Chapter 29 Perspectives differ again.

Culture, control, and the child in between.

North Hampshire, 1993.

There were only a few clouds in the sky, and it wasn’t raining. Mum was making lunch, and letting Cathy help, with gentle guidance.

“It’s a lovely sunny day!” she said. “Let’s have lunch in the garden!”

I shivered.

“It’s only nineteen degrees centigrade, mum!”

“You can always put a cardigan on!”

I took the cutlery and a lace tablecloth, the one I’d bought for her in Portugal, with matching napkins, into the garden. Cathy followed me. She ran around the lawn, to where her grandfather was kneeling by the flower border, weeding, and climbed on his back.

“Horsey!” she laughed.

Dad laughed, but muttered, “I’m getting too old for this!”

I picked her up and set her on the grass.

“Come and see the flowers,” he called, and she squatted down by his side, reaching her plump hands towards the roses and lupins by the border, taller than her.

“Fwowa, fwora.”

Dad laughed again, picked her up and swung her around, imitating her. “Fwowa, fwowa.”

I helped mum carry the lunch to the table, in little glass dishes. Cold meats, potato salad with garden chives, and a dozen other dishes. We sat down on the plastic chairs, with an extra cushion for Cathy. She sat, legs dangling.

“Should I bring the highchair out?”

“No, she can manage, mum.”

“We need to say our grace first,” she said, and my parents spoke their prayers, something I hadn’t seen in Portugal, while I sat silently.

Mum started serving the food, but Cathy had slid to the floor and was crawling around under the table. Dad tutted. I picked her up and cut up her food. She took a mouthful, then slid onto the floor between our feet.

Dad huffed.

“Can’t this child behave?”

I picked her up and put her on my lap.

“Come on Cathy. Here comes the aeroplane!” and zoomed the spoon into her mouth.

After lunch, mum and I walked with her to the park nearby, to the swings, roundabout and climbing frame with a slide. Mum put her on a swing, and pushed her, gently.

I wished there was something like this in Marco de Canaveses, where there was an old playpark in the centre of the municipal gardens. The concrete slide was too high, and only the swing was broken. Children were rarely left to themselves there.

When we returned, dad had retreated to his office. The door was closed, but I could hear him snoring.

Peace and quiet. That was what he always said he wanted for his birthday and Christmas. Not easy, in our house. But when he returned from his London office at the end of the afternoon, we would all be banished to the dining room while he watched the news in the sitting room.

He emerged, refreshed, at five o’clock. He bounced Cathy on his knee and sang to her.

“Oh the grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men…”

“Cup of tea?” offered mum, for the fifth time that day.

He lifted Cathy off his lap and put her on the floor, where mum had put the toys; wooden bricks, jigsaws and lego. Cathy squealed.

Dad turned on the news.

“When does this child go to bed?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s too early yet. She won’t sleep until eight.”

“Not till eight? We used to put you lot to bed at six! Children should be seen and not heard!”

He looked annoyed.

Cathy was running in front of the television, chasing a balloon she had found behind the sofa.

Dad groaned. Suddenly, he stood up, picked her up, and put her in the corridor.

“You can stay there!”

Mum made a face, but her tone didn’t change. “Oh don’t exaggerate!” Then turned to Cathy, “Shall I tell you a story?” And, picking up a book from our childhood favourites, she read, Cathy sitting on her lap.

In Portugal, Luís would do this often, but not my mother-in-law. Years later, when I asked my students whether their mothers read to them, one laughed: “Professora! That’s only in films.”

The next day, we had a trip to Guildford, our favourite shopping centre. Dad stayed at home. Cathy was still in nappies, and I was relieved to see that there were baby changing facilities everywhere. She was in a pushchair, but when we got to mum’s favourite boutique, she wriggled and grizzled until we released her.

In Portugal the week before, an assistant had picked her up and played with her, giving her a lollipop; at lunch, a waiter distracted her long enough for us to eat.

Here, Cathy found two steps towards the back of the shop. She jumped down them, giggling. Once. Twice. Three times…

The assistant glared at me.

“Do you think you could keep your child under control?” she asked, crisply.

We returned by Air Portugal after a week. I was slightly nervous, but armed with distractions; books, action toys, crayons, knowing how hard it would be to keep her in her seat.

After take-off, several small children started running up and down the aisles. Arms reached out from the seats as they ran, and no-one seemed upset. Periodically, the cabin crew requested the children to sit down so they could pass with the trolleys. Cathy had disappeared behind the business class curtain.

“Don’t worry!” one of the cabin crew winked. “She’s made friends with some passengers in business class.”

Cathy returned to me, periodically, to show me a pen that someone had given her. But after we landed, she walked hand in hand with a young man. No one I knew.

Luís was watching from the viewing gallery above the arrivals hall.

“How did Cathy meet Pedro Lamy?”

“Who’s Pedro Lamy?”

“A Portuguese racing driver. Very known here.”

He looked at me, laughing.

“Don’t you know who he is?”