Island (2 page)
Mrs Marshall had her very own little drama to focus on and she didn’t need me at all any more. And so I moved on.
The social worker lectured me. ‘You mustn’t tell lies. You lose sight of the truth and you don’t know what’s real–’
Can’t see any harm in that myself. Can’t see what’s so great about the truth, that I should need to keep it in sight. Lies make the world go round. People need something to get their teeth into. D’you want the whole world blank and silent? Absence is nothing to talk about. You can’t talk about a gap.
You mustn’t tell tales. Way back, Mummy Canning said that. ‘Telltale tit/your tongue shall split/and all the little birdies/shall have a little bit.’ I used to imagine that: a flock of them with their sharp little beaks circling flapping swooping in, pecking at thin strips of my tongue, pulling, digging their claws into my chin and heaving like the thrush on the lawn tugging a worm out of the earth.
I like tales. Those fairy tales from junior school Mrs Plant. I like it when Fir Apple and his sister turn into a pond and a duck to escape the clutches of the wicked old cook. I like it when ugly Rumpelstiltskin helps the miller’s daughter spin straw into gold. I like the princess who weaves shirts from nettles for her seven enchanted brothers to release them from the shapes of swans. (They’re in such a hurry she has to give the youngest his with the sleeve unfinished and he turns back into a fine young prince except he has a swan’s wing for an arm. Imagine.) I like frogs that turn into princes and old women that turn into maidens and fish that can speak and grant wishes.
I like to lose sight of the truth.
Truth is shit.
Fir AppleFir Apple was the first tale Mrs Plant
ever told us. I was new I was in a twin desk at the front of the class with no one in the other half. They used to fight not to sit next to me. When I was nervous I needed to pee and then I couldn’t wait. I wouldn’t have sat next to me either, given the chance.
I’ll tell you about Fir Apple. He was found at the top of a fir tree, in a huge dark forest. That’s how he got his name. He was a tiny baby all alone at the top of a tree in the middle of a deserted forest that spread over the mountains all around. Lying on a high feathery branch that trembled in the wind. Lying there crying with his voice so small and weak you could barely hear it for the soughing of the wind in the boughs and the cawing of the rooks in their nests.
But as luck would have
it … (O listen)
As luck would have it … (it still makes my stomach turn over)
As luck would have it a woodcutter is making his way home through the lonely forest after a hard day’s work. Looking up he spies a strange dot of pinkness in the branches. Then he hears the baby’s thin wail. And he sets down his axe and his bundle, and straightway begins to climb the tree. A fir tree is dense and hard to climb but he forces his way up through the scented prickly branches, up up up until at last he can stretch out his arm and pluck little Fir Apple from the branch. Where he was dropped, it should be told, by an eagle who had snatched him from his mother’s arms whilst she slept, in a far distant land.
The woodcutter wraps Fir Apple in his jerkin. ‘Poor child,’ he says, ‘I’ll take you home and you can be a playmate for my young Lizzy. Our old cook will take good care of you.’
So Fir Apple and Lizzy grew and played together closer than ever any brother and sister, for wherever you found one you would be sure to find the other. Never were two children so happy together. Said Mrs Plant. O listen. Never were two children so happy.
One day Lizzy noticed that the old cook was toiling back and forth, back and forth to the well, drawing buckets of water.
‘Why do you need all this water?’ she asked.
‘If I tell you you must keep it a secret.’
‘O I will,’ Lizzy replied. (But she didn’t.)
‘In the morning when your father goes into the forest I shall boil up all the water and drop in young Fir Apple, to make a tasty stew.’
When the two children were in bed that night, Lizzy whispered to Fir
Apple, as they were always used to whisper – ‘If you’ll never
leave me, I’ll never leave you.’
To which Fir Apple replied, ‘Not now nor ever.’
Then Lizzy whispered to him the old cook’s plan. And the two children decided to escape together. Very early next morning while the cook was in the kitchen lighting the fire under her huge pot of water, Lizzy and Fir Apple climbed out of the window and ran away into the forest.
When the cook found them gone, she was furious. What would the woodcutter say when he came home? She sent three servants to chase after them.
Deep in the forest Lizzy and Fir Apple heard the servants running crashing through the trees. Fir Apple began to cry but Lizzy said, ‘If you’ll never leave me, I’ll never leave you.’
‘Not now nor ever.’
‘Then quickly, do you turn into a rose bush, and I shall be the flower that grows on it.’
In an instant the children vanished; as the cook’s servants burst into the clearing all they saw was a rose bush with a single bloom. So they made their way back to the cook and told her they had searched the forest far and wide, and found nothing but a rose bush.
‘You fools!’ screamed the cook. ‘You should have cut the bush down and carried the rose back to me. Go and look again!’
Again the servants chased through the forest, and the children heard their footfalls. Fir Apple clung in terror to his sister.
‘If you’ll never leave me, I’ll never leave you.’
‘Not now nor ever.’
‘Do you turn into a tall tower, and I will be the clock upon it.’
In an instant the children were gone, and in their place stood an elegant clock tower, nearly as tall as the trees that surrounded it. When the cook’s servants came by they saw from the clock that it was dinnertime, and ran back to tell the cook they had found no children but a tall tower with a fine round clock.
Then the cook was furious and screamed at the servants, ‘You should have knocked down the tower and brought me back the clock. You fools, I can’t trust you to do anything, I must find those children myself.’ So she ran off into the forest. But the children heard the sounds of her approach, and Fir Apple clutched Lizzy’s hand tightly.
‘If you’ll never leave me, I’ll never leave you.’
‘Not now nor ever.’
‘Do you turn into a pond, and I will be the duck swimming upon it.’
In an instant the forest was transformed, a beautiful blue pond appeared with one snow white duck swimming across the water. But the cook was clever, she fell to her knees and quickly began to drink the pond dry. Then the duck swam right up to her and pinched her nose with its beak, dragging her under the last of the water. Very soon she drowned.
Then Lizzy and Fir Apple ran through the forest to reach home before the woodcutter. They lived happily together for the rest of their lives.
Mrs Plant asked us to draw
a picture for it, and I tried and tried to do a duck on a pond and it looked like a duck in a circle or a duck on a line. I couldn’t draw water. At last I gave up and drew the wicked cook with her boiling pot, squiggles of steam coming out and sharp orange flames beneath. I got a star for it but it wasn’t the picture I wanted to draw.
A planWhy did I decide to kill my
mother? The reasons are quite simple.
When you’re young you think other people can help you. Parents if you have any. Friends. Teachers. Doctors. Drink, tablets, counselling. Maybe they do help some people. But actually the fix is to know what you want to do and do it. Being unhappy, asking advice, trying to escape, analysing it; none of that progresses you. To progress you need to lift up your foot and take a step.
I thought, I want to kill my mother. And I will.
I’ve been accused of being selfish and unfeeling. Amongst other things. I’ve been accused of being a lot of things actually: liar, whore, thief, attention-seeker, immature, disloyal, unstable, immoral, mad and a waster of my own talents. All these things were or had been true, from time to time. Perfectly true. Which was another reason for my plan.
Because there was an author of
that person (me; selfish, unfeeling, etc). And she had never been called to account. She had never been asked to explain herself or excuse herself or even to identify herself. So I decided to find her out.
Now, reasons for planning to kill her: when my mother Phyllis Rose Lovage gave birth to me she did not hug me. She did not wash me. Feed me. Dress me.
She did not love me.
She wrapped me in a towel and during the night or early morning put me in a cardboard box on the doorstep of an inner London post office.
She walked away.
(Wrapping me in a towel is part of it too. If she hadn’t wrapped me in a towel – if she’d had the courage of her convictions and not merely not loved me but
hated
me, and put me naked in the box – then I would have died of exposure. Which would have been more honest of both of us.)
Further reasons: when asked by police, she claimed not to know my father. She told them she did not want me back.
All right. The reasons boil down to two: 1. She had me. 2. She left me.
Q
. Why did a number of young women who’d been in care figure amongst the Wests’ victims? I read an article claiming Fred and Rosemary chose them specially, knowing no one’d come looking for them. But I know the reason: upon invitation, those girls
chose
the Wests. They went
chez
West thinking it was a nice place, a proper home, a farm where you could ride horses and write poetry, a
family
. Where you
could be taken in and loved. Even when they were there for a bit maybe they couldn’t see any different, thought it was an alright place to be. Because
they didn’t know any better
. They didn’t know the difference between a loving family and a house of murderous perverts.
Well how could they tell? I learned about families from books. Families with mummies and daddies and birthday surprises, and picnics and super summer hols. In books I had a jolly band of mates and we were always setting off to follow the mysterious man with the limp or to investigate the night-time flashlights at Smuggler’s Cove; we tumbled back tired and happy to scrumptious tea prepared by Mummy; we were gravely thanked by parents of tiny lost children/owners of mischievous puppies/mayors of imperilled towns. When we got into really serious trouble often Daddy came and talked to the policeman or explained to the cross colonel or arrived just as it was getting dark to give us a ticking off with a twinkle in his eye and drive us safely home. We had boldly gone and spread decency and honesty amongst vicious aliens; we’d unearthed ancient treasure after breathtaking dangers, always remaining one vital step ahead of the crooks. OK it was crap. At least it was happy crap.
What is it like? Being brought up in care?
It is like the boy in
The Snow Queen
. He gets a splinter of ice in his eye. It changes everything he sees to cold and ugly.
That’s what it’s like, and you can accommodate, to a degree; it’s all you know. Just as the blind-from-birth know that others have
seeing
but can’t really visualise (sorry) what that is; so the ice-splinter-eyed know that everyone else has
something
but they can’t quite imagine what it might be.
It’s like a ghost limb. I felt my
disability. I was tormented by discontent. Well, it wasn’t merely discontent. It took more than that to galvanise me. It was the other stuff, the bad stuff.
I don’t think you need to know about that. Not yet, anyway. After I blew it with fat Louise and her tragedy-junkie mother, I went down. But I came up again, bounced back. I’m good at it – I fly I soar I swoop I glide. They tried to make me shift schools again but I went to see the head and wept. I loved his school, I didn’t want to leave it, I promised to work hard, I promised to stay away from Louise (why would anyone want to go near her?) Was it fair that I should be penalised for her disorders? Look how often my life had been disrupted – ten different schools, nine different homes, how could I have a chance of fulfilling my academic promise? I’d been dealt a poor hand by fate – surely he wasn’t going to increase the odds against me?