Higher Ground Anke Stelling (great novels of all time .TXT) 📖

The fact that I can’t rebel against the Weekend Lie doesn’t mean that I have to fall for the Family Holiday Lie. I stick to my plan: to stick it out without a plan. To build on the fact that we’re all responsible for keeping our own show on the road, including me.

Sunday.

The boys’ room stinks.

I know it’ll get worse the older they get. Now, it only smells of farts, hot plastic, and metal casing, rotting fruit cores and Jack’s dental brace, which is lying among the half-chewed apples.

‘Get some fresh air in here,’ I say and receive a growl as a reply. Which could mean anything, including ‘yes’, so I close the door again.

I ask Lynn if she wants to play Halma.

‘Do I have to?’

‘No, but I thought you might like to.’

I ask Bea what she’s up to. She’s sitting at her desk.

‘Nothing. Why?’

She covers up whatever she’s doing.

‘A secret? A present for me?’

She groans and rolls her eyes.

‘Sorry. I was only joking.’

None of the kids needs me. I can do what I want!

What do I want?

Bake a cake. Tidy up the flat. Freeze the present moment, extend it into infinity, so that I can be truly free.

I could sleep. Get some rest. It is Sunday, after all!

Sven is sitting in the bedroom, looking at his computer screen.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

‘Writing emails.’

‘Will you go for a walk with me?’

‘A Sunday stroll?’

It’s raining. I stare out of the window.

‘I can’t relax.’

‘Why not?’ he says.

‘Because the flat’s a mess again.’

Sven laughs.

‘What’s funny about that?’

‘Nothing.’ Sven looks serious. ‘I thought you’d got used to it. You gave a speech yesterday about how cleaning was a Sisyphean task. You quoted Camus.’

‘That was just waffle. I was showing off in front of the kids.’

‘Come here, I’ll make you feel better.’

‘I don’t want to stop you from working. I’m going to make a cake.’

Sven doesn’t stop me.

I bake a cake. I have absolute freedom to do whatever I want — and I bake a cake.

Will I at least manage to leave all the utensils, bowls, spoons, spatula, and baking tin unwashed in the sink? The flour on the worktop and the crumbs in the gaps between the floorboards?

No. I clean it all up. I wipe the mixer with a damp cloth. I hang up fresh tea towels.

What I manage not to do is to lay the table and call out to anybody who’s listening that it’s time for coffee and cake.

As evening draws on, the screams from the boys’ room get louder. When a chair falls over, I allow myself to knock on the door. ‘Everything okay in there?’ And hear: ‘Go fuck yourself, you fucking motherfucker, fuck you!’

The door opens, and Kieran comes out with that zoned-out expression of his and sweaty hair.

‘I need to kill something,’ he says.

‘I beg your pardon?’

He gives me a nasty look. A very, very nasty look.

‘An animal,’ he says. ‘A small animal I can kill.’

Bea comes out of her room.

‘You do know, don’t you,’ she says, ‘that last summer, Kieran peed on a butterfly until it died. He drowned it.’

‘Yeah,’ says Kieran, ‘and I enjoyed it.’

He goes back into his room and picks up his tablet.

Jack says to him, ‘Just stop.’

Kieran does something on his tablet then starts howling again. No words this time, just animal sounds.

Jack raises his hands. ‘I warned you.’

Kieran thwacks the table and hurts himself as he does. Yells again.

Jack says in a put-on voice: ‘Dude, don’t scream like that,’ and holds his head as if he’s getting a migraine.

Kieran throws his tablet at him.

Now Jack is crying. The corner of the tablet has caught his face.

I don’t know how bad it is, if Jack still has two eyes, if the tablet still works, whether Kieran might be crazy — a real animal torturer, a sadist. Or an animal himself. Or whether they’re all just pretending.

I think of the twenty episodes of Supernanny that I watched years ago, which were always filmed in households with too little money, too many children, too little space, and too many cuddly toys. Those are the kind of people who need help and want to be on TV, who aren’t ashamed to expose themselves, and are connected by walkie-talkie to Jo Frost, who says encouragingly and assertively: ‘Don’t get pulled into this argument. You’re the adult. Check if anybody is hurt, but sort out later what actually happened. Well done. I’m proud of you.’

I see Jo Frost standing on the balcony next to Sven, who’s smoking a joint. She’s standing very close to him, because it’s still raining and the two of them are trying to shelter underneath the balcony above. ‘Yes, Sven, I understand the theory of learning to be effective yourself, and I understand that you don’t want to police your kids.’ I wait for her to add that they have been plugged into their devices since this morning, or since lunchtime yesterday, if we’re honest, and have eaten nothing but sweets all day. But no, not even an insinuated ‘Everybody knows that’ passes Jo Frost’s lips. Instead, she puckers them and takes Sven’s joint.

I want to stand between them up and shout ‘Seriously?’ like the boys, but then I hear Jo’s voice again in my ear, saying I shouldn’t get involved and to only intervene if somebody is seriously hurt — and ‘seriously hurt’ in daytime trash TV means blood and bullet wounds, not disappointed emotions and dented utopias. It’s just a couple of people smoking a joint!

I sit down on the sofa.

It stinks here too, even though I cleaned earlier on.

Sven’s mobile is lying on the arm of the sofa and bleeps at regular intervals, crying out for electricity. I have to stop myself from throwing it on the floor and jumping all over it.

I have to find a way to concentrate on myself and to get in touch with my feelings. Where have my needs gone? I can’t go into my broom cupboard now; there’s no