Helen Marcus
Helen lives in Chalfont St Peter. The extract below is from a novel in progress.
Belinda made another attempt to start the sketches. She had to do it this time; she knew Gareth�s sympathy would run out if he came home in the evening and found her no further on. But it was difficult, other images kept coming into her mind. One was the single milk bottle on the doorstep of number twenty-nine, still there when she had last checked at ten o�clock, glowing like a stump of light in the grey drizzle. The other was of her mother carrying something across the garden. When was that?
She had to get these revisions done. Alec�s post-it note was emphatic: �I must (underlined twice) have these back on my desk by the tenth (underlined three times)�. They had arrived on the second. It was now the seventh. Three days to revise a month�s work.
This was the latest in a series of twelve books she had illustrated about the everyday life of the Browns � a rabbit family. She had never met Amelia Strong, the author, (real name Ron Broadbent, ex-Merchant Navy who had come to writing via the Falklands and a nervous breakdown), who Alec said was a recluse. What made Alec a pain to work for made him a good negotiator and he had recently sold the whole series (which amounted to the whole of his publishing house) to a supermarket who had re-packaged them under their own name. They were now on display between the dog food and the long-life milk in hundreds of stores around the country. Belinda's name was taken off the cover but Alec had said that was usual practice, besides she now had something that approached a regular income.
The latest one was about an elderly uncle who was getting ready to go on a Long Journey � �the longest journey he had ever taken�. The young rabbits all looked for things which they thought he might need on his trip. But he left in the night, taking only the torch that the smallest rabbit had given him. The two final drawings, on facing pages, were of the old rabbit walking out into a snowy night and of the youngest one watching him through the window. It had taken her days to get the old boy just right. His back had to be stooped to show his age and infirmity, but when his head followed the line of his back, he seemed to be in deep despair (or searching for his car keys, Gareth suggested). She raised his head so that he was peering through the snow, resigned but resolute. (Or �I�m going outside now and I may be some time�, as Gareth had again helpfully pointed out.) The final sketch was a close-up of the small rabbit�s sad anxious face at the window. Alec had stuck a post-it note over it. �What the hell is this? The Munch burrow? Lighten up.� (Underlined twice.)
She put a clean sheet of paper next to the original and picked up her pen. What was it about her mother? She was walking across the lane carrying a tray, that was it. She was holding it high and away from herself, as you would a lit birthday cake or an unexploded bomb. Belinda was lying on the grass at the end of the garden. It was very hot. It must have been one of those summers in the seventies. Her skin was burning under the Ambre Solaire and Dave Lee Travis was on the radio. The house was red brick and perfectly symmetrical, like a child�s idea of what a house should be. Her father had cut a path through the rectangular lawn. It started to the right of the back door and swept in a luxurious curve to the left side and then back again. Belinda had propped herself up on her elbow and was shading her eyes with her other hand. Her mother was coming down the garden to her, following the path. All the way to the left and then the right, carrying the tray. It was a reading-book illustration � the brilliant grass, the flat-faced house, her mother in a clean apron carrying a tray of � what? She doodled the house on the corner of the page and added a tiny milk bottle on the step.
Underneath she wrote See Belinda. See.
On her way to the kitchen to put on the kettle she looked across at number twenty-seven. The milk hadn�t been taken in yet. He might have a bug, there were plenty going round. Or he might just be having a lie-in. People do. She had wondered if she should go over and knock on the door, but they�d only ever waved at each other and actually turning up on his doorstep unannounced seemed too much of a presumption. Besides, what would she do if there was no reply? Look through the letter box? Go round the back and peer in through windows? Shout? She decided to wait until evening, by which time she could see if there any lights on and Gareth would be home and they could go over together if they needed to.
The Munch bunny was still there after she�d made the tea, and the post-it notes. Lighten up. By the tenth. Poor Ron, Alec had probably bullied him too. It would help if she could ring him, get some idea of what he wanted, but only Alec had his number. He was a privacy nut, was how he put it. He only gave his number out to a very few people and even then he didn�t always answer it. She had only had one correspondence with him herself. After she�d sent in the drawings for the third book, when Edward, the naughtiest rabbit, gets the measles, he had sent her a note.
�Would Edward�s fur be spotty if he caught the measles? Kindest regards Ron.�
She didn�t show it to Alec or Gareth. She wrote back and said he had a point, but it was the only way she could indicate measles on a rabbit. Did he want to consider changing it to, say, mumps? He answered immediately to say no, Edward had definitely caught the measles and on reflection the spots were fine. He was the sort of person she�d like to meet.
An avocado. That�s what her mother had on the tray. Bulbous, foreign-looking.
�The new boy in the grocer�s put it in with the pears,� she saidd. �Do you know what it is?�
She�d put it on a plate with a knife, fork and spoon, just in case.
�An avocado.� She sounded confident but she wasn�t sure how she knew the name, it seemed to just come to her.
�You have it then.� Her mother passed the tray down to her and she sat up, cross-legged on the grass and took it from her. She cut it lengthways like a pear and had to twist it to separate the two halves. She set them on the plate, one with the protruding, surprisingly round stone, the other with the matching hollow.
�Et voila.�
�Oh,� said her mother.
Yes, oh.
Her mother was saying �go on, try a bit�.
She scooped out a spoonful and put it in her mouth. Too fleshy. Salty. She didn�t want any more. She wanted to take it up to her room and paint it � those new shades of green, the russet stone and the beautiful hollow.
And this is a new short story
BAXTER INNES
I�m sitting in my bedroom, by the window, looking out, which is what I like to do best, but I�d never tell anyone because it would sound weird and a bit pervy. You�d be amazed at what you see. I like to look at people when they don�t know anyone is watching them. I�m watching my mother and sister pack the car. Not so much packing the car as emptying the house into it. The first book I can remember reading on my own was about a family who went out in their car looking for somewhere to live and in the end they said they�d live in the next house they saw after they turned the corner in the road. It turned out to be a gypsy caravan and a horse. I wanted to be that family. We could drive off in the Volvo tonight, after Dad�s strapped the tent to the roof and leave Glasgow for good. In a week we could be in Greece or Turkey, we could be in the Alps or Venice or Capri. But we won�t. We�ll be in the same caravan site we�re always in every year in France.
My mother and sister walk from the kitchen to the car and back again. Nats trails after Mum and gets in the way every time Mum turns round. Then every time Mum does the same thing � she gives a little yelp and stands to one side and sticks her arm out to show Nats the way to the boot, just in case she�d forgotten.
The only thing I�ve got to remember to pack is Miss Caulfield�s notebook. It�s my notebook now, I suppose. She gave us all a different one on the last day of term, which was only two weeks ago but it feels like a different time. It�s no ordinary notebook of course; Miss Caulfield wouldn�t just buy a batch from Smith�s. Everybody has a different one. Carrie Gregson, the class drama queen, has one covered with purple sequins. Jamie Peters, who�s always messing around with old cars, has a metal cover on his. Mine is made from recycled maps. Every page has a bit of a map on one side and is blank on the other. They seem mostly to be sea maps, criss-crossed with dotted lines, like the tracks of some hopelessly lost explorer. I�m still getting used to carrying it around, to thinking about using it. It�s shaping itself into my back pocket, getting softened up like a new pair of shoes. I wonder what it says about me; what she was thinking when she chose it.
I�m staying out of the way. I�ve said I�m doing schoolwork so she won�t ask me to help. Schoolwork is the most important thing in the world to my mother. I sometimes wonder what she would do if I said I couldn�t eat because I had homework to do � how far would she let it go?
I ended up with the big bedroom at the front because there�s a street light outside and no-one else could get to sleep. It suited me fine because when I was younger I could read by it if I opened the curtains and my mother was none the wiser. The yellow sulphur light makes even new books seem old. When we did illuminated manuscripts in history that�s what I thought they meant � all lit up. Nats is helping I suppose, because she�s got an armload of sleeping bags which keep slipping to the ground, but she looks so tired and moves so slowly she can only be getting in the way. My mother takes the bags from her and is peering into her face as if she�s trying to decipher someone�s bad handwriting.
My mother is a teacher. My mother is always a teacher. Like now - she�s taking the slippery pile of bags from Nats and saying lets make a bed in the back seat with these and then you can get some decent sleep on the way to the ferry. She�s always making things out of other things, as if life isn�t enough as it is. Why can�t she just throw them in the back and we�ll make ourselves comfortable whatever way we want to? She wears skirts with the waistband too tight and jumpers with embroidered flowers and teaches remedials. She calls them her specials and some of them come to the house for extra tuition. She ropes me in to help because she says a good way to learn something is to teach it and she says it will be good on my forms when I apply to teacher training college. Danny Franklin, her current special, breathes through his mouth and cuts pictures of people out of Hello! magazine and sticks them in to an album. He is the same age as me. My mother gets me to write underneath in special handwriting that Nats calls baby writing because every letter is separate. It�s like making words from children�s blocks.
Here is Mum. She is in the car. (Joan Collins)
Dad is cooking. (Jamie Oliver)
Dad holds the baby. (Tony Blair)
I pointed out to her that Danny doesn�t have a Dad, cooking or otherwise, but she said he needs to know about the idea of Dad.
I�ve got Miss Caulfield�s notebook in my hand and the special pen Nats gave me for Christmas. It looks like an ordinary pen, but if you twist the top a light comes on just above the nib. To be honest the notebook scares me. The pages seem vast, like the miles of empty ocean on the maps and there doesn�t seem to be anything that I could write that would fill them. It still feels like it�s hers, maybe because she always wears clothes in the same blues and greens of the maps. She�s a real writer; she won a prize for a poem about eating pizza in George Square. We�ve got to keep a journal for the summer she said, and then when we get back we�re to write a piece about our experiences. I trace the dotted lines with my finger. The pages are blank and the paper is soft. I can imagine how well it would take up the ink, how easily the nib would travel across it. I can imagine that if I did write in this book it would be in a different hand, so if my mother found it she wouldn�t know it was me.
Write about your experiences, Miss Caulfield said. I�ve never had any experiences. Things sometimes happen to me. But mostly not. I�m only sixteen.
I look at Nats. She is taller than my mother, and thinner of course. She�s solemn all the time, which makes me scared of her. It�s like she�s more there than any of the rest of us. She hardly ever speaks and when she does she points out something that I�ve never thought of as odd before, not until she says it. Like last night she said at the table, why do we all have to eat the same food at the same time? My father laughed as usual. He still thinks that Nats is a child being funny saying adult things. My mother flapped and got red and explained at length what the world would be like if we all ate different things at different times. A terrible, terrible place by all accounts, exhausting, confusing and unhealthy. Nats never interrupts or argues; she watches and listens and then carries on with what she�s doing; only more sadly, more disappointed. Older. Something hits me. It�s so obvious I feel stupider than cut and paste Danny that I haven�t seen it before. If I were brave enough to write anything now in this notebook it would be this.
Here is my sister. She is sad.
This is our last night in France. Two rainy weeks and doing nothing much and in the middle of it all Nats decides to have her first period. At least that�s what I think. She and Mum have shared one partition of the tent for most of this week, Dad and I share this one. She keeps crying and she and Mum have been up most nights, bags rustling and Nats taking more tablets in one week than she has in the whole of her life so far. They whisper to each other for ages before they go to sleep. Their voices are tissuey and I can�t make out what they were saying. Inside the tent is this tight feeling, like the darkness has been stretched across it, and sounds are taut. I fumble around in my backpack for my notebook, making secret noises of my own. I get out Nats� pen and tunnel down in to the sleeping bag with the journal. There is something I want to write that I read in a book Miss Caulfield lent me. I use the bit of torn off paper I was going to keep my place with. I want to know what it feels like to write these words in this order.
People forget days. They remember moments.
Each word swims in its own bit of light and I feel like I�m doing a cave painting. I write it now, with Mum and Nats whispering on the other side of the partition and Dad next to me snoring and leaking farts. The small circle of light makes each word seem new and mine.
It�s all right for girls; they�ve got this big Before and After. What about us? Are we supposed to go and fetch our Dads when we have our first wet dream, spend half the night drinking hot Ribena and changing the sheets and going off for a big round of clothes shopping the next day? I think not. Out of the blue yesterday Mum says not to call her Nats anymore, that�s her baby name. She�s a Young Woman now so you should call her Natalie. It�s like Mum is suddenly alert after years of being a fairly dozy sort of mother. The only things she�s has told me to do are to eat with my mouth closed and say please and thank you, not like some mothers who have discovered polite ways to breath. Now she�s big on Knocking Before Entering. In a I said?
I�ve got the application form for teacher training college tucked in the back. Mum says it�s best to get it in early, show you�re keen. It�s all filled in except for the first and the last questions, which are asking more or less the same thing. My name and my signature. Who I am and if I agree. I�ll sign it when we get back. I�ve done my personal statement too. Actually mum wrote most of it as she knows what they�re looking for. I move the pen light across my handwriting, which I realise is the baby writing I normally reserve for the specials. �I have been interested in becoming a teacher for as long as I can remember. I have always helped younger children with their learning and currently assist in teaching one-to-one literacy for special needs students.�
Nats and I used to play this game when she was little. We would sit on the peach and green rug in front of the fire and Mum would stick Nats� legs out in to a V and piled cushions around her in case she fell over, though I could have told her that Nats hardly ever fell over. Nats favourite game was the shape-sorter ball. It was red plastic and lacy with all these shaped holes � oval, circle, square, star. It was in two halves and you pulled them apart to empty the shapes out. Nats was always trying to put the wrong shape in the wrong hole. To give her her due they did look like they ought to fit, but they didn�t, no matter which way you turned it. So she�d hand it to me and watch as I spun it around and found the right hole. There was a very satisfying rattle when it went in and Nats always clapped her hands. I�d hand it back to her and she�d try and give up and hand it back to me. Backwards and forwards it went until all the shapes were in the ball. Later, when she knew how to do it, we�d have races to see who could fill it the fastest. I believe my twelve second record still stands. Mum liked us playing with it because she thought we were learning about shapes and coordination and all that, but I think she�s wrong. I reckon it�s to give kids an idea of what it feels like when something is right � the way a thing can fit just so.
I wriggle up from the depths of my sleeping bag and put the notebook under my pillow. I�ve carried it around with me everywhere and the cover is going soft. I haven�t written in it yet, but I feel as if I�m using it, writing in my head. I�m like mum. I�m suddenly alert.
This is the last stop and then it�s the final push for home, always has been. A tiny car park fifteen minutes off the M6, somewhere in the boring bit between Birmingham and Manchester. We always stop here because of the chip van � brilliant chips, even better than the ones at the harbour at Campbeltown. How Dad knew about a chippie in the middle of nowhere in the first place is a mystery to me. It�s changed a bit this year; they�ve resurfaced it and put three picnic tables on top of a bank of grass. My mother seems more impressed with the picnic tables than she was with the Cathedral at Reims. Nats stays in the car, leaning her forehead against the window. There�s another van here too this year � an ice cream van parked opposite the chippie. The two blokes glare at each other like tin clad sumo wrestlers, eyeing up the size of each other�s queue. In Glasgow we had ice cream wars. When I was young I thought it meant they hurled Mr Whippy�s at each other. I must try and remember that, tin-clad sumo wrestlers and ice-cream wars. Miss Caulfield will like that.
I choose a table and Mum lays her cardi on it so there�s absolutely no doubt that it�s ours and goes back to the car to persuade Nats to come out. Dad wanders down to bore the chippie guy with how�s business these days and good idea about the tables. That leaves me alone with my notebook, which suits me just fine. I stroke the cover which reminds me of how my favourite old pyjamas used to feel. I�d rather lose my passport than lose this. Mum is talking to Nats through the closed window, giving her a number of reasons why it would be a good idea to get out of the car. Laying a line of chocolate from the car to the grassy knoll would do it, but Mum will go on talking �til you�re fit to scream. It dawns me what I�ll write about for the piece for Miss Caulfield. She calls them pieces and for a while every time she said it I�d think of my Gran making my piece for me to take to school. Sometimes things collide in interesting ways, that�s what Miss Caulfield says. I like that because then even a collision can be OK and not an accident at all. So after a while every time Miss Caulfield said piece I�d think of it as a bit of food for the day.
I�m going to write about the moment when we all think our holiday ends.
Because to me, here, in the car park, that�s when it ends. Whenever we�ve finished the chips and I stuff the polystyrene trays down hard in to the bin�then, that�s when it�s over. And it�s weird. Why then when the next second comes ticking along like all the rest? And if that�s when the holiday ends, what is it that begins when I turn around and start walking back to the car? The other weird thing is that the others have got their endings too. When we pass the Welcome to Scotland sign Mum and Dad do this sad Mexican wave thing in the front seat. Nats and I used to join in when we were little, but not now. Nats thinks the holiday is over when she steps over the sill of the back door. We�re all standing in the kitchen drinking tea and Nats is hopping up and down on the step saying she�s still on holiday and we�re not, until you want to haul her over it to shut her up. I can�t see her doing it this year though.
Even though I�m stuffed from all the chips and I�ve been glared at by the chippie guy and my mother, I�ve bought a double cornet with the last of my holiday money. I think I�ve earned it. In the car Mum opens her mouth to say something, then changes her mind, but the phrase �you�ll be sick� hangs in the air anyway.
�Gi�e us a lick o� your cornet,� Dad says, in his cod Govan accent. He stretches his arm round to the back and opens and closes his fist like a baby. Something is wrong with the car. It peels off violently to the right. We are travelling sideways, but the car still faces the front. No one says anything. Both my father�s hands are on the wheel now. The car is rumbling then shaking so hard I�m sure pieces are falling off. I have a picture in my head of us on the opposite verge with nothing but the seats we�re sitting in and the steering wheel in my father�s hands. I�d like to tell Nats, she�d appreciate the joke. I look across at her. She puts her hand out and I take it. We hold tight. We are on the other side of the road. A lorry is coming towards us, a big smart van with green and gold writing above the cab. Baxter�s Removals. Honest. Up until this moment I really wasn�t sure about my name. Baxter. It could go either way. I mean the only other Baxter I�ve met was a dog whose face looked like it had melted. The writing on the van fills the windscreen and in a second it will fill the car. There�s the thought that I�m going to die and I�m disappointed, and then all these other thoughts fly up at once, like when they released those doves at the World Cup. And in the same second it�s as if something has also been settled. There�s something I have to put my name to when we get home.
We come to a halt on the verge and sit for what seems like a long time. No-one moves. My cornet has disappeared.
Baxter Innes. I�ve put my name on the front. And then I write.
I am sitting in my bedroom, by the window, looking out, which is what I like to do best. You�d be amazed at what you see.
Other pages
Home
Directions
News
Ty Newydd photos
Other photos
Non-Ty Newydd- related photos
September 11 2001
Publications by graduates
Publications by tutors
Graduate and student work
Poems, stories etc by Masters graduates
Staff work
Academi Cardiff Poetry Competition
As Meat Loves Salt
Teaching a Chicken to Swim
Links
Links to useful sites