The Cornflake House: A Novel

by Deborah Gregory

  I expect the violet perfume and bright lipsticks were used unsparingly. I’ve seen photographs of them arm in arm, Taff a few inches taller than Victory and with longer, fairer hair. Both are glowing with anticipation. It was a double date, set up by Taff who was, for once, uncertain of her man. Mostly they dated bus drivers and conductors, enjoying, after a film or a dance, the luxury of plush seats, upstairs or down, to themselves in the dark, deserted depot. But this time they were going out with a taxi-driver called Mac who had strayed into their canteen and stolen Taff from under the nose of her current beau. Taxi-drivers were a bit classier, or so Taff thought, although this one had a shifty look. She agreed only to a double date.

  ‘I’ll bring me brother,’ Mac had winked at Mum. ‘He likes ’em dark and stormy.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ Mum thought that names contained the essence of people.

  ‘Kenneth,’ Mac said, his eyes focused on Taff’s floral figure. Kenneth sounded a solid, dependable name. The women consented to meet the brothers outside the Odeon, Friday, at seven sharp.

  ‘They dragged us straight to the back row,’ Mum told me, ‘no ifs or buts. I was on the end, by the aisle. Well, I thought, at least I’ll be able to grab an ice-cream in the interval, or to make a quick exit. Kenneth sat between me and Taff, fidgeting, eating boiled sweets without offering them round, sniffing, crossing and uncrossing his legs. He was most unlike his name, small and oily. I didn’t fancy him one bit, and the feeling was mutual, I could tell. Fine by me. I settled down to watch the film as best I could, considering I was next to an eel. To be honest, Eve, I didn’t see that one coming. I was disengaged, sort of, from the vibrations, lost in a black and white world of soppy American romance. I knew Mac was well away with Taff, that was only to be expected, other than that I was unaware of my surroundings.’

  They were thrown out, all four of them. A fight began when Kenneth’s hand, exploring Taff’s left leg, met Mac’s hand, exploring Taff’s right leg, somewhere between her thighs. The air turned blue. As the manly film star whispered soft words of love, the flesh and blood men swore obscenities at each other and eventually at Taff who tried to separate them by swinging her handbag from groin to groin. My mother told me she was almost hysterical with glee and responding to a demon in her guts, she took off one of her wonderful pointed shoes and prodded Kenneth in the buttocks with the heel of this fashion item. All around them couples were giving themselves stiff necks turning to shout for peace. It took the manager, an elderly, timid man, both usherettes and the projectionist, to disentangle the four fighters and evict them from the building. During the fracas the reel of film ended and the audience shouted and booed at the poor man who had left his hideaway to help out so gallantly.

  They none of them saw the blood, because of the street lighting and their eyes adjusting from the cinema. Taff was cursing the fellows, her stockings were laddered and her handbag hung by a broken strap.

  ‘Bloody fools,’ she told them, ‘great pair of bloody babes, fighting like schoolboys.’

  Then, at last, my mother’s intuition returned. Sensing that Mac was about to make a getaway, she grabbed him by the back of his mohair jacket and he found himself pinned to the spot. Next, Kenneth let out a groan and fell flat on his face. My mother was seriously worried for a second, imagining her heels had done the damage, but the blood, and there was quite a pool of this, was seeping from his front, oozing under his flattened belly.

  ‘Get an ambulance,’ she ordered Taff. She only released Mac once the doors of this emergency vehicle were open and he’d climbed inside.

  It seems, like his namesake in the song, Mac had been carrying a knife. I don’t know which came first, Taff’s date or the record, but I do know that Mac wasn’t back in town for quite a while. What struck Mum was the way they were all shunned by the authorities. It was fair enough to expect police, doctors and nurses to handle Mac roughly, to dismiss his complaints of pains and cracked ribs, but they were equally full of condemnation for Kenneth and the women. Taff bears a scar to this day, a silver line across her right hand which she got when she clashed with Mac as he aimed for Kenneth’s guts. It was some time before this was stitched and then it wasn’t neatly done.

  A bedtime story. It might be bedtime, I have no idea. Whatever the hour, here I lie, telling myself stories when … what should I be doing? Considering my plight, I suppose. But I refuse to reflect on the words used as weapons by my attackers. All right, I’ve committed an exceptional crime, but then I come from an exceptional family. Besides, they’re wrong, I’m not the fiend they make me out to be. I’m not about to be tried for that, not for anything so dreadful. I wish it was over, much as I dread the trial, I want the whole business behind me. If I could scream, I might drown the accusations.

  There are pale neon lights burning beyond the door, giving the illusion of evening, an insipid sunset. Whether or not it is night, I’m in no fit state to sleep. If I close my eyes, feet kick at my face again, or fists fly in my direction. I’ll lie here, awake, alone with my memories and thoughts for days and days. Three monkeys rolled into one, not listening or speaking, and seeing not a soul.

  Eight

  The best laid plans … Even after I’d been dismissed and returned to my cell, where I managed not to look Liz in the eye but merely to keep my sore head down, I meant to stick to my plan of seeing no visitors. This includes you, Matthew. I’m not proud of my newly arranged face. But I had to meet with Valerie. The trial date approaches and she will insist on talking to me, although I try not to hear because what she suggests is absurd.

  To add to my distress, I had a visit from Merry and his carer. I wasn’t going to see them either but they’d come a long way and I was told Merry was in a state – when is he ever not? – so I gave in and limped to greet them. It was a mistake. My body hadn’t finished trembling; I wasn’t ready to be confronted by those goggling eyes or that vacant, innocent face. We hugged and cried, Merry weeping in imitation. Other prisoners and their visitors stared open-mouthed at my brother but he was oblivious, concentrating on his planned speech:

  ‘Mum’s … dead,’ he told me.

  I nodded.

  ‘You sad?’

  ‘Yes Merry, I’m sad. Are you?’

  ‘Oooh yes.’ He pushed his mouth into what he thought might be an appropriate shape. His carer, a kind, heavily tattooed man called Jim, held Merry’s arm with exactly the right blend of force and sympathy. He’d sensed that Merry was about to start jumping on the spot.

  ‘He’s been pretty good,’ Jim told me, ‘until last week.’ Since I didn’t understand the implication, he explained, ‘Time for his visit home. He looks forward to it, you see.’

  ‘Oh, Merry,’ and fresh tears oozed from my puffball eyes. Jim studied his booted feet. Merry studied me.

  Guilt came with all the force my assailants had used, hitting me where it already hurt. The importance of home in Merry’s cheerful and uncomplicated world hadn’t occurred to me before. He was in a Home, well fed, constantly entertained, cared for, and I’d not thought of him looking forward to visiting me and Mum. Until then I would’ve said that Merry was incapable of looking forward to anything. He seemed to live entirely in his own busy present. But of course he has a memory, a limited, more selective memory than most of us; I could see that if he had a past he might also have sometimes given thought to a future.

  This fresh onslaught of guilt was just what I didn’t need with my body bruised and my mind already shuddering in my skull. Much of my childhood had been spent worrying over Merry, tugging him from trouble, making excuses for his behaviour, defending him. Whatever I did for him, I invariably failed because then as now I couldn’t solve the essential problem, which was Merry himself. Of all my brothers and sisters Merry was the one who could never be guided, who wouldn’t sit on a knee and listen while Mum or I explained the ways of the world. Well, only reincarnation or similar miracles would help my brother now, or me for that matter.

  I wasn�
�t surprised by his sorrow because I’d seen him sad before. He has little idea how to express his feelings but he does feel, if only fleetingly. It was Merry who instigated our Day of Deep Sadness, when he was still quite a little boy.

  It was a Sunday and even though there was only one family in Fisher’s Close who actually went to church, revving their Austin pointedly to ensure we Philistines appreciated their piety, all residents but us treated the day as holy. On the Sabbath one might water one’s roses, but gently with the hose pointing to heaven. One could bring forth sponge and bucket and wash one’s motor car but the rubbing and rinsing must be done languidly, as that woman washed Jesus’ feet in the bible. Meat must be eaten, with roast potatoes and two veg, the whole covered in smooth Bisto, at one to one-thirty. To sit down to this feast before such time, or indeed to arrive late for it, as did some wicked men who went for a drink at the Jolly Farmer first, was a sin which could only be absolved by an afternoon reclining in a Parker-Knoll chair. God knows how the middle-class British Sunday evolved; and He may know, but I bet it still baffles Him.

  We, of course, were Pagans. To us Sunday was a non-school, no-shops-open kind of day during which we must make our own entertainment. It was the day for discovering why our bikes wobbled, or for finding out exactly what was stuck between the wheels of our roller skates. On Sundays we exercised the dogs, throwing sticks and balls across the garden, taking them on treks around the perimeter of the golf course, losing them in ponds for heart-stopping minutes until they emerged yards away with duck feathers in their jaws. Thinking of Sundays, I can see that we never shed our caravan mentality. Unless it was pouring with rain, we inevitably spilled outside, setting up artists’ studios on the front steps, making complex housing estates for soft toys on the lawn. Listen, you can hear the conversations of our neighbours as they tuck in to their dinners.

  ‘Nice bit of lamb this, not New Zealand?’

  ‘No Dear, English. Hurry up with the mint sauce.’

  ‘Oh God, there goes one of them now, just whizzed past the window.’

  ‘Where? Which one?’

  ‘The Darkie with the sad eyes. Must have been on wheels, he’d got up quite a speed.’

  ‘As long as he doesn’t hit the car.’

  ‘If only they’d confine themselves to indoors instead of spreading all over the place, like fungus.’

  ‘Fungi, Dear, in the plural.’

  ‘Appropriate simile though. Many hued parasites, sometimes attractive, as in the case of the girl with long black hair, but often deadly poisonous or at least having the ability to give one a severe pain in the belly. Unearthly too, not quite of this world. I’m certain they were spored not spawned.’

  ‘Very clever. If only, as you say, they’d stay indoors. Still, there are so many of them, it’d take a mansion to hold them.’

  ‘Hmm. Or an asylum.’

  Ha, ha, ha.

  As I said, the Day of Deep Sadness was a Sunday, and it was a scorcher. The sun was relentless and since we didn’t possess a hose, the only way for us to cool down was by wading in one of the golf-course ponds. We had been playing Indians. Not one of us wanted to be a Cowboy. Why be a boring Baddie in denim when you could be a glorious Goodie with a screaming redskin and a headdress of magpie feathers? Samik looked the most impressive, he had the right shaped face with skin that cried out to be painted for war. Around his head he’d strapped one of the dogs’ collars, having first stuffed the holes with quills that pointed skywards and left white tips hanging over his brow. Zulema had lovingly adorned his cheeks with Mum’s brightest, reddest lipstick and her greenest eyeshadow, in Italian flag fashion. Slung across his naked shoulder was a felt pouch full of home-made arrows and in his hand he carried a bow of willow and strong twine. We all made an effort, but only Samik looked the part. Off we marched, to the Land Of Many Waters, a colourful tribe in shorts and flip-flops, with Fabian, who’d ‘borrowed’ an old fringed leather jacket of Mum’s, whooping ahead, being the chief. Big Chief Big Mouth we called him behind his back, but he was Chief Standing Tall when we addressed him. We made a great deal of noise as we passed the silent houses in our cul-de-sac but once we reached the rough at the edge of the golf course, we began to stalk quietly through the undergrowth. Only Merry found it hard to get the hang of this. Quiet isn’t a word he understands, or a command he obeys. His continued warlike whooping sent jays and pigeons flapping from the trees, made the squirrels panic to the point of performing dangerous leaps and, no doubt, set the rabbits shivering in their burrows. At the pond we formed a circle, hands held, feet sunk happily into the cool muddy water, and squelched our way through a tribal water dance. As we moved we chanted a mantra Chief Standing Tall had taught us, a rhythmic little number which I thought sounded more African than American but which, I later discovered, was European in origin. We sang, paused and paced, sang, paused and paced again, in time to the chant. It seemed to us the words concerned the weather and a religious recluse called Jenny Ree:

  ‘Nun (squelch, squelch) rain der rain, (stamp, stamp) nun (slurp, slurp) Jenny Ree getta rain.’

  (Fabe was the only one of us kids who listened to the radio, and he’d probably only heard the original song once or twice. Add to that his not speaking a word of French and you might forgive him. Years later I heard ‘Non, Je ne regrette rien’ being rasped out by Edith Piaff … you can imagine how I smiled.)

  Once we warriors had cooled down and had a battle or two, we crept back to Fisher’s Close. That is, six of us crept but Merry ran on ahead, shouting Whoa, Whoa, Whoa until it seemed his lungs must burst. Ahead of us there was a great clatter, as of metal being thrown against tarmac and a loud cry, as of small boy in pain. Merry had caught his foot in a car-washer’s hose, collided with a tin bucket full of soapy water and smashed head first into the curb. By the time we got to him he was a soaking, bloody mess, so much blood and water that it was hard to see where his injury was. Every bit of him that we touched, as we pulled him to his feet, seemed to be either red or pink. People were coming out of their houses, their Sunday peace destroyed yet again by The Cornflake House kids. Everybody was talking at once, some speaking directly to Mum, who had appeared but seemed unable to make another move, some muttering to themselves. I remember only wanting to get away, to drag my bleeding brother home so as to comfort him, heal him and remonstrate with him. If Merry’s injury had been less dramatic I might have managed but the blood, diluted with half a bucket of car shampoo, kept on pouring.

  ‘Let my dad have him,’ a voice said, ‘he’s done First Aid, let him do it.’ The voice belonged to one Philip Bamford, a boy of ten who hadn’t previously thought us worthy of his attention, except to sneer at in passing. His dad, who was now examining Merry gently, was a smallish round man with fat but competent fingers and a bright ginger moustache. He lifted Merry’s head, an action that covered his competent fingers with blood. I saw Mr Bamford blanch, for all his having First Aid. A second later I caught the merest glimpse of Merry’s chin and no doubt I also did an impression of a sheet. There was something shining in the folds of raw, ripped flesh, something so white it was almost silver. Bone. It was chin bone exposed like a gruesome smile amongst the parted skin.

  ‘Two of you, in the back of the car with him,’ Mr Bamford barked, ‘hold him down, keep his head up. Out of the way the rest of you.’ Fabian and I obeyed mutely, sitting one on each side of Merry in the back of the Bamford’s elegant Riley while Mum pressed both her hands against the window and mouthed words we hadn’t a chance of hearing. We were in deep shock, accidents hardly ever happened to us, not major ones; Mum usually managed to foresee and forestall them. Until we arrived at the doors of Casualty, I didn’t even notice that Philip had slipped into the passenger seat and made the journey to hospital with us.

  ‘My dad’s brilliant with things like this,’ Philip told us as we sat waiting. He proceeded to describe his own accidents, giving details of the methods of healing practised, in each case, by his amazing father. He used w
ords we’d never heard before, turn-nick-hey, ab-race-shun, until First Aid became, in our eyes, a complex, foreign science and Mr Bamford a professor touched with genius. While we waited and marvelled, doctors, nurses and porters passed us by, each making some apt comment about our appearance:

  ‘Never mind, you’ll be back in your tepee before nightfall.’

  ‘Is this a private pow-wow, or can anybody join in?’

  One doctor walked by clutching the top of his head, a visual gag it took me some time to understand.

  ‘Your jacket’s wrong,’ Philip told Fabe. ‘It’s more Buffalo Bill than Indian.’

  ‘I stole it off him, didn’t I?’ Fabe responded, quick as a flash. ‘At the Battle of Wounded Knee.’

  ‘My dad’s got a pair of real moccasins,’ boasted Philip. We believed him, we’d have believed him if he’d told us Mr Bamford was actually Sitting Bull himself, in disguise.

  And so we passed the time until our brother was brought back to us, guided by his ginger saviour, with a bandage the size of a bedspread wrapped around his swollen chin.

  ‘Six stitches,’ Mr Bamford announced, as proud as if he’d done the needlework himself. On the way home Mr Bamford let Merry sit in the front of the Riley while Philip squashed in the back with me and Fabian. I think the man had grown rather fond of the odd little boy, but he made a mistake in letting Merry near his dashboard and his gear stick. At one time, as my brother yanked the stick and sent the car crunching from top to bottom gear, I thought we’d all be back in Casualty any second. This was before the days of seat belts and by leaning forward Merry was able to play with the windscreen wipers, honk the horn and pull dangerously on the handbrake. Mr Bamford sweated profusely and gave Merry ineffectual pats on the knees. As we pulled into Fisher’s Close I’m sure I saw him cross himself in gratitude.