Meanwhile…

  A few miles away…

  The countryside, near Thrimp

  Wiltshire

  United Kingdom

  Earth

  -Amanda-

  ‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ rumbled Mr. Poffingsworth, ostensibly to a steaming potato. He sat at the head of the table and spoke in a continuous roll that left no gaps between syllables for even the most determined interruptor to jimmy an ‘um’ into. He gave the impression that a lifetime of winning difficult conversations against difficult people had left him so casually oppressive that he had to consciously tone himself down in normal conversations so as not to win them unintentionally.

  ‘No,’ said Kylie.

  As a response it seemed insufficient. ‘I haven’t been here,’ she added.

  Mr. Poffingsworth enjoyed his potato in silence.

  Kylie, uncertain whether to follow suit, cautiously enforked a sprout and raised it to her mouth; but just as her lips parted to accept it, Mr. Poffingsworth muttered:

  ‘That would explain it.’

  Amanda groaned internally. Through years of dark experience she had learned to hunker down and weather the blizzards of he father’s conversation; but poor Kylie, seated next to her on the long side of the table, was caught in the middle of one with nothing but politeness and good intentions for defence.

  Amanda glanced over at her; the poor girl had the familiar look of someone maintaining a cheerful expression while trying to work out whether Mr. Poffingsworth was attacking them.

  ‘Wonderful food, Mrs. Poffingsworth!’ Kylie blurted.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Mrs. Poffingsworth, who sat at the end of the table opposite her husband, warmly. ‘Do help yourself, there’s plenty more of everything. Apart from the parsnips.’

  ‘Oh,’ gushed Kylie overenthusiastically. ‘What a shame! The parsnips are lovely!’

  Mr. Poffingsworth stopped eating and looked at her.

  ‘Ah… so’s everything else, obviously,’ she added hurriedly.

  Mr. Poffingsworth’s face, a study in blotches and wobbles, tilted down so that his eyes fixed on her over the top of his glasses.

  ‘You can have my parsnips,’ he intoned slowly.

  ‘Um. No, no, I’m fine, thank you’.

  ‘I didn’t ask you how you are,’ he replied, his glasses still lowered over his nose.

  ‘N-… um,’

  ‘I invited you to my parsnips.’

  ‘Um. No, thank you. It’s okay. Thank you.’

  ‘Nor did I ask you whether ‘it’ is okay,’ he continued.

  ‘Ahh.’

  ‘Whatever ‘it’ might be.’

  He eyed her expectantly.

  ‘There’s really no need, thank you,’ said Kylie, her face turning the same shade as the medium-rare beef that flopped lifelessly on the end of Mr. Poffingsworth’s fork.

  ‘I’m perfectly aware, Kylie’, he intoned, pronouncing her name as though he didn’t believe it was her real one, ‘that there is no need for parsnips. The human race would doubtless have achieved all that it has achieved, from the taming of fire right up to landing on the moon-’ Amanda noted without surprise that he counted landing on the moon as humankind’s most recent achievement ‘-perfectly adequately without parsnips. They are a pleasant, optional addition to life, and as such I invite you to mine.’

  ‘Then, ah, I politely refuse,’ said Kylie, smiling too much. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Refuse, do you?’

  ‘I, um-’

  ‘Politely, is it?’

  ‘Well-’

  ‘Polite, are you?’

  ‘I’m trying my best!’ she grinned desperately.

  ‘Doesn’t sound very polite. Refusing.’

  ‘I, uh. I apologise? Mr. Poffingsworth?’

  ‘Oh do stop it Alan, the poor girl is a guest. Just ignore him, Kylie, he-’

  ‘I politely call you a glob of phlegm in a half-wit’s handkerchief.’

  ‘Alan!’ cried Mrs. Poffingsworth.

  ‘Perfectly alright. I said I was being polite.’

  ‘I assure you, you are not.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Kylie, pleadingly.

  ‘This is how they talk now, dear,’ he said. ‘It’s a perfect strategy,’ he went on, softly pushing his fork into the unresisting flesh of a sprout. ‘You can’t ever say anything wrong or upset anyone, because you’ve made it unequivocally clear that you’re being polite. They put up polite notices all over the office too.’

  ‘I don’t work in an office, Mr. Poffingsworth, I’m still at unive-’

  ‘Polite notice: if the bin is full, please empty it. Polite notice: Please do not take personal calls in the office as others may find it distracting. Polite notice: please wash your own cup. Don’t you? And they write kind regards at the end of e-mails. Even emails that are self-evidently unkind! It’s genius.’

  ‘No one cares, dad,’ said Amanda.

  ‘You’ll stop putting sensible arguments together at all soon. You’ll all just say “eloquently and convincingly” at the end of whatever half-baked drivel you feel the overwhelming need to spout in the heat of the moment, and that’ll be that.’ The fork descended from the wagging position to lend force to the mauling of a slice of beef.

  ‘Kylie,’ began Mrs. Poffingsworth, kindly.

  ‘Your honour, I state indubitably and utterly convincingly that my client is innocent.’ said Mr. Poffingsworth, loudly. ‘Oh, well, that’s that then, good show, thanks for saving us all that time. Off you go then, no prison for you!’

  ‘I take your point, Mr. Poffingsworth,’ said Kylie bravely.

  ‘Do what you want with it,’ he muttered. ‘So long as you do so politely.’

  Cutlery tinkled some more.

  Kylie found herself afraid to chew too loudly.

  ‘That is an interesting point, Dad.’ Amanda said suddenly. ‘Just out of interest, what have you been writing instead of “yours sincerely” at the bottom of all your letters, since the day you decided it was such an intolerable breach of etiquette?’

  Mr. Poffingsworth’s fork halted its ascent. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What have you been writing instead of yours sincerely, given that it would be a reprehensible and transparent attempt at deception to make claims as to your own sincerity.’

  ‘That’s not the same thing’.

  ‘It absolutely is exactly the same,’ said Amanda.

  Mr. Poffingsworth masticated contemplatively.

  ‘Genevieve and her fiancé are going to Latvia for their honeymoon in August,’ said Mrs. Poffingsworth.

  ‘Oh that sounds nice.’ said Kylie. ‘I think. Is Latvia a holiday place?’

  ‘Another’s sincerity or insincerity is in their intentions, id est, entirely internal to them, and not mine to observe or judge ad hoc,’ Mr. Poffingsworth rumbled. ‘Politeness, on the other hand, is external, observable, and objective. Ergo, to assure another of one’s sincerity is appropriate, it being private and unobservable, but to assure another of one’s politeness, which can be observed and measured against objective standards’—Mr. Poffingsworth looked up over the rim of his glasses again—‘is trampling roughshod over their prerogative to make the judgement for themselves.’

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  ‘Three Latins!’ said Amanda. ‘Goodness. You must be right.’

  ‘I present,’ said Mr. Poffingsworth, ‘a perfectly irrefutable argument, in an irresistibly persuasive manner, that you are a three-legged brontosaurus.’

  ‘Well in that case,’ said Amanda through a mouthful of vegetables. ‘Moo.’

  ‘I also present the self-evident argument that you’re a flippant arse!’

  ‘Alan!’

  ‘Ad hominem, father!’ replied Amanda.

  ‘Quod erat demonstrandum!!’ exclaimed Mr. Poffingsworth, laying down his fork with a clatter.

  He frowned at her intently. She made a show of being too engrossed in her dinner to care.

  ‘From the garden,’ he said eventually, to Kylie.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The parsnips. They’re from the garden.’

  ‘Oh. Ah… They’re very nice.’

  ‘As you say. Now give me your plate,’ said Mr. Poffingsworth.

  He took the plate from Kylie’s tentatively outstretched hand, placed it next to his own and, with no regard whatsoever for the awkwardness of the situation, slowly and laboriously transferred his own gravy-and-mustard-smeared parsnips from his plate to hers, one by one, using his own knife and fork, occasionally assisted by his thumb. Kylie expressed her thanks twice during the process, adding another “thank you” when he returned the plate.

  She looked down at the newly parsnip-heavy lunch, now significantly colder than it had been, then looked back up at Mr. Poffingsworth.

  ‘Mmmmm!’ she said enthusiastically.

  But his attention was now devoted to his own beef-laden fork and he spared her not the slightest acknowledgement. Whatever it was that he had just done, he clearly now considered it finished.

  Amanda looked up at Kylie. She clearly wasn’t used to this sort of tension at mealtimes; she was looking around like a meerkat, doing nervous things with her face, obviously trying to think of something to say and hopelessly failing.

  ‘Tell us about Geni and Latvia, Mum,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘Very unconventional, isn’t it?’ said Mrs. Poffingsworth. ‘But we’re all for it. Breaking with tradition, I mean. Aren’t we Alan?’ She looked at him pointedly, eliciting nothing. ‘Have you met Genevieve, Kylie?

  ‘No. I’ve heard lots about her, obviously…’ she replied, glancing at Amanda, who had never told her anything about Genevieve.

  ‘You’d get on very well,’ said Mrs. Poffingsworth matter-of-factly. ‘She and Hugo are very progressive.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘After the wedding they’re going to have double-barrelled surnames.’

  Mr. Poffingsworth’s cutlery clacked against his plate as he set it down, his neck blossoming an unhappy crimson.

  ‘This again!’ he clamoured.

  ‘Alan doesn’t approve,’ she added, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘As long as I’m footing the bill-’

  ‘Oh, not now, Alan, you’ve had one rant.’

  ‘It’s bad enough she’s up the duff-’

  ‘Alan!’

  ‘Pish, woman, it’s only a secret from anyone too stupid to wonder at a sudden wedding in the pissing cold of January…what are they planning to call themselves anyway? Do we know? Wimble-Poffinsgworth, is it? Or Poffingsworth-Wimble?’

  ‘Wimble-Poffinsgworth, I believe,’ said Mrs. Poffingsworth coldly.

  ‘Wimble-Poffingsworth! For the love of god. What a thing to inflict on a child. Imagine the poor little bastard-‘

  ‘Alan!’

  ‘Bastard it is, conceived out of wedlock, and so bastard I say!’ he barely raised his voice, but the effect was dramatic. He continued uninterrupted: ‘wincing every time a teacher calls the register. A fine long queue there’ll be in the playground to kick her in the head.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ve thought it through,’ sniffed Mrs. Poffingsworth.

  ‘And every thump of the boot that pair of idiots’ doing. God knows we've suffered enough over generations just for being Poffingsworths,’ he barrelled on. ‘Why she wants not only to hang onto the damn thing but strap a great warbling kazoo of a name like Wimble onto the side of it…’

  ‘I think it’s very admirable of them,’ said Mrs. Poffingsworth. She smiled warmly at Kylie. ‘Subverting the patriarchy.’

  ‘Subvert it all you bloody want!’ Mr. Poffingsworth barked. ‘Subvert it until it’s got its trousers round its ears and its bollocks in its nostrils if you like—’

  ‘Alan!’

  ‘—but tell me this, hmm, what happens when our darling grandchild, when little Tallulah Wimble-Poffingsworth, or whatever clownish name they choose to curse her with, grows up? Eh? And comes home on the arm of some young dandy with a new suit and a bunch of flowers who politely introduces himself as Rodney Buggerington-Smythe, hmm, son of another pair of patriarchy-subverters, and declares that she is in love with him, asinine surname and all, and wants to append herself to him in the same admirably progressive and patriarchy-subverting manner as her own parents? Mmm? And then, mmm, when she graces the Earth with his offspring, what then, eh? Are we to have a troupe of little Buggerington--Poffingsworth-Wimble-Smythes running about the place? Very admirable they’ll be. Or will we just pick the stupidest part from each side?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Poffingsworth icily.

  ‘An acronym, perhaps?’

  The frost in her eyes looked almost enough to freeze the beef on his fork but he leaned forward, as impervious as an avalanche. ‘You can glare at me all you like, dear. You may elevate your disapproval to growling and hissing, if you feel minded to do so. But I remain the only voice of common sense in this debacle and as such I am obliged to intervene.’

  ‘What you are, and what you are not,’ replied Mrs. Poffingsworth in syllables as sharp as scissors, ‘I shall refrain from speculating upon at table, save for the obvious fact that you are ill-mannered.’

  He leaned back and harrumphed. ‘You can tell her from me that if she intends to be married in anything finer than a registry office and a supermarket blouse, she will first go and legally change her name to his, or even better change both their names to something sensible, and then go and see Gilbert about signing a contract preventing her from changing it back. Then, and only then, when that contract is in my hands, will there be a wedding fund for her to waste on frocks and flowers and overdressed bits of salmon.’ And with that, he delivered the slice of beef into his mouth and busied himself chewing, his decree delivered.

  The three remaining participants looked at one another uncertainly.

  ‘I apologise, Kylie,’ said Mrs. Poffingsworth. ‘Meals at our house aren’t always quite so fraught.’

  ‘Yes they are,’ said Amanda. ‘They’re just usually quieter.’

  And so the meal progressed, fraught but quiet, for some minutes. Kylie remained silent, Amanda noted with relief and approval.

  Eventually Mr. Poffingsworth leaned back in his chair, which creaked in distress; despite having done the lion’s share of the talking, he had also finished his meal.

  ‘That was very nice,’ he said. ‘Now, you two.’ He turned his attention to Amanda and Kylie, who were seated next to one another along the long side of the dining table. Kylie froze as though he had pulled out a gun. ‘I’ve given this some thought,’ he rumbled on.

  Amanda continued eating, vaguely hoping that if she ignored him he would get annoyed enough to finally have the heart attack his face had long promised.

  ‘You’re lesbians.’

  The sounds of eating stopped.

  The echo of the sentence bounced around the silent room, clattering and ricocheting off the walls like a startled pigeon.

  Amanda played and replayed it back through her mind’s ears, looking for the error, unable to accept that what she had heard correlated with had been said.

  As the shadow of those words engulfed the scene, the food she was staring at resolved into sharp focus. Its colours were suddenly harsh, organic and revolting; before her eyes her lunch transformed into wet, lukewarm chunks of plants and the muscle tissue of a dead farm animal, slopped over with glistening oily brown. Her stomach seemed to contract in revulsion as the sprout in her mouth turned to bitter, poisonous mush, the fork in her hand a vulgar weapon whose cold steel rasped nastily against her skin. The lights were too bright, her clothes too tight, her skin too hot.

  The world before he said those two words and the world afterwards separated tectonically. She watched, helpless, as the cataclysmic rift widened with each passing second, with her on the wrong side of it.

  ‘I’ve given it some thought,’ he barrelled on.

  ‘Wait, Mr. Poffingsworth, sorry b-’ began Kylie.

  ‘Don’t deny it, girl, you are and we all know you are so please don’t insult us by lying.’

  ‘No, it’s not- I’m not-’

  ‘This conversation is not happening,’ said Amanda before Kylie could confirm or deny anything. She wanted to get up and walk away but something wouldn’t let her.

  ‘Perhaps-’ said Mrs. Poffingsworth.

  ‘Would you please,’ snapped Mr. Poffingsworth, silencing the other three, ‘do me the courtesy of listening to what I have to say before broadcasting your reactions to it!’

  ‘No, dad,’ Amanda said hotly, quietly, setting down her cutlery. ‘if you wanted to have a conversation about that, the right time was about ten years ago.’

  ‘Settle your emotions, child, and disabuse yourself of the notion that this is a conversation.’ His tone was flat and empty. ‘I am informing, not consulting you.’

  Amanda’s mind raced for something to say that would stop him from planting his great dirty feet in this private territory of hers but her mind was blank, stunned into passive stupidity by the violation, as though he suddenly had his hand on her liver. ‘In fact I am doing you the service of avoiding the need for ‘coming out’, as you call it, and if you will only listen, a great deal besides.’

  She could feel Kylie’s eyes on her, expecting a defence that would not come. She simply sat, as defenceless as a snail pulled from its shell, while the enormous red man splashed words across the table like salt.

  ‘Your sexuality is of far less interest to me than you seem to think, girl. God knows I’ve known enough covert homosexuals over thirty years in Westminster and believe me you’re better off being upfront about these things. My opinion on the matter is that you’re old enough to do what you want and at least you won’t end up like your sister.’

  Mrs. Poffingsworth inhaled sharply, but knew better than to interrupt.

  ‘Now, listen. You’ve been… courting for some years now, hmmm, and don’t try to pretend you haven’t, your mother and I are neither blind nor deaf, and as you seem to see fit to go about things as though Kylie were a young gentleman, so shall we. Now. When Genivieve and Hugo are married, they will move in together and he will vacate the flat in the village. Kylie here will live in it, giving you free… visitation to one another, though it goes without saying that you will be discreet. She will have your sister’s old car, as she seems to have given up on learning to drive it, and I’ve spoken with a man I know at the University of York about transferring her studies there. They may require her to take an extra module or two to smooth over the cracks but it should all be in place for September.’

  Amanda could imagine Kylie’s face, her eyebrows forced up in incredulity, stretching the skin above her eyes, exposing the dark skin of the eyelids, but she couldn’t look at her, couldn’t allow anything to pass between them to prove her father right. Nor could she look at him, not without her face giving her vulnerability away. She desperately racked her brain for anything she could do to stop this from happening but it was like hammering at the keyboard of a frozen computer.

  And so, for the lack of any executable action that wouldn’t somehow make it worse, she fixed her expression like concrete and weathered the storm.

  ‘It’s no less than what we did with Hugo when he showed up half-educated and penniless,’ he added, turning to Kylie. ‘You’ll have a monthly stipend so there’ll be no further need for waitressing. Your time will be spent studying, not ferrying people’s tea about the place.’

  After a moment, Kylie guffawed. ‘Is this real?’

  ‘Don’t be facetious. There-’

  ‘Wait,’ she interrupted, ‘sorry, Mr. Poffingsworth, I’m sure you’re being kind in your way but I am so, so uncomfortable with this.’

  Mr. Poffingsworth lowered his tone, in the way that those with money naturally do when talking about money. ‘You are welcome to repay it once you graduate and find proper work, if it bothers you. Far easier to repay it then, when you’ll have a proper income, than slaving away for tea-shop wages now when you should be getting your head down in the library. You see the logic in that, surely.’

  ‘Well, obviously but, um… I’m sorry but I’m actually really happy with my course. And my job. Thank you, I mean.’ She laughed nervously.

  ‘If you intend to support my daughter, I’ll see that you have the means to do so. Which starts with a proper education.’

  ‘Support your… I don’t-’

  ‘Don’t react emotionally. Consider the thing with a cool head,’ he said. ‘The sense in it will be readily apparent. I’ll have my pudding in the study.’

  With that he scraped his chair cacophonously backwards on the weathered tiles, rotated his stomach out from under the table, rose, and shuffled heavily past the seated women, grunting ‘Welcome to the family.’

  When he had left the room, Mrs. Poffingsworth stood without saying a word and busied herself clearing the table; Kylie, the product of a well-mannered upbringing, automatically fell into helping.

  Amanda sat numbly, waiting for the stalled machinery of her mind to restart, listening to the familiar clattering of crockery punctuated by the distant beeping of Mr. Poffingsworth’s chess machine.