The Cornflake House: A Novel

by Deborah Gregory

  Then there was the untidiness. My mother tried, she wasn’t slovenly, you wouldn’t have called her house-proud but she did make some effort to keep those corners clean. It was a losing battle though. The Cornflake House was an average size, not a great rambling home for a hatch of children. We fell over each other and each other’s toys constantly. Tables and chairs were hidden under books, papers, security blankets. Until I started dating and visiting, I’d never sat down without first shifting a pile of junk. To emerge from a home like that in pressed, unsoiled clothing, in shoes with matching laces, was unfeasible. We were the misfits, the new scruffs on the block. Rainbow coloured, unelasticated, tied together with bits of chewed string. We were reliably, consistently messy. You could depend on The Cornflake House kids to turn up for PE with one brown and one grey plimsoll, to appear in assembly wearing the wrong school tie. I will never be groomed, I wasn’t made that way, but I could happily bask in your spruceness, Matthew. Forgive me for getting personal, but I appreciate your form to the point where I know that you have what is, to me, a perfect body. You would be tidy even in the nude.

  At least this time I made an effort and was prepared, as best I could be. I wonder if you noticed the brushed hair and teeth, the pearls? Thank God I sat behind myself, not able to see what you saw. Imagine if we’d been designed differently, how terrible to have to watch every blush and frown, every slackening of our own jaws. Talking of blushes, do you know that your cheeks redden exquisitely under stress? A trait we have in common, at last. I’d thought we might be too precisely opposite. When you shook my hand, secreting my frog there, your jaw, which is very fine by the way, sharply outlined, twitched just a little and your complexion darkened in a way that made me long for a fan to cool you. I can’t bear it now, the distance of the law between us. Keeping my distance, trying to win you without being able to make contact, this is the second most difficult thing I have ever had to do. Perhaps life will always be this hard on me now; the second most difficult quest is following so closely on the heels of the first. I only hope that captivating you doesn’t bring me as fierce a punishment as the one I am suffering for freeing my mother.

  You said you wanted me to try and tell you about myself as a child, to explain how it felt to be Eve, the eldest. It felt brilliant and tragic, marvellous and ordinary. I was both princess and pauper, a clumsy tub with a thin, dainty girl locked inside. A kid who never cared about clothes, yet longed for lace, silk, sequins. Well what child isn’t a mass, or in my case a mess, of contradictions? Being me at home was so completely separate from being me elsewhere, it’s amazing I’m not schizophrenic. I was confident, self-assured, often bossy with my brothers and sister, yet I was reticent and shy with adults. I’m sure that grown-ups, with the exception of Mum and Taff, found me distasteful. Neighbours in Fisher’s Close eyed me with suspicion, as if expecting me to spit or call abuse at any moment, while I was really a quiet girl, keen to be at peace with people. My teachers treated me as if I was a special needs case, although I was bright enough and got good marks. They always addressed me directly, bending their concerned faces close to my own so that I knew whose teeth were brushed and who hadn’t had time to say hallo to Mr Toothbrush. I might have been a deaf child or a foreigner. Such treatment baffled and upset me. Fear of looking as stupid as they thought I was kept me tense, tight, on the alert; I never allowed my mouth to hang open or let my eyes drift out of focus. I know I was a sight (and I was the pick of the bunch since most of my clothes went on down through the other six children) but I still find it depressing that not one teacher ever saw through the tatty exterior.

  Children who were not my own brothers and sisters seemed a strange breed to me. I now understand that we were the odd ones out; but at eight, or ten or twelve, my peers were peculiar simply for not being like me. The entire population of the world, or at least of Woking and its surrounding villages, walked in a haze as far as I was concerned, distanced by their lack of perception, their inability to see how wonderful, how glorious we, the children of Victory, actually were. All the same, I was constantly aware of being both special and unseemly: the daughter of the Queen of Magic, half-sister to the Child of the Moon, Gypsy Boy, Son of Satchmo and the little Eskimo lad, not to mention the pixie-faced speedy one and that extraordinary, manicured girl with the Shakespearean name. A lot to live up to. And I headed this troupe, I was the eldest, the leader. It was up to me to steer them from trouble, to teach them right from wrong, to watch over them in cloakrooms where gym kits went missing, in playgrounds where skipping ropes waited to trip them, on buses where they risked having their lunch-boxes thrown from the window.

  Have you noticed that I make no mention of friends? I had none. I spared no time, made no opportunities for forming friendships; perhaps there was no need. I was one of seven, and then their was my mother, always prepared to listen, to laugh, to help out. Besides, forgive the pathos, but I can’t recall anybody making advances, asking if I’d like to sit by them, to walk to assembly in their company, to share a bag of sweets. I know it takes two and, not wanting to be seen to capitulate or conform, I was equally mean with my smiles, my gestures of goodwill. When situations demanded pairing up, for dancing or for the walk to the swimming pool, I was among the last to be chosen, often having to team up with the teacher or with an insipid little boy called Timothy Ross, a creature so nondescript that even when you held his hand you managed to forget he existed. It didn’t bother me. I wanted it that way. To join them would have diluted me, or so I believed.

  I ought to have seen things differently as I grew up, to have made an effort with my fellow students or the mothers at Bing’s play group. I don’t think I was aloof, I just never went the extra distance, always turned down offers of drinks or coffees, was always either in a hurry or in love. In my present situation I can see the attraction of close friends. It would be delightful to have a woman, somebody not connected with my family, who knew me well, who cared about my fate. A friend to visit me, to bring frivolous gifts, makeup or magazines, to listen when I spoke of my grief and my new found love. It’s a lack I’ve rarely considered but suddenly it appears as a gaping hole, this friendlessness. Perdita has friends, she always did. I haven’t met the present ones, her own smart set, but I expect she’s still in touch with Katie, the nice, clean child she befriended at school. They went to Art Club together and invited each other to tea. Lord knows what Katie thought of Perdita’s lot, but I know my sister was impressed and embittered by the order of Katie’s home.

  ‘Why don’t we use napkins?’ she asked Mum mournfully. ‘And why does Merry make that slurping sound when he eats?’

  ‘It’s his way,’ Mum explained, ‘of showing his appreciation.’ And she presented Perdita with a Man Sized Kleenex in lieu of a serviette.

  I shall make some friends when I’m free, get out to evening classes, or join a bridge set. You see, I’ve no idea how to begin. Of course there’s always Liz, but she seems intent on maintaining our agreed silence, and who am I to intrude?

  On the way back to my cell today, with your kindly face clear in my mind, I stopped to kick the wall in frustration. The warder handled me roughly and I was glad to feel my muscles burning. If nothing else, pain brings an awareness of life going on regardless. Yesterday, I overheard two of my fellow prisoners as they sighed over a magazine. ‘It’s not all the crap inside that gets to you,’ one said, ‘it’s thinking of the stuff out there you can’t have.’

  Too true. Until they let me out of here, I must not only practise restraint, I must also learn the art of doing time.

  Do you remember the word you used when telling me how you were enjoying the stories of my family? You said you found them bewitching. An appropriate adjective. I was wondering how my mother would have coped with doing time, and the answer is that she would have bewitched time to make it serve her. Not that she’d have ended up behind bars in the first place; she could make folks forget what they’d seen. Or if, as in my case, the evidence was too glaring
to be forgotten, she would talk soothingly until the listener’s perspective shifted to her advantage. But supposing she had needed to kill time for some reason; can you believe me when I say she was able to do so?

  She could make time stand still. It must be hard to credit and it’s almost impossible to prove; although there were eight witnesses with her on the night she achieved this feat. Unfortunately they were all family and may be considered biased. Also, of the eight, my Grandma Editha is no longer living and my brothers Merry and Django would be disregarded as witnesses in any situation. That leaves me, an imprisoned criminal, my other two brothers – Fabian and Samik and my sisters, Zulema and Perdita. From this bunch, Perdita is the only one who could convince even the seriously sceptical that time had stopped. And Perdita might well have chosen to forget the episode. She disapproves of messing about with the status quo, of what happened to her in that non-time, and of my family in general. Perdita is a broker these days, she sells stocks and shares. From the bedlam of The Cornflake House she emerged in a trim suit and crisp white blouse to walk the floors of commerce. As strange a phenomenon as a peacock hatching amongst a clutch of scraggy chickens’ eggs. No, Perdita could not be relied on to tell the truth about that timeless night.

  Maybe I overestimate your reaction, perhaps it isn’t so strange or unbelievable. We change the clocks twice a year, moving our mornings on or our evenings back, and few complain that time cannot be gathered up and herded in such a way. It seems I’ve begun to think in terms of proving every case, like Valerie. Finding evidence and witnesses to bear me out, when I’m only recounting an event.

  Before I tell you what happened, I ought to take you inside The Cornflake House as it was all those years ago and introduce you to its inhabitants one by one. You already know my mother. Then there’s Fabian, a troubled teenager at this time, handsome and haunted. He dreams of greatness, longs for fame. He needs to escape, fly the nest and join that gathering of musicians who wait for him. But tonight he’s obliged to sit with us, pouting, restless, wasted. Fabian had a tough time in Surrey, being half-caste he was the butt of prejudice and envy. He was every teenage girl’s fantasy, except the middle-class white girls of our town weren’t supposed to dream in glorious Technicolor.

  With Fabian, on one of our sagging sofas, you’ll see Zulema. Her skin is not quite as dark as Fabe’s, but her eyes and hair are black. At twelve she’s already a beauty with graceful movements to match her gentle looks. I used to think she was an angel sent to watch over us; even now I’m not convinced she’s an ordinary mortal. Well, mortal maybe, but ordinary, never. As she grew up she became lovelier and more remote. I miss her most of all, but that’s the future. Tonight you can feast your eyes on her oval face and share her serenity. I won’t blame you for finding yourself drawn to look in her direction.

  Sitting all by himself, on his special chair, is Django. By rights, he should look wild, reckless. My mother insists he really did come from the Gypsies. He has brown eyes and twisting hair, but he cuts his locks so short that no curl remains. What is about to happen will have less affect on Django than on the rest of us, because he is already in his evening state of semi-trance. Only the stroke of midnight can wake him. He goes to bed then, counting the stairs, undressing from the feet upwards, brushing his teeth thirty-two times. He reads through his vacuum cleaner catalogues for exactly fifteen minutes and switches his light out at twelve thirty-one. You know, he’s the most unlovable boy in the world, but I can’t think of him without wanting to grab him in a crushing embrace.

  The shining example of cleanliness is Perdita, and pinned to her side, held down by her tidy but forceful hand, is Merry. What a scruff. He’s how old? About six I should think. Wonderful face, eyes of polished turquoise, the chin of an apprentice garden gnome. Mind out for Merry, he has a way of landing on people, like a comet.

  Grandma Editha has moved in with us now that Eric is dead. She takes the fireside chair, sits so close her knees cook slowly all evening. I swear I sometimes smelt them roasting. Last but not least is Samik, the baby of the family, squashed between Fabian and Zulema. He adores Zulema, who doesn’t? And everybody loves him. Right now Samik, at five, is as cuddly as a panda. Sadly he’s already suffering from insecurity brought about by teasing and bullying. He’s not entirely English, he has a look of Eskimo around the eyes which marks him out for special treatment at school.

  All right? Ready to step inside? I’ll escort you up the garden path, holding your hand as we pass the caravan and the tree house in the overgrown front garden. Together we can peer through the bubbled glass into the hall. This space glows warmly back at us thanks to red paint and stained-glass lampshades. We go inside and are greeted by a haze of warm, sweet and sour air; musk, incense, dogs, unwashed feet. I allow you a moment to get your bearings; it’s a house of contradictions and you might want to focus on a few of these.

  What do you notice? The worn but expensive Axminster carpet in bright reds and blues, perhaps. Or the variety of wellingtons that line this Axminstered hall. You might glance down to the kitchen, pink with neon lighting, fitted in best English oak but awash with unwashed pots and pans. We are heading for the door of the cramped, cluttered living room, where I will leave you and yet not move from your side. I have my part to play in the scene you’ll watch, but in this instance I can actually be in two places at once. As you stand in the doorway, you’ll see them all, two women, three teenagers and four growing children. I’m leaving you now. Yet at the same time I stay and squeeze your hand; don’t be alarmed. And please excuse that other me, the overweight, under confident teenager; she has a good heart, under the puppy fat.

  It’s a story that really should begin ‘Once upon a time…’ because its main concern is time. My mother had been experimenting for weeks with the concept of time. Clocks in The Cornflake House had spun backwards, chimed when it was not the hour, jerked their troubled hands forwards as if learning to drive. In those days we children were always in a hurry, late for school, rushing to meet friends, gulping meals. These hiccups in time had been driving us mad. We were used to the unusual but most magic was made to our advantage. On the night that time stopped, we’d been forced to stay in the living room until nearly midnight while our mother hushed us and concentrated hard. We were bored, stiff, fidgety, and then, when she was successful, suddenly stilled.

  ‘I’ve done it, stopped the clock,’ Victory beamed and she waited, momentarily, for our congratulations, before realizing the full implication of her words. She hurried on, ‘Sorry, but bear with me, it’s taken for ever to achieve this. Not too uncomfy for you, is it?’ If it was, we were hardly in a position to say so. ‘I think,’ she bubbled as she swiped an orange cream from under Grandma’s frozen nose, ‘that it’s the exactness of the hour, or the oh-so-nearly hour, which has made the difference.’

  Since I was sitting opposite the fire, facing the narrow mantelpiece on which the clock rested – and I do mean rested – I was the only one who could see and appreciate what my mother meant. It was, as the telephone robot might have said, eleven fifty-nine and fifty-nine seconds, precisely. Midnight hung suspended, frustrated, its throat choked by unchimed bells.

  ‘Ah,’ Victory caught my static eye. ‘Our Eve can see it, can’t you, Love? And can you feel the breeze that holds those hands? The wind of no-change? Course you can.’ I couldn’t nod or tell my mother how right she was but my hair fluttered obligingly from my face as I stared at the still, silent timepiece. Mum was flushed with success. So much was possible if only there was time to do impossible things. As my mum had pointed out, she who controls time, controls all.

  I might have felt more enthusiastic myself if I’d been able to applaud, or at least to speak. Unfortunately for those of us who shared the moment, when time stopped, so did we. Although I was unable now to look around the room, I guessed that petrifaction had taken each of us by surprise. Grandma was almost visible, her fuzzy form sitting stock-still in the corner of my eye. She had her mouth open,
having been caught in mid-sentence, and her left hand rested possessively on her precious box of chocolates. The remainder of the family were coloured blurs on the edges of my vision, although I remember I could still smell Merry’s infamous feet.

  ‘This side of midnight,’ Victory crooned, ‘interesting. You would have thought the magic would wait one second, for the witching hour. Then this would have happened when it was in-between time, neither one day nor the next. What is midnight, after all? Is it today, or tomorrow? Hmm. Seems it prefers to settle for just this side of the obvious. Like myself, of course, exactly like its maker.’

  Needless to say I was beginning to wonder how it would end. How long would this last? I wasn’t panic-struck because something similar had happened before, at a birthday party, Perdita’s, given in honour of her having reached the grand age of seven. The Cornflake House had rocked to the screaming of overexcited children. The kids we’d invited from school and the neighbourhood weren’t used to such a glut of freedom, or such a spread of sugary goodies. By the time we’d had our tea, the place was like a home for the hyperactive. More than paper was ripped to shreds as we played Pass The Parcel, and during a game of Shipwrecks, three dear little boys turned the sofa upside down and practically suffocated Sophie Thomas – she’d been sitting on it stuffing her face with what was left of Perdita’s birthday cake. When Merry, who had been spinning like a top all afternoon, finally knocked two little visitors over and gleefully threw himself on them, then even Victory had had enough.

  ‘Dead Lions,’ she shouted. And Dead Lions we were, every last one of us. Even Merry was stilled, his body at peace in spite of the state of his mind. We must have been the deadest Dead Lions this world has ever seen. We fell like ninepins, stomachs pressed into the carpet. Each of us could see at least a couple of our friends and so we lay numbed, fully able to appreciate how the mighty Kings of Beasts had been felled by one shout.