The Cornflake House (19 page)

Odd that I choose to stand alone. Until my mother died I'd never been alone. I'd always known there was one person who cared unquestioningly about me and my welfare. Do you believe in soulmates? I certainly do. For each of us there has to be another, a twin of the heart. Most individuals find this person through romantic love, don't they? Once they've fled the nest they substitute lover for mother, or father. Not in my case, until now. Maybe Mum's magic did outlive her, otherwise how can I account for the way you turned up just as her curtain fell?

My jealously of Taff is based here, somewhere. She was more than an ordinary friend to Victory. As I said, I didn't get around to making friends in my earlier life (I think of life as divided in two, neatly sliced down the middle by the death of my mother). It's true that Taff took lover after lover, but it was in Mum's company that she shone brightest. And, if I'm woman enough to admit it, Mum was happiest, most alive when that silly lemon-on-legs came to visit. It has to be said that they were good together, once they got going their humour was a game of tennis, jokes bouncing from player to player with us kids turning our heads to watch for the next shot. They joked on most subjects, twisting everything in blazing innuendos:

(Television)

‘It's all a load of crap, in't it?'

‘Well you don't have to watch it. You can always turn the knob.'

‘You know me, Darling, just show me a knob worth turning…'

(Knitting. Taff knitted extraordinary objects on vast needles, using fluffy day-glow wools of shocking pink and orange, mixed.)

‘Whoops, I've made a boob.'

‘Can't see why. You've got two perfectly good ones already.'

(Dancing)

‘I'm learning proper dancing, Vic.'

‘Ballroom?'

‘Only if I really fancy me partner.'

Mum and Taff would go for weeks without contact, months even when we were little and time consuming but, the second they screeched into each other's arms, their friendship resumed exactly where it had left off. I've had lovers who mattered a great deal to me but the seat on the top of my pedestal was always taken. Being the first-born, I felt it only right I should be the apple of Mum's eye. It didn't occur to me to be envious of my brothers and sisters, they were loved and protected as was to be expected, but they would never push me from the front of the queue. It was only when Taff came by, or telephoned for hours on end, and Mum's face lit with undisguised delight, that jealousy gnawed inside me.

Well I outwitted Taff at the end. It was me Mum turned to in her final hours, me she trusted. Taff wouldn't have done it. She might have said ‘Yes, all right,' but when the moment came her courage would've failed. Unlike mine. Paying this price is small punishment compared to how I might have felt about being passed over in favour of Taff. You see I understood the history behind Mum's request. I knew that she believed there was a circle to be completed. From my cradle I'd been told of the beginnings of this circle, I had lived the centre part all my life, and I alone could be relied on to tie the ends together.

I have quite a stack of post now, my frog has become a paperweight, but the letter from Taff remains unopened. I won't give her the satisfaction.

Can I use you as a sounding board? I know I wrote to Valerie and she's read that account of the final night, but I've not been able to talk about the months before my mother's death. Nobody can lend an ear the way you do.

I should go back further first, to the missing years. The Cornflake House was never empty. One by one the children left home – only I returned for good – but between them my brothers and sisters kept up a constant stream of visits. Also Mum became quite famous as a clairvoyant and a healer. She didn't advertise, word got around from one satisfied customer to another. Hopeful ‘clients' trudged up the path, their legs brushed by our overgrown grass, their eyes drawn to the ancient caravan. After half an hour with Victory, they'd practically skip back to their cars. Many of these believers crossed her palm with silver. I heard the tinkling of coins. In fact I waited discreetly for this cue before knocking and offering mugs of tea or coffee. Generous customers caused a breakdown in this system by handing Mum a note or two, so she developed a gentle cough as a signal. This went on for years. Of course I wasn't always there, I often worked. Mum had insisted I use my brain; she was so proud of my being able to read and write well that she kept me hard at my studies until I qualified to teach. Not having been happy at school myself, I found it hard to commit to spending hours in class or common rooms. I either taught kids in their homes or did supply teaching in bursts for as long as I could stand it. I had a live-in childminder in Mum, making me luckier than most single parents.

While I worked and Mum healed, little Blessing was growing up to all the prejudice I'd had to face before him, a bastard, poor as a tramp, in an area of tennis courts and rhododendrons. His heritage was disapproval. Following in the footsteps of The Cornflake House kids, in good old Fisher's Close, can't have been easy. I'll give you an example from my own childhood, you'll have to take a backwards leap to keep up, but you did ask what it was like, living there, being me.

I imagine astronauts feel as we did, light-headed, other-worldly, select and proud of it, but troubled. When we moved to Fisher's Close age suddenly made a difference. At Grandma's we'd all run around together, playing, fighting, being kids. But in Surrey you had to be very young not to notice the condemnation of our neighbours, not to mind the pursed mouths. I mean it was one thing to be me, eight years old with four years of schooling to my credit, and quite another to be a toddler like Merry. I know, that's a bad example. Merry was the same at eight, and at eighteen, as he was when wearing romper suits.

We'd been given this jewel, this treasure, literally a prize most could only dream of; but in true fairy-tale tradition, the precious gift brought its own limitations. We loved The Cornflake House, it was what we'd always wanted, a home of our own, miles from the bitter east wind, far from Grandad Eric and his stick. The place was new, ours to furnish with belongings, to decorate with scribblings, to fill with smells and sounds. It had a garden and two toilets; who could ask for more? And we were far from ungrateful or unappreciative. We were determined to enjoy it, to belong to it. I think we succeeded; at least indoors we managed to feel that we'd arrived, that we were home. But outside, what could we do? Even without our untrained dogs and our murderous cats, even if we'd been neater, quieter children, the sheer volume of our family, the colours of our skins and Mum's single-parent status would have set us apart.

I remember one day, during the Christmas holidays, when it snowed. I woke to find the room transformed into a cave surrounded by mystical light. I'd seen snow before, but not here, heaped against this window, inviting me out. The world was a child's heaven, roofs were giant slides, trees had been covered in cotton-wool and cars were rounded and white, drawings waiting to be coloured in. The pure, untrodden ground called to me. For once I was entirely selfish. I dressed silently, not waking my sisters, and tip-toed from the bedroom in my thick socks. I knew that later there'd be snowball fights, and seven of us making a great grinning snowman. We'd take trays to the slopes on the golf course, compacting the snow until we could race downhill with our legs in the air. Low branches of trees would be shaken, covering us with falls of freezing snow, gloves would go soggy, noses run. Later we'd enjoy this together. First I wanted to own the hushed, white world, to tread softly, making the first footprints, to be a fallen angel on a fresh, white lawn. One rush of icy, exhilarating air as I opened the door and I was outside, alone while the others slept.

I walked as lightly as I could in wellingtons, drawing patterns with my feet. When I did my fallen angel, I let my body collapse backwards, then rubbed my arms gently up and down on the snow to make the shape of wings. I was trying to get up carefully, not wanting to spoil the image, when a shadow fell across me. First I saw the shovel, a chunk of metal between my splayed legs, then I recognized Mr Powell, father of the dreaded Fiona, looking down on me. He offered his hand and I let him pull me to my feet.

‘You kids,' he complained, ‘there's always one of you in trouble, falling over, messing about, isn't there?' I felt ashamed, reduced to a red-faced girl when moments before I'd been The Angel Of The Snow. Mr Powell told me to get on inside and dry myself before I caught my death. He then proceeded to scrape the clean, beautiful snow from our path, leaving our garden with a mess of sludge and a spaghetti junction of footprints as he did us this favour.

That was the outdoor terrain, while inside there was a warm, extremely loving woman whose life was seeped in beliefs and superstitions. A womb of a house in which one never wore green clothing, or passed another on the stairs, where knives on floors meant visitors were on the way; and as long as you flung any spilt salt over your shoulder, all would always be well. A place far removed from the offices, restaurants and banks of the Mr Powells of this world.

Years later, enter Bing, a child with an adoring grandmother and a fairly keen mother, but, like his uncles and aunts, fatherless and, unlike them, an only child. It had been easier for me. I'd had my brothers and sisters to protect, most of them more obvious fuel for bullying than me, and I'd happily been their warrior, fighting battles either for or with them. But Blessing was singled out and taken to pieces without anybody to help or support him. We kept a good supply of Witch Hazel in The Cornflake House when Bing was small. Mum and I were often to be seen marching down the school drive, scowls set on our faces, ready to sort whoever needed sorting. In the end Bing solved the problem himself. By the time he reached secondary school he was so laid back that nobody could see the point of bothering him. Harsh words bounced off him like balls against a wall. Unfortunately most of his lessons also bounced away into a forgotten distance. He left school uneducated in everything but survival. It's not surprising he's taken to activities where that talent comes in handy.

During those years I dated many men. Some were of the check-shirt variety, schoolmasters, with inky fingers and pipe-stained teeth. A few were hippies, gentle folk breezing through Surrey on their way across Europe, staying with us for a week or a month before the road called and they ignited their camper vans, jolting off to catch a ferry. Mum provided good food, fascinating conversation and gallons of hot water in which they might wash themselves and their smelly socks. I met these elusive beings at festivals or in jazz clubs, doing well at the game of picking up. It was contrast that attracted men to me. I was in a black phase then. Drop your eyes to the ground and you'll see black suede shoes, black tights, travel up to a short, straight black skirt and on to the equally inky polo-neck sweater, but then onwards to a white face, caked in the palest make-up, and lastly, above it all a crown of long, waving, golden hair. The swarthy opposed to the milky, ebony and gold. It worked every time.

In schools I was considered an interesting oddity, not only because of my clothing. I wore a great deal of musky perfume and painted my fingernails alternately silver and black. Because I was heavily into wholefoods, the gaps between my teeth were always full of seeds which I attacked absent-mindedly throughout the day.

That's me then, well loved, with an identity I liked, having plenty of sex and nourished by goodly grains. Mum seemed contented too. She'd raised her family but hadn't been abandoned entirely. Her love for Blessing was a constant reminder to me of the joy she gave to children; a reminder which made me appreciate that
I
was the one who'd been truly blessed. We were in the happy position of being able to repeat childhood highlights; taking Blessing on picnics to woods we'd visited years before, reliving old Christmases as he ripped paper from presents, reading him bedtime stories that had been loved by his aunts and uncles.

Once the pressure was off and her own children grown, Mum became relaxed about her magic, more ready to experiment. With my generation she'd been careful, never doing anything out of the ordinary when the ordinary would suffice; but Blessing was treated to special showings of tricks which would have made the average conjurer give up and take to selling insurance. I was on the porch once, saying goodnight to a date, when the lights in The Cornflake House began to flash. Not haphazardly as in a storm, but rhythmically like Christmas-tree lights, one on then off, another the same, then all off, all on, upstairs only, downstairs only. It was dizzying, mesmeric. I pulled my young man's hand and led him backwards until we stood not far from Marcus's house, watching the garden fall under small spotlights. Now you see the caravan, now the tree.

‘Hadn't you better call somebody out?' my lover asked.

I looked at him without comprehension. Did he want me to get Mum outside, to view her show from this angle?

‘You ought to call the Electricity Board. It looks dangerous to me.'

Not a surprising response, I grant you, but dull enough to send me on that sudden fall which hurtles one out of love.

‘Never be afraid of electricity,' Mum advised me not long afterwards, ‘it'll not harm you.' And she clicked her fingers at the kettle which began to boil obediently. If we used the electric chair in this country, I might be finding comfort in those words today.

I had an inkling about electricity anyway, just as I am absolutely at ease in motor cars or on buses. My end will not come that way, violently on road or motorway. Understandably I shrink from discovering how it
will
come, foresight has to be controlled to be enjoyed, but the shadow of death moves quietly over my head. It was the same for Mum, except she knew not only how it wouldn't be, but how it would. She was braver than I, and had faced the scene of her death many times before it happened. Magic and death; as I said, the two are bound together.