Their finances gradually recovered. Pat wrote the guidebooks, and if they were not as thorough as the earlier ones nobody complained. Sales continued to be good. She kept on teaching, and Bee stayed on at New College. They often had student volunteers around the house and garden, in the orchard learning to graft or in the conservatory they built on where Bee crossbred plants and did much of her research. They redid the kitchen with low counters accessible from the wheelchair. They eventually managed to make the Florentine house tolerably accessible, widening the doorway, though they never managed to get a stairlift installed.
In 1974 the girls passed the eleven plus and started at Cambridge Girls’ Grammar school, where Pat had taught before they were born. Britain was wracked with strikes and reprisals. Violence seemed to be everywhere. The Red Brigades blew up trains and kidnapped politicians in Italy, and the IRA did the same in Britain. Meanwhile Europe moved closer and closer to political unity. Portugal was still embroiled in a vicious colonial war in Goa. The Americans were still fighting in Vietnam, and the French in Algeria. Britain’s African colonies were seething with rebellion. In space, the Russian and European space stations and moon bases glared at each other, and America tried belatedly to catch up and build their own space station. The Soviets crushed dissent in Poland as they had earlier in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
In 1975 Michael became the art director of the Observer newspaper. In 1976 Bee finally managed to get a car she could drive. The social worker kept calling twice a year. Bee and Pat tried to treat it as routine, but it always unnerved them. The threat of losing the children was always with them. The children grew up clever and confident, with Bee’s practicality and Pat’s love of words and Michael’s aesthetic sense. They continued to be bilingual in Italian, which delighted all their parents.
Pat’s mother deteriorated still more. She almost never knew Pat and was almost always afraid and savage. In the spring of 1977, she caught a chill and died. She was buried in Twickenham, next to Pat’s father and Oswald. It was a bitterly cold day with an east wind biting through their coats.
“Don’t put me here,” Pat said to Bee and the children as they walked back to the car. Flossie was pushing Bee’s chair. “I don’t care what you do with me, but not here.”
“That’s a really morbid thought, Mum,” Philip said.
24
Full Life: Trish 1980–1981
Trish taught full time, served as a councillor, taught two evening classes, was secretary of the two preservation societies, and attended her women’s group. Her calendar was always full and when anyone suggested anything she had to pull out a diary. Bethany took over most of the cooking and Helen did most of the cleaning. Sometimes the house had a neglected air, but Trish didn’t care. She usually took Tamsin and Alestra to school and Bethany, whose hours at the food co-op were flexible, picked them up. Cathy graduated in the autumn of 1980 and took a job at once in London, working at a merchant bank.
“What do you actually do?” Trish asked.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Cathy said. Cathy had had a girlfriend at university, worrying Trish and almost giving Mark apoplexy. Now she had a boyfriend, Richard, an accountant. They took a flat together in Kentish Town and played charmingly at domesticity.
“Your generation does much better at this kind of thing than mine did,” Trish said to Helen as they went home on the train after visiting Cathy and Richard.
“I don’t know,” Helen said. “I think it’ll be up to Tamsin’s generation to get it right. Look at Doug.”
Doug’s love life was a disaster, even as his career seemed to be rising again, despite the new punk trend. Trish grimaced. “Even so.”
“And I’m not doing so well,” Helen said. Men continued to be attracted to Helen’s undiminished beauty, but never anyone she could respect. “I sometimes wonder if it’s because I’m called Helen. If the name had an effect.”
“I don’t see how it could. We called you after Gran, and Gran wasn’t a beauty.”
“Well, much good it’s done me. Anyway, you shouldn’t give up on your generation because of Dad. You’re not too old to find somebody else.”
Trish laughed.
Helen worked hard on her computer course, and graduated to a computer degree at the university. “I saw Dad today,” she said one evening. “He was surrounded by students and pretended not to see me.”
“You were always his favorite,” Trish said, sadly.