Such a lovely girl

Anna wiped the children’s faces before they went in. She straightened Jacob’s tie. He squirmed, was still. Marianna stood placidly by the bottom step.
Inside there was shouting. Anna expected one of the children to say something, ask a question or say they wanted to go home. She wouldn’t blame them if they did. She felt that way herself.
She knocked on the front door. Jacob and Marianne remained by the bottom step. Shuffling footsteps approached the door from the other side.
It took a moment or two for the many latches and locks to be opened. The children fidgeted in the cold air. Anna’s finger ends began to lose their colour. ‘I need the loo,’ Jacob said.
The door opened. Anna barely recognised the man on the threshold, standing hunched in the sudden draft caused by the mixing of warm and cold air. Her father, Gustave, a headteacher for twenty years, a housemaster before that, now lost in his own doorway, as if he’d left part of himself back in the sitting room.
‘Ah,’ he said by way of a greeting. He held out a bent arm, lowered his head a little. ‘So good of you to come.’ Always so formal, the old man. Even to his daughter and grandchildren. Even to his own wife, most of the time.
They stood in the hallway, the four of them, and for a moment no one spoke. All were pretending not to be listening to the voice, or voices, coming from the next room. It sounded like someone asking unwelcome visitors to leave. Gustave looked down at his grandchildren. ‘My but you have grown.’ His voice was whisper thin. The children hid behind their mother.
‘A bit shy today,’ Anna said.
‘Of course they are.’
Anna took the hands of her children, squeezed them gently. Marianna’s felt cold and sticky. The three of them followed Gustave in.
‘Hello mum,’ Anna said to the woman stood at the end of the room.
‘Oh I am so wicked, such a terrible terrible person, oh dear yes. You need to leave right now. You shouldn’t be here. I’ll do you no good.’
Gustave sat in his usual chair, with his back to his wife. She was leaning against the wall, her head tilted upwards a little, as if bracing herself for an earthquake or explosion. Anna looked at her two children. They stared at their grandmother with a mixture of terror and fascination. Marianna gripped her mother’s hand more tightly.
The three of them sat on the sofa; Anna in the middle, her children either side. The sofa was old and soft and gathered them into it. Jacob struggled to stay close to the edge with his feet on the floor. Marianna seemed to have stopped breathing. Her eyes had not left the strange sight of her grandmother, who in turn stared absently at the candelabra above the dining table.
‘And how is work?’ Gustave asked, his hands resting on his knees, as they always did when he sat. As they’d always done.
‘Good Dad, yes – but –’ Anna paused, looked back at her mother, who was swatting imaginary flies away from her face and talking to them all the while. ‘Won’t you come and sit down, mum?’
‘Oh no, I can’t do that – I must stay here. The chairs are dirty, too dirty. Like everything. Just so much filth. Where are my cloths?’ She moved towards the kitchen, her hands moving restlessly. Gustave turned in his chair.
‘Don’t worry about that now, Ellen. I will see to it all later, as I told you before.’
‘I need the loo,’ Jacob said.
‘And me,’ added Marianna.
‘We’ll go together,’ Jacob said.
They were out of the room before Anna had time to speak.
‘Oh, where are my cloths?’ Ellen asked, panic rising in her voice.
‘Why don’t I make us some tea?’
In the kitchen, Anna leant against the counter top and forced herself to slow her breathing. She filled the kettle with water and waited for it to boil. Her mother had a point; the house was dirty. There was a thick rim of scum around the sink, and the floor needed a good sweeping. Her father had never been a practical man; his books were too important. They came first, even now.
Anna looked through the serving hatch. Her mother was sitting on a dining room chair, attempting to remove a heat ring from the polished surface using only the cuff of her cardigan. Gustave had a book in his hand, but Anna could see that he wasn’t reading.
She took the teapot in. Her mother stood unsteadily and moved towards her, arms outstretched. ‘No, that is the wrong tea pot, can’t you see? It has a chip in it. The tea will be ruined now. All of it ruined. I should have thrown it away before, when I could. Now look, all the tea ruined.’
Gustave stood and took her arm. ‘It’s alright Ellen. This teapot is fine for us. Don’t make such a fuss.’
Ellen pulled her arm away from her husband. ‘Get off me you stupid man. Just keep your fucking hands off me. You stupid, stupid man. Oh why did I marry you and have all those children. Where are they now, those children? Where? I’m no good for any of it, no good at all.’
Theirs had always been a polite home. If they had gone out, perhaps for an evening, or if they were on holiday by the pool, the sound of ‘toilet words’ always raised comment from Ellen. ‘Only dirty people swear,’ she’d say. So the word, as soon as it left Ellen’s mouth, hung in the air like pollution. Ellen shrank back into herself, began slapping her leg. ‘Oh dear me,’ she muttered. ‘Oh dear me.’
‘It has been getting somewhat worse,’ Gustave said as they went back to the sofa, leaving Ellen alone in the middle of the room.
‘I’m sorry Dad.’
‘Yes.’
The children returned and stood at the door. Marianna had been crying. A sensitive girl, like her own mother at that age. Anna stood, gestured for her father to remain seated.
‘I think we should make a move,’ she said.
‘Of course,’ her father replied.
Her mother moved towards Anna and the children, who shrank behind their mother. ‘Have you seen Anna?’ she asked. ‘Such a lovely girl. Lovely, lovely Anna.’