The Cornflake House: A Novel Read online

  My mother’s pain stopped the moment the authorities took over. Her own leg was cured as she walked back home. We wondered if it was a sort of double premonition she had, if she’d felt so deeply for Donald because of a subconscious knowledge of what was to come for her own father. Eric’s condition fascinated and frightened us but we were never able to make Victory speak of it with any emotion other than scorn. She told us that neither her mind nor her body would have felt sympathy for Eric because he deserved none. There were those, and my mother said this as if she was numbered amongst them, who said they wouldn’t put it past Eric to have chopped off his own leg so as not to have to work at all, ever again. Of course this was rubbish; he was hardly working himself to the bone before it happened.

  Mind you, in a way he did chop off his own leg, or made a good start to the job. It happened before I was born, one day when Editha was down with a bad dose of flu, far too poorly to carry let alone to chop wood. Grumbling all the way to the wood shed, Eric grudgingly picked up a log, set it too close to the edge of the chopping block and raised the axe. The log shot into the air as the axe came down and Eric, slipping backwards, made an impressive and very bloody dent in his left leg, about halfway between knee and ankle. They had no telephone, besides, Eric, not being a great one for doctors, wouldn’t have phoned for help anyway. Instead he limped to the house, called Editha from her sick bed, made such a fuss that she was barely able to clean the wound, then sat for several weeks without letting her change his bandage. Did he not want the leg to heal? We shall never know; only Victory ever had the courage to ask and he gave her a gruesome snarl in answer. As Eric’s luck would have it, Editha recovered and was well enough to walk out for help not long after gangrene set in. It was also fortunate for our grandfather that the day they came and carted him off for his amputation, was the very day Chamberlain made his ‘no such undertaking’ speech; so Eric was able, by a hair’s breadth, to boast that he’d lost his leg in the war.

  Being an amputee sets one apart, it must be like being blond in China. Although we were a hotchpotch of children and often stared at for our own differences, we were as prone to gaze and gawp at Grandad as any stranger might have been. There’s something appalling and mysterious about an unstuffed trouser leg, in Eric’s case a tube held together with three fancy safety pins, the kind usually seen at the hems of kilts. It’s absence that attracts the eye. His remaining leg was hardly worthy of consideration, we kids seldom wondered how it felt, never asked ourselves did it ache in sympathy, did it pine for its partner? A shining white band would sometimes peep at us from the space between his sock and his filled trouser leg, but that was merely flesh, not nearly as absorbing as the lack on the other side of his groin. Then there was the question, not spoken aloud, but once whispered in the dark from child to child, of what happened to Eric’s other shoes. This question had been hanging around, loitering with intent, for years before it made its hushed appearance. There was no sign of these surplus items, they weren’t to be found, alone and dusty, under dressers or on top of wardrobes. We’d all wondered at their fate, but never dared to ask, until one day, when we were living in a little caravan at Eric and Editha’s smallholding, Editha went shopping and bought Eric a new shoe. A single brown leather lace-up, size eleven. For a right foot. It was January the thirtieth, his birthday; Editha rarely shopped. I watched him unwrap his gift, give a grateful grunt, and discard his old, black, footwear to try on the new. The old shoe was put in the dustbin, although, since Eric’s only journeys were from bed to chair, it wasn’t exactly worn out.

  That night, in our caravan, Fabian and I lay awake long after the smaller children had fallen asleep, discussing in whispers the fate of the left brown lace-up. We couldn’t believe that our Granny would simply throw away a brand new leather shoe. She was, by necessity if not by nature, a thrifty soul, such waste would have seemed criminal to her.

  ‘Maybe,’ Fabe suggested, ‘there’s a shop for one-legged people, where they’ll sell you a left shoe or a right one.’

  ‘Yes,’ I liked this idea, ‘and they have stuff for people with only one arm too, like single gloves.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Fabe sounded unsure, ‘but buying a pair of gloves isn’t the same. Everybody loses gloves, but a whole shoe’s different. Anyway, Gran only went to Spalding, they won’t have special shops there. Only maybe in London.’ Yes, in London, we’d been told, you could buy anything, from furnishings to furbelows – whatever they might be; but not in Spalding.

  ‘Well then there’s a club,’ I ventured, ‘and the members swap the unwanted things. This time it was Granny’s turn to send somebody, a man with only a left leg, the spare shoe. Next time it’ll be his wife who has to post the right shoe to Granny.’ We let this concept swim in the dark with us for a while, but it faded when we thought hard about it. Granny hadn’t been seen with brown paper and string, wrapping a shoebox, and surely the box would have been used if any posting took place. In fact she’d appeared in the kitchen, having walked from the bus stop, with the single shoe in its box, and we’d been given this cardboard home to use for Stan, our pet mouse. For a few moments I saw them, an army of odd shoes, wandering tragically through shoe purgatory looking for their other halves, poor lost soles.

  There was only one thing for it. We’d have to see for ourselves. The situation called for a voyage of discovery. We didn’t possess slippers and there was no hope of sorting out our shoes from the pile in the caravan, so we crept across the smallholding in bare feet. The ground was white with frost. We sprang across it, as if the diamonds of ice were hot coals, until we reached the big tin dustbin. To us it felt like the dead of night, but it can’t have been very late as Eric, who slept in the downstairs back room, was still awake with his light on. Good and bad luck for us. The light shone on the dustbin, making our search possible, but if Eric saw or heard us we were done for. Fabian removed the dustbin lid with the care of an expert defusing a bomb. It didn’t smell too bad, Editha had a compost heap for peelings, so we leant over and began our inspection. The old black shoe was near the top only now, instead of Eric’s foot, it held a sticky collection of chicken bones. Underneath was a blend of household dust, broken china, tins and something that felt horribly like a human brain. We couldn’t get to the bottom, we weren’t tall or brave enough to try. Fabe was about to give up when a tingling, ticklish sensation played with the back of my neck then spread right over me, and I knew suddenly that I was special, that I’d be able to see to the depths, discern the contents without actually looking, just by touching the freezing metal bin on the outside.

  ‘Wait,’ I pulled Fabian back to my side, where he sat rubbing his icy feet while I lightly fingered the dustbin. For me the pain of the cold was obliterated by the joy of discovery. I could ‘see’ everything, the little silver coloured toothpaste tin, two tattered, filthy hankies with ‘E’ for Eric embroidered in their corners, both halves of a severed dog’s collar and a big lemon bath sponge.

  I was lost in this magical experience; Fabe eventually had to whisper fiercely in my ear, ‘What are you doing?’ And then, guessing what had happened, ‘Is it there?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ There was no sign of any brown shoe, I had failed to solve the mystery, but I was puffed with success, and determined to have the last word. ‘But there’s a three-penny piece in the pocket of that skirt Granny threw out, we could get it and spend it tomorrow.’ What a generous soul. Knowing Fabe would be put out by my having magic while he had none, I did at least try to share a benefit of this wonder with him.

  Back in the caravan I lay, with a sleeping sister on one side and a giant pink rabbit on the other, and felt warmed by good fortune. Tomorrow was golden with possibilities, I might do anything, see through closed doors, feel inside strangers’ pockets; anything. Amazingly, brilliantly, I’d inherited some magic, and this, my Day of Discovery, was Grandad Eric’s birthday so I would never forget the exact date. January the thirtieth, my own New Year’s Day.

  You
see, it was especially exciting, because my mother had often spoken of her Day of Discovery, the day of the freak storm, and there I was, finding my own feet, yet following in her footsteps. We ought to walk home with her now, mustn’t leave her standing, shaken but not scarred in the school playground.

  That afternoon the children were let out early. There was no hope of calling them to order after the added excitement of visits from ambulance and fire engine. Victory travelled across a sodden landscape, veering around newly formed ponds, jumping deep puddles. She said she hadn’t given her home a moment’s thought, having been so preoccupied with the dangerous roof and then having felt such empathy for Donald and his leg. But when the smallholding came into view she broke into a run and her heart pumped at double speed with a mixture of fear and relief. Relief because the place was still standing, its own tiled roof securely set where it should be. Fear because the ground was littered with debris and there was no sign of Editha.

  It was then my mum knew that even if the Gypsies had brought her to Editha, and even if they reappeared one day with another ‘real’ mother, it was Editha she loved with a daughter’s devotion. The idea that Editha might have been injured, perhaps killed during the storm was so dreadful that it stopped Victory in her tracks.

  ‘I stood at the gate, which was alone between its two supports, the fence having been flattened, and I prayed,’ she told us. I think that was the only time I heard my mother mention prayer, perhaps it was her only offering. She was a believer in many things, but not in the God of churches and prayer books.

  Then she saw Editha, in the distance, a bent figure, small, busy, gathering fallen branches from the fruit trees, salvaging what she could to use for firewood.

  ‘You all right?’ Editha asked her when she came to help.

  ‘Yes. You?’

  ‘Bloody mess, half the crop I should say. Blown half to bits.’

  And they carried on, without speaking again. They were out there clearing up until dusk, then they went in and made Eric his tea.

  ‘He’s all shook up,’ Editha said in a hushed voice. Victory looked at her father who was dozing in the armchair by the stove and she wished something would shake him up, wished the storm had whipped the seat from under him, or better still, lifted him and his smelly old chair clean away.

  My mother used to speak of Days, with a capital D. There were Days Of Deep Sorrow, which need no explanation. We had Days Of Delight, which she planned for us when we looked glum or which fell on us like presents in the post, without warning. We enjoyed Good Food Days and Glad Days and Sad Days. And she spoke of the day of the freak storm as a Day Of Discovery because not only did her feelings for Editha define themselves and settle down, but she also found out how far reaching her magic really was. Until then it had been a toy almost, a bag of tricks with which to plague the enemy. Now she knew what strength she possessed, what pain it might bring, and how little she could do, even when a warning came so clearly, to stop the inevitable.

  Those of us who know in advance that death threatens or disaster is on the way are bound to suffer from the burden of guilt. I used to worry myself to a state of sickness as a child because I could see it, a fire, a flood or whatever, coming, and do nothing about it. But my mother taught me not to blame myself when stories I had ‘invented’ appeared later as articles in newspapers. I accepted my talent easily enough though, children do. I never found the magic itself surprising; which makes it hard to understand why the rest of the human race can’t come to terms with the fact that some of us are born with a gift for music, say, or mathematics, and some of us are able to see a little further, do a little more than average. The only time I’m surprised is when my magic lets me down, as it did today.

  There are so many questions I’d like to ask you, Matthew. But even on paper I am shy of being forward. I suppose the only enquiry that matters is whether or not you want me to carry on telling you about myself and my family? Of course I hope you’ll say yes, and accept the gift of somebody who wants to be, to begin with, your friend at least. Your eyes, which I believe I only dared to meet the once, struck me as intelligent and deeply understanding. You’ll have got the gist.

  I wait for your answer, eagerly, apprehensively and, being a born optimist, hopefully.

  I wait; what else can a prisoner do?

  Three

  I have your letter here. Of course it delights me, this paper and these words. You tell me all the right things; you want to hear more of my family, learn more about me.

  But to see you again, well, I had hoped. Stupid of me I know, but I’d imagined another meeting, less formal – although I understand that cosiness is hard to achieve in a prison Visitors’ Room, surrounded by other couples. Still, I’d pictured us, myself groomed this time but shyly blushing, having a conversation practically as normal people do. Watching each other’s mannerisms, you perhaps smoothing your almost shaved, thinning hair while I ran my fingers through my tangled mane. Smiling at the many contradictions. Basically, getting to know each other in that ordinary but exciting way. We shall have to have another chat, you can’t give up on me now, we must meet eyeball to eyeball again sometime. Your letter decimates any chance that meeting might have had of being informal or without embarrassment. Before I got your reply I was looking forward to the next time; now I rather dread seeing you again.

  I have alarmed you. I never intended to do that.

  Also your letter leaves me in the same one-sided tell-all situation. Oh, now I’m assured that you’re happy to read my words, and that’s a relief all right. But I still know next to nothing about you. I search the letter for clues. Good quality paper, the colour of a spring sky. I bet … yes, there it is, Basildon Bond watermarked right through. A man of taste and big-hearted enough to find me worthy of expensive paper. There is a very faint smell, not of perfume or aftershave. I think it’s that pot-pourri stuff people have taken to having in their rooms. A Christmas present? Or did you buy it, bending to sniff the varieties carefully before selecting this subtle lime and spice mixture?

  You, who walk about freely, can have no idea how I long to do something as mundane as shopping. I never was a great one for buying anything before, but now, oh to be able to choose, to make decisions about colours and textures. Best of all would be the chance to shop with you. To stand by as you picked oranges from a basket. I haven’t told you how impressed I was with your hands, have I? Long fingers. Do you play the piano, Matthew? You should, otherwise you’re wasting a great set of digits. When I close my eyes I can still see your clean pink fingers, topped by white, white crescent moons that seem to glow in the dark.

  Your handwriting ought to tell me plenty, but I’m no expert. I suppose the long upward lines of your ‘t’s and ‘l’s means you are reaching for the sky, a dreamer. Your ‘o’s are perfect, pure, like the mouths of choir boys singing. My writing puts me to shame. It’s so big. I must seem overconfident to any reader, but in fact I write this way for the simplest of reasons. In school our homework was always supposed to cover two sides of a page. If I covered the paper quickly I had more time to play. My mum used to tell me not to bother sending postcards when I went away. ‘They only make them big enough for you to write the address,’ she’d say, ‘and we already know where we live.’

  You write with a fountain pen, a proper pen of the kind never to be found amongst the chewed pencils and snapped crayons in our house. No nib could have survived my brother Merry’s inspection anyway. I was once ordered to use a pen at school, but leaking ink stained my fingers and puddled my pages, so I was allowed to use a biro. But I can see the attraction now, I love the way the ink becomes integrated with the paper rather than merely resting on it.

  I can’t believe I’m waxing lyrical about a pen. God help me.

  Your letter wasn’t posted, it was delivered by hand. Which means you must have been here yesterday. I hadn’t thought about you having other, what are we? Clients? Cases? Not here, anyway, under the same roof as me. Useless to pr
etend I don’t care, that I’m not jealous: my envy will seep into this writing like a bad smell. Who is she, or who are they? These others who have your attention? Not that names would mean anything to me. I am still the new girl, I’ve hardly spoken to a soul, including you, since I got here. Until today that suited me fine. The last thing I wanted was to get into conversation, to have to start explaining myself, talking about my mother to strangers and listening to their own stories or excuses. Now I wish I knew the finer details of each case, not only why they are here but who comes to comfort them. I want to study the face of whoever it was you came to visit yesterday, to see what I’m up against.

  Actually, I lie. I have spoken to one woman. She’s a bully, the kind I used to protect my son against when he was tiny. On Saturdays we get extra rations, little packets of biscuits to keep, to take to our cells and hoard for special moments. With a stomach like mine, there’s no shortage of such moments and my Rich Teas were a treasure beyond price. This woman wanted them, hinting that it’d be in my best interests to hand them over without a fuss.

  ‘They’re a tax,’ she said, ‘sort of like insurance.’

  I told her I didn’t believe in paying taxes and suggested a part of her anatomy into which she might stuff her collection of biscuits. For my trouble I got a quick clip round the ear, deftly delivered out of sight of any warders. The sting made me proud of my tenacity; as I ate them that night under cover of darkness, the biscuits tasted sweeter for the fight.

  I wish I’d seen you. I’d have been delighted by the merest glimpse of your small, neat body as it turned a corner. But more than that, I wish I’d known. Your having been in the building, seeing another and delivering a letter to me, without my knowing about it, this is further depressing proof that, where you’re concerned, my magic has stopped working. And that is scary. For somebody who’s always had the power to see trouble or happiness coming, and a mother who could do something about it, to find herself motherless and powerless is the loneliest of feelings.