The Cornflake House

by Deborah Gregory

  I love you.

  How could I take you through hell if this was mere infatuation? I would only show my poor, dead mother to the man I love. Look at her, grey ringlets laid on her pillow, mouth set in a wistful smile, taking secrets to the other side. I bend and kiss her cheek, inhaling the smell of her skin. Should I cover her face? My hand is shaking, I drop the counterpane before it reaches her chin. She wouldn’t have hidden in life, she shall ‘see’ it through to the end. I have to cling to the banister as I go down the stairs. I turn on the kitchen tap and gulp cold water from my hands, splashing my face, mixing tears and drink together. Then I hear her voice. Oh I don’t jump, I know it’s a ghost, and a loving one at that. She encourages me, calms me. I do what has to be done automatically after this, one action following another, just as we planned.

  My surroundings are so familiar that I do none of the final looking about, taking in everything for the last time. In fact I hardly notice where I am until I stand outside in the garden. Then I gaze at The Cornflake House as if seeing it for the first time. As if Owen has only just brought me here, to this prize.

  My mother loved Surrey. After the fens she found the gentle slopes refreshing. ‘Leafy Surrey’, with its silver birch and tall, fat pine trees. She liked to pull the tips off bracken, when it was new and moist, and rub these between her fingers until her skin was green and smelt of spring. Even the heaths, frustratingly difficult to walk with their gorse bushes and tufts of heather, were pleasure grounds to her. Mum never wore trousers, she favoured full skirts – perhaps in order to look the Gypsy – and on Walking Days these swung about her legs above a pair of clumsy hiking boots. But she always took care not to tread on wild flowers, small animals, even spiders. Nothing in nature frightened her, not rats, not snakes, not insects that sting or bite. We children grew up accepting all creatures, from humans down to ants.

  As I stood and stared at The Cornflake House on the day of my mother’s death, I saw how nature had navigated around the minor setback of Fisher’s Close, and how we’d provided an oasis for butterflies and bees in a desert of clipped lawns and trim flower beds. It was a sight, our house, paint chipped, windows cracked, curtains hanging at odd angles; but it was more at home with the tall trees behind the little estate, more at peace with the ferns and hawthorns than any of its companions. Perhaps if we’d bought it, paying good money for the privilege of living tidily, we might have kept the place in better repair. Maybe if there’d been a man about the house … On the other hand, my mother had a purpose in all she did and all she left undone. Knowing what she was to ask of me, she’d probably intended to let the house go partially to ruin.

  Don’t be afraid. I’ve already set free the last of the birds. There are no dogs left alive, and the cats are in the woods behind the houses, chasing poor fledglings. You won’t hear any squarks or whines. We must hurry. Death has a way of attracting attention and we don’t want our neighbours coming round, sniffing about, asking questions. Everything we need is in the caravan, which doubles as a garden shed. This is the risky bit, carrying these cans up to the house without being noticed. Do you think three is enough? It had to be either three or seven, Mum insisted. Numbers, she was so sure of their power. To speak, to think of her in the past tense, I can’t believe … Bless her for giving me this task, to keep me occupied. She was right, it feels the right thing to do, doesn’t it? Terrible yet wonderful. Passionate.

  I’ll take the upstairs, it’s my responsibility and I know what to do. In my mind I’ve carried these cans, their contents splashing, that smell escaping through sealed tops, a hundred times. But nothing prepared me for the real thing, for the sound, almost comical, of metal banging the stairs, of my breathing as I heave the blasted can, of my nails as they rip to shreds while struggling with the clasp. Considering the age I live in, I’ve spent exceptionally little time in motor cars. The fumes catch me unawares, filling my eyes, making me cough. Half the contents, one sixth of the total, ends up on the landing as I tip too violently. My right hand is soaked and I leave the can and tip-toe into my mother’s bedroom. I anoint her forehead with the liquid, not making a sign but stroking her brow, feeling her skin move under my fingers, across her skull.

  From then on I move like the wind, before nerves overcome me. The rest of the petrol is poured, scattered haphazardly here and there. The stink is unbearable now, I’m worried it will drift to next door, to the other houses. Leaving the front door open, I exit, taking three backwards steps, stumbling over a pile of papers, holding the long taper in one hand, the matches in the other. Fumbling, trembling, I pull out a match and place the taper in my teeth. I have both hands free to strike. I do this quickly, dropping the box of matches to the ground as soon as my chosen one ignites. The flame touches the taper. The taper touches the petrol-drenched papers in the hall. The Cornflake House roars. It is done.

  Eleven

  Yes, it was done. I wonder if my mother ever doubted me? If so there was no need; it never occurred to me not to obey. Had she asked me to walk through the fire, I wouldn’t be here, telling my tale.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stood watching The Cornflake House burn. That old song’s right enough, smoke does get in your eyes, and up your nose. I smelt of it for weeks, as if I was made of ash. Can you imagine how bright a house on fire can be, how much heat it gives off? I’d invented a million monsters, flames sprang from nowhere, breeding more flames. Once created they were instantly vast, eternally hungry. They devoured everything, furniture, floors, curtains, the worn Axminster. And upstairs, the body on the bed, the corpse for cremation. I thought nonsense, Ladybird, Ladybird fly away home … nonsense. Anything to keep my feet planted on the spot, to stop me from running back to my home, to rescue treasures; to carry my mother to safety. Then I wished the fire brigade shouldn’t come soon. The image of my mother’s corpse, charred and hanging over a man’s shoulder, danced in the haze before my eyes. Too terrible.

  I was limp with heat, scarlet on the outside, melting beneath my skin. How mad I must have looked. A demented soul on the edge of hell.

  When did I come to my senses? Was it as the first frantic neighbour pulled me back, away from the heat? Or later, when the authorities arrived, one emergency service screaming on the heels of the next, in Ealing Comedy fashion? Did I recover? Will I ever be over the shock?

  ‘Is there anybody in there?’ a fireman yelled, his hose and mask at the ready.

  ‘My mother,’ I said. I’m sure I added, ‘but she’s dead, don’t rescue her, she’s dead’. No, I’m not sure. My only clear memory is that of being wrapped in a blanket, a kindness which brought me to the brink of hysterics. A blanket, in that heat; never mind coals to Newcastle, this was taking an electric fire to the sun. But later, when they tried to take the blanket back, I became possessive, pulling it tightly round my shoulders. I suppose I was coming to realize that I had nothing left, nothing of my own. Homeless people grow attached to their blankets, I fully understand why.

  To begin with everbody was very kind. An ambulance man told me to let myself go. ‘Have a good howl, Love,’ he advised, ‘nothing like a flow of tears to help get over shock.’ I expect I stared at him as if he’d just arrived from Mars. They seemed to be giants, green giants, yellow plastic giants, joke policemen and women looming yards above my head. The faces of the yellow-plastic-fireman giants changed from white to black as they emerged from the rubble that had been my house. Colour wasn’t the only change. The light of sympathy, which had been glowing behind the look of efficiency, had gone from their eyes. With the first whiff of petrol, I switched from victim to criminal. From where I sat, in the open back door of an ambulance, it sounded like a load of kids swearing; ‘Arson. Arson. Arson.’

  ‘Your house?’ a policeman asked. I expect I nodded. I may even have smiled sadly, there being so little left of ‘my house’. It was a sorry sight, an oversized bonfire sending clouds of black smoke into a spring evening sky. Hissing in protest, stinking fit to choke a body.
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br />   ‘Only there’s talk of petrol,’ the policeman explained, ‘which means an investigation, questions, d’you see?’ I saw little, understood nothing.

  ‘Somebody said your mother was in there,’ my persistent policeman told me. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ he shuffled his ash-covered feet, ‘I’m sorry. But was she alive when it started?’

  I dare say there’s a transcript in an office with my answer. If I gave one.

  It was at this point that a sooty-faced fireman appeared with Zulema’s moon pendant in his gloved hand. I thought it was an offering and reached for it, but he closed his fist saying, as parents say to small children, ‘Hot.’

  I suppose he must have kept it.

  What followed was a polite battle. Everybody wanted me to themselves. The ambulance folk were certain I should be leaving with them, the police said no, I was uninjured and could ride in their gleaming white vehicle. At one time I was having my left arm pulled in one direction, my right in the other. Or so it felt. I was light-headed, practically stoned on the smell of smoke and decay. The people from the hospital wanted to treat me for shock; but what’s the cure for death followed by fire? Had I been a true pyromaniac I’d no doubt have been lapping up the attention; I was certainly at the centre of this, for the time being. The inhabitants of Fisher’s Close had left their bridge parties and tottered out, some with whisky glasses clenched in their fists, to view the downfall of The Cornflake House with what must have been mixed emotions. I’m sure they were glad it had gone, but then there was this mess to be cleared before another, proper family could build on the site. So there was quite a crowd around me that evening as I stood in our smouldering clearing praying that my mother had vanished, bones and all.

  Valerie thought we might try saying that I was entranced when I set fire to the house. She thought this could work, because of Mum’s reputation as a fortune-teller and healer.

  ‘But not as a hypnotist,’ I pointed out. Of course I knew perfectly well that Mum used thought transference many times, but I also understood that I’d done the dreaded deed while in full possession of my senses. It was only later, once the flames bit and blackened and put on a fine show of their dexterity, that I became mesmerized. Valerie’s only hope lies in the fact that I was driven close to madness by my actions. There’ll be little enough logic in the police reports. By the time I reached the interview room, exhaustion and deep shock had silenced me. Grief only added to my dumbness as I sat on that hard chair shivering, a child wanting its mother.

  I have wondered, in spite of all I’ve said about being the loyal, dutiful daughter, whether or not I did the right thing. I’m not convinced that Mum thought it through, that she took the strong arm of the law into consideration when asking me to torch The Cornflake House the moment she died. In retrospect, now that I’ve had more than enough time to contemplate the full implications of my action, I see that I made my brothers and sisters homeless. Some of them have other homes now, of course, but the house you grow up in, that’s the core, isn’t it? No matter if we were unpopular in Fisher’s Close; we won our home fair and square and built a mountain of memories around the place – like any other family. Have I sentenced them to wander the earth, or to live in semis or huts, without a base for the rest of their days? I’m not talking of inheritance. Lord knows one tatty house, even in such an exclusive cul-de-sac, wouldn’t have gone far divided by seven. This isn’t about money, only about value. I deprived my family of the thing they valued most.

  If only we had fathers, gallant men who could come charging over the horizon now, offering comfort and inheritances.

  The more this goes around in my head, the nearer I get to being angry with my mother. It was all very well for her, lying there with that smile on her lips, but what about the living? Didn’t she understand that flames obliterate other images? They burn long after firemen extinguish them, leaving only orange in the eye. As time goes on, and my trial draws near, I see The Cornflake House less clearly through the heat haze. By the time I get out of here and have a life to call my own, I doubt if I’ll be able to remember the place as anything other than a pile of smouldering cinders.

  Would it have mattered if I’d said one thing, and done another? Would it have made any difference to Mum if I’d agreed with her plan, acting my part sincerely until the moment of her death, but then walking downstairs and telephoning a doctor and an undertaker? Stupid even to wonder. I couldn’t have fooled her with play-acting, not for a second. Anyway, it’s the life after death question again. The trouble is that none of us, in the wake of death, want to believe in its finality. Most of us organize moving services, selecting the departed one’s favourite music or poems, in order to please them; because we can’t admit that it doesn’t matter, that they have gone beyond caring about arrangements. Will they understand in court that I was conforming, in my way, to this common human ritual when I lit the match? That I was in the sorry state of make-believe known only to those who suffer loss? I doubt they’d sympathize. Might as well say the Devil himself visited one night and told me to set fire to my home.

  I might be making an ogre of my mother. Do you see her as an unreasonable, bitter woman trying to disinherit her kids and make life after her death as difficult for me as possible? I should be writing on a blackboard, then we could wipe the slate clean. Mum never wanted anything but happiness for her children. Perhaps her view of life was a little lopsided. She saw more than most people in some respects, her vision went beyond their everyday scope. Then again, she looked at life from one standpoint only, taking each issue as it arose and heading for a solution down a tunnel of what she considered right.

  ‘It’ll be no good for you, Eve, living on here by yourself,’ she told me when there was no denying how ill she was, ‘having your brothers and sisters visit, sensing them wanting this and that possession, knowing they were whispering about your right to live in the place while they had to make their own ways.’

  What she said made good sense. She presented me with scenes when she spoke. I could actually see Perdita pulling up in a smart motor car, hear her clip-clopping down the path in high-heeled shoes, feel the dampness of her hands as she fingered ornaments she meant to take away with her.

  ‘Besides which,’ Mum smiled, ‘I like to think of you away from this Close. Getting on with another part of your life, once I’m gone.’

  I was torn between remonstrating, asking how could I think of life without her, and spying this future through the cracks in my sorrow. As long as my mother lived, her magic thrived; the image she conjured for me was too strong to ignore. I saw this other part of my life – white houses, crimson wildflowers, sparse shrubs, goats, and further out, when I shielded my eyes, the sea silvered by bright sunlight. A foreign landscape, almost as far removed from The Cornflake House as Zulema’s beloved moon.

  ‘It will set you free, Eve,’ my mother promised, ‘there’s nothing like fire for release. The world is peopled with tribes and communities who believe in the power of fire. I believe in it too. Besides, all this,’ she waved a hand at the furniture and ornaments, ‘this tat. Wouldn’t life be easier without it? I give you freedom, a state worth the learning.’

  I could see her point, as usual. To be honest I didn’t relish living alone in a shrine full of junk.

  ‘Then there’s the neighbours,’ Mum told me. ‘Just as one lot get used to us, another bunch moves in and the snobbery starts over again. It’s been fine as a family, uniting forces, turning more than one cheek, but a single woman … You’d use up all your strength in the battle, Eve, and grow old and eccentric meanwhile.’

  ‘You see me with a rolling-pin, do you, grey hair flying, hairy dressing-gown flapping about even hairier legs, chasing Little Lord Fauntleroys off my precious patch of garden?’

  ‘I hear cultured voices drifting over the hydrangeas, saying the most hurtful things about you in the nicest possible way. I see you walking through the Close
, your outfits getting more daring by the day, your mouth set in resolution but your heart heavy with mistrust. I feel your despair as you grow ever poorer, lonelier and less loved.’

  I was there, stuck in the quicksand of that scenario, ‘And the house?’ I asked. ‘How does it fare without you?’

  ‘Not well,’ and she raised one eyebrow, ‘but then when has it ever? I haven’t done a lot for the place, have I? I can hardly be accused of wasting my time with DIY and so on. Still, we kept it bright, between us. Homely. It’s always been a dry ship in a safe harbour, eh?’

  This was a confusing description, because if the inside of The Cornflake House was reminiscent of anything – other than a jumble sale – it was an old, wooden caravan. My mother had won a characterless, modern house, and transformed it, slowly, lovingly, into a vast Gypsy caravan. I was amused as I looked around at the red walls, the pictures in their painted frames, the brass ornaments winking from every surface. Not a ship in a safe harbour, but a stranded caravan, one that had wandered from the train and become too inflated, too overloaded to return to the road. The egg-caravan in our garden had been the best Mum could manage before her win, but once she’d got something bigger to transform, well, she’d really gone back to what she believed was her nature. I remembered Cecil the horse, now long gone to that great pasture in the sky. I didn’t doubt Mum’s story of him having been brought to us by some man, but why, it occurred to me, would this happen? Why the sudden generosity, even if the man in question was the father of one of us kids? Because Mum had wanted a horse, that was why. It seemed likely that, having set her heart on perfecting the Gypsy image, she’d ordered one, the way folks order sofas or built-in wardrobes.

  As usual, Mum read my mind and we met each other’s eyes, understanding perfectly.

  ‘They may like to burn the lot, Mum,’ I said, ‘those Gypsies of yours, caravan, belongings and all, but do they usually leave the body inside? I don’t think so.’