Family Album (10 page)

Allersmead is fading, for Sandra. From where she is now, Allersmead seems a long way away, an alternative universe where they do things differently, a place that has no conception of the fashion world, of the
vie et mouvement
of a vibrant office, of photo shoots and travel and being busy, busy, busy. Last Christmas, she brought a copy of the magazine. Her mother had eyed it with some alarm, turned over the page, and said, “Goodness, those girls are so
thin
.” Her father picked it up, stared at the cover, put it down again. Ingrid said, “These clothes are strange—I could not wear them but I suppose in London it is different.” Clare said, “Wow!”

Gina had flipped through the pages. Was that a curled lip? “Not your scene,” said Sandra. “I shouldn’t bother. How’s Radio Swindon?”

Sandra applies mascara. She glances at the house. Allersmead is alive with light. It may have faded in the mind, but within its context it is still very much in business. Someone walks past the sitting-room window—she cannot see who. Are they all here? Is Gina here?

Gina and I, she thinks, were fish and fowl. Cat and dog. Sisters? Technically. Opposites. Rivals. Anything she liked I didn’t. Anything I did she despised. Same still, really, except that it doesn’t matter now. We don’t have to live together.

She fixes her hair, steps from the car, takes her overnight bag from the back, and the flowers for Mum—the bouquet from Harrods—and runs up the steps, heels clicking on the stone. She pushes open the door, smells dinner—a thousand dinners—fends off the dog, which threatens her skirt with dirty paws, and Charles comes out of his study.

“Hi, Dad,” says Sandra. “Happy anniversary.”

Charles appears to consider this. “Ah. Yes. Much is being made of it.”

“Of course. An event. Is everyone here yet?”

“The front door has been active. I have not counted.”

“Dad,” says Sandra, “you are out to lunch, as usual.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Sandra shrugs. “An expression. You’re not entirely . . . with it.”

“I apologize,” says Charles. “In fact, I was about to go up and put on a clean shirt in honor of the occasion.”

“Good idea,” says Sandra. She is thinking that a
new
shirt would be appropriate. That blue thing with the frayed button-down collar dates from when she was about ten. Does he even
own
a suit?

Charles is in no hurry. He eyes her. “How much are you paid?”

Sandra is affronted. “No way am I telling you.”

“My interest is purely academic. I am writing about economic expectations. What people feel themselves to be worth. What are you worth, then?”

“About thirty K,” says Sandra crisply. This is significantly more than her present pay packet.

Charles raises an eyebrow. “Impressive. You can buy a university lecturer for that, I believe. Remind me how old you are?”

“Oh,
Dad
. . .” cries Sandra.

The kitchen door opens and here is Alison.

“Oh . . . Sandra dear. I thought it might be Paul. We’re a bit worried that he . . .”

The front door now. It swings open, and frames Gina.

“Gina dear . . .” says Alison. Her voice falls away.

Mum is in a tizz. Dad is not. Sandra has blond highlights and a pricey-looking car.

Gina closes the door behind her and is digested into Allersmead. Clare shimmies down the stairs. Katie’s voice sounds from the kitchen, and Roger’s, interrupted by Ingrid, who is saying something about laying the table now. Gina holds out her bunch of lilies to Alison, and at the same moment spots Sandra’s bouquet on the hall table. Upstaged. Wouldn’t you know?

“Oh, goodness,” says Alison, vaguely. “And you too, Sandra! How lovely. I must put them in water right away. You’re both in your own rooms, of course, but remember you’re sharing the bathroom with Corinna and Martin. I hope they won’t be late—the pheasants have to come out of the oven by eight-thirty. And Paul . . . At the worst I suppose we’ll have to start without him. He didn’t seem able to say definitely about coming and he hasn’t rung again. I think I’ll just pop up and change before Corinna gets here. Ingrid has been having a struggle with the sitting-room fire—would you have a look at it, one of you?”

Alison goes upstairs, followed by Charles. Sandra and Gina contemplate each other.

“I’m not much good at fires,” says Sandra with a silky smile. She too heads upstairs, bag in hand.

Gina goes into the sitting room where the fireplace sullenly smolders. Once, she sent a letter to Father Christmas asking him to bring her a real typewriter. He did not comply, any more than God attended to her request that Sandra be transferred to another family; these failures induced a permanent skepticism about the powers of vaunted agencies. The United Nations can also fail to deliver, one has observed.

She adds some kindling to the sulky flames, applies the bellows, and coaxes forth a gush of flame. She sits back on her heels, watching.

Katie comes into the room. “Can you remember where the flower vases are? Mum’s told me to do them.”

“Top shelf of the pantry cupboard.”

Katie sits down on the fireside stool. “Mum was in tears, when I arrived.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know. Dad didn’t seem to be anywhere and there’s a fuss about Paul.”

Gina pokes a log. Sparks fly up. “Fingers crossed,” she says.

“What?”

“Just—I wouldn’t bet on Paul, one way or another.”

“Oh dear.” Katie sighs. “Mum’s rather set her heart on tonight.”

“I know. Half a dozen pheasants have died for this.” Gina hands Katie the bellows. “Here, you blow for a bit.”

Katie squats by the fire. The logs flare up. “What do you
do
at the radio place?”

“I chase fire engines,” says Gina. “Strictly local fire engines. I record outrage about the vandalism of park benches. I interview centenarians.”

“Is it fun?”

“You can certainly find some fun.”

“You were always going to do something like that,” says Katie. “Remember the
Allersmead Weekly Herald
?”

Gina laughs. “Editor, lead writer, and reporter. The rest of you were hopeless. Lost interest after issue number one.”

“You’re so lucky. I don’t know what I want to do.”

“Don’t worry. Things have a way of simply happening.”

“But suppose the wrong things happen.”

“Evasive action,” says Gina. “Spot the dead end. Mind, I can talk. Some would say local radio is just that. I’m giving it one year.”

“There are these postgraduate scholarships to America. I’ve been wondering.”

“So go for it.”

Katie sighs again, gets up. “I’d better do the flowers.”

The fire is developing a heart. Gina puts on another log. In this suburban home, she tells the mike—no, in this suburban mansion a family is gathered for a sacred ritual, the celebration of the passage of time. Twenty-five years have been knocked on the head, twenty-five years are under the belt. Parents and children have come together to wonder at this amazing mastery of the calendar, to congratulate one another on having gotten older, on having refused to stay still. Animals have been sacrificed, there will be festive exchanges—not too much, let’s hope—there will be statements of individual beliefs and tastes—again, let’s hope no one overdoes it—the old home will echo with merriment and no doubt, frankly, the occasional discordant aside. Let’s talk to some of the key players . . .

Clare comes in. “Look,” she says.

Clare leans over backwards, drops her hands to the ground, and rests thus, a poised arch.

“Fantastic,” says Gina.

Clare straightens up. She lifts one leg up to the level of her shoulder, and holds her foot lightly in one hand.

“Impressive.”

Clare sits cross-legged by the hearth. “Have you ever heard of the Frankfurt Ballet?”

“I’m afraid not.” Gina purses her lips, tilts her head to one side. “You’re a young student of dance, Clare,” she says. “Tell me, do you see yourself as the Sugar Plum Fairy or a member of Hot Gospel?”

Clare giggles. “What’s the funny voice for?”

“It’s an interview voice. Clare, as a sixteen-year-old mover and shaker, how would you change the world?”

“I don’t believe you really ask people things like that.”

“Sadly, no. I ask them if they’re in favor of a new bypass and how they feel about winning the dog show. With luck, you can slip in the occasional subversive item.”

Clare gets up, does the splits, and rests thus on the hearth rug.

“Don’t,” says Gina. “It makes me sore just to look at you.”

Clare swings to her feet, wanders over to the window. “Here’s a car.”

“Aha. Corinna and Martin.”

“There’s been huge commotion about tonight.”

“So it seems.”

“Massive. Mum and Ingrid. Dad not. There’s a cake, silver things all over it. Mum was icing till midnight.”

Gina pokes the fire, which is going nicely now. She stares through sparks into the shuddering red embers across which flit a procession of other cakes, other celebrations—the birthdays, the bonfire parties, the ceremonial cooking of two decades. The family that eats together stays together.

The front door opens. Voices.

“Come on,” says Gina, getting up. “We’d better do hostess stuff if Mum’s still upstairs.”

“The fatted calf has been slain,” says Corinna as she opens the front door.

“I could smell it from outside.”

Martin follows her, carrying the bags. “I forget,” he says. “Have we brought an offering?”

“Of course. Silver candle snuffer. They’ll wonder how they did without one for so long.”

Gina and Clare appear from the sitting room. Greetings. Kisses. Martin deals awkwardly with the kissing. He and Corinna are childless, and never wished to be otherwise. The Allersmead environment is as alien as you can get, as far as he is concerned. Charles should be a fellow spirit—he is a scholar, after all, of a sort, he leads the life of the mind—but Martin has never achieved more than desultory exchanges. From his viewpoint, in the heart of academia, someone like Charles is a bit of a lightweight, a dilettante. Charles, on the other hand, has an aura of unjustifiable complacency and is clearly unimpressed by status. Neither he nor Alison wrote to congratulate Martin on his chair.

“They’re upstairs changing,” Gina explains. “Down in a minute.”

“Oh, my goodness,” says Corinna. “Is it black tie? Have we boobed?”

Gina ignores this quip, which she considers facetious. She offers to show Corinna and Martin to their room. Corinna says that actually she is dying for a drink.

“It’s champagne,” Clare announces. “I’ve seen it in the fridge. There’s a tray out with the glasses.”

Alison now appears on the bend of the staircase, with cries of welcome. She is wearing something long and flowery that looks to Corinna like a converted curtain, and is followed by Charles, who is in brown corduroy trousers, shirt, and a pullover that can be seen to be delicately laced with moth holes, if you look closely. He is followed by Sandra. Roger, Katie, and Ingrid now emerge from the kitchen and the Allersmead hall is suddenly full of people and talk. The dog barks hysterically. Alison sends Roger back to the kitchen for the champagne and starts to herd everyone into the sitting room.

“Still no Paul—oh dear. Well, we’ll just have to start anyway, tiresome boy. Clare, get the nibbles, would you—on the kitchen dresser. And Dad will need a cloth for the champagne, it always overflows, doesn’t it? Oh, you did get the fire going—well done. Now that there are so few of us we hardly ever seem to
use
this room. We’ve got the telly in the old study now, where people did their homework, it’s so much cosier. Corinna, we haven’t seen you for
such
a long time, you’re going to find everyone so different, so
grown-up
.”

Grown-up? Corinna eyes the group. Indeed yes, though she glimpses too their younger selves. The small boy somewhere beyond Roger. Katie’s expression, which is still that of a wide-eyed eight-year-old. Sandra is elegant, poised, and out of kilter with the rest; that was perhaps heralded years ago. Gina—well, Gina always did have an air of shrewd appraisal and she has it now; Corinna feels judged and found wanting, something of an unusual experience for her. Clare is rapier thin and undeniably pretty. Ah—Clare.