alison is not bothered, on the whole. Allersmead was always self-sufficient; it is indeed diminished now, with the children gone, but it remains the unit that it ever was. And it is populate
d by all those winsome ghosts—perpetually happy, harmonious, the ideal family; they swing on the swings, they dig in the sandbox, the nursery gramophone croons away upstairs: “The farmer wants a wife . . .”

  Charles is gray, more stooped, but otherwise unaffected by the years, or so it would seem. He still spends most of the time in his study, but no book has emerged for some while now. He has found publishers unenthusiastic. Old contacts have been replaced by very young men and women who politely reject his proposals—they find themselves unable to get behind this idea, interesting as it is. Charles is still working on a book—of course he is, what else would he do?—but he finds that his relationship with this book is different from that with other books: not much is written as yet, he feels little urgency or compulsion, the book is like some comfortable garment that he puts on when it suits him to do so. He doesn’t really care if it is published or not. Suffice it that he has reason to be occupied in his study as he ever has been. Sometimes he does not feel too well these days.

  Ingrid has gone entrepreneurial. During the growing months she sells surplus produce from the vegetable garden to the cookery course women. She has branched out into cut flowers, and has turned a further area of the garden into a permanent border from which she can harvest a steady supply of blooms. Alison has insisted that she keep the income thus generated, but Ingrid, equally, insists on putting it into the household kitty. She is aware of a certain cash-flow problem, perhaps rather more than either Alison or Charles, who prefer to ignore this difficulty.

  Ingrid has thickened—she no longer has that girlish willowy look. But her hair—that betraying hair—is still corn-golden, without a thread of gray. She has still that impassive, enigmatic gaze, she is still inclined to slightly disconcerting conversational intrusions. The cookery class women are baffled by her; they can’t work out her role, and her stonewall response to their advances makes them feel put in their place. Alison is blank, when probed: “Oh, Ingrid is such a support—what would we do without her?” That “we” seems to draw in the seldom visible Charles, the husband about whom the women are mildly curious. Those who have glimpsed him, and have even tried to exchange a word, report a vaguely distinguished-looking guy, in the most ancient tweed jacket you ever saw, not what you’d call forthcoming, polite enough but dived straight back into that room of his, what does he do, one wonders.

  Allersmead provokes a certain curiosity. Perhaps it always did, but back in the days of full occupation, when the place ran with children, the response was also vaguely critical—what were people doing with a family that size, in this day and age, not even Catholics apparently, and what an odd mismatched couple, him so reserved, barely says hello, but her all smiles and chatter. Today the interest is focused on the inhabitants—this trio so out of kilter with the times (except where gastronomy is concerned), and what exactly is the Ingrid person for?—but equally on the place. Most neighbors are very property conscious—either they’re sitting on a gold mine or they’ve mortgaged themselves silly in order to buy one—and they note that Allersmead is far from up to scratch these days. The roof is visibly in need of repair, gutters are sagging, the paintwork is flaking, and there is a zigzag crack up the brickwork by the porch. Does this suggest apathy or lack of funds?

  Ingrid acquired a computer a few years ago, having explained e-mail to Alison, who at once saw its potential: this was the way to keep track of everyone. Ingrid has to be the conduit; Alison’s desultory attempt to acquire IT skills rapidly foundered, Charles took one look and turned away. The computer sits in the television room, thus converting this into the Allersmead twenty-first-century heartland. Ingrid checks the e-mails daily, and sends those drafted by Alison. No one is out of reach now; Allersmead tentacles embrace the globe. Furthermore, Ingrid has set up the Allersmead Cookery Courses website, which has brought in more customers than Alison can cope with. The waiting list is gratifyingly long, and those who at last rise to the top of it are all the more anxious to profit from this sought-after experience. Ingrid says that Alison should put the price up.

  Back when the children were still there Alison somehow never envisaged a time when they would not be. Oh, she knew it would come—but she never considered the implications, tried out the idea of an emptied house, listened for silence. They went gradually, of course, so silence came gradually, and there were returns, and now there is Paul again so the silence is tempered, and ever was. She has got used to it. You can get used to much—she has known that for a long while.

  She is rather pleased at the way in which Allersmead has been reinvented, become useful in a different way—Ingrid’s produce, the cookery classes. Once, it spawned children; now, it is differently creative. But it is still a shrine to the thing that matters—homemaking. Alison regrets that her views on this were rather stonily received by the Mothercraft group; she would have liked to develop the theme by telling them—in the most abstract way, of course—how you can overcome those inevitable glitches in family life, by way of determination and common sense. But they were only interested in things like nappy rash and projectile vomiting. She will definitely pull the plug on Mothercraft, but plans a new course on confectionery, jam-making, and preserves.

  The house does indeed have empty rooms these days. The drawing room is seldom used; the television room is altogether more convenient. Ingrid has turned one of the attic rooms into a dedicated space for her sewing machine. Below, there are empty bedrooms, though Paul is where he ever was, and Charles long ago moved into Roger’s old room. That four-poster matrimonial bed has come to seem something of a mockery. After Clare’s arrival, Alison became rather resistant to sex; there had better not be any more children, on the whole.

  And I always disliked the idea of the pill, so best to play safe. Charles often used to go off into the spare room anyway, when he wanted to read and I wanted the light off, so it didn’t make much difference.

  They always startle me now when they come back—I’ve forgotten what they’ll be like and there’s this adult. Gina with a different man, and of course Charles had to have an argument with him but I suppose he doesn’t much get the chance these days. One didn’t like to ask what had happened with that David—Gina never did go in for confidences. Roger’s wife is perfectly sweet, of course—I’ve tried her waffle recipe and she’s going to e-mail me more things she does. One gets absolutely used to that Chinese look, though it seemed odd at first, you didn’t expect her to speak English like that, with a Canadian accent. Katie we haven’t seen for ages, but she says maybe next year they’ll get over. Clare seemed very kind of foreign last time she came, I almost thought she’d start talking French or something. And of course Sandra is so elegant, but then she always was, even in school uniform—and the presents she brings, lovely food and silk scarves I can’t wear, but Ingrid sometimes does.

  Charles is difficult these days, but then he never was an easy man, you walked on eggshells half the time. It’s a different kind of difficult now, not so much irritable and shutting himself off—he’s more edgy, jumpy, he can’t stand it when the dog barks, and he seems so elderly sometimes. He’s taken to stopping halfway up the stairs, sitting on the windowseat, and he’s got this habit of putting his hand on his chest. There’s nothing wrong, of course—Charles has always had excellent health, it’s just some mood he’s in. Plus, he’s drinking again in his study, which he hasn’t done for years.

  VOICES

  Charles is writing. He doesn’t feel too bad today—so thoughts come, words. He is having a mild attack of concurrence, as his glance roams along the books on his shelves and falls upon names: Carlyle, Freud, Browne, Shelley, Stendhal, Malinowski . . . all these disparate dead people who rub shoulders with one another and are present still because he notices them. Everything—everybody—carrying on concurrently. This notion has always interested him. Long ago he thought it might be the subject of his magnum opus, but he has never been able to get a sufficient grip on it, to garner enough material, so the magnum opus has never c
ome about, in that or any other form.

  He doubts that it ever will. In fact, he knows it won’t. But there is no reason not to get down a few thoughts, on one of the better days when these still occur.

  Accordingly he writes.

  “Thomas Carlyle died in (check date); (check sp. first name) Malinowski died in (check date). These men lived far apart, at different times, their intellectual concerns were in no way related, but their posthumous existence is concurrent—they are a part of the furnishings of my mind. Looking out of my window I can see a tree that I know to be an ilex (check botanical name), a tree of Mediterranean origin mentioned by Virgil (check reference), who also now joins this disembodied throng in a room in an English house in 2008. But the house is not of 2008—its bricks and mortar, its stained glass, the marble floor of its hall, date from the 1890s, thus introducing a further element of displacement, of concurrence.”

  Charles stops writing, distracted; there is a more immediate concern.

  E-mail—Gina to Roger

  Coronary. Apparently he must have had a heart problem for some time, but never saw anyone about it. Well—sudden is the best way to go, I suppose. I went down this morning. Mum a bit off the rails, Ingrid and Paul coping. Funeral on Tuesday. Look, I know it’s not easy for you to get away—we’ll understand entirely.

  E-mail—Sandra to Gina

  Of course I’m coming.

  E-mail—Clare to Gina