Angelina was nervous about introducing me to her family, and for once I felt older than her, not least because her younger sister and brother were also living at home.
Apparently, Richard had been an admired member of the clan. Angelina had told her parents nothing substantial about me and didn’t want me to be smartarse or sarcastic or make jokes about being a real architect. Or about politics. Stay right away from politics. Best not to make jokes at all. But otherwise I should just relax and be myself. As long as I didn’t …
And so it went on the drive to Kew, where I had dropped her off after our date at the Mock Tudor.
I knew her family history, as Angelina knew mine. No skeletons of note, beyond the younger sister, Jacinta, being “troubled,” which in the Brown family could mean not studying law.
Angelina’s father, Tony, met us at the car, and I warmed to him immediately. He was a big, bluff, balding guy, not at all what my mind had conjured up from Angelina’s description. A Family Court judge, but very much the antipodean version, in tailored shorts and white knee socks.
“We saw you on the box last night,” he said to Angelina. “Those singing lessons weren’t such a waste after all, eh? Your mother and I have been getting calls all morning.”
Mother was a different story. Tall, thin, a passing resemblance to Princess Margaret, and introduced by Tony as “Angelina’s mother.” She did not invite me to call her anything else.
Nor did she waste time getting to the point. “How’s Richard?”
“He’s gone to Sydney, to see his parents,” Angelina said.
“You told me you were staying with him. Where have you been?”
Mrs. Brown’s glance at me suggested she had jumped to the right conclusion.
“I told you I was staying at the house. To water the plants and feed the cat.”
“You should have gone with him.”
“Mum? We’re not together.”
“People should be able to put aside their differences at Christmas. I honestly can’t—”
“Mum. Remember? Carols by Candlelight.”
“Did you really have to be there? There must have been twenty of you. I’m sure if you’d told them you needed to be with your husband…”
We had ten minutes or so more of Richard—his family, his bar exams, his need for a supportive wife—before Mrs. Brown returned to Carols by Candlelight.
“Did you have to sing that awful song? So many beautiful Christmas carols and they have to sing pop music, I don’t know why—”
“I think it’s one of Richard’s favorites,” I said, deadpan.
Angelina’s expression said Careful, but Mrs. Brown turned her attention to the turkey with a parting “You need to put a cardigan on over that frock.”
* * *
Dinner itself was a strange experience, and not just because of the roast turkey and plum pudding at the height of summer. My presence threw an extra factor into the family mix. I was officially the visitor from England, the traveler separated from his family. The absence of Angelina’s recently-ex-husband and the lack of any credible reason for her to know me undermined that innocent explanation. Grandma, Mrs. Brown’s mother, didn’t bother trying to make sense of it and called me Richard.
There was no beer or wine. I am not much of a lunchtime drinker, but this was one occasion where a pint would have been welcome. Jacinta, whom I recalled was an apprentice hairdresser, poured me a glass of lemonade and passed it down the table. I sipped it and was rewarded with the unmistakable warmth of alcohol.
Angelina’s older sister, Meredith, “worked in policy” and was occupied with a baby. She had her mother’s looks and already something of her personality. Her husband was a dork of the first order, right down to the heavy-framed glasses and surreptitious glances at Angelina, who had not put on a cardigan. His surname, White, tied neatly to his profession as a dentist, so much so that I cannot recall his first name.
The brother, Edwin, between Angelina and Jacinta in age, had deferred legal studies to pursue his cricketing ambitions. He seemed uninterested in discussing anything else, so I suppose he deserved credit for focus. He made a few jokes about the English team, but fewer than my workmates had. Allan Border’s Australians had recently given England a drubbing at home, after being the underdogs. Possibly Edwin was just being tactful. If he was, he had not got it from his mother.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked me.
“No, I think I put my parents off the idea.”
“That’s a shame. Children without brothers and sisters turn out so selfish.”
“Mum!” said Angelina.
“Moom? My godfather, you’re picking up that accent. It’s sounding like Coronation Street.” She turned back to me. “But you don’t need four, either. We’re not Catholic. Two would have been plenty, but Tony wanted a boy, and then Jacinta was an accident. Before you know it, you’ve got four.”
She surveyed the table. The accident, who had been popping up and down from the table to her mother’s undisguised irritation, walked behind me and performed a sleight of hand to replace my empty glass with a full one. I liked her a lot.
Mrs. Brown had not finished. “Four children. One more and we’d have needed a van. We could have used one on the night—”
“Mum! No. Everyone’s heard the story.” This was Jacinta.
“I’m sure they haven’t. Alan certainly hasn’t.”
“Adam,” said Angelina.
“I haven’t heard it,” said the dentist.
I was happy to hear the story, especially if Angelina was a part of it. I did not expect Mrs. Brown would hold back on the details out of respect to anyone’s sensitivities.
“Meredith was doing her moot—”
“Mock court,” said Tony, presumably for the benefit of visitors unfamiliar with longstanding English tradition but also clarifying that Meredith had studied law. In case there had been any doubt.
“We know what a moot is, dear. On the same night as Edwin’s speech night. And Angelina was in the school play at MLC.”
“My school. Methodist Ladies’ College,” said Angelina. “I was the understudy for the lead. It was the one night I was down to do it myself.”
Mrs. Brown laughed. “I always forget that bit and Angelina always reminds me. Anyway…”
I lost track of who needed to be where and when, but essentially Tony and Mrs. Brown had divided the duties. They had left thirteen-year-old Jacinta at home, not alone as it transpired because she had invited a few friends around—for drinks. There followed a farce of phone calls from concerned parents, detours, and an outbreak of alcohol-induced vomiting in the car. Angelina found her own way to the school play, and somehow her parents managed to catch the critical moments of the moot and the speech night. All good, then.
Dr. White saved me from asking.
“What about the play?”
“Oh, I should have mentioned that. That worked out, too. It was on all week, and we went the following night.”
“But Angelina wasn’t in it?”
“Oh yes, she was, just not in the lead role. We saw the proper lead, and she was just marvelous, wasn’t she, Tony? Only a fourth former, just a little girl, but couldn’t she act? If we’d gone on the other night we wouldn’t have seen her.”
I was watching Tony, and Tony was watching Angelina. He knew exactly what was going on but didn’t say anything.
* * *
As Angelina helped clear the table, Jacinta, who had disappeared during the telling of the saga, gave me a tour of the backyard, with its cricket stumps painted on the side of the garage and stash of cannabis in the bike shed.
“Your mum and dad don’t drink?” I said.
“It’s Grandma. She’s a Methodist. Mum drinks a bit. Dad drinks a lot.”
That made sense.
She passed me the joint. “What’s the deal with you and Angie?”
I took a considered toke. “We’re good friends.”
“She’s high maintenance,” said Jacinta. “I mean, she shouldn’t have married Richard, he’s a dick, but did she tell you she won’t cook or wash the dishes? And now she’s cheating on him, right?”
“They’ve split up.”
“Having time out while Angie grows up, according to Mum. Don’t get me wrong: she’s my sister. My favorite sister. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s not the sort of family where you want to be a black sheep. If you come back and get together with Angie, you have to let me stay any time I want.”
She took a final long drag on the joint and stubbed it out on the brickwork. “Don’t worry—I’m on your side.”
We went back into the house and unwrapped presents. A flannel nightie for Angelina and a parcel to take to Richard.
Then Mrs. Brown started on politics. The public had seen through Mr. Hawke’s socialist nonsense and the next election would sweep a new wave of young Liberals—which, in British terms, meant conservatives—into office. Had Richard thought of standing? The mention of Richard must have reminded her of me.
“What do you think of our prime minister, Alan?”
Angelina corrected her for the third time. “Adam, Mum.”
I gave her the answer I would give a taxi driver: “I’ve only been here six months, so I don’t know enough to comment on local politics.”
“Good policy,” said Tony.
Tony was a judge, a man of some experience in family dynamics, his own in particular. He had given me precious counsel that amounted to Do not engage with Angelina’s mother on this subject. I could blame the alcohol and the joint for ignoring it, but they merely lowered my inhibitions. It wasn’t the politics: Angelina’s mother was no more forthright than my own, and she was entitled to her opinion. The problem was her constantly putting Angelina down.
Mrs. Brown gave me the opening, as she had been doing all day. “I’ll say one thing for you English, you know what’s good for you. I don’t think anyone can say Mrs. Thatcher hasn’t been good for England.”
“Certainly not me da,” I said, and Angelina flashed me a look. I ignored it. “Bein’ dead ’n’ all.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“But when ’e were alive, ’e hated ’er. Stands to reason. With ’im being a miner.”
“Your father was a coal miner?”
“Aye. Down pit.”
“Well, with respect to your late father, I’m sure he was an honest worker, and I don’t blame him personally, but the unions—Arthur Scargill, am I right? The man’s a communist.”
“Aye. So were me da. Then ’e got the black spot on ’is lung.”
The story was spinning out of control, for the simple reason that I didn’t have an ending—or even a point—in mind when I started. My father had died from lung cancer, but cigarettes had been the culprit, not coal dust. I did my best to join the dots.
“So those what says the miners didn’t deserve a decent livin’—they never been down pit. They never seen me ol’ da coughin’ his lungs out into a dirty hanky.”
“Oh my godfather—we’ve just eaten.”
* * *
Tony walked with us to the car. It was hard to read Angelina’s body language, possibly because she wasn’t too sure how it had played out. Tony enlightened us both.
“You bastard,” he said, and burst out laughing. “Down pit. Your dad wasn’t a miner, was he?”
“He was a musician. But he wouldn’t have minded.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t. I hope you’re not driving.”
He gave Angelina a big hug, then turned back to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “You look after my girl.”
Somehow I had got away with it, even earned some credit with Tony, and no doubt Jacinta. My dad might not have minded, but my mother would have been ashamed of me.