by Ann Kelley
One of my favourite times is when I just wake up in the morning – that half sleep half awake state, where you aren’t sure whether your dream is reality or not, and even when you realise it’s only a dream, you try to hang on to it, finish the story, actually they are usually more like films. I hate it when I wake suddenly and the dream disappears from my memory. Like the very end of Jennie, when the little boy who has been a cat all through the book wakes and immediately forgets his friend Jennie, who saved his life and taught him how to be a cat.
That bit always makes me cry.
I would have to give it a different ending if I was the writer.
Mum read Jennie to me when I was little and I have read it to myself since. It’s quite a difficult read with many long words and sentences but it’s a wonderful story, one of my favourites.
Dreams are like films, I think, that come out of nowhere, like switching on a television film. They are inhabited by strangers, sometimes. Where do they come from? Maybe they are really there on another level of the universe, a bit like ghosts, who meet us on crossroads of time and space and, just as suddenly, disappear. Maybe that’s what happens to us when we die. We simply get onto another dimension, a parallel universe. Some people who are alive in the present are good at seeing beings from another world or time. And some people never see them at all, or even imagine them.
Mum doesn’t dream, ever. She says she’s still catching up on all the sleep she missed when I was a baby. I never stopped crying, apparently.
Pop has had breakfast, had a small through-the-glass argument with Flo and Rambo, and has flown off. He’ll be back at teatime. I’ve filled the bird feeders and there are the usual little birds feeding – blue tits, great tits, greenfinches.
I put out bits of old bread and cheese and pasta last night for the badger, but didn’t get to see him. The food went, though, so we think he had it.
There was a notice in the local paper for homes wanted for hedgehogs – they’ve got some at Newquay Zoo. I would love a hedgehog in the garden, but Mum reckons we have too many steps here for a hedgehog to negotiate. This garden is all steps and terraces, like a mountainside farm, except the little dry stonewalls are collapsing and the terraces are becoming slopes. Mum is out there every day now, battling with the brambles, but there’s not much she can do really. Everything grows so fast. She’s just about Keeping the Jungle from the Door. She looks so furious when she’s pulling up the weeds. She says she pretends she’s pulling out The Lovely Eloise’s hair.
It reminds me of when we were in Kenya and the undergrowth was always cleared around the house, to keep snakes away. I saw an enormous monitor lizard once, on the path between the house and the beach. I was only little and I thought it was a dragon. Mum missed it that time and didn’t believe me. But when we were there again another winter we saw one together. It was about five or six feet long – a big one, very close to the house.
I loved the vervet monkeys best. They used to leap from the sausage tree into the scrub, babies clinging to their tummies, making the most awful racket. And I loved the weaverbirds’ nests: carefully woven little balls at the ends of palm tree fronds, like green Christmas tree decorations. When the nests became old and torn and yellow, they would rebuild them.
Zakariah – who cleaned and cooked for us – made the best curries, and used to climb the coconut palms and gather nuts for me. He was probably about Mum’s age, fiftyish, but he had white hair and seemed very old to me. He lived in a village several miles away from our rented beach house, and had to walk back there in the evening in the dark. It got dark at seven o’clock. He was frightened of losing his trousers to robbers, he said, so Mum said he must go home earlier, while it was still light. One time we had an ayah to look after me, for when Mum wanted to go out on her own. I don’t remember her name – and she and Zakariah had a big argument and he beat her, apparently. We weren’t there when it happened. The police came and took him away and Mum had to pay lots of money to get him out of jail. The girl kept telling us, ‘He bit me. He bit me.’
Zakariah told Mum that the girl was his niece and she was lazy and flirting with another young man who worked close by, so he beat her. Mum looked after me on her own after that.
Mum took me snorkelling every day. I couldn’t swim very well but the mask and flippers helped. Luckily, we didn’t know what we now know – that some of the fish, the lionfish and moray eels, were dangerous. We had no fear, so it was like floating in underwater heaven surrounded by fish of every possible colour and shape and pattern. Little orange and white striped clownfish that live inside the poisonous tentacles of sea anemones, protected by the anemone from bigger fish. Yellow and bright blue fish, striped, spotted, zigzag patterned. Imagine all the colours and patterns and shapes of fish that could possibly exist – well, they actually do. They had lovely names too – Picasso fish, surgeon fish, angler fish – that one had what looked like a fishing line and hook hanging from its face.
We were like fish too, just hanging there in the warm clear water. If you trod on a coral head by mistake, a little fish would peck you on the leg to make you get off their territory.
Mum and I were the only foreigners on that bit of coast, apart from a Polish woman who looked after the cottages. We didn’t see much of her, because she suffered from malaria and had fevers.
Being there was like time standing still, a paradise on earth. The sun shone every day. We ate bananas, fish, and curries. Fishermen came to the door with parrotfish and lobsters. Dhows with white sails passed on the horizon. There was a reef a mile out and sometimes we walked out to it at low tide to look at the starfish and sea cucumbers, and gather shells. We only picked up the empty shells of course, but we saw loads of live shellfish. There were huge clams tucked in among the coral. When the tide came in, all the little white crabs – they were almost see-through – made a rush for the little waves, and then changed their minds and ran back to the beach. They live in holes in the sand and if you chased them they would sometimes go into another crab’s hole and be chased out again. I used to watch them for hours. We found lots of tiny red coral pieces on the beach. They have holes in and we made them into necklaces and bracelets. They were a bit scratchy but very pretty.
Sometimes when we had to go into town to shop, we went into Barclay’s Bank to get cool. It was the only place apart from the cinema that had air conditioning. I saw my first ever film in Mombasa – it was Dr Doolittle. The grown-ups kept making noise and the children had to keep shushing them so they could concentrate on the film. It was like a huge party going on with people drinking beer and laughing and talking. I thought all cinemas would be like that and was quite surprised and disappointed when I went to a cinema in England.
The only thing I didn’t like was going past Mombasa meat market. Yuk – the smell of warm meat. I always held my nose as we drove by.
There was an elderly man staying at one of the other cottages for the whole winter. He walked around in his pyjama bottoms because of the heat. He said he was ‘happy with this view and sixpence’. He and Mum used to sit together in the evenings and drink gin and tonic and laugh.
I would love to go back to Africa.
Eugene rang the bell this morning and when I went to the door he had a letter for me. It’s from the hang-glider man. He’s still in hospital. He says he’s very grateful to me for calling for help. Someone must have told him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Note: I have just rescued a bumblebee. It was trapped inside the downstairs room, buzzing about sounding very worried. I managed to get it onto an aquilegia head and put it outside onto a potted pelagonium. It must have thought it had died and gone to Heaven.
WHEN I WAS born I had to have an operation straight away almost, and I nearly died. The Australian surgeon said to Mum and Daddy, ‘Your baby nearly went to Heaven.’
Mum said my babyhood was a Total Nightmare.
Luckily I don’t remember anything about it. I know I had a dummy and Grandma kept try
ing to take it away from me. But I don’t really remember, it’s just that Mum told me that later.
My right-hand thumb is the one I still sometimes suck – only when I’m really, really tired – but I’m actually left-handed. Which is strange. Maybe I write with my left hand because my other hand was always stuck to my mouth. My handwriting is crap.
Mum thinks children should have all the comfort they can get, whether it’s a dummy or a thumb to suck, or a cuddly blanket, whatever. She said she wasn’t allowed to breastfeed me because I was too weak to suck at first. I was fed through a tube that went up my nose and down my throat. Luckily, I don’t remember that either. She tried to breastfeed me, but I just couldn’t suck enough milk to keep me alive. I think she probably feels guilty about it.
Mothers feel guilty about everything, even when they aren’t, she says, and if you’re a mother You Can’t Win.
I think the first thing that I remember about being alive was Grandpop throwing me in the air and catching me. Flying. I was flying and safe. Scared and happy at the same time.
Mum says I need more men in my life. She does, she means.
She used to smoke but gave it up when she was pregnant with me. She’s recently started again, even though Grandpop died of cancer. Daddy’s never smoked. I wish Mum wouldn’t. She says it’s her Only Vice these days, and she doesn’t do it in the house because she doesn’t want to expose me to passive smoking. Actually, I think she drinks too much, too. And she keeps crying. I’ve seen her in the garden, pretending to dig or something, but her face is all puckered up.
I never did that thing some children do when their parents split up – hope they’ll get back together. It never occurred to me. I just thought that was what fathers did – pissed off when they’d had enough, or when things got tough, or when they met someone younger. Most of my friends have stepfathers, or their mums live with a partner who is not the father of their children. We’re not so very different. Except Mum hasn’t got a partner.
When we live in St Ives she will be able to go out more. I could make friends too, maybe. And when I go to school there I’ll definitely make friends. Anyway, I just live for the day. Make the most of every moment in case it’s the last.
Note: We are making shell curtains to hang over open doors to stop butterflies and flies and bees coming in.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Note: We saw a little baby badger last night. (Perhaps if I open the kitchen door and keep the light on, it will still come, won’t be frightened and I can take a photo of it.) Its mother or father came first, about ten o’clock – it was nearly dark – ate the bits of bread, and went. I put out the cats’ leftovers in case he/she came back looking for something more substantial. Almost immediately, this baby arrived. It was so sweet – no stripes yet, just the salt and pepper bristles. I hope it comes back tonight. I’ll put out some of the cat food that the cats won’t eat. They’ll only eat the food in sachets these days. God, they’re fussy. I suppose they get enough protein from free-range mouse, anyway.
I HAVE BEEN examining Rambo’s eyes very closely, using Mr Writer’s magnifier. (I’d forgotten about it. I must take it out in the garden.) They are like prehistoric amber – the pale yellow sort with tiny black fish embedded. So there’s all this liquid amber, sliding, and the elliptical black iris swimming and changing shape. When he comes in from the dark his eyes are totally black and bottomless.
He sees ghosts, unfortunately. It upsets him. When I pick him up he looks over my shoulder at the corner of the room and is worried by his visions. Mind you, he’s worried by everything. Poor Rambo is a nervous wreck. He’s fine if you’re sitting down or prone on the sofa. But if you walk towards him when he’s eating, or if you stand up, he’ll run away as if you’re going to hurt him. And no one in our family has ever hurt him. He’s neurotic. I wonder if he sees people ghosts, or cat ghosts? Maybe he sees Grandpop and Grandma. I really think that when we die we end up in another universe, running alongside this one, and some people cross over sometimes and see each other over space or time, like when you’re in a car on a motorway and you see the cars coming towards you on the other side of the barrier.
A dog swam from the rocks below the house today. He had a woman with him who threw something into the sea for him to fetch. He was a good swimmer.
I don’t fancy swimming from the rocks – even though the water is calm and clear. I know it’s cold. I’m not good at cold.
Even on a lovely evening like it is now, it’s cold here after the sun goes behind the cliff. If we were on the beach that faces west, we could be watching the sun going down. There would be children playing and people lighting barbecues, and gulls creeping close to take anything worth eating from plastic bags. Families having fun.
Oh! There’s a dolphin! I just saw a dolphin. And another. Three of them. Heading towards St Ives, going past the headland. Big dolphins. And a little one. A whole crowd of dolphins. I can see without the bins, but I’ve found them and now I see there are at least six of them I think.
‘Mum! Dolphins!’
We stand like idiots, watching the dolphins, mesmerised by them, crying, almost. How wonderful that such huge creatures live in our sea. They survive all the pollution and fishing nets and jet-skis and motorboat propellers and there they are, leaping up and playing and fishing off our beach.
They go off around the headland towards St Ives, and I suggest to Mum that we follow them, so we do. She takes the heavy binoculars and I take my lightweight ones. I go as fast as I can along the garden path, out the gate and along the coast path. She runs ahead. I’m out of breath as I reach her, standing on the cliff edge looking down at the dolphins who have moved across the next beach now, Carbis Bay, headed towards Porthminster and St Ives. I wonder if anyone on the beach can see them. They don’t appear to be looking in their direction. We have a great view because we are so high. There are six, I think, and they have white bellies, which you can see when they come right out of the water.
We’ve seen dolphins! It’s like a visitation – like seeing the badgers. I feel honoured to have witnessed the wild animals. We are so lucky. I didn’t take any photographs. Things always look so separated from the photographer through the lens, Daddy says. Anyway, I didn’t even think about it.
We watch until they’re out of sight – in fact they dive and don’t resurface as they get closer to St Ives. We walk back slowly, bird-watching as we go – cormorants and herring gulls and a pair of stonechats. Stonechats love to get on a high point – a rock or the highest twig of a bush – and sing. There are butterflies, very tiny, grey blue, and a lovely smell of summer, the yellow gorse – which is more like coconut oil than Ambre Solaire. It is very lovely here – so wild and unspoilt, considering it is so close to such a busy holiday town.
‘I’m glad we came here,’ I tell Mum.
‘Good, darling, I’m glad you’re glad.’
I feel happy. Happiness is an odd feeling. Like being opened up inside. As if I have been surgically opened to my heart, which is singing. I hope, if, and when, I get someone’s heart, that that person’s heart has felt such happiness. I suppose it’s what they call joy. A pure, clean, lovely sensation, as if I am in love with the world. Which I suppose I am, at this very moment in time. Make the most of every moment. Well, we are, I am.
Peregrine Cottage feels suddenly like home, whatever home is. It’s a strange business, feeling at home somewhere. I never did really feel at home at our last house, where we moved after Daddy and Mum split up. He stayed on in Camden Town while we moved to Chalk Farm, so I could carry on at the same hospital and school. The Chalk Farm house was OK. I just never felt it was my real home. Naturally, I wanted to be in the house where I had grown up, with Daddy. And I never did go back to school, anyway.
I always felt at home in Grandpop’s house, with Grandma’s cooking smells and the sound of chickens in the garden. I suppose that’s where I felt most safe, even though it wasn’t my real home. The sound of the kettle whistli
ng. My white cockerel. My den in the old coal shed. I had an old mat, a blanket, a blunt kitchen knife, my cowboy hat and gun, and my herd of wild horses, and Thunderhead, of course.
Grandma paid me for collecting caterpillars from her cabbages. Drowned caterpillars stink of rotten cabbages. I have never eaten cabbage since.
I keep having dreams about trying to get home – an unspecified place, but I’m lost in a strange city, unable to catch a train, without money or passport or a map. Sometimes I can’t speak the language or read the street signs. The bus never comes, I miss the train, I’m never able to get home. Why do I keep having this dream? No dream books here, unfortunately. Maybe I’ll be a psychologist when I grow up. I’d love to be psychoanalysed. It must be wonderful to talk about yourself all the time and have someone listen to what you say. Of course, you’d have to pay someone to do that.
We don’t get many visitors, as we haven’t made any friends here yet. But we do get Jehovah’s Witnesses. Always the same two, a young man and a slightly younger woman – in their early twenties, I think. Very serious, smartly dressed, she always wears a longish dark skirt. They knock at the door and Mum says, ‘I can’t spare the time to talk to you now. You’ll have to make an appointment to see me.’
She sounds angry.
‘Why don’t you want to talk to them, Mum?’ I ask after they leave.
‘They don’t believe in blood transfusions, Gussie. If you had been born the child of a Jehovah’s Witness, you wouldn’t be alive.’
I wonder why they believe that. I think we should invite them in and ask them, but Mum is adamant. She doesn’t want to get into an argument.
She always takes one of their leaflets, though. It’s called the Lighthouse or something. She uses them as cat-food mats when we run out of Independents. Last time they came, we were just on our way out and we walked up with them from the house. There were four more of them standing by the railway line, all in black, like a funeral party, looking over the beach, standing on the very edge.