Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

  We are rather surprised to find that we aren’t near the sea and there’s quite a lot of discussion about whose fault this might be, Mr Roper’s orienteering skills once more being brought into disrepute by George (and defended by his mistress). Several day trips are planned to visit not only the sea but other places of ‘historic and architectural interest’ – Mrs Roper has brought a guide-book with her – and our first expedition is to Fort William via the famous Glencoe. ‘Why is it famous?’ I ask Mrs Roper, who is peering at the guide-book in one hand while wafting one of the baby-David’s dirty night-nappies in the other. ‘A massacre,’ she says vaguely.

  ‘A massacre,’ I tell Patricia.

  ‘Oh good,’ she says with relish.

  ‘No, no,’ I say hastily, ‘an historical one,’ but you can see from the look in her eye that Patricia isn’t thinking about Campbells and Macdonalds but Ropers and Lennoxes. Or perhaps just Lennoxes.

  A black cloud, both metaphorical and real, settles above our heads as we enter Glencoe. (‘Aye,’ Mrs von Leibnitz confirms later, ‘it’s an uncanny dreich place that Glencoe.’) The hills rise, grim and threatening, on either side of us but we arrive safely sans massacre, and sample the delights of Fort William on a rainy day. We take immediate cover in another Kitchen, a ‘Highland’ one this time, which is full of people and pushchairs, sopping macs and dripping umbrellas, and a chrome Gaggia, hissing aggressively. The grown-ups, as they comically refer to themselves, have coffee in glass cups and saucers and Bunty smiles across the red tinfoil ashtray at Mr Roper and says, ‘Sugar, Clive?’ holding out the stainless-steel pot as if it contained Aphrodite’s golden apples and not brown-sugar crystals. ‘Thank you, Bunty,’ he says, locking his smile onto hers while the rest of us watch his spoon as if we’re hypnotized, as he stirs it round and round and round and round and round and round until Mrs Roper says suddenly, ‘You don’t take sugar, Clive!’ and we all wake up.

  Patricia sips feebly at a glass of water, I have a cup of tea, Christine has milk, Kenneth has a Fanta and the baby-David is allowed a banana milk-shake which Mrs Roper pours into his baby-cup. The banana milk-shake is a sickly yellow colour that seems to owe very little to a bunch of Fyffes and it comes as no surprise to me when he dribbles most of it back up again after a few minutes. Patricia retires with precipitate haste behind a door marked ‘Lassies’ but everyone else, I’m glad to say, manages to hold their liquids down.

  We discover that we’ve left the guide-book in Och-na-cock-a-leekie and wander the streets disconsolately, looking for something of architectural or historical interest, settling eventually on the Wee Highland Gift Shop where we buy many totally useless objects adorned with thistles and heather, although personally, I am delighted with my Illustrated Pocket Guide to Scottish Tartans, even if half the tartans are reproduced in hazy black-and-white. Foolishly, we buy sugar in large quantities – Whisky Fudge, Soor Plums (a Scottish delicacy, the woman in the shop tells us), Edinburgh Rock and long ropes of shiny liquorice. A sudden, painful August hailstorm prompts a group decision to abandon the Fort and we scamper back to the car park, and take the high road back to the Farmhouse.

  On the journey back, we set about consuming our newly-bought confectionery in lieu of lunch and it isn’t long before the Ropers’ car is drawing up at the side of the road (He’s stopping!) for the baby-David to splatter the remains of his banana-yellow vomit all over the grass verge and, two minutes after we’re off! for the second time, it’s our turn because the lassie’s boaking again. Even the normally stalwart Mrs Roper has to ‘take some fresh air’ under the lowering skies of Glencoe. ‘Poor Harriet,’ George says, causing Bunty to look at him in speechless astonishment because he has never said ‘Poor Bunty’ in his life, but she never gets round to articulating this astonishment because Patricia moans gently and we have to Stop! again.

  I commiserate with her, ‘Nobody knows the trouble you’ve seen, Patricia.’

  ‘Shutupruby.’

  Not surprisingly, it is several days before we venture on another trip, but in the meantime there are other pastimes – we watch the cows being milked several times and Patricia makes quite a friend of one of the chickens. Then there are the evenings, which we pass in old-fashioned pursuits. There is a cottage piano, for example, very out-of-tune, on which Christine entertains us with her quirky versions of ‘My Bonny Lies over the Ocean’ and ‘Home Sweet Home’, a song whose popularity Patricia and I have never understood. Reading matter is supplied in the form of Reader’s Digest’s condensed novels and a large black leather-bound Bible, big enough to sink a ship. We play the usual games of Snap, of course, and Mrs Roper teaches us all Piquet. A previous holidaymaker has left behind Cluedo so we play that a lot, but instead of releasing murderous impulses it just seems to intensify them. You can tell from this, of course, that there is no television chez von Leibnitz, freeing us to fully appreciate the delights of living in a family with a double nucleus.

  We have several days of relative peace down at the Bottomless Loch. ‘Bottomless?’ Mr Roper queries. ‘Aye, bottomless,’ Mr von Leibnitz confirms. It’s more of a pond really, nestling amongst the sheep-strewn hills like a lump of liquorice, its blackness suggesting that it might well be unplumbable. Mr von Leibnitz lends the holiday party some fishing-rods and Mrs Roper, Mr Roper and George stand at the edge of the loch twitching and flinching their rods but catch nothing. I suppose all the fish have drained away to Australia. Meanwhile, the baby-David wobbles and totters around like a large, annoying insect and Patricia sits huddled on the grass reading Humphry Clinker and giving the baby-David the evil eye whenever he comes near her.

  Bunty glides around the loch, casting meaningful glances instead of bright, feathery little flies. Her romance is being seriously hindered by the presence of Mrs Roper, but despite this her loch-side perambulations bring her round and round again to Mr Roper. It’s amazing how often, in the daily round, they collide with each other, fingers brushing as they reach for cups, bodies bumping as they try to pass through doors together as if Mr Roper is a magnet and Bunty a heap of iron filings.

  Christine tries to involve me in a stream of games that she invents, all of which are based on the premise that we are horses. It’s difficult to avoid playing equine games with her and the best I can usually manage is to gallop hell-for-leather towards the nearest hill and hope that she doesn’t follow. Sometimes I escape successfully, especially if she becomes embroiled in some minor distraction (Oh, my God – where’s the baby?) or gets inveigled into helping Kenneth test the bottomless theory (Kenneth, get out of the water this minute!). It seems to me that the easiest way to test this theory would be to simply throw Kenneth in.

  I prefer to be as far away as possible from the loch. It creates a feeling of unease in me and if I get too near the edge I begin to think it’s trying to suck me into its endless blackness. It reminds me of something, but what?

  We have several fine days of weather together (‘It cannae last,’ Mr von Leibnitz says dismally, shaking his head, and Mrs von Leibnitz agrees, ‘Aye, we’ll suffer for it next week.’) and traipsing across hill and dale to the loch isn’t an altogether unattractive proposition. One afternoon, hot and bright, I gallop free of Christine, up to the top of the highest of the hills around the loch and, panting like a racehorse, throw myself down on the grass which is coarse and tickly like a straw mattress. Down below, the water gleams, fathomless and secretive, and the people buzz around meaninglessly. Far away in the distance, the wide horizon of heather meets a big, pale sky that’s been swept clean of everything except for a buzzard, hanging like an augury, and I experience a moment of pure elation, like an unexpected gift, and the hole inside me – where something has been taken away – heals over and is filled. This rapture cannot last, of course, and I’m summoned down to eat our lunch (Mrs von Leibnitz packs us a picnic, always the same – potted meat sandwiches, over-ripe bananas, plain crisps and mint Yo-Yos), and by the time we walk home everything is the same as usual and my o
wn bottomless loch of loneliness is back in place.

  Patricia continues to be nauseous almost all the time but everyone else seems to be restored to equilibrium, so another adventure is planned for Monday, this time to Oban; it can’t, after all, be worse than the trip to Fort William, Mr Roper laughs.

  Familiar problems present themselves – we have to run an impressive sheep gauntlet, zig-zagging for nearly a mile behind one particularly insouciant beast (Just run over the bloody thing!) and Patricia pukes in the heather. ‘What’s wrong with you, Patricia?’ Bunty glares at her.

  ‘Is it your soul, Patricia?’ I ask sympathetically.

  ‘Shutupruby.’

  As we descend into Oban we can see the sea, like the rim of the world, and the sky above, aqueous and translucent. We pass a piper standing – inexplicably – at the side of the road in full regalia (an Anderson kilt, I note) and he pipes us into Oban on a mournful, shivery pibroch. I could enjoy this holiday if they would just let me, but no, there is already talk of, ‘A little boat trip – or should I say “wee” boat trip, ha ha – after lunch,’ Mr Roper chuckles, accidentally rubbing against Bunty as we make our way to a restaurant in a hotel that has a tartan (McGregor) carpet. We all have fish and chips, except for Patricia who has one chip and turns greener than the water in the harbour.

  The Mull ferry steams away like a grande dame as we struggle to board our own craft – the Bonny Bluebell, a tiny little thing, more coracle than boat. We find her below a sign that says, ‘Trips Round the Bay’, and underneath, ‘Mr A Stewart – Proprietor’, and George says, ‘Donald, where’s your troosers, hoots mon!’ and Mr Stewart looks at him with a mixture of pity and disdain in his eyes.

  What harm can there really be, I say to myself as I sit down, next to Patricia on a sea-sawing plank; the weather, after all, is fair, the bay relatively small. Then the motor goes prut-prut-prut and we’re off! Bunty would never have set foot on this boat if she hadn’t been blinded by love and she soon discovers her mistake because hardly are we out of the harbour when all the colour drains from her skin and she whispers, ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘What is it, Bunty?’ Mr Roper’s voice is full of earnest concern as he leans over towards her. Both Mrs Roper and George look up quickly at the intimate timbre of his voice, but Mrs Roper is immediately distracted by baby-David wanting to be a little teapot again. Not so George, who from this moment on is on his guard, watching the pair of lovers like a hawk.

  As soon as we’ve chugged out of the harbour, the previously glassy-calm water seems to change – the water is ruffled by waves and it’s not long before an alarming swell begins to develop. The forget-me-not blue of the sea grows claret-dark and trouble brews. Gusts of wind begin to batter and buffet the little boat and its jolly sailor occupants. ‘Poor Bunty,’ Mr Roper says as she heaves up her fish and chips over the side of the boat. I can understand how she feels because my own stomach is conducting the Highland Fling. Patricia slides down in her seat and I shuffle up to be nearer her. When I grasp her hand she responds without hesitation, squeezing mine hard, and we cling to each other in terror.

  ‘It’s just a wee squall,’ Mr Stewart yells, which doesn’t comfort any of us, especially not Mr Roper, who shouts above the wind, ‘Wee or not, I don’t think this boat is up to a squall, old chap.’ I don’t know whether it’s the Anglo-imperialism in Mr Roper’s tone or that our captain is an evolved species with earlids, but he turns a deaf ear and sails on into the storm. Mrs Roper is fully occupied with the baby-David who is damp and screaming, with Christine who is moaning and clutching her stomach and with Kenneth who is dangling over the side of the boat, apparently trying to plumb the sea with his own body. Mr Roper is not helping his wife at all, but has moved over to Bunty’s side of the boat so that we’re now listing dangerously, caught between the Scylla of George’s jealousy and the Charybdis of Oban Bay.

  And then – and this is dreadful – suddenly I begin to scream, a fearful scream of despair that rises up from the bottomless loch deep inside me, a place with neither name, number nor end. ‘The water,’ I sob into Patricia’s neck, ‘the water!’ and she does her best, given the circumstances, to soothe me. ‘I know, Ruby . . .’ she shouts, but the wind carries away the rest of her words.

  Whatever else it did, at least this lost child’s cry seems to have an effect on Mr Stewart, who, finally and with great difficulty, turns the boat round and heads back to the shelter of the harbour.

  But we are not safe from the storm yet. That evening, Mrs Roper stays upstairs with Christine, for although everyone else recovers their land-legs, Christine does not. Mr Roper puts the baby-David to bed and then joins the rest of us downstairs for a game of Cluedo, sitting next to Bunty, and drawing his chair very close to hers. There is much giggling and accidental touching of hands until at a crucial point in the game George can stand it no longer. Miss (Bunty) Scarlet and the Reverend (Clive) Green collide one too many times in the hallways of Tudor Close causing George to throw his lead piping down and dash from the room. ‘Well, really,’ Bunty says, ‘some people.’

  Several dramatic things occur shortly afterwards, with the timing of a disagreeable farce. Miss Scarlet and the Reverend Green abandon the game after George’s hasty departure and are next encountered together in the dining-room where, unable to contain himself any longer, Mr Roper is copulating with our mother on the dark-oak of the dining-table. I am drawn thither by George’s war-hoop yell, ‘Whore!’ which, not unnaturally, also brings Mr and Mrs von Leibnitz to the scene of the crime. By this time, the offending couple are vertical and looking modestly decent, but I think we can all see the blazing scarlet letter ‘A’ branded across Bunty’s beige turtle-neck sweater. George is making some rather feeble pugilistic gestures towards Mr Roper, who is looking flustered and angry, while Bunty is trying to look as if she isn’t really there at all.

  ‘Zair’s a problem?’ Mr von Leibnitz asks, stepping forward, and Mr Roper turns to look at him and growls, ‘You stay out of this, you Nazi,’ which, as you can imagine, doesn’t go down too well with the von Leibnitzes. I look around for Patricia to see if she’s going to stand up against this injustice and am surprised to see her leaning against the door-post, a rather twisted smile on her face. Seeking a scapeparrot, Bunty turns to her and says testily, ‘Stand up straight, Patricia!’ as if Patricia’s deportment was the issue here. Patricia, in one of her greatest non sequiturs, smiles and shrugs and then says in a funny drawl, ‘Actually, Mama, I just came down to tell you that I’m pregnant.’

  Can anyone top that? Yes, Mrs Roper can. She flings herself into the dining-room like a tea-cake from a toaster, shouting, ‘Help! Help! Someone call an ambulance!’

  Well, it was only an appendicitis which isn’t that bad, although my grandmother always said her first fiancé died from one. Nevertheless, dying or not, Christine is ferried by ambulance to Oban where the offending organ is swiftly removed. The next day we split into new combinations – Mrs Roper, George and Kenneth in Oban with the hospitalized Christine, while my mother, Mr Roper and the baby-David roam the hills searching for Patricia. They eventually find her at the Bottomless Loch, mooching mournfully, a bit like Miss Jessel, amongst the reeds and sedge. I am in the company of Mrs von Leibnitz and together we make floury potato-scones and eat them warm in the kitchen by a singing kettle on the fire and discuss Scottish literature. ‘Do you no have any relatives hereabouts then?’ she asks, and I say yes, they’re hereabouts, wandering on the hills, and she says no, she doesn’t mean that, she means other Lennoxes, because Lennox, she informs me, is a Scottish name. I wrinkle my nose and say I don’t think so because George and Bunty never stop going on about how they’re Yorkshire born and bred (although, admittedly, there is a Lennox clan tartan in my Illustrated Pocket Guide to Scottish Tartans), generation after generation, time out of mind. Et cetera.

  On Wednesday, we curtail our holiday and go home, leaving the Ropers to make whatever arrangements they want. The journey home is relatively plain-
sailing. Bunty concentrates very hard on the map and the road signs in an effort to placate George – she’s seen the error of her wandering ways. I suspect that after a day in his company, the prospect of the baby-David as stepson was enough to dissuade her from infidelity without the added incentive of Mr Roper’s own misgivings (‘Look, Bunty . . . poor Harriet needs me, you know . . .’). Not to mention the added prospect of grandmotherhood.

  Patricia and I sleep most of the way home, although we wake up for a thoroughly nice meal in a restaurant on the road to Glasgow, which noone regurgitates. The atmosphere in the car is the stunned, silent one that follows on great disasters. We leave Och-na-cock-a-leekie very early in the morning, giving the porridge and baked beans a miss, because George wants to get a head start on the sheep and traffic. We pull away from the farm in a thick, early-morning mist that muffles and baffles the normal world. As we approach the road with no name and number, at the end of the farm-track, I peer sleepily through the car window to catch a last glimpse of our Scottish Farm and am astonished to see the head and shoulders of an heraldic beast emerging from the mist like a trophy on a wall. He’s only a few feet from the car but gazes at me with regal indifference. It’s a stag, a huge monarch, with a great head of antlers, like something from a myth. I don’t even bother prodding Patricia to tell her about him, because I know I must be dreaming. Somewhere just beyond the mist, there’s our real Scottish holiday – and perhaps all the other holidays we never had as well.

  I think Patricia must have been thinking on the same lines because later on, just as the mist clears and we’re surprised to find ourselves half-way up an impressive mountain, she leans over to me and whispers, ‘Do you remember Auntie Doreen?’ and looks quite relieved when I nod and say, ‘Of course I do.’