Read Online Making It Up by Penelope Lively - Free Book Online Page B

there was everything else.”
    She did not blame Miranda for her untimely pregnancy or, indeed, her father for his role: “I mean, that would be a bit rich, given that I was the outcome.” No, Miranda’s failing had been her slide into what Chloe referred to as the alternative lifestyle, and moreover one which flouted every kind of aspiration or regularity.
    â€œI’d take a more kindly view if something rich and rare had been the product. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I bow to none in my respect for art. But what her chums were into was the style alone. All you ever saw was batik and macramé. I grew up wearing tie-dyed shifts.”
    Chloe’s refrain about taking control of her life was not just an exhortation: she felt strongly that this can and should be done—a belief that did not spring solely from her rejection of the laissez-faire circumstances of her upbringing. Her education had taught her that people are pitted against misfortune and ever have been: poverty, disease, and history itself with its malevolent strikes. Well, if you have a war flung at you, that is indeed a major set-back, but even so a degree of manipulation is usually possible. You cannot sidestep the cancer cell, admittedly, but whereas market forces are the undoing of many, there again expedient action can keep you buoyant.
    People are themselves the central problem, of course. Other people. Here, Chloe drew upon experience, starting off with the rich seam of her childhood and all those fly-by-night associates of Miranda’s—the creators of batik and macramé and aromatic candles and herbal soaps, the families who lived in tumbledown out-buildings down muddy lanes, the craft market stallholders and the traveling theatrical groups. Plus the shifting cast of boyfriends, live-in and live-out. Here were people who operated according to whim, who seldom made plans, who lived in the moment. Which is all very fine provided that you do not have to deal with them if you yourself are of a different persuasion. Chloe had been able to break free of all this as soon as she had grown up and was her own woman, but then the people problem rears up again in different guises, she discovered. The trouble with them is that they are not always going to do what you want them to do; they will persist in their own opinions and intentions, they constantly obstruct your carefully designed route. Employers, colleagues, subordinates—none could be relied on for absolute cooperation. Friends must be judiciously selected.
    People management was therefore a prime consideration, a central feature of this business of exercising control. Chloe considered that she had got pretty good at it. There were occasional failures of course—irreparable differences of opinion with work-mates, unfortunate collisions with some teaching associate—but on the whole she usually managed to achieve her aims without running into altercation or causing offense. Perhaps it was a matter of personality as well.
    That was working life. Private life was another matter. John was never a major obstacle; a naturally compliant man, he was usually prepared to come to an agreement so long as there was no interference with certain sacrosanct areas, mainly to do with Saturday-afternoon fishing and rugby matches on television.
    Children were something else.
    Confronted with her first baby, Chloe was stopped in her tracks—scuppered, floored. This was the most intransigent being she had encountered, bar none. She faced anarchy, on a daily basis. Nothing she had learned or experienced had prepared her for this—this collapse of all expectations of order. Sophie performed as babies do, and had her mother on the ropes, glassy-eyed.
    Second time round, Chloe was grimly prepared. She knew the battle lines, she knew the limits of her endurance, she knew that even in this ultimate test of the human spirit there is a little room for