I tugged at his heavy trousers and he tutted as if I was a missing ingredient. ‘What?’ he said, wrinkling up his salty nose.
‘Help!’ I moaned.
‘Do you want to do some cooking?’ said George. He was like a man let loose in a ladies’ underwear shop. I climbed onto a high stool, and played with a grey lump of pastry left over from a chicken pie. George was piping cream onto the roof of the cake. For a while I forgot all about upstairs. I could hear Carmen banging about, wildly polishing in spasms.
I made the pastry into the shape of a bird. Its wings slumped and it bent its head towards me. The cake was leaning over to one side. George patted it with a non-stick spatula and looked alarmed. My ears were getting hot. What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘I don’t like it in the attic,’ I whimpered. He picked up a crystallized strawberry and gazed at it as if it was a nipple.
‘Did you see a ghost?’ he asked sadly.
The pastry bird tried to fly, then fell off the kitchen table.
I tried again. ‘It smells!’ I yelled, into the quietness.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ crooned George. ‘It’s only a room.’
A cherry slid off the roof of the cake and a dollop of cream avalanched after it. George was getting irritated.
‘I want to go back to the nursery!’ I screeched. (I don’t know why, but I did.)
‘Don’t be silly,’ he jabbed, and Frank galloped in holding a plastic jet that he hurled maniacally into the air. It nosedived into the side of the gateau and George covered his eyes with a gesture of helplessness. Frank wrote something down on a piece of paper, then scooped up some stray cream that had landed on the floor and looked at it quizzically.
‘It’s the wrong consistency,’ he announced. ‘And I don’t want her back. She gets on my nerves.’
‘I know that,’ snapped George, brandishing his spatula at me.
Suddenly Carmen stood squarely at the kitchen door, holding a mop and bucket as if they were a spear and shield. ‘What’s going on?’ she said, as if she was in charge.
‘I don’t like my room,’ I spluttered.
‘Her cheeks look funny,’ Carmen said solidly. ‘She’s got the mumps.’
George brightened and looked at me paternally. ‘The mumps?’ he repeated as if it was a new recipe for a cake. ‘Poor buttons.’
I felt my cheeks. They were hard and full of unpronounceable words.
Frank whistled through his teeth.
I clambered down from the high stool. My legs were pastry. Carmen ushered me upstairs to the bathroom and wiped my face with a cool sponge. Then she pulled off my clothes and sprinkled talcum powder on my belly so that it looked like a doughnut. She led me back up the attic stairs. The smell had disappeared. I was too wobbly to protest. She tucked me up in bed and stroked my damp head.
‘It’s good to get the mumps,’ she said approvingly.
Her hands were dry from Ajax and her bare leg had one virulent varicose vein running down it in a blue river.
‘It’s a nice room really,’ she said, glancing around, picking a rose from her patterned overall and placing it in a vase that appeared by my bed.
For a moment it was a nice room. The presence of Carmen dissolved my fears, and I slipped down under the sheets into a dark peace. I fell asleep with Carmen sitting there, a wholesome weight on the edge of my bed, guarding me. Downstairs George had remade the cake into a splendid mountain and was letting Frank lick the contours of a large and sticky wooden spoon, while explaining the physics of cake decoration to him.
The Kingdom Of Leaves
Days later, I was swollen up into a delirious caricature of my former self. The mumps made me feel as if I was encased in a swarrn of hostile bees. I lay counting the stings. In front of me there was a blurred flurry of fat wings. I was tangled up in a weighty Victorian nightgown, that clung to my body whenever I tried to move. When a doctor came I asked him to take me away, but he just patted my heavy jowls with his dry hands, and told me that darkness was good for the mumps, and winked at Jean who had just returned from the hospital wrapped in mummy-like bandages, with a fierce and battered face. She stood bravely in a dress made of alabaster that smelt of sherry. The thermometer rattled on the roof of my mouth, and his stethoscope was unbearably cold and flat against my back. The air was yellow as old Lucozade, brewed in foggy factories in Watford.
After the doctor had gone Frank appeared, carrying an oversize astronomical manual, and sent by Jean to catch the mumps. He stood there, breathing deeply, looking down at me scientifically.
I was so hot, it was as if I was strung up on the top branches of a leafless tree in the midday sun. My tongue didn’t fit in my mouth. My heart was bubbling.
Frank shook his head like a doctor, then stood at the window, squinting up at the sky. He was studying the eclipse. In my Savannah dreams the eclipse was happening above my head. He opened the book and started to read in a ponderous, poetic tone. It sounded like another language.
I groaned.
‘What do you want then?’ he enquired politely.
I said, ‘Rain.’
What sort of rain?’
I told him, croakily, that I wanted the heavy stormy type rain that bounced when it landed.
Frank sharpened a. pencil and coughed authoritatively.
‘Imagine,’ he lectured, ‘that you are a citizen of the Kingdom of Leaves.’
I nodded. Frank was drawing on the wall. I was reptilian, and helpless.
He drew me a map of a country that was beset by continual monsoons. It was soothing. He recited geographical facts about the country, where, he said, the rain was so ever-present that people lived under huge elephantine leaves the size of houses, and were wet all the time, with their faces streaked with mud, and leeches sucking at their skins. No-one was ever ill in the Kingdom of Leaves, as diseases were washed away daily down a thick, torrential river named the Sump. The population had skin of flannel and could wring themselves out. Fishes lived on land and tigers swam. Frank drew across the ceiling with sweeps of his pencil, stopping to peer into my delirium and fan me with tales of squelching, of incessant watery tracks on which one could sail to market on a twig to buy wet meat to boil in pans over a spluttering blue flame.
I wet the bed. Warm urine soaked sensually through the hot sheets and weighted the mattress. My temperature flew to a place where birds flapped their wings like seals, and my limbs were masts with sails attached to them. Frank put his pencil down and sniffed.
‘Smells weird in here. Like mouldy books,’ he muttered, and left as quickly as a gust of wind.
I fell out of bed trying to follow him.
I think I must have fallen asleep, but when I opened my eyes I saw a figure standing motionless by the window. She wore a long grey cloud of a dress and her face was small and indistinct.
I wondered for a moment if I might be dead. She reached out to me, then disappeared. The leaves around the window shuddered and brushed against the window frame.
I was drifting away, down the Sump. Blue rain was falling onto my white cotton nightdress.
Later Frank told me I never stopped yelling. He said that Jean wore earplugs and played Elvis Presley records. I remember only that I lived in another place for a period of time, and that I was always wet.
Wooing
How I hated the lottery! Theobald and I discussed the changes in our workplace with scorn and fury. The archaeological institute was filled with whirring machines, and there was constant drilling in the once quiet wings. I saw a skip filled with birds heads on plinths. It was somehow pathetic. The Head Curator had appointed a consultant who wore iodine-coloured shirts and who kept asking us questions about our movements. I did my best to confuse him with archaeological jargon. He obviously knew nothing about the museum’s collection. He didn’t understand that anyone can push a button and watch a video and leave the place with a plastic pencil sharpener and a frog-shaped pencil case, and still be none the wiser about the cult
ural heritage of ancient civilizations. Also, although Theobald was my friend, he was a very weak person, and I knew he would probably swing to the new way of thinking. I was in a state of constant anxiety.
It was in this insecure state that I decided to start wooing Eva. Even if I was disappointed in love, I reasoned, it was better than never having loved at all. In wooing terms every detail was important; clothes, facial expressions, conversation, timing, superficial impressions. I did deep-breathing exercises and ran up and down the stairs. If I was going to practise the art of courtly love then I thought that I had better be fit.
The next morning I stopped at a flower stall, run by a woman with the face of a tiger and a fur shawl wrapped around her shoulders. I stood there for ages considering the symbolism of different flowers.
The tiger said ‘Somebody sick?’
‘No,’ I answered, although I suppose I was sick in a manner of speaking. ‘What do you want then?’ she barked. ‘Roses for love, lavender for remembrance, daffodils for cancer?’
‘What about irises?’ I asked.
‘What?’
What do they mean?’
‘Oooh, they’re very stately.’ Stately. Eva was stately. Her back was as straight as an iris. Her eyes were blue.
‘I’ll give you two bunches for three pounds,’ she snapped, already wrapping the flowers in paper with the gentleness of a butcher.
I started moving off. The flower seller touched my sleeve.
‘Be careful,’ she said, and squeezed my arm.
‘What of?’ Did everyone know what I was thinking?
She didn’t answer.
This was one of the things that frightened me about the Public. They could be over-perceptive.
At the institute the Head Curator was standing in the room of Arctic mammals, waving his hands about. I tried to skirt past him but he lumbered towards me. We stood in the shadow of a polar bear.
‘Flowers Gert?’ he boomed.
‘Irises,’ I muttered, trying to edge away.
‘We must talk,’ he whispered. ‘There’s going to be changes.’
‘Oh?’ I sniffed.
‘You see, stuffed rooms like these aren’t relevant to today’s youngsters.’
How I hated his vocabulary. I didn’t like his trousers either. They were big and corduroy and too long. I held the irises in front of me like a shield, and peered through them at his pavement face with its slabby cheeks and small, gritty eyes.
‘What are you proposing?’ I asked, creeping sideways.
‘Humour!’ His bulging eyes sparkled. The polar bear sighed. There’s nothing funny about taxidermy. Not many jokes about holes in ancient pots either.
‘Theobald agrees.’ Theobald would have agreed with a mass murderer. Perhaps he will form a flea circus, or dress his gnats in dancing shoes, I thought, ignoring the Head Curator as he elaborated on a number of humorous examples, based in similar buildings in Rome, Madrid and Toronto.
What are you doing today?’ His nose brushed the petals.
‘Sharks’ teeth,’ I muttered. I was investigating a shark’s tooth necklace from an island where the inhabitants believed that they became fishes at night and ate each other.
‘Perhaps you would like to come upstairs and give a talk, to a school party?’
This was one of the Head Curator’s themes. For years he had wanted me to become a kind of Rolf Harris; to leave my quiet room and sit in a glass box with a magnifying glass and ramble on to any old toddler passing by about the nature of my work. I told him, over and over again, that I needed peace and privacy.
‘You could bring an object like a shark’s tooth necklace alive!’
The image was disconcerting.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t do talks.’
‘Gert.’ He stopped smiling. ‘Things are changing. We live in a modern world. Ask yourself some tough questions. Like, what is the point of what I do?’
It was a thickly buttered threat, but I couldn’t be fagged to take it seriously. My desk was an oasis after this conversation. I put the irises in a temporary bucket and settled down with my cross references. Coffee break arrived after I had written an extremely inaccessible paragraph about the necklace with no juicy detail whatsoever.
As I walked towards the canteen my heart was being eaten by sharks. Eva was standing in a pool of domestic light pouring coffee into a teacup, looking calm and efficient. I leant over the counter with the irises. There was a deathly silence as the rest of the museum staff watched with amusement.
‘These are for you,’ I whispered.
Eva looked at the irises and then at me. Her face was pale. I noticed that she had perfectly formed, white, modern teeth.
‘Is it a joke?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Why then?’
‘I thought they would match your overall.’ I half smiled, an expression I had rehearsed at home, in an attempt to look suave.
‘I see.’ She took the flowers furtively and pushed them somewhere under the counter.
‘How do you want your coffee?’ she asked politely.
The canteen started to gossip. Theobald was shaking his head wearily.
The first steps in wooing had begun. I shoved feelings of embarrassment and exposure into my sweaty pockets and sat down.
Theobald leant towards me. What’s the matter with you?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ I answered defensively.
‘It won’t do you any good. The powers that be are watching us all the time.’ Theobald glanced furtively around the canteen.
‘It’s not illegal to woo!’ I snapped, sounding like an owl.
‘At your age!’ exclaimed Theobald. This depressed me. I was only thirty-five.
‘And why irises for God’s sake?’
‘I just like them,’ I said.
They symbolize death I think,’ muttered Theobald cheerfully. ‘You should have got roses. She probably thinks you’re a nutter.’
Well, I’m not,’ I retorted too quickly, as Theobald smirked.
George Goes To The Crocodiles
When I recovered from the mumps, some weeks later, I was too thin for my clothes, my skin was sallow and I had heavy rings under my eyes. The light outside the attic was so bright that I had to peep through my fingers. I staggered to the bathroom. The first thing I saw was a group of American tourists up a tree filming me as I got out of the bath.
As I shuffled downstairs I noticed that the house had been redecorated and that there was a new floral carpet on the mezzanine. I wondered how long I had been lying in the morguish attic. It could have been months.
The family was eating breakfast. They looked different.
Frank had a new pair of rectangular spectacles, which magnified his eyes into large unwieldy marbles. He was eating a piece of toast cut into identical geometrical shapes. Jean wore shiny lipstick and a cloudy frock of pink linen. She perched at one end of the table glancing at her watch, and George sat at the other, hooting. My place was on his left side, not far from his mouth.
‘So you’re up!’ he bellowed into my ear.
Jean took a pill from a small brown bottle and slipped it under her tongue calmly. She was wearing a necklace that looked like a string of wasps. ‘Guess what?’ she said, turning her watery face to mine.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Today we’re going to the station.’
‘At ten fifty-two,’ interjected Frank dimly.
‘What for?’
‘To see your father off on a train.’
‘He’s going away!’ Frank chirped.
‘For quite a long time!’ George boomed, raising his eyebrows. ‘But I’ll come back,’ he continued, buoyantly.
I chewed a strand of Shredded Wheat. They looked at me, waiting for the next question. ‘Where?’ I asked obediently.
‘He’s got a new job.’ Jean sipped from her bony cup.
‘Crocodiles,’ said George.
‘Handbags,’ Frank expanded.
‘He’s going to help run the crocodile farm,’ Jean explained. ‘Uncle Willy’s.’ The crocodile farm was in West Africa. It had been left to my father after Uncle Willy was eaten by his pet crocodile. It supplied crocodile handbags to Paris, Rome, and London. It bought Jean whole salmons and lavish soaps. It had provided the cash with which to buy our huge and uncomfortable house, and also to send Frank, later, to a sadistic educational establishment.
However, this was the first time that I had been aware of the world of work. Of course, George must have worked before, but I had never noticed. We had always lived off the crocodiles. Perhaps I saw a briefcase once lying on the desk in his room. Sometimes the telephone rang officiously and he answered with a careful, well-behaved voice. I looked at him again, trying to imagine him in this new role.
‘Administration,’ barked George.
‘Skinning?’ muttered Jean uncertainly.
‘Everything!’ He puffed up his heavy shoulders.
I secretly wished he would stay at home and make cakes. I couldn’t imagine him skinning a crocodile. And where did the crocodiles live? Was it secure? What if a baby one crept out through a hole in the wire and hid under George’s bed until it had grown to ten foot? And crocodiles were obviously not dependable, thinking of Uncle Willy.
‘How are you feeling anyway?’ enquired Jean politely.
Some distant tears fizzed in the ends of my fingers. ‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled, calculating how soon I could leave home.
‘You’ll feel better in a while,’ said Jean with a faraway look in her eye.
We all went to the station. Jean drove the car in a careless, American way, with one elbow hanging out of the open window. At the station she got out of the car very slowly, as if she was practising something she had only just learnt. The station was very clean and there were notices everywhere telling us to be neat. Pink hydrangeas grew in wheelbarrows. George bumped his head on a hanging basket. We stood in a row on the narrow, rural station waiting for the fast London train. Jean linked arms with George, but he was anxious about his tickets and kept rummaging in his pockets, searching them out, so that her arm fell away from his. I pulled at his trousers and he looked down at me crossly.
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