The Cornflake House: A Novel

by Deborah Gregory

  ‘We had to make do with red for Taff,’ he told us regretfully, ‘because they don’t do these in pink.’ This comment was the final straw. I had to be taken away by a kindly Zulema as I snorted with hopeless laughter. The idea of Taff trussed up in pink leathers, looking naked but fit to burst any moment, was too much.

  Then there was the time she brought a poodle with her. Maybe she was beginning to lose her charms, the poodle appeared to be instead of a man. It was an unhappy dog, with eyes that collected clumps of brown sleep. She carried it about under her arm.

  ‘Is that a child substitute?’ Mum asked, for once speaking just a little harshly.

  ‘No, it’s a fucking poodle,’ and Taff laughed until her smoker’s cough turned to a choking fit.

  ‘Well then put it down and let it walk,’ Mum ordered. The dog was lowered to the floor where it was instantly attacked by our own mutts. As I’ve said, we were never cruel to animals. Perdita grabbed the poodle, disentangling him from the jaws of our dogs and was given, for her pains, the job of looking after the little visitor for the duration. I think the thing she minded most, as she carried the poor soul around, was his scruffiness. Taff, having only just acquired him, hadn’t had time to take him to a parlour and have him clipped down and puffed up.

  Then, another time … I was brought sharply back to the present by hearing my name. Not only my name but the endearment which had previously been Mum’s prerogative.

  ‘Tell ’em where the letter is, Evey,’ Taff was begging. ‘What’ve you done with that letter I sent?’ For a while, as she gave me her most pleading look, I wondered what the hell she meant. Then the scent of violets drifted in my direction and I knew Mum was prompting me to concentrate harder – because Taff had been sent to help me.

  ‘The letter,’ I muttered while Taff gave me encouraging nods. The unopened post. Yes, I remembered, it was in my cell, lying under your frog. I was allowed, with my warder, to leave the court and search for this missive. Of course I knew where it was, but I didn’t want anybody else to touch the frog. The letter was found and we marched back to court. It was not unlike a historical scene, with the King’s pardon arriving seconds before the executioner raises his axe. I knew that sealed envelope contained information which would save me. My magic was returning. I honestly felt the air about my head clear. It was rather like having my ears syringed. There was a spell of painful but exquisite tingling noises and a low hum, then a popping sound and Hey Presto. After that I found myself smiling, a kid with the present she most wanted. I smiled at Taff as I was led past her, I gave Valerie a grin, I even beamed at the judge. Only Taff smiled back, flashing her undoubtedly false teeth.

  There was a hubbub in court, like actors saying ‘rhubarb, rhubarb,’ and I knew that if I wanted, I could have picked out one mutter from the far back and isolated it in order to listen in. Magic is exhilarating, even when you choose not to use it. I’d missed being special, missed knowing I could interfere with the normal, make the world a more interesting place. I was so pleased with myself that it took a nudge from Valerie to make me pay attention to what was happening. My letter had been opened and the judge was reading through it. I thought of Taff’s language and blushed, but when I looked across at my mother’s friend she was nodding her head at the judge, silently agreeing with what he was reading.

  ‘Hope the language isn’t too blue,’ I whispered to Valerie and I inclined my head in Taff’s direction, ‘she’s famous for her swearing.’

  Valerie put her mouth to my ear, ‘You haven’t been taking any of this in, have you?’ she hissed. ‘That letter’s not from the witness, well there is an enclosed note from her to you, but the essential part, the evidence we need, is from your mother.’

  I gripped her arm so hard I imagine I left my mark, ‘Say that again.’

  ‘It’s a letter from your mother to Mrs Davenport.’

  ‘Who?’ I’d forgotten that Taff had once married a man called Davenport; she’d divorced him so fast you’d think his name would’ve gone with him.

  ‘From your mother to the witness,’ Valerie’s patience was running out.

  ‘From my mother…’

  ‘Yes. Written several weeks before her death.’

  To give myself time to recover, I gazed at the judge. He had put on a pair of specs but even so he was squinting at the page of notepaper. Not smart, blue Basildon Bond like you use, Matthew. This was from Mum all right. The thin, white, lined paper he was holding took me straight back to The Cornflake House. My heart ached to see it. And on this familiar paper would be my mother’s writing. The judge wasn’t squinting because the writing was small, but because it was ill formed. She was no great writer, Mum. I could hardly remember having seen her handwriting, she was adept at getting one of us kids to jot things down for her.

  ‘My hands are floury, Eve,’ she’d say, or, ‘I’m all wet, Dear, write a message to Fabe for me will you?’

  I wonder if she went to the pantry first, and covered her hands in flour, or if she purposefully began the washing-up every time a note needed writing.

  ‘You say it’s written from Mum to Taff, not to me?’ I asked Valerie.

  She shook her head, laying a sympathetic hand on mine, ‘But it contains information which will clarify your mother’s wishes, do you see?’

  Yes, I did. The thin paper collapsed the moment the judge stopped supporting it with his spare hand. Cheap stuff. Trees pulped to tissue. Lines to guide the unsteady hand. No need to wonder why Mum hadn’t asked me to write that letter for her, it contained secrets. Secrets she’d struggled to keep, straining to put pen to paper in spite of her problem with words and her illness. I was upset by this, wishing she’d written to me, left a message for me, until I realized that she knew I’d have burnt any such letter along with everything else.

  Mum’s letter to Taff proved once and for all that I had set fire to The Cornflake House at her bidding. ‘I have asked Eve to burn the house down the moment I’m dead,’ it said, as plain as that. This has thrown a new light on my case, a glimmer of hope. It isn’t enough to clear me, the case has been adjourned for two days.

  During this respite I’m not allowed visitors, so I shall make do with sobbing Liz and with your card. Having my magic back I’ve lost the doubts that haunted me. I know the roses on the card are substitutes for the real thing. I can sense the emotions you were feeling when you wrote your message. By running my fingers over your handwriting I can feel that you wrote the word ‘love’ with trepidation, but that you meant it. Scary, isn’t it? What can I say to calm and reassure you? You are my shooting-star wish come true. I will never let you down. I will be there for you as long as that’s what you want. Now I understand the frog too, it was symbolic, wasn’t it? Even the colour was no coincidence. Are you green when it comes to love, Matthew? I find that hard to credit, since you are the most desirable man in the world to me. Never mind, I’m practised in the art, and after all, I did train as a teacher.

  The return of my magic has enabled me to look at this gift anew. Perhaps magic consists largely of the ability to absorb information not only about myself but about anybody I single out. Is that magic, or merely common sense? I shall sleep tonight, and dream not of fathers but of lovers, of a frog who turns into a prince when the imprisoned princess places her lips on his.

  Having spent the worst two days of my life waiting, I was led back to court this morning. It was a clearer case for the judge and jury, but if Mum thought she’d free me by writing to Taff, she was wrong. Taking into consideration the time I’ve already served, I’m to be moved to the Midlands to spend a further three months at Her Majesty’s pleasure. ‘Ooh goody,’ said the queen of my imagination, ‘that fat blonde girl’s got another three months porridge.’ The judge told me that no matter how much I loved my mother and wanted to obey her wishes, he could not condone my actions. It seems that, as adults, we have to make choices and the right choices have nothing to do with family love or duty, because they must always fall
within the law.

  Valerie seemed pleased with my sentence but then she doesn’t have to start over in a new prison, laying down ground rules with a fresh cell mate and fighting off another load of bullies. They can have my biscuits this time. I shall emerge in three months, thinner and unscarred. Until then I don’t want you to see me. Forgive me if this sounds harsh. I need this extra time to myself and I think you do too. I want you to meet as many women as possible while I’m away. Draw comparisons, I shan’t be offended. I think I’ve awakened in you an understanding that you may be attractive. This being a novel concept, you might now be wondering if you could have done better for yourself. You do love me, Matthew. You just don’t know if you love only me, yet.

  They’re coming to take me away. See you in three months.

  Thirteen

  Thanks for your letter, Matthew. I can’t repent and let you visit, the three months apart has become part of the process of healing for me. I need to hurt before I can fully enjoy. But believe me I’m delighted to hear that you’re missing me. Not falling into the arms of another woman yet? I’m astonished to find you haven’t been snapped up, but then I’m biased. Of course I’d know if you had found a new love; the magic has stayed, making my life in this hell-hole a lot easier. The other prisoners don’t bother me. I walk in peace, surrounded by an invisible iron curtain. Big Bad Eve, don’t mess with her. Sometimes it seems I’ve been inside so long I shan’t know how to be free; freedom is a lesson I’ll need to learn from scratch. I’ve taken on a prison persona, a tough, abrupt woman of whom I’ve grown quite fond. She and I shall have to say goodbye in a month’s time. One month, surely you can wait ’til then?

  I have had one persistent visitor here. She won’t leave me alone, although at first I refused to see her, sending messages to say I was ill or busy. I am busy, funnily enough. I’ve been given the task of rearranging the library. Not simply A-Z, but sub-divisions in the existing categories. Now fiction is split into Romance, Thrillers, Sci-Fi etc. It’s made me realize how much reading I’ve yet to do, so many authors, so little time. Since I stopped writing to you, I read until my eyes ache, until they turn out the lights, but I’ll never catch up with myself. And I’ve made a new friend, well two actually. I said I’d try this out, friendship, and I rather like it.

  I share a cell with a woman called Maggie who is so ordinary that at first it was hard to think of her as anything other than a housewife who had popped in for a chat. She is middle-aged, has a kind, honest face, a Birmingham accent and hair which is growing out from a fairly disastrous perm. Our conversation centres around ideal ways of cleaning sinks and how to get stains out of T-shirts. Not my specialist subjects, but Maggie has knowledge enough for two. For days, assuming she was simply missing her kitchen and her pile of washing, I humoured her, nodding when she recommended this soap powder over that, playing interested. Then I discovered that she’s in here for stabbing her husband eight times with a carving knife and that the T-shirt and sink in question had been haunting her since the night she tried in vain to wash pints of blood out of one and down the other. Suddenly I wasn’t playing interested any more. Sadly Maggie has blanked all but the washing from her memory and can tell me no more about her night of crime. I don’t even know how the husband fared; neither, it seems, does she. Frustrating, isn’t it? Was the man a complete bastard, making her life a misery for years on end? Or did he play around, meaning to leave his homely wife for a younger, more attractive woman? Maybe neither, perhaps Maggie just flipped from boredom, finding herself tied to the kitchen one day too long. We’ll probably never know. Maggie is stuck at her sink, in her imagination, a modern Lady Macbeth, endlessly trying different cleaning products.

  My other friend is the librarian, Stella. True to her name, she’s a real star. Stella treats me with unqualified respect, not showing a scrap of interest in my crimes but being genuinely enthusiastic about my background.

  ‘Can’t waste skills like yours,’ she insisted and set me straight to my task. For hours on end we work side by side, passing each other with arms full of books, absorbed in searching, filing, checking. Prisoners come and go but I hardly see them. What I do envisage is the impression their choice of book will make on them. I’m not talking of reform, simply of the marvellous impact of reading. A book adds to a person. When they reach the end, readers have expanded themselves. Take two women, criminals say, shut up here for a couple of years. Then take a novel, let’s choose Oliver Twist in this instance. One woman reads Dicken’s poignant work, the other doesn’t. The reader will leave with more, will go away having had a relationship with Nancy, Bill and Fagin; she’ll be greater by the sum of that book. Also she will have joined the club, the band of those who know this work. Do you see? As I said, so many books … It was easy to convince myself that I was too busy reading and growing to see my visitor.

  But this was no ordinary caller, not one to be fobbed off, never one to take no for an answer. She came repeatedly, leaving little calling cards, notes scribbled on the back of bus tickets, written on the inside of chocolate wrappers. ‘See me,’ they pleaded. There was one worked painstakingly between the lines of a telephone bill. She must have picked this bill up on the bus to the prison, I suppose, where it had been dropped by another visitor. This is how it reads:

  Breakdown of information

  ‘Don’t try and avoid me, Evey,’

  Summary of call charges

  ‘I only want a chat after all,’

  Total call charges £67.94

  ‘I come a long way’

  Family & Friends

  ‘and I need to sit and talk.’

  As I studied it I had this vision of her on the bus, anxious, eager. An elderly woman making a difficult journey, riding that route taken only by family and foolhardy but firm friends of the incarcerated. I was still shocked by another, clearer message I’d had from her, one written on thin, white, lined paper. Shocked doesn’t do my feelings justice. Infuriated comes closer, or staggered. But the telephone bill was a missive straight from the land of childhood, taking me back to the muddle, the absurdities of The Cornflake House which is where, despite everything, I have wanted to be all this time. I couldn’t refuse to see her any longer. My visitor had every right to ride that bus along with those other long suffering relations. It was my mother, you see, pestering, begging, longing just to see me.

  My mother. It takes a bit of getting used to, I can tell you. Such an emotive word, that and its companions, mothered, motherless. I’d begun to get used to motherless, now I have to adjust to the likelihood of being mothered again. Loved in that unique way, as I love Bing. I have no mother. I have a mother. Very little difference, on paper; but away from the page, everything is changed.

  The woman simply will not leave me alone. Burning The Cornflake House was supposed to liberate me, to free me for the remainder of my life and to release Mum’s spirit. Instead I’m a prisoner, physically constricted and mentally trapped in a web of family which even my own death wouldn’t unravel.

  I mentioned the letter, didn’t I? The one that preceded the scribbled notes? I’ll copy the letter out for you. It’s a classic, a schoolteacher’s nightmare:

  ‘Darling Girl,

  You must be wandering why you was asked to burn down your house,’ she wrote, ‘and now you must be feeling cross’ (cross!) ‘because you’ve landed up inside. Don’t blame her, Evey, there was things inside The Cornflake House should never have been kept, but Vic was like that, kept every bloody thing, specally papers cos she thought these should be kept when others would have throwed them out.’

  It rambled on in this vein and I almost gave up on it. Almost. Now I wish I had chucked it in the bin unread. Not that I’d have escaped. As I said, the writer was intent on being either seen or heard. To continue:

  ‘These papers that got burnt I suppose along with your clothes and stuff told to many secrets, I’m not saying Vic wasn’t a true Gypsy and wanted to go that way and take it all with her, but most
important was those papers. They had to go. Do you see, Lovey? Are you following? It was all written down and stuffed in a box somewhere then knowing Vic it got lost, about your Dads, the truth about them and about your Mum as well. Not one of you was her own flesh and blood. I can’t keep quite any more. Maybe Ill be sorry, but my days are numberd and I have to have my say. Sorry to shock you Sweetheart, but Vics gone, God bless her, and I kept shut up to long.’

  Are you following, Matthew? Can you love a woman who’s been duped right through her life? Can you love the bastard child of an old tart like Taff? More importantly, can I love myself, or at least learn to like being who I am? The letter went on to explain, gushingly, how Taff had given birth to me in a place far from home. But being ‘a flighty soul’ she hadn’t felt able to give me the love I deserved. Victory, on the other hand, wasn’t flighty, didn’t even like male company, and therefore, not being driven by similar urges, was happy to take on the role of mother. So happy that she offered this service not once, but seven times. We Cornflake House kids were as good as orphans, seven souls without a proper parent between us.

  I was shaken at first. Mum was not Mum, but Taff was. It look hours to sink in. Then I was embarrassed for having been simple-minded. I was eight when Samik was ‘born’. I didn’t know the facts of life in detail but I understood that babies came from a mother’s stomach. Shouldn’t I have noticed the flatness of Victory’s tummy? I suspect her of trickery. She must have been capable of puffing herself up. I can’t have been the only one who was fooled. After this I grew angry. Secrets are all very well, but we are talking basic human rights here. A child should know its parents, or at the very least, its parent. Neither Victory nor Taff had any right to leave me in the dark so long. I’m in no fit state to receive a shock of this magnitude now, either. How dare they? I hated them both for a while, and Grandma Editha who must have known too. What fun they must’ve had, all in on the act, cosy together. I wished I had a kitchen of my own, I was in just the right mood for smashing some china. Beyond anger was a void, numb surprise; back to being staggered, in fact.