Family Album Read Online Free Page B

Though the eight candles I imagine came from Woolworths, thinks Corinna. Oh, the earth mother has done her stuff.
    Why does Alison so exasperate me? Is it because she has six children, and I have none? But this is 1977, and a woman’s achievement is not measured by the output of her womb. In my circles, where people have heard of feminism, Alison is a throwback: she is entirely dependent on her husband, her skills and talents are limited to nappy changing and birthday cakes, whereas I am a well-regarded scholar and teacher. I know more about Christina Rossetti than anyone except a tiresome man at Yale who will be trumped when my book comes out. In the modern world, it is I who am the achiever, not Alison.
    All right, maybe the children come into it. Somehow. But it’s more elemental than that. It’s to do with that inexhaustible smile, and the way she pats your arm, and her general shapelessness and the fact that she’s barely read a book in her life, and that slight stammer, and her majestic complacency.
    Why ever did my brother pick her? Suddenly she was there, and he’d married her, and no sooner married than babies poured forth. What’s in it for Charles? Amazing sex? Surely not. Three meals a day and room service when required, yes. Charles has never been asked to lift a domestic finger. Genetic prowess? Well, maybe. Who knows what dark unspoken urges he has. I’d be the last to say I know my brother.
    Corinna has a cup of tea in her hand, supplied by Alison: “You must be parched after that drive, and we’re not going to have the birthday tea till after they’ve finished the treasure hunt.” Corinna drinks her tea and watches children eddy in and out of the bushes. Alison is in their midst, clapping her hands and exhorting them onwards. Ingrid wanders up from the pond garden, a baby on her hip. Her role today seems to be to keep the baby out of harm’s way. When did this one arrive? One was barely aware that there had been another.
    And now Charles has appeared, also coming from the pond garden. He joins Alison, who is consoling someone who has not yet found any treasure, and he stands beside her, looking somehow entirely detached, as though none of this were anything much to do with him, as though he had merely strayed upon the scene. But, paradoxically, he manages also to seem some kind of pivot, he commands attention, this tall man in jeans and a green checked shirt, slightly stooped, as though he condescended to the shorter folk about him, at whom he vaguely gazes through heavy-rimmed glasses. There they stand, Alison and Charles, in the middle of their suburban acreage, their progeny whooping around them.

    Alison is skimming and floating. She skims about the garden, with the children; her skirts float around her; she is on a tide of pleasure. Her thoughts too skim and float: lovely day . . . sun . . . children . . . Sandra, don’t push Katie, there’s plenty of treasure for everyone . . . Summer birthdays always best, poor Paul with January, one should have thought ahead . . . Paul’s a bit forlorn, so many girls, with Gina’s friends . . . Will there be enough lemonade? . . . Will they eat the paste sandwiches, too savory perhaps? . . . Gina, do make sure the little ones find some treasure, I don’t think Roger has any . . . sun . . . children . . . Ah, here is Charles.
    She skims to a stop, with Charles now beside her. “They’re having such a lovely time,” she tells him. But Charles is not here, she can see, he is concerned with matters of the mind, the things that go on in his head that she could not possibly follow. She puts her arm through his, smiling. Smiling and smiling.
    “Who are all these children?” he says. “The ones that aren’t ours?”
    “They’re Gina’s friends from school,” she tells him. “Just six of them, for her birthday. Rowena and Sally and Rosie and, um . . . Corinna is here. Having tea on the terrace. Why don’t you join her?”
    And here now is Ingrid,