Inchworm (23 page)

and metal ashtrays

sour with an odour

of ash and loss.

We wait.

The chairs sigh for us.

They have absorbed

the sadness

of too many people.

They have had the stuffing

knocked out of them.

Emily Dickinson – who Mum loves – said: ‘
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.’

Maybe one day I’ll be able to write poetry that takes off the top of someone’s head
.

Cows and sheep fly past the window and the wind flings crows over the hedges.

I wonder if Mum would consider taking me somewhere exciting when I am completely recovered – like Australia? Will I be allowed to fly? I’m not sure. Maybe the
USA
at least? Not for a year, I know, but after that? Perhaps not to somewhere like Malaysia or Indonesia because of tropical diseases, or Africa again, but somewhere hygienic like Switzerland would be good, except that I’m not keen on mountains or snow or fir trees.

How about Sweden? I could do a photo project on the Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman or visit the island where the writer and cartoonist Tove Jansson spent her childhood. I suppose when I start at school I’ll have to stick to school holidays for going anywhere exciting. That was one advantage of being a child with health problems – Mum always took me somewhere tropical so we had winters in the sun. When I’m a famous photographer I will be able to go anywhere and make records of anything – buildings, animals, people, landscapes.

Brett might like me to travel with him to Australia to show me where he was born. In my dreams.

We’ve never been to America. Yes, New York should be top of my list of places to go. It will be like being in the middle of a movie. New York cabs –
Taxi;
The Empire State Building –
King Kong;
Grand Central Station –
North by Northwest
; Woody Allen’s
Manhattan
. The entire city is a movie location. Daddy could come with us. Or if Mum doesn’t want to go, Daddy could take me on my own. (Also, in my dreams.)

In the booklet they gave me at the hospital it says that heart and lung transplant patients are likely to have more than three years of life, possibly ten.

They don’t really know, they’ve only been doing them for a few years. Let’s be positive and assume I have ten more years. That means I’ll live until I’m twenty-two. That’s old. I ought to have a plan of action for things I must do. Perhaps one for each year. I must act wisely. It’s a good reason not to put off dreams.

1
.  See New York.

2
.  Go to Australia and New Zealand, especially

  Wellington, the birthplace of one of my favourite     writers, Katherine Mansfield.

3
.  Meet Nelson Mandela and go back to Africa.

4
.  Walk the West Cornwall coastal path or some of it.

5
.  Make sure Mum and Daddy are, if not     together, then at least good friends and make sure he meets his Cornish family.

6
.  Read as many of the best books in the world as is   possible. Start now!

7
.  Go on a course to learn about writing     poetry (I suppose that should go before no.
4
).

8
.  Be kissed by Brett.

9
.   Get married and have at least one child who

  will be healthy and whole and have a useful happy life. Maybe she’ll be a world famous – an artist or writer, or maybe she’ll be an ordinary, extraordinary person. (Maybe I shouldn’t have any children as the world is already too full. I might adopt children with health problems.)

10
.  Visit the Galapagos Islands. I better do that before I have children as it’s an expensive trip to make. Now I can’t stop thinking about favourite things.

Things I love or have loved to do:

1
.  Sitting with my back to the wall on Porthmeor Beach watching the sun slipping into the sea.

2
.  Birding with Brett on Tresco.

3
.   Reading a favourite book. Better still, having a   book read to me.

4
.   Playing Scrabble with Mum.

5
.   Watching old movies with Daddy.

6
.   Having Charlie on my lap.

7
.   Hanging out with Precious.

8
.   Laughing.

9
.   Watching the seagulls on the roof.

10
.  Playing with my kitten.

Favourite smells:

1
.  Cockle shells and mud at Old Leigh, Essex.

2
.  The air when you get out of the train at St Erth     after being in London.

3
.  Second-hand book shops.

4
.  Charlie’s fur.

5
.  Hot chocolate.

6
.  Daddy’s aftershave (don’t know what it’s called     –
Suave
or something).

7.  Moules marinière
and chips.

8
.  Sunburnt skin.

9
.  Horses’ breath.

10
.  Primroses.

11
.  Leather car seats.

That’s enough.

Favourite things to touch:

1
.  Cat’s fur.

2
.  Daddy’s hand in mine.

3
.  Grandpop’s tattoos.

4
.  Mum’s silk velvet dress.

5
.  Pebbles warming in my hand.

6
.  Books.

7
.  The wooden banister in our house at St Ives.

8
.  Mud under my toes.

9
.  Cold stainless steel.

10
.  A cool cotton pillow on my cheek.

Favourite tastes:

1
. 
Moules marinière
and chips.

2
.  Roast chicken and roast potatotoes with gravy and peas.

3
.  Coconut ice-cream.

4
.  Crumpets and strawberry jam.

5
.  Ginger biscuits dipped in tea.

6
.  Raspberries and cream.

7
.  Cornish clotted cream with meringue and strawberries.

8
.  Apple crumble and vanilla ice-cream.

9
.  Elderflower cordial.

10
.  Steamed samphire with melted butter and black pepper.

At least the last one makes me sound sophisticated.

Favourite sights:

1
.  A bluebell wood.

2
.  Starlings dancing together at dusk before going to roost.

3
.  Seagulls flying over the sea.

4
.  The first sight of St Ives through the gap in the wall by the coastguard cottages.

5
.  The sun setting into the sea at St Ives.

6
.  A field of daisies and buttercups.

Favourite sounds:

1
.  Charlie’s ‘hello’ miaow.

2
.  Seagulls talking, crying, and all their sounds.

3
.  Starlings praying to the Sky God.

4
.  A robin’s evening song.

5
.  The sea – whooshing and whispering, roaring and hissing, and when it sounds like an orchestra in the middle of the night.

6
.  Rain on the roof when I’m inside in the warm on a sofa wrapped in a woollen blanket.

I fall asleep and dream of Precious. We are running together along a warm sand beach. I wake with the shock of realisation that he is gone.

At Plymouth in one of the scruffy back yards next to the railway line there’s a pink camellia bush standing alone. A game of football is played on bright green artificial grass at Devonport with artificial lighting. The teams look like robots or characters in an animated film.

Our train is trundling over the huge Isambard Kingdom Brunel bridge across the River Tamar into Cornwall. Swans are gliding by in front of the pub with the Union Jack painted on the front. Two herons stand sentinel on a gasholder, and Brent geese are heads down waddling through a field. Primroses grow in clumps on the railway banks, quite unreal-looking, like children’s posies on a grassy grave.

I wish I had been able to go to Precious’s funeral. I didn’t get to say Goodbye. It was the same with Grandpop and Grandma. Then I was in hospital. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to write a poem about him. I’ll call it
When I Die.

If I become a famous poet I might change my name. I have been known by various names:

Gorgeous Gussie (there was a tennis player with that nickname in the Fifties I think. She work frilly knickers).

Pansy. Don’t ask why, I have no idea.

Honeybun – Daddy.

Gussiebun – Daddy.

Gussie – everyone.

Guss – everyone.

Sweetheart – Mum.

Sweetie-pie – Grandma and Grandpop.

Princess Augusta – Grandpop.

Org – Summer used to call me that and I hated it.

My Flower.

Why was I called Augusta anyway?

‘Mum, why was I given my name?’ She wakes and yawns.

‘What?’

‘Why did you call me Augusta?’

‘Because you were born in August, and because it means sacred and majestic.’

‘That’s no reason.’

‘It’s a lovely name.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Unusual and memorable.’

‘Hmm.’

The journey between Plymouth and St Erth is agonisingly slow. We stop at every station.

The rain hasn’t stopped since Liskeard; drops run horizontally across the window and outside the world is grey and foggy.

I am so tired. Mum is too. I kick her when she snores.

The people with the bald baby must have got off when I was asleep. We are the only people left in the carriage. Bubba is quiet. She must be so bored, stuck in the box, but I daren’t let her roam.

Mum said she lost a kitten once on a long journey. She searched the train for it and thought it was lost forever. It had crawled over the top of the metal partition under her seat. Hours later it cried and she found it, but it wouldn’t come out and she had to get the train manager to unscrew the partition to rescue it.

I’m too tired to be excited, and sad about so many things – Precious mostly. Mum has Agnes’s address in West London and she’ll write to her, if she’s still there. What will she do? Will she wait for her daughters to arrive or will she go back to Zimbabwe to be with her husband?

I’m sad that I didn’t achieve my aim to get Mum and Daddy together again.

And I’m ashamed I was horrid to Alistair. He can’t help it if he isn’t my father. I’ll have to make it up to him. Perhaps I could get him tickets for a really important cricket match, except that that would be rather expensive. I know: I’ll cook him and Mum a romantic dinner for two. No paper napkins, of course.

The sky is lightening as we reach Truro. Only half an hour before we reach St Erth. I go for a wee. The buffet is closed and the staff are relaxing, reading discarded newspapers. It must be strange to spend your working life on a train journey. I wonder if they suffer from land sickness when they get off?

‘How’s the little cat, then, my flower?’ the manager asks.

‘She’s asleep.’

He must be Cornish, calling me ‘my flower’.

I wake Mum and she goes to ‘freshen up’. She looks better than she did when she first came out of hospital. I wonder if people will recognise me? I’ve put on a bit of weight, though I haven’t grown upwards. And I’m pink – a real, normal pink.

We’ve gathered our bags on wheels and the kitten’s box, which is very light, and when we get to Hayle we stand at the door, looking through the gap between the sand dunes at the estuary mouth. The town is like a white floating island against a grey-green, tumbling sea.

Mum opens the window.

The sun has come out into a broken patch of pale blue and the sweet smell of salt air takes my breath away. We draw slowly into St Erth station.

‘Alistair!’

I jump into his arms and find myself crying on his tweedy shoulder as he hugs me.