The Mussel Feast Read Free

all bothered when my brother said, you’re crazy.
    The chips had all been cut and my mother said, right, it would be good if he arrived now. Dinner was already late, we always ate at six o’clock because my father came home from the office at half past five; first he’d read the paper and drink his beer in peace while Mum prepared dinner, and at six on the dot, as I said, we ate, except when he was away on business, then the schedule went by the wayside and everything was different. There were cheese rolls and hot chocolate, we ate whenever we wanted to, sometimes standing up in the kitchen and with our hands. I don’t think we ever ate with a knife and fork when my father was away. We let our hair down while you were away, Mum said when my father asked, what did you get up to without me; it’s really nice to let your hair down a bit sometimes, Mum continued slightly wistfully, because she had as much fun as we did and less work, too, when we were alone with her. We seldom argued, and I liked it when we let our hair down, but my father didn’t want to hear any more of it and so she switched to wifey mode. As it was now getting on for seven o’clock she’d already switched. We were all expecting him to come through the door and ask, so, what do you have to say, because his promotion was virtually in the bag, and we would have said what a clever, successful father we had, and my mother would have been pleased, too, and then we would have celebrated his success, listening to him talk about his business trip, and we would have completely forgotten our wild behaviour – only: it was seven o’clock and he hadn’t come back yet. So Mum’s wifey mode appeared silly and pointless; my brother even said, we’re sitting here all dressed up and nowhere to go. This didn’t stop my mother dashing into the bathroom and, as a precaution, combing her hair and reapplying her lipstick, which she had already put on an hour earlier; she walked around with her evening face on display, saying, he’ll be here soon. My mother would often switch modes several times a day, and for each switch there was a change of face. At school she wore her serious face and was strict. She tried to replicate this face at home, but it never worked with us. We weren’t afraid of her in the slightest, although her pupils were; her school face was really scary. Once my brother and I sat at the back of her class and listened in. We could have died laughing – she looked so strict, we couldn’t actually believe that this woman was our mother. Respect is essential, she said; my father, too, said that respect was essential, an absolute necessity, otherwise you don’t learn anything; but it never crossed our minds to show our mother respect. At home she wore her knackered, exhausted face, her household face; when she came back from school in the afternoon, she said, I’m knackered today, I don’t have much energy after six hours of school. My father often said, how are you treating your mother, kindly show her some respect; in vain my father tried to instil in us the respect for our mother which she could not command from us herself. He said, can’t you see how she’s slaving away for you two, she grafts all day long. Of course we could see her grafting and slaving away, lugging heavy bags. When my father came home in the evening, she continued to graft and slave away, and if there wasn’t any beer she’d dash out, for his cigarettes, too, and everything else my father had forgotten on his way home, she would dash out to get it in the evening. My father was a heavy smoker, and Mum often had to dash out, but he couldn’t stand my mother’s knackered face, and so she switched to her after-work face, which she would paint on quickly in the bathroom at half past five, before my father came home. But this after-work face only lasted for an hour and needed reapplying. Now she was walking around with her after-work face on display, saying, he’ll be back