It was flat, and not very well wrapped. Slowly she unravelled it, and there it was, a catapult. I couldn’t believe it.
‘Why’s Dad bought you a catapult?’
‘I asked him to, it’s to get rid of them cats next door.’ And she told me how she’d tried everything from scraps to menaces. But still they peed on her prize roses. She was going to ping at them now with dried peas. I shook my head, not knowing how to say that I had only bought her a cardigan . . .
I didn’t see much of them for the next couple of days; they were at church. And it was in the first post after Christmas that my mother received the dreadful news. It was about the Morecambe guest house again, or rather, its owner Mrs Butler.
‘Definitely a job for Pastor Finch,’ said my mother, putting on her coat to go to the phone box. As soon as she had gone I picked up the letter. It seemed that Mrs Butler, depressed by falling numbers at the guest house, and frustrated by the constant nagging of the health authority, had taken to drink. More importantly, she had got herself a job as matron of a local old folk’s home. While there she had taken up with a strange charismatic man who had once been the official exorcist to the Bishop of Bermuda. He had been dismissed under mysterious circumstances for some kind of unmentionable offence with the curate’s wife. Back in England and safe within the besotted arms of Mrs Butler, he had persuaded her to let him practice voodoo or some of the more senile patients. They had been caught by a night nurse.
Imagine my mother’s feelings; the Society for the Lost had been a bitter blow, the Morecambe guest house a terrible shock, but this was the final straw. I stared into the fire waiting for her to come home. Families, real ones, are chairs and tables and the right number of cups, but I had no means of joining one, and no means of dismissing my own; she had tied a thread around my button, to tug when she pleased. I knew a woman in another place. Perhaps she would save me. But what if she were asleep? What if she sleepwalked beside me and I never knew? Then the back door slammed and my mother marched in on a gust of wind, the knot of her headscarf blown up on to her cheek like a patterned goitre. ‘What a mess,’ she raged, throwing the letter on to the fire. ‘If I’m not sharp I’m going to miss my broadcast. Fetch the headphones.’ I passed them over to her, and she adjusted the microphone.
‘This is Kindly Light calling Manchester, come in Manchester, this is Kindly Light.’
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
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