The Cornflake House (6 page)

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 didn'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.

Bring me an object, Matthew, a token of friendship. I'm a companionable soul, I wasn't designed to be this empty and alone.

Four

Too late, Matthew. Even if you are walking my way as you read this, it is too late. I have had my visitor. Need I say how my heart lifted when I was told that somebody wanted to see me? I assumed it would be you, preened myself in readiness, swallowed the lump in my throat so that this time I might be able to speak to you. I was so intent on looking for your compact, delightful form, that at first I didn't notice my own son waiting for me. Mind you, my son was the last person I expected to see – and besides, he had changed beyond all recognition. His hair, which should be as golden as mine, now looks like the aftermath of a failed chemistry experiment.

Did I already mention my great big, baby boy? If not let me say now that I'm blessed with one son, aged eighteen, who likes to be known as Bing. Maybe I should add that I've been a rather average mother and consequently my son has managed, in his comparatively short life, to get himself into a great deal of trouble. Whatever; he's a sweet boy. Not about to win any prizes for conversation or deportment, but basically sound.

We were shy as strangers with each other. Then he said what I was thinking:

‘This is weird, Mum. Wrong way round, you inside, me visiting.'

It was a long speech for him.

I was suddenly overjoyed to see him and deeply moved by the effort he'd made to get all this way from wherever he'd been hiding. I muttered words to this effect and he mumbled that, as luck would have it, he hadn't been that far from his dear old mum. He was living about twenty miles away, down a hole, under a stretch of land that will inevitably become part of a bypass. So that was why he smelt, amongst other things, of damp clay. His fingernails, when I focused on them, were the colour of weather-beaten flower pots. I wondered how deep his hole might be and does he feel safe there, being separated from the world? Safe as I felt when I first came here? Or does he expect the world to fall on his head any minute? Then I thought this; the point of protest by burrowing was surely to stay underground until the last minute, so as to make headlines, drawing attention to your cause by being dragged out triumphantly in front of flashlights and reporters. By surfacing prematurely, he had made a heart-rending sacrifice on my behalf.

‘You came up … just for me,' I said, almost overwhelmed by motherly love. ‘Oh, Ble…' but he stopped me there. And we were back at loggerheads, where we are actually more comfortable with each other than on the cosy but foreign ground of caring and showing it. I'd been about to call him by his full, his proper name. He hates that.

‘It seems I'm in deep shit,' I smiled at myself for using his vocabulary.

‘Yeah.'

‘Have you seen any of them?' Meaning his aunts, uncles and cousins.

‘Nah.'

‘No, well, I guess not, living in a hole.'

My son grinned and I noticed that he has chipped yet another of his teeth.

‘Do you eat enough?'

He laid his hands on his stomach, resting his case: not a strong argument since his figure resembles an army-booted bean-pole. I didn't need to ask if he was able to wash himself underground. The answer had been wafting my way each time I inhaled. Still, he looked great to me, blinded as I was by emotion, and I could have held my breath and hugged him, had we been on hugging terms. It occurred to me that I looked like the ‘before' in one of those magazine articles anyway; we deserved each other. I still couldn't get over the fact that he'd come, clay, hair, smells and all, to visit me. Appreciation and wonder made me dumb. He played the edge of the table that divided us, fingers hitting an imaginary keyboard as our eyes tried to avoid the sting of meeting. In that silence I felt as if every emotion had chosen my heart in which to settle. And amongst this rabble of emotions, was a newcomer; pride. I was proud of him, of his protest and his essential goodness, even of the way he looked. He hides a well-shaped face behind the stubble, fine bones and a neat nose. His eyes are dark green and, in spite of all his efforts to be laid back, full of intensity. Of course I've always loved him, it's just that I wasn't always there for him, to borrow a phrase from the Yanks. Yet he was being there for me; and his physical presence meant more than any letter, Matthew, no matter how pretty or expensive the paper.

As I looked at Bing, I remembered how I used to fret over him when he was a child. I always knew when he was in trouble or in danger but I wasn't always able to do anything about it. And I thought of other mothers, because I'd heard, in schools and playgroups, mention of premonitions concerning children. It seems women often know when their offspring are threatened. They
know,
without the phone call or the knock on the door, that something is wrong. I've heard of many cases personally. Women who stayed home, putting off the weekly shop because they'd be needed sooner rather than later. Mothers who took themselves to Casualty without being told, knowing their child was also on the way, in the back of an ambulance. I saw a woman double up with pain one morning and discovered next day that her daughter had developed appendicitis. We accept warnings like these, we may mull over them, perhaps even marvel at them, but we don't raise our arms in disbelief or horror. Now can you see why I found it easy to accept my magic? If you believe in one drop of water, and if you have no problem coming to terms with streams and brooks, then rivers shouldn't give you that much trouble.

‘I can't believe you came…' I said to Bing because it was true and I could think of nothing else to say. I remembered having used the same phrase to Oliver, my son's father, nearly nineteen years ago. Oliver had appeared on the doorstep of The Cornflake House on the very day I was preparing to go to a clinic and have an abortion. My son was literally saved by the bell, the ghastly ‘Avon calling' chimes which heralded the arrival of the man responsible for my pregnant state. Oliver had a hare-lip, or he had been born with one. An operation to free the lip had left him with a twist to his mouth and a lisp to his speech which I found impossibly arousing. I was so in love, I remember confusion and sickness, the joy of touching, the pain of parting. We did more parting than touching, a sure sign that our love affair was doomed. But on that day Oliver came to see me.

‘I can't believe you came…' I gasped. Then we talked; and he convinced me to keep the baby by promising that I would have his manly support – not only throughout my pregnancy but for ever and always.

To be fair to the man, he did reappear occasionally to pat my pod of a stomach and offer words of encouragement. I knew he was dating a thinner, less encumbered blonde by the time I gave birth, but he made an effort and turned up to see me while I was in the maternity ward.

‘Well done, Sweetie,' he lisped, as if I'd won a horse race. I grinned. I've always had a thing about men's voices; some, like yours Matthew, are smooth plain chocolate to the hungry senses. Oliver could have talked me into anything – well, I suppose that was how I came to be there, between maternity ward sheets, in the first place. He told me he thought I should call the tiny new being Trevor, an idea that made me laugh out loud until I realized he'd said, ‘I think
you
should call him Trevor,' rather than ‘I think
we
should.' He clearly had no intention of being part of any decision making team. I said I'd already decided on a name and when I told him my choice, it was Oliver's turn to laugh loudly. A reaction that's been echoed by many equally small-minded people since.

‘It's quite common in Africa,' I sulked, but this only made Oliver scoff some more.

The last time I saw Oliver was by accident. In fact it almost caused an accident. I was being given a lift by a friend and when we stopped at a junction, I looked to my side and there he was, in a parallel car, tanned, handsome, carefree as ever. I gasped and my companion's foot slipped off the clutch, making us shoot forward until we almost hit a lorry. Oliver didn't see me, he was busy talking into a mobile phone.

I've often wondered why Oliver bothered to stop me from having an abortion. Did he want a child simply so that he could boast of having fathered ‘some kid somewhere'? Or was he spurred by the basic instinct to procreate the species? Maybe he was just proud of being fertile. Or possibly, and this only occurred to me recently, my mother took control of his shoes too, so that, like Ben Davidson, he was forced to confront me.

I was still gazing fondly at the silent piano player's fingernails.

‘You were a love child,' I said softly, ‘did I ever tell you that before?'

‘Yeah,' but he looked glad to hear it again.

A fresh thought occurred to me, ‘How did you hear about me? About all of it?'

He hadn't seen any of his relations and he could hardly have been watching television in his cave.

‘Papers,' he explained, ‘big spread and a picture in the locals, little para in a national.' Yes, of course he'd be getting the newspapers, or having them delivered. I found myself whimsically wondering if his hole had an address. It must have been a shock, searching for articles about himself and his fellow protesters but finding a ‘big spread' about his errant mother. As if he'd read my thoughts, he said, ‘We were in together, one day, you and me.'