My Mother My Mirror Read online

  I can remember her needlework basket too: the pincushion heavy with sand, filled with brightly-coloured pins, with little Chinese people clinging all round the edge; colourful cotton-reels all wooden and chunky, little silver or black poppers, hooks and eyes... And then a big blue box full of different buttons: roundish clear glass ones, golden ones with anchors from a uniform jacket, slippery little mother-of-pearl shirt buttons... Somehow all these things became my friends... things I could visit that were pleasing to my fingers and my eyes, that I could sort into piles of different types or build little buildings out of and make up stories.

  There was also the whole world of pretend people and animals. Some of them were invisible and could be with me at the bottom of the garden or under the bedclothes: the fairies, Father Christmas, Laferty – who was prince of the fairies and a kind of boyfriend – and Alice, who was the sort of imaginary friend you could have sitting next to you at the tea table. Others were visible, and varied in size from a teeny-weeny peg doll inside a miniature wooden egg, to the dolls-house dolls, plastic farm and zoo animals, the mantelpiece ornaments, and then all my dolls and teddies, ranging from small to large. Jacqueline was the biggest: she was made of stuffed velvet and meant to be a baby I suppose, though I don’t remember cradling her. Teddy was very important because he was the only male, so he often had to marry different dolls in different games. The dolls-house had been made by my father out of an old orange box. It had real electric lights operated by a battery in the roof, pottery stairs carpeted with red felt, proper wallpaper and carpets, and pottery furniture all made by my mother.

  I spent hours happily absorbed in my own made-up games, either inside when the weather was bad or out in the garden when the sun shone. I had a swing hanging between two boughs of an apple tree. There was an area in the back corner of the garden called the ‘Bumbledinkies’ – a name my father gave it after a similar area at his school – which was all scrubby bushes, mostly with those little snowball berries that go pop when you stamp on them, and tiny paths between them leading eventually to the ditch at the end of the property and the boundary with an old chapel to the left. It didn’t cover a very large area, but I can remember that sense of exploring and not quite knowing where the path came out, of endless possibilities for adventure and discovery.

  At the front of the house there was a big yew tree with a wasp’s nest in it, and sweet-smelling old-fashioned apricot-coloured roses, and snowdrops and crocuses in spring and great billowing boughs of lilac in the summer. I remember the feel of the grass under my hands and feet, the feel of the soil when I helped with planting the vegetables, the ash tree hard and sturdy under my shoes but a little scary as I clambered higher; my first Cadburys crème egg that I ate hiding in a bush at the other end of the garden, amazed at its sweet yellow yolk. Another place that was fun to play on was the big pile of junk behind my father’s studio: rejected bits of concrete, metal, plaster and wood from the things he made. And behind that there were fruit trees, including the pear tree where I once tried to dig up my baby brother, because he had been buried underneath it...

  Which brings me back to the not-so-happy side of our perfect little family. Of course as a child I didn’t fully understand what was going on, but I knew I wanted a brother or sister, and from time to time it seemed as if I was going to get one; and then everything would go wrong. Mummy was in bed crying, Daddy was all gruff and concerned... Until after a few weeks everything would be back to normal and my parents would be jolly and positive, but somehow I became the sad one, weeping silently, more and more locked inside myself.

  This wasn’t just because of the babies – though one or two allies in my little world would have been more than welcome – but more because of a wariness I felt around my mother; and the more she tried to draw me out of myself with cheerful suggestions and entertaining stories, the more withdrawn I became.

  She tried extremely hard, with all the intensity of a new mother, exacerbated by her fear of losing me as she had lost the others. But as a small child the whole atmosphere simply made me feel insecure. Early on she latched me to her breast for so long and with such determination that she gave herself a nasty abscess; then there was all the drama of the bottle and the feeling that she had failed again, one moment holding me close and the next moment (having read a different book) leaving me to cry and cry. And there was endless anxiety over food: what is healthy to eat, what I must eat, what I must not eat. I feel sorry for her now. She didn’t have a stable beginning, and what she didn’t have she couldn’t give to me.

  As cutting-edge vegetarians and health-food enthusiasts in the fifties and sixties my parents were ardent and idealistic, and I came to the conclusion in the end that fear around food could be far more toxic than the food itself. I learned to feel guilty for eating anything containing white sugar or, to a lesser degree, white flour. (I was well into my twenties before I dared eat pasta, and was surprised how pleasant and harmless it seemed to be).

  If I was unwell, whether it was a cold or a tummy upset, I would be subjected to the ‘nature cure’ method of healing, which meant nothing but water for a day or so, moving on to fruit juice, then fruit, then a little cheese, egg or nuts; and days later when I was all purged, a small amount of comforting carbohydrate. I’m sure there was logic behind this, but to someone who felt terribly guilty for being ill in the first place (I must have eaten the wrong things) it just felt like punishment, and certainly gave me no chance to gauge my appetite and find out what my body might actually need.

  Perhaps with my own children I went too far the other way and gave them too much choice... That’s the great thing about growing older: I’ve made so many mistakes that I’m much less hasty to judge other people, and understand much better that it’s all a bit of a mess but we do our best!

  2

  Sex & Cake

  I have spent a lot of my life trying to figure out why it was so difficult between me and my mother: trying to mend the harm done and find a healthy balance in my body, mind and soul; and I know she has done the same. I suppose it was a combination of things. I was the first child and the survivor of seven pregnancies, so I was terribly precious but inevitably never quite good enough to be the fulfilment of all their dreams. And my mother had so much fear and insecurity about herself as a woman, yet she tried to cover it up in a confusing manner which made me think it was me that was over-sensitive and somehow wrong, whilst she was just fine.

  In her efforts to feel OK about herself she seemed to fill the whole sky with scintillating excitement and colourful hugeness, and the bigger and bolder she appeared to be, the smaller and mousier I became, until I felt as if I hardly existed at all. Carmen and Shelley would spend hours discussing subjects such as the state of the world and the role of art in society. I sat silently and never knew what to say, feeling on the one hand devastatingly bored, and on the other hand bewildered and stupid. These subjects were so big, I couldn’t begin to grasp them, but I felt that if I could then perhaps there might be a clue somewhere in there that would give me a way to connect with them and get some sort of handle on my life.

  As it happened, the clue came in a different way. I was hanging around in front of the AGA one morning, at about four years old, when Carmen crouched down in front of me and told me about sex. She tells me now it was because I had heard them in the night and had asked what the strange noise was. All I remember is that this was the moment when I learned that Daddy puts his penis in Mummy’s vulva.

  Talk about body parts was already commonplace in our family: they had obviously decided to break free of any Victorian-type inhibitions and mention genitals in the same breath as cups of tea... But this was more information than I knew what to do with. I think I was in shock. I felt sort-of winded and slightly unreal, and there was a very disturbing squirmy feeling between my legs. She told me not to worry: Daddy wasn’t hurting Mummy, in fact what they did together was the most wonderful thing in the whole world; it was called ‘making love’ and it
made them very, very happy.

  Oh, the damage that is done with the best of intentions! But then it wasn’t that one incident but the whole situation surrounding it that caused my reaction. Basically, I decided that this explained my unhappiness and gave me hope that it would change, but probably not for a long time. I now understood my parents’ source of joy: this incredibly exciting, scary thing that they did together privately, just the two of them, with me entirely excluded. Obviously I wouldn’t be happy until I had found somebody to do this thing with too. And obviously it would have to be real love, and the boy would have to be handsome and I would have to be beautiful, and all the ideals of my young parents and of the fairy-tales they read to me at night would have to come into play. And so my romantic longing began in earnest, terribly early in my life, on that morning in front of the AGA.

  The school that my parents particularly wanted me to go to, and a big reason for moving where they did, was St Christopher School in Letchworth Garden City, four miles out of the village of Weston and down a steep hill. It was founded by Quakers and was ‘progressive’, which so far as I could tell meant that there was a bit more respect given to what the children had to say, there was no uniform, we called the teachers by their Christian names and there was an emphasis on the arts. It was also vegetarian.

  To begin with I went to the Montessori part of the school, which had its own little house on the far side of the playing field; the headmaster lived upstairs. We had pegs in the cloakroom with pictures on and our name written underneath. I would hang up my little red duffel coat and shyly follow the other children into the classroom, where there would be colours and letters and numbers to identify, and a big tray of flags from every nation. We did reading and writing, drawing and painting; we had music lessons where we sang, tinged triangles and bashed tambourines. Eleven o’clock was elevenses time: those little third-of-a-pint glass bottles of milk with a straw, and a brown-bread rusk made in the main kitchen. (You had to try to avoid the overdone ones as they were bitter and nasty).

  Once I started going for the afternoon as well as the morning, I was there for rest time, when small canvas beds were erected and we each lay under a blanket listening to a story for half an hour. Outside there was a wooden climbing frame, and a sandpit, and a swimming pool in which we splashed around naked in the summertime, using tractor inner tyres to keep us afloat.

  I became very attached to Patsy Lyle, who was shepherdess to the little class (as opposed to the slightly older ones). I would follow her around, hanging on to her long skirts and looking up into her calm, grey eyes. She was tall and serene and endlessly patient. When I had been there about a year, rumours began that she was to be married to the music teacher, John Myatt, whose son was in my class. I saw them together, the way they smiled at each other, and got that funny feeling again that I sometimes had about Mummy and Daddy. I knew there was a grown-up secret going on, and it was huge and disturbing because I wanted it... I so much wanted that closeness that I saw, yet the more I wanted it the more shy I became, the more tongue-tied and unable to feel free to play and laugh and shout – especially with boys.

  But by the time I was five I had made friends with some girls. I was never a girly-gaggle type person, but I would make one special friend and knowing that they liked me would give me the confidence to talk and play with them. My first friend was called Judy – a bright-eyed, bubbly girl from a Jewish family; then there was Gillian, and then I made friends with Josephine, whom I loved especially because she was even quieter than me. She also had long, blonde hair – a darker, more honey shade than mine. Now Jo was in the class above me, and she was friends with George Gulfulvi... well, that’s what his name sounded like, and I was told it was Polish. To me it sounded embarrassingly like vulva. I was very impressed that Jo could be so casually friends with this boy; maybe it was because she had a brother. And for some reason I decided that George might be the answer to my longings.

  He was small and energetic and fairly confident – not the sort of man I would go for later in life, when tallness was the most important prerequisite! Of course he had no idea how I felt, and I never dared approach him, though those rare occasions when I would catch a ball he had thrown or brush past him in the cloakroom, or when a word or two was accidentally exchanged for some practical reason, became treasures that I would take home and dwell on for days. I made a little book - fixed the pages together myself, and wrote ‘LOVE BOOK’ on the front - and inside I wrote about loving George. I made up a story in which George was lost in the woods and I came to rescue him and he was so grateful that he loved me for ever and ever. I knew I was pretty, with my blue eyes and long blonde hair, so I did think there was a chance I could be loveable.

  And then something terrible happened: Mummy discovered the book. I don’t know if it had been under my pillow or in a drawer, but somehow she found it. I felt so humiliated and ashamed. I can’t remember exactly how she reacted – certainly she wasn’t cross. It was never as simple as that. She seemed so caring and attentive that I could never quite work out why I felt so uncomfortable. I think she sat me on her knee, and she was all smiles and surprise and – well, I didn’t know the word ‘patronising’ at the time, but it felt as if she was looking down on me, and I felt very small and foolish. I suppose the thing was, somewhere inside I knew that I was meant to be receiving love from my parents and giving it in return, I knew that I shouldn’t really be having these far-flung fantasies at such an early age. Yet I couldn’t trust my mother to receive my love; I felt that if I gave her what she so desperately wanted – a happy, loving child – then somehow her enormous need would gobble me up and I would cease to exist. So I was stuck feeling terribly guilty and ashamed of myself, but at the same time determined not to let her see it: not to let her see any of what I felt. My little heart was full of love, but trapped and paralysed by fear.

  On my sixth birthday I had a party and invited friends from school, and a few from the village. I dressed in my red velvet dress with the daisy-chain lace, and we played musical bumps and pass-the-parcel and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Then we sat down to tea. I don’t think I ever saw white bread in the house, so the sandwiches were still brown, probably with peanut-butter or cheese, but there were lots of other yummy treats such as twiglets and crisps, and biscuits with animal pictures on, and little gem biscuits with a swirl of hard icing on the top, and chocolate fingers, and orange jelly with pieces of tinned mandarin in the bottom.

  When we had filled our tummies, the lights went off and Carmen appeared from round the corner with the air of ceremony and style that she did so well, and placed in the middle of the table the most magical cake I had ever seen. It was built in the shape of a fairy-castle, with swiss-roll turrets and ice-cream cone pinnacles all covered in white icing that glistened in the light of the candles. The castle was placed on a mirror, making a broad moat surrounded by small trees. And while the candle flames reflected in the moat and in our wide-open, awestruck eyes, she told us all a story:

  “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess with long, golden hair. She was trapped in the northernmost tower of the castle” (she indicated a small window marked out in tiny silver balls)... “Her father, the King, locked her in there many years ago to protect her from the wicked world; and now she just waits, day after day, to be rescued. If you listen carefully, you can hear her plaintive cries.” (We all listened carefully). “Then one day there was a whirr of wings and a magnificent white bird came swooping down, perched on the windowsill, opened his beak and dropped something into the room.” This was accompanied by broad, expressive gestures so that with just a little imagination we could see the princess at the window and the bird flying towards her.

  “If you look closely you might see the flash of light as it falls from his beak,” she told us... “What could it be? Is it a little silver key? - a magic jewel? And now the great bird is bending his head and whispering something in the princess’s ear. Listen... Perhaps he is telling her the
words of a magic spell to make the prince arrive, perhaps he is the prince, in disguise; perhaps he is inviting her to climb on his back and fly away. But no – look – he’s spreading his wings and soaring off into the distance. So is it all hopeless? She is still trapped in the tower. What was it that the bird gave her, and what did he tell her?... Wait: what is that sound?? Shush... listen very carefully. I think she’s singing,” she whispered; “And now it’s getting louder and louder. You know, I think that bird planted a tiny seed of love in the princess’s heart, and she’s singing because she’s happy...”

  The lights went on, the candles were blown out and I cut the cake and wished. But it would take me years and years to escape from that tower, and even longer to figure out what I was doing there in the first place.

  3

  Home

  I want to tell you more about Long House. It was, after all, the place where I built the person who I was to be for the rest of my life. I always think that childhood lasts about a hundred years, in terms of just how many new impressions we receive, how much we learn, what a lot happens! And I’ve come to understand even more later in life how crucial those early years are and how deeply they influence all our decisions and responses for ever after.

  Perhaps also my home was particularly important to me because of the strange mixture of safety and fear that I felt around my parents. There’s a way in which I have been trying to find another Long House ever since. Second most important to my need for a partner is my need for a home with soul: with beauty, a sense of history, a connection with nature... something at least a little bit similar to that dear little house in Weston, Herts.

  She was built in the reign of Queen Anne, which I believe was brief, but produced some pretty buildings. There were two bow windows at the front of the house, upstairs and downstairs, in which there was still a lot of the original curved glass; and all the sash windows were that pleasing shape and size they were so good at that time. The front door was painted olive green, carved with decorative grooves; and there was a solid little porch with white pillars. The walls were ‘pebble-dash’, the roof was slate and the chimneys had the traditional clay pots.