house and horrible chrome lights were fixed in corners. The house was now made up of spaces of light and spaces of darkness and Dad and Paul were now sitting in one of the spaces of darkness. When I got close enough to see, I recognised the determined gleam in Paul’s eyes : he was researching. There was even a notebook poking out of his jacket pocket.
‘Has Paul mentioned he’s going to do a documentary on the family, Dad?’ I asked cheerfully, slamming the tray down.
Paul sat up and scowled. ‘I was going to, Jane,’ he said. ‘Give me a chance.’
A trail of yellow worked its way down Dad’s chin. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What’s so interesting about us?’
Paul took a deep breath and laid down his piece of toast. ‘That’s a very good question,’ he said, and Dad looked faintly surprised. ‘When I talk about my family – which, of course, is interesting to me – then I am also, for the viewer, in some ways allowing them a new way to think about their own family, their own childhood. Every family is different, and yet every family is similar.’
‘Is that a quotation?’ I muttered. Paul ignored me.
‘When I talk about our family – you and Mum and Jane and me – and when I talk about the Martellos, because, of course, I can’t leave them out, what are the things that I’ll be addressing?’ He wasn’t waiting for a reply so I picked up his piece of toast and bit into it hungrily. I’d missed lunch. ‘Nostalgia. Closeness and estrangement. Possessiveness and jealousy. The idyll of childhood. The pain of growing up. The hopes that parents have for children. The resentments that children feel about their parents. All these things and more can be explored through one family. I hope that you’ll want to help me?’
‘Enough of this nonsense,’ Dad said. ‘Drink your tea, Paul, I want to show Jane something. Come over here.’
He led me over to the desk in the corner. Drawings and large old books were piled high.
‘How’s your project going?’ he asked.
‘Which one?’
‘I don’t mean at the Stead. The hostel.’
‘It’s becoming a torment.’
‘I’m sorry, Jane. Anything I can do to help?’
‘Yes, kill everybody in the housing department.’
‘It’s half the job,’ Dad said abstractedly. ‘I asked you here with an ulterior motive. I thought you might cast an eye over this.’
‘What is it?’
‘This is going to be the project of my old age. I’m going to restore the interior of this house.’
‘What to?’
‘To the basic structural and decorative order of the interior as it was originally conceived in the mid-1880s. You can see I’ve done some preliminary drawings. The basic fabric is original anyway. The main work will be restoring the partition in this room and on the first floor.’
Paul was standing behind us now, looking over my shoulder. ‘You mean you’ll be blocking up the bits you knocked through in the sixties,’ he said.
I gave Paul a kick but my father continued as if he hadn’t heard.
‘The cornices and some roses will need to be restored, of course, but fortunately we can take mouldings from those which survive.’
‘I’m staggered,’ I said. ‘But isn’t it going to be rather expensive?’
‘I’m going to do it myself.’
‘You’re not.’
‘I am. Pat Wheeler has said he’ll help out.’
I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t need to say anything because my father was talking animatedly. He shuffled through his preliminary drawings and specifications. He talked of sash pulleys, sealers and firebacks, plaster dabs, angle beads and door furniture. Le Corbusier had been born again as William Morris. Paul teasingly asked if he was going to have gas illumination and the central heating removed. My own feelings were mixed, not only because of the impracticality of the plan but because it seemed like a scheme in which my father was systematically removing himself from his own house. At the end of the reconstruction, if he ever reached the end, the interior would have been stripped of every innovation and ideal that my father had lived by. I mumbled something about respect for the past and my father gave a heavily sarcastic laugh.
‘We all have different ways with our past. I hope I’m going to restore it and preserve it. Is that better than making a television documentary about it?’ He gave a sharp look at Paul, whose face was reddening.
‘I’m surprised to see you so starry-eyed about restoration,’ Paul replied. ‘You always used to write about buildings in their social context. What’s the point of recreating a Victorian family house in the 1990s? Are you going to start riding around on a horse as well? My attitude to the past is to re-examine it in terms of today.’
‘Natalie,’ father said bluntly.
‘What?’ said Paul.
‘You know what,’ said father. ‘Natalie’s been dug out of the ground and you’re turning it into a TV documentary, and you’ll want us all to talk about how we feel about it, won’t you? I suppose you’ll want me to talk about your mother’s death as well. Who else will contribute? Your two wives? Poor old abandoned Claud?’ Now it was my turn to flush with anger and mortification. ‘And what about Alan and Martha? Martha won’t say much, she’s always hugged her griefs close; but Alan – I can just see it – the angry old man looks back on his life and reviews it. He’ll be good value all right. Is that what you want, Paul, a family of TV personalities?’
Paul looked shocked, but excited as well. He had caught a whiff of what his programme might be like. He replied in his best programme-proposal mode, ‘The programme will be made with the utmost respect and integrity.’
Father turned his back on Paul and began talking about opening and reconstructing a square pargeted brick flue. I wondered whether clay flue linings mightn’t be better but he brushed me aside.
‘I’m not giving up just because of an old man’s need to strike poses. Have you ever heard anything as ridiculous as that half-arsed restoration? Has Dad gone senile?’
Paul sounded quite belligerent as he sat in the pub fidgeting with his half-pint glass, but I knew he was feeling guilty.
‘Don’t just blow smoke out of your nostrils at me, Jane. It’s entirely legitimate for me to draw on my own experience for my work and my experience happens to consist of our two families. Just because
I was silent.
‘Well, does it?’
I shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter what
‘It’s important to me. Since that weekend all I’ve thought about is Natalie. Making a film about her and us would be good for everyone. A way of coming to terms with what’s happened.’
‘Television therapy,’ I said.
‘Well, that’s probably no worse than whatever it is that you’re doing now. We’re both just trying to help ourselves. What’s so wrong with that?’
I laid my hand on his sleeve, and he shook it testily away.
‘Paul,’ I said, ‘you want people to talk about their lives to you, but most of us don’t know our lives. What you’re doing is risky. You may trample all over people’s memories and dreams at the very moment they’re the most fragile. And these are people you’ve got to go on living with. I don’t want Claud to tell the world how he feels about me. Television is so seductive: people tell things to the camera they’d never dream of telling their best friends.’
I stubbed out my cigarette and reached for my coat.
‘It’s just going to be an honest piece of film-making. I can promise you that I won’t do anything that would be unworthy of Natalie’s memory.’
‘Save it for the
