Family Album (20 page)

Alison responds to the postcards. She writes appealing letters to the contact address given by Ingrid, but no postcard ever refers to these. Perhaps Ingrid is no longer at that address; perhaps she has no comment to make.

“I expect Ingrid’s got married,” says Sandra conversationally.

Alison slams a saucepan into the sink and tells her to get on and help to clear the table.

And Charles? Charles is writing a book, of course. He keeps to his usual routine, and has the tact (or prudence) not to remark upon the disagreeable household climate—children querulous about late meals and mislaid possessions. Alison’s disheveled mood. He says nothing, and keeps himself to himself, rather more than he would tend to do in any case. You would think that none of this had anything to do with him.

“Your father . . .” says Philip.

Gina sighs. She puts her hand on his. “Do you know, I’ve had enough of facing down the past. Shall we get the bill and shoot off? I could do with an early night.”

“Of course. Just—your father is inscrutable.”

It seems to Gina not so much that people are unfathomable or inscrutable but that other times, other circumstances, are unreachable, are no longer available. That was then, and you cannot go back there, just as you cannot revisit your own former self, recover the eleven-year-old Gina of that time when Ingrid went away. That person is herself, but also someone quite other, a distant stranger who occasionally signals, and there is a flash of recognition, but who is for the most part an alien being.

She remembers that she had a green pencil case with slots for eraser, sharpener, ruler, individual pens and pencils. She remembers the splendor of that pencil case, the soft material of its interior, the pink eraser, the zip that went around three sides. She remembers writing a diary that she hid in her pillowcase lest Sandra should find it. She does not remember wondering where Ingrid has gone, or what her mother or her father may feel about this. Just, Ingrid was not there for a while. So?

It seems to her that your family is at once utterly familiar and entirely unknown. She knows her parents intimately—their faces, their voices, the way they walk, smile, laugh, frown, hold a knife and fork, turn their head to speak. And she does not know them at all—why they did as they did, what they experienced, how they saw the world, and each other. As for the rest—Paul, Sandra, Katie, Roger, Clare—the five of them dart through her head like the images in one of those flicker-books, every shape and size, and they too are both known and mysterious, she realizes. You thought you had them nailed, but you know now that you did not—they were as slippery as yourself.

And Ingrid?

She tries to remember Ingrid then, to extract her from Ingrid now. Ingrid then was authority of a kind, but secondary authority, not authority on a par with Mum and Dad. You played Ingrid up, you disregarded her, you sometimes obliged her and other times you did not. Ingrid had pale gold satiny hair, and she was good at sewing, she made her own clothes and some of theirs, she could do origami, and she didn’t like spicy food or coffee. What does this tell you about Ingrid, then? Well, nothing significant, of course. Nothing that throws light on what went on in the grown-up world, that impenetrable world of Mum and Dad and Ingrid, of which they, the children, knew nothing. They were the center of that world, its focus, but it passed them by.

Alison was in the kitchen, sorting out the wash, when she heard the front door open, and close. It was ten o’clock at night. The Allersmead front door was never locked until Alison and Charles went up to bed. Had Charles gone out, and returned? No, he was in his study, she was sure of that, and even as she rose she heard his door open: he too was wondering who would come in at that time.

So they met in the hall—Alison, Charles, and Ingrid, who carried a suitcase in each hand. She set them down as Alison spoke, as Alison opened her mouth in an unconsidered torrent: “You’re
back
! But why didn’t you let us know, we’d have met you at the station, did you get a taxi? So often there aren’t any, oh I wish you’d told me, and have you had anything to eat? There’s some cottage pie left, I can heat it up, really, Ingrid, you should have
said
. . .”

And then she dries. She looks at Charles, who has not spoken. He stands there looking at Ingrid, who does not look at him but turns to Alison.

“Yes,” she says. “I have come back. That is the way it is, isn’t it? And now I am tired. I am going upstairs to sleep.”

For Gina, for all of them, there is in recollection simply the revival of Ingrid. She is there once more, and it is as though she never went. Allersmead is complete again, order is restored. If questions are asked, no answers are given. Sandra wonders aloud at breakfast one day if Ingrid went away to meet her boyfriend; Ingrid gazes at Sandra and says that is something that is not very interesting, she does not think that people need to know that. Soon, the whole episode is forgotten, subsumed into Allersmead’s history as time marches on, as children grow and develop and mutate, as adults accommodate or fester or rejoice.

“I’ll shut up about it, I promise,” says Philip. “But I have to say that I find Ingrid enigmatic. There—all three of them. And I think I’m going off the Turkish place. We’ll have to find somewhere new.”

 

 

 

 

R
oger has found it difficult to talk about his childhood circumstances to the perfectly sweet Canadian girl who is now his wife. Susan is of Chinese extraction, Canada born, a dermatologist who grew up in a two-bedroom apartment in Markham. Her parents are hardworking, orderly, and unfailingly courteous; her only sibling, a brother, is a fledgling investment banker. Both he and Susan have astonished and gratified their parents by so successfully navigating the educational system, and emerging as such significant citizens. When Roger visits, there is a lavish Chinese meal laid on, and the parents sit there smiling and urging him to sample this and that. There is a faint chime of Allersmead here—food as anchor—but otherwise things could not be more different. The parents say little; they beam and nod while Susan and Roger eat and talk of what they have been doing; after a couple of hours or so Susan and Roger leave—the formalities have been observed. Susan says that her parents think Roger eminently satisfactory as a son-in-law. She is a slight, vigorous young woman who enjoys skiing in winter and hiking in summer. Proficient at everything to which she turns her hand, it seems, she has shone in her chosen profession, and in off-duty life is a whiz on the ski slopes and a mean cook (no dim sum or chop suey—spaghetti carbonara, Moroccan chicken, hamburgers). Roger does not find this competence daunting; he respects her and is somehow amused by her and she is the love of his life, at last, thank goodness.

Roger and Susan have succeeded in marrying with minimum fuss, Susan being particularly exercised about avoiding traditional Chinese ceremony of any kind without offending her parents. In the event, this was achieved with the concession of a Chinese meal in a favored restaurant, the night before, for family and family friends. The wedding itself was a register office affair, with a party afterwards for a handful of the couple’s cronies.

They are now at the tail end of their honeymoon, which has been spent taking in as much as possible of the delights of Italy, to which Susan has never been. But a visit to Allersmead is essential, to introduce Susan to her parents-in-law, and this was always written into the itinerary. A few days in London, and then a night at Allersmead. Roger has been a touch apprehensive about this. You could never know how Dad would perform with a visitor. Plus, Roger has never mentioned to Susan the matter of Clare’s parentage. He has dithered about this, forgotten about it, dithered again, and indeed has dithered all the way to the Allersmead front door, before which they stand. Too late now.

The arrival goes off well. Alison is effusive, Charles is amiable, Ingrid has baked a cake for tea, in the icing of which a sycamore leaf is embedded. Someone has told her that a maple leaf is the emblem of Canada. Susan is graciously—and genuinely—delighted. Alison beams. She has put on weight, Roger notices, and in the past it would surely have been she who was on cake-baking duty, rather than Ingrid. Is she relinquishing the reins?