Behind the Scenes at the Museum Read Online Free Page B

black-and-white film here), Bunty turns a contorted, murderous face on him and lifts the knife as if she’s considering stabbing him. Is a torch being put to the great city of Atlanta?
    ‘I have some business to do,’ George says hurriedly, and Bunty thinks the better of things and stabs the steak instead.
    ‘For heaven’s sake, what’s wrong with you, what do you think I’m doing – meeting another woman for a riotous night on the tiles?’ (A clever question, of course, as this is exactly what my father-of-a-day is going to do.) Will Civil War rage in the kitchen? Will Atlanta burn? I wait with bated breath.
    No, it’s saved for another day. Phew, as Bunty’s brother Ted would say if he was here; but he isn’t, he’s in the Merchant Navy and is being tossed on the South China Seas at this moment. Bunty loses interest in the skirmish and returns her attention to her steak and kidney pudding.
    Well, my first day is nearly over, thank goodness. It’s been a very tiring day for some of us, me and Bunty in particular. George isn’t home yet but Bunty, Gillian and Patricia are fast asleep. Bunty is in dreamland again, dreaming of Walter, who’s fumbling with her buttons with hands of pork and kneading her flesh with fingers that look like sausages. Gillian is snoring in her sleep, in the middle of a Sisyphean nightmare where she must pedal endlessly uphill on her tricycle. Patricia is deep in sleep, her pale face drawn and her panda clutched to her chest. The spectral wraiths wander at will making puny efforts to create domestic disorder – souring the milk and sprinkling dust on the shelves.
    I’m wide awake too, turning somersaults and floating in the ocean of Bunty. I tap my tiny naked heels together three times and think, there’s no place like home.
    Next morning George is in an uncharacteristically good mood (his night on the tiles – with Walter – was satisfying) and he prods my sleeping mother awake.
    ‘How’d you like breakfast in bed, Bunt?’ Bunty grunts. ‘How about a bit of sausage? Black pudding?’ Bunty moans, which George takes to mean ‘yes’ and he saunters off down to the kitchen while Bunty has to run to the bathroom. For a second she thinks she sees Scarlett smiling in the bathroom mirror in full Technicolor, but the image disappears as she vomits. Leaning her hot, prickling forehead against the cold tiles, a terrible idea forms in Bunty’s head – she’s pregnant! (Poor Bunty – throwing up every single morning at every pregnancy. No wonder she was always telling us that she was sick of us.) She sits abruptly down on the toilet and mouths a silent Munch-like scream – it can’t be (Yes, yes, yes, Bunty’s going to have a baby! Me!). She throws the nearest thing (a red shoe) at the mirror and it breaks into a million splintery pieces.
    I’m hanging like a pink-glass button by a thread. Help. Where are my sisters? (Asleep.) My father? (Cooking breakfast.) Where’s my mother?
    Still, never mind – the sun is high in the sky and it’s going to be a beautiful day again. The crowds will be flocking into the Exhibition Halls and the Dome of Discovery, craning their necks at Skylon and the shimmering emerald city of tomorrow. The future is like a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door. Bluebirds fly overhead, singing. What a wonderful world!

Footnote (i) – Country Idyll
    T HE PHOTOGRAPH IS IN A SILVER FRAME, PADDED WITH red velvet with an oval of glass in the middle from behind which my great-grandmother regards the world with an ambiguous expression.
    She stands very straight, one wedding-ringed hand resting on the back of a chaise-longue . In the background is a typical studio backdrop of the time, in which a hazy Mediterranean landscape of hills drops away from the trompe-l’œil balustraded staircase which occupies the foreground. My great-grandmother’s hair is parted in the middle and worn in a crown of plaits around her