by Ann Kelley
There was the usual decapitated mouse head on the carpet in the sitting room. I am becoming totally unsqueamish, and pick it up and chuck it out into the garden. Mum can’t cope with blood and stuff.
Buggering poodle bums! Should have noted where the head went so I could see if the elusive burying beetles did their thing.
But the most amazing thing that happened was – in the night, a badger stole one of Mum’s shoes! For the second time! She had left her very best favourite thick-soled white leather and suede thong sandals, which she bought in a surf shop in St Ives, on the kitchen doorstep – they were muddy. This morning, there was only one sandal. We searched the house, then the entire garden, followed the badger trail as best we could, but found nothing.
Our badger is a shoe fetishist. What does it do with the shoes? The first one was a Hush Puppy backless suede clog – black, soon after we arrived. Mum thought she must have mislaid it somehow. It too was left outside the kitchen door because it was muddy and wet, and she forgot to retrieve it.
Does Brock invite his mates round to look at his designer shoe collection – shoe sculptures, installations, whatever? Does he like the smell or the taste of leather? Are the shoes child substitutes and has he/she lost his/her babies? Does he cuddle up to Mum’s two odd shoes? Has he given them names – Hush and Shush, Blackie and Snowy, Black Beauty and White Fang? Maybe he worships them, like gods or goddesses. Brings them offerings – flowers and bits of bread, like they do in Thailand or somewhere.
Grandpop’s parrot was called Viv, after Sir Vivien Richards, the West Indian batsman. He started to call the bird Sir after Viv Richards was knighted. Viv was a green and red parrot, very loving towards Grandpop, but jealous. He was known to give a nasty nip to anyone Grandpop talked to kindly, so I had to watch him when I was there. Grandpop usually shut him in the cage when I was around. Viv and I were in competition. I think Grandpop quite enjoyed that – these two birds loving him.
I never knew if Viv was male or female. He didn’t say much apart from Hello, and that stupid whistle that means I fancy you. He died a couple of years before Grandpop and Grandma. Old age, I think. But they live to be very, very old.
How strange to die of old age. To be so old you just wear out and fade away.
I think I’m lucky, in a way, to know I’ll die young, untarnished and unwrinkled. Whatever I achieve, people will admire me for it, because I was young and I died before I could make all those mistakes ordinary people make. I’ll be a hero, sort of. Not like Beth in Little Women, though. You could see she was a victim, the sickly one with the mark of doom over the door, the sweet, never did anything wrong, yukky angel. Why does the one who dies young in novels have to be so bloody goody-goody?
I won’t have time to be unfaithful to my husband, or to be a bad mother, or a failed anything. I have the perfect excuse for failure – an early death. So I can try anything, do anything I want, no worries. What do I care about exams? I am the luckiest person I know. It’s just that I have to get in all the stuff I want to learn now. Now. Before it’s too late.
I wonder what happens to all the stuff people know, when they die. Obviously, if you’re a great scientist, or a famous actor, or a great cricketer, or a great piano playing genius, there would be a record of your achievements and inventions or discoveries. Film, video, recordings, books. But what happens to all the little people’s knowledge and discoveries? How do we pass it on? How will anyone else know what we did? Does it matter? I suppose writers have found the best way to preserve their learning. If the book gets published, of course. Perhaps everyone should write a book about their life. That way, their grandchildren and great grandchildren will know what they thought about life, and they would pass on their understanding and imagination. I expect we all have at least one insight about something or other that other people might find interesting.
Mum has got lots of herbs growing. Well, a few from car boot sales – basil, ordinary mint and apple mint; oregano, and that very small-leafed stuff – thyme. She would love to grow coriander but it runs to seed, apparently.
I want to get a photo of the badger shoe thief, when it comes again. Maybe I should leave the other shoe out for it as bait. Then follow it and find Mum’s other shoe. But I expect it’s hidden deep down in a set that goes a mile inland, within an old tin mine. I could follow it into its hole like Alice in Wonderland. Mum’s shoes a mile underground… weird.
It won’t be the first time Mum has had problems with a shoe fetishist. She always tells this story when anyone admires her shoes: Once, in London, she was driving in heavy traffic and an old bloke put his hand up and stood in front of her car. He was fat, with narrow shoulders and a very fat bottom. He had next to no teeth, and there were long strands of hair pulled over his bald head. And he was wearing a scruffy raincoat. He said she had oil leaking from the engine and should stop round the corner. She did as he said. Yes, she really is that naïve, poor Mum! She parked and he put his head through the car window and saw her beautiful dark red, high-heeled suede boots, and he asked her to put up the bonnet so he could look inside the engine. Being totally ignorant about motors and shoe fetishists, she did as he asked. He then asked her to push her foot down on the accelerator and pump up and down. Then he apparently winked, she said – I think that’s what she said – with his hand in his pocket. Oh yes, he suggested that she might like to remove her boots. At this point she realised that something was wrong and gave him a fiver, said thank you, and drove off in a hurry, laughing hysterically. She read in the newspaper soon after, that a man in that area of London had been found with a collection of hundreds of women’s shoes in his flat – every cupboard stuffed full of boots and shoes, especially high-heeled shoes. It must have been the same man. Perhaps he died and became our badger in his next life. He was the right shape for a badger, narrow at the head and big at the rear. Pear-shaped. There are some very weird people out there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BRETT CALLED FOR me today after breakfast. He just rang the bell. I answered as Mum was, of course, in the bath. And there he was with his floppy hair, his daft curly smile and his binoculars. I was not wearing my hat – a miracle, though obviously I don’t care what he thinks, and I stood there like a lemon – how do lemons stand? Like me, obviously – knock-kneed. Actually, I am not knock-kneed. My knees are probably the only part of me that aren’t knocked.
I asked him in and gave him orange juice. Mum came out in her dressing gown and with a towel turban covering her wet hair. She was uniquely well-behaved.
Then I went with him onto the coast path and we sat in the same grassy place as before. I didn’t say much. He did all the talking. Said he was pissed off coming to England, and I was the first interesting person he’d met. Me, interesting? He’s starting at the local school next term. He’s twelve next month. He hates skateboarding, surfing and all contact sports. He likes reading – he’s told me about a great Australian writer who’s written a series of books about these teenagers who have to survive on their own in the Australian bush when the country is invaded (it’s set in the future). And says he’ll lend them to me.
What’s wrong with him? He’s too good to be true.
We had a really good time – saw all sorts of sea birds – I was able to tell him what some of them were, as he doesn’t know much about English birds. And we looked them all up in my – Mr Writer’s – bird books. Didn’t see the peregrine again. Brett has a notebook for birds. He wrote down all the birds we saw:
Herring gull – 26.
Greater Black-backed gull – one pair.
Cormorant – 6.
Gannet – 32
Stonechat – a pair.
A possible skylark, but it was too far away to be sure.
I really enjoy being with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Note: A sunny day, so the sliding door onto the deck was wide open and Pop walked in and had a look round. Flo and Rambo were asleep on the sofa – or pretending to be. He
wasn’t at all concerned when I walked slowly toward him. He casually made his way out the same way he got in. We need another shell curtain.
Last night three badgers came – a large male, a smaller adult and one baby. I put out loads of peanuts for them and chicken bones from our roast supper. They nibbled the chicken bones very carefully, getting every bit of goodness out of them but didn’t eat the actual bones. They came just as it got dark so I couldn’t take a photo of them as I don’t have a flash. I’ll never get to take a photo of them. I’ll just forget that idea and simply enjoy watching them.
We’ve freed the racing pigeon. Took it out to the edge of the cliff. It flew.
I HAD A dog once – at least, it wasn’t exactly my dog – it was a stray, and I called him Scruffy. He was a sort of rusty red colour with a very waggy tail and a good sharp intelligent head, quite foxy, with yellow eyes and a thick coat. He had a collar but without a name tag on, and I used to tie a belt on to it and take him for walks onto the beach by Grandpop’s house. Then I’d let him off the lead and we jumped breakwaters and ran along the edge of the waves and lived in a beach hut. Not really, but pretend. It was lovely. I was so happy. We were free, Scruffy and me.
OK. That whole thing is a lie. It was Mum’s story and her stray dog Scruffy. But she’s told it to me so many times I sort of think it belongs to me, too. It’s part of my story. Mum says her generation was the last to have a ‘Free-Range Childhood’. She means that she was able to go out of the garden to play – to run in the fields, climb trees, make dens in places a long way from home. Well, a mile away at least with no adult around to say ‘No, you can’t do that.’ When she was little she would have breakfast and then just get out of the house and only come back at tea time or supper time. Grandma was very strict and even when Mum was seventeen she had to be home by 10pm. But Mum, when she was little, had no fear of anybody kidnapping her or abusing her or anything. She could speak to strangers and nothing awful ever happened to her. When I was small, I used to think that abusing was called abruising – which is a much better word. Kidnapping is a word that means just that – kid stealing – child stealing. So, it’s been going on for hundreds of years.
There was an unhappy ending to Scruffy though. Mum was walking to school one day and she saw a dustman pick up a dead dog from the gutter and throw him into the rubbish truck. Yes, it was Scruffy. Mum never did find out who his real owner was.
Grandpop once said to me that I had been given a great gift: the knowledge of my own mortality. He said that most people never really lived at all, even if they survived to be 100. They just let things happen to them and didn’t really see the world around them or change anything. He said that I had a unique opportunity to be someone who lived to the full. Every moment is full of wonder. He said that. And it is. He’s right – was right. He said that I had the privilege of living in a country that had free speech and a free press, and that was the most important thing a government could give its people. The truth: however unpleasant that might be. No one here gets tortured for writing poems. That happens in many countries, apparently. Tortured for writing poems? Buggering poodlebums!
He said I should think about producing something to leave behind, or do something to change the world for the better. Make something beautiful, Princess.
He said he wasn’t capable of creating anything lovely but maybe I would be. What, though?
Mum and I are on our way to Seal Island. I’m so excited. I love little boats. I’ve been seasick in bigger boats but not something as small as this. We’re on the Island Queen with lots of holidaymakers. There’s a mother with her baby, who has blond curly hair – he’s about three. They’re sitting next to us in the stern – that’s the back of the boat. The waves are bouncing and leaping like frisky lambs, white and fluffy and not threatening at all. It’s a perfect day for a boat ride. The baby is trying to catch a wave. He has his plump little arms outstretched and is looking at the wave curled around the sunlight, the pale green glow inside the wave. He wants to take it home. His fingers are trembling. Oh, he’s such a darling baby with his blond halo! His Mum is so proud!
An American woman sitting close to us says to Mum, ‘Isn’t he adorable! When they’re babies you could eat them, and when they’re teenagers you wish you had.’
Mum – my own mum, that is, looks scrumptious. Her hair has gone very blonde in the sun and she is wearing a lovely floaty white shirt with her jeans. She’s lucky in that she doesn’t feel the cold. I do, so I’ve got a heavy sweatshirt on over my birthday T-shirt, and of course I’m wearing my cowboy hat, which keeps trying to blow away, so I have to hang on to it. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost my cowboy hat. It’s part of my disguise, my persona, my uniform. It’s part of Grandpop, and I can’t ever let it go.
If I ever get married (which, of course, I won’t) my husband will have to love my hat, as well as me. And Charlie too, natch.
The captain of the boat is very old and wrinkled and brown as a conker. He’s got a smiley face with smiling lines around his sailor’s narrow eyes, and he has faded tattoos like Grandpop’s. They must have been bright colours once, when he was young, but now they are like a stained-glass window seen through a fog: pale mauve and baby pink and apple green – anchors and roses and strange fishy creatures.
I do love tattoos. It’s like being covered in cartoons; they make me smile, I don’t know why. Why do people make patterns over themselves, painting their skin? It seems very primitive, like being a Native American Indian in cowboy movies. An instinctive urge to decorate oneself for something – what? – sex? Like lipstick. (Mum says it’s war-paint.) To make your enemies afraid? You must have to be quite brave to put up with the pain of all those needles.
I’ve had quite a few needles in me over the years. Since day one. I still don’t like them and I would never have them for fun or vanity.
I do sometimes think about the dangers and disadvantages of having a heart–lung transplant operation. But as it’s my only chance of a longer life – well, a few years longer, maybe four or five – there’s not much choice. I have to go with it. Go for it. Just do it, if I get the chance. Forget the post-op problems – possible tissue and organ rejection, drug side effects. I’ve no choice. Just go for it. What’s there to lose?
The cardiac surgeon has talked me through it and I know what’s involved. I think it’s rather exciting, actually – like a great adventure. I am a pioneer, going into new territory. Cool. A journey into the unknown. Wowsky! (a Grandpopism I’ve just remembered). But first they have to find the Holy Grail for me to survive – the perfect match donor. Hopefully, by the time a donor is found for me, I will have completely recuperated from the last operation.
I trust the surgeon – Mr Sami. He did my operation last year, the one that didn’t work. He says my particular problem is unique and so there is no known curative surgery. I should have died when I was first born, he reckons. But I didn’t. I’m still here. He thought I might have enough pulmonary artery to build on, but I haven’t, so that’s why the last bit of surgery was aborted or abandoned – he just opened me up, saw what was what and closed me up again. He had hoped to do two operations or even three to make me a nylon or teflon or dacron or whatever artery, but he had to abandon that idea, and just close me up. So now the idea is to wait until they find a donor heart and lungs and give me a completely new set. Well, second-hand.
We’re used to second-hand, Mum and me. We’re into recycling – the car boot variety.
‘Look, a seal! And another, and another!’ They’re all over these black rocks, lying around as if they are sunbathing. Big ones and little ones. They’re wearing their wet suits – black and shiny like surfers – and they have long lovely catty whiskers and black noses and big soft eyes. They look as intelligent as labrador dogs.
It’s hardly an island though – just a group of rocks.
The baby is not in the least bit excited. His mum is pointing at the seals and trying to get him to look, but he d
oesn’t care a hoot about them. He takes it for granted that there are creatures around him, a part of the world, as he is. He has no idea that it might be the only and last time he ever sees a seal.
Last times. How do we ever know when it’s the last time for anything?
The last time someone says, Goodnight, God bless.
That’s what my Grandpop used to say to me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
GRANDPOP SOMETIMES CALLED me Tiddly Poo. I don’t know where that comes from – maybe Winnie the Pooh. Tiddly – little. Pooh – bear. So – Little Bear. I always felt safe and very loved when he called me that. Beloved.
Every time I think of him and Grandma not being here any more I feel as if I have been stabbed in the heart, or punched in the stomach. I nearly fall to the ground. Someone said to think of them as if they are in another room. Another room? With a locked door.
I remember Grandma calling me Sweetie-Pie or Sweetheart. My heart is not sweet. It’s bloody rotten, actually.
No one really knows why it grew that way – maybe an infection when Mum was first pregnant. I was born with heart failure. My pulmonary artery is only vestigial; which means it’s not properly formed. My blood is oxygenated by way of the bronchial arteries, and there are other defects in the heart and circulation too, which actually help the blood get round the system other ways, luckily. So my brain is getting about 75 per cent oxygenated. As it is such a rare condition – babies born with these problems usually die within a few days or weeks – they don’t really know what to do with me, or they haven’t, so far. They’ve been making it up as they go along. They admit that. And I’m still here, after all. But now they reckon a transplant might be the answer. A heart–lung transplant.
