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‘I never particularly pushed him at school. I really don’t know what you mean, I was hoping for some sympathy here.’ I can feel the tears welling, how can they still get to me like this?
Dad waves his hand as if to calm the atmosphere. ‘There’s no point trying to control what Gethin does. After all, we should know, we had little enough success with you.’
I feel as if I’ve been punched in the stomach and I can’t get my breath. ‘Little enough success?’
‘Oh Pat,’ Mum’s dismissive tone. ‘You’ve hardly had a glittering career, have you?’
Instant portal to feeling I’ve always been an irritating inconvenience, at best, for Mum. As a child I decided Mum hadn’t wanted another baby after Jonathan and resented me because of this. Wait ’til I tell your father, was her regular refrain, and he would whack me out of duty to her, for answering back, for being late home, for stealing food from the fridge. ‘And that’s your measure of success, is it?’ I attempt a fightback. ‘Like Jonathan, you mean?’ I nod towards the mantelpiece photos – her golden boy with his Oxford first in PPE.
Mum smiles as if reluctant to agree.
‘For all the good that did the godless Tory rascal.’ Dad pulls at his tie again, his face reddening.
Ah, the old family dynamic. The constant mealtime clashes with Jonathan boasting his debating society victories: arguing controversial right-wing positions, but also pitching for the triumph of reason over superstition and religion. Mum hailing her brilliant son, bringing the argument to a bitter three-way. Then when I got caught skipping Sunday school when I was nine, how I screamed at Dad that he’d taught me to question everything, but I wasn’t allowed to question God. Dad turning pale, his eyes filling; silencing me with the pain I’d caused him.
But now this talk of my lack of success. Unbelievable after all this time. I’m not going to let that go, am I?
‘You know when you moved us here from London,’ I start, ‘art was about the only thing I could relate to, but you never thought that was worth encouraging, did you?’
‘Oh, it didn’t take you long to find some misfits to slouch about with,’ Mum true to form now, every statement a barb.
I think about driving here today on the A11 – that long straight road through fields of cabbages and pigs, still throwing me back to how I felt then.
‘Did you even stop to think how hard it might have been for a twelve-year-old from London to relate to the regular kids round here? Most of them had never been on a train, would gawp at a black person, you know? So, I hung out with the screwed up social rejects and painted desolate landscapes. Mrs Toller, the art teacher, was the only person to encourage me.’
I fumble for a tissue, cursing the tears that have broken through my defences. How is it OK for them to gang up on me like this? Why can’t I stand up to them, even now, without crying?
‘We only worried about the unsettled lifestyle,’ Mum says. ‘Really, there’s no need to get upset.’
‘You were concerned that I wasn’t hitting the top grades at school. Art was a bourgeois diversion, wasn’t it, Dad?’ I try a swipe back.
‘Working class people fought for the right to education.’ Dad bangs his fist again.
That was always his line: no child of mine chooses ignorance and decadence. No child of yours chooses anything, I’d retort in a flurry of door-slamming.
‘Do you know, Dad, it wasn’t until I went to college that I was even aware of art as a progressive force? What socialist wants a world without art?’
Dad pulls his breath in, and I worry that I’ve hurt him. For all his intransigence, his beliefs are strongly felt, and I hold a grudging respect for that.
Mum on the other hand, only ever interested in me fitting her image, gets right in there with another dig. ‘But then you dropped out of art college, didn’t you Pat? All that camping out at Greenham Common.’
‘You never got it, did you, anything about Greenham? We were constantly harassed, evicted, our shelters destroyed, our possessions shredded, just standing up for what we believed in. But you saw it as some lesbian drop-out camp.’
‘Oh Pat, it really wasn’t that simple,’ Mum starts.
‘Wasn’t it? Everything I did was a pointless rebellion to you. When I told you about my relationship with Gaynor, it was all about what people would say: how I was wasting myself, too pretty to be a dyke?’ I feel my throat tighten; I can hardly believe I’m getting into this. But there is a righteous rage keeping me going.
Mum pulls back as if preparing her retort.
Dad glares across at me. ‘There’s no need to be upsetting your mother, now.’
‘Oh God.’ I sigh. ‘You know, that was all you ever said, Dad. You never really gave me credit for taking a stand in my own way.’ And I can still feel the desolate disappointment in my firebrand socialist dad, backing up my mother’s hysteria. Why was I never able to challenge this?
‘I always admired your spirit, Pat,’ Dad says quietly, reaching for his cold tea.
‘Well, why didn’t you show it, then?’ I almost whisper. ‘Greenham was both one of the best, and the most difficult times of my life.’
It comes to me: Gaynor on the roof of her car, screaming manic abuse at the bailiffs. The women surrounding her, singing Which side are you on? Are you on the side of suicide? Are you on the side of homicide…?Me, trying to connect with that incredible power of our chanting to rattle the authorities, but feeling a sick dread inside, wanting Gaynor to climb down and give them the car, scared for her, scared I was losing her. Are you on the side of genocide? Which side are you on?
