by Joanna Glen
I knew deep down that this was stealing.
But I wanted this book so badly.
Inside it were all the normal nursery rhymes that Julia and I knew off by heart and used to say so fast that the words blurred into each other when we were younger. ‘Humpty Dumpty’, ‘Little Bo Peep’, and ‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’, which was another of my mother’s nicknames for me and drove me absolutely mad.
My favourite poem was called ‘The Pedlar’s Caravan’ by William Brighty Rands. The illustration showed trees and birds and caterpillars – and a Victorian caravan, made of wooden slats, yellow and red, with flowers painted in vertical plaited lines to the right and left at the front, and butterflies fluttering above them. It had tiny windows with geraniums in boxes, and ladder steps, and wooden wheels with cream-coloured spokes, and a smoking tin chimney, and it was passing under a huge tree, with a dark-looking woman and child at the window, and the pedlar man leading a dapple-grey horse to a dusky not quite see-able horizon.
When I was alone, I read it and I read it, and it made my heart beat and my soul soar, and I heard the noise of singing coming from deep down inside me, where he comes from nobody knows, and I was in the caravan, or where he goes to, but on he goes, and I was leading the dapple-grey horse, and my horizon was unknowable, and every time I climbed the ladder, I gave my own life story a different ending. And I never once ended up in Hedley Green.
Perhaps the reason I didn’t show Julia the book was that I couldn’t bear to admit to her that I wanted to leave.
Go anywhere but where I was.
The minute I could.
Of course, I knew that she would want to stay.
And, if I left and she stayed, we wouldn’t be Justa any more.
We’d be ripped apart like the ragdoll, with our stuffing falling out.
Parfait
The stuffing was falling out of my mother.
When Douce came running out of the hut, shrieking, I knew.
I wasn’t brave enough to face what I knew.
Not again.
So I ran up to Víctor’s house, and we zoomed back down the hillside, with me on the back of his bike, my long legs sticking out either side. As I looked at Víctor’s strong back in front of me, his prominent shoulder blades, his thick white-skinned neck and his mop of grey hair, I felt that perhaps this time, this time, it was all going to be OK.
But by the time we got into the hut, the feeling started to dissolve. Because Gloria and Douce and Wilfred and Zion were all sitting in a semi-circle, and in front of them was my mother. It was, in some ways, my mother, but she looked like an empty sack.
Breathe, I thought, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
I remembered the feel of her skin on my cheek.
The softness of her.
Zion got up.
‘She’ll be with Pa,’ he said, clenching his fingers, then stretching them out. ‘Isn’t that a good thing, that she’ll be with Pa? That they’ll be together.’
‘That’s right,’ I said, and I wiped away my own tears as fast as they fell because I was the oldest and I had to be brave.
‘Yes, Little Bro,’ I said, trying to find a smile from somewhere, ‘she’ll be right there where there’s a huge river, and trees with fruit every month – do you remember? – and leaves for the healing of the nations.’
‘Leaves don’t heal nations,’ said Pierre, coming in through the open door. ‘Leaves don’t do anything.’
‘Except photosynthesis,’ said Zion.
Zion remembered everything I taught him. He listened to me like I’d listened to my father, and this steadied me. He loved me much more than the others did, and this gave me purpose. If he was beside me, it was worth going on.
‘Yes, Zion,’ said Víctor. ‘Your mother’s crossed over to the eternal city.’
‘Like my name!’ said Zion.
‘Like your name!’ said Víctor. ‘And she’ll be dancing down its golden streets with your father.’
‘What do you think it was?’ Pierre said to Víctor, crossly, sounding as if he couldn’t stand hearing another thing about the golden streets. ‘The thing that killed her?’
‘It could have been cholera,’ said Víctor.
‘Could the doctor have saved her?’ I asked Víctor.
Víctor put his arm around my shoulder.
Pierre said, ‘Well, could he?’ in that voice he had that made me feel as if everything that happened in our lives was my fault.
‘Oh, cholera’s a tricky one,’ said Víctor.
Then, he dug a hole, and each one of us in turn thanked God for our little bird mother, Aurore, whose name meant dawn. We gathered around the hole where she lay, and as Víctor filled it up with red earth, he led us in singing, Freedom is coming, freedom is coming, freedom is coming, oh yes I know!
Except Pierre walked off in the middle.
I understood.
Freedom didn’t seem to be coming at all.
The more the years passed, the less free we felt.
Augusta
I noticed that the older you got, the more careful you had to be about things you said. In Reception, you could let anything blurt out of your mouth. But by secondary school, you weighed things up before you spoke.
For example, we couldn’t say gardening aloud in Year 8, and for a few years after that. Robin Fox had introduced the class to double-entendre, and frankly one hardly dared open one’s mouth at school. Girls in our class were starting to grow hair in awkward places, and Robin Fox would take a look at our fuzzy legs and the hairs appearing in our armpits and say, ‘A bit of gardening at the weekend, maybe, for you?’
What could we do but use our pocket money on Bic razors or depilating cream or wax strips that didn’t work? And looking back, what power he wielded.
Robin Fox had four older brothers, and he knew how to turn ordinary sentences sexual by raising one eyebrow. For the whole of our lives, we’d been able to say, ‘Are you coming?’ without even thinking about it. But not now. Now we would have Robin Fox’s one raised eyebrow, and, if there was enough of an audience, we would have the full fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally, with Robin Fox thrashing about moaning and gasping at the dining table.
I remember a spring day when we were heading for thirteen. My father was mowing the lawn with not a hint of double entendre in his clean and ordered mind; my mother was cutting the edges into perfect curves (ditto); and Julia was weeding (relieved from the burden of Robin Fox’s raised eyebrow).
I wasn’t thinking of Robin Fox either. Part of the joy of the school holidays was getting away from him.
No, I was thinking of Lola Alvárez saying, ‘Your weeds are my flowers.’
The weeds, which looked exactly like flowers to me, were lying with their pretty blue petals, ready to be piled into thick green sacks where they would suffocate in polythene on their way to the dump to die in a yellow metal skip.
I was suffocating too, on purpose, hiding in my bedroom to avoid the tedium of the gardening. I was also watching Pally’s dove, which lived in a cream dovecote Fermín had made in their garden. It liked to fly down and flit among the luscious creamy petals of the magnolia tree, which my father had planted dead in the centre of our front lawn. Sometimes he would do the measurements all over again for the pleasure of knowing that he’d got it just right.
Today the dove had flown over the top of our house to the three lacy cherry blossom trees which stood at the back. It flitted from tree to tree, before flying off to the Cooks’ garden and landing on Graham Cook’s swing-set, which had been there for years, but to which I’d paid little attention.
I’d watched Barbara Cook pushing Graham in his enormous cage of a swing in the rain, and I’d watched Jim Cook with his shirt off and his big balloon tummy, shouting, ‘Hey ho and up she rises.’
That day, it struck me, as I stared out of my bedroom window, that nobody had ever sat next to Graham Cook on the spare normal swing. Nobody ever in his entire
life.
So I crept downstairs out of the front door, up our little grey paved drive, and I went next door and asked Barbara Cook if Graham would like me to come and swing with him on the swing-set.
Graham was in his baby pen, rocking back and forward, and he sounded almost like a vacuum cleaner going up and down the carpet.
Barbara Cook talked to him, and she guided him into the garden, holding his arm. It was quite an effort getting him into the swing, but once he was in with his red bus, and swinging, he stopped making the hoover noises.
Barbara Cook pushed Graham, and I started to swing, back and forth in time with him. I went higher higher higher, and I could see my mother digging, my father digging, Julia digging.
Back down.
Up again – they were still digging.
Back down.
Up again – so odd to watch my family being my family without me.
Digging.
Very intently.
My father turned around.
Back down.
I loved it that they didn’t know I was watching them.
It made me feel powerful.
It also made me feel odd watching them.
I sang, ‘Hey ho and up she rises,’ like Jim Cook, and Graham and I made laughing noises together.
Up I went – my family remained oblivious.
I breathed in the smell of mown grass.
Barbara Cook went inside for a moment, and I heard her shouting at Jim, ‘You’re drunk again!’
When she came out, she was carrying a camera. She shouted, ‘Cheese!’ and she stood in front of the swing-set, laughing and laughing, as if she couldn’t stop, as if she’d been storing this laughter somewhere deep down for a long time, and, while she went on laughing, she kept taking photos of the same thing – Graham Cook and me swinging on the swing-set.
She gave Graham a push and went inside again. She came out with a flowered cushion, and she sat on her white plastic garden chair and she put her cup of tea on her white plastic garden table, and she sighed very loudly and she dipped in a digestive biscuit so that its edges went soft. When she lifted her head, I saw that she was crying, in the same way that she’d been laughing, as if she’d never stop.
Graham’s swing had come to rest, and he was moaning and twisting, and Barbara Cook was crying tears from deep inside of her, and I pictured all of our stomachs full of bubbles, which would turn acid-red for crying, or alkaline-blue for laughing, like litmus paper. I supposed that we all had an endless supply of these bubbles, and I didn’t know whether my life would be a laughing kind of life, mainly blue, or a crying kind of life, mainly red. None of us knows.
No, none of us knows.
Barbara Cook went on crying, and Graham and I went on swinging, and after a while, I thanked Barbara for having me and I crept through the double garage and sped through the back door and up to my room, where I bumped into my mother, on the landing.
‘We’ve been calling,’ she said. ‘Where on earth were you?’
‘In the toilet,’ I said.
‘We’re all going to the dump,’ she said.
‘Thrilling,’ I said, which was not the right answer.
Julia and I sat strapped into the back of the car.
‘What on earth have you been doing all this time?’ said my mother.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
When I went round to the Cooks a week later, there was a large photo of Graham and me swinging on the swing-set framed on the wall of the hall, above the shelf.
As I came in, Barbara Cook called out to Graham, ‘Your girlfriend’s here.’
That made me feel really strange inside, and I hoped that I could be a nice person without having to be Graham Cook’s girlfriend. Then I realised that Graham Cook would never ever in his entire life have a girlfriend.
The real problem came when my father went to visit the Cooks and saw the photo on the hall wall, and when Barbara Cook called out to Graham, ‘It’s your girlfriend’s dad.’
My father told Barbara Cook not to say that. Then he came home and told me I was not to visit Graham Cook’s house, and nor was Julia, that Graham Cook was not a suitable friend for me. What was I thinking, going and swinging with him as if, as if … he spluttered to a stop.
My mother looked shocked and wrung her apron in her hands, and mentioned all Barbara Cook’s good qualities.
‘I like swinging with Graham Cook,’ I said to my father. ‘I like being his friend.’
My father’s neck went red and his fingers started shaking.
‘There is to be no more swinging,’ he said.
Then I said something very rude. I said some double-entendre I’d learnt at school, which my father did not appreciate.
I said, ‘I heard at school that there has been plenty of swinging in Willow Crescent. That is, amongst the adults.’
My mother and father went very quiet, and then my father told Julia and me to please go to our bedroom.
Straight away.
Now.
NOW.
‘NOW,’ screamed my father.
Julia asked me why he was so cross about me swinging with Graham Cook.
‘Because he’s stupid enough to think …’ I began.
‘Please don’t say that,’ said Julia.
‘… that I would want to be Graham’s girlfriend, when it’s perfectly obvious that I want to be Diego’s!’
‘Me too,’ said Julia.
‘We can’t both have Diego,’ I said. ‘We can’t exactly share him. We might be twins but that would be taking things too far.’
‘But how will he choose?’ said Julia. ‘Surely it’s got to be one of us. We’ve fancied him for years.’
‘It will be quite easy for him to choose,’ I said. ‘We’re really not very alike. Especially for twins.’
As I said it, I knew exactly who he would choose.
‘People say our faces are quite similar,’ said Julia. ‘It’s only the colour of our hair and the shape of our bodies which have turned out a bit different.’
I looked down at my skinny legs with dark hairs on them.
‘Well, he’ll just have to choose the hair and body he likes best, I suppose,’ said Julia.
‘That’s a terrible thing to say,’ I said. ‘You’re supposed to fall in love with someone’s personality. Not the shape of their body. It’s very sexist to think of women as bodies, Jules.’
‘I still don’t get why Dad has stopped you visiting Graham Cook.’
‘He doesn’t want me with a spastic,’ I said.
‘Stop it,’ said Julia.
‘That’s what he said to me at the first Craft Fair,’ I said. ‘That if I sat with Graham, I’d look spasticated too. And he nearly pulled my arm out of my socket to force me to get up.’
‘I still don’t get why he’s sent us to bed,’ said Julia, who never liked to criticise our parents.
‘Because I did the double-entendre.’
‘The what?’
‘Robin Fox told me that swinging is what adults do when they swap husbands and wives, and he said there was a lot of it going on in places like Willow Crescent.’
‘But Dad’s Neighbourhood Watch,’ said Julia. ‘Wouldn’t he stop it?’
‘It happens inside people’s houses,’ I said. ‘Apparently, they all throw their keys on the floor and then see where they end up.’
‘What? Do they deliberately go to the wrong house?’ said Julia.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘To have sex.’
‘What? People like Helen Dunnett and Janice Brown?’ said Julia, with a massive frown wrinkling up her forehead.
‘Robin Fox said it’s typical of the suburbs, but I didn’t know what he was on about.’
‘Do you really mean that Mum and Dad would do this too?’ said Julia again. ‘Like, would Dad have had sex with Helen Dunnett or Janice Brown?’
I nodded very seriously, and then I said, ‘Come to think of it, nobody else would put up with Dad’s pants!’
&nb
sp; That set Julia off, thinking of his grey Y-fronts with little slits at the front to put his thingie through. (We knew masses of words for his thingie these days, but neither of us could quite bring ourselves to use any of them – the whole idea of it appalled us. Not to mention the necessity of his thingie in our very own creation. With our very own mother!)
My father came raging up the stairs because, instead of being contrite and ashamed of the rudeness of my double-entendre, he’d heard me laughing again. When he came in, shaking and bursting a blood vessel in his neck, we put our hands over our mouths because seeing him there screaming at us and knowing he was wearing those slitty grey Y-fronts underneath his grey trousers made us squirt laughter between our fingers in big gasps and splurts. This sent him totally round the bend.
Then our mother came in, smelling of talcum powder, from her bath, and we could see her big stretchy pants because she’d got her nightie on which was a bit see-through, and we could also see the tyre of fat around her middle, like a ring doughnut.
‘If you go on laughing like this,’ said my mother, ‘you will give your father a heart attack.’
At the mention of the word heart attack, and I don’t know why this was, a big squelch of laughter burst out of my mouth through my fingers – and that set Julia off.
My mother turned bright red in the face.
She looked at Julia and said, ‘I expected more of you.’
And I realised that she didn’t expect more of me.
I couldn’t decide whether to try and be good like Julia or whether to pay her back by being extremely bad.
Parfait
When my mind clogged up with stuff, I used to go down to the lake, and I’d let the water wash it clean as I swam deep, like a dolphin, remembering that I was Parfait Nduwimana, and I was in God’s hands.
‘Come on then,’ I said to the rest of them. ‘Who wants to learn to swim? It’s a beautiful day.’