Relatively Strange

by Marilyn Messik

  We were though, did they know it, only at the beginning of what was to be a long and somewhat eggshell-treading path for us all. Because, of course, it wasn’t just the flying.

  *

  I started school when I was five. Mrs Groom, whose cross in life it was to take the baby class, was a vague, lavender-scented lady with untidily dusty brown hair, plaited and pinned into large coils over her ears. Her mind matched her hair, full of odd strands of information causing her to pause often in the middle of a sentence, as completely unrelated ideas drifted past. Not that we minded, not being overly concerned at five with how much syllabus is being covered and to be honest, school was even better than promised, overflowing with the delights of sand and water tables, plasticene, a Wendy House and creamily lukewarm milk at playtime.

  For a long while it never entered my mind that everyone couldn’t hear and see as I did. Why would it? It was certainly muddling though, sifting through what people thought, what they said and what they actually meant – often and puzzlingly, those three being startlingly different.

  “No trouble at all,” someone might murmur, meaning exactly the opposite. Or, “Lovely to see you.” when nothing could have been further from the truth. It was indeed confusing, especially with all the other stuff going on. Tunes or phrases repeatedly circling, interwoven with sub-texts – hot/cold/tired/hungry/thirsty, headache? aspirin? umbrella or hat? All of this backgrounded by different emotions. Just one person is noisily discordant. Several create a dreadful din and the output from a crowd is a mind-aching mix. Opening up to that unprepared can make you physically sick as I found, embarrassingly, more than once.

  Obviously, I learned early to automatically tune out and barrier-building keeps volume down but in the early puzzling days when I had no idea I was different, things were tricky. Startled by something I’d heard, I couldn’t fathom why nobody else jumped or even looked round to locate the source. I compensated as best I could, mimicking other people’s behaviour as I worked my way through situations. Unending input though made it hard to sort out what I should be hearing and understanding as opposed to what I shouldn’t and seeking much-needed guidance often thrust me even further into trouble. It turned out there were some questions which were perfectly normal to ask and to which I received satisfactory answers. There were others which generated the uncomfortable reaction which, I came to recognise, meant I’d crossed an invisible and constantly moving line. It was really all very puzzling and I hit a fair old bit of turbulence along the way.

  At school, for example, my reaction to Alan Sdimes caused problems, although I really couldn’t see quite why. He once took a handful of sand, called my name to ensure my attention and threw it in my eyes. It hurt, I cried, he laughed. So I shoved him. His feet promptly shot from under and he landed with a very satisfying thwack on a nearby pile of wooden bricks which made him howl as loudly as me.

  “Didn’t touch him!” I was able to protest with complete honesty if not total innocence. And that was the truth, I hadn’t laid a finger on him.

  After that incident I reasoned if I could move Alan with no hands, I could probably move other things too. I experimented and found that indeed I could push things around easily – cups, plates, spoons. After a while, I was also able to lift and deposit them some distance away with no real effort, although experience had taught me the shifting of bigger objects (such as Alan) was apt to bring on an unpleasant headache and sickness. I also, even at that age, had the wit to realise practising on classmates might possibly not be the best route to winning friends. What I could do didn’t strike me as particularly odd, just part of so much else you discover at that age. All new and exciting and whilst I did my best to steer clear of anything I’d learned might cause consternation, events sometimes just overtook me.

  *

  We used to have P.E. in the school hall, nothing so sophisticated as a separate gym, just bars around the wall for us to climb up and then down again – a pretty pointless exercise as far as I could see, but then so was the hurling to one another of a bag filled with beans. We were divided into teams, designated by different, faded-colour, fraying fabric bands worn diagonally across our chests. The team achieving most points gained a gold star at the end of each session. At close of term, the team with most stars won a silver cup. I couldn’t get very excited about it – I’m not big on sports and this lack of competitive spirit displayed itself early.

  I was Red-team, lined up to do a somersault on the thick rubber mats, redolent of plimsolls, socks and sweaty children. Greens were doing skipping and Blues were climbing the wall bars. I was heading into my forward roll – “Chins into necks.” – when Margaret Claryn, snub of nose, loud of mouth, good at games and invariably first to clamber to the top of the wooden wall bars, for some reason lost her grip.

  She was pretty high up, the bars extended to just below the ceiling of the vaulted hall. In seeming slow motion, mouth agape in a scream as yet unuttered, the upper part of her body began to peel outwards from the wall. Mrs Groom, shiny silver whistle clamped between her teeth and emitting small panicky toots as she ran, started from the opposite side of the hall to try and prevent the inevitable. She wasn’t moving fast enough.

  There wasn’t time to think. I nipped back off the mat and skimmed it across the floor to where it was needed, at the same time trying to slow Margaret down as she fell. This was in an entirely different league from anything I’d ever done before so I really don’t know how successful I was. She landed awkwardly twisted and with a sickening thud but on the mat, not the parquet floor. An agonising, red-hot pain shot through her arm and my head and I promptly threw up.

  An ambulance was called for Margaret – wide-eyed and shaking, with her arm strapped across her chest. Mr. Jones, the caretaker, arrived with mop and bucket, Mrs Groom herded my team-mates away and I was taken upstairs to the headmistress’s study while they phoned my mother to come and collect me. Everyone was shaken by the accident, puzzled too. They thought I’d shown lightening reflexes in flinging the mat across the room. Miss Macpharlane, the headmistress, told my mother on the phone that I’d acted amazingly promptly and, were it not for my action, Margaret would probably have hurt herself far more.

  What puzzled them though was that the mats were so heavy, they were normally only hauled around by Mr Jones. While we waited for my mother to come and collect me, I was given a cup of hot sweet tea and a staff-room biscuit. Miss Macpharlane even switched on one bar of her electric fire because my teeth were chattering. I felt dizzy and sore and my head was thumping deeply and unpleasantly.

  Miss Macpharlane was a canny Scottish lady. Tall and stooping, with glasses chained round her neck, she never put her arms in her cardigans but wore them draped over her thin shoulders from whence they were constantly slipping. She had a gentle, elongated face like an amiable horse, with large nostrils that flared fascinatingly as she spoke and a genuine love and understanding of her small charges. She was just a little Strange herself, but I don’t think she knew it. She simply trusted her instincts a lot and extended, to staff and children alike, an empathy that permeated the entire school producing excellent atmosphere and results.

  However, she was a very long way from daft, and sheer logic dictated I could scarcely have lifted the heavy mat, let alone flung it all the way across the width of the hall. Yet there was no doubt it had happened nor that I was involved. She wanted to question me further but I didn’t think this was a good idea. I didn’t know quite how I’d done it either and I hated that it had made me feel so poorly. I just wanted my mother to come and take me home. Miss M watched me thoughtfully as I sipped my tea, eyes downcast and teeth chattering chummily on the china cup which I was clasping with two hands, trying to warm up a little.

  “Bit better?” she asked, I nodded silently and she turned away and busied herself with papers on her desk. There was something going on here she didn’t understand and instinct told her, very strongly, to keep an eye on me in the future. My instinct, equal
ly forcefully, suggested I make like Brer Rabbit – laying low and saying nothing!

  *

  Not long after I started school, a sister arrived. My parents had done the usual preparatory groundwork, explaining how and where the baby was growing and getting me to place my hand on my mother’s tummy, so I could feel when it kicked. All of which I found only moderately interesting, although of course I wasn’t so impolite as to say.

  We didn’t own a car ourselves but for occasions when one was needed, called on John, an amiable French-Canadian who ran a local taxi service. He was recruited to take my father and I to collect my mother and the new baby from hospital. He always talked a storm, which was fine, except his accent was so strong, none of us ever understood more than the occasional word. It was clear he was aware of this because he elucidated his conversation with elaborate hand gestures, turning round in the driving seat and fixing his polite but petrified passengers with his one good eye – he’d lost the other in an accident. All in all, he possibly wasn’t the finest choice for Jewish travellers who are nervous at the best of times.

  On our way back from the hospital, they gave me the warm, surprisingly heavy bundle to hold on my lap. It was disconcerting, to say the least and what’s more it moved and had a powerful, though not unpleasant, sweetly powdery, different-to-anything-else smell. Still, I felt on balance, it would be far better for all concerned if I were to hand it back immediately. This was confirmed when it suddenly woke up, and I was instantly engulfed by unbearably urgent need. She was hungry, she wanted to be fed and she wanted it NOW, NOW, NOW. Aside from the hugely desperate wanting, there didn’t seem to be too much else going on in the baby’s head. Certainly not the usual cacophony of interwoven theme and thought, which even animals give off. Instead, she was full of light and dark, warmth and hunger and absolutely no patience whatsoever. She opened her small mouth, screwed up her red face and vented all the way home, which made an already nerve-wracking journey, more so.

  I’d assumed, because she was my sister, she’d be able to fly too, sadly this proved not to be the case. A great disappointment to both of us although I imagine a profound relief to our beleaguered and apprehensive parents. I learned in later years just how long and hard they’d agonised about having another child, weighing the disadvantages of a single offspring against the risks of producing an even stranger sibling.

  When she first arrived, I used to lift her out of her cot and, holding her over my bed in case she fell – I was nothing if not thoughtful – wait for her to take off. She didn’t and I wondered whether it was simply a question of stimulating her survival instincts. Apparently, throwing a new-born into the water makes it swim, but I had enough sense to appreciate there was probably an element of risk in chucking her out the window to test a similar theory.

  However, for a long time I didn’t give up hope. Flying of course is not an effort in fact it’s exactly the opposite, it’s a relaxing and letting go of what holds you down. It honestly couldn’t have been simpler. But I suppose, like anything, once you break it down to step by step instruction for someone else, it takes on a complexity all its own and if interaction of brain, muscle and balance aren’t working in the right way, you’re not going anywhere. As she got bigger, I used to wake her at night and make her climb on to the blue-painted, wooden bedside table in our shared bedroom, an excellent take-off point. I explained how, over and over, but she never could get the hang of it and sulked a lot until I let her go back to bed.

  Chapter Five

  Lots of children have an imaginary friend. Beady was mine and I suppose it was inevitable she should prove more problematic than most.

  Afternoon get-togethers with Auntie Cynthia, so her daughter Stephanie and I could play together, were never something I particularly looked forward to. An ex work-colleague of my mother’s, Cynthia had acquired in rapid succession a husband in Ladies Underwear, a substantial house in Temple Fortune, a Poggenpohl kitchen and an inflated idea of her own importance.

  On that particular afternoon, when we seated ourselves for tea at the massive, ornate dining room table with its surfeit of carved cherubs in unlikely and uncomfortable places, I noticed, next to Auntie Cynthia’s plate, a small bronze hand bell. She utilised this almost before we’d started on the sandwiches. A moment or two brought the new daily help, Irene, to the dining room door, wiping water-reddened hands on her apron,

  “Wot?” she demanded, obviously not as skilled in the fine art of service as Aunt C might have wished.

  “Ah, Irene,” Aunt Cynthia had apparently forgotten her background was Kingsbury not Kensington, “A little extra hot water please, and some more milk for the girls.” Eyes raised ceiling-ward, an audible sniff and a grudging stomp across the room to collect the empty milk jug, gave an indication of Irene’s take on the situation.

  “I’m in the middle of the potatoes,” she grumbled “If you want that stew on I can’t keep running up and down the flaming ‘all.”

  “Casserole Irene, casserole.” murmured Aunt Cynthia, dabbing her lips with a monogrammed napkin and a weary air. “And just the milk and the water will be fine thank you, then we’ll look after ourselves.” My mother had by this time turned an interesting shade of pink, I could see she was struggling manfully not to laugh. She busied herself giving Stephanie and me another sandwich apiece.

  Stephanie, was a stodgy-minded child – the inside of her head seemingly jammed as full of fat, soft Shirley Temple ringlets as the outside. A couple of months younger than me, she wasn’t exactly a riot as playmates go. Her mother was fond of telling mine that Steph had never given them one moment’s aggravation from the time she was born. My mother loved me dearly, but even she had to admit I didn’t measure up too well in any non-aggravation-giving stakes. I always appreciated though, how adroitly she could move to another subject when a comparison arose, which might prove odious.

  For a short while, we sat and munched our crustless sandwiches in ladylike silence, but clearly it was going to be the usual boring afternoon unless a livelier note was introduced. Luckily, I knew just the person.

  “I brought Beady to see you today,” I announced cheerfully “We can play fairies and witches if you like.” My mother paled.

  “Who’s Beady then?” asked Stephanie without much interest.

  “My invisible friend, haven’t you got one?” Stephanie chewed for a moment or two while she thought.

  “No.” she said finally. And there the subject might well have safely languished and died, had it not been for Aunt Cynthia, sticking her oar in. With a light laugh she pointed out that Steph had so many real friends she’d never felt need to make one up. Well, I’m sorry, but I took umbrage, so would you, so certainly, did Beady.

  The little bronze bell next to Auntie Cynthia’s plate suddenly jerked up and swung irritably from side to side. Long and loud it rang – once, twice and then, just as it was sinking slowly down, a third time, for good measure.

  “That’ll be Beady.” I said helpfully. Two pairs of horrified eyes fastened on the bell, a third pair, equally horrified, on me. Two mouths fell unattractively open on half-chewed egg and cress, another pursed into an unmistakeable and familiar wait-till-I-get-you-home shape.

  And into the following, heavily pregnant pause, strode an irate Irene. A satisfyingly swift response, I felt. Flushed-faced, breathing hard and divesting herself fiercely of her apron, she was not best pleased and proceeded to put forward a couple of startlingly frank and interesting suggestions as to exactly where Auntie Cynthia could stick her bleeding bell. She went on to suggest that room might also be made there for her frigging airs and graces, her shitty wages, her stinking stew and last but certainly not least, her sodding silver candlesticks, the polishing of which apparently fell into Irene’s regular sphere of activities. Having thus made her feelings abundantly clear and giving a good trample to the abandoned apron for final emphasis, Irene swung neatly on her heel and exited, slamming the dining room door behind her. On an adjacent shelf, o
ne of Aunt Cyn’s precious Capo di Monte pieces teetered. We all watched. I could, of course, have stopped it falling. I chose not to.

  “No,” my mother muttered tersely as we made our way briskly home, “An imaginary friend wasn’t a bad thing as such. However, it was precisely because she was imaginary that people such as Auntie Cynthia,” last seen pouring herself a recuperative glass of sherry with a shaking hand, “Were entitled to be somewhat startled if she suddenly started doing things.”

  “But,” I protested, trotting to keep up with her agitated stride and grasping at last with relief exactly wherein lay the problem, “It wasn’t really Beady, it was me.”

  “Oh sweetheart, I know.” she said. And she sighed heavily and then, unexpectedly she gave a little snort.

  “It’s not funny at all.” she said, “And I’m certainly not laughing young lady.” but inside her head, she kept seeing the gob-smacked faces on Aunt C and Steph and her mouth twitched all the way home whenever she thought I wasn’t looking. I don’t remember going round there for tea again.

  *

  As I recall, it was shortly after Beady was given her marching orders that I was taken for a sixth birthday treat, to a variety show at the London Palladium. It was a wonderful, unforgettable evening – supper at the Corner House and good seats in the stalls. Although a long-planned and looked-forward to outing, possibly my parents hadn’t really thought things through enough. Certainly I suspect they might have been assailed by a first tremor of apprehension when I leaned forward in sheer wonder as the star turn, Mr. Magica made his spectacular entrance. He was flying. Effortlessly and gracefully, soaring and swooping high above the stage, acknowledging the delighted applause of the rapturous audience and my heart soared with him.