Behind the Scenes at the Museum (26 page)

‘Dunno,’ she says with a shrug, and then, as we stand watching the frozen river and contemplating the olden days, a curious feeling rises up inside me, a feeling of something long forgotten. It has something to do with the cold and the ice and something to do with the water too. I try to concentrate on the feeling, to bring it to life, but as soon as I do it evaporates from my brain. It’s the same feeling I have sometimes when I’m woken from sleepwalking and I know that there’s something incredibly important which I’ve lost and have been looking for – something that’s been torn out of me, leaving a hole inside – and that thing, whatever it is, has been tantalizingly within reach as if it were just around the corner, behind a door, or in a cupboard somewhere. Then I grow fully awake and have no idea at all what it is that I’ve been looking for.

‘Are you all right, Ruby?’ Patricia asks, but we are diverted by the approach of a pair of swans, balanced forlornly on their own private iceberg. We can hear the river crackling and cracking and watch as our steamy breath billows into the air. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ I ask after a while.

‘Truanting. Do you think those swans are all right?’

‘Well, I would change places with them anytime,’ I respond gloomily. ‘At least the rest of their lives doesn’t depend on whether they can do mental arithmetic.’

‘And they can fly away if they want to,’ Patricia nods sadly.

‘And they have each other,’ I add as the swans glide past us on their ice-float, their magnificent wings ruffled to protect them from the numbing cold. A shiver goes through me from top to bottom. ‘The water looks so
cold
.’

‘It is,’ Patricia says with feeling and then she gives me a funny, sideways look and says, ‘Ruby?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Do you remember—’ and then she shakes her head and says, ‘Nothing, it doesn’t matter, come on – I’ll wait with you at the bus-stop if you like,’ and she turns her collar up against the wind.

Bunty rallies a little for Shrove Tuesday – a day of ‘feasting and merry-making’ according to the Ye Olde England calendar. Not in our house, not at any rate after Bunty throws the fifth pancake at the kitchen wall instead of tossing it nicely back into the pan. It sticks on the wall for a few seconds and then slowly unpeels itself into a sticky blob on the floor like an extra from a science fiction film (
Killer Pancakes!
). It seems awfully symbolic somehow, especially as it was George’s pancake. ‘Well,’ Patricia says with Bunty’s smile stuck across her face, ‘I was almost full anyway, weren’t you, Ruby?’

‘Just about,’ I murmur and we slink out of the kitchen quickly before the frying pan whizzes through the air towards George’s head.

An appropriate air of contrition is in the air on Ash Wednesday, but we know it won’t last. Lent also marks the beginning of Nell’s decline, taking to her bed permanently after the pancake fiasco and not even rising for Easter Monday. Somewhere in the middle of this, on Mothering Sunday, Bunty displays a blatant lack of mothering by locking Patricia out of the house, so that she’s unable to creep in as usual at three in the morning. Patricia, not to be outdone, stands down below in the quiet suburban night-air, screaming, ‘Bloody bourgeois pigs – come the revolution, you’ll be first against the wall, Bunty Lennox!’ which, not surprisingly, creates quite a stir in the neighbourhood. I think Patricia’s enjoying herself and almost looks annoyed when I throw my front-door key down to her.

I myself undergo a traumatic visit to Mr Jeffrey’s, the dentist, the day before Good Friday, resulting in the loss of three much cherished baby-teeth which I have been hanging onto as long as possible. Perhaps I do not want to leave my childhood behind. (On the other hand, perhaps I do.) Patricia very kindly exchanges the teeth for three sixpences and takes me to meet Howard in the Acropolis Coffee House. It is hard to believe that this awkward gawky person, peppered with acne, is responsible for the Bacchanalian heights which Patricia reports to me most Sunday mornings as I lie in my innocent bed listening to
Easy Beat
.

Easter weekend is marked by a flurry of family visitors to say goodbye to Nell who has just about ‘had enough’ of life by now. This premature wake also produces a flurry of Easter eggs. Auntie Gladys, Uncle Clifford and Adrian come as well as Auntie Babs (on her own, thank goodness) and Uncle Ted. Adrian is entirely grown up now (twenty) but is still living at home. He’s just started on a hairdressing apprenticeship and is very handy around the house – setting the table for tea and picking up the teapot and saying, ‘Shall I be mother?’ to Bunty so that she looks shocked as noone has ever offered before to swap this role with her (you can see she’s tempted). Uncle Ted, standing behind Adrian, winks at George and puts his hand on his hip and takes a few mincing steps. George gives a great guffaw of laughter but when Uncle Clifford says, ‘What’s the joke?’ shakes his head helplessly. Adrian has brought his dog with him – a timid wire-haired terrier that Rags tries to dismember.

Uncle Ted announces to the company that he has finally become engaged to his long-standing girlfriend, Sandra, and George says, ‘Knocked up?’ and all the women shout ‘George!’ disapprovingly at him. Bunty, getting down to the nitty-gritty, asks who the bridesmaids will be, while Auntie Babs looks smug because the twins are in great demand as bridesmaids. Even I would have to admit that they would probably grace a wedding a bit better than me and Patricia, for we are clumsy, slouching sorts of girls compared with Daisy and Rose. They are too busy, revising for their O-Level exams, to come and say goodbye to their grandmother. They are fifteen-going-on-sixteen and I haven’t seen them for a long time. Patricia is sixteen-going-on-seventeen and a few of her Favourite Things are Howard, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Beatles, who have rapidly taken over from Elvis in our fickle affections. (All his smouldering six-by-six, glossy, black-and-white photographs have come down off her wall and been replaced by the cheerful grins of the Fab Four. Poor Elvis.) Patricia manages to be rude to everyone – two aunties, two uncles, a cousin and even a dog, within the space of fifteen minutes (as I recall, something to do with her proposal to join the Communist Party) and I gain to the sum of three extra Easter eggs because everyone is so disgusted that they give me her eggs. But what profiteth it a girl if she gains three Easter eggs and loses her sister?

George and Uncles Ted and Clifford gather round the kitchen table with a bottle of whisky that Ted has brought and engage in an animated tri-partite discussion on a) whether or not George should build a patio at the back, b) the sight of our new neighbour, Mrs Roper, breast-feeding her baby in the conservatory next door, which elicits cries all round of ‘Bloody Hell!’ said half in admiration and half in disgust and c) the best route to Scotch Corner.

I scurry upstairs to seek refuge from this grown-up talk but up in Nell’s bedroom an even worse scene is waiting for me. Bunty, Auntie Gladys and a captive Nell are spectating at a morbid women-only striptease show with Auntie Babs as the main attraction. She moves like a statue on a revolving dais and, turning to her audience, she peels back her navy blue cardigan and white blouse to reveal – on one side a pendulous, matronly breast, and on the other side – nothing, just a pucker of skin and scar tissue. Bunty and Auntie Gladys suck in air quickly, making mouths like stricken fish and Nell moans softly. I leave the room quickly. I haven’t even learnt about
getting
breasts yet, let alone about losing them. I sit on the stairs pushing chocolate buttons from my Easter egg into the empty sockets in my mouth until eventually boredom propels me to go and find Patricia and secretly give her back the Easter eggs which are rightly hers.

I am both repelled and fascinated by this sight. I have never seen anyone breastfeeding before Mrs Roper (we aren’t that kind of family). It also makes an unfortunate contrast to Auntie Babs’ chest, now entirely shorn, as she lies looking paler than the sheet on her bed in St James’ in Leeds where Bunty and I go on a cheap-day return one Saturday while Patricia stays at home to fast for India.

This was shortly after I witnessed, for the first time, Bunty and Mr Roper together. Bunty and I were in the Co-op mobile shop, lurking amongst the tinned milk puddings, trying to decide between rice and semolina, when Mr Roper bounded on board, looking for washing-powder – a new man ahead of his time. ‘Well, hel-
lo
there!’ he said to my mother. He was smartly dressed in cavalry-twill trousers, a dogtooth-check sports jacket and a cravat. Bunty handed over her purse to me so I could pay for our purchases and she could remain ensnared by Mr Roper at the back of the van. While I chanted our divvy number to the driver I could see, reflected in the windscreen, the vision of Mr Roper presenting, with a flourish, the red plastic tulip that was being given away with every packet of Daz.

I was there and, believe me, the woman who took that tulip off Mr Roper was not my mother; that woman was a giggling confection of girlishness – charming, playful, spirited, sort of Debbie Reynolds before Eddie Fisher left her.

I fear for my mother. She is entering murky, uncharted deep space where the meteorites shower unexpectedly down and the Rings of Saturn, as we know, are Deadly.

A little while after this, at the end of June, a miracle happens – George and Bunty receive a letter telling them that I will be going to Queen Anne Grammar School. Phew, as Uncle Ted would say. Patricia, on the other hand, has some grisly results in her O Levels. This is because she walked out of most of them early. (When asked why by a furious Bunty, she just shrugs and says, ‘Dunno.’)