The Cornflake House Page 4

  It seems I’m on my own, no hope of beguiling you with the trickery that’s worked so well for me in the past. I once told my mum about a boy, Ben Davidson – the focus of many a fifth-former’s dreams. I told her he walked right by me at school, didn’t even know I existed, a situation which was breaking my tender, inexperienced heart. We devised this plan, Mum and I. When he was nearby I was to tell her, telepathically of course since she was at home and I was suffering the indignities of the local comprehensive. Her magic was always more effective than mine. While I could only feel his approach, she had the ability, even at a distance, to control his shoes. For a few glorious days, until I realized his soul in no way matched the beauty of his eyes, that behind his knee-watering looks there lurked the dull, grey brain of a future insurance broker, I enjoyed long minutes of Ben Davidson’s undivided attention. He was unwittingly brought to me, his footsteps carrying him to within an inch of my face where they would halt, his black suede shoes stuck fast to the spot. I saw a great deal of the inside of Ben’s mouth – a vision which finally helped me to fall out of lust with him – in those spell-bound minutes. He invariably left this orifice hanging open while I engaged in light, and I hoped entertaining conversation of the ‘chatting up’ variety. I soon told my mother to stop bothering with him, that he had no personality and nothing to say for himself.

  ‘Just shows,’ she teased, ‘you can take a man to the daughter, but you can’t make him think.’

  Still, long after I had lost interest in Ben, I would see him coming and mutter, ‘Oh no, here comes the most moronic mouth in school,’ and his shoes would swivel in my direction or turn him round and round confusingly.

  Perhaps, in this instance and this instance only, I’m better off without my mother’s help. I want you to come to me of your own free will. Frightening as it is, I do rather relish the challenge of getting your interest by fair means. Nothing but my own, tubby, untidy self with which to lure you. Not doing too well so far, am I? One short but beautifully written letter to my credit, and reading the sky-blue spaces, between the lines, it seems, understandably, that I only became interesting after my mother’s death. But I’m writing this to show that I am more than just a case. I am Eve, with a long history and a personality which goes way beyond my crime. And you must see me Matthew. Consider me at least before accepting or rejecting me, before moving on to other women.

  In spite of all my lumps and bumps, I’ve never been seriously unhappy with the way I look. I’d be uneasy in a different body, uncomfortable with a more perfect face. But right now I wish I was saturated with sex appeal. Somewhere along the line, I’ve missed out there, because my mother, when young, must have had enough of this magnetism to pull an army. Not everybody realized this, because she never flaunted her appeal once she’d finished having her tribe of kids. I know some people, the teachers who dealt with seven children from the one mother and a heptad of fathers for example, thought my mum must have been so unappealing that she couldn’t keep a man for weeks let alone years. But there’s always two ways of seeing things; to my mind, my mother was so sexy that seven men, at least seven, found her irresistible and made love to her with the kind of passion I have always believed it takes, although I know this belief is unfounded, to make babies. Seven men in quick succession, one passion hotly following the next. What a variety of men too. We kids had a wondrous, colourful selection of dads. True, many of the attributes we bestowed on these men were sheer inventions – for example Fabian, the eldest of my four brothers, insisted he was fathered by a particularly enigmatic rock guitarist – but their physical glories, passed on to us, are there for all the world to see.

  I suppose it’s hardly surprising that having seven babies changed my mother. She had us in quick succession. I was just eight when Samik, the youngest, arrived, and so I only know the Victory who vamped about before she became a multi-mother from stories, fragments of memories told by Mum herself or laughed over with her friend Taff – whenever the two of them got together.

  When asked why she had so many kids, my mother would say it was all on account of her magnetism. But did she mean simply sexual attraction? Or was she talking about a biological pull? Perhaps, when she reached a certain age, she found that she conceived every time she had sex. Or almost. Was it her ovaries that held the magic magnetism, boasting the suction of a vacuum cleaner so that any sperm, having been shot from his safe haven, found escape impossible? Then again she might have meant something else entirely; she may have been suggesting that children found her mixture of mothering and magic so delightful that they were queuing up to be conceived by her. I have pictured this scene, a row of little souls, arms waving eagerly in the misty air of children’s heaven, all trying to catch the attention of the dark, twinkling lady. Any of these explanations might be right in terms of what my mother meant. That’s the way it was with Victory, everything she said had many connotations each of which, at a given time, could be the logical answer.

  Although I don’t suppose Taff was around every time my mother conceived, carried, or produced one of us, I find it hard to separate her from scenes of love, sex and courtship.

  Victory and Taff met in their fourteenth year and stayed close as underwear to skin right through ’til Victory’s death. Taff is still going strong, a fat, toothless old bag with an outrageous laugh and a way of finding the innuendo in any phrase or sentence. I haven’t seen her since my mother died. The prospect sickens me but I suppose we’ll have to meet again soon; Taff wouldn’t miss the court case if she was in an iron lung – but in fact her lungs are working all too well in spite of her chain-smoking and having lived, until being recently moved to a Home, on a busy main road. They’ll have to gag her, no amount of shouting ‘order please’ will have any effect on Taff. Who needs a prosecution counsel when they can rely on the best friend of the deceased to yell abuse? Apart from her anger and hatred, I’m afraid of confronting Taff’s grief. She can’t possibly be as lost and empty as I am but she’ll make such a show it’ll put the rest of us to shame.

  There never was much love lost between us. We were rivals, I suppose, vying for the position of top place in Victory’s affections. When Taff came to visit, we children felt pushed aside. She’d take up two easy chairs, her great bum bulging in one while her bad legs rested on another, and smoke us all out of the room. From our place of banishment we’d hear her cackling and we’d plot all kinds of torments for her. But Taff had Victory’s protection. Our minor tortures were sometimes successful; we made superb slings from her giant knickers and once persuaded her to eat cubes of Ex-Lax, which she mistook for plain chocolate. But our plans for major horrors were always thwarted because, without necessarily seeing for herself, Victory knew what was what:

  ‘No Taff, not that chair, I think you’ll find it’s booby-trapped with drawing pins.’

  They never bore us any malice, Taff and Victory. To them, kids would be little terrors. They’d have found us far more offensive if we’d tip-toed about being good and nice. I know this is true because my mother fretted more over Perdita in her perfect stage than she ever did over the troubles the rest of us brought on her and on ourselves. I shouldn’t hold Taff’s friendship with my mother against her. Not having been a mother herself, Taff did her best to be an aunty, treating us to mountains of takeaway food and trailing big but hopeless presents in her wake. Large stuffed animals were favourites, mostly orange and yellow monsters she’d won at Bingo, another of Taff’s addictions. One such creature, sporting a vast red baseball cap, was blocking out the draft by the back door of The Cornflake House to the bitter end.

  When they first met, Victory and Taff had a lot more than their shared age in common. Both girls had suffered friendless childhoods, a bond which instantly cemented their relationship. Like Victory, Taff was an outsider. Worse, sin of sins, she was actually a foreigner. Her full name was Myfanwy and she was half Welsh. Although she had only the faintest of accents, her voice was ridiculed by other children. Taff reckons this n
ever bothered her, sticks and stones and so on; and it’s hard to imagine her sulking or giving a damn, but it did set her apart. Taff is as down to earth as Victory was up in the clouds. She says exactly what she thinks, gets into endless trouble and laughs fit to bust at those who don’t like it. The two adolescents seemed made for each other, two halves of an invincible whole. Heaven help those who stood in their way as they bucked and pranced from child to adulthood.

  ‘We met at dancing classes,’ one or the other of them would tell us again and again, ‘no boy was ever brave enough to take either of us in his arms, we looked a sorry sight in those days. So there we were, four sets of toes in tight shoes, two breasts colliding to the strains of the foxtrot. Most of the class we spent doubled up with giggles or the stitch. Seemed to dance everything at breakneck speed, didn’t we Dear? Not a glimmer of timing between us. Often enough we’d finished, worn ourselves out, halfway through the music. Still, the best bit was sitting, panting and watching to see whose hands were sliding towards whose bum, whose trousers boasted the biggest bulge.’

  I can hear Taff’s laugh now, as clearly as if she was in the next cell. A laugh to shake solid walls.

  To be fair, Taff did practise refinement from time to time, and it took some practise I’m sure. She had no choice, few men would have looked at her in her natural state. And she loved men. Or I should say she loves them; I’m sure she’s flirting still in her old folks’ home, exercising those heavy eyelids whenever a bloke walks by. Toning down the cackle until it sounds more ladylike. Give her a couple of vodka tonics and you’ll hear the real thing but by then with any luck you’ll be pissed too and that’ll soften the edges.

  Can you see them? Those two almost-women, dancing together out of time, whizzing round the floor of some dusty old hall in the hope of hurrying the arrival of love and sex? It couldn’t come quickly enough for them, they were, in all senses, ahead of their time.

  I know my problem. I want to be Taff, in those good old days. I want to giggle with Victory at the boys in all their gawky glory, to feel my knees knock in harmony with hers when a handsome one appears on the scene. To triumph over the good girls, over the prigs in permanent waves. To swing down the street after the rain, a shining girl on the arms of a likely lad, orange lights reflected in the puddles, my stockings damp, my body ready. I want to be there, taking life in great gulps, not being for one second a tease, but offering and accepting the real thing. Going all the way.

  There you go Matthew, another window opens and you see yet another of my secrets, more of my soul.

  My cell mate Liz has had some post too. Hers must contain the kind of news she’d rather not have known. Her eyes are red, her mouth is down at the corners. From time to time, I look up and give her what I hope is a sympathetic smile but she ignores me.

  Ah well, back to that other pair. Yes, Taff and Victory were alike, but they were opposites too, as friends perhaps ought to be.

  Well, I say that Victory was a friendless child, but after the freak storm she grew very close to her mother, Editha, or rather very fond of her. Being loved and appreciated was such a novelty for Editha – the experience came too late for her to enjoy it wholeheartedly. She never achieved that easy, confidential, giggling state that I enjoyed with my mum. There was always a brusqueness about Granny which gave the impression that she didn’t care. But we knew she loved Victory and us grandchildren really, deep down, because nothing, not her silent hard-working father, not the endless storms and gales she suffered or the routine of her life, not even her lazy demanding husband, could take the softness out of Editha’s smile. I think my grandmother found the seven of us heavy going, but also awe inspiring. She was nosy, interfering and bloody-minded in her old age but she had a way of staring at one or the other of us as if we’d dropped from outer space and then breaking into that special smile of hers which was composed of nothing more or less complicated than inherent love.

  While she was still at junior school, my mother did form one friendship, another rapport that sprung from the Day of Discovery, the freak storm day. Miss Downy was won over by Victory when the weather calmed. The child she’d seen as a trial was clearly blessed with the gift of vision; and who in their right minds would carry on treating one so talented as the enemy? Miss Downy waved the white flag and crossed No Man’s Land with all the caution of one who knows the territory is explosive.

  ‘Although I thought she dealt with Kathleen, Donald and the roof-tunnel fearlessly,’ my mother told me, ‘Miss Downy wasn’t a naturally brave woman. She was not so much blonde as white, I never saw hair as pale or skin so clear. When embarrassed she would blush to the roots of that lemon hair and when she was frightened she blanched to the point of transparency. After the storm she was alternately embarrassed and afraid of me, flashing hot and cold alarmingly throughout lessons. Before long the whole class would be watching for the colour changes, nudging each other when the first signs appeared and wearing out red crayons doing cartoons of her face. She was on the verge of losing control when I took pity on her and gave her the stone. It was nothing really, just a peachy pebble, but I said it was a crystal and would bring her luck. The important thing was that she understood it to be a peace offering, which it was. It did bring her respite from the flushes and freezes, which was the kind of peace she wanted and it did bring her luck, of a sort. A couple of days later she met a man who found her see-through skin and limpid hair attractive. Within weeks she was blushing more than ever, but from joyful embarrassment this time, and hinting that we might be calling her something other than Miss Downy by the start of the following term.’

  It didn’t last. I forget why, the man fell out of love perhaps, with Miss Downy or with the bleakness of the area. Anyway he moved on. My mother arrived at school one autumn day with a bunch of chrysanthemums for her teacher.

  ‘It’s sweet of you, Victory,’ Miss Downy thanked her, ‘but there’s no need. It’s not a special occasion.’

  ‘You might be glad of them tomorrow,’ Victory muttered, ‘they’ll help to cheer you up.’

  The next morning Miss Downy had sore, red eyes with which she kept peeping at the ‘Dear John’ letter in her cardigan pocket. This time she didn’t hold Victory’s clairvoyancy against her, she just smiled sadly whenever she caught the little girl’s eye.

  ‘We were on good terms right until I left that school,’ my mother assured us, ‘and when I went she gave me the McDuff Egg.’

  At this point in the story Mum would usually hunt for the tiny tartan egg, and if it could be found amongst the clutter she’d hold it up as if offering it for auction. The McDuff Egg was a masterpiece in miniaturization and ingenuity. Made of wood, it hatched, when twisted, to reveal a complete sewing kit with a thimble in the bulbous end of the egg and threads spooled around a central stem that housed pins and needles. Some of the weave in the tartan was outlined in gold, and the name McDuff was written amongst the reds and greens in minuscule golden lettering. My mother had a wicker basket full of impossible tangles of cottons, fat, lethal pin cushions, needle cases shaped like fruits or many skirted ladies, and this she used, diving in to its dangerous depths whenever we ripped or burst out of our clothes. But the McDuff Egg was complete and untouched even when … Oh God, I suppose I should have saved it. I never thought … Zulema was especially fond of it, she has small, neat hands – although she used to spoil these by constantly chewing her nails – she’s always liked objects that fit snugly in her palm.

  A terrible thing is happening to me, Matthew. The lining of my stomach is starting to eat itself up. I am sick and my insides are hollow. I suppose you will guess this feeling is guilt, or its little brother, remorse. But it is neither; it is dread, catching up with me at last. You must encounter this all the time, people who are ill with fear. Even though I’m sitting down, dizziness is throwing me off balance. What have I done? What am I doing here? Why haven’t I asked myself these questions before? I didn’t care, my mother was dying, then she was dead and I di
dn’t care where I went from there. Coming here, it didn’t matter. I hardly gave it a thought; prison. Or if I was capable of giving thoughts to any kind of future, I assumed that prison would be a good place for me. I wanted the distance, the locked doors. It was away from them, that was the essential thing.

  I can’t believe my mother is dead. Although I’ve missed her, cried over her, suffered from her absence; I haven’t believed in it, death, the fact that I will never see her again. My subconscious expects her to appear, in this cell, or later, at my trial. When I saw your letter I thought for one second … I jump when I hear the distant ring of the telephone, still hoping … My ears are strained for the first sound of her voice, a voice that will speak up for me when everybody else talks of me with hatred and anger. But she isn’t here, and she will not be there, will she Matthew? She’s gone.

  For the first time I am taking in my surroundings. Why did they send me to this place and not to an open prison? Am I so evil, in their eyes, that I can’t be trusted? Why doesn’t Liz want to speak to me? I’m not used to silence. I was brought up in The Cornflake House, for God’s sake, where every room rang with cries, laughter, music. And bare walls, just this yellowing paint all over the place, not a picture to look at, when I’m used to postcards by the yard, beer mats stuck to every surface and a ceiling decorated with cut out planets and stars.

  I have nothing but your letter. Not one piece of junk to gaze at or to hold. Not a single memento. My own fault, of course, if we are talking of blame. Once the shock has worn off, my family may come to visit me and I cannot face them alone. How can I be expected to see them, to answer their accusations, with nothing in my pockets? My mother understood this need and passed her understanding and her tokens on to those she cared for. Please visit me first, Matthew, before my brothers and sisters come, and please bring me something solid. A pebble or a painted egg, something which fits comfortably in my hand. No matter what they say is right, or what they think is wrong, there is a limit to the punishment a person can take. I am sorry, if being sorry will help my cause; but in the name of justice, there is a limit.