Therapy

really stunned him was the cut-and-thrust of mealtime conversation. It wasn’t that there was any real debate. Father thought he was encouraging us to think for ourselves, but in fact there were very strict limits to what it was permissible to say. You couldn’t have argued against the existence of God, for instance, or the truth of Christianity or the indissolubility of marriage. We children very soon cottoned on to these constraints, and domestic conversation became more of a point-scoring game, the aim being to discredit one of your siblings in the eyes of the rest of the family. If you misused a word, for instance, or made some error of fact, the others would be down on you at once like a ton of bricks. Tubby couldn’t cope with this at all. Of course, he used it much later in The People Next Door. The Springfields and the Davises are based essentially on my family and his, mutatis mutandis. The Springfields are totally secular, but that mixture of highmindedness and disputatiousness, their unacknowledged snobbery and prejudice, all go back to Tubby’s first impression of my family, while the Davises are a more rumbustious, somewhat sentimentalized version of his own, with bits of his Uncle Bert and-Aunt Molly added. I suppose that’s why I never cared for the programme. It stirs too many painful memories. Our wedding was particularly gruesome, with the two sets of totally incompatible relatives grinding and grating against each other.
    Why did I marry him? I thought I was in love with him. Well, perhaps I was. What is love, except thinking you’re in it? I was longing to rebel against my parents without knowing how to do it. Marrying Tubby was a way of asserting my independence. And we were both desperate for sex — I mean just the normal appetites of youth — but I wasn’t rebellious enough to think of having it outside marriage. And then Tubby did have an undeniable charm in those days. He had faith in himself, in his gift, and he made me share that faith. But most of all, he was fun to be with. He made me laugh.
     

* * THREE * *
     
    TUESDAY, 25th May. The plane trees outside my window are in leaf: rather listless, anaemic leaf, with no visible blossom, not like the creamy phallic candles of the chestnuts outside my study in Hollywell. There aren’t any squirrels scampering about in these branches, either, but that’s hardly surprising. I should be grateful — I am grateful — that trees grow here at all, considering the pollution in central London. There’s a narrow, featureless short cut between Brewer Street and Regent Street called Air Street that always makes me smile when I clock the nameplate. Smile rather than laugh because it’s invariably choked with traffic pumping carcinogenic exhaust fumes into the atmosphere, and you wouldn’t want to open your mouth if you could help it. Air Street. I don’t know how it got the name, but you could make a fortune selling bottled air round here.
     
    Now that I’m living permanently in the flat I find it claustrophobic. I miss the clean-smelling air of Hollywell, I miss the squirrels playing tag in the garden, I miss the daytime hush of those suburban streets where the loudest noise at this time of year is the burr of a distant lawnmower, or the pock pock of a game of tennis. But I couldn’t stand the strain of sharing the house with Sally any longer. Passing her in stony-faced silence on the stairs or in the hall; exchanging curt accusing little notes (“If you must leave the laundry to soak, please remove it before it is my turn to use the utility room. ” “As I bought the last bottle of Rinse-Aid for the dishwasher perhaps you would like to replace it next time”)-, hiding when she opened the front door to a neighbour or tradesman so that we wouldn’t be obliged to speak to each other in front of them; picking up the phone to make a call and dropping it like a hot brick because Sally was already using it, and then being tempted to press the monitor button and listen in... Whoever dreamed up that “separate lives” lark had a sadistic streak — or a warped sense of humour. When I described it to Jake he said, “You know, there’s a great idea for a sitcom there.” I haven’t spoken to him since.
     
    It feels strange, writing this journal again. There’s quite a gap in it. After Sally dropped her bombshell that evening (what exactly is, or was, a bombshell, incidentally? And how do you drop one without blowing yourself up? Is