Family Album by Penelope Lively Page B

away.”
    “How big is it?” demands Roger.
    Katie is worried. “I think this is cruel. It’s really cruel to the spider.”
    Paul says, “I don’t believe you’ve got one at all.”
    Sandra eyes him coolly. “Suit yourself,” she says. She raises her hand to her mouth, opens it. She swallows, gags dramatically, stares at them in triumph.
    Gina realizes that they will never know. Did she or didn’t she?

    The appeal of the cellar game is privacy and secrecy; it is never mentioned aboveground, no grown-up knows what goes on. If it has been noticed that they have gone down there, Paul, or Gina, or Sandra will say airily, Oh, we go down there and read to the little ones. Reading always earns brownie points at Allersmead. Or, We’re making a museum down there (creative, cultural, good). Or, We thought we’d tidy it up a bit (positively virtuous). Alison does not care for the cellar and virtually never visits it. Charles is perhaps barely aware that it exists.
    The cellar is their territory. And the cellar game is an alternative universe into which, occasionally, they withdraw. It has nothing to do with real life; they are licensed to become other people, though their aboveground status and personalities continue to direct and inform the game. Paul is still the eldest, and thus entitled to pull rank. Gina supplies the most productive ideas, and devises story lines and props. Katie and Roger remain something of a unit, and like to have roles that reflect this. Sandra is wayward and independent; if she feels like rocking the boat, she will. And Clare is occasionally a liability, an uncontrollable element.

    Today it is the family game. Gina is mother. Paul has shot a bison, so Gina has served bison bangers and mash, and now it is storytime. “Are you sitting comfortably?” she says.
    Sandra groans, and gets a look to kill.
    The story begins. It is a story about six children, who sound eerily familiar. There are smiles and nudges. There is an episode in which they swim the Channel; Clare is nearly drowned, Roger carries out a valiant rescue. And then the story veers in an unexpected direction. Everyone has grown up. Katie has eight children. Roger is a British Airways pilot. Clare is a pop star. Paul is prime minister (much hilarity at this point). Sandra . . . Sandra is a head teacher.
    “I absolutely am not,” says Sandra. “Absolutely no way.”
    Gina is firm. “In the story you are.”
    “Then I’m not in the story,” says Sandra.
    Paul says that she has to be. Paul is inflexible, when it comes to rules.
    Sandra shrugs. “You can have this head teacher if you want to, but she’s not me. And anyway, what are you?”
    Gina says that she is a writer. She is telling the story.
    “Then you can’t be a very good one,” says Sandra. “It’s obvious I’m not the sort of person who is ever going to be a head teacher.”
    Gina is getting angry. “In the story that’s what you are. And anyway you don’t know what you’re going to be like when you’re grown up.”
    “Actually,” says Sandra easily, “you’ve only thought up this head teacher stuff because you know it would annoy me.”
    Ah. A home truth, maybe. Something has happened. Reality has invaded the game. The game has lost its potency, its immunity, the real world has muscled in, asserting itself.

    The cellar game is doomed, in fact—the Damoclean sword of time hangs over it. At twelve, Paul is still in there; at thirteen, he will not be. Sandra, a sophisticate, has perhaps already sprung clear. Quite soon, the cellar will become just that once more. The mattress, the packing case, the broken cupboard will sit out the decades—unconsidered, unrequired. The Daleks will sink into the murk of their corner. But the wooden board under the window will continue to record FORFITS and PENALTYS.

CRACKINGTON HAVEN
     
     
     
     
    K atie does not have eight children. She has no children. Roger is not a British Airways pilot; he is a pediatrician in a