Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes Read Free Book Online Page A

it? And even supposing they agreed, how did they then go about it? Here’s a haunting would-you-rather. Would you rather tear up your own expressions of love, or the ones you had received?
    In company, I would now lower myself gently onto the pouffe; alone, I would drop heavily, so that its exhalation might jet out a scrap of blue airmail paper bearing one or other of my parents’ youthful hands. If this were a novel, I would have discovered some family secret— but no one will know the child isn’t yours, or they will never find the knife now, or I always wanted J. to be a girl —and my life would have been changed for ever. (Actually, my mother did want me to be a girl, and had the name Josephine waiting, so that would have been no secret.) Or—on the other hand—I might have discovered only the best words my parents’ hearts could find for one another, their tenderest expressions of devotion and truth. And no mystery.
    The collapsing pouffe was at some point chucked out. But instead of being put in the dustbin, it was dumped at the bottom of the garden, where it became heavy, rain-sodden, and increasingly discoloured. I would kick it occasionally as I passed, my wellington ejecting a few more blue scraps, the ink now running, the likelihood of legible secrets being divulged even less. My kicks were those of a disheartened Romantic. So this is what it all comes to?

Chapter 9

    Thirty-five years later, I was faced with the final leavings of my parents’ lives. My brother and I each wanted a few things; my nieces had their pick; then the house-clearer came in. He was a decent, knowledgeable fellow, who talked to the items as he handled them. I presume the habit must have started as a way of gently preparing the customer for disappointment, but it had turned into a kind of conversation between himself and the object in his hand. He also recognized that what would soon be haggled over coldly in his shop was now, here, for the last time, something which had once been chosen, then lived with, wiped, dusted, polished, repaired, loved. So he found praise where he could: “This is nice—not valuable, but nice”; or “Victorian moulded glass—this is getting rarer—it’s not valuable, but it’s getting rarer.” Scrupulously polite to these now ownerless things, he avoided criticism or dislike, preferring either regret or long-term hope. Of some 1920s Melba glasses ( horrible, I thought): “Ten years ago these were very fashionable; now no one wants them.” Of a basic Heal’s green-and-white checkerboard plant holder: “We need to wait another forty years for this.”
    He took what was saleable and departed in a peel of fifty-pound notes. Then it was a matter of filling the back of the car and making several trips to the local recycling centre. Being my mother’s son, I had bought a number of heavy green plastic sacks for the job. I carried the first of them to the rim of the big yellow skip and realized—now even more my mother’s son—that they were far too useful to throw away. And so, instead of leaving the final remnants of my parents’ lives confidentially bagged, I poured the house-clearer’s rejects into the skip and kept the sacks. (Is this what my mother would have wanted?) One of the last items was a stupid metal cowbell that Dad had bought in Champéry, on that trip from which my brother reported a disappointing ham sandwich; it ding-donged clonkily down into the skip. I looked at the spread of stuff below me and, though there was nothing incriminating or even indiscreet, felt slightly cheap: as if I had buried my parents in a paper bag rather than a proper coffin.

Chapter 10

    This is not, by the way, “my autobiography.” Nor am I “in search of my parents.” I know that being someone’s child involves both a sense of nauseated familiarity and large no-go areas of ignorance—at least, if my family is anything to judge by. And though I still wouldn’t mind a transcript of that