Behind the Scenes at the Museum (20 page)

It would be better for Bunty if George stayed in the Shop all the time – she could push his meals across the passage to him and he could push his washing back.

‘Any chance of a cup of tea, Bunt?’

George is trying to imitate the way he thinks happily married couples speak to each other. He often does this when Bunty is in a bad mood (or at any rate, worse than usual) and it’s so patently artificial that all it does is make her even crosser. If we all know this, why doesn’t he? Bunty stops peeling potatoes, wipes her hands and sighs noisily. Putting the kettle on the stove, she lights the gas with the same look on her face as the Virgin Mary has, standing at the foot of the cross in the painting in the Catholic church that my new friend Kathleen Gorman has recently introduced me to. (
Nobody
, not even Patricia, knows I have been in there.) I didn’t like it, it was full of dripping hearts and pictures of people doing horrible things to other people. Bunty would have liked the Catholic church if she had given it a chance.

‘The child can do that,’ George says, indicating the abandoned potatoes in the sink.

‘No, she can’t,’ Bunty snaps, much to ‘the child’s’ relief. Bunty looks like she’s willing to defend her potato peeler to the last King Edward. She pushes her hair back from her forehead in a centuries-old genetic gesture of suffering. The life of a woman is hard and she’ll be damned if anyone is going to rob her of her sainthood. There’s a tremendous battle of wills going on in the kitchen, in which I am clearly the hapless pawn. George keeps sizing up for a real ding-dong and then backing down because he doesn’t really want to risk the consequences of an argument. He’s been in Bunty’s bad books since we opened the first door on the advent calendar (or rather since Gillian did, as she has done nearly every day. Patricia has got round this by making her own personal advent calendar out of a cornflakes box). I haven’t discussed with anyone this new phase of the Cold War (more of an Ice Age really) between our parents but then Gillian and I rarely ‘discuss’ anything – she shouts, I ignore her. And Patricia, since entering adolescence, is incommunicado. I don’t have the right words anyway – I won’t have the right vocabulary for several years.

George stubs out his cigarette and makes a kind of snorting noise in his throat and settles back into his chair to watch Bunty making his cup of tea (well, this is 1959). He clears his throat and spits into his handkerchief just as Bunty puts the cup and saucer in front of him with a glazed expression on her face. This is the expression she wears when she picks up George’s socks, handkerchiefs and underpants (wearing rubber gloves) and drops them into a bucket of Dettol to soak before they are allowed to join the rest of our barely-sullied washing in the English Electric.

Bunty reclaims her peeler while I remain hovering in the doorway, uncertain as to whether I’m still needed in my pawn-role. They seem to have forgotten it’s Christmas Eve and, despite the mound of mince pies on the dresser, the kitchen is not carolling with the festive spirit. The Christmas cake, I notice, is sitting un-iced on the refrigerator, decidedly naked in its almond paste. This is a bad sign. The cake is a close relative of the Boxing Day trifle, both regarded by Bunty with the kind of reverence that Kathleen’s mother affords the Nativity Scene.

‘We
are
going to the pantomime tonight, aren’t we?’ I ask rather recklessly.

‘Why else do you think I’m going flat out like this?’ Bunty spins round, the potato peeler moving like a dagger through the air, indicating a panorama of mince pies, Christmas cake, potatoes, George.

‘
And
I haven’t had time to make a pudding.’ Her eyes narrow to slits as she looks at George and adds menacingly, ‘It’ll have to be tinned fruit.’ She advances on a tin of peaches, clawing them open with a tin opener and pouring them into a big glass bowl where they swim about like goldfish. George shakes out the evening paper and starts whistling ‘Jingle Bells’, softly, under his breath.

‘Haven’t you got anything to do, Ruby?’ Bunty asks sharply.

I haven’t. I didn’t think you needed to have anything to do on Christmas Eve.

‘Where’s our Gillian?’ George asks suddenly. Always Bunty’s favourite of course, Gillian has recently managed to make herself extremely popular with George. I suppose if you work hard enough at anything you’re bound to succeed in the end.

‘Piano lesson,’ Bunty replies, turning down the gas under the pan of potatoes.

‘On Christmas Eve?’ George says, a note of surprise in his voice. You see? I’m supposed to be ‘doing something’ but ‘Our Gillian’ isn’t. I seem to be dismissed so I go up to the living-room and switch on the television.
Champion the Wonder Horse
is just starting and although my heart thrills automatically to his stirring theme music I have to confess to being a little disappointed that there isn’t something more seasonal on. Don’t the television people know it’s Christmas Eve either? Still, the Christmas tree is beautiful; the lights are switched on and we have some new decorations – big silver glass balls with silver glitter snowflakes stuck on them – a company Christmas gift from a pet food traveller. And the coal fire in the living-room has just been lit so that the room is full of promising smells like coal-dust and pine needles and I begin to cheer up. Nell is asleep in an armchair next to the fire, a piece of tinsel wrapped mysteriously round her finger. Maybe it’s to remind her of something? Her personality perhaps?

Gillian bursts into the room, throwing her music case down and sprawling in an armchair, revealing her navy blue knickers. She sighs darkly and rearranges herself, crossing her legs and staring at a spot two inches above my head.

‘You’re not supposed to cross your legs,’ I tell her helpfully. Without speaking she slowly uncrosses them then recrosses them. I wonder if I were to say, ‘Listen Gillian, this is your last day on earth, lighten up, for heaven’s sake,’ she would take any notice? Probably not.

George puts his head round the living-room door. ‘Tea’s ready,’ he announces, glaring into the middle distance of Champion’s girth and stirrups. In one smooth movement, Gillian sticks her tongue out at me, uncrosses her legs and turns round and gives George a big, toothy grin. ‘Hello, Daddy,’ she beams at him. If only she would teach me how to do that before she goes.

But no, nothing as simple as that for Our Lady of the Kitchen, who is pretending to dish out pork chops, mashed potatoes and carrots but is really shooting out steel tension wires from her fingertips. They make little noises as they hit the walls of the bedrooms, the living-room, the front of the Shop, the occasional Pet. Ping! Ping! Ping! Until the whole house is criss-crossed with the metal web of Bunty’s thoughts.

She makes an entrance into the dining-room, singing, in a high, tuneless voice, a totally inappropriate Doris Day song (‘The Black Hills of Dakota’) that indicates that she is pretending to ignore whatever is going on between her and George. This is a special occasion after all – the pantomime, Christmas, not to mention Gillian’s death. Bunty circles the dining-table, with the plates held high, as if she is a waitress in an American film. She looks ridiculous.

‘Pork’s a bit tough,’ George says. Why can’t he just chew and swallow without comment like everyone else? I hate this. I hate these people at the table. I can see Gillian’s doing the same as me, rehearsing expressions of agreement and dismay in case George continues with his carping. Bunty, however, is not in a placatory mood.

‘Really?’ she says, slicing icebergs with her tongue. ‘Really?’ she says, daring him to continue. Her eyebrows have risen so far they seem to be hovering above her head. ‘Really?’ George falls silent under the pressure of Christmas.

‘What a wet night it is for going out!’ Bunty says suddenly, in a different tone, her ‘company’ voice. This is her way of letting it be known that she is a very well-behaved person with good manners, unlike the boorish man at the other end of the table, who unfortunately happens to be her husband.

Nobody replies. Everybody’s too busy chewing – George is right, the meat is tough, small charred chops that have been grilled by the flame of Bunty’s temper. What a shame for Gillian, her last supper and it’s a burnt offering. If we had known we could have had Christmas dinner a day early just for her.

Nell’s knife skitters off the table and onto the floor. George and Bunty exchange looks over her head as she makes a futile attempt to bend down and reach the knife. Finally, George sighs and picks it up for her, slamming it back down on the tablecloth.

‘Can I sit next to you at the pantomime, Daddy?’ Gillian asks, turning the full torchlight beam of her smile on George.

‘Of course, pet,’ he smiles. This is sickening. But George is soothed, so some (reluctant) admiration is due to Gillian, I suppose.

I’m sitting next to Nell, dutifully chewing and saying nothing, but that doesn’t make me safe. Bunty turns to me suddenly, like a frustrated cobra. ‘If you don’t hurry up, Ruby, you’ll still be sitting here when
we’re
all at the pantomime.’ She says this as if she’s pleased with herself for saying something clever.
Is
this my real mother? Why does she do this? What kind of enjoyment does she derive from idle threats like this? For one thing we have plenty of time. And for another thing they wouldn’t dream of actually leaving me here while they go to the pantomime. Would they?

‘Yes,’ George says unexpectedly. ‘Stop dithering, Ruby, you can’t spend your whole life being late, you know.’ He’s taking sides with Bunty either to mollify her or irritate her, it’s hard to say which. I start to eat as fast as I can, but stop in open-mouthed astonishment when Nell, slip-sliding in and out of lucidity, suddenly turns to me and says (in a foreign language, I notice) ‘Aye, frame thyself, girl!’ For a split second the entire family appears to be staring at me with the kind of look that sparrows give to their poor innocent cuckoo-babies.

Bunty, still chewing, starts whisking the plates away, ignoring the protests of Nell who hasn’t managed to start eating anything yet. I think Bunty would prefer it if she could wash up before we’d eaten. She waltzes back in with the cut-glass bowl containing the tinned sliced peaches that are like big smiles, like the enormous, manic smile fixed on Bunty’s own face. (An extreme version, this, of the smile of
Footnote (
iv
)
.) She dishes out the peaches and when Patricia protests that she doesn’t want any, tells her that’s too bad because she needs the bowl for the Boxing Day trifle. Bunty is the only person in York who knows how to make a sherry trifle properly, and as its sacred properties are not to be interfered with Patricia takes her bowl of peach slices, but not without leaning over towards George and saying in a mock-confidential whisper, ‘They say discretion is the better part of valour, don’t they?’ George looks extremely uncomfortable; he has no idea what Patricia’s talking about but he’s pretty sure it’s got something to do with The Floozy.

George cuts a peach slice in half with his spoon, scoops up a little cream on it and raises it, delicately, to his lips.

‘The cream’s off,’ he pronounces, hardly tasting it at all. His spoon remains suspended on the way down from his sandy moustache, which is the colour of peaches. He stares at Bunty, daring her to contradict him, all thought of festive goodwill abandoned.

On the other side of the table from me, Patricia eats a spoonful of cream and peaches and gags. She nods at me and mouths the word ‘Off’. Nell, fearful of starving probably, has already finished hers.

Bunty licks her lips with the fastidiousness of a cat. ‘Tastes all right to me,’ she says quietly. She’s being very brave, rather like Deborah Kerr in
The King and I
.

George pushes his plate away. ‘You bloody well eat it then,’ he says, leaving Gillian in a bit of a dilemma, her cheeks stuffed with rancid cream and slippery peaches, not sure which parent to suck up to. She is able to spit her dilemma back into her bowl when Bunty and George’s attention is diverted by a loud snore from Nell. She is as sound asleep as a dormouse with her head in her empty dish.