Will Hodgkinson - The House is Full of Yogis

He filled up the boat with petrol and, after thanking the couple that had helped us, glided it out of the marina just before the marina closed. That evening we moored near Hampton Court, where Henry VIII had chopped off the head of Anne Boleyn in order to make way for the significantly more docile Jane Seymour, and ate fish and chips on the bank of the river, Mum sitting a little apart from the rest of us. She stayed by the boat while Nev, Tom, Dominic, Will and me went walking along the Thames. We found a rope, attached to a high bough of a tree, hanging down at the point where the raised bank met the river. Nev swung out on it, manoeuvring his middle-aged but slender body onto the seat of the rope and taking off over the water. Dominic made French-sounding whoops. Will Lee, being small, shot out across the river as if catapulted. Tom somehow managed to step on and off the rope with the same air of indifference he might have had catching the bus on his way to school.

‘Suppose we’d better get back,’ said Nev with a sigh, after an hour of rope swinging and peace.

As Tom, Dominic, Will and I played a game of Monopoly that night, we could hear Nev and Mum talking in the cabin next door. This time, however, it was Nev doing most of the talking. ‘Look at the woman who made me a cup of tea, after I almost caught hypothermia untangling the mess you made,’ he said. ‘That’s the kind of woman I respect. Rather than interfering and criticizing the whole time, she was supportive and helpful. What good have you done on this holiday? You’ve gone out of your way to be as silly as possible; to try and do things you can’t do just to prove a point. And it all went wrong.’

‘I have to stand up for feminism.’

‘Where were your feminist credentials when it was time to dive under the boat? Or are you going to tell me that’s a man’s job? Why didn’t you prove the equality of the sexes when I almost froze to death untangling the ropes and drinking gallons of river water? It’s got nothing to do with feminism. It’s all about your ego and your silly, childish pride and your need to show everyone that you’re the boss, even when you don’t have a … a ruddy clue about what you’re meant to be doing. You don’t stand for anything. You just can’t bear it when the attention is on someone else.’

We sat in the uneasy silence that followed.

‘The main reason I wanted to get a scholarship to Westminster,’ said Tom, as he bought the first hotel of the game, ‘is so I can become a boarder and get away from these people. I was born into this family by mistake.’

‘My muzzer,’ said Dominic, ‘she was to make sex with all of London in the time of the ’ippy.’

For the rest of the trip, our parents communicated with each other through a series of grunts. Torturing insects lost its appeal for Will and me while Dominic cried for most of the following night, tormented by homesickness. ‘Imagine your family is just like ours, but a tiny bit worse,’ Tom recommended. ‘Then being here will become a whole lot more bearable.’

Nev let all of us boys drive the boat on the last three days of our water-bound adventure. Mum sat at the back, still with her nose in the air but now, if not exactly contemplative, then at least quiet. We never made it to the London of Dominic’s dreams, turning back before we got to Richmond, but his guidebook did feature Windsor Castle, and we were heading straight for it.

‘Regardez,’ said Tom to Dominic, as the castle came into view. ‘La Reine habite ici.’

‘And now at the last time,’ said Dominic excitedly, ‘I am getting to see ze real England. Ze England of terrible wars and battles for ze power of ze throne.’

Tom looked at him and said: ‘What do you think you’ve been getting for the last week?’

It was a bright day. Nev managed to moor the boat without causing any further damage. Dominic led the way towards the castle. A large boy in shorts walked past holding two Mr Whippy ice creams, which he took it in turns to lap at: Mum watched him go by, opened her mouth as if about to pass comment, and appeared to think better of it. An elderly couple in grey anoraks sat on a bench by the towpath, a foot away from each other, silently watching the river. Two boys played Frisbee with their father. A couple, younger than our parents, lay on the lawn outside the castle, throwing a gurgling, smiling baby into the air.

Dominic, at least, was happy. We were there for the Changing of the Guard, we went up the Round Tower that was built in the reign of Henry II, and we managed to get quite close to Queen Mary’s dolls’ house. A blue-rinsed authority figure shouted at me after I rapped on the breastplate of a suit of armour once worn by Prince Hal. Will Lee found a spider amidst the gilded splendour of the State Apartments. He picked it up by a leg and hurtled it towards a Van Dyck. Nev bought Dominic a guidebook. Tom informed the woman at the information desk that the guidebook contained an aberrant apostrophe.

Mum had a coffee and a cigarette in the café. She had taken up smoking again.

We arrived back at the boat harbour that evening. The man looked over the Kingston Cavalier III and kept saying ‘Oh dear oh dear oh dear’, shaking his head as he itemized the damages with Nev. He told Nev that the bill for repairs was likely to be around two thousand pounds. Nev raised a hand to his furrowed forehead and nodded. He looked at Mum, clenched his fist, and let it fall limply open.

As the man went into a small office to write an invoice we stood in a row, next to a poster on a shellacked fence that read: Luxury Leisure Boats … For the Ride of your LIFE!!

Will Lee tugged Nev on the shirtsleeve and said, ‘This hasn’t been an entirely successful holiday, has it, Nev?’

Nev wiped his brow, looked at Will Lee, and said: ‘What makes you say that?’

‘The Lees have invited us to a dinner party,’ said Mum, who was attempting to decipher Hugh Lee’s scratchy handwriting, written in fountain pen on the back of a self-portrait by Duncan Grant. ‘It’s in two Saturdays’ time. I think.’

‘Bugger,’ puffed Nev from underneath the kitchen countertop, where he was trying to plug in a new dishwasher. As a gush of water poured out of the wall and onto the floor, Mum continued, ‘Hugh Lee may be irascible, but at least he’s fun, unlike most old men. What happens to men when they reach sixty? It’s like they are wiped clean of what little personality they once had.’

‘I wouldn’t say that about your father,’ said Nev, emerging from the recesses of the kitchen with soaked beige trousers and a spanner.

‘In his case it could only be an improvement.’

Since returning from the boat holiday, the arguments between the parents had died down. Now they treated each other with cold civility. Nev got a promotion and Mum moved to the Sun . She cooked a little – she had learned how to put lamb chops in the oven – and they sat around the table and talked about work, colleagues, politics, newspapers, religion … anything as long as it didn’t reveal how they felt about each other. It took me years to realize most families only talked about the weather. Meanwhile, Tom held forth on his new privileged life at Westminster School.

‘The head boy has the right to drive a flock of sheep across Westminster Bridge,’ he said, bouncing his fork off a rubbery lamb chop. ‘And we have a massive pancake fight called The Greaze. The cook throws the pancake up in the air and we scramble for a piece of it. The person who gets the most wins a gold sovereign and we all get a half-day, and if the cook fails to throw the pancake up high enough we’re allowed to throw our Latin books at him.’