Cobweb Walking, page 8
The Sister was very clumping, and had large red hands which she had often used to tug my hair, or pinch my arms. Her cheeks were fat and red, and her bottom was padded and quilted with nappies which were almost always moist and smelled of urine. But Daddy, who was so fastidious, and who had admired my tiny fingers, and delicate feet, and the way in which I always kept my body fragrant with herbs and lavender, did not seem to mind at all.
“She’s only a baby, Morgan. Why can’t you be a little patient with her,” Daddy would tell me, when I told him that The Sister had just gone and put her foot in George’s dinner, and then walked all over the newly washed kitchen floor.
And George didn’t seem to mind The Sister either, but would allow her to scramble all over his back, and licked her face until Cora caught him at it, and told him, “No, George! Naughty! Not lick baby!”
George, who understood exactly what she meant, did not lick The Sister any more, but smiled, and whacked his tail against the floor when he saw her tottering towards him with her rolling drunken gait. “Of course he is only a dog,” I told myself, watching while The Sister pulled at his ears and opening his lips, bent over, damp bottom in the air, to examine his teeth. He has no discrimination. George, who had always been such a private dog, had never allowed anyone to treat him in this way before. Although he did not growl at Daddy’s guests, he never made friends with them. They could call to him, make kissing sounds, even surreptitiously offer him bits of their sandwiches under our table. George was too grand and aloof to pay them any attention at all. But now, he would kiss The Sister softly on the cheek, and lie for hours by her pram, keeping away intruders while she slept.
Whenever I saw him lying by her pram or cot, I would try to call him away, take him rabbiting in the woods with me, sniff down the badger holes, examine the fox earths in the woods. He would accompany me as gladly as ever. Sometimes I would ride on his back as I had done when I had been younger. Once or twice it had seemed just like old times, astride my dog, wandering through the woods. But then either because I had become heavier, or he weaker with age, I do not know, a time came when quite soon he would stop, turn an asking face to me, that meant he was tired and wanted me to dismount. And when we got home he would greet The Sister with the same wild and barking welcome he had always given to me, when he had been parted from me for some time.
But I must not think about George, my dog, any more, I told myself sternly. So I decided to think about George the man instead. And my mind gave an excited little leap to think that even now he might be trying to get me on the telephone. Or perhaps the next time the postman came with the letters, there would be something for me from George.
I thought as soon as I heard from him I would invite him here. Perhaps George and I would sit together in the loft, and eat nuts and apples, while we decided what should be done next. I would gather apples from the store, and nuts from the zinc bins when Billy was not looking — hazels that I had gathered in the autumn, and walnuts from our garden tree. I thought how much George would enjoy our own scrumpy. The best in the world, Daddy used to say, having downed a cold glass of the golden sparkling liquid. No pub in the world could possibly sell better.
I could go on helping myself to these things for weeks, I thought, without Billy noticing. Or if he did notice he would probably suspect mice had been at the bins, or rats had taken the apples. All these thoughts of food made me feel terribly hungry again, and I started to think of the larder at home. Would they notice, I wondered, if I tiptoed in, as I had done when I was little, and took some of the tins stored there — macaroni cheese, canary pudding, stew, things that either Daddy had bought to stock the shelter, and that we had not had time to take, or food bought in town by Cora. I imagined myself getting these chilly tins from the top shelves as I had done when I was little.
Then, stealing from Maggie’s larder had been one of my greatest pleasures. And one of Maggie’s greatest burdens, I realised now, looking back. I had climbed to the very topmost of the stone shelves, clinging with my toes and fingers, and not daring to look down in case I slipped. My feet would scrabble among the bottles of home made wine, dried herbs and pickled pears. Rice would pour, prunes tumble, flour seep, as I inadvertently trod on things, in my struggle to reach the jam. Then I would open the jars, smell deeply, inhale the plums of summer, the sharp sloes and fragrance of blackberry jelly, while I tried to decide which jam to steal. Usually it was the golden quince that won, wobbly and slippery in my hot fingers. I would crouch up there in the half dark, sucking the perfumed slobbery stuff from my knuckles, while Maggie’s running footsteps would approach and her voice cry out, “Is that you at the jam again, Morgan?”
I would crouch back on the dim cool soap-and-raisin-smelling stone shelf, and wait. The door would fly open, and Maggie would say, very cross, “How could you, Morgan. And I’ve only just cleaned the floor. If you was hungry you should have asked. And no wonder you’ve never got no appetite for dinner if you go and eat all that jelly. You got your tummy full of jams, and that’s why.” Her eyes would flash with triumph, as she announced this discovery.
But even when I didn’t eat stolen jelly, I never seemed, in those days, to have much appetite for dinner. Daddy would have baked potatoes with Primrose butter gushing from the gash, and a hunk of cheese. Maggie would give him stewed plums from our garden with cream, and perhaps first milk baked golden, if we had just had a new calf. In those days everything came from our own garden, except for things we couldn’t make, like soap and tapioca.
“Come on, Fairy,” Daddy would say, breaking off a little of his potato and offering it to me. “Just a little bite to make your Daddy happy. An apricot and a finger of cheese is just not enough.” Sometimes I would eat a tiny egg from my own little bantam hen, and perhaps a single plum from Daddy’s plate. And then I would feel as full as anything, even though I had stolen nothing at all that morning.
After Cora came, I began to eat almost as much as Daddy did, so that Maggie gave up saying, “She doesn’t eat enough to feed a jenny wren,” and began to say, “Such a tiny thing, it’s a wonder where she puts it all.”
In those early days I think the humming that I heard flowed through my body and nourished me as though it was food.
Chapter 6
Squatting among the old elders, my haunches growing stiff, I waited with an almost feverish longing for Billy to be gone so that I could eat, drink, and blot out my thoughts with sleeping. Just ordinary sleep like dogs do was what I wanted, for I knew I could no longer hope for the lovely sleeping I used to enjoy when I had been young.
When I was young I often went right through the night without really being asleep. It was as though some part of me was always a little bit awake, and could even watch the part that slept. If I slept all night without knowing anything about it I woke surprised, and a bit disappointed. In those days I thought everyone enjoyed this waking sleep that was much more restful than the heavy sort, so that once, when Daddy told me, apparently happy, “I slept like a log last night, Fairy!” I answered, “Logs can’t see themselves dreaming.”
“Can you?” He seemed quite surprised.
“Of course!” And it was me who was surprised then, for I could see from Daddy’s face that he had never seen himself dreaming. His kind of sleeping was not at all the same as mine. In those nights of awake-sleeping I would feel something rushing into me, pouring in like milk singing into a bucket, something as strong and clean and good as milk, and a voice in my mind saying, “You can do anything, Morgan, Morgan.” I lay there all night, asleep and not asleep, sometimes simmering with elation, and knew that it was true. I could do anything, anything.
I seemed to be awake all night, happy as the soaring bats outside, and in the morning I would not feel the least bit tired. And Daddy’s voice in my mind … or was it the Fairy Queen’s? “You can do anything, Morgan, Morgan. You can do anything. You can walk on cobwebs, you can walk on moonbeams.” And I would think, yes, I can, for had I not walked right across the front field, when the last light snowfall still lay, and not left the least mark on the new snow, though even thrushes had printed trails of tiny arrows all over it?
In the quiet of my room, on those nights of the Fairy Queen, she hummed to me very soft and velvety, and I could feel her breathing in, out, in, out, born die, born die, break make, break make, went her breath. Whole worlds, said the Fairy Queen, or was it Daddy, are softly made and softly destroyed.
I would wake when the bats swooped and twittered against a luminous sky, and my body would feel light as gossamer, as though a small wind could have blown me along. I used to go on feeling like this for days, and the Fairy Queen whispering over and over, “You can do anything, Morgan, Morgan, you can do anything, Morgan.”
In the dark of the fall-out shelter I realised I could hardly remember any more what it was like to walk the cockcrows, mist-mingled, with that effervescent golden wine running in my veins.
The Fairy Queen never spoke to me nowadays. I could not remember how long it was since she had last done so. Once, years ago, there had been days when she spoke to me all the time. On the first day of my cob web walking she had been whispering to me ever since I awoke. She had been murmuring, “Morgan, yes you can, yes you can,” as I raised my foot to the cobweb behind the milking shed, very quietly, so that no twig crackled to let Billy know I was there. I could not remember any more why I had thought it so important that Billy did not see me.
The golden glistening bubbled in my body, and the Fairy Queen said, “Yes you can,” as I raised my foot and placed it on the mill-misted web. The stout spider withdrew and scowled from the eaves. Breathing up and over as I had learnt to do to become light, and let nature hold me, I allowed my weight to linger on the web. Out in the yard Billy hummed under his breath, and secret kittens mewed from the hay loft. A rabbit thumped among our spring greens, and the cobweb shivered, emitted a puff of stale flour, and did not break. Leaning my body forward, I eased my full weight on to the web.
George watched me from the ground with wary fascinated eyes. The web swung a little crazily, and I stretched out my arms for balance, knees bent like a baby moorhen making its first attempt on the water. Wobbling a little, I slowly straightened my body, and dessicated elderberries rained down the back of my neck. My cheeks were scraped by twigs, flour rose sneezily, and I did not mind. In a mouldy mist I shouted for joy to the catless yard, then I fell. The web did not burst but I fell from it. And lay panting among old leaves, mouse droppings, and under a still quivering cobweb.
When I got home that day Maggie looked me up and down, her face scowly, and said, “I won’t keep making you your little jerkins and petties if you give them such rough wear.” And dabbed witch hazel on to my scratched cheek, while I told her, “I’m so happy, Maggie, so happy you don’t know!” but I never said a word about the cob web walking, not because I wanted to keep it a secret, but because I had learned long ago that there are some things that grown-ups just cannot understand.
Once I had told Maggie about the silence. Sitting quietly in the apple tree, or lying on my back under the sun, with no warning at all, it would fall suddenly. The silence would wash away the sounds of distant tractors, quench the clamour of lambs, and the songs of birds. Afterwards, coming back into the world of sounds, the warmth and the smells, the grasshoppers crawling on my back, the roughness of cow parsley thrust against my skin, my mind would sing and soar and glory like larks specked against the vastness of the sky, that was not as vast as my colossal silence.
“You need your ears washed out,” Maggie had said, when I told her about it. I had struggled to find words important enough, and all Maggie said was, “Speak clearly! Don’t mumble. I told you, don’t play among those ragged robins. They’re bad for the ears. If it goes on I’ll push cotton wool down with some olive oil.”
Even Daddy, who I had once thought understood everything, only laughed and hugged me when I told him that I would one day walk on moonbeams.
“Beautiful, my Fairy,” he said. “You are a little poetess!”
But now, pressed into the musty elder gap, I listened to the milk hit the pail like notes of music, and there was not any happiness in me at all. The cobwebs hung there, looking tired and used, and I tentatively touched one with my finger. It was very delicate, and came away at the slight pressure.
“Gone to Cornwall and not a word,” Billie was mumbling to the black and white Ayrshire. “Not a word, and not a card. Would have thought they’d have let me know something …”
The cow responded with a cuddish burp, and I heard Billy butt her in the flank with his back-to-front capped head, and cry, “Get over, can’t you! Get over then.” Which was followed by the sound of the cow’s hooves shuffling in the slosh.
Then I heard Maggie calling, “Left your tea on the sill, Billy. I’m going to open the windows and give the house an airing. It looks like it’s going to be fine.”
I waited, feeling stiff, cold and cramped now, and hoping it would not take Maggie very long to open our windows. After that she would do breakfast. And when Billy had returned the cows to the field they would eat together. That, I decided, would be the moment for me to go into my home.
Then there came a scream from Maggie. “All the windows is cracked, Billy!” Running footsteps, as she returned along the path. “Glass all over the floor like burglars has got in.”
“Must be the bomb,” from Billy.
“The bomb,” shouted Maggie. “How can you talk of the bomb? That was miles away. How can it crack Mr Basil’s windows?”
All the cows must have been loose by now for I could hear hooves slapping and slipping along the aisles between the stalls, and they mooed in anticipation.
“Come up you!” shouted Billy, and smack, I heard his palm land on some rebellious hind quarters. “Get on with you.”
“Why do these Arabs have to go putting their bombs in our country, I should like to know,” Maggie shouted. She always had to talk very loud to Billy, for he was terribly deaf. Really Maggie was the only person he could hear well at all. “It is,” Daddy said, “because Billy is used to Maggie’s way of talking.” We could have shouted as loud as we liked and Billy often wouldn’t hear us.
After a few more shouts and smacks, Billy said, “You can’t never tell what foreigners is thinking.”
Maggie went on grumbling. “They’ve made a real bad mess of poor Mr Basil’s house. There’s stuff broken all over the place. I don’t know what poor Mr Basil’s going to say when he comes home. Two of his favourite plates is gone. And there’s stuff all over the larder floor.”
Actually much of the mess had been made by Cora, not the bomb. Pressing The Sister to one hip with her elbow, while at the same time trying to keep her hand over the child’s mouth so that The Sister should not breathe atomic fumes, Cora had grabbed stuff from the larder shelves for us to take down into the shelter.
Daddy told her, “Darling, we only expect to be in there for a week at the most. We’ve got plenty now, and there won’t be room to turn if you take any more.”
“Do help, do lend a hand, Morgan,” she cried to me. “Don’t just stand there, for goodness’ sake. Get water. Oh, upstairs in the linen cupboard you’ll find some blankets. We’ll need extra blankets for sure.” As if I didn’t know where the blankets were kept in my own house! “Is there any heating in the shelter, Basil? Is there a light? We’ll need paraffin. Candles? Will candles be safe to have in there? Now, now, darling, don’t cry. Mummy going to give Abby Baba lunch soon,” and she rushed off along the passage, dragging a cardboard box in one hand, her baby clutched in her arm, singing, “Horsey horsey don’t you stop …just let your feet go …”
All the time we had been in the shelter she carried on like that too, pulling off the knitted socks, and plucking at the child’s fat toes. “This little piggy went to market …” Opening out The Sister’s cherry fingers, and tickling into her palm with the words, “Here’s a little hare, there’s a little hare. The little dog caught it just about there,” trying hard to keep the child entertained. And at first The Sister laughed and squealed, happy with all the attention.
As days passed however, four, and five, and six, The Sister became first angry and loud, shouting, “I don’t like it here! I want to go out! Open the door, open the door, open the door.” She would jump from her mother’s knee, and rush to the door, punching it with her puce fists, yelling, “Open this! I don’t like it here.”
Then she became quiet, hardly laughed at all when Cora tickled her palm. She lay listlessly in her mother’s arms, or on the bunk, and whimpered under her breath. It was almost better in the days when she had raged against the immovable door. Drisco had broken the door on the day we had entered the shelter. We heard the thumps as he had driven the ditch digger again and again at the shelter’s entrance, because Daddy would not let him and his families in.
“I’ll get in, never you mind,” he had shouted, while Daddy had sat with his face in his hands, and Cora had cried.
“Do you want me kiddies all to die of the poisons out here then?” Drisco’s voice could be heard shouting over the roar of the engine. “For God’s sake, have some mercy.” And, “I’ll bloody smash it, never you mind,” until at last Cora had said, her voice faint and shaky, “Basil, shouldn’t we..?”
But Daddy had shaken his head, his face white and his eyes red. “There is just not enough of anything … not enough bunks, or water … but that is the least of it. There is simply not enough air for so many people. We would be asphyxiated in hours if they all came in. Anyway, if Maggie and Billy come back before the air is clear they will have to come down here too …”
But Billy and Maggie never even tried to cram themselves into the shelter. They arrived home a week after the bombing, a week after the day Drisco roared off down the drive with his screaming children and weeping wives in the lorry. Billy and Maggie did not know we were in the fallout shelter.
