Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

Frank closed his eyes and pushed himself back into the soft mud of the side of the crater and decided that the safest place to be was in the past.

Nell had adopted the philosophy that, generally speaking, things tended always to get worse, rather than better. This pessimistic outlook was a source of considerable comfort to her – after all, unhappiness could be relied upon in a way that happiness never could.

What did you think of when you were drowning? (Nothing in Sandy’s case because he was hit on the head by a crate of spam as he fell into the water.) So ends the night, Bunty thought.

She gets very confused (so do I but not about things like what century it is), not confused enough to be ‘put away’ (which is what George wishes for when it’s his turn for the wishbone),

Nell is asleep in an armchair next to the fire, a piece of tinsel wrapped mysteriously round her finger. Maybe it’s to remind her of something? Her personality perhaps?

Patricia returns her gaze to the ceiling and laughs mirthlessly, ‘I have a sickness of the soul,’ she declares in hollow, Gothic tones, closing her eyes and putting on the kind of sublimely bored expression that the Pre-Raphaelites were always demanding of their models. ‘Shall I tell Daddy that?’ I can just see his reaction if I say, ‘Patricia can’t come down, her soul’s sick.’ She laughs her Madeleine Usher laugh and waves a thin, pale hand in the air. ‘Tell him I’ve got my period – that’ll shut him up.’

Rachel wouldn’t stir herself from a chair to say goodbye to Jesus Christ himself.

The summer rolls on, vast oceans of nothing, punctuated by days playing with Christine. Mrs Roper is always asking us to look after the baby-David and we spend a good deal of time trying to lose him. A favourite game is Hide-and-Seek with him, where we Hide him somewhere – under a hedge in the garden or in the Ropers’ potting-shed, and then go off to Seek something else – Rags, perhaps, or the tortoise. On one memorable occasion (signalled as ‘Trafalgar Day’ on my calendar), we completely forgot where we had left him. If it hadn’t been for Rags, the baby-David might be in the airing-cupboard to this day.

Sometimes I would like to cry. I close my eyes. Why weren’t we designed so that we can close our ears as well? (Perhaps because we would never open them.) Is there some way that I could accelerate my evolution and develop earlids?

This conversation is fatally interrupted by George banging on the car window, telling us all to hurry up because we haven’t got all day. ‘Ah, but we have,’ says Patricia. ‘We have all day today, and then all day tomorrow and so it goes on until the crack of doom, believe me.’

‘How did he find Dresden? He couldn’t find his way round bloody Woolworth’s.’

In the days following the funeral I find myself reliving the ceremony again and again. I am haunted by the vision of the coffin sliding beyond the doors like a ship being launched into nothing. I want to run after it, drag it back. I want to lift the lid and demand answers from my father to questions I don’t even know how to ask.

I have been to the world’s end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer. I would put my sisters.

I am gripped by a wholly inappropriate urge to shake Bunty back to life and make her be our mother all over again – but do it better this time.

Perhaps my concept of love – as wide as the sky – isn’t big enough to encompass Bunty’s autistic mothering.

but now I realize that she’ll always be here, inside me, and I suppose when I’m least expecting it I’ll look in the mirror and see her expression or open my mouth and speak her words.

The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.

‘I don’t think the dead are lost for ever anyway, do you, Ruby?’ ‘Nothing’s lost for ever, Patricia, it’s all there somewhere. Every last pin.’

‘The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,’ she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. ‘Nonsense, Patricia,’ I tell her as I climb on board my train. ‘The past’s what you take with you.’