The Cornflake House: A Novel

by Deborah Gregory

  On that occasion, unlike this, time had not stood still. The hour of the coming of the mothers and fathers approached with speed; and my own mother had no idea how to break the spell.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I heard her mutter more than once, ‘oh dear.’ She tried clapping her hands, but the lions remained dead. She put on music and suggested we might like to dance, but our legs stayed still as stones. She even sprinkled pepper on our noses, but simply sneezing was quite beyond us. When the doorbell rang, I felt real panic on my mum’s behalf. Here was the first of the parents, come to take their little terrors home …

  Victory took her time answering that doorbell. Mumbling to herself she shuffled down the hall and let the child-collecting mother in. The two women stood side by side, filling the frame of the living-room door, one gazing fondly, perhaps with admiration for Victory, at the lifeless forms on the floor, the other racking her brains for a solution.

  ‘We’ve been playing Dead Lions,’ Victory explained, unnecessarily. ‘We needed a rest, you know, after all the chaos. But now the game is over,’ this with more hope than conviction, ‘so up you get kids.’ No response. ‘On your feet now, Living Lions it is.’ Magic often responds to opposites and, at long last, just in the nick of time, Living Lions we were.

  ‘Bit of a close call there, eh, Evey?’ Mum teased me when the visitors had gone. ‘Worried you, did I?’ I nodded mutely, my face so close to hers that I could see it in her brown, brown eyes. ‘There’s always a danger when you let outsiders in, but I don’t think any of them noticed.’ She was right, the party, discussed next day at school, was ‘brilliant’, ‘smashing’, an unqualified success. Nobody even mentioned Dead Lions, it was as if the game had been wiped from their memories altogether.

  Well, outsiders weren’t a problem when the clock stopped just this side of midnight. At least I guessed it was only us who sat so still in the night. The idea of the entire neighbourhood, perhaps the whole county, stranded as we were was too horrible to contemplate. One thing was certain, nobody was coming to collect or rescue us, so Victory had all the time in the world, and no time whatsoever, in which to reverse our situation.

  Typically, as we sat in limbo, Mum decided to put her extra, hard-gained time to good use.

  ‘Might as well make hay…’ she chirped, and whipped Merry’s socks from his feet. On her way to the washing basket, with these rancid tubes dangling between finger and thumb, she passed my line of vision. I heard her filling a basin with water, then the sound of scrubbing. I could smell the soap as she counted Merry’s toes in an attempt to make purging into a game.

  ‘Pure perfume,’ she sighed. Had I been able to smile, I would have blessed my mother with an appreciative grin.

  It was Grandma’s turn next.

  ‘These things are bad for you, Mum,’ said Victory as she removed the chocolates from Grandma’s lap, ‘especially the hard ones. Now, you won’t mind if I take a liberty? Been bothering me for months and it’ll improve your looks no end.’ She fished a pair of tweezers from her bag and plucked at Grandma’s chin. Three long grey whiskers were flicked from tweezers to waste-paper bin, then Mum stood back, admiring her work. ‘Wonderful,’ she grinned and patted my grandmother’s frail grey head.

  Fabian had his fingernails clipped, although Mum was kind enough to leave his ‘plectrum’ finger alone so that he could still twang his guitar. It took an enormous effort for her to get Django out of his cursed ‘Henry’ T-shirt. She had to cut both side seams and widen the neck before it would leave his body. It must have been seriously hindering his circulation, making him more constrained than ever. Always the thoughtful one, Mum replaced ‘Henry’ with another gem. The replacement was several sizes bigger but otherwise identical, a marvellous piece of forethought which she held up before my eyes like a designer at a fashion show.

  ‘You won’t know the difference,’ she promised Django; but of course he would, which was why, as a safeguard, she popped the small version on the fire – the only thing in the room, apart from herself, that was still moving. While she had the scissors at hand, she brushed Samik’s hair ’til it shone as nature had intended, a task that involved a great deal of de-knotting. Then she cut it carefully so that it framed his face but could no longer hide his almond eyes. I only saw the full effect afterwards. It looked stunning.

  Next Mum painted Zulema’s nails with a layer of that foul stuff which stops the biter from wanting to self-mutilate. I could smell this concoction as I had smelt Merry’s feet and the burning T-shirt, and yet again I was filled with admiration for the woman who was always as good as her name.

  What, we must all have been wondering, could she do to the already perfect Perdita? Here there was no cleaning or trimming needed. That chestnut hair, brushed a hundred times before bed, was neatly pulled from a face which enjoyed a cleansing, toning, moisturizing routine both night and morning. Those clothes were washed and pressed and fitted like gloves. Her shoes were polished – polished, in The Cornflake House, I ask you – and her teeth flossed. But nothing daunted and never one to leave anybody out, my mother proved once and for all that she was a woman after my own heart. Or I suppose it was my heart that dogged hers so faithfully. She messed Perdita up. Not viciously, as I might have been tempted to do, but just enough to humanize the girl. She undid the top button of Perdita’s spotlessly white blouse. She removed the clip and let loose a shampoo-advertiser’s dream of shining, bouncy hair. And she removed that cameo brooch which made Perdita look like a member of the lesser aristocracy.

  Believe me, I was impressed. I was also, at this point, feeling pretty smug as I imagined I was just fine the way I was. Not perfect in the too well-groomed way of my sister but comfortable and complete. Whereas actually, and I blush to recall this, my mother had been saving the worst ’til last.

  ‘Sorry Darling,’ she sighed as she pulled my great sloppy jumper over my head, ‘now don’t be cross, or embarrassed, but we aren’t always exactly as we imagine ourselves. You are blessed, Evey, with a great body. But it’s time you appreciated how great it is. You shouldn’t be hiding your light…’ To my horror she was now easing my vest over my head, leaving me exposed to the world, to the fire anyway. ‘I bought you this, and believe me you need it.’ She produced a bra, holding it up for my inspection before working my arms through the straps. ‘It’s not even the first, or the second size, Eve. It’ll make a whole lot of difference to your life, to the way you walk and hold yourself. I want you to be proud of what you’ve got, not to keep on pretending they aren’t really there. There,’ she stood back and congratulated herself, ‘that’s ever so much better.’ My sweater was returned to me, but I knew that if I could, I would have been shivering. Not from cold but from mortification.

  The bra, a black satin affair which I later came to love, the anti-nail biting potion and the ‘Henry’ T-shirt had all appeared from Victory’s giant carpet-bag. As I sat uplifted, upholstered almost, I began to understand how much planning had gone into this evening’s performance. I imagined my mother in her bed, night after night, not sleeping but dreaming of improving us. Had she found Grandma’s whiskers annoying for months, or only weeks? When the rest of us had complained, ‘Not the Henry T-shirt again, Django, you look like a stuffed Hoover bag,’ had Victory smiled inwardly, knowing that soon she would cut the dreaded thing to ribbons and feed it to the fire? Did the clicking of Fabian’s fingernails and those chewed stubs of Zulema’s drive her mad? Did we, in fact, each in our way irritate her to death? All credit to her, she never showed any signs of frustration, she’d always been the one, the only one, who absolutely accepted us as we were.

  And then I thought how small her alterations had been. When the world mocked us, seemed often to hate us simply for being ourselves, multiracial oddballs, our mother saw us only as her children. If all she wanted to change was our socks or underwear, then the woman deserved a medal.

  Once she’d done with me, she sat on the floor, taking her time, a time that existed only for her.
She may have thought there would be trouble when we were released, that a period of noise, fighting and tearfulness was bound to follow. She rested as if in meditation, head down, eyes closed, probably calling on something out of the ordinary, even by her standards. Her breathing, a strange mixture of panting, blowing and deep inhalations, finished and we found ourselves able to move again. Amazingly, we weren’t angry with her. Not one bit. Time moved on a second and the clock chimed with extra vigour, each ping resounding joyfully through the room until it was no longer midnight but the next morning, and we were late for our beds. One by one we said goodnight and climbed the stairs, or in Grandma’s case went through the kitchen to her flat. I don’t know about the others, but I guess it was the same for all of us. I felt such a glorious heaviness that I had trouble getting undressed, especially reaching for the hooks of my new bra. I was more than tired, I was compelled to sleep. I remember falling, sweetly and steadily down through my pillows to a place of perfect peace.

  I wonder, did you read that story at bedtime? It works for me and I need soothing if ever a person did. Do you see what I’m up to? I’m skating around, trying to kill or to cure time; to drift in memory – avoiding the frustrations of the present.

  It’ll soon be lights out, time for bed. I am wrapped in sentiment; you are my pillow and my blanket. My hand closes on the little stone frog. I wonder, were you aware of any symbolism when you chose him? You are a small man, Matthew Pritchard, and you hair is going thin, but you are no frog in my eyes. Has nobody ever seen the prince in you before? Have I really stumbled on a man who has been overlooked by the rest of my sex? No, I can’t believe no other woman has heard the music in your voice, seen the texture and imagined the warmth of your skin, or lost herself in those gloriously grey eyes. If you were short and fat, instead of being so perfectly proportioned, and if your eyes bulged, which they most certainly don’t, then I might assume I was alone in fancying you.

  Still, if you believe one kiss might wake the prince in you, what fairy-story hero would my wealth of caresses reveal? Mind you, I’m no princess myself. Only my hair belongs in fairyland and I’ll have to cut it soon. As I grow older it will make me seem more witch than princess. I shall miss it, although I took years to appreciate it. As a teenager I used to iron it straight, with only a piece of brown paper between my locks and the heat. Marianne Faithful and Françoise Hardy have a lot to answer for. I thought I looked the bee’s knees with my fried hair and my skirt up round my bum. I also had a pair of white plastic boots, thigh high. Boys ran from them in droves – must have thought a couple of giant milk bottles were coming their way.

  I hear the warder’s approach, doom-laden steps interspersed with the clanging of doors, the turn of the screw. No wonder folks in prison become neurotic, it’s like actually having to confront the bogey man, only here he is she and wears a uniform not of ghostly grey but of dull navy blue.

  Goodnight Matthew and thank you for the present.

  Six

  A terrible thing happened to me in the night. I woke to find another body in my bed. My first thought was of the frog. It seemed possible that I had energized and activated him. That the force of my longing, flowing from my hand to his stony being, had brought him to life. Not totally transformed. The thing in my bed had all the damp bonelessness of an amphibian, this was no prince. For a few seconds I lay shivering, anticipating a croak. Then I jumped out of bed and my foot landed on the frog. He’d fallen to the floor as I slept. He was no bigger than before and solid as any pebble. Not magically turned to skin and blood. I swooped like a night owl and plucked him up before darting across my cell to the furthest corner.

  As I crouched there squeezing my green friend in my left hand, I knew that if the alien in my bed was no life-sized frog, then it had to be human and from the feel of it, dead human at that. Horrifying possibilities flashed by me. Liz had been unwell, that was why she was tearful. She’d climbed down from the top bunk and died by my side. But as I listened, there it was, that deep breathing; Liz was fast asleep on her bunk.

  Perhaps it was the ghost of my mother, my grandmother – worse, of Grandad Eric.

  I gathered my panicking thoughts and made them rerun the actual events. I’d been dreaming and had woken bathed in sweat, clammy and aching. Pushing myself to a sitting position, heaving my torso off the mattress, I felt, to my horror, not a frog but a hand under mine. Yes it was a hand, lifeless, limp, as wet to the touch as a drowned man. From my corner I stared at the lumpy bed, waiting for the dead to move.

  Slowly my senses began to work again. First my eyes had to become accustomed to the dimness; it’s never properly dark, lights always burn beyond the grill in the door. I wondered what goes on, in this or any prison, while we inmates sleep. There were faint voices coming from somewhere, I strained to hear them but they slid about like an untuned radio. The whole experience, limp hand, lack of comprehension and not being able to hear clearly, was frightening and frustrating. If only I still had my magic, I could have not only listened better but honed in on certain sounds, seen into blocked distances, known much, much more. Soon, at least, I could make out the bed, with the top sheet thrown back to reveal nothing but the bottom sheet, crumpled but uncovered by any body. Then I could smell my own sweat but that was it, there was no hint of death in my nostrils. Lastly my brain began to work. I reasoned that it would have been impossible for a dead person to climb into my bed unaided. And I would have heard, felt and seen anybody putting a body there, beside me. So there wasn’t a body in my bed.

  But the feeling of a hand under mine had been real enough and still I shuddered, staying in my corner, cold and shaken. Three of my limbs ached, but my right arm was stinging with fierce pins and needles. I rubbed it gradually back to life, the fizzing alternating between dull and sharp pain as the blood began to flow. I worked from my shoulder downwards, lifting my numb arm, until I reached my hand. And there it was, the limp, boneless object from my bed. Devoid of feeling, my right hand had let my left hand think it was a foreign body, and my brain had believed it too.

  Having clapped and slapped my hand back to life, I crawled to the bed where it was chill, damp and lonelier than ever. Not that I’d have welcomed a stiff for a bedfellow but the dream I’d been having before waking so fitfully had been full of life, making me long for voices, movement, company. Staring at the mesh of Liz’s bunk, I tried to return to the dream in which I’d been back in that day, long ago, when we had moved into The Cornflake House. The great day when we’d hitched our old caravan to Owen’s lorry and rocked our way through England, from the fens to deepest Surrey. In my dream the lorry had become a milk float and our journey, amongst the clanking bottles, had been painfully slow. Not only were we propelled by a single electric battery but we stopped to deliver gold or silver-topped pints to every household on our route. Then there was the orange juice in bottles with shining green tops like beetles in the sun. Merry, just a toddler at that time, made himself sick by drinking milk and orange alternately. Dream vomit, bright yellow with green and carrot-coloured chunks. As the poorly tot hurled himself off the moving float, all arms reached for him and our bodies tumbled after him to land in a sickly heap on the damp verge. I was the last to jump, landing on top of this human pile, with my mother underneath.

  ‘Get off my back,’ she cried.

  I’d woken up as I rolled over.

  After the dream and the dead body incident, I couldn’t sleep again. But I did manage to transport myself back to the day the dream had been based on, the day when we’d made the real move. To feel again that wonderful build up of excitement which had highlighted and lengthened the wait. It was late spring and Grandma Editha was boiling with rage and sorrow. She couldn’t keep us off her freshly sprouting crops. Our caravan was parked in her garden and although we slept there, on top of each other, we bounced into her house and over the smallholding like hailstones. Our feet must have seemed to be everywhere, but mostly, I imagine, under hers. We weren’t dainty children. No
thing was safe in our wake. On the other hand, she was dreading being left alone with only Eric for company. Poor Grandma, she didn’t want us to stay and she couldn’t bear to think of our leaving.

  Grandad hadn’t wanted us there in the first place.

  ‘You and your tribe of bastards can camp in a ditch,’ he told my mother at the time when she was evicted from the field we used to share with three other families. She ignored him, of course. So he wasn’t the least bit sorry when we left. Perhaps he missed us later, the way a ball misses skittles or a dart longs for a bull’s-eye. He used a fat round stick as a substitute for his lost leg and since he couldn’t kick us, he swung this out at those who were careless enough to venture close. You had to be pretty agile to avoid bruised knees and red shins. This game was his only exercise, that and eating.

  Finally the day dawned and we were off on our long-awaited journey. You’d be amazed how much you can fit into one small caravan and an old open-backed lorry. We stacked ourselves high, perching on toys, books, bedding, crockery, and that was only the caravan. Our furniture, such as it was, had been stored in a shed until that day. Now it sat in the lorry, exposed to the sky. Ancient moth-eaten sofas and wormy chairs wobbled under hastily tied ropes and on the very top lay a scratched white table, its legs pointing crudely upwards. We must have looked like refugees.

  In my prison bed I lay and smiled to think of the consternation our arrival caused in that exclusive cul-de-sac. What were we? Gypsies? Tinkers? Tramps? A bit of each, all things abominable. The residents’ worst nightmares, multiplied by eight and then added to by a number of dogs, cats and rodents. I suppose, if you belong to the middle classes, and if you have invested in a nice, tidy house in a smart location, the arrival of vagabonds in an old, open lorry and a battered caravan is not exactly a welcome sight.