Family Album (18 page)

Jan is not a person you marry because as it happens he is married to someone else. This suits Ingrid well enough, and presumably it suits Jan also. Neither wishes to change their present circumstances—just, it is nice for Ingrid to have a friend in London, and nice too for Jan to have some solace while he pursues his studies. There is no need for explanations, to anyone.

Sandra’s boy is becoming a touch possessive. He wants to continue their arrangement after the holiday, and is full of plans for further meetings. Sandra is evasive. She has now got the measure of sex, which was the whole point. If her period arrives as it should at the end of the week, she thinks she may well call a halt, very sweetly and kindly. It’s all a bit risky, she doesn’t want to have to go on watching the calendar indefinitely, she likes him but not enough to go for broke with him. She will have to tell him that this was a holiday romance and that is all, it’s been fantastic, so no hard feelings, right?

It happens to be Roger who answers the phone when the call comes from Bude police station. Everyone else—bar Paul—is dumped in front of the television, it being a damp evening, including Charles, who has noticed a documentary he would quite like to watch after the current program, and intends to assert his rights. Roger is outside the back door, with his buckets, and so is the only one to hear the phone ring in the hall and pick it up. He is too intent upon his researches to register the significance of what comes down the line to him, and so simply puts his head around the sitting-room door and announces: “It’s the police in Bude, for Mum or Dad.”

Alison gasps. An awful, yelping gasp. Charles gets up and goes out of the room to where the phone is. Someone switches off the television. They hear him say “Yes . . . Yes . . . No . . . Yes.” Then he comes back into the room, and looks at Alison. “We shall have to go to Bude,” he says.

Alison is speechless. She has risen, and simply stands there, staring. At last she manages, “Is he
hurt
?”

“Paul is unhurt,” says Charles crisply. “He is at the police station.”

There is a hunt for car keys, for Alison’s jacket. Charles is silent, Alison is incoherent. The others watch them get into the car, Charles at the wheel. They watch the Volkswagen make its way out of the drive and up the hill.

“Oh dear,” says Sandra.

Paul has been caught. Possession of drugs. This had to happen, thinks Gina. Maybe it’ll sort him out. Alison weeps, Charles seems resigned rather than enraged. Paul himself is sullen, but not especially repentant. “I’m not going to
prison,
” he says to Gina. “It’s a
caution,
that’s all. Could happen to anyone. Does happen to anyone.”

Gina points out that he had better watch it, in future. Paul says cheerfully that he will, of course he will. Just, he had to do
something
down here, didn’t he? He couldn’t just sit about in this godforsaken place all day. He’d made quite a few mates in Bude, and one thing led to another.

Gina sighs. One thing has always led to another, with Paul. Progress is a dogleg affair, for him, rather than a smooth trajectory; he shoots off in one direction on impulse, then switches course once again. It depends who he comes across, what he hears, what grabs his attention. He is borne along on some incorruptible current of optimism: it will all work out in the end, something will turn up, no one’s going to find out, are they?

Unfortunately they do, on occasion. The stolid spoilsport Cornish police, for instance. So now Paul is not so much grounded as under house arrest. For the rest of the holiday he will remain at Crackington Haven twenty-four hours a day. Surprisingly, he becomes quite docile about this. He flies Roger’s kite with him, he admires Clare’s cartwheels. He offers to help Alison in the kitchen, and spends a messy afternoon making drop scones for tea. Alison is tearful with gratitude and relief. She tells Gina that it is just so unfair, always someone turns up to lead Paul astray, left to himself he would just get on with things, there would be no problem, it is other people who are his undoing.

So that was the summer at Crackington Haven. Katie and Roger, at the top of the CN Tower in Toronto, reflect upon it across the years. Each sees just their own facet, but in any case they are other people now—those distant early selves can be summoned up, it is just possible still to see what they saw, but they are also unreachable. Katie looks across the table at her brother and sees this
man,
who is somehow a product of that boy in shorts and a T-shirt, fishing in rock pools. She sees this man with open face, thatch of gingery hair, this really rather nice-looking fellow (why hasn’t some girl snapped him up?), who deals daily with matters of life and death, a useful person, a necessary person. Roger sees a woman with a small, neat-featured appealing face (does that Al realize how fortunate he is?) and a faintly worried expression—but she always had that, he remembers.

“How’s work?” he says.

“Oh, fine. I’m a commissioning editor now—a step up.”

There is a silence.

“Do you know?” says Roger. “Even now, I get a thrill when I think of a butterfly blenny.”

Katie smiles. “Those crawling buckets. I can see them now. And you. Blue shorts and sunburn.”

“Careful. This is getting close to nostalgia.”

“One of Dad’s books is about that. I’ve read it. Tried to read it.”

“Said to be a bad thing, nostalgia. I have immigrant patients who suffer from it—yearning for somewhere else.”

“No way do I yearn for Crackington Haven,” says Katie. “Fuss and bother and an uncomfortable house is what I remember. We went there more than once.”

“Allersmead?”

“Allersmead what?”

“Nostalgia.”

Katie considers. “No,” she decides. “Not if nostalgia means what I think it does. Kind of glamorizing something. Allersmead just is. Was.”

“Inescapable.”

They smile, wryly.

“Coffee?” says Roger. “And then I have to get back to the nostalgic immigrants.”

 

 

 

 

“Y
our mother rang,” says Philip.

Gina is just back from turbulent events half the world away. She is jet-lagged and displaced; a part of her is still scurrying, at work. Mother? What mother?

“She wanted to tell you that Roger is getting married, and wondered when we’ll be coming down to Allersmead for a weekend.”

Gina surfaces. “Ah. Who is Roger marrying?”

“A perfectly sweet Canadian girl.”

“Of course. Good for him.”

“So when?”

“When what?” says Gina, throwing dirty clothes into the washing machine. Philip has wandered after her, and offers a glass of wine.

“When are we going there? Just so I can clear my diary.”

Gina sighs.

“You’re prejudiced, that’s the trouble,” he says. “From my point of view the whole setup has a certain fascination. And the food is amazing.”

“This is my family,” says Gina coldly. “Not a setup.”

He puts his arm around her. “Sorry. Sorry. There was further news. Your father has had a beastly cold. The dog dug up Ingrid’s asparagus bed and Ingrid was much displeased.”

Gina switches on the washing machine and picks up her glass. “Talking of nosh, we have none. Shall we go to the Turkish place?”

“You have to understand,” says Philip, “that for those of us who grew up with the most bland of family circumstances, yours are exotic. Six of you. That house. Where I come from everyone had two-point-five children and lived in a semi. No one had heard of such a thing as an au pair girl, let alone one who stays forty years and grows asparagus. Forty years?”

“Thereabouts,” says Gina.

“Were you fond of her?”

“Fond?” Gina gazes at him. “I’ve no idea. She was there, and that was that. Part of the landscape.”

Indeed yes. So that when she wasn’t there you noticed. That time.

“When’s Ingrid coming back?” someone would say, once in a while. Postcards came, bright and shiny in blues and greens—sea and sky and Scandinavian forests—addressed to All at Allersmead, or to individuals: some rugged fishermen with creels for Paul, lasses in national costume for Katie, kittens in a basket for Clare. Gina was eleven, with concerns of her own, but she was aware that things were somehow awry. There was a gap, and Mum was all on edge.

“Soon,” she would say. “In a week or two, I expect.” And when one day Sandra said, “Actually,
is
Ingrid coming back?” she flew into a temper.

“Will you not go
on
about this. Of course Ingrid’s coming back. She had to see to family business, that’s all.”