My Mother My Mirror Read online

  There was one chicken I had made friends with when she first came out of her egg, so she would eat out of my hand and sometimes follow me around. I remember once when for some reason I was trying to get them to roost in a different part of the barn for the night, through a different doorway on the other side of the yard. Although I was rattling an enticing bowl of grain, one by one all the others hung back in distrust of the new plan, whereas my special chicken followed me all the way.

  And then there were the quails. They were so sweet, but unfortunately didn’t last very long. Sam built a large and elaborate cage and run for them in the corner of the walled garden, making sure he buried the chicken wire deep enough to prevent rats from burrowing underneath and seizing them. But somehow the rats did manage to get in, and we went there one morning to find two poor slaughtered little birds.... The rats didn’t even eat them.

  Another brief friend was the mouse: she scuttled across the kitchen floor one evening and hid. The cats didn’t notice, but Buckles spent the next five minutes blowing his nose under the fridge... I suppose he was trying to clear his nasal passages to get a better whiff. Then a few weeks later I was up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep and having a cup of tea, when she peeped at me from behind the cooker. After several more wary peeps she finally got daring and made a quick expedition to investigate the catfood by the Rayburn, then whisked back again, faster than the speed of sight. On the next trip she lingered a little longer, and on the one after that she seized a cat-biscuit, took it back behind the cooker and gnawed on it for the next ten minutes. Then a little while later she came and fastened her hind feet on the edge of the milk bowl, balancing carefully with her tail and leaning down almost vertically for a long drink, with one beady eye always looking my way.

  But the next day the cats spotted her and all hell broke loose. Meerschaum was diving in and out of the cupboards under the sink, knocking over window-cleaner and bags of potatoes; Midgen was also stalking and pouncing, but always a little slower off the mark. Much though I had appreciated friend mouse, we didn’t really want her involved with our food, so I’m afraid I was encouraging these antics, and the next thing I did was to move the dustbin, at which point all at once she was seized. Schaum took her away under the table, stared at her, tossed her around then lost her again on purpose, just for the joy of an easier catch next time, behind the basket by the Rayburn.

  Once the poor little thing was thoroughly limp and chewed and no fun any more, she was given to Buckles, who more-or-less ignored her until Sam came in, when he made a great show of pretending he had just caught her and was in the process of the kill. Finally we heard the crunching of bones; the victim was removed and put in the dustbin.

  22

  Facing the Shadow

  Reynolds Park had five bedrooms, if you include the two little box rooms, and we had great fun finding purposes for them all, as well as sleeping in different rooms at different times as needs changed.

  The tiny room at the back next to the bathroom and overlooking the fields was too small for anything but a single bed. I did have it in mind for a nursery later on, but at this time it was my writing room. I would go in there early every morning when my mind was fresh, and work on whatever project I had at the time. I had a bookshelf, a desk and a chair, a colourful rug on the floor and inspiring pictures on the wall.

  The other small room, in the middle at the front, we painted royal blue for minimum glare and used for the computer and printer. To the left of this was a large room we first used as a bedroom but which was then taken over by Sam for his model planes, balsa wood, diagrams, tools, glue... and of course that horrible polystyrene that crept through the door and got trodden all over the house.

  On the other side at the front was a little guest room, that we also slept in for a while... I remember us pushing the bed up close to the window and gazing at the craters in the moon through my new binoculars, then falling asleep together in the moonlight. And by the time we had moved into the bedroom next to this at the back, my main memories are of us both reading ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ by Ursula LeGuin, one after another, and of keeping an axe by the bed.

  He had tracked me down again. I picked up the phone one day and heard that dreaded Northern Irish accent, and my heart sank. With the premie grapevine, it was not so hard to find anyone you wanted to. We discovered later that he had been phoning a family in Plymouth, the mother of whom had been easy to locate because she was on a national list of people involved in setting up satsang programs in their local area. She refused to give him my number, but he called again when only her children were there and threatened to kill himself if they didn’t hand it over, so they did.

  I tried to reason with him; I told him to go away, of course; but it seemed he was just feeding on any attention at all. He rang again and again, drivelling on about how much he loved me. Sam took the phone and shouted and argued. Nothing made any difference. I knew it was only a matter of time before he turned up on the doorstep. We phoned the police, but it was the same old story as in Brighton: they were powerless to do anything until he had broken the law. It went on and on, and we got more and more stressed and anxious, racking our brains for solutions.

  I was driving home from work one lunchtime when I saw him, walking down the lane towards our house. Sam was at home, thank goodness. I speeded up, as much as I could on a narrow country road, pulled in to the yard, leapt out of the car and into the house and locked all the doors, then phoned the local police station. They came and took him back to Kingsbridge and cautioned him with some sort of telling-off, asking me in the meantime to come and check they’d got the right person; then they took him back to Plymouth where he was staying.

  But they wouldn’t tell us exactly where he lived, and there was no let-up in the phonecalls. Sam pestered them, saying that if they couldn’t do any more then we needed to know where he was, so we could confront him ourselves. For a few weeks they refused, and then in order to get us off their backs they accidentally-on-purpose let slip the information.

  Sam went round there with Rodney: a large, bombastic friend of his with a loud voice and training in the Martial Arts. I would have thought that between them they could have frightened some sense into him, but he remained impervious, slowly wearing away at us just by his presence and his dubious intent.

  He said he wanted to marry me, that I was his Marilyn and he was my Guru Maharaji, that he had always loved me, we were meant to be together. He was obviously completely deluded, but he kept on and on. Even when we put the phone down as soon as we heard his voice, we knew he was still there, focusing all his attention on me, and that he knew where I lived. Sooner or later he would turn up again, and this time I might be alone and he might hurt me... We imagined the worst.

  We were careful to keep the doors locked, though being an old house it wouldn’t have been that difficult to break in through a window. We kept makeshift weapons in strategic places: a heavy stick behind the front door, an axe by the bed. By this time the police had also given us an emergency button for the bedroom, which would call them at a moment’s notice.

  And we started to imagine ways of getting rid of him... picking him up in the car and driving to the edge of a cliff... or taking him out in a boat at night... or perhaps poison? But then what to do with the body? Surely nobody would miss him. We even went as far as making shady investigations in the Plymouth underworld: how much to dispose of somebody? What was involved? It was unsettling to discover that for a price, anything was possible.

  I mentioned that we were reading ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ because it is significant. Ged, the student wizard in the story, has unleashed a malevolent being from beyond the veil of death. He is pursued by this creature across land and sea. He consults the cleverest minds, employs all the spells and tricks he can think of, but he cannot get rid of it. He is trying, above all, to discover its true name, because in the wizarding world if you can name something then you have power over it.

  In t
he end, after years of terrible trials and scrapes with death, far out on a misty ocean in the middle of nowhere, he comes face to face with the creature and calls it by his own name, Ged, at which point it ceases to have any hold over him.

  I knew I had conjured up Paddy by my own naiveté and passiveness, and that somehow he was still around because I hadn’t been assertive enough to send him packing. I had tried to get other people to do the work for me, yet it was my task: there was a lesson here for me to learn. And slowly it occurred to me that perhaps now that I wasn’t on my own I could deal with him once and for all, with the support of Sam, and possibly others. A plan began to hatch.

  In the end it was Mark who joined us. He and Sam were by now reasonably good friends, sharing a common project to do with selling water filters to the general public. One warm and sunny afternoon, Mark turned up at our house in his shiny red Ford Sierra and took us down to Plymouth.

  We parked in the next street from the lodging house where Paddy was staying and waited for ten minutes or so, going over our plans; then at about the time we expected him to be sauntering back from town, Mark and Sam got out and began to casually patrol the streets. I slid over to the driving side and waited.

  It wasn’t long before I spotted them in the rear-view mirror. They had him in an arm-lock and were marching him, one on either side, back to the car. Once there they slid into the back seat with Paddy still between them; I started the engine and we sped back to Reynolds Park. He was still burbling insanely, but this time I didn’t bother to respond. I concentrated on the task, rigid with determination and adrenalin.

  Back home, he was bundled out of the car and into the front room with the hessian wallpaper – which was out of favour now and empty most of the time. Sam plied him with cheap wine for some reason – maybe to soften the edges of the confrontation. Then my first-ever real live cathartic therapy session began.

  With the two men standing protectively, one in front of the door and the other on the opposite side of the room, I laid in to Paddy: scratching, pinching, kicking, yelling: “Get the fuck out of my life! - I hate you! Do you understand? I don’t want you anywhere near me – I’m so sick of your ugly face, your horrible voice – I hate your fucking guts! Listen to me: I want to get this into your thick skull – I don’t like you – I think you’re shit – I never, ever want to see you again...” I went on and on, tugging at his hair, grabbing his cheeks, slapping his face, punching his chest, tearing at his arms. He was a very tough, solid creature. From time to time he turned away, and one of my referees would turn him back and tell him to listen to me. All my pent-up rage of the last ten years came pouring out.

  Finally I was spent. We all had another glass of wine. Paddy looked vaguely in my direction and said, “I think I must have been in an illusion...” Wow. Result. I am the last person to ever recommend violence as a solution to a problem, but there is always an exception to the rule, and in this case my physical actions seemed to have got through to him where no amount of words could. And I certainly felt a hell of a lot better.

  The next bit is even naughtier. Mark went home, then Sam tied Paddy’s hands behind his back and his ankles together and put a gag around his mouth and bundled him in to the boot of the SAAB. It did have ventilation holes, and we did give him a pillow, but the idea was to truly frighten him so he would be sure never to return.

  Then we leapt into the front and drove through the night, up the A38 towards London. We had one dicey moment when we had to stop for petrol and there were some peculiar thumps and muffled noises from the back, but other than that it went smoothly, and by the early hours we were in the suburbs.

  We drove around for a while looking for the bleakest, most industrial, nowhere sort of place we could find, then stopped the car and opened the boot. Sam untied him, still gripping his arm as he climbed out onto the pavement, then I had one last go at him, this time just with words: “If you ever, ever dare to come anywhere near me again, then a lot, lot worse will happen...” He wandered off into the night.

  As we made our way back down to Devon we were feeling like Bonny and Clyde, united in the thrill of the crime. Years later I heard that poor Paddy had found someone else to obsess about. For myself, I had learned to look very carefully into someone’s eyes before offering them a cup of tea, just to make sure they had all their marbles.

  23

  Making Babies

  “Let’s make a baby” must be one of the sexiest things there is to say: deep down sexy, not just titillating but Earth-moving. We didn’t have a lot of money, and we sometimes argued, but time was ticking by and we both agreed we would love to bring a little person into the world. It felt organic, visceral and natural. Stirred by lovemaking with my man in the nest we had made, there was a place in my belly that was beginning to yearn to be filled.

  I had never particularly liked babies, finding them irritating and messy; in fact it was hard to imagine loving any small thing more than I loved Smidge, and she had the advantage of soft, silky fur... But I was also feeling tired of my whole life being centred around me – my meditation, my possessions, my relationship – and could see that it would be healthy to put someone else first for a change: to be woken in the night by the needs of a child. I was eager for something to take me out of myself, to take a step into the unknown and become more involved in life.

  The more we thought about it, the more we warmed to the idea, so that soon we were calculating my most fertile days, and being disappointed when I bled again at the end of the month. I found that pre-menstrual tension felt deceptively like pregnancy: the bloated tummy, tender breasts and heightened emotions. Months went by and nothing happened; and then it did. The stick from the chemist went blue, and the doctor confirmed it. After all Carmen’s miscarriages, I was careful not to get over-confident, but of course our minds began to race ahead: we made plans to paint my writing room pale yellow with pretty curtains, a soft carpet and a mobile hanging from the ceiling. I wondered if Shelley still had my old cot. We looked in Mothercare at the teeny weeny clothes, but didn’t let ourselves buy any yet.

  Which was a good thing, because on this occasion I lost it. One evening I began to hurt and to bleed, until I was writhing around on the living room floor in paroxysms of pain. I didn’t want to go to hospital: I just wanted to eject it and for it all to be over with; but in the end the agony became so intense that we called an ambulance and I was whisked off to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, where very shortly the pain subsided and it was all over. They wanted to scrape any remaining detritus from my womb, and they wanted to give me an injection. I refused both these things, and after two or three hours Sam drove me home.

  At our request, they had given us the embryo: a little lump about the size of a walnut. We buried it under the hydrangea bush in the front garden. I wasn’t particularly worried or upset: I knew that the body often does a trial run, and that if an embryo is rejected there is sometimes a good reason for it. But not having the injection I did regret.

  Having been brought up to distrust hospitals, I had presumed it was yet another unnecessary intervention, but apparently this one was important, and my ability to conceive in the future was at stake. As soon as I realized this I tried to get it done, but it was too late: it had to be within 48 hours. So I contacted my doctor, but he was on holiday for two weeks. Apparently when he got back he could do a blood test to find out whether my body would now reject future foetuses, as can happen to those like myself in the O negative blood group.

  Before the development of the ‘Anti-D’ injection, babies with a different blood type to their O negative mothers would often turn blue and die at birth. So the two weeks that I had to wait for my doctor to come back from holiday were by far the worst part of the whole episode, and it wasn’t my own fear so much as the medical establishment that was frightening me! But it turned out I was fine; so we settled down and tried again.

  A few months later Sam got a call from a premie at Maharaji’s residence in Reigate, as
king if he would come up and mend some model planes belonging to Maharaji’s son, Hansi. Despite his philosophies about spiritual detachment, Sam was excited to feel he was needed, and I’m sure there was also a glimmer of hope that he might at last get to meet Maharaji again, after years of exile. I was certainly keen to come along, just in case: every premie dreamed of that one-to-one encounter with their guru, and only a few were lucky enough to experience it.

  The following week we drove up to London and were shown the planes. It turned out that apart from being in poor shape, the batteries had been lost, and in any case the frequencies were only suitable for America; so we decided to buy Hansi a brand new plane, and set forth with our Barclaycard to see what we could find.

  We were by now beginning to run up debts. We usually managed to pay them off, but it was getting more difficult. Anyhow, on this occasion we were sure the Grace of God would take care of us, since we were spending money on such a noble cause. So we bought a beautiful model glider, suitable for flying on the Downs adjacent to Maharaji’s house, where it could be launched from the edge of a slope and there would be sufficient lift to keep it airborne for some time. We also found the necessary battery and controls; Sam carefully put it all together, then we wrapped it up ready to deliver.

  The next day we drove down to Reigate, handed our gift to one of the regular staff and spent a long time sitting in the visitors’ bungalow, waiting in case Maharaji decided to come out and see us. He never did. It felt pretty mean, after all the time he had spent with Sam, and all the service Sam had done for him, and the suddenness of his spiritual redundancy. We tried to look at it philosophically, but I think something in Sam gave up at that point: his hope died, and he slowly became more cynical and bitter.