Semi-Detached by Griff Rhys Jones Read Free Book Online

second floors built into mansard roofs. ‘Stop.
This could be it,’ I commanded.
    ‘I
thought it was a bungalow’
    ‘Yes,
but these places were once bungalows. I’m sure of it. Look, they must have
built these silky roofs on later. That’s exactly the same crusty grey
pebble-dash. Those are the concrete slabs of the path round the side. And look.
I remember those prefab garages.
    I rang
my mother. ‘I can’t remember the name of the street,’ she said. ‘My memory is
going for all that sort of thing. Anyway,’ she went on, remembering after all, ‘I
was never there for more than half an hour. We’d dump you lot and high-tail out
of it.’
    ‘Where
were you going?’ I sounded abandoned.
    ‘Oh,
just off on holiday without you for a change.’
    ‘Oh.
Well, this is where you dumped us.’
    ‘No, it
wasn’t.’ She remembered more. ‘It was a cul-de-sac.’
    ‘They
probably extended the road later.’ I took a last look at the horrid little
house we used to hate.
    When we
were back on the motorway my mother rang back. ‘It was Brewster something. I’ve
just remembered. Brewster Road, or Close. You see, my memory isn’t so bad.’
    We’d
been nowhere near.

 
     
     
    3. All About Me
     
     
    Between attempts to
prostrate my poor mother by ‘disappearing’ in public places and ‘appearing’ in
even more public places, I was gaining a reputation as a forward child: cheeky,
of a ‘sunny disposition’ and a nuisance, sniffing out the advantages of my
position. I was one year ahead of the vulnerable, girly baby, Helen, and three
years behind the aged William. He had to take responsibility for all three
children, the dignity of the entire family, and the duty of carrying dicta to
elderly relatives, while, as ‘Griffith, Griffith Bach’, I was allowed to simper
and wriggle.
    ‘Don’t
shift the blame on to Griff, you’re the oldest.’
    ‘You
can stay behind and help your father … because you’re the oldest.’
    He was
also the biggest, so he could hurt me. His function, apart from absorbing
parental flak, of course, was to act as a mobile punch bag.
    My own
son had nobody but a little sister to fight with so I had to wrestle with him,
but fathers say, ‘Not now,’ and laugh at key assaults, whereas brothers, given
a hefty kick getting into the car, respond in kind and get themselves into
trouble. You could karate-chop an older brother to see if it really hurt. He in
his turn didn’t just ‘play’ at fighting. He liked to win. (‘No punching! No
biting!’) If he shouted, ‘Submit,’ there was always the last resort of pushing
him to the limit so that he actually hurt me. I could yowl seriously then,
provoking Mother to leave Mrs Dale’s Diary and demand furiously why
William, who was the oldest , didn’t know his own strength. And look, he
had actually hurt his brother, and we had better stop fighting and go outside,
otherwise our father would hear of it. Temporarily gathered up into a bosomy,
powdery hug, I could be the brave one. Then I could follow him outside and
whack him with a stick.
    I was
put up for things: songs, recitations, kisses. My mother recalls a visit to an
end-of-the-pier show in Bognor. The family sat up with glassy-eyed attention
when, during a break in the musical light entertainment, the cast were joined
by a four-year-old boy who came on and sang ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’. The
grisly child was me.
    I knew
how to suck up. Our earliest holidays were at a place called Gorran Haven in
Cornwall. We stayed in a flat above a crab—fisherman’s locker and played on the
beach, while my father paced about in a distracted fashion on a cliff until it was ice-cream time. Here, I recall, I made apaper knife out of a
spider crab’s leg and a bit of charred driftwood. I solemnly presented it to
my mother. It hung around the house smelling noxiously for most of my
childhood.
    Occasionally
we travelled to Cardiff, on a deathly visit to Nain, my father’s mother,