Page 35 of Days You Were Mine

‘E-type Jag,’ Jake says, incredulous that I don’t know. ‘The most glorious car ever made.’

We have borrowed Robin’s car so that we can drive to Essex to have lunch with my parents, more of an order than an invitation. When I rang home to ask if they’d post my passport, my father said, ‘If you’re planning on going to Italy with some youth we have never met, think again. You can come and get it yourself.’

My mother wrote to me the same day and I spied her round, girlish handwriting with the same pit of gloom that accompanied most of my childhood. Her missives, dictated by my father, have been chequering my life since I started at boarding school.

We thought you might have the decency to introduce your new boyfriend to your family. We haven’t heard from you all term. Come for lunch on Sunday.

Driving out of London along the Bayswater Road, lined with its cheerful display of bad art, clunky nudes and one-dimensional still lifes proudly tacked to the railings, T. Rexturned up to distortion volume on the car stereo, I feel calm and hopeful.

But the moment we turn off the A12 and begin the approach to my village, past the house where I took Scottish dancing lessons as a child and the courts where I learned to play tennis, past Huskard’s, the grim-looking old people’s home with its barred top windows, I become twelve again. Frightened of my father, ashamed of my mother, her weakness, her cowardice, her lack of self-respect. I suppose I love her in some far-off way, but she never once stood up for me; she watched my father berate me for kicks and allowed her silence to be his accomplice.

‘You’re quiet,’ Jake says, reaching out to take my hand. ‘How bad can it be?’ but I can’t find any words to answer him.

‘You didn’t tell me you lived in a mansion,’ he exclaims as we turn into our drive.

‘We only own part of it,’ I am still too choked for proper conversation.

It is a vast and beautiful house, mostly red brick, with black and white gables and three tiers of long, thin windows running across its facade. It was bought as a whole by my grandparents in the fifties and then carved up, so that we only live in the middle section, a large-roomed, high-ceilinged flat overlooking the rose gardens below. A retired schoolmaster lives in the top flat, originally the servants’ quarter, and a couple of bad-tempered Scottish pensioners inhabit the ground floor, and this, growing up, was my day-in, day-out demographic.

I hesitate at the side door, the entrance to our flat, and consider ringing the bell. But the door is open and I remind myself that I am not a visitor, that this is my home.

‘Hello?’ I call, and my voice sounds thin and false even to myself.

In these last moments, I’m uttering a silent plea. Please can it not go too badly. Please can my father be all right.

The stairs lead to a landing where I would expect my parents to be waiting, but it’s empty.

‘They must be in the kitchen,’ I say, and we follow the smell of roasting chicken down the dark corridor.

‘Smells delicious,’ Jake says, still believing this is a normal family gathering. ‘I’m starving.’

In the kitchen, black and white tiled floor of my youth, both parents are at the Aga with their backs to us.

‘We’re here,’ I say, and my mother turns immediately, a wooden spoon held aloft. I see that she is wearing make-up, lipstick, blusher and eyeshadow, an unusual event in her world. She’s dressed up too, in a bright blue trouser suit, the jacket zipped and belted, an orange silk collar peeking out of the top.

‘Hello,’ she says, holding out her hand.

‘Hi, Dad,’ I say, but my father doesn’t answer; he continues to stir a pan as if he hasn’t heard us.

I see Jake dart his eyes at me and then my mother, trying to gauge the situation. Are we being ignored?

‘Hello, Dad,’ I say, louder this time, and I watch my mother slide her eyes away from me; she’s not going to help. She doesn’t offer Jacob a drink – always my father’s domain; if he doesn’t give her a glass of wine then she goes without. She stands with her gaze averted, as though she’s fascinated by the rose bushes below.

Eventually, perhaps only a couple of minutes later, though it feels longer, my father turns around. He is smiling, if you can call it that, and I see that while he has been making the gravy, he has drunk half of a bottle of red wine.

‘Hello, daughter,’ he says, a name he never calls me. ‘Or perhaps you have absconded from that role? Perhaps you are now emancipated from your parents?’

‘Of course not. Dad, this is Jacob.’

The best recourse when my father is in this mood is to try and move things on, although with three glasses of wine inside him, I’m not optimistic.

‘Good to meet you, Mr Garland.’ Jake extends his hand, which my father ignores. Instead he allows his eyes to travel over Jake in expressionless assessment. I feel him registering the shoulder-length hair, the flowered choker at Jake’s neck, the long bead necklaces I considered asking him not to wear.

‘Well, lunch is ready, come and sit down.’

We are eating in the kitchen, the table already laid with knives, forks and four glasses, although my father doesn’t pour me any wine. He refills his own, and then pours a couple of inches for Jake and my mother. Our boundaries are set; lunch is to be an endurance test.

You throw a new lover into a situation of extreme awkwardness and you see a different side to them. I would never have expected Jake to try so hard with my mother, asking her about the roses in the garden below.

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