Christine,
Thomas’s mother, works as a literature teacher at the university and lives on
her own in a flat in London. She is working at home, as she usually does on
Thursdays, when she suddenly remembers about what someone told her the previous
evening while having dinner with some friends of hers: Alan, Thomas’s father,
is going to get married to a young girl half his age, in fact she could be his
daughter.
Immerse in her thoughts, she receives by
surprise the visit of Thomas. He’s got himself in a bit of a mess and needs to
talk. He usually doesn’t tell her about his worries, which means that something
important must be going on. At first, she thinks it is concerning Alan’s
wedding, but it is not, he’s actually happy about it. He’s having an affair
with a girl she met at work called Annie, curiously the same name as his
girlfriend, Anna. He feels so comfortable talking with this girl, she is very
bright, but not as good-looking as Anna. He hasn’t told anything about it to
his girlfriend yet, as he wants to be sure, rather than upsetting her for no
good.
Furthermore, he is not quite convinced
with his work as an assistant of a Labour member of parliament, whom he really
doesn’t believe in. Due to that, he is thinking about leaving the job and going
away by himself to live abroad, in Prague or Budapest.
He starts to be impatient to leave.
Christine knows he is going to meet Annie without even telling her. Remembering the way he has talked about her
before, she feels he is so infatuated.
She feels herself reflected on Annie and
revives the relationship she had with Alan. They had an affair by the time he
was married and with two children. For a short period of time, Alan left his
family to live with Christine, and that’s when Thomas was conceived. The relationship
hadn’t worked out because they quarrelled continuously and Alan missed his
children. So he came back home, leaving Christine alone while she was pregnant.
They only kept their relationship from time to time to manage things about Thomas. In one of those meetings, they had a
huge discussion on how to educate his son. From that day, their relationship broke
definitely.
In the following morning after Thomas went to see his mum, Anna visits her at
the university and tries to know what’s going on. Obviously, even caring about
her, Christine feels that her loyalty is towards Thomas’s confidence. That’s
why she only tells Anna about his worries concerning his job, whether he was
doing the right thing working on it. But Anna keeps jostling for more, in fact fighting
for their relationship. Christine only adds what he said about the possibility
of going on holiday to Europe, and supposedly on his own. Anna is very sad, and
she will try to talk to Thomas to get the truth.
Deep inside, Christine envies the Anns for
having this struggle over him, the game of pursuit and being pursued, and the
feeling of possession, a possession which she, as a mother, had from the very
first moment when Thomas was born and which is now no longer available for her.
QUESTIONS
-She had the news about Alan, she forgot them, she
remembered next day, but then she only thinks about her place. Why remembering
Alan make her meditate about her place and how she likes it?
-Why did she use Mondrian to decorate her flat?
-How do you know she liked her son’s visit?
-Can you make a summary of Alan’s love live?
-Why does the narrator give us information about the
husband if the key history it’s his son’s?
-“Being good might be another kind of lie”: When or
where can you apply that?
-Why does he prefer Annie to Anna?
-Christine longed those storms caused by her
relationships long time ago. Why can anyone miss some herd times in their
lives?
-Could that mother (stormy in her youth) be a good
adviser?
-For our children, what is it better, a simple or a
complicated life?
-Bearing a child is always a good experience?
-Could you say the Alan was a bit sexist, or he was a
product of his time?
-What would you say to a child who asked you about
death?
-Do you think parents can / have to solve love
problems of their children?
-Is “being extra nice” a sign of a lie?
-Do you think Anna pays too much attention to her
body?
-What is the meaning of the rotten egg at the end of
the story?
-When you had a mess, is it a good idea phoning somebody to tell the about it to try to forget it?
VOCABULARY
bristling, thriving, entertained,
slate, cost the earth, brogues, pull a sickie, cropped up, wagged, dummy, popped,
slick, BFI, tame, pebbles, dabble, prig, mew, truce, patching, moody, jostling,
swivel, rump, shallot, bleached