‘Merry didn’t seem to mind,’ Mum told me, ‘went off happy as a lark. They’ve got a trampoline and an electric organ. I went to see the place, of course. It’s very bright, sliding glass doors everywhere. I told them to watch him with those and they said it was all right, the glass was toughened.’ For the first time, I noticed how my mother had aged. There was grey in her ebony hair and although I saw no wrinkles, her skin lacked something, colour, elasticity. I couldn’t bear it, this indication that she was mortal and fading.
‘I’d like to come home.’
‘Why don’t you come back home?’
We spoke simultaneously. We often did.
Before he left The Cornflake House, Merry went to special school, but Django plodded on at the local primary and later at the comprehensive. He never was given labels. Whether that lack was a blessing or a curse I’ve no idea. For a while the psychiatrist thought he was autistic, a diagnosis based on Django’s obsessive behaviour.
‘His need to repeat patterns, his overwhelming interest, to the exclusion of all else, in one topic, in Django’s case the workings of vacuum cleaners, these are our indications,’ the shrink told Mum. She wasn’t convinced; and her instinct was right. Several weeks later, after Django had told the psychiatrist many truths about himself, the man changed his mind. He said it was another syndrome altogether, this time citing Django’s want of social grace as the basis for his findings:
‘He has no concept of correct social behaviour, I have advised him many times that telling me I have, for example, hairs in my ears, is not a nice, friendly thing to do. But your Django is unable to see the difference between the things we should and should not say.’
‘He tells the truth,’ Mum said, no doubt giving the doctor cause to wonder if Django’s problems were inherited.
‘Absolutely, but he cannot distinguish between the truths most of us keep to ourselves and those we may speak out loud.’
Django lives in Chatham now, he chose it because of the docks. He has a flat within walking distance of the ships that interest him so. At school he only ever developed one talent, apart from the ability to mend the cleaners’ equipment for them, and that was in geography. In those days the subject was colourful; pink blotches, yellow continents, blue oceans. Books were illustrated with drawings of tribes out hunting, crossing deserts, paddling canoes down wide green rivers. Django was brilliant at maps, spending hours with his face inches from the paper, perfecting every cove and inlet. Ultimately this passion overtook his love of vacuum cleaners. I’ve often considered Django’s luck. If Mum and I hadn’t got the order of those electrical gadgets just right in our competition, we wouldn’t have had a house, let alone a Hoover. What would Django have done then? He might have become intensely withdrawn, staring into space, longing for something he couldn’t name. Who knows? Fate is often a kind beast.
As I say, maps took over from cleaners, and now he works for a company who publish maps old and new. Having ruined his eyes with the close work, he wears thick glasses which, I discovered when I went to look after him one time when he was ill, he puts on at seven-ten a.m. precisely, after unbuttoning his pyjama top but before taking his arms out of this garment.
It’s true that maps won the day from Hoovers, but it was an uphill struggle. I once took Django with me to a party, he was seventeen and I thought it time he met some other teenagers. He wouldn’t drink because I’d forgotten to take his special cup, and I knew there was no point in offering him a snack. He only ever ate his own ‘meal’, a red and green affair of peas, placed in a mound, centre plate, two whole lettuce leaves curling upwards, opposite each other, and one tomato sliced in half and laid, wounded side down, on the lettuce. But the party appeared to be going well, Django was talking to another boy, advising this lad on ways of banishing spots, when I went to dance with my boyfriend.
Then I lost him. He’d vanished. I thought he’d walked home. I wasn’t that worried, he was seventeen and he knew where he lived. Several hours later there was a cry from a girl who’d gone to fetch her coat from the understairs cupboard. There was Django, bent over the party-giver’s rather ancient vacuum, a tubular object that he’d taken to bits, sitting with a torch in his hands. He held his light before his face as people gathered to stare at him. The ghost of Hoovers past.
Can’t see many signs of innate, genetic behaviour patterns in Django’s case, can you? It’s unlikely that his Gypsy dad was riveted by the workings of domestic appliances. No self-respecting Romany would admit to that hobby when they should be out catching rabbits and breaking horses:
‘Sorry, Jo, can’t come down the paddock with you until I’ve oiled me Hoover.’
Hardly the picture of life on the road we have been taught to cherish.
When I felt close to Mum and sensed that questions about our fathers, a taboo subject in my family, might not be met with unease, it was usually Django’s dad I asked about.
I found it impossible to envisage my own father, and I was scared of doing so. Much as we were filled with fascination and yearning for our dads, we Cornflake House kids lived under their shadows too. Who knows? These almost phantom men might come at any time and reclaim us, whisking us away. These scenes of abduction altered, for me, as I grew. When I was little, in Lincolnshire, my dreams were of a huge, sandy-haired man who wore sandals, so I wouldn’t hear his coming I suppose. It was always night and there was a full moon in that dream landscape. He was big but agile, and he carried a sack. As he swung his way to my bedside, leaping over ditches and dikes, he plucked small animals from the ground and crushed their bones with his bare hands. His sack grew heavier as he approached. By the time he arrived, squeezing his frame through the caravan door, the sack was so full it had to be dropped by my bed as he bent to lift me.
‘You’re mine,’ he breathed. I shivered in my nightie, shrank from his beer and tobacco breath, but never offered any resistance as he picked me up on his shoulder. It was only when he opened his sack and I saw the mess of flesh, fur and blood, that I struggled.
‘In you go,’ he said, not unkindly, it was more of a tease, but as he tipped me, head first down into the death sack I kicked and bit and screamed. I used to wake, or sometimes be woken by Zulema, a second before my head collided with the poor animals.
‘Was it your “father dream”?’ she’d ask. She had her own recurring nightmare involving her own imagined father. We all did, they were so swathed in mystery, our dads, it was only to be expected. Zulema’s dream involved white horses and gentle rides across plains of meadow grasses. At the same point in her journey, just when she felt she was getting to know and love her father, he would suggest a gallop and race on ahead. But her horse would rear up and throw her to the ground. Instead of rescuing her, her father would turn in the distance and gallop back to her, not stopping but letting his beast thunder closer and closer. When Zulema woke with a start I knew she had just leapt to her feet to avoid being trampled to death.
My dad shrank as I grew. The sack became a trunk, then the boot of a car, but there was always a dark place in which he wanted to throw me. Not was, is; I still dream of him. My subconscious has allowed him to age, letting his hair fade from sand to ash, but the expression on his face hasn’t altered. He peers at me with greed, ‘You’re mine,’ he says, possessively, and I can only suppose that a part of me likes this idea of being wanted, for whatever reason.
No, I never asked about my own father, fearing the worst, perhaps even fearing the best. What if he’s a wonderful man, bright, intelligent, witty? Think of how much I might have missed. Now that I’m motherless, I wish I’d been braver, more inquisitive, and found out who he is while I still had the chance. On the other hand, for all I know, he may have been in contact with Mum from the day I was born. If so the least he could do now is to get in touch, to hear my side of the story. This is one place where his agility would come in handy, the only place I’ve lived where being rescued, even if rescue meant being shoved in a sack, would be a treat.
The little girl in me says ‘what the hell, he wouldn’t love me anyway’. Our dads; did they ever have a chance? Or were they discouraged by Mum and her magic? As I said, when I felt able, I did ask the odd question about Django’s father; and I got the odd answer.
‘He was a rough one all right,’ Mum once admitted.
‘Was he really a Gypsy?’
‘Oohh yes, warts and all.’
‘And was he obsessive, like Django?’
‘Only about sex,’ Mum grinned. ‘Sex and sugar. He ate sweeties all the time. Humbugs.’
That was about it. Either she would drift to a world of fantasy, making up stories she thought I’d enjoy, or she’d make my head fizz until I dropped the subject and went to find the aspirin.
Ten minutes to lights out. Can you imagine what it’s like to have your life regulated by somebody else? I am tired, but I shan’t sleep. There is more I’d like to tell you. But it’s lights out and I’m condemned to lie in the dark. Remembering. Alone. Panic struck. I’ve had a change of heart, Matthew. I do want to see you, I need to talk to a friend. I need to repeat, out loud, the accusations hurled by the women who attacked me in the toilet. They called me Mother Fucker, and it shocked me, but it’s just an expression, an Americanism, isn’t it? I could live with that. Then they called me Mother Killer. And that’s what Valerie was trying to tell me earlier. Somebody somewhere has got hold of the idea that I killed my mother.
‘We don’t take kindly to Mother Killers here,’ they said as they kicked the shit out of me. Numb with shock as I was, I didn’t respond. Later I almost laughed. It was ridiculous, the thought of me taking the life of my mum, destroying the thing I lived for. Yet it seems likely that I shall be tried for exactly that.
Nine
I walked with caution, aware of movement over my shoulder, expecting the sudden onslaught of fresh violence but I was still eager, if not exactly light of foot, when heading down the corridor to see you.
Thanks for your discretion, Matthew, and for the good advice; deep breathing, yes, I’ll try that, and thinking positively, well, again I’ll make the effort. Although it won’t be easy, when the only certainty is that the rest of the world is lined up against me. I’d never have thought that the day would come when I was afraid of almost everybody.
Sorrow and nervousness are eating my insides. Causing weight loss; there, a positive thought. I must have mislaid several pounds with all the worry. I used to eat in times of crisis, as if buns and biscuits would cure a broken heart or get me through exams. It was a whale who sat my GCEs for me. Come to think of it, I used to eat in times of calm too. Meals in The Cornflake House were random affairs, it was a case of grab it while it was there or go without. Mum was an unwilling cook, not a regular meal-giver, not one who prepared food when it was needed. She cooked when she saw us pigging too many snacks. She could mix a cake as light as air or blend herbs and spices to make mouthwatering stews when the mood took her, but the mood didn’t take her nearly often enough. We kids developed arm actions to accompany meals and some of these, embarrassingly enough, linger on. If you and I ever settle down to enjoy a quiet dinner in a smart restaurant, please feel free to place your hand on mine when I seem to be diving across the table to grasp the last remaining bread roll. No, I’ll be fine really, either my glands have altered, or prison food has worked a transformation on my psyche. Somehow I’m not tempted to eat myself stupid anymore. An entrepreneur could make a fortune by prescribing instant mashed potato and lumpy gravy as a cure for obesity.
Since I’m hated for having cut myself off from company, perhaps I should write to other people, not confine my letter writing to you. I have been getting post, as it happens. I suspect Valerie of circulating my address, possibly even of writing to my family for character references, then adding a postscript to say she thinks I might appreciate letters or cards. I had a postcard from Fabian. Sea, sand, outrageously blue sky, made me long for freedom. I miss the weather. Of course I go outside but I’m unaware of the skies, in general. I’m excused exercise, my back hasn’t recovered well, sudden movements bring spasms of pain to my spine. Flitting from block to block is about my limit now so I’m not out there long enough to notice what kind of day it is. And I haven’t seen a night sky for months. No doubt the stars shine on, the moon glides through her phases, but all unseen by me. Whereas Fabian probably sleeps under a clear star-studded sky most nights. He didn’t say much, always a master of the understatement, Fabe, but it’s good to know he cares and that he lays no blame at my feet.
Then there was a letter from Perdita, written on a computer. It was her first communication with me since Mum died, so of course there was a lot about how sad she is, sincerely heart-rending stuff which made me sorry not to have seen her in person. On the other hand, she’s also furious with me, not, as far as I can make out, for committing a crime, but for having been sent to a dump like this, thus bringing shame upon her head. I shan’t reply to that one and I won’t write back to Fabian because I can think of nothing suitable to say until I have definite news about my fate. The third piece of post is unopened. I know who it’s from, the post mark and the smell of violets do rather give the game away. Taff. What’s that old bat got to say to me? Must be something she thinks is important, I’ve never known her write to anyone before. I wasn’t aware that she could write. Maybe she dictated it to some adoring old man. I can’t bring myself to open the envelope. I’m afraid of all the memories and accusations buried in there, gasping for an airing.
Why should I suffer from guilt? Have you met this consequence before? Where the imprisoned grow accustomed to believing they’re in the wrong? Between you, me and whoever has the job of reading these letters, I might be going a little mad. Stress, I suppose. My case is due in court any day. Scared? Yes, shitless.
I wonder who’ll write to me next. Maybe I’ll receive one of those hippy prayers from Zulema. She lives in a commune, with a group of weirdos who have dedicated their lives to the moon and the sun. It seems they are fine and dandy as long as there’s light in the sky. On moonless winter nights, after sunless days, depression rules, suicides are almost commonplace. It’s not a strict sect, they’re allowed out, to shop, to pay visits, but mostly they choose not to leave their circle of huts, situated just off a motorway in Gloucestershire. Zulema is especially reluctant to make journeys. She joined them because she was attacked by two men one night; one moonless night, of course. To those of us who saw Zulema when the thugs had finished with her, and shared in her horror, the move to the sect made perfect sense. Where else might she have gone? She was too shaken, rendered too insecure, to sit in The Cornflake House garden unless there was another member of the family with her. So yes, we were full of understanding when she packed a bag and left for her hut. Not that understanding helped to ease the pain of losing her.
She’s a dark, mysterious creature, her movements always graceful, her voice low and calming. Zulema has skin the colour of milky coffee and hair that hangs down to her waist. Once she stopped biting her nails, there was nothing jagged about her. She flows and floats through life.
Apart from Mum, I miss Zulema the most. I was closer to her than any of the others. As children we stood up for each other, invented games together, shared our toys. Like me, she inherited the ability to see what was coming, to predict and occasionally to change events. But she was nervous of using her magic; when she did put it to use it was only ever to improve a person’s lot. No amount of coaxing could persuade her to do wrong. For example, she never joined in our taunting of Taff.
I once wasted a whole summer’s afternoon begging Zulema to help me create a tidal wave in a pond. It was only a small pond, on the edge of the golf course opposite Fisher’s Close, so I wasn’t prompting a major environmental disaster. Two particularly obnoxious boys were rowing around this little haven, terrorizing shoals of fish and families of ducks. We could have upset their boat and dumped them head first in the water if we’d put both our minds to it. While I
tried and failed to stir the waters by myself, Zulema stood at the pond’s edge, her attention divided equally between willing me to stop devising horrid punishments for the boys and willing the lads to turn from their evil ways and become keen naturalists. All this wishing she managed without speaking a word, the only sign of life was her eyes moving sadly from one miscreant to the other.
She always was a little strange. The interest in the moon didn’t start with the sect. When she read about them in one of Mum’s occultish magazines, Zulema grew excited and said that she’d found her soulmates. Even as a tiny child Zulema’s moods shifted with the moon’s phases, and naturally as she grew up her menstrual cycle waxed and waned with the moon. I’ve often wondered if my sister is the only one who is truly in tune, or if the rest of the hut-dwellers are also sincerely motivated by that silver satellite. I’ll tell you a secret. When the moon was full Zulema used to sleep on the landing. It was the only place in The Cornflake House where the glow could bathe her. There are people who can’t sit out of the sun, if the sun shines, who get tetchy in the shade or indoors on bright days, Zulema is like that about moonshine. When she left, she gave me one of her pendants, a crescent opal, to remember her by. I never wore it, instead Mum and I hung it in the kitchen window where it winked at us and gleamed whitely. I can see it now, not hanging, spinning on its thread, but severed as it was on the night my mother died.
It was a great sacrifice I made, on my mother’s behalf. I deserve praise, for being strong willed and obedient, rather than punishment.
I say that Zulema would only use her magic to improve a situation, but I suppose Mum was equally restrained. There was one time, in a queue for fruit and veg, when a fellow shopper pushed in front of me and Mum, then trod on Mum’s foot. I knew by the scowl on my mother’s brow that this shopper was about to suffer. When the woman’s bag was full, it burst open, spilling greens and apples on the shop floor. As she bent, cursing, to pick these up, the food came alive in her hands. Cabbages and fruit which had been green and healthy seconds before were suddenly covered in maggots and flies. The insects clambered over the woman’s hands and up her arms as if bug heaven lay above, in her armpits.
The Cornflake House Page 12