Behind the Scenes at the Museum: A Novel
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About this ebook
A deeply moving family story of happiness and heartbreak, Behind the Scenes at the Museum is bestselling author Kate Atkinson's award-winning literary debut.
National Bestseller
Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year
Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets. Kate Atkinson's first novel is "a multigenerational tale of a spectacularly dysfunctional Yorkshire family and one of the funniest works of fiction to come out of Britain in years" (The New York Times Book Review).
Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Life After Life, Human Croquet, Case Histories, One Good Turn, the short-story collection, Not the End of the World, and the Jackson Brodie crime series, which was adapted into the BBC TV show Case Histories. She lives in Edinburgh, UK.
Read more from Kate Atkinson
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Reviews for Behind the Scenes at the Museum
1,445 ratings78 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Abandoned about 75 pages in. Written well enough but just not enough happening to propel me along. May pick it back up another time.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A marvelous book.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5So-so......
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atkinson is a writer who keeps the reader in good hands. I liked the structure (Ruby's life unfolds with "footnotes" that cover her family's history), though it was sometimes confusing. A meditation about families, how everyone and everything is connected in ways we don't even think about.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I loved it! I have yet to be disappointed by Atkinson. It was really interesting to see how choices and circumstances affect people (and their offspring) down the line.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Museum is missleading. tatterd familysaga.someties hard to follow the who is who.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Darky humourous look at four generations of late 19C - mid 20C Yorkshire women with decidedly mixed feelings (honest ones) about their children; epiphanies re 'leading the wrong life' resonate throughout. Better 2nd time around when one can concentrate on the story, words and imagery rather than only plot.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The story of multiple generations of women in England.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A compulsive read, which is rare. I enjoyed the narrative alternating between Ruby Lennox, who was a spectacular narrator (almost all the way) throughout, and the story of Ruby's family. Atkinson uses a technique where she flashes forward and sometimes backward as introduces characters into books that I've always enjoyed - perfect for a reader who hates foreshadowing. My only quibble was her wrapping everything up in the end and Ruby the adult wasn't as interesting a narrator as Ruby the child. On one hand it was nice to find out certain things, on the other hand I really didn't need to know. Still, one of my best reads of the year and I suspect it will keep that status.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not my favorite among the Kate Atkinson novels I've read, but still very enjoyable; it's easy to see in this the seeds of some of her later stories, too.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kate Atkinson won the 1995 Whitbread (Costa) Book of the Year Award for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, before going on to write six more books, so far, including the popular Jackson Brodie mystery series.In Museum, the precocious narrator Ruby Lenox takes us behind the scenes of the museum of her family history, starting with the very moment of her conception. Interleaved between the chapters of Ruby’s biography are lengthy “footnotes” that provide the story of earlier generations, back to Ruby’s great-grandmother.This is a book about parents, children, sisters, love, marriage, infidelity, war, death, pets and the general hodgepodge of family life. Ruby is a beguilingly effervescent narrator, finding humor in the darkest cubbyholes of her family’s past and, eventually, finding her own place in the family gallery.Also posted on Rose City Reader.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ruby Lennox begins narrating this novel in utero. It's 1951 and she is the third child born to a dysfunctional family headed by Bunty and George. Ruby's mother Bunty is third in a line of women unhappily married and dissatisfied with their station in life. Ruby's narrative is wry and funny, whether she is talking about her siblings, the war, or even deaths in the family. Each chapter describes events in Ruby's life, and is followed by a "footnote" (actually chapters in their own right), documenting some piece of family history. Ruby takes us back 100 years to her great-grandmother Alice, who has recently had a series of family photographs taken by an itinerant photographer. Alice dies suddenly, leaving her husband and several young children (including Ruby's grandmother, Nell). Little by little we learn Ruby's family history and get to know a mixed bag of aunts, uncles, and cousins.This book is a brilliant interweaving of past and present. I loved the "herstory," with events unfolding through a matriarchal line. I enjoyed Ruby's cocksure narration, even when she turned out to be incredibly unreliable, because the reason for it made perfect sense (I can't say more without spoilers). And Atkinson is very funny. My favorite scene was her description of a wedding that occurred during the legendary 1966 FIFA World Cup Final. Here the behavior of a drunken wedding guest is juxtaposed with television commentary of the match:Everything seems to go into slow motion as Ted pitches and reels, his arms flailing like windmills, in a desperate attempt to regain his balance and avoid the irresistible, inevitable accident which we can see hanging before our eyes. The tiny bridal couple on top of the cake sway and totter as if they were sitting on top of a volcano. Some people are on the pitch -- they think it's all over-- Ted moans as his feet go under him and in one dreadful slapstick movement he falls, face first, into the wedding cake. It is now! (p. 260)Yet despite the humor, it's clear all is not right in the Lennox family. The pieces just don't all fit together; that is, until a significant event is revealed that sheds new light on everything that came before. The drama and emotion escalate as Ruby sorts through her family's history and tries to heal wounds to lead a normal adult life. This was Kate Atkinson's debut novel, and is highly recommended.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Having read and loved Atkinson's three mysteries, I'd put off reading any of her "literary fiction," mostly because the term "literary fiction" really bothers me because it basically just means "not genre." Anyway, everything I loved about Atkinson's mysteries was here as well: amazing characterization, interesting metaphors, perfect pacing and multiple narrators and storylines that all work together.
Ruby Lennox starts narrating her life at the moment of her conception, and each chapter in the book is a snapshot of one event that happened in each year of her life. Each chapter is followed by a footnote that relates to the chapter but examines the history of Ruby's family. As time passes, she (and you!) learn more about the secrets of the Lennox family. There eventually is a revelation that is a little bit unbelievable, but overall it didn't really distract from the excellence of this novel. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is one of those marmite books that people seem to either love or hate. As you can see, from my 5 star rating, I loved it!
But, I wasn't always sure that I would. I read it for my book group and the description wasn't promising. It seemed to be about a bunch of Yorkshire women blaming their husbands for all their wrong choices in life. I think I married one of those, so you can see why I was a little wary :)
But Kate Atkinson writes with a light and amusng style and the fact that the main story is viewed through the eyes of a child makes it entertaining and accessible. Much of it is very much a kitchen-sink drama, with drudgery, family tragedies and infidelities throughout - which is entirely in keeping with the 1950s / 60s setting. But think Adrian Mole rather than Harold Pinter.
Those who didn't like it pointed to the large number of background characters, that can be difficult to keep track of and are often met out of sequence. It is very much like somebody narrating their family history and talking about people that they know well, but you have never met.
The structure is also quirky. The main story of Ruby's childhood is fairly straightforward and dealt with in sequence (but there is an early mystery that you sense she is blanking out - although the hints are there throughout). But each chapter has a 'footnote', which is frequently longer than the chapter itself, that deals with some aspect of Ruby's recent ancestry. The best way to deal with it is to view it as a novel and a series of vignettes / short stories running in parallel.
One of my fellow book-clubbers also wrote out Ruby's family tree as she read the book to help keep track of everybody (wish I'd thought of that).
Who would enjoy this book? Anybody who likes a quirky style, those who can handle multiple characters; and those who like to be kept guessing, because some things are hinted at, but not revealed until right near the very end.
Incidentally, no museums in this book. The reference is to the Castle Museum in York, which has artifacts from a variety of periods and specialises in common social history. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Set mostly in York, England, this is a multigenerational family saga in which protagonist Ruby Lennox narrates the story of her life from conception in 1951 into adulthood. She of her distant mother, two siblings, grandmother, and great grandmother. Ruby inserts what she calls “footnotes” to provide the necessary background and historic context. It is character-driven. It covers family secrets and tragedies. The writing is solid. My main issue with it is that it is not particularly engaging. I was not enthralled with the idea of a narrator that was self-aware at conception, especially in a book that is realistic in all other ways. It really drags in places, and I was tempted to set it aside. I liked it but didn’t love it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kate Atkinson writing about family history, with a Yorkshire setting - the perfect novel! Reading on my Kindle, I didn't feel the heft of this epic undertaking until I finished, which says a lot about the skill of the author. Instead, Ruby's story, and the history of her family for three generations, complete with 'footnotes', swept me up and carried me along for a week of boring bus journeys.The 'home' setting might have won me over but I really felt like I recognised these characters, from wry narrator Ruby, who is hiding one of the biggest 'twists in the tale', to battle-axe Bunty in the pet shop, and sisters Lilian and Nell during the First World War, growing up with a fearsome stepmother in place of the ethereal Alice, who vanished in the night after having her photograph taken by a Frenchman. I loved the storytelling too, with Ruby's sharp observations and appreciation of history undercutting tragedy after tragedy. Brothers and sons go to war and never return, children are lost in youth, generations fade into sepia photographs and are replaced by new lives, but 'history is what you take with you'. The humour, mostly dark but occasionally farcical, is also spot on. The flip-flopping through time kept me reading, whereas a straight 'aga saga' starting with Alice and ending with Ruby's own children would have been very dry. Instead I was treated to lots of satisfying 'aha!' moments in the footnotes chapters.Wonderful escapism, full of history, humour and heartache.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book takes awhile to get going but some of the later portions are laughing to tears hysterical, e.g., the wedding scene. Picked this up before realizing it's not part of the later mystery series but it was worth the listen.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kate Atkinson's first novel
Ruby Lennox first speaks to us at the moment of her conception, and from then on, she is a funny, irreverent and heartbreaking narrator. Atkinson plays with time, as she goes back to explore the stories of the generations which lead to Ruby, and her terrible, damaged and damaging family. Extraordinarily good. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I rarely give books 5 stars. Although I note this is the second time in a fortnight! But I enjoyed this book so much, and mainly because of its dry wit. The story is many-layered, occasionally confusing (and sometimes intentionally so), often quite sad or confronting, but invariably funny. There is the odd belly-laugh, but most of it just wry and smile-worthy. This is Atkinson's debut novel and worthy of commendation in that category. Its debut-ness is hinted at by the many short stories it contains, yet all these are episodes in a grander plot that has its twists, turns and satisfying resolutions. I think I've found a new favourite.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I really did enjoy this book, Kate Atkinson writes with such wit and humour but underneath are some heartbreaking goings on, with really important messages.Ruby is aware at conception, and already realizes that things are going to be rough, but doesn't know quite how rough! Some pretty dreadful things happen within the family, but life just keeps on running along.Wonderful writing that will have you doubled up laughing one minute, but tearful the next. Fantastic book, and I shall be reading more from Kate Atkinson I can assure you!
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson I hated this book, well that may be a bit strong, but I certainly never liked it one bit.
What's with the footnotes as big as chapters? and the disjointed flow that it brings to it?
Was it a gimmick of some kind? Because it was certainly a distraction. Whilst it may have appeared to have a beginning, middle and end it certainly lacked direction and purpose.
At times I thought the author was just using it as framework to weave even more dysfunctionality than what she had already smeared across every page.Dreary, dreary dreary. Bah - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A wonderful story, I loved it from start to finish.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5"The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby," she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. "Nonsense, Patricia," I tell her as I climb on board my train. "The past's what you take with you." Page 331 Ruby Lennox is our intrepid narrator, weaving a tale that begins with her conception and all the subsequent years in between. Atkinson takes us through the stories of Ruby's family, generations of people, countless names, faces, and experiences. Secrets are revealed, memories are recovered, and at the core of it all is the relationships between people, the bonds that are broken and restored and the reality that life so exquisitely ordinary can also be painfully beautiful. I can definitely see the hype that comes with Atkinson's books because she is one heck of a storyteller. The problem is with my ability to connect with plethora of characters in the Behind the Scenes at the Museum. There is a lot of them and there is a lot of jumping around with different times and different lives so that each time I would have to reorient myself and mentally picture which part of the family tree I've landed on. Despite all that, there were definitely moments where I marvelled at how she was able to write about rather mundane everyday living and still make it readable and enjoyable. If nothing else, it has perked my interest to read her other books for comparison to see if perhaps there I will find more connection with her characters and the stories they have to share.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm very fond of Kate Atkinson, she is a splendid storyteller. Moving back and forth in time from one generation to another, the story gives us four generations in all, both World Wars and a great deal of happiness and sorrow.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A highly original, tragicomic family story spanning a century of misadventure and misfortune. Ruby, the primary narrator, has a sharp eye and a sharper wit. She does not suffer fools gladly and her family is rife with them. I enjoyed this book tremendously, start to finish, and only felt, as others did, that it lost a bit of momentum near the end. Not a lot, just a bit. Looking forward to more from this author.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It took me a long time to warm up to this story but I did eventually like it. A small quibble with the narration, which had pauses at places that didn't seem to be related to the content...
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A wonderful interweaving of several generations of the one family. The things that affect each of them. The portrayal of individuals from vibrant children to old doddery folk. The random things that survive in memory and as mementoes. The unexpectedness of life (and death). Essentially it is Ruby's story, a child in a post-war pet shop, but it is also her mother's siblings and her grandmother's story.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We live in a place called 'Above the Shop' which is not a strictly accurate description as both the kitchen and dining-room are on the same level as the Shop itself and the topography also includes the satellite area of the Back Yard. The Shop (a pet shop) is in one of the ancient streets that cower beneath the looming dominance of York Minster. In this street lived the first printers and the stained-glass craftsmen that filled the windows of the city with coloured light. The Ninth Legion Hispana that conquered the north marched up and down our street, the via praetoria of their great fort, before they disappeared into thin air. Guy Fawkes was born here, Dick Turpin was hung a few streets away and Robinson Crusoe, that other great hero, is also a native son of this city. Who is to say which of these is real and which a fiction?Ruby Lennox narrates her life story beginning with her conception in 1951. Each chapter provides a window to another year in Ruby's life. Ruby defines herself in relationship to her mother, her older sisters, her father, and her extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Each chapter concludes with a footnote that anchors Ruby to her family's past in the stories of her grandmother Nell's and her mother Bunty's youths.Up to now, my only experience with Kate Atkinson has been the Jackson Brodie novels. I liked Case Histories and loved the rest. I picked up her first novel with some trepidation. Would it live up to the Jackson Brodie novels? I'm happy to say that it exceeded my high expectations. Atkinson strikes a perfect balance between strong characters, vivid settings, and narrative pace in a distinctive voice. As she does in the Jackson Brodie novels, Atkinson follows chains of small events that propel characters toward major events that will change the course of her characters' lives. Atkinson is well on her way to becoming my favorite currently active author.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Behind the Scenes at the Museum is a very short book which I listened to on cd. Ruby, a young girl whose story is woven in and out of the novel from her conception through adulthood, though not in a sequential manner, is sad and somewhat hard to follow. The setting begins in Britan, in a a flat in York where the family lives and Ruby is conceived. The time begins around World War I and the interplay between Ruby, whose own lack of self worth, lack of love from her mother and her meandering father George all are cemented in sadness in the strained relationship with her sisters. The storyline in the book is depressing as it tries to give an inside look of what it would be like love a poor, uneducated and disfunctional family in Britan during the this time. It does not provide any sense of relief for the family caught in a stagnent world of depression, blame and weakness. Moving from the past to the present and spaning the time between both World War I and World War II, Ruby’s memories and thoughts leave the reader with a sense of emotional loss. This is not a book that I would recommend except for those who want a glimpse of one family’s history during this time in 19th century England. I would rate it 3 stars.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5After loving Life After Life, I decided to go back to Atkinson's backlist and read her debut novel. With the story of Ruby Lennox, I immediately saw similarities to Ursula Todd and as a storyteller Atkinson has only improved. Of course, she had a pretty strong start with this one.While there were a few things with this one that didn't seem to work, overall it's a wonderfully weaving story of several generations of Ruby's family -- Alice, her great grandmother, Nell, her grandmother, and Bunty, her mom -- and we see over and over how history manages to repeat itself despite all the different paths taken.Spoiler: The one thing that threw me was that Ruby apparently had a twin, Pearl, but we don't know about it until MUCH LATER. Which doesn't make a lot of sense because Ruby starts narrating at the point of conception.... So that kind of distracted me from the story. I think the story could have survived without that piece, but it also didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of the novel.
Book preview
Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson
Introduction to the
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition of
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
First, The Title. I Had A Dream In The Early Stages Of Writing The book—long before any publisher or agent was interested and when it was still a small handful of random chapters—and in the dream I was in the Castle Museum in York, on my own, in the middle of the night. Although it was dark and frightening, I was compelled to investigate (as we are in dreams) and, as I moved from room to room in the museum, objects sprang to life—a fire suddenly flared in a hearth, an automaton began to move.
When I woke up, I immediately thought, That dream was called ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum.’
My second thought was more revelatory: Of course, that’s what the novel should be called.
I rarely remember dreams, let alone give them titles, but I presume that my unconscious self (not usually so lucid or so obviously helpful) was engaged at some deep level in the writing process,
as we glibly call it—as if sentences roll out smoothly on a factory production line rather than being manually wrought in a hellishly tedious part of the brain.
Looking at Behind the Scenes now, I can see that York, not Ruby, is the all-pervading main character of this book. The novel is a hymn to my relationship with the city, constructed out of history, memory, and nostalgia.
I doubt it was incidental that the Castle Museum provided the backdrop for this dream. I visited it regularly from an early age, walking with my father from our shop, which, like the Lennoxes’ shop that rose from the ashes of the Great Pet Shop Fire, sold medical and surgical supplies and was located in Stonegate. Stonegate was the old Roman via praetoria, which stretched all the way from the river to the headquarters of the Ninth Legion, now buried beneath the Minster. That walk took us through ancient streets so freighted with history that they can barely carry the burden. My father knew every shortcut there was, and those secret snickets and alleyways are an old and familiar groove in my brain.
The museum was a place of miracles and wonders for me, where the rooms and streets of the past were brought to life in a way that was—and still is—thrilling. My imagination was undoubtedly nurtured by those visits—in fact, I am sure that they helped to build the foundations of my becoming a writer. Another foundation, of course, was being an early and avid reader. Like Ruby, the first book that I read by myself, when I was barely four, was the Ladybird book Puppies and Kittens.
The Castle Museum is located in two former prisons, the debtors’ and the women’s, and was founded by Dr. John Kirk, a North Yorkshire country doctor who collected everyday objects to keep them safe for future generations, which is something that Behind the Scenes also does.
If you were to ask me what the book is about (which is the most loathsome question you could ask—why bother to write the thing if you then have to explain it? It is what it is) and if I were forced to answer, I would say, It’s about things.
The book is a repository for the past: for mine, for other people’s, for the city’s, a place of safekeeping for the fragile. (The Lost Property Cupboard of the book is a deeply held belief of mine. Everything will be returned at the end.) The book saves things that might otherwise be lost, it gives them a value, just as the footnotes of the book—a rabbit’s foot, a glass button—represent so much more than they appear to.
I did an event a few years ago at a different museum, to which I brought in objects relevant to the coronation chapter of the novel— a photograph of me aged two with the television set on which my family watched the coronation, my coronation mug and coins, and so on. It seemed appropriate for a reading in a museum. It was very enjoyable, although a little like reminiscence therapy for everyone concerned. Thank you so much,
a woman in Canada said to me years ago, for remembering the red plastic tulip given away with Daz.
Not just the red plastic tulip, but also my Queen Anne Grammar School uniform list from 1963; my grandfather’s death (hit by a stray bomb in 1942 after surviving the Great War unscathed); every book I have ever read; my intense, Winnicottian love for my Teddy; my only-child sense of isolation—they (and so much more) are all in there. I am not Ruby Lennox, but she is me. Her story isn’t mine, but the book is, in its own way, my own museum.
The beginning of the book is a nod to Tristram Shandy. Sterne wrote the novel in York, the first copies were sold in Stonegate. And here I am, Shandy-wise, more or less back where I started, having never really gone anywhere in this essay. And, of course, Behind the Scenes is not about York, or things, or museums—like Tristram Shandy, like all literature, it’s about the journey of the self toward the light.
Kate Atkinson
CHAPTER ONE
1951
Conception
I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall. The clock once belonged to my great-grandmother (a woman called Alice) and its tired chime counts me into the world. I’m begun on the first stroke and finished on the last when my father rolls off my mother and is plunged into a dreamless sleep, thanks to the five pints of John Smith’s Best Bitter he has drunk in the Punch Bowl with his friends, Walter and Bernard Belling. At the moment at which I moved from nothingness into being my mother was pretending to be asleep – as she often does at such moments. My father, however, is made of stern stuff and he didn’t let that put him off.
My father’s name is George and he is a good ten years older than my mother, who is now snoring into the next pillow. My mother’s name is Berenice but everyone has always called her Bunty.
‘Bunty’ doesn’t seem like a very grown-up name to me – would I be better off with a mother with a different name? A plain Jane, a maternal Mary? Or something romantic, something that doesn’t sound quite so much like a girl’s comic – an Aurora, a Camille? Too late now. Bunty’s name will be ‘Mummy’ for a few years yet, of course, but after a while there won’t be a single maternal noun (mummy, mum, mam, ma, mama, mom, marmee) that seems appropriate and I more or less give up calling her anything. Poor Bunty.
We live in a place called ‘Above the Shop’ which is not a strictly accurate description as both the kitchen and dining-room are on the same level as the Shop itself and the topography also includes the satellite area of the Back Yard. The Shop (a pet shop) is in one of the ancient streets that cower beneath the looming dominance of York Minster. In this street lived the first printers and the stained-glass craftsmen that filled the windows of the city with coloured light. The Ninth Legion Hispana that conquered the north marched up and down our street, the via praetoria of their great fort, before they disappeared into thin air. Guy Fawkes was born here, Dick Turpin was hung a few streets away and Robinson Crusoe, that other great hero, is also a native son of this city. Who is to say which of these is real and which a fiction?
These streets seethe with history; the building that our Shop occupies is centuries old and its walls tilt and its floors slope like a medieval funhouse. There has been a building on this spot since the Romans were here and needless to say it has its due portion of light-as-air occupants who wreathe themselves around the fixtures and fittings and linger mournfully at our backs. Our ghosts are particularly thick on the staircases, of which there are many. They have much to gossip about. You can hear them if you listen hard, the plash of water from Viking oars, the Harrogate Tally-Ho rattling over the cobblestones, the pat and shuffle of ancient feet at an Assembly Rooms’ ball and the scratch-scratch of the Reverend Sterne’s quill.
As well as being a geographical location, ‘Above the Shop’ is also a self-contained, seething kingdom with its own primitive rules and two rival contenders for the crown – George and Bunty.
The conception has left Bunty feeling irritable, an emotion with which she’s very comfortable, and only after much tossing and turning does she succumb to a restless, dream-laden sleep. Given free choice from the catalogue offered by the empire of dreams on her first night as my mother, Bunty has chosen dustbins.
In the dustbin dream, she’s struggling to move two heavy dustbins around the Back Yard. Now and then a vicious tug of wind plasters her hair across her eyes and mouth. She is growing wary of one dustbin in particular; she suspects it’s beginning to develop a personality – a personality uncannily like that of George.
Suddenly, as she heaves hard at one of the bins, she loses control of it and it falls with a crash of galvanized metal – CCRASH KERKLUNCK! – spewing its contents over the concrete surface of the yard. Debris, mostly from the Shop, is sprawled everywhere – empty sacks of Wilson’s biscuit mix, flattened packets of Trill, tins of Kit-e-Kat and Chappie that have been neatly stuffed with potato peelings and egg shells, not to mention the mysterious newspaper parcels that look as if they might contain severed babies’ limbs. Despite the mess, the dreaming Bunty experiences a flush of pleasure when she sees how tidy her rubbish looks. As she bends down and starts picking it all up she becomes aware of something moving behind her. Oh no! Without even turning round she knows that it’s the George dustbin, grown into a lumbering giant and now towering over her, about to suck her into its grimy metallic depths …
Somehow, I can’t help feeling that this dream doesn’t augur well for my future. I want a mother who dreams different dreams. Dreams of clouds like ice-cream, rainbows like sugar-crystal candy, suns like golden chariots being driven across the sky … still, never mind, it’s the beginning of a new era. It’s the 3rd of May and later on today the King will perform the opening ceremony for the Festival of Britain and outside the window, a dawn chorus is heralding my own arrival.
This garden bird fanfare is soon joined by the squawking of the Parrot down in the Pet Shop below and then – DRRRRRRRRRRRIINGG!!! The bedside alarm goes off and Bunty wakes with a little shriek, slapping down the button on the clock. She lies quite still for a minute, listening to the house. The Dome of Discovery will soon be echoing to the exultant cries of joyful English people looking forward to the future but in our home it’s silent apart from the occasional chirrup and twitter of birdsong. Even our ghosts are asleep, curled up in the corners and stretched out along the curtain rails.
The silence is broken by George suddenly snorting in his sleep. The snort arouses a primitive part of his brain and he flings out an arm, pinioning Bunty to the bed, and starts exploring whatever bit of flesh he has chanced to land on (a rather uninspiring part of midriff, but one which houses my very own, my personal, Dome of Discovery). Bunty manages to wriggle out from under George’s arm – she’s already had to endure sex once in the last twelve hours (me!) – more than once in a day would be unnatural. She heads for the bathroom where the harsh overhead light ricochets off the black-and-white tiles and the chrome fittings and hits Bunty’s morning skin in the mirror, making ghastly pools and shadows. One minute she looks like a skull, the next like her own mother. She can’t make up her mind which is worse.
She cleans her teeth with some vigour to dispatch the taste of George’s tobacco-fumed moustache and then – in order to keep up appearances (an important concept for Bunty, although she’s not exactly sure who it is that she’s keeping them up for) – she paints on a shapely ruby-red smile and grins at the mirror, her lips retracted, to check for mis-hit lipstick on her teeth. Her mirrored self grins ghoulishly back, but in Bunty’s 35mm daydreams she’s transformed into a Vivien Leigh-like figure pirouetting in front of a cheval mirror.
Now she’s ready to face her first day as my mother. Downstairs, step by creaking step she goes (in daydreamland a great curving plantation staircase – Bunty, I am discovering, spends a lot of time in the alternative world of her daydreams). She’s being very quiet because she doesn’t want anyone else to wake up yet – especially Gillian. Gillian’s very demanding. She’s my sister. She’s nearly three years old and she’s going to be very surprised when she finds out about me.
Bunty makes herself a cup of tea in the kitchen at the back of the Shop, relishing her few moments of morning solitude. In a minute, she’ll take George up a cup of tea in bed – not from altruistic motives but to keep him out of her way that bit longer. My poor mother’s very disappointed by marriage, it’s failed to change her life in any way, except by making it worse. If I listen in on her airwaves I can hear an endless monologue on the drudgery of domestic life – Why didn’t anyone tell me what it would be like? The cooking! The cleaning! The work! I wish she would stop this and start daydreaming again but on and on she goes – And as for babies, well … the broken nights, the power struggles … the labour pains! She addresses the front right burner of the cooker directly, her head wobbling from side to side, rather like the Parrot in the shop beyond. At least that’s all over with … (Surprise!)
The kettle whistles and she pours the boiling water into a little brown teapot and leans idly against the cooker while she waits for it to brew, a small frown puckering her face as she tries to remember why on earth she married George in the first place.
George and Bunty met in 1944. He wasn’t her first choice, that was Buck, an American sergeant (my grandmother had a similar struggle to get married during a war) but Buck had his foot blown off fooling around with a land mine (‘Anything for a lark, these Yanks,’ Bunty’s brother Clifford remarked with distaste) and got shipped back home to Kansas. Bunty spent some considerable time waiting for Buck to write and invite her to share his life in Kansas but she never heard from him again. So George got the woman. In the end, Bunty decided that George with two feet might be a better bet than Buck with one, but now she’s not so sure. (Buck and Bunty! What a wonderful-sounding couple they would have made – I can almost see them.)
If Buck had taken Bunty to Kansas think how different all our lives would have been! Especially mine. In 1945 George’s father died by falling under a tram on a daytrip to Leeds and George took over the family business – Pets. He married Bunty, thinking that she’d be a big help in the shop (because she’d once worked in one), unaware that Bunty had no intention of working after her marriage. This conflict will run and run.
The tea’s brewed. Bunty stirs the spoon round the insides of the little brown teapot and pours herself a cup. My first ever cup of tea. She sits down at the kitchen table and starts daydreaming again, moving beyond her disappointment over Kansas and her ham-tea wedding to George to a place where a flimsy veil moves in a summery breeze and behind the veil is Bunty dressed in gauzy white organza with an eighteen-inch waist and a different nose. The man at her side is unbelievably handsome, remarkably like Gary Cooper, while Bunty herself bears a passing resemblance to Celia Johnson. A huge cloud of orange-blossom threatens to engulf them as they clasp and kiss passionately – then suddenly, an unwelcome note of reality interrupts our reverie, somebody’s pulling at Bunty’s dressing-gown and whining in a not very pleasant fashion.
Here she is! Here’s my sister! Climbing up on Bunty, all arms and soft legs and sweet bedtime smells, crawling her way up the Eiger of Bunty’s body and pressing her sleepy face into Bunty’s chilly neck. Bunty unclenches the little fists that have fastened on to her hair, and deposits Gillian back on the floor.
‘Get down,’ Bunty says grimly. ‘Mummy’s thinking.’ (Although what Mummy’s actually doing is wondering what it would be like if her entire family was wiped out and she could start again.) Poor Gillian!
Gillian refuses to be ignored for long – she’s not that kind of child – and hardly have we had our first sip of tea before we have to attend to Gillian’s needs. For breakfast, Bunty cooks porridge, makes toast and boils eggs. George can’t stand porridge and likes bacon and sausage and fried bread but Bunty’s stomach is a little queasy this morning (I’m privy to all kinds of inside information). ‘So if he wants it he can get it himself,’ she mutters, doling out a bowlful of (rather lumpy) porridge for Gillian. Then she fills a second bowl for herself – she thinks she might manage a bit of porridge – and then a third bowl. Who can that be for? Goldilocks? Not for me surely? No, indeed not – for here’s a surprise – I have another sister! This is good news, even though she looks a little on the melancholic side. She’s already washed and dressed in her school uniform and even her hair – cut in a straight, rather unbecoming bob – is brushed. She is just five years old and her name is Patricia. Her plain little face has a somewhat dismal air as she regards the porridge in her bowl. This is because she hates porridge. Gillian is gobbling hers down like the greedy duck in her Ladybird book The Greedy Duck. ‘I don’t like porridge,’ Patricia ventures to Bunty. This is the first time she’s tried this direct approach over the porridge, usually she just turns it over and over with a spoon until it’s too late to eat it.
‘Pardon me?’ Bunty says, the words dropping like icicles on the linoleum of the kitchen floor (our mother’s not really a morning person).
‘I don’t like porridge,’ Patricia says, looking more doubtful now.
As fast as a snake, Bunty hisses back, ‘Well I don’t like children, so that’s too bad for you, isn’t it?’ She’s joking, of course. Isn’t she?
And why do I have this strange feeling, as if my shadow’s stitched to my back, almost as if there’s someone else in here with me? Am I being haunted by my own embryonic ghost?
‘Mind the shop, Bunt!’ (Bunt? This is even worse.)
And then he’s gone. Just like that! Bunty fumes to herself – He might at least ask. ‘Would you mind, Bunty, minding the shop for me.’ And of course I would mind, very much. But I’d still have to do it, wouldn’t I? ‘Mind’ – why was it called ‘minding’? What kind of a mind did you need for standing behind a shop counter?
Bunty doesn’t like the promiscuity of behind-the-counter contact. She feels that she’s not really selling dog food and kittens and the occasional budgerigar, but that she’s selling herself. At least, she thinks, when she worked for Mr Simon (‘Modelia – Ladies’ Quality Fashions’) it was sensible things they were selling, dresses and corsets and hats. What was sensible about a budgerigar? And, what’s more, having to be polite to everyone all the time wasn’t normal. (George, on the other hand, is born to it, chatting away, making the same remark about the weather twenty times in one morning, scraping and grovelling and smiling and then ripping off his mask as soon as he comes backstage. The children of shopkeepers – me and Chekhov, for example – are scarred by having witnessed their parents humiliate themselves in this distressing way.)
Bunty decides that she’s going to have to say something to George, point out that she’s a wife and mother, not a shop assistant. And another thing, where does he go all the time? He’s always ‘slipping out’, off on mysterious errands. There are going to be some changes if Bunty has her way. She sits behind the counter clicking her number nine needles as if she’s a tricoteuse at George’s guillotine when she should be knitting my future – tiny little things, lacy shawls and matinée jackets with pink ribbons threaded through them. Magic red bootees to see me on my journey. The Shop Cat – a fat, brindled tabby that spends its days squatting malevolently on the counter – jumps up on her lap and she swiftly knocks it to the floor. Sometimes Bunty feels as if the whole world is trying to climb on her body.
‘Shop!’ George returns. The budgerigars rise up and flutter in their cages.
Shop! Why ‘Shop!’? George and Bunty always say this when they come in at the Shop door – but it’s supposed to be what the customer says, not the shopkeeper. Are they addressing the shop in the vocative case (‘O Shop!’) or naming it in the nominative? Reassuring it of its existence? Reassuring themselves of its existence? Pretending to be a customer? But why pretend to be the thing you hate? ‘Shop!’ I fear, like the thing it signifies, will remain an eternal, existential mystery.
But now we are freed from our enslavement to the counter (Bunty has just sold the Shop Cat, but she doesn’t mention this to George. Poor cat.) and we can go and discover the world beyond the Shop. First we have to go through the ritual of dressing Gillian so that she’ll be able to survive in the alien atmosphere outside the Shop. Bunty doesn’t trust the month of May so Gillian has her liberty bodice securely strapped to her still cherub-new skin. Then a petticoat, a thick red woollen jersey knitted by Bunty’s never-idle fingers, followed by a Royal Stewart kilt and long white cotton socks which cut her fat little legs in half. Finally she puts on her pale powder-puff-blue coat with the white velvet collar and a little white woollen bonnet tied with ribbons that slice into her double chin. I, on the other hand, am free-floating, naked and unadorned. No mittens and bonnets for me yet, just the warm, obliging innards of Bunty’s unconscious body, which is still unaware of the precious package it’s carrying.
No-porridge Patricia has already been hurried up the road to school by George a couple of hours ago and is at this moment standing in the playground drinking her little bottle of milk and going through the four-times table in her head (she’s very keen) and wondering why no-one ever asks her to join in their skipping games. Only five and already an outcast! Three-fifths of the family are now walking along Blake Street towards Museum Gardens, or rather Bunty walks, I float and Gillian rides her brand new Triang tricycle which she has insisted on riding. Bunty feels there’s something indulgent about parks, something wasteful – holes in existence filled with nothing but air and light and birds. Surely these are spaces that should be occupied by something useful, like housework?
Housework must be done. On the other hand, children are supposed to play in parks – Bunty has read the childcare section in her Everything Within book (‘Bringing up Baby’) that says so – therefore, some reluctant time has to be given over to fresh air so she pays a precious sixpence at the gate of the Museum Gardens and guarantees that our fresh air will be exclusive.
My first day! All the trees in Museum Gardens are in new leaf and high above Bunty’s head the sky is solid blue; if she reached out her hand (which she won’t) she could touch it. Fluffy white clouds like lambs pile into each other. We are in Quattrocento heaven. Swooping, tweeting birds dance excitedly above our heads, their tiny flight muscles at full throttle – miniature angels of the Annunciation, avian Gabriels, come to shout my arrival! Alleluia!
Not that Bunty notices. She’s watching Gillian, who’s riding round every twist and turn in the path, following some magic tantra all of her own. I’m worried that Gillian might get trapped amongst the flower beds. Beyond the park railing a broad calm river can be glimpsed and ahead of us lie the pale fretworked ruins of St Mary’s Abbey. A peacock screeches and launches itself off its perch on the Bar Walls and down onto the grass at our feet. Brave new world that has such creatures in it!
Two men, who we will call Bert and Alf, are employed cutting grass in the park. At the sight of Gillian they pause in their work and, resting on their huge mower for a minute, regard her progress with unalloyed pleasure. Bert and Alf fought in the same regiment in the war, danced to the music of Al Bowlly at the same dances, chased women (women very like Bunty) together and now they’re cutting grass together. They feel there might be a certain injustice in the way their lives have turned out, but somehow the sight of Gillian reconciles them to such things. (Bonny and blithe and good and gay, for Gillian was indeed born on the Sabbath day and still had some of these qualities in 1951. Unfortunately she soon lost them.) Clean and new as a pin or an unwrapped bar of soap she represents everything they fought the war for – our Gillian, the promise of the future. (Not much of a future as it turned out, as she gets run over by a pale blue Hillman Husky in 1959 but how are any of us to know this? As a family we are genetically predisposed towards having accidents – being run over and blown up are the two most common.)
Bunty (our mother, the flower of English womanhood) is irritated by the attention of Bert and Alf. (Does she actually possess any other emotion?) Why don’t they just cut the bloody grass, she thinks, disguising her thoughts with a bright, artificial smile.
Time to go! Bunty has had enough of all this idleness and we need to go shopping in other people’s shops. She prepares for a scene with Gillian, for scene with Gillian there will surely be. She manages to extricate her from the flower beds and get her on the straight path of life, but Gillian, who does’t know she’s wasting valuable time, continues pedalling slowly, stopping to admire flowers, pick up stones, ask questions. Bunty maintains a Madonna-like expression of serenity and silence for as long as she can before her impatience suddenly boils over and she yanks the handlebars of the tricycle to hurry it along. This has the disastrous effect of tipping Gillian onto the ground, where she lands in a neat little blue-and-white heap, sucking her breath in and screaming at the same time. I am dismayed – will I have to learn how to do this?
Bunty hauls Gillian to her feet, pretending not to notice that her tender palms and knees are grazed. (Bunty’s attitude to pain, or indeed, emotion of any kind, is to behave as if it sprang from a personality disorder.) Bunty, only too well aware that we are being observed by Bert and Alf, puts on her don’t-be-a-fusspot smile and whispers in Gillian’s ear that she’ll get some sweets if she stops crying. Gillian immediately rams her fist into her mouth. Will she be a good sister? Is this a good mother?
Bunty walks from the park with her head held high, dragging Gillian with one hand and the tricycle with the other. Bert and Alf return silently to their mowing. A slight breeze ruffles the new leaves on the trees and discovers a discarded morning newspaper on a bench. A front-page photograph of the Skylon tower flutters in a beckoning way – like a city of the future, a science-fiction Oz. It’s of no great interest to me – I’m squirming around uneasily in a wash of vicious chemicals just released by Bunty as a result of the tricycle tantrum.
‘Well, now, darlin’, what can I get you?’ The butcher’s voice bellows around the shop. ‘Nice bit of red meat, eh?’ He winks salaciously at my mother, who pretends to be deaf, but everyone else in the shop titters with laughter. Walter’s customers like him, he behaves as a butcher in an Ealing comedy might behave, a bluff parody of himself in his stained blue and white apron and straw boater. He’s a Cockney and this alone represents something dangerous and unknown for those of us in the spiritual heartland of Yorkshire. In Bunty’s private animal lexicon (all men are beasts) he is a pig, with his smooth, shiny skin, stretched tightly over his buttery, plump flesh. Bunty, at the head of the queue, asks for a bit of steak and kidney in her most neutral tone of voice, but nonetheless the butcher guffaws as if she’s said something highly risqué.
‘Somefin’ to get the ol’ man goin’, eh?’ he roars. Bunty dips down to fiddle with Gillian’s shoelace so that no-one can see the embarrassment flaring in her cheeks.
‘For you, gorgeous, anyfin’,’ Walter leers at her and then suddenly, unnervingly, he draws a huge knife from somewhere and begins to sharpen it without his eyes ever leaving Bunty. She remains bobbed down next to Gillian for as long as possible, having a pretend conversation with her, smiling and nodding, as if what Gillian had to say was of extraordinary interest. (Whereas, of course, she never took any notice of anything any of us said – unless it was rude.)
The butcher begins to whistle the Toreador song from Carmen very loudly and makes a dramatic performance out of weighing a heavy, slippery kidney in his hand. ‘You should be on the stage, Walter,’ a voice from the back of the shop declares and the rest of Walter’s customers murmur in agreement. Bunty, now vertical again, has a disturbing thought – the kidney, now being tossed from one hand to the other by Walter, bears an odd resemblance to a pair of testicles. (Not that ‘testicles’ is a word she’s very familiar with, of course, she belongs to a generation of women which was not very au fait with the correct anatomical vocabulary.)
Walter slaps the kidney down on the slab and slices it, wielding his knife with astonishing dexterity. His admiring audience give a collective sigh.
If she had her way, Bunty would go to a different butcher, but Walter’s shop is near ours and not only is he therefore a fellow shopkeeper, he is also a friend of George, although little more than an acquaintance of Bunty. She likes the word ‘acquaintance’, it sounds posh and doesn’t have all the time-consuming consequences of friendship. Acquaintance or not, Walter is hard to keep at arm’s length, as Bunty has learnt to her cost on the couple of occasions he has cornered her behind the sausage-machine in the back of his shop. George and Walter do each other ‘favours’ – Walter is doing one now, in full view of the shop, performing a sleight-of-hand with the steak that will give Bunty far more than she’s due on her ration coupon. Walter also has a reputation as a ladies’ man so Bunty isn’t at all happy about George keeping company with him. George says that kind of thing’s disgusting, but Bunty suspects that he doesn’t think it’s disgusting at all. She prefers George’s other shopkeeping friend, Bernard Belling, who has a plumbing supplies business and, unlike Walter, doesn’t conduct innuendo-laced conversations in public.
Bunty takes the soft paper package of meat, avoiding Walter’s gaze and smiling stiffly instead at the inside cavity of a dead sheep behind Walter’s left shoulder. She walks out, saying nothing, but inside a silent Scarlett rages, tossing her head indignantly and swirling her skirts as she flounces out of the butcher’s shop, damning him to hell.
After Walter we go to Richardson’s the bakers, and buy a large floury-white loaf but no cakes because Bunty believes shop-bought cakes are a sign of sluttish housewifery. Then we go to Hannon’s for apples, spring cabbage and potatoes, on to Borders’ for coffee, cheese and butter which the man behind the counter takes from a tub and pats into shape. By this time I think we are all a little weary and Bunty has to nag Gillian into pedalling up Gillygate and along Clarence Street towards our final port of call. Gillian has gone a funny lobster colour and looks as if she wishes she had never asked to bring the tricycle. She has to peddle furiously to keep up with Bunty, who’s getting very annoyed (I can tell).
At last we reach Lowther Street and the squashed terraced house where Nell lives. Nell is my grandmother, Bunty’s mother, Alice’s daughter. Her entire life is defined by her relationship to other people –
Mother to: Clifford, Babs, Bunty, Betty, Ted.
Daughter to: Alice.
Step-daughter to: Rachel.
Sister to: Ada (dead), Lawrence (presumed dead), Tom, Albert (dead), Lillian (as good as dead).
Wife to: Frank (dead).
Grandmother to: Adrian, Daisy, Rose, Patricia, Gillian, Ewan, Hope, Tim and now … ME! Bunty’s stomach rumbles like thunder in my ear – it’s nearly lunch time, but she can’t face the idea of eating anything. My new grandmother gives Gillian a glass of bright orange Kia-ora and to us she gives arrowroot biscuits and Camp coffee which she boils up with sterilized milk in a pan. Bunty feels like throwing up. The smell of sawdust and rotting flesh seems to have been carried on her skin from the butcher’s shop.
‘All right, Mother?’ Bunty asks without waiting for an answer. Nell is small and sort of two-dimensional. For kith and kin, she’s not very impressive.
Bunty notices a fly crawling towards the arrowroot biscuits. Very stealthily, Bunty picks up the fly swatter that my grandmother always has handy and skilfully bats the fly out of existence. A second ago that fly was alive and well, now it’s dead. Yesterday I didn’t exist, now I do. Isn’t life amazing?
Bunty’s presence is getting on Nell’s nerves and she shifts restlessly in the depths of her armchair wondering when we’re going to go so she can listen to the wireless in peace. Bunty is experiencing a wave of nausea due to my unexpected arrival and Gillian has drunk up her Kia-ora and is taking her revenge on the world. She’s playing with her grandmother’s button box and chooses a button, a pink-glass, flower-shaped one (see Footnote (i)) and, carefully and deliberately, swallows it. It’s the nearest thing she can get to the sweets our forgetful mother promised in the Museum Gardens.
‘Bloody Parrot!’ George holds his bitten finger up for inspection. Bunty tut-tuts indifferently. (Injury, as I said, is not really her forte.) She’s up to her elbows in suet and flour and her stomach is heaving again. She watches George in disgust as he picks up one of the fairy cakes we’ve spent half the afternoon making, and swallows it in one bite, without even looking at it.
The afternoon has been a bit of a disappointment. We went shopping again but only for some dun-coloured wool from a shop kept by a timid old woman who made me appreciative of Walter’s shopkeeping-as-performance technique. I hoped we might visit a florist and celebrate my arrival with flowers, a garland or two, a bouquet of joy and roses, but no. I keep forgetting that no-one knows about me.
We went and picked up Patricia from school, but that wasn’t very interesting either and her day seemed rather boring, viz:
‘What did you do today?’
‘Nothing.’ (Said with a shrug of the shoulders.)
‘What did you have for dinner?’
‘Can’t remember.’ (Shrugs again.)
‘Did you play with any friends today?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t shrug like that all the time, Patricia!’
Bunty chops up the blood-glazed kidney, the idea of testicles never far from her mind. She hates cooking, it’s too much like being nice to people. Here she goes again – I spend my entire life cooking, I’m a slave to housework – chained to the cooker … all those meals, day after day, and what happens to them? They get eaten, that’s what, without a word of thanks! Sometimes when Bunty’s standing at the cooker her heart starts knocking inside her chest and she feels as if the top of her head’s going to come off and a cyclone is going to rip out of her brain and tear up everything around her. (Just as well she didn’t go to Kansas.) She doesn’t understand why she feels like this (Go ask Alice – see Footnote (i) again) but it’s beginning to happen now, which is why when George wanders back into the kitchen, takes another fairy cake, and announces that he has to go out and ‘see a man about a dog’ (even tapping his nose as he does so – more and more I’m beginning to feel that we’re all trapped in some dire black-and-white film here). Bunty turns a contorted, murderous face on him and lifts the knife as if she’s considering stabbing him. Is a torch being put to the great city of