God, it was brilliant to arrive. We were so fed up, having been cramped in that egg of a caravan for hours on end. Except for Fabian who sat like Lord Muck beside Owen in the cab of the lorry. Yes, the rest of us had reached the hair-pulling, head-banging stage, the point where torturing each other was the only way to stay sane.
They had built the houses of our cul-de-sac in an orchard, or on the spot where the orchard had once blossomed. This site was at the bottom of a steep hill and as we descended behind the lorry we were tipped to the front of the caravan and attacked by sliding crockery. Before we could yell at Owen to slow down, he was turning sharp left, swinging us against the windows, then shuddering to a halt. We picked ourselves up, turned around and squashed our faces on the glass to see why we’d stopped.
We had arrived.
It took me a while to understand this, because reality was nothing like my expectations. I’d conjured my own Cornflake House from the artist’s impression and my version was prettier than any house I’d ever seen, but only two-dimensional. My imagined house stood, a cardboard cut-out in splendid isolation, in a watercolour meadow. I think there was even a thin, paper Eve gazing wistfully from a bedroom window. The sight I first saw through the caravan window was very different; far from isolated, these dwellings stood almost overlooking each other. In the small sphere of my vision I could see three homes at least, trim as dolls’ houses and close enough together to share hammocks. Figures emerged from tidy hallways, people imitating goldfish, mouths opening, closing, dropping open again. Then Owen appeared at the caravan door, ‘Reception committee’s waiting,’ he announced in his finest fen voice.
Dogs escaped instantly, yapping, peeing, heading for the goldfish people. Merry followed them, pushing past Owen, running to catch up, tumbling, screaming and, not being encumbered by a nappy, copying the hounds by pissing against a flowering cherry. The rest of us formed a queue behind our mother, picking up on her anxiety, nervous of meeting our benefactors.
‘Which one? Which is ours?’
‘Number three,’ Mum informed us, ‘the one with the flags flying.’
We were shoved back inside, driven in a neat semi-circle, and rearranged right outside our very own Cornflake House.
Like me, you’ll have to wait to see the inside of this wonder-home. First you need to know where we were coming from. I described our caravan as an egg because it was cream, oval and had, at Grandma Editha’s, rested on a nest of uncut grass. We’d lived elsewhere in our short lives, in flats or bits of shared houses, but our young memories held only dim recollections of solid walls and roofs. To us, until the Day of the Move, home was the caravan, ten by twelve feet of damp, airless mess. There was only really room in there for beds and bedding, everything other than sleep had to be done outside. In summer we ate in the garden, in winter we sat at Grandma’s table. We peed in the privy by the side of her square brick house; at least we girls did, the boys watered the crops. Games, including pillow fights, sent us tumbling outside. Unless you sat on the caravan steps, you couldn’t even draw a picture without being jogged and distracted.
If we’d previously inhabited an old cottage or a little town house, then the move would have been strange enough. But to zoom up the social ladder, from caravan to Cornflake House, to hatch from thin shell to insulated brick and plaster, this was truly remarkable. It was a little too much for some of us. After all the anticipation, all the excitement, I remember that Zulema and I hung back, timid, overawed, on the caravan step, while the others followed Owen, Pied Piper for a day, whooping, hopping, skipping up the short drive to the front door.
Standing by Zulema in the caravan, I watched my mother shaking hands with a man in a suit, practically dropping a curtsey to him and his small party of colleagues. Her mouth moved, presumably she was thanking them for their boundless generosity. The man in charge was winded with surprise. During this, his first encounter with the lucky family, the poor man aged several years. His eyes did a fair imitation of Al Jolson, roving from mother to children, from Owen in his jeans which were held up with string, to Merry who was hanging semi-naked from a drain pipe. Well. What a shower. He glanced dubiously at his clipboard, as if it had lied to him. I suppose Mum’s name was written there and my guess is that he was searching for the word ‘alien’ in brackets. It was their own fault, those Cornflake people hadn’t bothered to check us out. We lived so far from London, where the cornflake company was based, that all communication had been by post. I bet companies vet folks nowadays, bet you any money that once this suit-man got back to base he instigated a new regime for checking on those they may later have to meet on doorsteps or at posh garages. His colleagues were pretty stunned too, although one woman – I later discovered she was the interior designer – couldn’t help smiling to herself. We were decidedly non-U, I’m afraid. Non-Surrey. It was an embarrassing while before the Cornflake man recovered his composure. No doubt, in this interlude, as Merry fell and scratched his bum and Samik howled for milk, the man considered ways of telling us a mistake had been made. That we couldn’t have this house and that it would be best for us to clamber back in that hut on wheels and go away.
There was no escape for him, of course. The home was ours, fair and square. The photograph they took, of Mum smiling over the top of Samik’s baby head while flags of many colours flapped round her ears, was later framed and hung in pride of place over the mantelpiece. The suit-man said a few hesitant words of congratulations, then, with a look of undisguised apprehension, he presented Mum with a pair of scissors. The photographer adjusted his tripod and snip, Mum cut the red ribbon. A few hands clapped, a small sound in the great outdoors. Finally, Mum was awarded the key.
We were going to be allowed inside. At last. Even Django, who had a bit of a problem with emotions, was excited. Zulema and I made a slight move, one step towards leaving the old home and getting to the new.
But, as a portent of things to come, before my mother even had time to open her front door, one of our new neighbours strode over to complain. A dog – ours – had shat on his patio. Dino, the dog in question, padded along behind this man, tongue hanging out, tail wagging, looking most relieved. It would have been useless to argue with that.
‘It’ll be cleared up by the time you get back,’ Mum promised.
‘Is that it?’ our neighbour growled, obviously unimpressed by this magical offering. ‘Aren’t you even going to say you’re sorry?’
‘Of course I’m sorry. I wouldn’t be clearing it up if I wasn’t.’
At this point, Django, who had been staring at the newcomer, tugged the man’s sleeve. Reluctantly the man looked down, his face stiff with disapproval of my little brother.
‘You have a bogey,’ Django told him, ‘you should wipe your nose, it’s disgusting.’
Owen laughed and patted Django on the back. ‘Check mate,’ he said.
There was more than a moment’s silence and even at a distance, I understood that from this point of impasse things might go one of two ways. In terms of social blunders, we were equal, and we were neighbours. The man might find a hanky, use it, laugh too, shake hands and be friends. Or he might glare, stamp and become a sworn enemy. I hoped for the hanky, but was disappointed. This was a stamping, glaring man. His scowl encompassed my family, Owen, and the reception committee; but suit-man and co. met his gaze with well-rehearsed smiles which sent him thumping back to his soiled patio.
Mum turned to Zulema and me. ‘Come on girls,’ she begged, ‘you should be here for this.’ We hung back, reluctant to join an atmosphere which had turned sour. Over the years I’ve imagined that I heard my mother speak again, but I think she was silent. I don’t know; she might have said, as she put the key to the door, ‘I wish Taff was here.’ Even if she didn’t speak aloud, she must have thought it, because there was a sudden honking of car horns, spluttering of engines, calling of excited voices; and there was Taff, all hair and grin, leaping from an open-topped sports car. She held a bottle of champagne in each han
d and although several young men were emerging from her convoy, she eyed suit-man and shouted, ‘Extra rations, you’re brilliant you are, Vic.’ It was party time.
Thinking about it, I believe Taff was the first to step inside The Cornflake House. Mum turned the key, held back the door and Taff’s stilettos sank into the newly fitted Axminster. By the time Zulema and I crept in, Taff was in full swing, swigging straight from the bottle, filling the empty house with ‘oohhs’, and ‘just get a load of this, Vic’.
I saw a lot of floor, some banisters, and many adult knees as I stole from room to room. There wasn’t much else to see, empty houses are sorry places, especially when decorated entirely in a wan blue. This colour was, next to having to contend with Taff, my greatest disappointment. I remembered the description Mum and I had hung over, the words I’d read to her so often ‘… Enjoying a quiet, orchard setting, your three-bedroomed Dream House will have a modern, fully fitted kitchen complete with washing machine, refrigerator and stainless-steel sink unit. You will be able to relax in your pale turquoise bathroom before slipping into bed in the luxurious master bedroom. The walls will have been painted in Duck Egg Blue and the floors will be fitted with a carpet of your choice.’ Well, if this was Duck Egg Blue they’d been feeding the ducks the wrong stuff. I looked at the bright, positively garish carpet.
‘What’ll it be, Evey?’ Mum’d asked when we went to see Mr Pollard who ordered rugs and lengths of carpet for those who came to feel their way through his stack of hairy books. At least the Axminster was all it was meant to be.
‘Just needs a lick of paint,’ Mum made me jump, as she so often did when reading my thoughts. She’d sneaked up behind me to admire the luxurious master bedroom, and with her arm over my shoulder I felt, at last, that what was happening was real. Or was it? It was down to her magic, our being there, our owning the place. But … one snap of her fingers would banish the house to oblivion.
She never did snap her fingers to break the spell. We lived in our Cornflake House because my mother believed it was meant to be. Had destiny intended us to stay in our caravan, then Mum wouldn’t have bought the box of cornflakes in the first place. The artist’s impression of a Dream House on the back of that box, the invitation to try her luck, wouldn’t have caught her eye, enticing her to have a go at the competition. What’s more, I don’t believe Mum would have entered the competition unless she knew, without any doubt, that she would win. She was more than lucky. Nobody played cards with Mum more than once. Dice fell into any pattern she wished and we kids knew better than to invite her to play games of chance with us. I remember one time when Zulema and I were playing Pick-A-Stick, you know, that game where you drop a stack of coloured sticks in a tight formation and have to take them one by one without moving any of the others. Those bits of wood remained still in impossible situations for Mum, until we were forced to accuse her of cheating. ‘Can’t help it,’ she shrugged, and I don’t suppose she could.
When Bingo became popular she used it as a method of getting us a bit of extra cash. She won raffles all the time and being so fatalistic she felt obliged to keep the prizes whether she wanted them or not. Of course a house is a little different from the average raffle prize, you can stuff a box of hankies or some unwanted soaps in a drawer and forget about them, but a house … Still, I’m almost certain she did want this particular prize.
You had to say which ‘luxuries’ were best, in our competition for the house, put in order of preference things we’d never seen before. It was boom time, women, having worked through the war, were supposed to be lusting after labour-saving gadgets. These delights would seem primitive to us now, the ‘super-twin’ washing machine, which included ‘Spin Drying!’, was the size of a small garden shed, but each item was miraculously modern then. We put the Dishmaster fairly low on our list, it being hard to cope with the idea of a machine doing our mountains of washing-up, but the Kenwood Chef, billed as ‘your servant in the kitchen’ sounded just the job. And as I say, Mum knew only too well that she was getting it exactly right. There was a tie-breaker to finish in no more than ten words … ‘I eat my cornflakes every morning because…’ We mulled this over for a while, until Mum came up with; ‘all year round, there’s sunshine in every crispy, crunchy bowlful.’ Simple, but effective; nobody had ever equated cereal with the weather before.
Those who doubt the existence of magic should have been there, in that sleepy Lincolnshire village when Mum and I posted our entry. I swear the envelope floated down that post-box. And if that wasn’t convincing enough, they should have seen our faces when we opened the reply. Mum might have known she’d win, and I had my suspicions, but the rest of them could hardly take it in.
‘A house?’
‘Yes, a whole house.’
‘We won a house? By eating cornflakes?’
‘And doing a quiz thing, yes.’
‘A house? Like Grandma’s?’
‘Umm, but modern, with an indoor toilet and stuff.’
‘Will we have to give it back?’
‘Will we have to share it?’
‘Will we have our own rooms?’
‘No; no; and of course not. It’s a house, not a Grand Hotel. It’s got three bedrooms, not eight.’ But still, three bedrooms, detached, with gardens front and rear – and all for next to nothing, for eating one box of cornflakes instead of the gooey porridge Grandma usually dished up. My brothers and sisters made me read the glorious news over and over ‘… delighted to tell you / please confirm by return of post / we look forward to hearing which carpets you have chosen,’ and yet again I read the phrase, ‘your very own Dream Home’. Those five words must have been repeated hundreds of times. The smallholding might have been on a cloud, the air was light with dreams come true.
It seemed, after all, that there was a God. And He was, to quote the hymn, good, good, good, and He smiled, unlike most adults, benevolently down on us. A vast, charismatic figure of the heavens who could change fortunes with a wink of his eye. In my imagination, this deity was a cross between the standard bearded father figure and Hughie Green.
But have you ever considered that expression; dreams come true? Today, with the arrival of the national lottery, there are new millionaires every week, twice weekly in fact. According to reports, instant wealth can bring pleasure and pain in equal measures. In our dreams we omit the pain, naturally enough. Sun shines on us as we drive gleaming convertibles, champagne corks pop, fountains play in the large, well-kept gardens of these dreams. But imagine great riches actually falling on your head, sudden as death. Everything would need to change. Deceits would have to be practised, moves made. We’d discover a fresh set of worries. Where would we be made welcome, where would we belong? I have no answers so I’m grateful to be the child of a wise woman. My mother had the ability to harness chance. For all I know she may have looked down that road and seen a future in which we had limitless funds. Maybe she foresaw one child after another going off the rails, taking drugs, killing themselves in fast cars. Maybe. For reasons best known to herself, she rationed her good fortune, tempered any greed she may have experienced. If she’d wanted to, she could have picked six numbers from forty-nine as easily as you might select a decent wine in an off-licence; but she believed in effort, knew the delight in spending one’s own hard-earned wages; understood that some dreams are best left unfulfilled.
Yet she won us The Cornflake House, because we were out-growing our caravan, because she thought that, having only the one parent, we deserved at least the stability of bricks and mortar. Did other families ever seriously consider the possibility of winning one of those prize houses? Did people transport themselves, whilst munching their breakfasts, into the back-of-box world created by an artist who was only allowed to use three colours? I mean I really don’t know how carried away with fantasy folks get, when there is only a remote chance of winning – and statistics to prove exactly how remote that chance is. But if they did follow through that dream scenario, I suspect they may
have found themselves wondering if winning a home was what they really wanted. Home; an emotive word, conjuring, for most of us, an image of our chosen haven. Does anybody who hasn’t won a major, life-changing prize ever realize the stigma of winning? Perhaps the truth is that there are no winners; you are vomited out of one class without hope of being accepted by another. Those who own property are top of the pile, those who rent still have aspirations, ambitions, but those who get their houses by chance have no say and no status. There you have it, do you see? We won and we were grateful; but in different circumstances we might have been even more fortunate. We might have been able to choose where we lived. Supposedly, the essential things in a person’s life are their relationships with other people and their relationship with their surroundings. Take one family of vagabonds, move them across England from secluded Lincolnshire smallholding to select Surrey cul-de-sac, and stand back, wait for the fireworks.
On our first night as homeowners, while the party raged and neighbours popped by to complain about the noise, Mum sensed my feeling of anti-climax. She made me a fizzy drink which I imagine was three parts champagne and one of orange squash and which restored in me a feeling of excitement and well-being. So, drunk as the rest of them, I sailed through the evening, hardly noticing the gradual way in which the rooms filled with furniture. Having taken a nip or two, to help them recover from the shock, even the cornflake manufacturer’s representatives helped out. I remember being asked to hold the suit-man’s jacket while he helped Owen with a sofa. In fact some of the cornflake people were still there, hanging over various chairs, when we kids came charging down the stairs the next morning.
The party, Dino and Merry’s toilet habits and the sight of the poor caravan rocking to the strains of Taff and her current choice of lover, set the seal on our relationship with the inhabitants of Fisher’s Close, the cul-de-sac where The Cornflake House was built. Why the place was called Fisher’s Close when it was on the site of an orchard, I never could fathom. I suppose the builder must have been a Mr Fisher, or a man who fished. The other home owners chose more appropriate names, Cherry Tree, Apple Orchard, Damson House. (There seems to have been some confusion as to what fruit had been grown there before the land spurted those little dream homes.) Had we been accepted, welcomed, my mother might have decided on Pear Blossom or the like for our house. But since we were met with resentment and distaste, she painted our legend on a large piece of wood, in letters red as blood, and nailed this sign to a post on our front lawn. She used a sledgehammer on the post, staking respectability through its heart. ‘The Cornflake House’ sign stood up to all weathers and was repainted each year so that it might shine as a constant reminder.
The Cornflake House Page 8