The Cornflake House (7 page)

‘Ah,' I thought this was rather touching, two lawbreakers united by the snipe and snap of the press.

The look on my face must have prompted him, in this strange about-turn situation, to ask what any responsible prison visitor should.

‘Why? Why did you do it?'

I was tempted to answer, flippantly, that it had seemed a good idea at the time, because this had been
his
response when I'd once asked him the same question. He's always been anti motor cars and when he was asked ‘Why did you do it?', he'd just punctured every tyre in our neighbourhood. Not only that, but he'd been caught doing so. Still, this was a whole lot more serious and he deserved a decent answer, ‘I did it for her, for your Grandma Victory.' I found it impossible to say more, my throat itched, my eyes prickled and I so badly wanted to avoid tears.

‘Fair enough,' he said. I loved him the most then, more than I knew I could.

Our time was up. We were standing, smiling gently at each other.

‘Do you hug?' I asked.

He responded as if I'd invited him to dance.

‘You asking?'

‘I'm asking.'

‘Well, I'm hugging.'

I expect, I hope, that I still smell of him, of his earthy hideout and his unwashed hair, of his roll-ups and his age-old combat trousers. No perfume could have been sweeter to me. Back in my cell, holding him again and again in my memory, I find it impossible to think of him as Bing. It just doesn't suit him. He chose it because it consists of four of the letters of his whole name. Other possibilities were Les, Sin or Sing and, one which had us rolling with mirth, Bess. I can't say I blame him for discarding the name I chose for him. I suppose I was hoping to follow in my mother's footsteps, give my child a head start in being extraordinary, but now I can see that I went too far. Mind you, my boy didn't shrink from me as I whispered his name in his ear while enjoying that long, lovely hug:

‘Thank you, Blessing,' I dared to offer. ‘Thank you for this show of strength.'

Eighteen years ago, when Oliver had disappeared through the swing doors of the maternity ward and the echo of his scorn had died away, I lay with Blessing in my arms and wept. Of course I felt abandoned, heavy with the tragedy of unrequited love; but now I understand that those were probably just the usual post-natal tears, brought about by dancing hormones. I don't cry easily or frequently. Only birth and death seem to affect my tear ducts. And before long I felt a gratifying grain of grit mixed with the salt on my cheeks. I knew I'd get by without a man – but I was no fool, I understood that it wouldn't be easy. I'd watched my mother struggle the same way. I looked down at baby Blessing's fuzzy head. ‘Son,' I told him, ‘you'd better live up to that name of yours.'

Today, at last, my Blessing has proved that he was listening to me all that time ago.

Five

Thank you, Matthew, for your visit and for my frog. I can honestly say I like nothing better than this tiny creature. I love his polished colours, shades of damp forest floors, moss, ivy and periwinkle. Being made of stone, being the colour of plants and shaped in the image of a living thing, he brings all aspects of the outside world into my cell. What a clever man you are. You knew, before I knew myself, that a smooth, stone frog was exactly what I most wanted. He sits in my palm, happy as any of his living brothers and sisters on their lily pads.

See, I was right about you all along. You've proved that you have a heart. Please don't panic when you read this. I understand that the frog is only a token of your sympathy. I heard what you said; it's impossible for you to see me at any time other than on your official visits. And you must stick to only a professional relationship with an inmate. Understood. Honestly. You can relax in the certain knowledge that I'm not about to leap up and ravish you – much as the idea appeals. I'll practise restraint. But things change; all things change all the time. I won't always be here, on the wrong side of the law, gazing longingly at you, on the right side. When they hear my full story, they'll throw my case out of court. If I hadn't been incoherent with grief, I should have explained myself on the night of my arrest, and most likely I'd have been freed on the spot. You see, although my action was dramatic, in a place where drama is abhorred, I hardly think of it as a crime at all.

I had a visit from my solicitor, my brief as they say. She's not quite the forceful character a person in prison would chose. Dress wise, she reminded me of Perdita, my smart, businesslike younger sister, the same neat blouse and tight black skirt. My sister. Sometimes I think Perdita must have been a foundling, she's so unlike the rest of us. Apart from the clothes, my solicitor is softer than my sister, I can't imagine her standing up for me in court. Not that she doesn't have my interest at heart, but she waffles. I did my best to reassure her, explaining that all I need is the chance to tell my tale but she gave me the impression she wasn't quite listening. Her name is Valerie and she has dark, frizzy hair and very white skin which is flecked with moles. Because her voice is so monotonous, my mind kept wandering.

I thought it was a shame Mum hadn't met her. My mother had a way with moles. She had to find some excuse to touch them, which caused problems when they were in awkward places, but once she'd laid her hands on those brown growths, they faded away. Spots and warts also succumbed to her touch. We children had the clearest skins in the county.

I once saw my mum grab a teenage boy in the street. A risky business because he was with a gang of his leather-clad mates at the time. She held his face in her hands. ‘Sorry,' she told him, moving her fingers over to the screaming patch of acne near his nose, ‘I thought you were one of my brood,' and she patted him as old people pat toddlers, ‘but I expect you've got a perfectly good mother of your own at home.'

His companions hardly had time to be derisive as she walked away. Within seconds they were gawping at the magical vanishing of their friend's pimples, craters and humps.

Valerie droned on, being despondent, but I couldn't concentrate. I gave her my most reassuring smile as I thought about moles and frogs. I'm so proud of myself because, in spite of everything, I saw, and fell for, the frog-giver in you.

Scottie dogs and frogs. What else do you like, Matthew? Possibly, hopefully, snogs? Oh God, if I could only sit by you in a pub, drinking beer, giggling, teasing, watching you as you got to know me. I'd be so damn proud to be out with you. I should glow like a lump of plutonium. Still, we did it, eh? We met. We talked; and I didn't die of embarrassment. Not quite. You can have no idea how tantalizing it was, seeing you again, or how nerve-racking. It was almost impossible to make the journey from cell to Visitors' Room, my legs became rubber tubes, my heart a dinner gong. Didn't you hear its reverberations? How polite and wonderfully understated you are. That's a large part of your appeal for me.

How to explain this attraction? It's you, Matthew, the whole you, I've fallen for. That cleanliness, that care, attention to detail, I find it simply melts me. Maybe you'll never fully understand, you'd need not only to stand back from your own self, to look with my eyes at the neat, appealing man opposite me, but also to go backwards, to step inside my old life in an impossible way. Imagine being one of seven children, one of whom was seriously deranged, for a start. Think of the noise, the constant cries, discordant music, slamming doors, calls for help, barking dogs, telephone bells. I used to sing to myself as a child, any old song, the jollier the better, to drown the others out.

‘We're off to see the wizard…'

‘Muuummm!'

‘Wahhhh!'

‘… the wonderful wizard of Oz…'

‘Brrring, brrring!'

‘Woof, woof, woof!'

‘… if ever a wiz of a wiz there was…'

I was pink with indignation when it was me, tuneful, cheerful me, they told to shut up. Then along comes this quiet, gentle man with a name that sounds like pure relief; Maff-phew. So soft after the cacophony of such a childhood.

Now try inhaling the smells. Tea-towels boiling, fish frying, nappies stinking. Bend close to the floor if you dare, get a whiff of that carpet, soaked in years of animal and human excrement. Sorry, but my brother Merry never did get the hang of toilets. Upstairs there's a heady mixture of perfumes, teenage boys' aftershaves, nail polish, cheap violet scent, talcum powder and that unmistakable smell you get from gerbils kept in small bedrooms. No wonder I'm thrilled by the fragrance of a manly bar of cream soap, which is all I detect about your person.

Then there was the untidiness. My mother tried, she wasn't slovenly, you wouldn't have called her house-proud but she did make some effort to keep those corners clean. It was a losing battle though. The Cornflake House was an average size, not a great rambling home for a hatch of children. We fell over each other and each other's toys constantly. Tables and chairs were hidden under books, papers, security blankets. Until I started dating and visiting, I'd never sat down without first shifting a pile of junk. To emerge from a home like that in pressed, unsoiled clothing, in shoes with matching laces, was unfeasible. We were the misfits, the new scruffs on the block. Rainbow coloured, unelasticated, tied together with bits of chewed string. We were reliably, consistently messy. You could depend on The Cornflake House kids to turn up for PE with one brown and one grey plimsoll, to appear in assembly wearing the wrong school tie. I will never be groomed, I wasn't made that way, but I could happily bask in your spruceness, Matthew. Forgive me for getting personal, but I appreciate your form to the point where I know that you have what is, to me, a perfect body. You would be tidy even in the nude.

At least this time I made an effort and was prepared, as best I could be. I wonder if you noticed the brushed hair and teeth, the pearls? Thank God I sat behind myself, not able to see what you saw. Imagine if we'd been designed differently, how terrible to have to watch every blush and frown, every slackening of our own jaws. Talking of blushes, do you know that your cheeks redden exquisitely under stress? A trait we have in common, at last. I'd thought we might be too precisely opposite. When you shook my hand, secreting my frog there, your jaw, which is very fine by the way, sharply outlined, twitched just a little and your complexion darkened in a way that made me long for a fan to cool you. I can't bear it now, the distance of the law between us. Keeping my distance, trying to win you without being able to make contact, this is the second most difficult thing I have ever had to do. Perhaps life will always be this hard on me now; the second most difficult quest is following so closely on the heels of the first. I only hope that captivating you doesn't bring me as fierce a punishment as the one I am suffering for freeing my mother.

You said you wanted me to try and tell you about myself as a child, to explain how it felt to be Eve, the eldest. It felt brilliant and tragic, marvellous and ordinary. I was both princess and pauper, a clumsy tub with a thin, dainty girl locked inside. A kid who never cared about clothes, yet longed for lace, silk, sequins. Well what child isn't a mass, or in my case a mess, of contradictions? Being me at home was so completely separate from being me elsewhere, it's amazing I'm not schizophrenic. I was confident, self-assured, often bossy with my brothers and sister, yet I was reticent and shy with adults. I'm sure that grown-ups, with the exception of Mum and Taff, found me distasteful. Neighbours in Fisher's Close eyed me with suspicion, as if expecting me to spit or call abuse at any moment, while I was really a quiet girl, keen to be at peace with people. My teachers treated me as if I was a special needs case, although I was bright enough and got good marks. They always addressed me directly, bending their concerned faces close to my own so that I knew whose teeth were brushed and who hadn't had time to say hallo to Mr Toothbrush. I might have been a deaf child or a foreigner. Such treatment baffled and upset me. Fear of looking as stupid as they thought I was kept me tense, tight, on the alert; I never allowed my mouth to hang open or let my eyes drift out of focus. I know I was a sight (and I was the pick of the bunch since most of my clothes went on down through the other six children) but I still find it depressing that not one teacher ever saw through the tatty exterior.

Children who were not my own brothers and sisters seemed a strange breed to me. I now understand that we were the odd ones out; but at eight, or ten or twelve, my peers were peculiar simply for not being like me. The entire population of the world, or at least of Woking and its surrounding villages, walked in a haze as far as I was concerned, distanced by their lack of perception, their inability to see how wonderful, how glorious we, the children of Victory, actually were. All the same, I was constantly aware of being both special and unseemly: the daughter of the Queen of Magic, half-sister to the Child of the Moon, Gypsy Boy, Son of Satchmo and the little Eskimo lad, not to mention the pixie-faced speedy one and that extraordinary, manicured girl with the Shakespearean name. A lot to live up to. And I headed this troupe, I was the eldest, the leader. It was up to me to steer them from trouble, to teach them right from wrong, to watch over them in cloakrooms where gym kits went missing, in playgrounds where skipping ropes waited to trip them, on buses where they risked having their lunch-boxes thrown from the window.

Have you noticed that I make no mention of friends? I had none. I spared no time, made no opportunities for forming friendships; perhaps there was no need. I was one of seven, and then their was my mother, always prepared to listen, to laugh, to help out. Besides, forgive the pathos, but I can't recall anybody making advances, asking if I'd like to sit by them, to walk to assembly in their company, to share a bag of sweets. I know it takes two and, not wanting to be seen to capitulate or conform, I was equally mean with my smiles, my gestures of goodwill. When situations demanded pairing up, for dancing or for the walk to the swimming pool, I was among the last to be chosen, often having to team up with the teacher or with an insipid little boy called Timothy Ross, a creature so nondescript that even when you held his hand you managed to forget he existed. It didn't bother me. I wanted it that way. To join them would have diluted me, or so I believed.