Learning to Swim Page 13

  But her intuition proved correct, and so began the preparations for father’s Great Test. Mother cut his hair with more than usual care, so that his fringe when combed actually lay straight rather than raked. His one suit, which had gone in and out of fashion all over again since its original purchase many years before, and which served at all official functions, including his last unsuccessful interview, was retrieved from the back of the wardrobe and inspected for blobs, moth-holes and signs of wear.

  I had kept my promise, up to a point. I didn’t mention my despair at the prospect of moving, and tried not to sigh and groan when the subject arose, and considered myself quite a pillar of neutrality. It didn’t occur to me that my silence was itself exerting a form of pressure. In the few days before the interview father had the air of a man forced to choose the method of his own execution: upset me or disappoint mother – he couldn’t win.

  On the eve of the great day I had gone up to my room early to avoid the Poetry Circle who were meeting below to ‘do’ Tennyson. I had begun to nurture a vague contempt for this cabal, ever since we had started to study poetry at school and I had formed the idea, along with most of the class, that I alone understood it properly; that it had been written with me in mind. It irritated me that my mother’s enthusiasm for her Wednesday night hobby didn’t spill over into the rest of the week – I never saw her so much as glance at a poem at any other time. This struck me as the mark of a phoney. Father had been twitchy and nervous all through supper. I could see him drifting off every now and then into imaginary debates with the interviewer. Even when he was composing the questions himself he would come back to earth looking thoroughly worsted.

  I was in bed reading Mansfield Park when I heard the study door open and then father’s slow tread on the stairs. He hesitated outside my door before tapping lightly with one fingernail, a diffident pattering which lasted through several calls of ‘Come in’. This was very different from mother’s technique which was to knock once loudly and walk straight in.

  ‘Oh good,’ he said, hovering in the doorway. ‘I thought you might be downstairs with the ladies.’ He looked at my book. ‘But I see you’re in a more prosaic mood.’ I nodded. ‘Who’s under the scalpel tonight?’

  ‘Tennyson,’ I said.

  ‘Ah. Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of hell. Abigail will you be terribly unhappy if I get this job? You can say Yes.’

  I wavered for a moment, and then said, ‘I’ll be happy for you, but unhappy for me.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Good answer. Thank you.’ And he kissed me on the top of the head and left.

  The next morning all his anxiety seemed to have evaporated, and he looked almost cheerful as he ate his breakfast, his suit swathed in tea-towels to protect it from milk splashes and deposits of marmalade.

  ‘I’m glad you’re not too nervous,’ said mother, observing him with some surprise. ‘I thought you’d be in an awful state.’

  It was then that I realised why father had questioned me the evening before. Overnight he had made his decision, and I was sure that when he came home from Bristol he would not have got the job, and we would not be moving. And so it proved. I never knew whether he had performed badly on purpose, was not good enough anyway, had been offered the post and declined it, or had simply not turned up to the interview. But I did know that this was another of those sacrifices made in my name to which mother had alluded.

  For mother, of course, who was ignorant of our conversation, his failure was a sign of two things: the indifference of Fate to her needs and desires, and an insufficiency in father himself. In future she would stop petitioning him to try for promotion, not because she had given up wanting the extra money and prestige, but because she could no longer envisage him as a success. In the past she had blamed the interviewers for their poor taste; now she blamed father for lacking whatever mysterious quality it was that they sought.

  Since then I have often wondered how different things might have been if I hadn’t chosen selfishness. We might have moved to Bristol; Father would have re-invented himself as a successful man; mother would have been proud or at least grateful, possibly happy; I would have moved out of the Radleys’ immediate orbit; I would have missed Anne Trevillion’s party; I wouldn’t have gone back to the house alone on that terrible afternoon; I wouldn’t have lost what I had so recently found.

  20

  Revenge, like mother’s migraine remedy, is a dish best served cold.

  ‘I’m going to ask Mum to move in with us.’ Mother lobbed this into the breakfast-table silence like a grenade a few weeks later.

  ‘You are going to ask her?’ said father, a teacup arrested halfway to his lips.

  ‘Well, I have asked her, in fact.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She said “Yes”.’

  ‘Oh. So it’s all settled then.’

  ‘Only with your approval.’ She looked at both of us. ‘She knows I have to consult you first.’

  There was a pause while we savoured the impressive dishonesty of the word ‘first’. ‘Isn’t consultation more properly so called when it occurs before a decision has been taken?’ Father’s tone was as mild as possible – a dangerous sign.

  Sensing irony, mother began to defend herself. ‘What could I do? She’s not safe on her own any more. She’s half blind and she keeps leaving things on the stove. You know I can’t go down there at the drop of a hat when I can’t drive.’ In an obscure way she blamed father for this problem of mobility, as if he had willed her to fail. ‘One of these days she’ll burn the house down. It’s such a responsibility. You don’t know how lucky you are not having parents to worry about.’

  Amen to that, I thought.

  There was some substance to her anxieties. Granny was indeed going blind. All that Thackeray under the bedclothes had finally caught up with her, and she could now no longer read at all. Large-print books and a magnifying glass had given way to audio-tapes to which she listened day and night at full volume, for her deafness had also seen no improvement with the years. She was gradually accumulating a houseful of gadgets and appurtenances to assist her in her independent life: an amplified telephone with huge numerals, Braille clocks, a hearing aid which she refused to wear because it whistled, an emergency buzzer which she was supposed to hang around her neck but which she inevitably left lying around and then lost, but none of them could withstand the vagaries of her memory or temper. Home helps were regularly accused of the theft of some item of mislaid jewellery which would later turn up in a new and bizarre hiding place – the tea caddy perhaps, or the fridge. Even the meals-on-wheels lady had been sent packing for calling out the social services when there was no reply to the doorbell. Granny had awoken from a midday nap to find a teenage policeman with one leg over the window sill. She now existed on a diet only slightly more varied than Auntie Mim’s: toast and marmalade for breakfast, a tin of something heated up for lunch (as she couldn’t see the labels she was never sure whether it would be pilchards or pear halves that ended up on the plate), and cheese biscuits for supper. All of this was supplemented by frequent snacks of sweets. Mother had been spending more and more weekends there, stocking up the larder, clearing packets of rancid butter and green cheese from the fridge, scrubbing away at marmalade spills which, left untreated, would get trodden right through the house on the sole of Granny’s slippers, and listening more or less patiently to endless complaints about loneliness and debility.

  Granny would not be an easy house-guest, that was certain. But however much aggravation mother was inflicting on herself by inviting her to stay, father would suffer more. The silence and privacy he so revered would be gone. He would become an unpaid and unthanked chauffeur, a fixer of broken gadgets, an untangler of bank statements and share dividends and income bonds and pension books and run-ins with the DSS, and all without the bonds of love and duty and shared memories which for mother would make it – just – bearable. I could see the dread on his face as we sat ther
e, taking in the news, but he would not quarrel.

  ‘I’ve told her she wouldn’t be able to bring much clobber – only what will fit in the spare room. And there’s room in the loft for a few boxes, isn’t there?’

  Father confirmed that there was.

  ‘And I’ve said she can’t expect us to entertain her – we won’t have time to read the newspaper to her every morning the way we do when we’re down there. It won’t be a holiday, she understands that.’

  ‘Mmm. When would you like me to fetch her?’

  Unnerved at meeting so little resistance, mother faltered. She had not expected anything like this level of co-operation, and having prepared various arguments in her defence did not want them to go to waste. ‘I know it will be difficult at first until we all get used to each other, but we couldn’t possibly afford a decent nursing home, and one of those state ones is out of the question – you know how rude she is to anyone who doesn’t speak the Queen’s English.’

  ‘Oh I don’t think she’d last long in a home,’ agreed father.

  ‘Yes, you’re always hearing of people going ga-ga after a week in one of those places. I couldn’t have that on my conscience.’

  ‘I meant no one would put up with her – she’d be expelled, rusticated, or whatever they do.’

  ‘Oh I see. Well, I can’t think what alternative I’ve got – every day I expect to get a phone call from the police saying she’s drowned in the bath or burnt the place down. She’s a danger to other people, not just herself.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘And she’ll contribute towards bills and food and so on here. You must admit the extra money would be useful.’ Since you have failed to gain a salary increase, ran the unspoken sentence. I couldn’t share mother’s optimism about having tapped a new source of income. Granny was used to being able to save out of her state pension; her idea of a reasonable donation would be unlikely to cover the cost of keeping the bar heater in her room running. We would be worse not better off.

  ‘Oh I don’t know what to do,’ mother finished, as if she had met nothing but opposition.

  ‘Do?’ said father. ‘Our duty of course.’

  Mother was wrong about it being difficult at first. At first it was just like having a visitor to stay: courtesies were observed and allowances made. When the World Service issued quite audibly from Granny’s room at three in the morning we pulled the blankets over our ears. When she talked through a television programme that we were trying to watch, we made polite responses or switched the set off. When she walked in on father, asleep in his study on Sunday afternoon, with the words, ‘Can somebody fix my torch/radio/hearing aid?’ he would spring up to do her bidding. When she insisted on carrying plates through from dining room to kitchen and then dropped one, mother clenched her teeth and said, ‘Doesn’t matter’.

  It was only after a few weeks that it began to register that this was how it would always be: the armchair which Granny had taken to occupying would become without any discussion hers and would be left free by the rest of us. We would grow accustomed to finding empty milk bottles inverted in a cup overnight so that the last few drops might not be wasted, and clotted balls of multicoloured soap made from those tiny fragments left over at the end of a bar. I knew thrift was one of her particular vices: when helping her to pack up her possessions in the Bognor house I had come across a cardboard shoebox labelled PENS THAT NO LONGER WORK; she still saved and ironed old wrapping paper even though she had not bought, much less wrapped a present for years; and she kept all her old calendars and only ever wrote on them in pencil because she had worked out that every fourteen years the days and dates would be back in sync again. When I was younger I used to be sent up into the higher branches of her apple tree to pick the out-of-reach fruit. A morning’s prickly labour – scratched knees, near falls, and encounters with giant bees – would be rewarded with a bag of bruised and maggoty windfalls. The decent apples would be laid out in trays in the front garden and sold to holidaymakers.

  21

  In the summer of 1982 I achieved one of the great ambitions of my childhood: I was invited to join Lexi and Frances on their annual holiday. This was something I had secretly craved since that first letter arrived from Paris with tales of topless dancers and beggars on the Metro and single red roses.

  My mother could not very well object: we would not be going away as a family at all, since my granny’s potential as an arsonist was firmly established in my parents’ minds. Leaving her behind was out of the question, but taking her with them would negate any benefits the holiday might bring. It was a holiday from her they needed. Lexi had taken the precaution of petitioning my mother and father first rather than leaving it up to me. A postcard of Burne-Jones’s Ophelia – not the most reassuring image – arrived one morning with the message:

  Dear Mr and Mrs Onions

  Frances and I would very much like Abigail to come on holiday to France with us this year. I hope you can spare your delightful daughter for a couple of weeks in August. We will take great care of her.

  Yours truly

  Alexandra Radley

  Mother sniffed. ‘She writes with red pen,’ she said, as if this was a further sign of Lexi’s moral turpitude. ‘Doesn’t her husband ever go with them?’ she went on. ‘It seems such a peculiar arrangement.’ This year as other years father and son were going off together to The Trenches. The ritualistic significance of this was heightened as it was assumed that it would be their last trip. In September Rad was off to university; future holidays would doubtless be spent working to pay off debts. Though it was hard to picture Rad even managing to spend his grant. He didn’t drink much or smoke at all, and only bought new clothes with the greatest reluctance and wore them until they disintegrated. Dependent upon his A-level results he had a place at Durham to read Philosophy. The idea of acting as a career had not in the end appealed. He could always get involved in drama on the side, went his reasoning, but when would he ever have another chance to spend three years just thinking?

  ‘This is very kind of them,’ said father, picking up the postcard. ‘Your first trip abroad, Abigail.’

  ‘I wonder how much it will cost?’ said mother. ‘You’ll have to pay your way, you know, Abigail, petrol and so on.’ But when the subject was finally broached over the telephone by father, at mother’s prompting, Lexi dismissed the idea instantly.

  ‘Oh no – there won’t be any expenses. We’ll all share a room anyway. She’ll only need a little pocket money for ice creams and so on.’

  In the event father gave me a thousand francs to take – a fortune, which I strapped to me in a money-belt like a holster under my clothes, and fretted over and checked twenty times a day.

  Both my parents came with me to the Radleys’ to see me off. Typically the annual argument about which party needed which car was in progress as we arrived. Husband and wife were standing either side of the disputed vehicles, Lexi still dressed in her housecoat and turban. Mr Radley was adamant that he needed the Estate. He and Rad were not leaving for another week and he was apparently intending to spend the time hawking his paintings round various galleries and shops. ‘I can’t very well fit them in the Triumph, can I?’

  ‘But there are three of us,’ Lexi was saying in her schoolmistressy voice. ‘You can’t expect one of the girls to sit on the bench seat all the way to Menton.’

  ‘Why not? Blush is as skinny as a rake – she could fit in there quite easily.’

  ‘Abigail is not “skinny”; she is beautifully slim,’ said Lexi, who tended to bridle at any slur on the female form.

  ‘Skinny, slim, what’s the difference?’ Mr Radley smote his forehead in frustration. ‘The point is, she can fit in the back of a Spitfire more easily than a six by four canvas.’

  ‘She is actually perfectly proportioned. Hello Abigail’s parents,’ Lexi said without pausing. ‘We’re just having a row.’ And she took my small suitcase – locked and strapped against the rapacity of foreign chamberma
ids – and put it defiantly in the back of the Renault. Mr Radley promptly took it out and dumped it in the drive.

  ‘Well …’ said mother uneasily. This was her first encounter with the Radleys. Through the back gate I could see Frances taking washing off the line while Growth leapt up, snapping at the trailing garments. At the sight of me he came tearing up the drive, a pair of Lexi’s lacy knickers between his teeth, two ribbons of saliva swinging from his jowls. Mother recoiled like someone walking into a cobweb as the apparition flung himself at us, barking and drooling and trying to keep hold of the knickers.

  ‘We’d better say goodbye, Abigail,’ she said at last. ‘Have you got everything?’ I nodded briskly to be rid of them. ‘Passport, money, calamine lotion, diarrhoea tablets,’ she went on, determined not to spare me. Mr Radley’s lips twitched.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, fairly bundling mother and father back up the drive. We exchanged hugs and kisses. ‘Phone us some time to let us know you’re safe,’ said mother. She looked quite tearful.

  ‘Cheer up,’ I heard father whisper to her as they got in the car. ‘She’s not off to boarding school.’

  ‘No, far from it,’ came back the reply, before the car door slammed.

  Rad had meanwhile appeared in the doorway. He had obviously been listening from the hall. ‘If we take the roof off we can prop the canvases in the back of the Spitfire and you can hold on to them to stop them banging about while I drive.’ Rad was now a legitimate licence-holder.