Dreams Before the Start of Time

by Anne Charnock

  I run my index finger around the top of my glass, take another slug of wine. Do I match Richard? With Josh, I showed my natural generosity until it all went too far. I’m certainly not tight with money. And I’m attentive to Mum and Dad.

  I skip forward to the section titled “Sensitivities.” It seems that Richard does not take compliments at face value. He didn’t receive sufficient praise as he developed towards adulthood. He’s suspicious of praise, yet he still craves it. I can handle that; my parents lavished praise on me, and I’m happy to dish it out too. In fact, I love praising people—friends, colleagues. No hardship there.

  Richard must decide for himself if he can cope with my personality traits—specifically, my tendency towards impulsivity. Not to mention my sensitivity arising, so I’m told, from my solo conception—that I’m apt to form intense friendships with other women. The shrink suggested that I’m deeply affected by my lack of genetic diversity. Where’s the logic in that? These people do talk utter bollocks at times. I’m emotionally well connected to Simone, my “mum,” possibly more so than I am to my dad, because although I love him, he can be bolshie; tries to press his opinions on everyone.

  The shrink, I reckon, latched on to a single remark: I said I wouldn’t choose a solo conception if it was avoidable—I’d prefer to splice my genes with a sexual partner as part of a long-term relationship. And that was my dad talking, to be honest.

  Richard will have finished his homework on me by now. It does speed up the whole process, but there’s scope for obfuscation. The process can’t detect sins of omission. For one thing, I didn’t mention my love of fine dining when asked about my interests. Though I did say I’d take one glass of good wine any day to three glasses of plonk.

  When I’m ready to commit to someone—and Richard could be the one—then I’ll be obliged to reveal the past three months’ bank statements and global assets. If I delay reaching that commitment stage, I can rein in my spending so the statements appear chaste. He’ll no doubt do some budgetary housekeeping himself. And if we stay with the programme and decide to marry, there’s a compulsory “come clean” session in which we’re coaxed by a life coach to bring everything to the table. Thumbscrews, in other words.

  “Polly, call my dad.” It’s a short walk to Acton Main Line station, past the coffeehouses on Horn Lane. My friends aren’t convinced, but I reckon Acton is a nice enough part of London to bring up a family. And it’s not too far from my parents. They’ve asked me over for lunch on Saturday, so I’d like to buy a Mimmy memento before then. Ideally, I’ll take it with me, together with a bottle of champagne. What’s taking Dad so long to answer?

  “Hi Julia. You’re not cancelling Saturday, are you?” His voice is deeper than I expected.

  “Sorry, were you asleep?”

  “Not really. Just coming round.”

  “I want your opinion if you’re awake enough, Dad. I’m thinking of buying an antique globe—a small one to sit on my oak sideboard, like a centrepiece. I thought it would be a lovely reminder of Mimmy. You know, telling all her stories about pirates.” I don’t mention that the globe was Polly’s top suggestion.

  “That’s a great idea. Go for it. But why an antique?”

  “Well, it’s like an investment, makes it more precious. And, I’d like the oceans as they were in pirate days—with the Maldives, and all the Solomon Islands.”

  “Could be expensive.”

  “You’d be surprised. They must have made globes by the thousand. I thought I’d use the rest”—I look around to check that no one is in hearing distance—“the rest of the money to pay down some of my mortgage.”

  “Bloody hell, Julia. That’s woken me up. When did you become so sensible? Wait ’til I tell . . . Hey, Simone, wake up and hear—”

  “Very funny, Dad. Anyway, I’m nearly at the station, and I’ve some work to do en route. I’ll see you Saturday. Love to Mum.”

  That’s that sorted out. I reckon Richard will admire my choice of memento, once he understands the pirate connection. Let’s hope we’ll meet again; after all, we’ve so much going for us.

  At the station entrance, I give the command: “Polly, sweetie. Buy the globe.”

  THEY’RE ALL THINKING THE SAME

  Theo Munroe-Steane lies on his duvet in the bathtub, takes a sliver of soap from the tiled nook and throws it at the mirror above the sink. The sliver sticks for two seconds, then drops. Satisfaction level: nonexistent. The white smudge on the mirror mocks him for his timidity; he didn’t have the guts to throw the full, as-yet-unwetted bar of soap.

  Downstairs, Theo’s father, Nathen, clears the breakfast dishes. He looks over his shoulder and says, “Fancy getting a baby-sitter tonight?”

  Theo’s mother, Amelie, is checking the weather forecast before her Saturday morning run. “Er, could do. We’ve no other plans this weekend, have we?”

  “None. Or we could take the boys out for an early dinner,” says Nathen.

  “Either way.”

  Theo is now forty-three minutes into his lock-in, and he has a crick in his neck. Neither of his parents, he suspects, is aware of his self-imposed solitary confinement. He should have brought his pillows and more than one game. The bathroom isn’t ideal for battle scenarios, it’s too low and rectangular, but it’s fine for Scuba Diver. He decides he might as well tiptoe across the landing to fetch the pillows—then restart his confinement. And while he’s in his bedroom, he’ll search for chocolates and snacks under his bed.

  He places his forearms on either side of the bath and pushes himself up, slipping a little as the duvet shifts on the bath’s smooth azure surface. With one foot on the bathroom floor, he freezes. Footsteps on the stairs. He can tell from the weight and speed that his mum is on her way up. She turns the doorknob.

  “Who’s . . . ? That you, Theo?”

  “I’m not coming out until you cancel the haircut. You can’t make me.” His mum doesn’t reply. Theo knows he’s caught her off-guard. He has the early advantage, which he rams home: “It’s a free world, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  His mum mentioned over breakfast that she’d booked a barber’s appointment for both him and his brother, Seb, next weekend. “Have a think about a new hairstyle, Theo. Now you’re getting older you could try something shorter—like Seb’s?” Theo replied that he liked his hair long. That should have ended the discussion, to his mind, but she said, “I think you’d look really handsome with short hair.” His dad chipped in, “You’d take less time in the shower too.” It was a pincer movement; it made him suspicious. Had they rehearsed? He stood up from the breakfast table and said, “I like my hair long, so you can cancel the haircut.” They carried on reading. He left his toast and marmalade unfinished, walked upstairs. They probably didn’t even register that he’d spoken.

  He should have slammed the door and stomped up the stairs. In the future, he’ll make more noise, act like his older brother. He needs to observe his brother and learn. Seb can sense the precise location of an invisible threshold—the line he must cross to provoke a parental reaction. He deploys one of two tactics: he hikes the volume or he swears. And he knows exactly how far he can go.

  His mum clears her throat. “Come on, Theo, unlock the door. If you must know, the haircut wasn’t my idea in the first place. Gr’Atticus put the thought in my head. He’s coming over with Nan Toni at the weekend, and I thought it would be a nice surprise if you had a new hairstyle. You know, before they set off on their big trip.”

  “What’s my hair got to do with their trip? That’s totally illogical.” He’s still too measured. He closes his eyes and imagines he is Seb. He says, “I’m not taking style notes from someone who’s over a hundred years old,” and increases the decibels: “It’s fucking ridiculous.”

  Silence all round. He’s relieved his mum can’t see his blushes.

  In a lowered voice, she says, “Gr’Atticus would be so upset if he heard you say that, Theo.”

  He steels himself, “What do you
take me for? Obviously, I wouldn’t say it to his face.”

  “He wasn’t offering fashion advice. He made a perfectly innocent remark, that you’d look a lot older if you had shorter hair.”

  “You’ve all been talking about me behind my back, haven’t you? You’re not respecting me.”

  His mum mutters; he can’t hear her. Then, clearly and slowly, she says, “We know how smart you are, Theo. We’ve always respected you. But you shouldn’t be swearing at me. I wouldn’t let Seb get away with that.”

  “I’m not coming out.”

  And with that she walks downstairs. Theo climbs back in the bath. His mum has outmanoeuvred him. Even if she relents on the haircut, she’s got him cornered for swearing. He’s such an amateur. Seb told him so last week. Their dad had asked who’d left the milk out of the fridge overnight. Theo admitted he’d done it. Afterwards, Seb took him aside and said, “You didn’t need to own up. He’d never know for sure who did it. He knows Mum might have left it out and forgotten. Just keep your mouth shut and look innocent—should be easy enough for you.” Seb does look out for him.

  Theo’s stomach rumbles. He didn’t finish his breakfast, and he has zero food supplies. Seb wouldn’t make such an elementary error. He climbs out of the bath, leans over the sink and drinks water straight from the tap. He hears heavy, steady footsteps. It must be his dad, because Seb is out at football practice, and in any case, Seb runs two steps at a time up the stairs.

  There’s a knock. “Theo? I told Seb I’d watch the second half of his footy match. Fancy coming along?” His dad must surely know about the argument, but he sounds perfectly normal. “Seb would love to see you on the touchline. Fact is, your mum’s going for a run. I can’t leave you home alone.”

  “I’m not coming out if you’re going to talk about haircuts. You can’t make me have one.”

  “But we’d like to talk about it without escalating to DEFCON Two. And, you’ll have to apologize to your mother for swearing at her.”

  This is probably the moment to back down, but Theo imagines Seb nudging him forward. “She started it.”

  Another silence. And then, “Please yourself. You can explain to Seb why neither of us turned up to watch him play.”

  Amelie is waiting in her running gear at the foot of the stairs. She says, “He must be starving, Nathen. What shall we do?”

  “Go for your run. I’ll put a plate of food in his bedroom and tell him he’s made his point.”

  “Good idea. He’ll be nervous about coming downstairs to face us. I’m sure he’ll apologize later on.” She puts her hands on her hips and sighs. “I was looking forward to a noneventful weekend.”

  As she leaves the house, she slams the front door. Over winter the door swelled, and it’s still sticking, even though the tulips are out. She sets off on her usual run through the back streets towards Burgess Park, makes her usual detour to pick up the original straight route of the Grand Surrey Canal, filled in to make roads nearly two hundred years ago. It’s a one-hour route if she makes two circuits of the park. She’d intended to try a new route today, but she feels too distracted by Theo. She just hopes the run is long enough to clear her head, shed some guilt.

  She feels absolutely rotten she brought Gr’Atticus into the argument, but it’s a measure of her desperation. If only Theo would cooperate, cut his mop of hair, she might start to relax. They’d look like a family instead of the hotchpotch revealed in Theo’s birthday photographs. Ten years old last month, and the family photograph—everyone gathered around the birthday cake—screamed that Theo was the odd one out. If he’d wear his hair shorter, the difference would be tempered.

  A couple of years ago she could have dropped Theo off at the barber’s and said, “Time for a big-boy’s haircut.” Stupidly, she’s left it far too late. So, when Atticus commented that Theo’s long wavy hair made him look young, he unwittingly supplied Amelie with a ploy for broaching the subject. And Theo adores his great-grandfather. She reaches the park entrance. Small kids and their parents block the path. She slows down and dodges her way past.

  Everyone in the family keeps quiet, but they’re all thinking the same thing—she speeds up—Theo doesn’t fit in. He’s taller, slimmer, blonder. And Amelie suspects he’ll be much, much smarter.

  Theo breaks into a sweat when the front door slams—a motherly meltdown. He wracks his memory, can’t recall a single moment when his mum ever lost her temper with him. He’s seen her fly off the handle with Seb.

  He wallows in his dry bath. He does the slightest thing wrong and his mum goes catatonic, as though he’s expected at all times to be perfect. He’s a fool. There’s no point in staging this lock-in—Seb will laugh at him when he gets home. There’s a bathroom downstairs. No one is inconvenienced but himself.

  None of them know why he’s so pissed off, and he’s not going to spell it out. Seb would crack a joke, and his parents would do that thing he hates. Whenever he shows interest in a new hobby, they chase around, massively agitated, looking for special classes and extra tuition. He hasn’t told them he’s been writing poetry over the past six months. He’s doing it on the quiet. Well, not exactly on the quiet, because he leaves his games on autoplay so they’ll think he’s still fixated on that particular time sink.

  The fact is, he can see his future unfolding before him, and he’s been reading the biographies of famous poets to check their childhood achievements. He’s not doing badly in comparison. He’s going to be a serious poet one day, and more to the point, he doesn’t see himself as a short-haired poet. If he gives in to his parents, he’ll have to wait until he’s eighteen to start growing his hair again. And that will take at least two years, probably three. He’ll be twenty-one before he looks like himself again, and his best work might already be behind him.

  Perhaps he should negotiate a peace settlement via his dad; his dad won’t make a big deal of it, whereas his mum will want to reason with him, talk him into submission. He doesn’t mind saying he’s sorry. He wants to. And he’d like to end it all before Seb comes home. He climbs out of the bath again, listens at the door. He could slip out, go to his room and act as though nothing happened. But he doesn’t want his dad to catch him coming out—he’d have to admit defeat.

  And coming full circle—if he ends the lock-in without some recognition of his rights, his parents might never respect him again. He climbs back into the bath.

  Nathen prepares a plate of cheese, pickle and bread, and brews a mug of tea. He places them on a tray, adds a chocolate bar, then removes it—“Don’t be such a pushover,” he mumbles—and walks across the hallway to the bottom of the stairs. He hears the sound effects of an underwater fight coming from the bathroom. He clenches his teeth. Some blasted genius. He’s gaming again as though nothing happened, oblivious to the upset he’s causing at the start of what should have been a relaxing weekend with no commitments. And Amelie has enough stress at the moment. Nathen always thought she had the ideal job, conserving paintings in the back rooms of the museum—quiet, meditative work. But now that she’s won promotion she’s handling a few managerial tasks, dealing with interference from patrons. She came home exasperated yesterday. The worst of the patrons were insistent on turning back the clock—refusing to accept that paintings do age, and should be allowed to.

  Amelie starts her second circuit of the park. There’s a tightness in her calves, so she can’t settle into a rhythm; she hasn’t stretched as much as she should between runs. She wonders if Nathen has talked Theo out of the bathroom. If anyone can defuse the crisis, it’s Nathen. So calm. He works in human resources, has defused worse situations. She can’t help thinking that their lives would be incredibly straightforward if they’d stopped at one. She’d convinced herself that she needed a second child to feel like a proper family.

  First time around, she wanted a natural pregnancy, which Nathen supported. She had assumed she’d do the same for her second pregnancy. But at the age of two and a half, Seb still spoke in single words—
no two-word phrases. She and Nathen were anxious he might have developmental problems, so they decided on remote gestation for the second baby. Even though all their relatives told them not to worry about Seb’s speech, that every child was different, the clinicians preyed on their guilty feelings. Why take the risk of having two children with learning difficulties?

  She and Nathen paid for the standard germ line modifications to delete the mutation load, and allowed the clinic to screen for the most vital embryo. Then—going too far—they paid for aesthetic tweaks. What were they thinking? Two intelligent adults who allowed themselves to be bamboozled.

  Before Theo reached full term in the gestation clinic, Seb discovered his powers of speech. He’d skipped the ba-ba-ba-ba baby phase; his first utterance was a complete sentence. He finished eating his lunch—mashed potato and flaked fish, she’ll never forget—licked the bottom of his dish and spoke, plain as day: “That was good, Mummy.” At the time, she thought, Now he tells me! If he’d said that six months ago, we’d have saved a ton of money.

  Nevertheless, she and Nathen were on a high when they collected Theo from the gestation unit. They felt life would be replete with possibility for this child. He would simply reach out and achieve greatness. And, as anticipated, Theo hit all the developmental milestones early—early to roll from his back to his front, early to sit up unaided, early to say his first word. However, when Amelie inspected the photos of Theo’s tenth birthday party, she realized—apart from baulking at his mop of hair—that his persistent cherubic looks were overstated, at odds somehow with his intelligence. With that realization, Amelie suffered a panic attack, which she passed off as work stress. Since then, she has entertained a troubling thought—that she came away from the gestation unit with someone else’s baby.