Various Pets Alive and Dead by Marina Lewycka Read Free Book Online Page B

great crack opened up between the wall and the floor, through which a ton of bricks, books and floorboards thundered down into the room below.
    ‘What the f—!’ she heard Fred’s cry, and a muffled squeak from the Althusserian girl. Then silence.
    Marcus, now fully awake, reached out a hand to pull Doro away from the hole in the floor, and they raced downstairs to find Fred and the girl writhing under a heap of mud-coloured bedclothes covered in books (the bricks and floorboards had mercifully mostly fallen against the far wall), showing flashes of pale naked limbs and tousled mud-coloured hair as they tried to work out what had happened. The girl discovered a huge gash on her shin, and started to cry. Doro sat on the edge of the bed and put her arm around her.
    ‘It’s nothing compared to what’ll happen in the revolution, sister.’
    After the collapse of Fred’s ceiling/Marcus’s floor, the accommodation crisis became acute. Marcus and Doro dragged their mattress downstairs to the damp basement kitchen, which was the only available room, and were woken each morning by everyone else stepping over them as they congregated to make breakfast. Over cups of tea, burned toast and lumpy porridge around the kitchen table, a vision emerged of a place where they could all live together in a non-bourgeois non-private non-nuclear non-monogamous community, where they could put theory into practice and reach out to the masses; a community based on Marxism, vegetarianism, non-violence, non-competitiveness, creativity, communal ownership, home-grown vegetables, free love, Althusserian ideas (optional) and rejection of stereotypical gender roles (i.e. no housework); a place adorned with Capiz shell lampshades and macramé flowerpot holders, where everything would be shared from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
    Doro sighs. It was an adventure and, given the chance, she’d probably do it all again. But with fewer lentils.
    As dusk falls, the train pulls into Doncaster station, and there’s Marcus waiting for her on the platform. His brown curls are now white, but he still stands tall, his eyes are as blue as ever, and he’s wearing that red T-shirt she bought for him many years ago with the slogan ‘
I am a Marxist Groucho tendency
’.

SERGE: The mermaid
     
    Long long ago, before Serge and Clara were born, their previously normal parents were suddenly overwhelmed by insane ideas. This is what Clara told him. They decided pirates’ property was robbery and family life was impressive, she said, and they abandoned their house and hamster and went to live in a commune. As the oldest of the commune kids, Clara’s role was to interpret the Groans’ baffling pronouncements, though being slightly deaf at the time, she sometimes invented things.
    The trouble is, although her hearing’s okay now, Clara’s still bossy, and still makes things up. Like she’s convinced he was entirely to blame for that hamster debacle, and even though he’s almost twenty-nine now, she treats him like an Asbo. Which is why he doesn’t always tell her stuff.
    For example, he lied to her yesterday about not being in contact with Otto. In fact, a year after Otto was taken away from Solidarity Hall, following the fire, they bumped into each other at Glastonbury, and have kept in touch. At Cambridge they linked up again. Although he was two years ahead of Otto, and in a different college, and couldn’t understand why Otto had chosen computer science, which seemed pedestrian compared with maths or physics, they sometimes went out and got wasted together, and had intense conversations which neither could remember afterwards. The thing is, he was well within his rights to withhold this information, because he knows Otto won’t want to come to any saddo reunion. And because even if he did, he can’t be trusted not to blab to Clara about Serge’s career change – not out of malice or envy, but because he’s a blabby kind of