c) Why do you think Swift repeats the image of the pools of water? (Water is one of the symbols of the story. Water is seen as taking things away, but also changing things. The water changes in this section, possibly to reflect the boy's acceptance of death.)

d) Why does what happens when the boy wakes up make the placing of this ghostly visitation important at this point in the story? (This vision is connected to death and when the boy wakes up he hears about another death of a loved one - his Grandfather.)

Task 10. Analysing language

Aim: to explain to students what implications are and help them see to implications in the story and the idea there can be several of possible explanations of one and the same phrase/paragraph.

Students have the following text in their Workbooks. When you analyse a story, you should look closely at different parts of the story to see how they are connected. These may form a pattern. Often, close study of the language may reveal details of the author's meanings and purposes that on a first reading you may not have noticed. These details are usually called implications.

What someone says can be taken as a fact or as a sign of something more - a feeling, an attitude or a personality trait. Implied meaning can be different from what is apparently being said.

Writers choose their words to convey a range of things - usually ideas, feelings and attitudes. Sometimes even a short and simple sentence can show how a writer has chosen words carefully.

1. Mother says to Grandfather: You're ruining our meal - do you want to take yours out to your shed?! Ask students to rank the following statements according to how close they think they are close to what the mother means in this sentence, giving reasons for your decisions:

a) She does not want to wait for her pudding.

b) She wants to get rid of Grandfather so she can enjoy the meal with Ralph.

c) She does not want the crumble to go cold.

d) She wants to tell Grandfather that she now values Ralph more than him.

e) She thinks she should do what Ralph wants her to do.

2. Discuss the following quotations from the story about the weather and the natural world. Make notes to help you answer the following question: How might the weather and the natural world be related to what different characters are feeling?

- When the wind blew, little waves travelled across it and slapped the paved edges.

- All that autumn was exceptionally cold. Rain was dashing against the window as if the house were plunging under water.

- The heavy rain and the tossing branches of a rowan tree obscured my view.

- It was a brilliant, crisp late November day and the leaves on the rowan tree were all gold.

- They tidied the overgrown parts of the garden and clipped back the trees.

- The air was very cold.

Means of expressiveness

Aim: to pay attention to the means of expression used by the author and to how they contribute to creating of images or mood.

1. Swift uses alliteration in this story. For example: "For about a year we lived quietly, calmly, even contentedly within the scope of this sad symmetry." Try to find other examples of alliteration and explain what effect it causes (Examples: little waves were running across the water; dead willow leaves floated on it; as we ate supper Ralph suddenly barked, etc.)

2. Try to find examples of metaphors like “invisible cord”. (Examples: sad symmetry (about them standing at the funeral); her face had a look of being about to spill over; impregnable domain (about their relationship); a sealed-off world (about his Grandfather's shed, etc.))

Task 11. Symbolism

Sometimes a writer uses words or actions in a way that gives them a wider meaning. In this story, we can find symbolism in the study and practice of chemistry. Aim of the task: to let students suppose and discuss what the symbols in the story mean.

1. Discuss and make notes about the following questions.

a) Grandfather says: `You don't make things in chemistry - you change them. Anything can change.' Do you think he is speaking about chemistry or relationships? (He may mean the changing nature of relationships due to death or the introduction of a new person.)

b) Why does Grandfather say, `Then we'd take something that wasn't gold at all and cover it with this changed gold so it looked as if it was all gold - but it wasn't.'? (Not all the changes happen for the best and they can be false, misleading.)

c) Why doesn't Grandfather put the watch chain into the beaker? (Probably, he does not want to change the watch as it reminds him of his wife.)

d) What does the boy mean when he thinks `how suicide can be murder and how things don't end'? (He feels that his Grandfather was actually forced to commit suicide but he is sure, his Grandfather will live on in his dreams.)

e) In the final paragraph, the boy thinks `But though things change they aren't destroyed'. What do you think is the signifcance of this? (Memories are precious and memories of people we loved will always be with us.)

Task 12. Aim: to explore a key moment in the story

The moment when the ambulance arrives to take away the dead grandfather is an important point in the story. The boy watches from a bedroom window as Ralph appears outside the house and seems to be supervising the paramedics.

1. Re-read the paragraph beginning `And then it was almost light …' and then make notes on:

a) how the weather contributes to the drama of what is happening

b) how the boy's view is obscured so he does not understand what is happening

c) how Ralph appears to be an almost comic figure

d) how Ralph also appears to have some authority

e) the boy's reaction when he realises what is happening

f) the mother's promise of an explanation.

Task 13. Analysing structure

1. Ask students: The story begins and ends at the pond. Why do you think Swift does this? Aim: to analyse how such text organization contributes to creating the image.

2. Working in a small group, rank the following statements according to how well you think they answer this question. Explain your decisions.

The story begins and ends at the pond to:

a) suggest that the boy is lonely

b) remind the reader of the bottle of acid and the boy's dislike of Ralph

c) show that Graham Swift likes to include water in his stories

d) remind the reader of the lost boat and the changes that have happened in the family

e) show that the boy wishes to return to somewhere where he felt loved

f) show that things don't change, even after death.

2. Re-read the last paragraph of the story. Then answer these questions.

a) What details can you find that create a sad atmosphere?

b) In what ways does the description of the grandfather link to the opening of the story?

Aim of the questions: to attract students' attention to how the author created the image at the end of the short story.

Task 14.

Which of the following best describes how you feel about the ending of the story?

- sad

- hopeful

- celebratory

- uplifting

- curious

- sentimental

Why is the story called Chemistry? Aim of the questions: to let students express their general impression of the story and give their ideas and comments after reading and discussing it.

At the end of discussion the teacher may also ask students the following question:

What relationships will the boy have with his mother after his grandfather's death? Try to predict and explain why you think so.

Focus on language

As the language of the story is (as it's been already mentioned) quite demanding, so only one extract has been chosen for the language work.

Read the description of Grandfather's shed and do the tasks below

Extract:

I don't think Grandfather practised chemistry for any particular reason. He studied it from curiosity and for solace, as some people study the structure of cells under a microscope or watch the changing formation of clouds. In those weeks after Mother drove him out I learnt from Grandfather the fundamentals of chemistry.

I felt safe in his shed. The house where Ralph now lorded it, tucking into bigger and bigger meals, was a menacing place. The shed was another, a sealed-off world. It had a salty, mineral, unhuman smell. Grandfather's flasks, tubes and retort stands would be spread over his work-bench. His chemicals were acquired through connections in the metal-plating trade. The stove would be lit in the corner. Beside it would be his meal tray - for, to shame Mother, Grandfather had taken to eating his meals regularly in the shed. A single electric light bulb hung from a beam in the roof. A gas cylinder fed his Bunsen. On one wall was a glass fronted cupboard in which he grew alum and copper sulphate crystals.

I would watch Grandfather's experiments. I would ask him to explain what he was doing and to name the contents of his various bottles.

And Granfather wasn't the same person in his shed as he was in the house - sour and cantankerous. He was a weary, ailing man who winced now and then because of his rheumatism and spoke with quiet self-absorption.

Task 1. In this extract you come across the word `would'. What is it used here for? What's the difference between `would' and `used to'? Aim: to revise important grammatical rule.

Task 2. Many things that Grandfather had in the shed are enumerated in the extract. Match their names with the pictures. Aim of tasks 2, 3, 4: to enlarge students' passive vocabulary

Keys: 1. work-bench 2. shed 3. light bulb 4. flask 5. glass fronted cupboard 6. retort stand

Task 3. Match the words from the extract with their synonims

1. solace

2. ailing

3. menacing

4. sealed-off

5. self-absorption

6. sour

7. weary

8. cantankerous

a. tired, exhausted

b. gloomy

c. threatening

d. sick, unhealthy

h. consolation, comfort

f. isolated

g. quarrelsome

e. state when you are into your thoughts, into yourself

Keys: 1.h 2.d 3.c 4.f 5.e 6.b 7.a 8.g

Task 4. Match the words with their definitions

1. Drive out

2. Lord it (over)

3. Tuck into

4. Wince

a. Make a slight involuntary grimace or shrinking movement of the body out of pain or distress

b. Eat food heartily

d. Act in a superior and domineering manner towards someone

c. Make somebody leave the house

Keys: 1.c 2.d 3.b 4.a

Question: Grandfather wasn't the same person in his shed as he was in the house. Are there places where you are a different person than at your house? Why do you behave differently there?

ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ 7

(обязательное)

Задание для работы в группах над названиями реалий, встретившихся в прочитанном отрывке “Случайной вакансии” Джоан Роулинг

Worksheet 1

1. “A group of sixth-formers carrying folders had arrived in the library”.

Note: the Sixth form in American or British schools does not mean the 6^th grade in Russian schools. So who are they?

Sixth-formers are students who study at Sixth Form Colleges. It means that these students have passed the obligatory school exams and want to enter a university. Sixth Form Colleges are places that in two years prepare students to pass the exams which allow them to go to a university. These students are 16-18 years old.

The scheme of British school education looks approximately like that:

Таблица 16 - Схема школьного образования в Англии

age		Type of school
5	11 years compulsory education	PRIMARY SCHOOL (at least 6 years of primary education)
6
7
8
9
10
11
12		SECONDARY SCHOOL (at least 5 years of secondary education) Exam
13
14
15
16
17		SIXTH FORM COLLEGE Exams (`A' level) if pass - university
18

2. “The room set aside for the guidance department at Winterdown Comprehensive opened off the school library”.

As you know, there are no классные руководители in British schools. But they have a `guidance department' where guidance counselors or school counselors work. They help students with difficulties in interpersonal relationship, with family problems that affect the school life, with improving child's self-esteem¹ and with any other issues connected to the studies or psychological things. In most countries the main focus of their work is on students' career development.

¹ self-esteem - самооценка

3. “An' he's still gave me … detention!'“

Detention¹ is a kind of punishment which almost isn't used in Russian schools, but is very common in Britain. If you are given detention, it means you have to go to a certain part of school during a specific time and remain there for a specific period of time. Usually schoolchildren are told to do it during long breaks or after classes. However, if the fault is really big, they may be told to go to school on a non-school day, for example, on Saturday.

¹ detention - (букв.) задержание

4. “Tessa hardly ever looked at herself in full-length mirrors, and boycotted shops where this was unavoidable”.

The word `boycott' (either a verb or a noun) doesn't look like a typical English one. Its origin is of huge interest. In the 19^th century in Ireland there lived a man called Captain Charles C. Boycott. In the 1870s, Irish farmers faced an agricultural crisis and were afraid of starvation¹. So they formed a Land League to fight against landlords. Retired² British army captain Charles Boycott was an agent of a landlord who was absent at that time. He tried to punish the farmers who couldn't pay the rent by making them move to another territory. But the League didn't agree with these actions. They united against him: Boycott's laborers³ stopped working, and his crops began to rot⁴ as no one worked on his fields. Soon the incident became well-known and people started to use his name to describe this particular protest strategy.

¹ starvation - голод

² retired - ушедший в отставку

³ laborers - работник

⁴ his crops began to rot - его посевы начали гнить

ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ 8

(обязательное)

Вопросы для учащихся при просмотре видео-интервью с Кадзуо Исигуро

Worksheet 2

1. Why has the reporter brought Ishiguro his favorite childhood toy?

2. Why does he think that we should not classify books according to their genres?

3. What did he want to become when he was a child?

ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ 9

(обязательное)

Задание и вопросы для jigsaw-reading отрывков из ноктюрна Кадзуо Исигуро “И в бурю, и в ясные дни”

Worksheet 3

Group 1

Read the extract, read the questions below and find the ones you can answer. Write down your answers.

Charlie and I have remained close friends through the years. We may not see each other as much as we once did, but that's mainly down to distances. I've spent years here in Spain, as well as in Italy and Portugal, while Charlie's always based himself in London. Now if that makes it sound like I'm the jet-setter and he's the stay-at-home, that would be funny. Because in fact Charlie's the one who's always flying off - to Texas, Tokyo, New York - to his high-powered meetings, while I've been stuck in the same humid buildings year after year, setting spelling tests or conducting the same conversations in slowed-down English. My-name-is-Ray. What-is-your-name? Do-you-have-children?

When I first took up English teaching after university, it seemed a good enough life - much alike an extension of university. Language schools were mushrooming all over Europe, and if the teaching was tedious and the hours exploitative, at that age you don't care too much. You spend a lot of time in bars, friends are easy to make, and there's a feeling you're part of a large network extending around the entire globe. You meet people fresh from their spells in Peru or Thailand, and this gets you thinking that if you wanted to, you could drift around the world indefinitely, using your own contacts to get a job in any faraway corner you fancied. And always you'd be part of this cozy, extended family of itinerant teachers, swapping stories over drinks about former colleagues, psychotic school directors, eccentric British Council officers.

In the late `80s, there was talk of making a lot of money teaching in Japan, and I made serious plans to go, but it never worked out. I thought about Brazil too, even read a few books about the culture and sent off for application forms. But somehow I never got away that far. Southern Italy, Portugal for a short spell, back to Spain. Then before you know it, you're forty-seven years old, and the people you started out with have long ago been replaced by a generation who gossip about different things, take different drugs and listen to different music.

Meanwhile, Charlie and Emily had married and settled down in London. Charlie told me once, when they had children I'd be godfather to one of them. But that never happened. What I mean is, a child never came along, and now I suppose it's too late. I have to admit, I've always felt slightly let down about this. Perhaps, I always imagined that being godfather to one of their children would provide an official link, however tenuous, between their lives in England and mine out here.

Anyway, at the start of this summer, I went to London to stay with them. It had been arranged well in advance, and when I'd phoned to check a couple of days beforehand, Charlie had said they were both `superbly well'. That's why I'd no reason to expect anything other than pampering and relaxation after a few months that hadn't exactly been the best in my life.

<…>

`Ah, yes.' He chewed his food thoughtfully. `To be honest, this was my real motive in inviting you over. Of course, it's great to see you and all of that. But for me, the main thing, I wanted you to do something for me. After all you're my oldest friend, a life-long friend…'

Suddenly he began eating again, and I realized with astonishment he was sobbing quietly. I reached across the table and prodded his shoulder, but he just kept shovelling pasta into his mouth without looking up. When this had gone on for a minute or so, I reached over and gave him another little prod, but thus had no more effect than my first one. Then the waitress appeared with a cheerful smile to check on our food. We both said everything was excellent and as she went off, Charlie seemed to become more himself again.

`Okay, Ray, listen. What I'm asking you to do is dead simple. All I want is for you to hang about with Emily for the next few days, be a pleasant guest. That's all. Just until I get back.'

`That's all? You're just asking me to look after her while you're gone?'

`That's it. Or rather, let her look after you. I've lined up some things for you to do. Theatre tickets and so on. I'll be back Thursday at the latest. Your mission's just to get her in a good mood and keep her that way. So when I come in and say, “Hello darling,” and hug her, she'll just reply, “oh hello, darling, welcome home, how was everything,” and hug me back. Then we can carry on as before. Before all this horrible stuff began. That's your mission. Quite simple really.'

`I'm happy to do anything I can,' I said. `But look, Charlie, are you sure she's in the mood to entertain visitors? You're obviously going through some sort of crisis. She must be as upset as you are. Quite honestly, I don't understand why you asked me here right now.'

`What do you mean, you don't understand? I've asked you because you're my oldest friend. Yes, all right, I've got a lot of friends. But when it comes down to it, when I thought hard about it, I realized you're the only one who'd do.'

I have to admit I was rather moved by this. All the same, I could see there was something not quite right here, something he wasn't telling me.

Questions:

1. What is the narrator's name? ___________________________

2. What are the relationships between Charlie and the narrator? __________________________________________________________________

3. What were the relationships between Charlie and his wife Emily at the time when the narrator arrived? __________________________________________________________

4. What does the narrator do for work? _____________________________________

5. What do Charlie and Emily think about Ray's work? __________________________________________________________________

6. Why do Charlie and Emily think that Ray is not a successful person? __________________________________________________________________

7. What is Emily unsatisfied with? __________________________________________________________________

8. What does being Mr Perspective mean? __________________________________________________________________

9. Why did the narrator go to London at the beginning of summer? __________________________________________________________________

10. What favour did Charlie want the narrator to do? __________________________________________________________________

Group 2

Read the extract, read the questions below and find the ones you can answer. Write down your answers.

(A talk between the narrator, Charlie and his wife Emily)

`Oh, honestly, Raymond. You let yourself be exploited left, right and centre by that ghastly language school you led your landlord rip you off silly, and what do you do? Get in tow with some airhead girl with a drink problem and not even a job to support it. It's like you're deliberately trying to annoy anyone who still gives a shit about you!'

`He can't expect many of that tribe to survive!' Charlie boomed from the hall. I could hear he ad his suitcase out there now. `It's all very well behaving like an adolescent ten years you've ceased to be one. But to carry on like this when you're nearly fifty!'

`I'm only forty-seven…'

`What do you mean, you're only forty-seven?' Emily's voice was unnecessarily loud given I was sitting right next to her. `Only forty-seven. This “only”, this is what's destroying your life, Raymond. Only, only, only. Only doing my best. Only forty-seven. Soon you'll be only sixty-seven and only going round in bloody circles trying to find a bloody roof to keep over your head!'

<…> `Raymond, don't you ever stop and ask yourself who you are?' Emily asked. `When you think of all your potential, aren't you ashamed? Look at how you lead your life! It's … it's simply infuriating! One gets so exasperated!'

Charlie appeared in the doorway in his raincoat, and for a moment they were shouting different things at me simultaneously. Then Charlie broke off, announced he was leaving - as though in disgust at me - and vanished.

His departure brought Emily's diatribe to a halt, and I took the opportunity to get to my feet, saying: `Excuse me, I'll just go and give Charlie a hand with his luggage.'

`Why do I need help with my luggage?' Charlie said from the hall. `I've only got the one bag.'

But he let me follow him down into the street and left me with the suitcase while he went to the edge of the kerb to hail a cab. There didn't seem to be any to hand, and he leaned out worriedly, an arm half-raised.

I went up to him and said: `Charlie, I don't think it's going to work.”

`What's not going to work?'

`Emily absolutely hates me. That's her after seeing me for a few minutes. What's she going to be like after three days? Why on earth do you think you'll come back to harmony and light?'

Even as I was saying this, something was dawning on me and I fell silent. Noticing the change, Charlie turned and looked at me carefully.

`I think', I said, eventually, `I have an idea why it had to be me and no one else.'

`Ah ha. Can it be Ray sees the light?'

`Yes, maybe I do.'

`But what does it matter? It remains the same, exactly the same, what I'm asking you to do.' Now there were tears in his eyes again. `Do you remember, Ray, the way Emily always used to say she believed in me? She said it for years and years. I believe in you, Charlie, you can go all the way, you're really talented. Tight up until three, four years ago, she was still saying it. Do you know how trying that got? I was doing all right. I am doing all right. Perfectly okay. But she thought I was destined for… God knows, president of the fucking world, God knows! I'm just an ordinary bloke who's doing all right. But she doesn't see that. That's at the heart of it, at the heart of everything that's gone wrong.'

<…>`She thinks I've let myself down,' he was saying. `But I haven't. I'm doing perfectly okay. Endless horizons are all very well when you're young. But get to our age, you've got to… you've got to get some perspective. That's what kept going round in my head whenever she got unbearable about it. Perspective, she needs perspective. And I kept saying to myself, look, I'm doing okay. Look at loads of other people, people we know. Look at Ray. Look what a pig's arse he's making of his life. She needs perspective.'

`So you decided to invite me for a visit. To be Mr Perspective.'

At last, Charlie stopped and met my eye. `Don't get me wrong, Ray. I'm not saying you're an awful failure or anything. I realise you're not a drug addict or a murderer. But beside me, let's face it, you don't look the highest of achievers. That's why I'm asking you, asking you to do this for me. Things are on their last legs with us, I'm desperate, I need you to help. And what am I asking, for god's sake? Just that you be your usual sweet self. Nothing more, nothing less. Just do it for me, Raymond. For me and Emily. It's not over between us yet, I know it isn't. Just be yourself for a few days until I get back. That's not so much to ask, is it?'

I took a deep breath and said: `Okay, okay, if you think it'll help. But isn't Emily going to see through all this sooner or later?'

`Why should she? She knows I've got an important meeting in Frankfurt. To her the whole thing's straight-forward. She's just looking after a guest, that's all. She likes to do that and she likes you. Look, a taxi.' He waved frantically and as the driver came towards us, he grasped my arm. `Thanks, Ray. You'll swing it for us, I know you will.'

Questions:

11. What is the narrator's name? ___________________________

12. What are the relationships between Charlie and the narrator? __________________________________________________________________

13. What were the relationships between Charlie and his wife Emily at the time when the narrator arrived? __________________________________________________________

14. What does the narrator do for work? _____________________________________

15. What do Charlie and Emily think about Ray's work? __________________________________________________________________

16. Why do Charlie and Emily think that Ray is not a successful person? __________________________________________________________________

17. What is Emily unsatisfied with? __________________________________________________________________

18. What does being Mr Perspective mean? __________________________________________________________________

19. Why did the narrator go to London at the beginning of summer? __________________________________________________________________

20. What favour did Charlie want the narrator to do? __________________________________________________________________

ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ 10

(обязательное)

Текст рассказа “Химия” Грэма Свифта

Chemistry

By Graham Swift

The pond in our park was circular, exposed, perhaps fifty yards across. When the wind blew, little waves travelled across it and slapped the paved edges, like a miniature sea. We would go there. Mother, Grandfather and I, to sail the motor-launch Grandfather and I made out of plywood, balsawood and varnished paper. We would go even in the winter - especially in the winter, because then we would have the pond to ourselves - when the leaves on the two willows turned yellow and dropped and the water froze your hands. Mother would sit on a wooden bench set back from the perimeter; I would prepare the boat for launching. Grandfather, in his black coat and grey scarf, would walk to the far side to receive it. For some reason it was always Grandfather, never I, who went to the far side. When he reached his station I would hear his `Ready!' across the water. A puff of vapour would rise from his lips like the smoke from a muffled pistol. And I would release the launch. It worked by a battery. Its progress was laboured but its course steady. I would watch it head out to the middle while Mother watched behind me. As it moved it seemed that it followed an actual existing line between Grandfather, myself and Mother, as if Grandfather were pulling us towards him on some invisible cord, and that he had to do this to prove we were not beyond his reach. When the boat drew near him he would crouch on his haunches. His hands - which I knew were knotted, veiny and mottled from an accident in one of his chemical experiments - would reach out, grasp it and set it on its return.

The voyages were trouble-free. Grandfather improvised a wire grapnel on the end of a length of fishing line in case of shipwrecks or engine failure, but it was never used. Then one day - it must have been soon after Mother met Ralph - we watched the boat, on its first trip across the pond to Grandfather, suddenly become deeper, and deeper in the water. The motor cut. The launch wallowed, sank. Grandfather made several throws with his grapnel and pulled out clumps of green slime. I remember what he said to me, on this, the first loss in my life that I had witnessed. He said, very gravely: `You must accept it - you can't get it back - it's the only way,' as if he were repeating something to himself. And I remember Mother's face as she got up from the bench to leave. It was very still and very white, as if she had seen something appalling.

It was some months after that that Ralph, who was now a regular guest at weekends, shouted over the table to Grandfather: `Why don't you leave her alone?!'

I remember it because that same Saturday Grandfather recalled the wreck of my boat, and Ralph said to me, as if pouncing on something: `How about me buying you a new one? How would you like that?' And I said, just to see his face go crestfallen and blank, `No!', several times, fiercely. Then as we ate supper Ralph suddenly barked, as Grandfather was talking to Mother: `Why don't you leave her alone?!'

Grandfather looked at him. `Leave her alone? What do you know about being left alone?' Then he glanced from Ralph to Mother. And Ralph didn't answer, but his face went tight and his hands clenched on his knife and fork.

And all this was because Grandfather had said to Mother:

`You don't make curry any more, the way you did for Alec, the way Vera taught you.'

It was Grandfather's house we lived in - with Ralph as an ever more permanent lodger. Grandfather and Grandmother had lived in it almost since the day of their marriage. My grandfather had worked for a firm which manufactured gold- and silver-plated articles. My grandmother died suddenly when I was only four; and all I know is that I must have had her looks. My mother said so and so did my father; and Grandfather, without saying anything, would often gaze curiously into my face.

At that time Mother, Father and I lived in a new house some distance from Grandfather's. Grandfather took his wife's death very badly. He needed the company of his daughter and my father; but he refused to leave the house in which my grandmother had lived, and my parents refused to leave theirs. There was bitterness all round, which I scarcely appreciated. Grandfather remained alone in his house, which he ceased to maintain, spending more and more time in his garden shed which he had fitted out for his hobbies of model making and amateur chemistry.

The situation was resolved in a dreadful way: by my own father's death.

He was required now and then to fly to Dublin or Cork in the light aeroplane belonging to the company he worked for, which imported Irish goods. One day, in unexceptional weather conditions, the aircraft disappeared without trace into the Irish Sea. In a state which resembled a kind of trance - as if some outside force were all the time directing her - my Mother sold up our house, put away the money for our joint future, and moved in with Grandfather.

My father's death was a far less remote event than my grandmother's, but no more explicable. I was only seven. Mother said, amidst her adult grief: 'He has gone to where Grandma's gone.' I wondered how Grandmother could be at the bottom of the Irish Sea, and at the same time what Father was doing there. I wanted to know when he would return. Perhaps I knew, even as I asked this, that he never would, that my childish assumptions were only a way of allaying my own grief. But if I really believed Father was gone for ever - I was wrong.

Perhaps too I was endowed with my father's looks no less than my grandmother's. Because when my mother looked at me she would often break into uncontrollable tears and she would clasp me for long periods without letting go, as if afraid I might turn to air. I don't know if Grandfather took a secret, vengeful delight in my father's death, or if he was capable of it. But fate had made him and his daughter quits and reconciled them in mutual grief. Their situations were equivalent: she a widow and he a widower. And just as my mother could see in me a vestige of my father, so Grandfather could see in the two of us a vestige of my grandmother.

For about a year we lived quietly, calmly, even contentedly within the scope of this sad symmetry. We scarcely made any contact with the outside world. Grandfather still worked, though his retirement age had passed, and would not let Mother work. He kept Mother and me as he might have kept his own wife and son. Even when he did retire we lived quite comfortably on his pension, some savings and a widow's pension my mother got. Grandfather's health showed signs of weakening - he became rheumatic and sometimes short of breath - but he would still go out to the shed in the garden to conduct his chemical experiments, over which he hummed and chuckled gratefully to himself.

We forgot we were three generations. Grandfather bought Mother bracelets and ear-rings. Mother called me her 'little man'. We lived for each other - and for those two unfaded memories - and for a whole year, a whole harmonious year, we were really quite happy. Until that day in the park when my boat, setting out across the pond towards Grandfather, sank.

Sometimes when Grandfather provoked Ralph I thought Ralph would be quite capable of jumping to his feet, reaching across the table, seizing Grandfather by the throat and choking him. He was a big man, who ate heartily, and I was often afraid he might hit me. But Mother somehow kept him in check. Since Ralph's appearance she had grown neglectful of Grandfather. For example - as Grandfather had pointed out that evening - she would cook the things that Ralph liked (rich, thick stews, but not curry) and forget to produce the meals that Grandfather was fond of. But no matter how neglectful and even hurtful she might be to Grandfather herself, she wouldn't have forgiven someone else's hurting him. It would have been the end of her and Ralph. And no matter how much she might hurt Grandfather - to show her allegiance to Ralph - the truth was she really did want to stick by him. She still needed - she couldn't break free of it - that delicate equilibrium that she, he and I had constructed over the months.

I suppose the question was how far Ralph could tolerate not letting go with Grandfather so as to keep Mother, or how far Mother was prepared to turn against Grandfather so as not to lose Ralph. I remember keeping a sort of equation in my head: If Ralph hurts Grandfather it means I'm right - he doesn't really care about Mother at all; but if Mother is cruel to Grandfather (though she would only be cruel to him because she couldn't forsake him) it means she really loves Ralph.

But Ralph only went pale and rigid and stared at Grandfather without moving.

Grandfather picked at his stew. We had already finished ours. He deliberately ate slowly to provoke Ralph.

Then Ralph turned to Mother and said: `For Christ's sake we're not waiting all night for him to finish!' Mother blinked and looked frightened. `Get the pudding!'

You see, he liked his food. Mother rose slowly and gathered our plates. She looked at me and said, `Come and help'.

In the kitchen she put down the plates and leaned for several seconds, her back towards me, against the draining board. Then she turned. `What am I going to do?' She gripped my shoulders. I remembered these were just the words she'd used once before, very soon after father's death, and then, too, her face had had the same quivery look of being about to spill over. She pulled me towards her. I had a feeling of being back in that old impregnable domain which Ralph had not yet penetrated. Through the window, half visible in the twilight, the evergreen shrubs which filled our garden were defying the onset of autumn. Only the cherry-laurel bushes were partly denuded - for some reason Grandfather had been picking their leaves. I didn't know what to do or say - I should have said something - but inside I was starting to form a plan.

Mother took her hands from me and straightened up. Her face was composed again. She took the apple-crumble from the oven. Burnt sugar and apple juice seethed for a moment on the edge of the dish. She handed me the bowl of custard. We strode, resolutely, back to the table. I thought: now we are going to face Ralph, now we are going to show our solidarity. Then she put down the crumble, began spooning out helpings and said to Grandfather, who was still tackling his stew: `You're ruining our meal - do you want to take yours out to your shed?!'

Grandfather's shed was more than just a shed. Built of brick in one corner of the high walls surrounding the garden, it was large enough to accommodate a stove, a sink, an old armchair, as well as Grandfather's work-benches and apparatus, and to serve - as it was serving Grandfather more and more - as a miniature home.

I was always wary of entering it. It seemed to me, even before Ralph, even when Grandfather and I constructed the model launch, that it was somewhere where Grandfather went to be alone, undisturbed, to commune perhaps, in some obscure way, with my dead grandmother. But that evening I did not hesitate. I walked along the path by the ivy-clad garden wall. It seemed that his invitation, his loneliness were written in a form only I could read on the dark green door. And when I opened it he said: `I thought you would come.'

I don't think Grandfather practiced chemistry for any particular reason. He studied it from curiosity and for solace, as some people study the structure of cells under a microscope or watch the changing formation of clouds. In those weeks after Mother drove him out I learnt from Grandfather the fundamentals of chemistry.

I felt safe in his shed. The house where Ralph now lorded it, tucking into bigger and bigger meals, was a menacing place. The shed was another, a sealed-off world. It had a salty, mineral, unhuman smell. Grandfather's flasks, tubes and retort stands would be spread over his work-bench. His chemicals were acquired through connections in the metal-plating trade. The stove would be lit in the corner. Beside it would be his meal tray - for, to shame Mother, Grandfather had taken to eating his meals regularly in the shed. A single electric light bulb hung from a beam in the roof. A gas cylinder fed his bunsen. On one wall was a glass fronted cupboard in which he grew alum and copper sulphate crystals.

I would watch Grandfather's experiments. I would ask him to explain what he was doing and to name the contents of his various bottles.

And Grandfather wasn't the same person in his shed as he was in the house - sour and cantankerous. He was a weary, ailing man who winced now and then because of his rheumatism and spoke with quiet self-absorption.

`What are you making, Grandpa?'

`Not making - changing. Chemistry is the science of change. You don't make things in chemistry - you change them. Anything can change.'

He demonstrated the point by dissolving marble chips in nitric acid. I watched fascinated.

But he went on: `Anything can change. Even gold can change.'

He poured a little of the nitric acid into a beaker, then took another jar of colourless liquid and added some of its contents to the nitric acid. He stirred the mixture with a glass rod and heated it gently. Some brown fumes came off. '

`Hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. Neither would work by itself, but the mixture will.'

Lying on the bench was a pocket watch with a gold chain. I knew it had been given to Grandfather long ago by my grandmother. He unclipped the chain from the watch, then, leaning forward against the bench, he held it between two fingers over the beaker. The chain swung. He eyed me as if he were waiting for me to give some sign. Then he drew the chain away from the beaker.

`You'll have to take my word for it, eh?'

He picked up the watch and reattached it to the chain.

`My old job - gold-plating. We used to take real gold and change it. Then we'd take something that wasn't gold at all and cover it with this changed gold so it looked as if it was all gold - but it wasn't.'

He smiled bitterly.

`What are we going to do?'

`Grandpa?'

`People change too, don't they?'

He came close to me. I was barely ten. I looked at him without speaking.

`Don't they?'

He stared fixedly into my eyes, the way I remembered him doing after Grandmother's death.

`They change. But the elements don't change. Do you know what an element is? Gold's an element. We turned it from one form into another, but we didn't make any gold - or lose any.'

Then I had a strange sensation. It seemed to me that Grandfather's face before me was only a cross section from some infinite stick of rock, from which, at the right point, Mother's face and mine might also be cut. I thought: every face is like this. I had a sudden giddying feeling that there is no end to anything. I wanted to be told simple, precise facts.

`What's that, Grandpa?'

`Hydrochloric acid.'

`And that?'

`Green vitrol.'

`And that?' I pointed to another, unlabelled jar of clear liquid, which stood at the end of the bench, attached to a complex piece of apparatus.

`Laurel water. Prussic acid.' He smiled. 'Not for drinking.'

All that autumn was exceptionally cold. The evenings were chill and full of the rustlings of leaves. When I returned to the house from taking out Grandfather's meal tray (this had become my duty) I would observe Mother and Ralph in the living room through the open kitchen hatchway. They would drink a lot from the bottles of whisky and vodka which Ralph brought in and which at first Mother made a show of disapproving. The drink made Mother go soft and heavy and blurred and it made Ralph gain in authority. They would slump together on the sofa. One night I watched Ralph pull Mother towards him and hold her in his arms, his big lurching frame almost enveloping her, and Mother saw me, over Ralph's shoulder, watching from the hatchway. She looked trapped and helpless.

And that was the night that I got my chance - when I went to collect Grandfather's tray. When I entered the shed he was asleep in his chair, his plates, barely touched, on the tray at his feet. In his slumber - his hair dishevelled, mouth open - he looked like some torpid, captive animal that has lost even the will to eat. I had taken an empty spice jar from the kitchen. I took the glass bottle labelled HNO3 and poured some of its contents, carefully, into the spice jar. Then I picked up Grandfather's tray, placed the spice jar beside the plates and carried the tray to the house.

I thought I would throw the acid in Ralph's face at breakfast. I didn't want to kill him. It would have been pointless to kill him - since death is a deceptive business. I wanted to spoil his face so Mother would no longer want him. I took the spice jar to my room and hid it in my bedside cupboard. In the morning I would smuggle it down in my trouser pocket. I would wait, pick my moment. Under the table I would remove the stopper. As Ralph gobbled down his eggs and fried bread...

I thought I would not be able to sleep. From my bedroom window I could see the dark square of the garden and the little patch of light cast from the window of Grandfather's shed. Often I could not sleep until I had seen that patch of light disappear and I knew that Grandfather had shuffled back to the house and slipped in, like a stray cat, at the back door.

But I must have slept that night, for I do not remember seeing Grandfather's light go out or hearing his steps on the garden path.

That night Father came to my bedroom. I knew it was him. His hair and clothes were wet, his lips were caked with salt; sea-weed hung from his shoulders. He came and stood by my bed. Where he trod, pools of water formed on the carpet and slowly oozed outwards. For a long time he looked at me. Then he said: `It was her. She made a hole in the bottom of the boat, not big enough to notice, so it would sink - so you and Grandfather would watch it sink. The boat sank - like my plane.' He gestured to his dripping clothes and encrusted lips. `Don't you believe me?' He held out a hand to me but I was afraid to take it. `Don't you believe me? Don't you believe me?' And as he repeated this he walked slowly backwards towards the door, as if something were pulling him, the pools of water at his feet drying instantly. And it was only when he had disappeared that I managed to speak and said: `Yes. I believe you. I'll prove it.'

And then it was almost light and rain was dashing against the window as if the house were plunging under water and a strange, small voice was calling from the front of the house - but it wasn't Father's voice. I got up, walked out onto the landing and peered through the landing window. The voice was a voice on the radio inside an ambulance which was parked with its doors open by the pavement. The heavy rain and the tossing branches of a rowan tree obscured my view, but I saw the two men in uniform carrying out the stretcher with a blanket draped over it. Ralph was with them. He was wearing his dressing gown and pyjamas and slippers over bare feet, and he carried an umbrella. He fussed around the ambulance men like an overseer directing the loading of some vital piece of cargo. He called something to Mother who must have been standing below, out of sight at the front door. I ran back across the landing. I wanted to get the acid. But then Mother came up the stairs. She was wearing her dressing gown. She caught me in her arms. I smelt whisky. She said: 'Darling. Please, I'll explain. Darling, darling.'

But she never did explain. All her life since then, I think, she has been trying to explain, or to avoid explaining. She only said: 'Grandpa was old and ill, he wouldn't have lived much longer anyway.' And there was the official verdict: suicide by swallowing prussic acid. But all the other things that should have been explained - or confessed - she never did explain.

And she wore, beneath everything, this look of relief, as if she had recovered from an illness. Only a week after Grandfather's funeral she went into Grandfather's bedroom and flung wide the windows. It was a brilliant, crisp late-November day and the leaves on the' rowan tree were all gold. And she said: `There - isn't that lovely?'

The day of Grandfather's funeral had been such a day - hard, dazzling, spangled with early frost and gold leaves. We stood at the ceremony. Mother, Ralph and I, like a mock version of the trio - Grandfather, Mother and I - who had once stood at my father's memorial service. Mother did not cry. She had not cried at all, even in the days before the funeral when the policemen and the officials from the coroner's court came, writing down their statements, apologising for their intrusion and asking their questions.

They did not address their questions to me. Mother said: `He's only ten, what can he know?' Though there were a thousand things I wanted to tell them - about how Mother banished Grandfather, about how suicide can be murder and how things don't end - which made me feel that I was somehow under suspicion. I took the jar of acid from my bedroom, went to the park and threw it in the pond.

And then after the funeral, after the policemen and officials had gone. Mother and Ralph began to clear out the house and to remove the things from the shed. They tidied the overgrown parts of the garden and clipped back the trees. Ralph wore an old sweater which was far too small for him and I recognized it as one of Father's. And Mother said: `We're going to move to a new house soon - Ralph's buying it.'

I had nowhere to go. I went down to the park and stood by the pond. Dead willow leaves floated on it. Beneath its surface was a bottle of acid and the wreck of my launch. But though things change they aren't destroyed. It was there, by the pond, when dusk was gathering and it was almost time for the park gates to be locked, as I looked to the centre where my launch sank, then up again to the far side, that I saw him. He was standing in his black overcoat and his grey scarf. The air was very cold and little waves were running across the water. He was smiling, and I knew: the launch was still travelling over to him, unstoppable, unsinkable, along that invisible line. And his hands, his acid-marked hands, would reach out to receive it.

...