My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter for us, that never varied.
CHARLES DICKENS, Great Expectations
We turned nine, eleven, thirteen and fifteen, and more than anything wanted our own lives. Boredom might drive us together for a game of Monopoly or table-tennis but we only really met when slumped in front of the television or around the kitchen table over the evening meal. This was when we talked. Our friends were always welcome and somehow my mother fed everyone but while I was proud of this, I made anxious speeches and issued warnings:
Don’t sit there, that’s my little brother’s chair and only he knows how to … Oh! Let me help you up. Sorry, it’s just that it’s held together by this string here. No, don’t worry, you haven’t broken it. It fell apart ages ago but he was so attached to it that when Mum got the new ones, she let him keep it. Are you alright? Why don’t you sit here. Oh. I’ll just move those plates. They’re from yesterday. I didn’t wash up, you see. We won’t, or at least Mum says we won’t and she’s given up trying so we’re each supposed to do our own, only we forget and so she leaves them on our chairs. She’s just being … logical.
During a meal, everyone talked and persisted whether or not anyone responded, so that it seemed as if each of us were singing to ourselves:
There’s a fascinating article in the British Medical Journal about the tapeworm …
Did you see what Tracey was wearing today?
This is ever so nice, Mrs Greenlaw. What’s it called?
What is that disgusting notepad doing by the phone?
I told you, Mum. I’m, like, a vegetarian.
And she’s got, you know, child-bearing hips.
Now, the tapeworm, as you may know …
But you, like, shoot things.
Boiled wheat and ratatouille.
It’s advertising thrush. It’s disgusting.
Do you think I could get away with it?
What’s thrush?
I need a lift into town.
I shoot pests.
It’s just the stationery your father gets sent by pharmaceutical companies.
It’s a yeast infection.
They’re still animals.
Mum, why are there weeds in the salad?
I would describe it as the result of an imbalance of vaginal flora.
Do you want me waiting alone in the dark for two hours?
You can’t be vegetarian if you pour gravy all over your potatoes.
What about my hips though?
They’re dandelions from the lawn.
I could be abducted.
Don’t be silly, we mustn’t waste paper.
What’s vaginal?
The French eat them in salad.
I’d eat meat if I killed it myself.
Mum! What’s green and has got six legs and if it falls out of a tree kills you?
Should we tell her it doesn’t suit her? I mean, it would just be being kind.
They call it Piss-en-lit which means -
Did you kill this ratatouille yourself then?
I’ve missed the bus now anyway.
‘Wet the bed’. It’s actually a diuretic.
I don’t know, darling. Hasn’t it got something to do with a banana?