It was 2001 and my second and final stepmother was, I think, still trying to civilise my siblings and me – an unbelievably stupid aim. We ranged in age between 10 and 22 when we met her and were already pretty well baked, even the 10-year-old. We spoke to our dad the way we spoke to him, which was to ask him for money and berate him for historical wrongs. It was just our way of saying hello.
He, in turn, constantly replenished the stock of wrongs, forgetting it was Christmas and falling asleep in taramasalata. Once he walked out of a party with all of my 21st birthday presents because he saw a bag with a bottle of vodka in it and didn’t check whether there was anything else in there. I remember calling him from a phone box, saying: “Did you seriously steal my eye shadow?”
Anyway, so it was probably 20 December, and I (27) and my siblings – two sisters, aged 29 and 21, and a brother, 17 – were having a festive dinner with our dad and stepmother. (There was another brother yet to come but we hadn’t met him yet. Not because he was a baby – he’s around my age – but because that particular cat didn’t come out of the bag till we were in our 30s.)
Dad arrived with this bag. I want to say it was something outlandish like a gift bag, but realistically it was probably a Sainsbury’s carrier. Nevertheless, inside it were presents, which had been wrapped. I cannot stress enough how unusual this was. He would always get you something if you wanted it and you asked often enough. But for him to choose something himself, and wrap it, and remember to bring it – and to do all these things in a timely fashion … “out of character” doesn’t begin to cover it. It had to be our stepmother’s doing, but how? By what dark magic do you change a man in his 60s so radically?
I just assumed that she’d done all of it – chosen the gifts, wrapped them and put them in his paw on the way into the house – but that was a mistake, because she gives lovely gifts and these presents were terrible. He had got my younger sister a novelty set of four mustards, the jars in the shape of numbers, to spell out 2000. They were in a presentation box that bore the word – I’m not joking – Mustardlennium.
“But,” my sister said, “it’s 2001. Are these even safe to eat?” He went off on some wild peroration about how mustard never goes off, and if it goes a little brown, that’s because it’s oxidised. “So of course they can’t have gone off, because they’re not open!” he finished, and she said: “Well, that’s something, I guess.”
And all this drew attention from my older sister’s face, which was like thunder. He had given her a book about interior design. She was a set designer then. It was like giving a surgeon the kids’ game Operation. My brother, he had forgotten. “Did you just leave it at home, or forget I existed?” my brother asked. He was quite enjoying himself. He had a nihilistic streak and much preferred annihilation to out-of-date mustard, but then, who wouldn’t?
Mine was clearly a book, and come on, I thought, how insulting can it be? He reads, I read, there are loads of books in the world that are good. I unwrapped Kafka’s Milena: Life of Milena Jesenská. “Kafka’s muse!” said my father in delight. “She was a journalist.”
I went off like a catherine wheel. “Kafka’s fucking muse! That’s the summit of journalistic endeavour, is it? That you journal away so well that someone much more talented and famous might shag you?”
I was on fire. I’d just got a job at the Guardian. I was really pleased with myself. I emphatically was not hanging around coffee houses, waiting for a contemplative, brooding and overall quite difficult genius to notice me.
“I mean, who knows, maybe she did some awesome investigation on insects one time, and he said, ‘Come to bed, darling, the cockroaches can wait,’ and that’s how Metamorphosis was born, and she must have died so happy knowing that!” I paused. “KAFKA’S FUCKING MUSE?”
None of this is to cast any shade on Milena Jesenská, who was probably a great journalist. I’ve never read any of her work, and I’ve definitely never read this book. I never threw it out, though – it just sits there with oversized nonfiction, and whenever I pass it, I think: “Kafka’s fucking muse. I miss you, you old bastard.”
