Family Album by Penelope Lively Page A

plenty of action, while both Katie and Roger have been known to object if their roles are too insignificant or too challenging.

    “I don’t want to play,” says Katie.
    “You have to,” says Paul kindly. “Everyone has to. You know that.”
    “I’m not going to be the one who gets eaten by the sharks.”
    Gina intervenes. “She can get rescued. We throw her a rope.”
    Paul frowns. This spoils things. He does not have an anticlimax in mind. “Clare, then.”
    Clare beams. She is not sure what a shark is.

    Actually, Clare can be a problem. She is inclined to start doing her own thing, to introduce an element of four-year-old mayhem. She has only recently been included at all, and has not yet grasped the imperative requirement for teamwork. There is a form of democracy in operation—people can raise objections about what is demanded of them personally, they can make suggestions and proposals, but nobody may go off on a tangent, introducing their own subplot or, indeed, engaging in some completely different operation. They may not—Clare may not—start to play with the stack of jam jars on the shelf of the broken bookcase, or go off to jump on the mattress that is not a mattress but a boat or a covered wagon or a sled. It is just as well that the cellar has its own hidden malevolence, and Clare is aware of this; she does not like spiders and wood lice, still less does she fancy the snakes that she has been told lurk in dark places, let alone the invisible Daleks. Clare has to hide behind the sofa during Doctor Who . So, on the whole, Clare stays close to everyone else and does what she is told, frequently bemused about what is going on.
    Sometimes visiting children are obliged to play the cellar game. Usually, they do not enjoy it. There is the feeling that you are on the edge of things, you do not quite understand, you are inadequate, you are an outsider. And when it comes to forfeits they find that they would like to go home.

    “Eat a spider!” orders Paul. There are gasps. This is new, and harsh. Everyone looks at Sandra. Will she decide to take a penalty? Evidently not: “OK,” she says calmly. She goes over to the cobwebby place under the window. She searches.

    Forfeits are not quite the whole point of the cellar game. On some occasions, no forfeits arise. Rather, they are a kind of embellishment, a peak of creativity and excitement that things attain from time to time. Someone will overstep the mark—deliberately as often as not, provocatively—and there will be no alternative. In the house game, one of the children will be subversive, disobedient, and must be brought to heel. Or there will be mutiny on the ship, or someone fails a test of bravery. Some forfeits are mild enough; sit blindfolded for ten minutes, squat for five minutes, walk right around the house in nothing but your knickers, sing “God Save the Queen.” Others are more demanding: go into the back garden and dig up a worm and bring it back, steal one of Mum’s hairpins, stay in the Dalek corner for five minutes. Forfeits are both challenge and entertainment. The challenged will win status by accepting and successfully carrying out the forfeit; the spectators will be diverted but also titillated by the thought that next time it might be them.
    There is an escape route. Anyone can refuse to accept a forfeit, but in that case they must take a penalty. They lose face, and their penalty mark is chalked up on the board, to be there in perpetuity. Clare has never really understood about this, and her penalty marks are in double figures, despite the fact that her penalties are customized. “No,” she says. “I don’t want to do a somersault. Not now.”
    There is a continual search for new forfeits. Paul’s various proposals involving matches and lighters have been vetoed; some primitive instinct about health and safety seems to operate.

    “Show us!”
    “It’s in my hand,” says Sandra. “If I show you it’ll get