Family Album (2 page)

“No longer?”

“Well, look at her. She’s Allersmead now, isn’t she?”

Gina continued to hear voices, her life was still flashing at her. It seemed odd that Philip could be impervious to this, that a person with whom one had become so absolutely intimate could be so perversely ignorant. Not
know
. Not see and hear. One is sealed off, she thought. So is he. So’s everyone. No wonder there’s mayhem.

“We should go down.”

“Of course. The orange and lemon cake.” He had flung himself on the bed, arms behind his head. “How extraordinary—that you spring from here, and I know nothing about it.”

“Rather what I was thinking. But I sprang some time ago, remember.”

“Even so . . . I have to say, I don’t see much physical resemblance. A hint of your father’s nose, perhaps. Remind me again what exactly is his field.”

“Field? Charles writes—wrote—books. Polymath—he’d probably buy that description. History, philosophy, sociology—a bit of everything.”

“The name did ring a bell. When I met you.”

“He’d be gratified.”

“Wide readership?” inquired Philip, after a moment.

“Actually, yes. Accessible. More so than the academics, I suppose. Listen, we must go down.”

He held out his arms. “Come here.”

“Not now. Later.”

The kitchen was the heartland of Allersmead. Of course. That is so in any well-adjusted family home, and Allersmead was a shrine to family. The kitchen was huge; once, some Edwardian cook would have presided here, serving up Sunday roasts to some prosperous Edwardian group. Now, there was—no, not an Aga but a big battered old gas cooker, a dresser cluttered with plates, cups, mugs, a scrubbed table that would seat a dozen. There were children’s drawings still tucked behind the crockery on the dresser, a painted papier-mâché tiger on a shelf, alongside a row of indeterminate clay animals that someone made earlier. There were named mugs slung from hooks: Paul, Gina, Sandra, Katie, Roger, Clare.

Philip ate two slices of orange and lemon cake, with evident enthusiasm.

Gina eyed the papier-mâché tiger. Katie made that. So where’s my fish? We made them at school, and gave them to her for Christmas. The fish has not stayed the course, it would seem.

Tea was had. People came and went from the kitchen. Charles came, stood smiling benignly around, a cup in his hand, departed. Paul came, wolfed down cake and chocolate brownies, offered to service Gina’s car—“For a consideration, mind.” After he had gone, an engine revved outside. Gina looked alarmed.

“It’s all right,” said Alison. “That’s his. He’s got an old Golf, since he started with the job. And he’s teaching himself about engines—so clever.”

Ingrid sat at the end of the table, shelling broad beans. She and Alison had a discussion about
pommes dauphinoise
or just mashed. A big round old station clock on the wall ticked, perhaps a touch too loudly.

“Show Philip the garden,” said Alison. “Admire Ingrid’s vegetables. She has some dahlias too. Of course, this has never been exactly a display garden.” She beamed at Philip. “We grew children, not flowers.”

Gina pushed her chair back noisily, stood, nodded at Philip. “Come on, then.”

They went down the steps from the terrace. It was August. The wide, sloping lawn was shaggy but also yellowing here and there. A couple of hydrangeas glowed, but the general effect was one of unconstrained greenery—rampant shrubs, the presiding trees. A fat branch that reached out over the grass supported a homely swing—a piece of plank slung from two ropes. As they walked down to the hidden areas beyond the lawn, Philip saw a rope ladder hung from another tree, a further swing, a sandbox with a crust of dead leaves.

“A sort of empty stage,” he said. “Rather touching. No grandchildren yet?”

“No one has got around to it.”

This area of the garden was more unkempt still, except for a disciplined vegetable garden at the far end—a wigwam of runner beans, bushy rows of broad beans, lines of carrots, lettuces, onions. A bank topped by trees marked the boundary; in front of this, there were sprawling bushes, patches of overgrown grass, an ancient rubbish heap of branches and rotting vegetation, a flat place in the center, just below the lawn, where a rectangle of fading grass seemed to have archaeological significance.

Philip eyed this. “What happened here?”

“Pond,” said Gina. She walked over to the vegetables. “I am admiring you,” she told them. “There. And the dahlias.”

Philip joined her. “Have you really not been here for over a year?”

“Quite possibly. I do,” she said, “lead quite a busy life. You may have noticed.”

“This garden must have been paradise for kids.”

“Paradise?” She laughed, for some reason. She was still looking at the vegetables. None of this stuff back then, she thought. Ingrid has found a new talent, a new use.

“There was one family of five at my school,” said Philip. “I used to envy them—a sort of homegrown gang. I felt exposed by comparison, with just one mingy sister. Were you a gang?”

“Mafia activities were confined to the home. We ignored each other at school.”

“And where
is
everyone? You don’t make much reference, you know. Paul, once or twice, that’s all.”

“Dispersed.” Gina crushed a sprig of marjoram, sniffed. “Wow—she’s into herbs as well.”

“Dispersed where? Remind me.”

“Oh.” She waved a hand, vaguely. “Roger’s in Canada. Katie married an American. Clare—I’m not sure, right now. Sandra was last heard of in Italy, I believe. Do you fancy a walk around the neighborhood? There’s quite a nice park.”

“Is Paul always in residence?”

“Paul comes and goes,” she said. “The park—and the church is worth a glance—Victorian Gothic, likely to be defrocked at any moment, congregation of a dozen. Let’s go.” She walked away.

They lay in bed. The house creaked around them, as though subsiding. Boards groaned. A cupboard let out a small pistol shot. Gina remembered the place stuffed with ghosts, when she was eight. You crept to the bathroom at your peril.

“I have overeaten,” said Philip. “Excellent food. Is it always like this?”

“My mother likes to cook.”

After a moment Philip said, “He is quite a talker, when he decides to.”

“ ‘Decides’ is the right word.”

“One gets a bit left behind at points. I am not strong on German philosophers.”

“He probably wouldn’t like it if you were.”

A pause. “How does Alison manage? And—um—Ingrid?”

“They are not required to.”

“But he hasn’t been an academic as such? No job in a university?”

“Regular employment would not have suited him, I guess.”

“Did I overdo things a bit on Iraq? It was the one point when I felt relatively well informed. You can’t now insist that Blair must have had information about WMD, when patently he didn’t.”

“My father can,” said Gina.

“Do you,” inquired Philip, “. . . did you . . . tangle occasionally?”

She laughed. “I like ‘tangle.’ So delicate. Yes, I tangled. Head-on resistance, more like.”

“All the same—stimulating for the young mind. My parents were short on opinions.”

“I won’t hear a word said against your parents.”

He rolled onto his side, reached out. “Come here.”

“I should warn you—this bed is noisy.”

He squinted at her. “I thought this was the spare room. Oh—David . . .”

She sighed.

“Never mind—come here all the same.”

The family tumbles through the house—happy, smiling faces preserved on mantelpieces and windowsills, on the piano, framed on walls. The swaddled chrysalis in Alison’s arms becomes a sweet toddler with a mop of curls; another chrysalis arrives. The toddlers grow legs, wave from the branches of trees, turn cartwheels on the lawn. They are lined up in height order, each with an arm outstretched to another’s shoulder, grinning. The big ones carry the little ones piggyback. Their faces are dappled with the sunshine of summers past. Once, they have built a snowman, with Charles’s pipe stuck in its mouth. They are preserved in an eternal childhood—ecstatic, absorbed, untroubled.

Philip studied this cavalcade, pausing on the staircase. “This is you? On the trampoline. With Paul?”

“Yes and yes.”

“Do you remember that?”

“Remember?” said Gina. “I’m never sure if you remember or are told. The photo tells me Paul and I trampolined that day. So we must have done.”

Philip eyed her. “What else are you told?”

Gina laughed. “Family history, of course. Everyone has one. We had selected extracts of yours at Fowey last month. Most edifying. That time you cut off your sister’s ponytail.”

“A calumny,” said Philip. “She asked me to.”

“Not in your mother’s version. But there you go. Famously unreliable.”

Philip abandoned the trampoline photograph and continued down the stairs. Gina was becoming attuned to indications of his state of mind—that uncanny achievement of coupledom; she sensed that he was alert and interested, but also ill at ease. The set of his shoulders indicated this, the way his fingers drummed on the banisters. He headed for the kitchen, without looking at her. There was the smell and sound of breakfast: toast, the chink of cup set down on saucer.

She had a headache. Her seven-year-old self beamed at her from the wall, lacking front teeth. She wondered if Philip was wanting to escape. I told you, she said to his back. Bigger deal. I told you. His parents had been unexceptional to the point of anonymity. She had found them delightful.

Charles was seated in a big Carver chair at the head of the table, wearing a plaid dressing gown and reading a book. He glanced up, raised a hand in some kind of greeting, and continued to read.

Alison was at the cooker. “Tea or coffee? I’m doing bacon and fried egg for anyone who’d like.”

Philip said that he would like.

Charles said, without looking up from his book, “This chap has the cold war all wrong. Would you subscribe to the theory that mutually assured destruction was the deciding factor, David?”

Alison turned, shot a rueful little smile at Gina and Philip. “Fried bread as well, Philip?”

Charles was not waiting for Philip’s view on the cold war. “Apart from anything else, the man has the Soviet mind-set all wrong . . .”

“Are you reviewing the book?” inquired Gina.

Charles ignored this. He picked up his cup, drank, and waved the empty cup in Ingrid’s direction. She reached for the coffeepot and refilled it.

“Charles doesn’t do much reviewing these days,” said Alison. “It was always a bit of a chore.”

From the hall there came a rattle, and a thump. Evidently the newspaper had arrived. Charles had turned back to his book but now held out a hand, palm up. Alison left the room, returned with the paper, and gave it to Charles.

“Time was,” said Gina, “you were all over
The Sunday Times
and
The Observer
or whatever. I hadn’t realized it was a chore.”