The Birthday Present: A Novel by Barbara Vine

Author:Barbara Vine [Vine, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0307451984
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2009-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

WE DEPEND ON the television in this household. I don't particularly care for it, I never have, but Justin loves it, as all children do, and Gerry watches it compulsively. I used to think he was an intelligent man but I've had to revise my opinion. He and Justin sit on the sofa—I sit in an armchair—and watch program after program with no discrimination whatsoever. Well, I shall correct that. If anything very horrible comes on, battles and corpses—they don't seem to mind showing dead bodies anymore—he doesn't turn it off, he changes channels. There used to be a phrase current when I was a child: “Glued to the glowing cathode.” I think that was quite clever, it was so apt. Gerry will change to anything Justin may want to watch, the most banal cartoons or pop music rubbish, but if I dare to ask for something marginally more intellectual, he always says Justin wouldn't like it or it wouldn't be suitable for Justin. I have actually said in reply that in that case I'll go and watch it on the set in the kitchen and, outrageous as it seems, he hasn't said a word to stop me. Usually it ends in my going upstairs to work on the scrapbook, writing captions to some of the pictures and putting names to the people with Tesham and Carmen in some classy venue.

So when the television broke down a couple of weeks ago I was rather pleased than otherwise. At least it would mean we might have a proper conversation in the evenings, Gerry talking to his son, which he was supposed to want to do when he started letting him stay up late. Or we could even listen to the radio. But things happened differently. The man who came to repair the set said he would have to take it away and it might be gone for at least a week. You would have thought the end of the world had come. The black-and-white set in the kitchen would have to be brought into the living room, Gerry said. Never mind that my daytime viewing would be at an end or my alternative viewing in the evening.

I don't know what made me say what I did. Or, rather, I do know, I know only too well. It's the way I am, the way I act. Bluntly, brutally, I want them to love me—well, to like me, for that's all I can expect. It hasn't been allowed to happen. How could it when Gerry is always telling Justin how wonderful his mother was, showing him her picture, telling him in a soppy outdated way that his mother is in heaven, loving him and watching over him? I'd hoped Gerry would—well, perhaps not love me, I gave up on that long ago, but at least grow fond of me, tell me again that I was indispensable. But there are no signs he feels any different toward me than he did when first I came.

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