But as soon as I tried to write my life story, I mean really write it, as opposed to just sitting with it in front of me, I suddenly understood why, the first night I’d been there, everyone in the Reading Room had been slapping the desks with the palms of their hands, crumpling up balls of paper, throwing them at the wall in despair and shouting ‘I can’t do this!’
Faced with the questions, I found I deeply didn’t want to answer them.
37
What was my earliest memory? I wondered, looking at the empty page in front of me. Any one of many. The time that Margaret and Claire put me in the crolly doll’s pram and pushed me round in it at high speed. I still remembered being squashed into the too-small pram, blinded by the summer sun and Margaret’s and Claire’s laughing faces beneath the brown, pudding-bowl haircuts we all had. I remembered how much I hated my hair and wished fiercely for long, golden ringlets like Angela Kilfeather’s.
Or running after Margaret and Claire on my chunky, little legs, trying to keep up. Only to be told ‘Go home, you can’t come, you’re too small.’
Or coveting Claire’s powder-blue patent sandals, which had a strap across the toe and another around the ankle and – the best part of all – a white, patent flower on the bit across the toe.
My earliest memory could have been of the time I ate Margaret’s Easter egg and we all got locked out.
Instantly, it was as if the lights in the Reading Room had dimmed. Oh dear, I still felt peculiar even twenty-three years later, as I recalled that day. It certainly didn’t feel like twenty-three years, it felt like yesterday.
It was a Beano Easter egg, I remembered clearly. I don’t think they make Beanos anymore, I thought, trying to distract myself from the painful memory. As I recalled, Beanos became extinct some time in the seventies. I supposed I could always check with Eamonn. They were lovely, like Smarties, but in much brighter, groovier colours.
Margaret had saved the Easter egg from April and it was then about September. That was the kind of sister Margaret was. I was tormented by her ability to hoard.
I was the total opposite. When we got our Sunday packet of Cadbury’s éclairs, I could hardly wait to get the paper off before shoving them into my mouth. And when I’d finished, hers were still untouched. Then, of course, I was sorry I hadn’t saved mine and I wanted hers.
For months, the Easter egg stood on top of our wardrobe, winking and dazzling me with its glittery red paper. I coveted it incessantly with every inch of my plump little body. I was obsessed with it.
‘When do you think you’ll eat it?’ I’d ask, trying to pretend that I didn’t care. Trying to pretend I didn’t feel I would die if it wasn’t in the next five minutes.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said airily, control-freak that she was.
‘Really?’ I said, with grim nonchalance. It was vitally important never to let anyone know what it was that you really wanted. Because if they knew, they deliberately wouldn’t give it to you. If you ask, you don’t get, was my experience.
‘I might never eat it,’ she mused. ‘I might just throw it out.’
‘Well,’ I said carefully, holding my breath at the thought of clinching the deal and getting what I wanted, ‘there’s no need to throw it out, I’ll eat it for you.’
‘Do you want to eat it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, forgetting to dissemble.
Aha! So you want to eat it.’
‘No! I…’
‘You do, it’s obvious. And Holy God says that, because you’ve asked, it makes you unworthy. You weren’t humble, see?’
At the age of five and a quarter, Margaret was an authority on God.
I knew very little about Him except that He was a right old meanie and behaved the way the rest of the people in my world did. If you wanted something and asked for it, you were automatically disqualified from getting it. It seemed to me that the only safe way to live your life with God around, was to want things you didn’t want.
The God I grew up with was a cruel one.
The sister I grew up with was a cruel one.
I was confused by her self-control, confused by my own weakness. How come I wanted her Easter egg so badly and she didn’t seem bothered at all?
The day I finally cracked, I didn’t intend to eat it.
Not all of it, in any case.
I only meant to scoff the little cellophane bag of Beanos in the middle. The plan was to rewrap the Easter egg in its red tinfoil and cardboard box and replace it on top of the wardrobe, as good as new. And, if Margaret ever came to eat it, and found her little bag of sweets missing, she’d just think she got a dud one from the factory. I might even say that I didn’t get any Beanos in the middle of mine either, I thought, pleased with my cunning. That claim would certainly add authenticity.
The notion of stealing it gestated slowly and resentfully. I chose my time carefully.
Claire and Margaret were at school; Margaret’s teacher said she’d never met such a well-behaved little girl in her thirty-eight years of teaching. Smelly-bum Anna was asleep in her cot, and Mum was out at the clothes-line, a trip that usually meant an absence of several hours as she stood at the garden wall talking to Mrs Kilfeather, mother of Angela of the angelic, golden ringlets.
I dragged a yellow wicker chair over to the big, heavy, brown wardrobe (sleek, white, jerry-built, plastic-looking fitted wardrobes were still in our future. Such wardrobes were ‘mod-cons’ and our house had no ‘mod-cons’.)
I clambered up on the chair and stood on my tippy-toes, stretching hard to reach. I told myself over and over again that it was obvious that Margaret didn’t want the Easter egg. I nearly had myself convinced I was doing her a favour. Finally, I tipped it with my hand and it tumbled down on top of me.
I carried the box and lay on the floor between my bed and the wall, so that if Mum came in, I wouldn’t get caught.
There was a moment of fear before I pulled at the cardboard. But I was beyond resisting by then. My mouth watered, my heart pounded, my adrenalin pumped. I wanted chocolate and I was going to have it.
Opening the box wasn’t easy. Margaret still had the sellotape on it, for Janey’s sake. That meant, I realized in disgust, she hadn’t opened it, even to lick it.
Carefully, fat little hands sweating, I lifted the sellotape. But it was no good, the cardboard came with it. But I decided I was too excited to care and that I’d worry about that later.
Reverentially, I lifted the red, shiny ball of chocolate from the box and the smell hit me. Desperate to start cramming chunks of chocolate into my mouth, instead I forced myself to carefully peel away the tinfoil. Once off, the two halves fell apart, exposing the rustly cellophane bag of Beanos nestling within. Like Little Baby Jesus in the manger, I thought excitedly.
I had genuinely only planned to eat the Beanos but, once I’d finished them, I wanted more. More. LOTS MORE!
Why not? I asked myself. There’s plenty. Anyway, she doesn’t even want it.
I can’t, I realized, she’ll kill me.
You can, I coaxed, she won’t even notice.
OK, I thought, a compromise quickly forming, I could eat one half of it, then cover the other half again with the red paper, stick it back on top of the wardrobe with the good side facing out and Margaret will never know.
Happily convinced, proud of how clever I’d been, I took one half of Margaret’s Easter egg in my hand and, panting slightly from fear and anticipation, snapped it in half. Joyously, blood racing from fulfilment, I stuffed it into my mouth, barely tasting the chocolate before I swallowed it.
The frenzy was brief.
At about the time the last mouthful disappeared, the shame arrived. Guiltily, rapidly, I covered the remaining half with the tinfoil. I didn’t want to look at it anymore.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop the shiny paper from looking puckered and wrinkled. But when I tried to smooth it out with my fingernail, I ripped it! My lust for sugar and chocolate had been sated. Fear, which couldn’t coexist
with such lust, reappeared.
With deep regret, I wished I hadn’t touched anything. I wished I’d never even heard of Easter eggs. Margaret would know. And, even if Margaret didn’t, God knew. I’d go to Hell. I’d burn and sizzle like the chips Mum made for us every Friday.
Sick with chocolate overload and nostalgia for ten minutes previously when the chocolate was still unconsumed, I rearranged the paper, and put the remaining half of the Easter egg back into the box. But it wouldn’t stay upright because the other half wasn’t there to support it against the back part of the box.
And now that the sellotape had half the box attached to it, it was no longer sticky.
Then I was really afraid. Really, really afraid. I would have given anything to put time back, before I’d eaten it. Anything.
Please God, help me, I prayed. I’ll be good, I’ll never do anything like this ever again. I’ll give her my Easter egg next year. I’ll give her my Cadbury’s éclairs every Sunday, just don’t let me get caught.
Eventually, I managed to jam the remains of the Easter egg into the front hole of the box. I closed it up and put it back on top of the wardrobe.
I convinced myself it looked fine. The front bit was perfect, you’d never know that the back bit no longer existed. Margaret’s Easter egg was just like the man they found down in O’Leary’s swamp who’d had his skull beaten in, I realized, not displeased with the image. The discovery had caused great excitement along our road and in at least four other roads either side of us. But our road was the centre of all the fuss because one of our citizens, Dan Bourke’s father, found the corpse. At first, he thought the man was just having a little lie-down because his face looked normal. But when Mr Bourke lifted him up, his brains spilled all down his back. Dan Bourke said it was so disgusting that his dad got sick.
We weren’t supposed to know about it, I heard Mum say, ‘Ssshh, walls have ears,’ and jiggle her eyebrows at us. But Dan Bourke, who had the inside track, told us everything. He said it happened with a poker and I subsequently took a great interest in our poker and wondered if that too could make a man’s brains spill down his back. I asked my mother and she said, no, that our poker was a nice person’s poker.
That didn’t stop us playing ‘Dead man in O’Leary’s swamp’with it, for part of the summer. There was very little to it. One of us would pretend to hit the other on the head with the poker, then the one who’d been hit had to lie down for ages, then someone else had to be Mr Bourke and come along and pretend to puke. Once, Claire did the puking bit so well, she really did throw up.
That was great.
When Mum found out about our game, she took the poker away and we had to use a wooden spoon instead which wasn’t half as authentic.
As it happened, the removal of the poker coincided with the Shaws getting a paddling pool and Hilda Shaw suddenly being inundated with invitations from wannabe new best friends.
Claire, Margaret and I all tendered bids. As usual, I wasn’t even shortlisted. Claire and Margaret got as far as the second interview, then received the manila envelope telling them they’d been among the successful applicants.
So while they swanned off in their pink togs that had three rows of little frills around the bum bit, I had to stay at home in the back garden, odd-man-out as always, and play Annoy-The-Mother.
(‘Mummy, why is the sky?’
‘Why is the sky what, Rachel?’
‘No, just why is the sky?’
‘You can’t just ask why is the sky, it doesn’t make sense.’
‘Why?’
‘It just doesn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Stop saying why, Rachel, you’re annoying me.’
‘Why?’
‘Go and play with Claire and Margaret.’
‘Can’t, they’re in Hilda Shaw’s paddling pool.’
Pause.
‘Mummy, why is the grass?’
‘Why is the grass what, Rach…’)
Anyway, Margaret’s rearranged Easter egg looked fine on the wardrobe, so I thought. Reassured, I went to check on my mother. She was still out in the garden, talking to Mrs Nagle, on the other side. What do they talk about? I wondered. And how can they do it for so long? Grown-up people were funny. Especially the way they never wanted to break things. Or pinch people.
I loitered, hanging onto my mother’s skirt, leaning against her. I thought she’d never leave, so to speed things up and get some attention I complained ‘Mummy, I need to do a poo,’ even though I didn’t.
‘Oh, blast!’ she exclaimed to Mrs Nagle. ‘I can’t call my soul my own round here. Come on!’ But as soon as we got inside she busied herself with Anna. I still didn’t have her attention.
Who or what would I play with? And unbidden, the thought shimmered to me of the remaining half of Margaret’s Easter egg. Just up the stairs. A few minutes’ walk away. So near. It would be so easy to just…
No! I mustn’t, I reminded myself.
But why not? Another voice wheedled. Go on, she won’t mind.
So back I went to the scene of the crime. Over to the wardrobe, up on the chair and down with the Easter egg.
This time I ate it all and there was none left to put in the box as a façade. The terror and shame returned, but worse, far, far worse than the last time.
Too late, I realized I was done for.
Heart thumping with fear, I knew I couldn’t just leave the empty box sitting on the wardrobe. I looked around for places to dispose of the evidence while I wished I’d never been born. Under the bed? No way, most of our games took place under there. Behind the couch in the good room? No, when I’d hid Claire’s Sindy doll there after I cut all its hair off, they’d found it alarmingly quickly. I finally decided on the coal-hole because it was no longer used. (I was still too young to make the connection between warm weather and no fires.)
And then I agonized about what I’d say when Margaret noticed the absence of her prize piece of confectionery.
Naturally, I had no intention of owning up. On the contrary. If I could have blamed anyone else I would have. But that didn’t usually work either. When I’d tried to frame Jennifer Nagle for pulling the head off Margaret’s crolly doll, it had all gone horribly wrong.
I’d suggest it had been stolen by a man, I decided. A scary man in a black cape who went round stealing Easter Eggs.
‘What are you doing out there?’ Mum’s voice made me jump and the pitter-pattering of my heart went into overdrive. ‘Come on, Anna’s in her go-car, if you don’t get in here right now we’ll be late collecting them from school.’
I prayed – although not with any great faith – that when we got to the school, Margaret might have broken her leg or died or something handy like that.
No chance.
So on the way back I prayed that I might break my leg or die. I often prayed to break my leg, actually. You got loads of sweets and everyone had to be nice to you.
But I reached home, alive, with full bodily integrity, and almost gibbering with terror.
There was a brief moment when I thought I was saved – my mother couldn’t open the back door. She jiggled and fiddled the key and still nothing happened. She pulled the handle towards her and tried again, but the door remained closed.
And a trickle of ominous fear began in me.
The grim muttering that Mum had been doing under her breath grew louder and less muttery and more shouty.
‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ I asked, anxiously.
‘The lock seems to be fecking well broken,’ she said.
Then I was really afraid! My mother never said ‘fecking’. She gave out to Daddy when he did and told him to say ‘flipping’ instead. Things must be bad.
With a deep, abiding certainty, I knew that this was all my fault. It had something to do with me eating Margaret’s Easter egg. I’d done a bad sin, it might even be a mortal one, although I wasn’t really sure what that was, and now I was being punished. Me and my family.
I
waited for the sky to darken the way it did in the pictures of Good Friday I’d seen, after Baby Jesus died.
‘Isn’t this desperate, Rachel?’ Claire asked slyly. ‘We’ll never see the inside of our lovely house again.’
At that I burst into noisy, terrified, guilty tears.
‘Stop it,’ Mum hissed at Claire. ‘She’s bad enough as it is.’
‘We’ll get a man to fix the lock,’ Mum told me impatiently. ‘Stay here, mind Anna, while I run over to Mrs Evans to ring someone.’
As soon as she was gone, Margaret and Claire regaled me with horror stories of girls in their class in school who’d had the lock on their house broken and never got back into their homes.
‘She had to go and live in the dump,’ Claire said. ‘And wear torn clothes.’
‘And she had a cornflakes box for her pillow,’ Margaret added.
‘And her only toy was a piece of paper that she had to make into shapes, even though she’d had piles of dolls and fuzzy felt in her house.’
I wept terrified tears, appalled at what I’d destroyed. I was single-handedly responsible for depriving my family of a home. All for being a little pig.
‘Can’t we get another house?’ I begged.
‘Oh no.’ They both shook their heads.’ Houses cost a lot of money.’
‘But I’ve got money in my tin,’ I offered. I would have given my life, let alone the fifty new pence I had in the red post-box tin that Auntie Julia had given me.
‘But the tin is locked in the house,’ Claire pointed out and the pair of them collapsed with malicious laughter.
Mum came back and said that we had to sit round the front so that the man would see us when he arrived. Neighbours offered us sanctuary and tea, but Mum said we’d better stay where we were. So Mrs Evans sent over a plate of banana sandwiches, which Claire and Margaret ate with gusto, while sitting on the grass. I couldn’t eat a thing. I would never eat again. Especially not Easter eggs.
People passing up and down the road looked at us with interest, as they made their way home from school or work for their early-seventies-style repast. Hurrying past us for their instant mash, followed by instant whip, humming a David Cassidy song, resplendent in their acrylic tanktops, waiting for the Vietnam war to end and the oil crisis to kick in.