CHAPTER 5
When Sylvia opened her handbag, you never knew what might come out of it. It might be a tract; it might be a revolver.
This morning it was a little pink card. She pushed it across the table to Suzanne. “That’s the number of the clinic,” she said. “Ring them up right away for a quote. If you don’t want to go locally, I’ll drive you back up to Manchester; Hermione’s given me the name of her man on John Street.”
“It’s Saturday,” Suzanne said.
“There’ll be somebody there, don’t fret.”
“Anybody would think you were forewarned.”
“Sometimes my community work comes in useful.”
“Hang on a minute, Sylvia. This is your own flesh and blood.”
“I prefer not to think about the flesh and blood aspect. It hardly is, at this stage.”
“But it’s a potential life. She has to think it out. It’s a matter of conscience.”
“Oh, bugger her conscience,” Sylvia said. “What about her career?”
Suzanne surveyed her mother from red-rimmed eyes. She did not look pregnant. She was a thin, listless girl, though pretty enough in a commonplace sort of way.
“What a brutal woman you’ve become,” she said. “I’m surprised I exist. I’m surprised you had any children.”
“Our generation didn’t have your opportunities,” Sylvia said.
“If I wanted an abortion I could have fixed it up myself through the Student Health Service. That’s what it’s there for. I don’t need your money to go to John Street.”
Another family impasse. Colin’s mind leaped, as it did so reliably, to a face-saving distraction. “You’ve mentioned it to Hermione?”
“Yes, I told Francis on the phone.”
“Oh, the vicar,” Suzanne said. “If you were a grandmother, you might not act so stupid.”
“Now look, Suzanne—”
“It’s obvious the way things are going. You just don’t want to know, Dad. Other men…at her age.”
“I think you ought to be concerned about your own situation; not about the way your mother and I run our lives.”
“If Mum takes up with the vicar it will be in the papers. It will be a topic of general interest.”
“You silly baggage,” Sylvia said. “Are you going to pick up that phone, or must I do it for you?”
Suzanne picked up her glass of orange juice instead, and looked at her parents over the rim. “Cheers,” she said. She swung to her feet, using the tabletop for support, as if her condition were much more advanced. She turned in the doorway to say something. Her brother came through it, knocking her aside. “Hiya, Wart.” She gave him a cool glance, passed beyond retaliation. She had other things on her mind.
Alistair strode into the room, flung open the cupboards, and began to sneer at their contents. “Never any decent food,” he complained.
“What did you want?”
“Sausages. Austin gets sausages.”
“I hardly think so. In a vegetarian household.”
“He has his own sausages. He’s autonomous.”
“Then go round,” Colin said. “Perhaps he’ll give you some.”
“What’s up this morning?” Alistair enquired. “You were having one of them funny silences, when I came in.”
“A pregnant pause,” Colin said. Sylvia made a sound of disgust. “It just popped out,” he said abjectly.
Alistair poured half a pint of milk on his cornflakes, lambasted them with the back of his spoon, then dredged up a quantity of the compacted mass and thrust it into his mouth. “Just ignore me, just go on,” he said. “Not getting divorced, are you?”
His parents exchanged a glance. “Should we have expected it, at some stage?” Colin said musingly.
“Not these days. Not this.”
Alistair was gazing glumly at his melamine dish. Suddenly he lifted it and banged it down on the table. “Why do we always have these? Why don’t we have no decent china?”
“Listen, sunshine,” Sylvia snapped, “if you want gracious living, go and get it somewhere else.”
“If you did get divorced I wouldn’t live with you. Not either of you. I’d get a flat. I’d be a homeless young person. I’d be entitled.”
“Well, as soon as you set up house for yourself,” Colin said, “you can have thin pork links served on Crown Derby. Will that make you happy?”
Alistair got up, muttered, and kicked his chair. He was muttering as he walked out of the room, and hauling up his sleeve, no doubt preparatory to injecting himself with some addictive substance.
“I wonder why we bother,” said Colin.
