The Cornflake House (18 page)

To everyone's surprise we stayed together for weeks, which looked like stretching to months. People began to talk of Marcus and Eve, a pairing which never ceased to lift my heart. I made him laugh, I flattered him, teased him, and paid for him. I also cooked experimental snacks to fill his ever hungry gut and let him fumble about in the dark caravan in a way that was just as experimental as my cooking but far more satisfying. Then, as if the god of wrath himself had picked me out, my glands flared up, filling my throat with pain, making my head throb and my heart break. I knew it was hopeless. Depression is one of the symptoms of that illness, but knowing Marcus wouldn't hang about, faithfully waiting for my recovery, was more sense than sadness. Regardless of this knowledge, I lay with my head back, exposing my lumpy neck to the spring breezes, listening intently for a knock on our door, for his voice in the hall and the sound of my mother's footsteps leading him up to see me.

He never came. I had to gather information from my sisters, an exhausting process involving many questions and not nearly enough answers. Perdita fancied Marcus herself, although she was much too young. She was happy to watch out for him but less willing to relate her findings. I wanted to box her ears or shake her unsullied head, to swap her thoughts about until she gave me some consideration. Zulema was reluctant but reliable, she couldn't help telling the truth, when pressed. She told me what I needed to know but didn't want to hear. Marcus was leading another down lovers' lane while I lay pale and poorly. How could I ever have imagined that pale and poorly was what would appeal to him?

Hence, as I began to recover, the holiday. Two weeks for two people in sunny Spain.

‘Please leave Merry and Django behind,' I begged when Mum said she was putting the spending money, part of her prize, towards taking some of the others with us. It was still a lot to ask of Taff, a fortnight babysitting a pair of awkward boys, one bloodyminded girl – Perdita was to stay at home – cats, dogs, small mammals and of course, Cecil the horse. All credit to her, Taff rallied round, arriving a couple of days before we departed ‘to get the feel of the job'. She brought with her enough clothes to cover a football pitch and a man called Steve who instantly endeared himself by giving me magic-carpet rides. The floor of the bedroom I shared with my sisters was by then covered in green and yellow lino. The Axminster, upstairs, had suffered enough, having been singed by an electric fire, sicked on, peed on and shaved (don't ask), it was finally pulled up and turfed out.

‘You're never too old for a whiz round the lino,' Steve promised as he sat me on a rug and tobogganed me in and out of the spaces between the beds. He was not wrong.

It may well have been my last fling as a child, and I loved it. I'd been cooped up and sorry for myself for so long that my laughter came back like an old friend.

Needless to say, those who stayed in The Cornflake House with Taff and Steve had a far better time than we who packed and left. In Spain, Samik proved once and for all that half his blood was Eskimo and heat didn't agree with him. His skin erupted in tiny, blistering spots, his appetite vanished and his bowels exploded. Since we were squashed into one small room, the rest of us had to tip-toe about while the poor lad tried to sleep through his itching and aching. Fabian, usually starved of the company of girls who looked remotely like himself, fell heavily for a lass from Birmingham, but since she was also sharing a cupboard with her family they were obliged to do their snogging on a beach covered in rubbish and sandflies. And he missed his guitar, having eventually found somebody worth serenading.

Mum spent hours staring at the walls, trying to ‘see' how things were going back home.

‘Taff's drunk,' she told me, and a hiccup escaped from her chest.

‘How about the kids?' this from a girl of fourteen; but then I considered myself a woman, after all hadn't I already loved and lost?

‘They're tipsy too. Except Perdita.'

‘That figures.'

‘No, I mean Perdita isn't merely tipsy, she's out cold. Here, feel my hand.'

I obeyed. It was icy. The image of my sister staggering, dishevelled, possibly even vomiting before she fell, acted like alcohol on me, flowing warmly through my mind. Most of the time, though, I was miserable. It was too soon, my glands hadn't quite settled down, and my heart was still at the raw, stinging stage. Which left Zulema to wander the streets of the little town alone, buying bright presents for her brothers, sending postcards to everyone she knew or had ever known.

That was my holiday. Two weeks with a sick kid and a psychic mother. I did try the brave new world beyond our cramped room but the sun hurt my eyes and even the most bronzed and beautiful boys paled by comparison to my Marcus. When I got back to England, hungry for one kind glance, the bugger couldn't bring himself to face me. He took to using his back door. I'd see him sneaking out, clambering over the hedge at the bottom of his garden, snagging his cord Levi's on brambles. Serve him right.

Mind you, during our fortnight's absence, Taff had transformed The Cornflake House into a shrine to bad taste. There was cut glass everywhere, great ugly bowls on tables, shelves blessed with shimmering vases, swans floating over the window sills. The toilet roll was hidden under the knitted skirts of a ‘Victorian' doll, the butter lay buried beneath a Chinese version of Anne Hathaway's cottage. Our first, welcome, cup of tea was poured from a giant pink and silver pot which rested on a set of lion's feet. She'd painted our scruffy old kitchen chairs gold and re-covered them with purple brocade, making it feel, when we parked our weary behinds, as if we'd entered a nursery-rhyme world. I gave an audible sigh and got a scowl from my mother in return. For a second I was glad Marcus had ditched me; I could never have let him see my place like this.

In his own, less offensive way Steve had worked miracles too. Merry was worn out, I kid you not. The child was exhausted from days of football, cricket, horse-walking, swimming and of course magic-carpet rides. Django was engrossed in an entirely new collection of vacuum cleaner catalogues, while Perdita had been taught how to play chess, a game that obsesses her to this day. I ask you, who had the better holiday?

Now, all these years later, I need another chance to find out what drives folk to leave their comfortable homes and fly in silver machines to distant places. Please Matthew, let me sit on warm sand with a whole heart this time. If you don't want me, try not to say so until … well, try not to say so. I have my frog nearby. I rubbed my bruises with him, when they hurt like hell, to see if he was magic and could heal. No luck, but the comfort of holding him tight in my fist is indescribable.

You know, in a bizarre way I'll be glad when the day comes. You wouldn't think a woman waiting to be tried for one crime she didn't commit and one she most certainly did could be bored, would you? If I'm not exactly bored, then I am restless. Thank God I've got these letters and the memories they allow. As I'm no longer capable of leaping around the netball court with my fellow prisoners and since I never achieved the honour of working in the laundry like my lucky pal Liz, I'm grateful to be using some of my brain cells at least.

Ten

My life has gone into fast forward. I have frequent meetings with Valerie while we try to think of some way of proving my innocence, and fail. The evidence for half of the crimes of which I'm accused was more than plain for all to see. Although this was intended at the time, it leaves no room now for pretence. Valerie sighs often and has taken to chewing her bottom lip, while I've developed a quiver in my hands and a habit of swinging my left leg. I hit my solicitor's feet under our table several times but she was engrossed in the law and barely noticed. I'm instructed to sit quietly in court, not to mutter under my breath when the police give their account of what happened, and to speak clearly when my turn comes. It has also been hinted that I should chop off my locks, or at least tie them back so that my pale face can shine across at the judge. My hair was used to get me to the floor in my attack. I don't think I'd miss it, not if I'm to spend much more of my life inside. I'll leave it to you, Matthew, will it stay or will it tumble? No, on second thoughts I'll pin it up, the word tumble brings frightening images to mind. Scenes from the film of
A Tale of Two Cities
have begun to flash in my head. An overactive brain is no friend in times of crisis, believe me.

I had another visit from Bing. He appeared to have shrunk, I had to scour the Visitors' Room to find him hunched in his chair. He's been evicted from his hole, a painful business – emotionally and physically. He hardly spoke and his eyes roved around the room longingly. I don't think he'd sat on a chair since his last visit here. In our mutual silence, once he'd raised his eyebrows at my still bruised face, I was compelled to face the fact that I've made my only son homeless. Possibly even motherless, to all extents. What
have
I provided for him? Not security, that's for sure. In a feeble attempt to make good, I suggested he might go and stay with his Uncle Samik for a while. There's a bond between those two which holds tight in spite of Margaret, Samik's boring, possessive wife.

It wasn't surprising that my youngest brother should marry and raise a family – he has four children, all of whom he adores – but none of us expected Margaret. She's as straight as a bowling alley, has no conversation and collects, wait for it, porcelain dolls. Dolls of all sizes and in a great variety of costumes, but mostly sporting frilly bloomers. Their painted faces stare at you from glass cupboards, pouting, smiling inanely, begging for freedom. A visit to Samik's semi, on an estate just outside Guildford, is like going to a museum full of shrunken, stuffed people.

I know why Samik settled down while the rest of us raved and partied. Not being able to have a father, he did the next best thing and became one himself. But I think he went to unnecessary extremes in marrying Margaret. She was faintly pretty until it stopped mattering, now she is more nondescript than plain, with the dress sense of a three-year-old let loose in her mother's wardrobe. Old-fashioned? Well, not if you like half-pleated skirts and twin-sets. And Margaret hides a heart of granite behind those pearly buttons. She can be tough, stubborn, immutable, but never passionate, which is what makes her so tedious. Whereas Samik is a beautiful man with a sweet nature; he could have done much better. I'm never sure if he sees it that way himself, if so he gives no hint. His loyalty to his chosen life seems total. Family and boats, those are his twin preoccupations. He owns two boats, one a floating bar which keeps the lot of them in food and clothing, the other a small yacht moored on the south coast and called – you'll appreciate the irony – Spirit Of Adventure II. Spirit Of Adventure I was destroyed when it ran into a rock.

‘Oh yeah?' Fabian mused when told of this catastrophe, ‘and what was the rock called? Margaret?'

Before he met his match, Samik was devoted to Bing. I moved back to The Cornflake House while my son was still in nappies. All the love Samik had been storing up was given to his baby nephew. Youngest children do sometimes suffer from not having anybody to mother or father, I suppose. Mum and I sat back, watching as he played with little Blessing, smiling as the baby smiled at the affection in the eyes of the young uncle. It's fair to say that Samik was a substitute father for Bing, even to the point of leaving when my son was growing and most in need of a man in his life. It might be guilt which encourages Samik to make room for his crusty nephew when there is clearly no space left for anybody else. For whatever reason, I know that if Bing tramps or hitches to Guildford, he'll find a welcome at his uncle's house. Maybe only half a welcome; Margaret has no sympathy with Bing, she thinks he should be a fully-trained computer programmer by now.

Being a brave soul, not afraid of dark places, my son promised he would get himself to Samik's for a break.

‘Will you be all right?' Bing asked me, his voice slurred with lack of sleep and the effort of asking an almost emotional question. How should I know? I could be far from hunky bloody dory by this time next week, not that I'm exactly floating in ecstasy now. I could be banged up, locked away, doomed to suffer not one but an endless stream of attacks from bullies. My eyes might pop out altogether, my lips swell like melons. How was I supposed to answer Bing?

‘Yes,' ever the coward, avoiding eye contact, ‘I'll be fine. Got a wonderful solicitor, female, very caring.' God, if he only knew, he wouldn't trust Valerie to get him off a charge in Woking had he been in Australia at the time of the crime.

I'll have to try harder, if I'm released. Have to find somewhere for him to think of as home. Being locked up has wakened maternal feelings which have lain rather dormant for the past few years. I watched Bing leaving with a terrible sinking of my heart, a mixture of love, regret, and guilt.

I've become famous, notorious, in my own social circle. On my rare trips to the Visitors' Room, voices drop at my entrance, whispers hiss from the lips of other prisoners. ‘That's her,' they say, urgently, ‘that's the one who killed her mother.' My fame encompasses those who visit me, being a friend or relation to such evil singles people out. Not that Bing needs any help there, he looks exceptional enough, God knows; and as for Merry, well he'd stand out, even if he managed to stand still, at any gathering. But you must have found your back burning from the stares and glares, haven't you, Matthew? I'd rather be on my own than put you through that humiliation. That's part of the reason why I'm going to ask you not to come to my trial. The other part is that it's important for me to keep something separate, to have a person I care about who isn't involved in the past, the trial, the whole mess. I'm not playing the heroine, the martyr who prefers to stand alone in Joan of Arcish glory, I only want you waiting in the wings instead of on stage witnessing the tremors. Does it make sense? Sense being a tad elusive these days, I really have no idea.