“Good God, do you think of me as a person who would have?”
“It’s the impression you’ve given. I mean, you seem to believe in your work, for instance. And in, well, family life, and God, and the Labour Party by and large—the whole package, really.”
“The package.” He thought about it. “I’d not deny that my own father believed in a package. But I dare hope his package seems more stupid than mine?”
She smiled. “Yes, to be a creationist and to have family rows about Darwinism … yes, it does seem stupid. Victorian.”
“So it seemed to me. Even then. But we’ve always been behind the times in Norfolk.”
“You should have stood up to them,” she said.
“Not that easy, Kit. There were penalties they could impose. People bullied other people, in those days.”
It was his oblique way of telling her that she had nothing to fear; not from him, anyway. “You must rest,” he said. “Then when you have rested, think. And then you will know how you want to go on with your life.”
She didn’t mention Africa, this idea she had. Better not; she was afraid of touching some wellspring of unhappiness. One night lately, walking the house in the small hours, he had found Robin alone in the cold back sitting room where the television skulked.
“Test Match highlights,” he explained. “Just finished. I was off to bed. Want a coffee?”
She nodded; sat down on a chair, picked at its upholstery, said, “Do you know, in any other family this chair would be put out for the dustmen to take.”
“I’d never noticed it,” Robin said.
“You’re just like your father. Don’t you ever see how shabby we are? How poor?”
“We’re not poor.” Robin was indignant. “Mrs. Glasse and Sandra, they’re poor. Beks was laughing at Sandra because she said, ’Do you like my skirt, I got it in a charity shop.’ “
“Beks is a brat. She knows nothing. When you’re that age you think you’re sensitive—well, I did, I remember. But you’re about as sensitive as a bouncer in a nightclub.”
“What would you know about nightclubs?”
“As much as a child of two saints should know.” She looked up. “What about that coffee?”
When Robin brought it back—modern coffee, gray and tepid and sugarless—she asked him, “But do you know what I mean? Mum works so hard to keep the house going, with that furnace to be fed, and that demented twin- tub, and that antique Hoover. All Dad does is bring home hulking great hallstands from Yarmouth, and then beam on us like Jehovah and think he’s done his duty by us. Don’t you ever wonder why we have to be good all the time, why we have to have such tender consciences, why we have to have these Visitors every summer?”
“We’ll be getting some new Visitors soon,” Robin said. “Morlocks, Yahoos, slags, and tarts.”
“Why can’t we be normal, and self-absorbed, and acquisitive?”
Robin’s eyes were fixed on the blank television screen. “Haynes 184,” he said thoughtfully. “Hit out to all parts of the ground. Viv Richards 145. God help England. I don’t know, Kit. If you want to be acquisitive, why don’t you marry Daniel?”
“He hasn’t asked me, and I don’t want to get married. Anyway, it’s not a career. What do you think this is, the era of W. G. Grace?”
“I wish it were.” Robin sighed. “So … what are you going to do then? Slope about getting on everybody’s nerves?”
“Do I do that?”
“No, but fuck it—there’s Julian living out his rustic fantasies, and Becky with a mental age of seven, and nobody but me with any sense of purpose these days.”
“Oh, sure,” Kit said. “Jack the Lad, aren’t you? On with the hockey pads. On with the cricket pads. Why don’t you take up schoolboy boxing and then you can get a padded helmet too? With that on you’d be totally impervious to life.”
They sat in silence, Robin slumped on the sofa, Kit curled into the chair, her legs drawn up into the skirt of her chain-store nightdress, which was too tight under the arms, and neither short nor long. “All these questions, Robin. I’ve never had a sensible discussion with you before.”
“And you aren’t now.”
“But you do have thoughts?”
“Yes.”
“Such as?”
“Such as why are we so miserable these days? Creeping around Julian and his obsessions.”
“You’d think Dad would laugh him out of it.”
“He doesn’t seem disposed to laugh.” Robin turned his head back to the TV screen. “West Indies 518.” He looked glum. “Only rain can save us now. What was that you were saying the other day, about going to Africa?”
“Yes. I mean it.”
“Do you want to do what they did, is that it?”
“Perhaps.”
