erotic signifiers rather than dedicated to feeding another, even though that other has sprung from his seed. Indeed, Martyn finds the processes of parturition so bizarre as to be almost beyond belief.
Since the birth, he, who was once so scientifically reluctant and talked about Nature in the same way as people once talked about God – as the source of all goodness – finds himself all for cloning, test tubes, stem cell research, artificial wombs, GM crops and the like. The further from Nature and the more subject to intelligence and contrivance, the better. It has crossed his mind that an au pair would take up the spare room, and that this postpones the baby having a room of its own, and makes the likelihood of any decent, noisy, bounce-around-the-house sex even more remote than before.
‘What has my Swedish father got to do with anything?’ asks Hattie. Martyn points out that a Swedish Prime Minister’s wife, a full-time working lawyer, was lately in trouble for employing a maid to clean their house. That she should do so was seen as demeaning to her, her husband and the maid. In Sweden, people are expected to clean up after themselves.
‘Now we, who are meant to be working for the New Jerusalem, are to have a servant?’ Martyn asks, ‘Where are our principles?’
Hattie almost giggles. Sometimes she thinks he is addressing a public meeting, not her, but he has a future as a politician so she forgives him: he has to get into practice.
‘She’s not a servant,’ says Hattie, firmly. ‘She is an au pair.
Or a nanny. I don’t know which she will prefer to be called.’ ‘Whatever – she will be doing our dirty work because we can afford to have her do it, and she can’t afford not to do it,’ says Martyn. ‘What’s that if not a servant? Get real, Hattie. By all means do what’s convenient, but understand what you’re doing.’
‘We are embarking on a fair and sensible division of labour,’ says Hattie haughtily, seeing that mirth will not distract him.
‘Have you thought about the consequences of being an employer?’ Martyn asks. ‘Are we doing it officially, paying for insurance stamps, taking tax at source and so on? I certainly hope so.’
‘If she’s working part-time and lives in, she doesn’t need stamps,’ says Hattie. ‘She counts as one of the family. I asked Babs.’
‘I assume you’ve seen her visa, and she’s entitled to be in this country?’
‘Agnieszka doesn’t need a visa. She’s from Poland,’ says Hattie. ‘We’re all Europeans now. We must be hospitable and do everything we can to make her welcome. It’s all rather exciting.’
She has a vague idea of Agnieszka as a simple farm girl, from a backward country, with a poor education, but welltrained by her mother in the traditional domestic arts. Hattie will be able to teach her, and enlighten her, and show her how forward-thinking people live.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ says Martyn. ‘She’ll probably hate it here and leave within the week anyway.’
Both come from long lines of arguers and defenders of principle in the face of all opposition.
In 1897 Kitty’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, a musician, joined forces with Havelock Ellis the sexologist and wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury urging him to acknowledge the entitlement of young women to free sex. He forthwith lost his job as Director of the Royal Academy of Music, and had to flee to San Francisco, but it was a sacrifice gladly made in the interest of early feminism and the onward march of humanity.
Kitty’s great-great-great-grandfather, a popular writer, went to the Soviet Union in the mid-thirties and came back to report a socialist and artistic paradise. Thereafter there was no stopping the left-footed march of the family, certainly on the female side.
When the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament began, Kitty’s great-great-grandmother Wanda walked from Aldermaston to London, her daughters Susan, Serena and Frances at her side. In 1968, Serena’s second husband George was arrested for his part in the Grosvenor Square demonstration against the Vietnam War. In the seventies Serena’s boys Oliver and Christopher put on balaclavas and threw aniseed balls over walls to distract guard dogs – though I can’t remember what that was about. Serena and George housed an anti-apartheid activist in their house in Caldicott Square. Susan’s children and grandchildren still turn up to march against the war in Iraq. It’s in the blood. Even Lallie signs petitions to save veal calves from export. Hattie has demonstrated against GM crops – that was probably the time she and Martyn met crammed up against one another in an alley. One way and another it is amazing that the world is not yet perfect. The forces of reaction must be strong indeed not to fall in the face of so much good feeling and hope for the future, over so many generations.
From Kitty’s father comes a different strain, a more orderly, stubborn, self-righteous kind of gene: oppressed and poor, the family rise up to demand their rights. Martyn, educated and sustained by the kindly State they have brought about, works as a commissioning editor for Devolution, a philosophical and cultural monthly. It runs articles about plenary targets, enablement, and the statistics of State control. These days Martyn feels he has the opportunity to change the world from the inside out, and no longer needs to go on demos, which are only for those who don’t know the inner story, as he does. He too is certain that he is helping the world towards a better future.
I wonder what Kitty will do with her life? If she takes after her father’s side, she will end up working for some NGO, I daresay, looking after the asbestos miners of Limpopo. If she favours her mother’s side, and all the mess and mayhem attendant on their particular talents, she will be a musician, a writer, a painter, or even a protesting playwright. You may think I’m obsessive about the gene thing, but I have watched it work out over generations. We are the sum of our ancestors and there is no escape. Baby Kitty looks at me with pre-conditioned eyes, even as she holds out her little arms and smiles.
Martyn cheers up, for no apparent reason, rolls the name around his tongue, and likes it. ‘Agnyeshh-kah,’ he says, savouring the syllables. ‘I suppose it is less gloomy than Agnes. And you’re quite right. It’s antisocial to have a room going spare at a time when there’s such a pressure upon housing. Tell you what, Hattie, I’m still hungry. Supposing I get some fish-and-chips?’
Hattie looks at him in no little alarm. Hasn’t he just eaten? Can he still be hungry? Is this why he wants the car keys? To buy fish and chips? A dozen thoughts flow through her mind, oddly disorganised. Fish fried in batter is unhealthy on many counts, not just for the individual but for the planet. Re-used oil has carcinogenic properties. The batter itself is fattening. The wheat used, unless organic, will have been sprayed many times with toxic chemicals. Batter can be removed before eating, true, but the seas are being denuded of fish and good
