happened, you refused to call him anything at all.
Muriel said she was asking Greg and Sammy Chen from the office too. (I know this sounds like she was afraid ofbeing alone with Bert in some way still – afraid of him hurting her, I mean – but I honestly didn’t believe that was the case.) He irritated her like hell. I mean, when he came to the flat – oh yes, the flat where you were born, my dear, was near the river in Chelsea, in one of those redbrick blocks … dark and dingy, but when the light came off the water, the sitting-room had quite a magical air about it, as if all the sun flashes on the walls were silver fish swimming round and round.
No, as I was saying, he irritated her, your grandfather, when he came to the flat, because he walked around like the male lion in the pride, checking glasses and plates in the cupboard, passing remarks about the carpet and cork tiles being worn, that kind of thing.
Your mother Anna didn’t go for that either, as you can imagine. She often said that the only way forward was to destroy the authority of the father altogether.
No, she didn’t get on with Bert very well.
It was Muriel who put herself out, almost in spite of herself . She’d had a hard day, but she still stopped off at the butcher and got chicken for a coq au vin. Anna told her that those attitudes to male supremacy would keep women in slavery until the day they woke up and came to terms with themselves. But then your mother was in the very forefront of the new generation of feminist women – not that that was the name they called themselves at that time.
*
Now I look back to that room on a river wider and deeper and more treacherous than the chalk stream that winds slowly behind us down to the weir at Slape. I look back, and I remember – Muriel was the one who made shadows on my bedroom wall with her hands: a rabbit, a fox, a silly dog with waggling ears. Muriel was like a magician to me, forshe could do anything, she could pull any surprise out of a hat, she could get me what I wanted just as soon as I asked for it.
*
It maddened your mother, Jasmine says, as if she is the one this time to guess my thoughts. There was Anna trying to bring you up to be self-sufficient, to go about the world with the same sense of belonging to your share of it as a boy would have: putting you in dungarees, making sure you had building bricks and counting-beads …
*
And there, I think sadly, was Muriel, coming home with dresses of spun strawberry silk, a Viennese outfit with a tiny apron and a dirndl skirt and, of course, the dolls.
But my mother it was who sent me away.
*
The arrangement was, Jasmine says, as a wind whips in from the downs and she pulls her raincoat close round her, that I should pick you up from the nursery and Muriel would buy the food for supper on the way home. Greg and Sammy Chen would come about seven, the same time as Bert was expected to turn up.
Now, I said that Muriel didn’t exactly want to protect herself from your grandfather by having other guests, but, consciously or not, she was making sure that Bert couldn’t steam ahead with his condescending remarks about her work, if the art director of New Image – which Greg was (Sammy Chen was his boyfriend, all very discreet in those days) – was there to lead with a few conversations of his own.
As it turned out, the whole thing was a disaster.
You must remember that Muriel had taken quite a few knocks in her time. It was insensitive of me, I know, not tosee it then, but I think she was really upset by the rift that was widening daily between her and your mother.
Everything Muriel was, Anna seemed to despise more and more.
Muriel was superstitious, for instance, always consulting her stars and once even going to an astrologer. Actually, we went together – it was just good fun – but Anna was too solemn about these things. She took it all very seriously, and she actively disapproved.
– Oh come on, Anna, Muriel would
Muriel said she was asking Greg and Sammy Chen from the office too. (I know this sounds like she was afraid ofbeing alone with Bert in some way still – afraid of him hurting her, I mean – but I honestly didn’t believe that was the case.) He irritated her like hell. I mean, when he came to the flat – oh yes, the flat where you were born, my dear, was near the river in Chelsea, in one of those redbrick blocks … dark and dingy, but when the light came off the water, the sitting-room had quite a magical air about it, as if all the sun flashes on the walls were silver fish swimming round and round.
No, as I was saying, he irritated her, your grandfather, when he came to the flat, because he walked around like the male lion in the pride, checking glasses and plates in the cupboard, passing remarks about the carpet and cork tiles being worn, that kind of thing.
Your mother Anna didn’t go for that either, as you can imagine. She often said that the only way forward was to destroy the authority of the father altogether.
No, she didn’t get on with Bert very well.
It was Muriel who put herself out, almost in spite of herself . She’d had a hard day, but she still stopped off at the butcher and got chicken for a coq au vin. Anna told her that those attitudes to male supremacy would keep women in slavery until the day they woke up and came to terms with themselves. But then your mother was in the very forefront of the new generation of feminist women – not that that was the name they called themselves at that time.
*
Now I look back to that room on a river wider and deeper and more treacherous than the chalk stream that winds slowly behind us down to the weir at Slape. I look back, and I remember – Muriel was the one who made shadows on my bedroom wall with her hands: a rabbit, a fox, a silly dog with waggling ears. Muriel was like a magician to me, forshe could do anything, she could pull any surprise out of a hat, she could get me what I wanted just as soon as I asked for it.
*
It maddened your mother, Jasmine says, as if she is the one this time to guess my thoughts. There was Anna trying to bring you up to be self-sufficient, to go about the world with the same sense of belonging to your share of it as a boy would have: putting you in dungarees, making sure you had building bricks and counting-beads …
*
And there, I think sadly, was Muriel, coming home with dresses of spun strawberry silk, a Viennese outfit with a tiny apron and a dirndl skirt and, of course, the dolls.
But my mother it was who sent me away.
*
The arrangement was, Jasmine says, as a wind whips in from the downs and she pulls her raincoat close round her, that I should pick you up from the nursery and Muriel would buy the food for supper on the way home. Greg and Sammy Chen would come about seven, the same time as Bert was expected to turn up.
Now, I said that Muriel didn’t exactly want to protect herself from your grandfather by having other guests, but, consciously or not, she was making sure that Bert couldn’t steam ahead with his condescending remarks about her work, if the art director of New Image – which Greg was (Sammy Chen was his boyfriend, all very discreet in those days) – was there to lead with a few conversations of his own.
As it turned out, the whole thing was a disaster.
You must remember that Muriel had taken quite a few knocks in her time. It was insensitive of me, I know, not tosee it then, but I think she was really upset by the rift that was widening daily between her and your mother.
Everything Muriel was, Anna seemed to despise more and more.
Muriel was superstitious, for instance, always consulting her stars and once even going to an astrologer. Actually, we went together – it was just good fun – but Anna was too solemn about these things. She took it all very seriously, and she actively disapproved.
– Oh come on, Anna, Muriel would
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