Agnes’s mother had grown up during the war, and found the vocabulary of that harrowing period indelibly fixed in her memory.
‘Poor Tom. I wonder what he’ll do. God, it seems so unfair.’
‘Life is unfair!’ replied her mother rather shrilly. ‘We’ve always tried to protect you children from disappointment, but I’m afraid we just can’t any more. You have to find out for yourselves what it’s like. Your father and I can’t pick up the pieces whenever things go wrong, you know!’ She went to the sink and turned on a tap. ‘We’re too old.’
She began washing up a teapot. Agnes stared at her dumbfounded.
‘You’re not old,’ she said. ‘And besides, no one’s asking you to pick up the pieces.’ She thought of adding ‘don’t be so melodramatic’ for old times’ sake, but decided against it.
‘Aren’t they?’ sighed her mother. She dried the teapot with a towel which Agnes recognised as one she used to take to the swimming-pool. ‘Well, I don’t know, in that case. I really don’t,’ she insisted. ‘First Tom calls up in a state. Then you arrive on our doorstep looking like death warmed up with heaven knows what problems. What are we expected to do? It’s hard to — to readjust to all this.’
Agnes found this speech rather wounding. While in moments of happiness and high confidence she would not have minded in the least her mother’s retirement from parental services, and indeed would probably have actively encouraged her liberation, her current state of despondency cast a somewhat different light on things. She did not want to hear that her primal protector had been replaced by someone offering tea and limited sympathy. It was not a fair exchange.
‘Well, what did you expect?’ she said crossly. ‘Did you think we’d both be safely ensconced in nice country houses by now having babies?’
‘I was,’ her mother replied; somewhat cruelly, Agnes thought.
‘Well, I’m sorry we can’t all be like you, then. The fact is, we can’t just stop being your children.’ Such logic, if nothing else, was certainly a throw-back to the old days. ‘You’d hate it if we didn’t run to you with all our problems, Mother,’ she continued with a semblance of maturity. ‘You know you would.’
Her mother smiled wanly and sat down at the table.
‘Yes, you’re probably right. But I must say, it makes a pleasant change to have the temper tantrums oneself occasionally.’
‘That was nothing,’ Agnes returned. ‘You missed out the bit about not asking to be born.’
She grinned edgily. The times when she had sought exemption, immunity — perhaps even grace! — with such claims to innocence were still too fresh in her memory to regard with more than passing irony.
They had to collect Tom from the local station because his company car had been rescinded. Such seizures made Agnes fearful of the brutal arena of office politics. As they swung round the corner to find Tom sitting forlornly on his suitcase in the deserted forecourt, Agnes saw in his destitution evidence of a cruelty she had long suspected lurked behind the civilised façade of corporate life. He had ceased to please them, and they had ejected him from their circle without a thought to loyalty or love. One had to watch one’s back these days, she reminded herself. There were a lot of funny people about.
The car stopped and positions were shifted by silent consensus. Agnes’s father vacated the driver’s seat and removed to the back, where Agnes soon joined him from her earlier place in the front passenger seat, now occupied by her mother. Tom, afforded the rare opportunity to assert himself unchallenged in the family hierarchy behind the driving wheel, now however chose this moment to demur.
‘Come on, Dad,’ he said. ‘You can’t sit in the back seat like someone’s old granny. You drive.’
‘Not at all,’ declined their father politely. ‘I’m quite happy being chauffeured about. I’ve got Agnes here to keep me company. You sit up there with your mother.’
‘Oh, all right,’ grumbled Tom, getting in. ‘But I hope you realise this is playing havoc with my masculine role-models.’
Agnes was becoming increasingly aware that her father was happy to take the back seat not just in the most literal of senses. She looked at him as the car pulled out on to the road, and saw in the harsh daylight that his hair had now turned completely white.
‘Dad, you’re so old!’ she almost said; but managed ‘I’m so cold!’ instead.
‘No stamina,’ he replied, fumbling about behind him for a rug. ‘There, that should fix it.’
He had, she saw, long since substituted kindness for authority. Leaning against him with the gentle pull of the car, her mother’s grey head bobbing serenely in front of her, Agnes saw in the cycles of all their ageing new evidence of compatibility. They too, she realised, had once been children. They didn’t ask to be born either.
‘Shall we have a fire?’ said Agnes’s mother when they got home. The wind had grown fiercer overnight and was whining beneath the door jambs and round the window-panes.
‘Good idea,’ said her father. ‘I’ll chop some wood.’ He waited hopefully for someone to relieve him of the burden of his offer. ‘Unless Tom feels like hefting an axe,’ he added, when no one did.
‘Do I have to?’ said Tom, whose masculine role-models were evidently once more intact.
Agnes offered to assist him, and the two of them made their way out to the old shed where their father had used to breed rabbits. Their community had long since become extinct, and the ruins of old hutches were stacked against one wall to make room for the woodpile, which, Agnes’s father had found, required less upkeep and could be consumed without undue sentiment.
The shed smelt mouldy and dank. It was a country smell, strong and not altogether unpleasant. It summoned equally strong memories. She could not recall having smelt anything so pungent in her years away from home. The odour gave her a strange sense of those years being effortlessly wiped away. The life she had left behind only yesterday seemed already indistinct.
‘This won’t be enough,’ said Tom, examining the small pieces he had gathered from the floor of the shed and thrown into the large basket they had brought with them.
He picked up an axe and began chopping more wood. The pieces cleaved cleanly from the gnarled blocks, as if they had always had within them the seeds of separateness. A fresh smell of pencil shavings wafted through the shed.
‘Can I have a go?’ said Agnes.
‘Okay.’ Tom looked at her doubtfully. ‘Be careful, though. You could cut yourself. It’s sharp.’
Agnes reined in a remark concerning the contrasting bluntness of his views on gender stereotypes.
‘Put your hands lower down,’ said Tom, observing her critically. ‘No, not like that. You have to bring it down harder. Put your foot on it, woman. That way it doesn’t roll.’
She hefted the axe and brought it down on the block of wood. It split into two with a sharp crack.
‘Bull’s-eye!’ she said gleefully.
‘Now cut those into two. They’re too big.’
‘They are not! Leave them alone. They’re perfect.’
‘They’re too bloody big.’ Tom sat down on the woodpile. ‘Go on, let’s see you do it again.’
‘Okay.’ Agnes raised the axe above her head. ‘Watch this.’
The block of wood toppled over on impact and was sent spinning away to the other side of the shed. Tom began clapping sarcastically.
‘Shut up!’ Agnes went to retrieve it. ‘I was just practising.’
Her next blow was more successful. She threw the logs in the basket and picked up another block. She had begun to work up quite a sweat.
‘Let’s have a go,’ said Tom.
‘No.’ Agnes wielded the axe. ‘I’m enjoying myself. Besides, I’m armed and dangerous.’