Page 36 of Days You Were Mine

‘I think they are classic tea roses, and perhaps the purple ones—’

My father cuts across her.

‘It’s not our garden.’

‘But you have a garden here? There’s so much space.’

‘Yes. An acre, the other side of the house.’

‘We grow vegetables,’ I say, surprising myself and perhaps my parents with the pronoun. ‘Courgettes and beans, potatoes and carrots, all the usual. We have fruit cages too, with redcurrants, blackcurrants and raspberries in the summer.’

‘My grandparents lived on a farm; I spent a lot of my childhood there. My grandmother grew every vegetable you could think of. They were almost self-sufficient.’

‘Sounds idyllic,’ my mother says, and I feel hot with shame. Jake’s childhood was the exact opposite of idyllic.

‘This trip to Italy.’ My father has no interest in small talk. ‘Who pays for it?’

‘Well, the record label is paying all our recording costs, and we have a sponsor who has rented the house for the summer.’

‘And why does Alice need to be there?’

‘She’s making a series of drawings of the band. Didn’t she tell you? She’s going to have an exhibition at the Robin Armstrong Gallery.’

‘Alice doesn’t communicate with her parents any more,’ my father says, refilling his glass.

I could protest but what would be the point? When I started at art school, I told myself I would ring home once a week. Then once a fortnight, before it slipped to every month. What happened, I think, is that with the space and distance to review my teenage years of repression and isolation, my parents morphed into caricatures: the tormenting bully, the muted wife. For the first time in my life I was away from them, I could be whoever I wanted to be, and the freedom was addictive. I didn’t want to be reminded of my home life, which became in my head a swirling underworld of doom; it suited me to live as if my parents didn’t exist.

‘Student life is pretty hectic,’ Jake says. ‘It doesn’t leave much time for anything else.’

‘Art school? Swanning around drawing some pretty nude model, you mean? I hardly think so. We wanted Alice to go to Oxford, but she didn’t have the brains.’

There’s a tense little moment of silence. It’s not so much what my father says but the scorn in his voice as he says it.

‘Alice has a real gift. Perhaps you don’t know of RobinArmstrong, but he’s a big deal in the art world. I would have thought you’d be proud of her.’

My mother looks down at her plate of food; she’s hardly touched it, and her hands are fluttering around her knife and fork as if she’s forgotten how to use them. Inside me now is just one burning intention. I will never be like her.

We all watch my father draining and refilling his glass. His greed, his selfishness, his sad, old-fashioned patriarchy: it makes me feel ashamed.

‘I’m sure Jacob would like another glass of wine,’ I say, and my father looks at me in disgust. But he picks up the bottle and empties the rest of it into Jake’s glass.

‘I’m not sure we approve of Alice spending her summer in Italy. She should live here and get a job like everyone else.’

‘I don’t think you understand,’ Jake says. ‘Alice is being commissioned to do a show, and for that she needs to be in Italy, working on her drawings of the band.’

‘A vanity project, that’s all this is. I don’t want Alice hanging around some band with a dubious lifestyle. Don’t think I don’t know what you lot get up to. She’s far too young.’

I would speak, but the threat of tears keeps me quiet, and I will not cry in front of my father. My mother and I are frustrating victims; we don’t react. What happens is that my father’s scornful put-downs escalate; he needles away at us, childlike in his quest for victory.

‘I think you might be surprised by how hard-working we are.’ Jake’s voice is soft, polite, but I know without looking at him that inside he is clenched with anger.

‘Hah!’ My father takes a sip of his wine. Jake, I notice, hasn’t touched his. I understand the rebellion.

‘What is it, if you don’t mind me asking, that you object to? Alice is being paid for her work. This commission will earn herfar more money than a summer job washing dishes or whatever else you had in mind.’

‘I object,’ the word imbued with hostility, viciousness, the way only my father can, ‘to all of it. Our daughter is nineteen. We don’t want her spending a summer with your lot, picking up all your habits. Drugs, free love, whatever else it is you’re into.’

‘It’s not up to you,’ I say, pushing my plate away and standing up.

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