Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

  George stubs out his cigarette and makes a kind of snorting noise in his throat and settles back into his chair to watch Bunty making his cup of tea (well, this is 1959). He clears his throat and spits into his handkerchief just as Bunty puts the cup and saucer in front of him with a glazed expression on her face. This is the expression she wears when she picks up George’s socks, handkerchiefs and underpants (wearing rubber gloves) and drops them into a bucket of Dettol to soak before they are allowed to join the rest of our barely-sullied washing in the English Electric.

  Bunty reclaims her peeler while I remain hovering in the doorway, uncertain as to whether I’m still needed in my pawn-role. They seem to have forgotten it’s Christmas Eve and, despite the mound of mince pies on the dresser, the kitchen is not carolling with the festive spirit. The Christmas cake, I notice, is sitting un-iced on the refrigerator, decidedly naked in its almond paste. This is a bad sign. The cake is a close relative of the Boxing Day trifle, both regarded by Bunty with the kind of reverence that Kathleen’s mother affords the Nativity Scene.

  ‘We are going to the pantomime tonight, aren’t we?’ I ask rather recklessly.

  ‘Why else do you think I’m going flat out like this?’ Bunty spins round, the potato peeler moving like a dagger through the air, indicating a panorama of mince pies, Christmas cake, potatoes, George.

  ‘And I haven’t had time to make a pudding.’ Her eyes narrow to slits as she looks at George and adds menacingly, ‘It’ll have to be tinned fruit.’ She advances on a tin of peaches, clawing them open with a tin opener and pouring them into a big glass bowl where they swim about like goldfish. George shakes out the evening paper and starts whistling ‘Jingle Bells’, softly, under his breath.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything to do, Ruby?’ Bunty asks sharply.

  I haven’t. I didn’t think you needed to have anything to do on Christmas Eve.

  ‘Where’s our Gillian?’ George asks suddenly. Always Bunty’s favourite of course, Gillian has recently managed to make herself extremely popular with George. I suppose if you work hard enough at anything you’re bound to succeed in the end.

  ‘Piano lesson,’ Bunty replies, turning down the gas under the pan of potatoes.

  ‘On Christmas Eve?’ George says, a note of surprise in his voice. You see? I’m supposed to be ‘doing something’ but ‘Our Gillian’ isn’t. I seem to be dismissed so I go up to the living-room and switch on the television. Champion the Wonder Horse is just starting and although my heart thrills automatically to his stirring theme music I have to confess to being a little disappointed that there isn’t something more seasonal on. Don’t the television people know it’s Christmas Eve either? Still, the Christmas tree is beautiful; the lights are switched on and we have some new decorations – big silver glass balls with silver glitter snowflakes stuck on them – a company Christmas gift from a pet food traveller. And the coal fire in the living-room has just been lit so that the room is full of promising smells like coal-dust and pine needles and I begin to cheer up. Nell is asleep in an armchair next to the fire, a piece of tinsel wrapped mysteriously round her finger. Maybe it’s to remind her of something? Her personality perhaps?

  Gillian bursts into the room, throwing her music case down and sprawling in an armchair, revealing her navy blue knickers. She sighs darkly and rearranges herself, crossing her legs and staring at a spot two inches above my head.

  ‘You’re not supposed to cross your legs,’ I tell her helpfully. Without speaking she slowly uncrosses them then recrosses them. I wonder if I were to say, ‘Listen Gillian, this is your last day on earth, lighten up, for heaven’s sake,’ she would take any notice? Probably not.

  George puts his head round the living-room door. ‘Tea’s ready,’ he announces, glaring into the middle distance of Champion’s girth and stirrups. In one smooth movement, Gillian sticks her tongue out at me, uncrosses her legs and turns round and gives George a big, toothy grin. ‘Hello, Daddy,’ she beams at him. If only she would teach me how to do that before she goes.

  The dining-room. A very small room, off the kitchen. There’s just enough room for the table, the chairs and the people – George, Gillian, Nell and me are sitting at the table while Bunty makes a lot of noise in the kitchen in case we should forget about her. If only. Patricia wanders in and studies her chair for a long time before she sits on it. I’m fascinated by what goes on in her brain these days. She reveals few, if any, clues. Finally, she sits down. George looks at her briefly and says, ‘You took your time.’ She screws up her face and tilts her head to one side (an uncanny impersonation of the Parrot) and appears to think hard about this statement before saying sweetly, ‘Yes, yes I did take a long time, didn’t I?’ No matter how ravaged by adolescence I may become in future years I know I’ll never be as daring as Patricia. George looks as if he’d like to hit her. But he can’t – not just because it’s Christmas Eve, but because Patricia has accidentally met The Floozy and may reveal this encounter to the Snow Queen in the kitchen. George, therefore, treats his eldest child like a ticking time bomb that might go off at any moment. Patricia relishes her new, powerful status.

  Nell is trying to cut up invisible food on the tablecloth. Bunty is banging things around in the kitchen, thumping down pots and pans and slamming cupboard doors, like a woman possessed. I know she is trying to say something to George so why doesn’t she just speak, for heaven’s sake?

  But no, nothing as simple as that for Our Lady of the Kitchen, who is pretending to dish out pork chops, mashed potatoes and carrots but is really shooting out steel tension wires from her fingertips. They make little noises as they hit the walls of the bedrooms, the living-room, the front of the Shop, the occasional Pet. Ping! Ping! Ping! Until the whole house is criss-crossed with the metal web of Bunty’s thoughts.

  She makes an entrance into the dining-room, singing, in a high, tuneless voice, a totally inappropriate Doris Day song (‘The Black Hills of Dakota’) that indicates that she is pretending to ignore whatever is going on between her and George. This is a special occasion after all – the pantomime, Christmas, not to mention Gillian’s death. Bunty circles the dining-table, with the plates held high, as if she is a waitress in an American film. She looks ridiculous.

  ‘Pork’s a bit tough,’ George says. Why can’t he just chew and swallow without comment like everyone else? I hate this. I hate these people at the table. I can see Gillian’s doing the same as me, rehearsing expressions of agreement and dismay in case George continues with his carping. Bunty, however, is not in a placatory mood.

  ‘Really?’ she says, slicing icebergs with her tongue. ‘Really?’ she says, daring him to continue. Her eyebrows have risen so far they seem to be hovering above her head. ‘Really?’ George falls silent under the pressure of Christmas.

  ‘What a wet night it is for going out!’ Bunty says suddenly, in a different tone, her ‘company’ voice. This is her way of letting it be known that she is a very well-behaved person with good manners, unlike the boorish man at the other end of the table, who unfortunately happens to be her husband.

  Nobody replies. Everybody’s too busy chewing – George is right, the meat is tough, small charred chops that have been grilled by the flame of Bunty’s temper. What a shame for Gillian, her last supper and it’s a burnt offering. If we had known we could have had Christmas dinner a day early just for her.

  Nell’s knife skitters off the table and onto the floor. George and Bunty exchange looks over her head as she makes a futile attempt to bend down and reach the knife. Finally, George sighs and picks it up for her, slamming it back down on the tablecloth.

  ‘Can I sit next to you at the pantomime, Daddy?’ Gillian asks, turning the full torchlight beam of her smile on George.

  ‘Of course, pet,’ he smiles. This is sickening. But George is soothed, so some (reluctant) admiration is due to Gillian, I suppose.

  I’m sitting next to Nell, dutifully chewing and saying nothing, but that doesn’t make me safe. Bunty
turns to me suddenly, like a frustrated cobra. ‘If you don’t hurry up, Ruby, you’ll still be sitting here when we’re all at the pantomime.’ She says this as if she’s pleased with herself for saying something clever. Is this my real mother? Why does she do this? What kind of enjoyment does she derive from idle threats like this? For one thing we have plenty of time. And for another thing they wouldn’t dream of actually leaving me here while they go to the pantomime. Would they?

  ‘Yes,’ George says unexpectedly. ‘Stop dithering, Ruby, you can’t spend your whole life being late, you know.’ He’s taking sides with Bunty either to mollify her or irritate her, it’s hard to say which. I start to eat as fast as I can, but stop in open-mouthed astonishment when Nell, slip-sliding in and out of lucidity, suddenly turns to me and says (in a foreign language, I notice) ‘Aye, frame thyself, girl!’ For a split second the entire family appears to be staring at me with the kind of look that sparrows give to their poor innocent cuckoo-babies.

  Bunty, still chewing, starts whisking the plates away, ignoring the protests of Nell who hasn’t managed to start eating anything yet. I think Bunty would prefer it if she could wash up before we’d eaten. She waltzes back in with the cut-glass bowl containing the tinned sliced peaches that are like big smiles, like the enormous, manic smile fixed on Bunty’s own face. (An extreme version, this, of the smile of Footnote (iv).) She dishes out the peaches and when Patricia protests that she doesn’t want any, tells her that’s too bad because she needs the bowl for the Boxing Day trifle. Bunty is the only person in York who knows how to make a sherry trifle properly, and as its sacred properties are not to be interfered with Patricia takes her bowl of peach slices, but not without leaning over towards George and saying in a mock-confidential whisper, ‘They say discretion is the better part of valour, don’t they?’ George looks extremely uncomfortable; he has no idea what Patricia’s talking about but he’s pretty sure it’s got something to do with The Floozy.

  George cuts a peach slice in half with his spoon, scoops up a little cream on it and raises it, delicately, to his lips.

  ‘The cream’s off,’ he pronounces, hardly tasting it at all. His spoon remains suspended on the way down from his sandy moustache, which is the colour of peaches. He stares at Bunty, daring her to contradict him, all thought of festive goodwill abandoned.

  On the other side of the table from me, Patricia eats a spoonful of cream and peaches and gags. She nods at me and mouths the word ‘Off’. Nell, fearful of starving probably, has already finished hers.

  Bunty licks her lips with the fastidiousness of a cat. ‘Tastes all right to me,’ she says quietly. She’s being very brave, rather like Deborah Kerr in The King and I.

  George pushes his plate away. ‘You bloody well eat it then,’ he says, leaving Gillian in a bit of a dilemma, her cheeks stuffed with rancid cream and slippery peaches, not sure which parent to suck up to. She is able to spit her dilemma back into her bowl when Bunty and George’s attention is diverted by a loud snore from Nell. She is as sound asleep as a dormouse with her head in her empty dish.

  ‘She’s behind you! She’s behind you!’ Gillian yells with abandon. (She means the wicked witch but I fear that it’s sweet death in all her gauzy splendour.)

  ‘Shush,’ Bunty whispers, her freshly rose-budded lips pouting primly. ‘Not so loud, someone will hear you.’

  The absurdity of this statement is not lost on Gillian who can see the whole theatre is in uproar as the witch, an elf, a panda, a cow and a plucky village youth rush about the stage while Hansel and Gretel hide under a pile of leaves. (Why is there a panda? Perhaps to make Patricia happy – she nudges me and says, ‘Look! A panda!’ a note of rare happiness in her voice.) Undeterred, Gillian continues to shout at the top of her voice. Make the most of it, Gillian, I say.

  When they ask for volunteers from the audience to come on stage I sink into my seat as far out of sight as possible, and Patricia has rendered herself completely invisible, but there’s no holding Gillian back and before you can say, ‘Oh yes she is,’ she’s kicking up her white kid heels and layers of petticoats and is on stage, charming the panda and singing her heart out.

  ‘Well, really,’ says Bunty self-consciously to the woman in the seat next to her (I am in the middle of the Lennox sandwich – George on one end, then Gillian, me, Patricia and, on the other end, Bunty. Nell has been left at home). ‘Really, she is a one, our Gillian.’ Not for much longer.

  When Gillian returns to her seat you can see that she’s flushed and irritable (her mother’s daughter) at having to step out of the spotlight. ‘All good things come to an end,’ Bunty says, smiling stiffly, keeping her eyes on the stage.

  If Hansel and Gretel had stayed lost in the forest for ever, we could have remained trapped with them and forgotten about The Floozy and sour cream and un-iced Christmas cakes. And Gillian wouldn’t have died either. But the plot’s unstoppable – the witch is burnt to a heap of charred rags and ashes, the wicked stepmother’s pardoned, children reclaimed. Hansel and Gretel discover the witch’s treasure chest, overflowing with emeralds, diamonds, opals, rubies (!), sapphires, glowing like the bag of boiled sweets Gillian and I are sharing. The Good Fairy sends a shower of glitter from her wand so thick that when I put out my hand I can touch it.

  ‘Well, that’s over for another year.’ George is out of his seat before the house lights are even up and while we are still applauding he’s already standing in the foyer, lighting up a cigarette. Bunty is behaving like a frantic rodent, jumping up and down at the end of the row, urging us to hurry up, while we fumble desperately with hats, scarves, gloves, programmes. Why does she do this? Why does she induce a sense of panic commensurate with an earthquake when it’s obvious that we are going to have to queue for ages before the exits clear. Gillian, who is transfixed by the sight of the empty stage, suddenly bursts into tears. Bunty moves along the row, mouthing simpering things to the people crushed in around us, ‘very tired’, ‘too much excitement’, ‘children, you know’, while she secretly pulls viciously on Gillian’s hand, hissing under her breath, ‘Why don’t you just bloody grow up, Gillian!’

  I feel it’s unfortunate for Bunty that these are her last words to Gillian. Not only is it a futile admonishment – the one thing that Gillian is clearly not going to do is ‘grow up’ – but it’s not a very nice note to finish on. However, this is Bunty’s problem, not mine. My last words to Gillian are – as I hand her a jewel-like sweet – ‘Do you want the last red one, or can I have it?’ Fairly neutral in the circumstances, and luckily she takes the last red one (this is Gillian, remember) so I won’t have to feel guilty about it afterwards.

  Outside the Theatre Royal, George is hopping about trying to catch a taxi (our car, we discovered as we started out for the theatre, had a flat tyre – one more coincidence in the conspiracy of coincidences that kill Gillian). The rain is turning to needles of sleet. Patricia is skulking under the arches that decorate the outside of the theatre – terrified that someone she knows might see her out with her family (can we blame her?). Bunty, for some reason, is holding tightly onto my hand as we stand shivering on the pavement. She is making a big mistake, she’s hanging onto the wrong child. Gillian is trying to look sophisticated (I can tell from the way she’s dangling her white fur muff). She has just spotted a group of her friends from school – she has just finished her first term at Queen Anne’s – on the other side of the road. They’re all shouting and waving to each other like a bunch of idiots.

  I don’t see what happens next because Bunty is beginning to panic about not being able to get a taxi, but I suppose Gillian has run out from between the parked cars without looking, because all of a sudden there is a bang and a pale blue Hillman Husky van is lobbing her gently into the path of the taxi George has just succeeded in hailing.

  I’m struggling to get away from Bunty but I can’t pry her fingers off my hand, she went into a kind of rigor mortis when she saw Gillian flying through the air. People are milling arou
nd making a lot of noise but after a while a space clears and we can see George sitting on the edge of the pavement, one of his trouser legs inexplicably rolled up, exposing a beige woollen sock. He’s being sick. Then Bunty starts screaming, loud at first, and then the noise seems to get thinner and higher until it rises up, bat-like and starts bouncing off the sodium street lights, the gargoyles on the theatre, the blue light flashing nearer and nearer.

  On Christmas morning I wake up next to Patricia in the otherwise vast emptiness of George and Bunty’s bed. Between us huddle Teddy and Panda. It’s extraordinary to be sharing a room with Patricia, let alone a bed. I expect that, like me, she feared to be alone when Gillian’s vengeful spirit must be stalking Above the Shop, jealously guarding the kidney-shaped dressing-table and the advent calendar and all the other thousand and one things invested with her life-force. At eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve, George and Bunty phoned from the hospital to say that Gillian was dead and then they just seemed to disappear into thin air. Nell was distressed at the idea of having to cope. ‘I can’t cope,’ she whined down the phone to Bunty, but Bunty didn’t care.