The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night Read online

  ‘Very saintly,’ I remember saying and I thought she was going to slap me.

  ‘You know we can’t afford another mouth to feed, Margaret.’

  Outside we could hear horses, their hooves clattering on the tarmac.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about the four horsemen of the apocalypse?’ she said, and started sewing again, as though the piece of material was a person she was stabbing repeatedly in the heart.

  The baby kicked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thousands of times.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, recovering quickly. ‘In that case, let me tell you this one …’

  What does the bee do?

  Bring home honey.

  And what does Father do?

  Bring home money.

  And what does Mother do?

  Lay out the money.

  And what does baby do?

  Eat up the honey.

  One night I had a dream that my mother made a scarecrow. I went downstairs to get a glass of milk and she was shoving straw inside one of the suits she’d collected for Christian Aid. She said that she was trying to make the demons go away. She stuffed it so full that it split at the seams, and then gave it a carrot for a nose. She snapped it so that the end broke. It dangled pathetically.

  ‘Right, let’s get this outside,’ and she dragged it right into the middle of her vegetable patch, next to the aubergines that had won her first prize at the church fair, even though Mrs Timmins’s were better.

  She pulled a box of matches from her pocket and lit one. She set fire to the legs of the scarecrow, letting the smoke billow out around her. She looked like a figure from a murder mystery film as I stood watching her from the doorway.

  ‘That’s right!’ she shrieked at the scarecrow. ‘You stay where you are until you’re all gone!’ And suddenly she wasn’t my mother anymore. She was Mary Tudor. ‘Heresy!’ she cried, as the flames burned white.

  The scarecrow screamed. My non-mother danced.

  I woke up, sweating, with cramp in my legs.

  By January, my stomach was so huge I used to pretend it was a map. The veins under my skin were rivers. I’d trace them in bed and read them poems. These were my baby’s wires, winding their way around the equator, deep beneath the sea.

  Flora came to visit me sometimes, when my mother was out, and my dad let her in. We played snap.

  ‘Did you hear?’ she said, dealing out the cards.

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘We got a new vicar.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, carefully. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Dunno,’ she shrugged. ‘Old, I suppose. But the other guy left in a hurry.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. He had to move out ’cause his house was burned down.’

  MARGARET (name)

  meaning: ‘a pearl’, ‘the bud of a flower’ or ‘daughter of light’.

  Other variants of Margaret are: Maggie, Madge, Marge, Meg, Megan, Rita, Daisy, Greta, Gretel, Gretchen, Magee, Mary, Molly, Meggie, Peggy and Peg.

  Once upon a time there was a boy called Hansel and a girl called Gretel. They were the children of a woodcutter. But their father had lost his job and they were very, very poor.

  Their mother was a rather wicked lady.

  ‘We cannot keep these children,’ she said to their father. ‘It is too expensive. We must take them into the middle of the forest and leave them there. I’m sure they’ll be able to survive on their own. Children are very inventive.’

  And because the father was bewitched by this woman, he said: ‘Yes, let’s. We’ll make a day of it.’

  And so they did. They told Hansel and Gretel that they were going to take them on a picnic in the centre of the forest. The children were very excited; they’d never been on a picnic before.

  But that night Hansel and Gretel overheard their parents talking about their plan to abandon them.

  ‘Hush,’ said the sister. ‘We will take some bread and drop crumbs out behind us so we can follow them all the way home.’

  So they pulled pieces of the stale bread between their fingers and let them hit the ground behind them as they walked.

  ‘Here we are!’ Their mother spread her arms out wide in the middle of the woods. ‘How wonderful. Oh wait, what’s that, over there?’

  Hansel and Gretel turned to look and, when they turned back, their parents had gone. It was so quick that Gretel wondered if they’d turned into trees.

  ‘Where’s the bread?’

  But they saw a large blackbird eating the last of the bread they had dropped. So they were stuck.

  After wandering through the woods for hours, they saw smoke in the distance. It was coming out of a chimney. The house the chimney was on top of was a strange house. It was made out of gingerbread and honey and cherries and nuts. Hansel’s stomach rumbled.

  ‘Let’s go and look!’

  As they approached the front door, it opened and a lady came out. She was old and looked oddly familiar. She was very happy to see the children.

  ‘Come on in, my dears,’ she coaxed, and in they went.

  But as soon as they were in the house, the woman slammed the door behind them.

  Boom!

  She grabbed Hansel and turned him into a bird, then threw him in a cage. He squawked in anger. Then the woman turned to Gretel and said she was going to feed her up. She said that she looked too thin. Gretel tried to run, but found her hands and legs were locked in chains. The woman made her sit on the floor, and she force-fed her:

  pomegranates full and fine

  dates and sharp bullaces

  rare pears and greengages

  damsons and bilberries

  currants and gooseberries

  bright-fire-like barberries

  and Gretel watched her stomach get bigger and bigger and bigger until she thought she was going to burst.

  She cradled her stomach like it was the world.

  ‘Now,’ said the woman, when she had fed Gretel non-stop for four days and four nights. ‘Now you are ready to go in the oven.’

  The oven was the mouth of the kitchen. The woman began to sing. ‘Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye. Let’s stuff this little girl into a pie …’

  Gretel, her eyes so small in her swollen face, noticed a broom sidling up beside her.

  ‘Use me!’ it whispered.

  So she did. Gretel managed to grab it between her chained-up hands and she waited until the woman had opened the oven and then pushed with all her might, shoving her in the back with the broom. The woman fell into the oven with a bang and a scream.

  The smell of burning flesh was overpowering.

  The spell was broken.

  The cage and chains disappeared. Hansel turned back into a boy, Gretel grabbed his hand and they ran out of the house that was made of gingerbread and honey and cherries and nuts. They ran into the forest, and then all the way home, hope leading the way.

  Their father was sitting outside their house in a deckchair, playing solitaire. He was very pleased to see them. He said that their mother had died unexpectedly in the night, and he was extremely sorry that he had tried to abandon them both in the woods.

  They all sang and danced and had a big roast supper. Their father sharpened his carving knife for the occasion. They all tucked in.

  ‘Daddy, what kind of meat is this?’ Gretel asked, a big chunk of it stuck in her teeth.

  ‘A new kind,’ her father said, calmly cutting it up into very small pieces. ‘Now, don’t forget to eat your greens.’

  The man next to me in the gallery has moved on. I can see him looking back at me every so often as though he thinks I’m crazy.

  The assistants are beginning to move around the gallery, tapping people on the shoulder, saying that they’re about to close up. That it’s time to go.

  Mary is standing by the sink, folding the ironing. She has thirty minutes until her taxi arrives. The taxi that will take her to the clinic. She’s sewn coins into the waistband of her jea
ns, one-pound coins that line her hips with gold, like a halo. A chastity belt. She’ll also drink two litres of water at the end of the taxi ride, if she can hold it in. That will help. She folds clothes, the bones of her wrists flashing upwards.

  ‘Hey. How’s it going?’

  Mary nearly jumps out of her transparent skin. There is a man sitting at the kitchen table.

  She can’t help but notice that his feet are on fire.

  ‘Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?’

  ‘Always be prepared, that’s my motto,’ and he holds his hands up in fake surrender.

  ‘I didn’t hear you break in!’

  ‘Mary, Mary.’ He flashes her a winning smile. ‘I made myself a spare key. Cuts down on all the divine apparition. You know, sometimes it’s nice to do things the human way. I’m an angel, you see.’

  Mary doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know whether to call the police. Or perhaps the fire brigade.

  Or perhaps she’s just seeing things again.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment soon, you know,’ she says. ‘So perhaps you should leave.’

  But Gabriel doesn’t leave. Mary tries to pretend he isn’t there. She turns back to the ironing and starts singing to herself. ‘Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, four and twenty blackbirds …’

  But then Gabriel begins to sing too: ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary. How does your garden grow?’

  She glares at him but he doesn’t stop.

  ‘With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row … Do you realise that that’s a song about mass execution?’

  ‘It’s about a garden …’

  ‘No. It’s about Mary Tudor, and her massacre of the Protestants. Her garden is her graveyard.’ The angel seems to take great pleasure in telling her this, and rummages through her fruit bowl as he continues. ‘Yes, silver bells are thumbscrews and cockleshells were torture devices used for, well, you know.’ He gestures to his crotch. ‘And as for “pretty maids all in a row”, maid was the name for the guillotine.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mary’s face falls.

  Gabriel looks pleased with himself. ‘And ring-a-ring-o’-roses was a song about the plague. My, my, the things parents get their children to sing about, eh? Anyway, down to business. You’re pregnant, congratulations.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Yep, you know, son of God, inside you. Perhaps the daughter of God if we’re, you know, moving with the times,’ and he laughs as though he doesn’t really think so. ‘Great stuff.’

  ‘Do I get a say in this?’

  Gabriel laughs louder. ‘Sorry, I appear to have set fire to your tablecloth.’

  I gave birth to her on a Friday, and she was gone by the Sunday. I wasn’t told what they called her; my mother said that it was best I didn’t know. She thought that naming things made you form a bond with them.

  ‘Like Adam and the world,’ she said.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  I used to wonder what would have happened if Mary had handed her baby to a stranger and told them to raise it. I think of Zeus and his many earthling children. I think of my mother, now, all these years later, acting like a child herself who no longer knows its name.

  I step out of the gallery, surprised by how dark it is. The building stands right on the edge of the Thames. Blue lights are twisted along the front of the Tate into letters, which declare: ‘Everything is going to be all right.’

  A man is taking a photo of it on his phone. It seems smug – this new version of a ‘message from above’ engineered by scaffolding, powered by electricity, shared on the Internet. Wireless technology, that’s our myth now. Telling ourselves stories that wrap around the globe. Viral whispers, buzz, buzz, buzzing.

  I wonder where all the wires go.

  I try one last time when I get to the nursing home.

  ‘Mum, about those adoption papers …’ but she’s not even listening. She’s looking at a pigeon sitting on the windowsill. Then she waves at a nurse walking by. Her nightgown flaps by her side.

  ‘Do you remember what I said?’ she says, suddenly, as though she’s just realised I’m there.

  ‘What about?’ I ask.

  ‘About my cremation,’ she says. ‘After I’m gone. I want an open-top cremation, out in the countryside – near the woods; they’ve made a law so you can do that now.’ She closes her eyes, breathing heavily. After a minute I wonder if she’s fallen asleep, but then her eyes snap back open. ‘Yes. I want four horses to draw the funeral cart.’ She sounds lucid for the first time in weeks. ‘I want to go out in flames with everyone watching …’ She laughs to herself. ‘You can set fire to my feet first, if you like.’

  Little Deaths

  Our town is full of ghosts.

  We try to catch them during break. They struggle against our grip, shapeshifting. We shove them into wine bottles and jam jars, fish bowls and snow globes. Henry tries trapping one in a fruit basket but it slowly leaks out through the cracks, making a pool of ominous red that evaporates with a giggle. Henry always catches the most but he’s taller than the rest of us, so I call it cheating.

  We give these ghosts to the teachers, who give them to the government, but I always manage to smuggle a few of them home. I have a hidden compartment at the base of my wheelchair that no one ever checks.

  My mother and I sell some of these captured spirits at the market.

  Ghosts in jars light up the streets on Saturday mornings, swinging from tarpaulin, ready to be sold as medicine and prayers. The priest-doctors weave between the stalls with tape measures, light meters and necklaces hung with IOUs. I write messages on the glass with the tips of my fingers and watch the mist disappear, never knowing if the air has swallowed it or the ghost inside has gobbled it up.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ I scrawl.

  I look for the ghost’s eyes. I want to know if it can see me; if it’s peering out at the world through crackled fog. I wonder what it’s thinking. They come in all different colours, these ghosts. The purple ones go for the highest price: slippery poltergeists. Some sellers use food dye to make exotic rainbow spirits – the brighter the better – but often the colours split or the ghost is allergic, growing and growing until it breaks through the glass and out into the air with a sigh of relief. An aggressive little ghost balloon.

  The fakers always get caught in the end.

  At the market, the nearest priest-doctor starts haggling with Henry’s dad over a violet spirit in a marmalade jar.

  ‘I’ll give you three and a blessing,’ he says, and then catches me staring, so I scramble out of my wheelchair and pull myself under the counter. I can still spy him beneath the tablecloth but he can’t see me.

  Government priest-doctors, like this one, believe that the ghosts are pockets of death which can be manipulated in labs, edited and liquidised. They claim that one of these days they’ll be able to use them to inject us with immortality. And then these ghosts that we accidentally birth inside ourselves, and hiccough out several times a day, will disappear for good.

  Then we will be empty.

  Right now, we are ghost hotels.

  I prop myself up on dusty pillows and pull my homework out of my bag.

  English:

  How would you like to die? Please number your preferences 1–10, with 1 being the most preferable. You have a 1000 word limit. You will be marked on your ability to persuade.

  Maths:

  How much should your family and friends cry at your funeral? You have a limit of 1000 tears. Please share these out among those you expect to attend. Show your working.

  Biology:

  Draw a pair of infected lungs and label them correctly.

  Philosophy:

  What is death? What does it mean to be alive? Discuss.

  I pick up a purple pencil and draw a pair of lungs that look like squashed sausages with tiny ghosts brewing at the base. I cough and clamp my hands over my mouth but an orange wisp escapes and I taste lemons
.

  Just a half ghost. Just a whisper.

  Above me, my mother is starting to argue with someone I know she’ll refuse to serve.

  Illegal scientists, like my mother, love the ghosts. She goes on expeditions across poppy fields and cliffs, secretly taking photographs, which she develops in special chemicals. We stick them on the basement walls, all sizes and colours and fantastic shapes. Sometimes my mother invites these spirits home for dinner and I get to feed them their favourite food: electricity. They hum and fizz like jellyfish and dance around in circles. Then they giggle, giggle, giggle. We record their sounds and guess their names before they fly away.

  The only ghosts we sell at the market are the ones I steal from school. Mum says we have to have a stall for show, but we only sell to jar-breakers. Not to priest-doctors or witches or anyone else. Though once I gave a ghost to a very old man who said he needed company. I told him to open the jar when he got home, introduce himself calmly and see if the ghost wanted to stay.

  I think about him sometimes. I wonder how he’s getting on.

  History:

  Do you feel the presence of the past in your breath?

  My grandma used to sit me on her knee to tell me stories about the early ghosts. The first one she’d ever seen hovered over the Green Sea, like fog. Except it moved with purpose and it was magenta, and when she closed her eyes she could hear it singing in a language she’d never heard before.

  ‘I think that ghost came from another country,’ Grandma said. ‘Some shipwrecked spirit, roaming. Looking for another home.’

  Then came reports of ghosts interfering with radio waves, floating through TV screens. An Other, from goodness knows where, until we realised we’d started birthing them ourselves. Like cold breath in the morning, except, with that breath, a memory escaped, too. A little part of us, pushed into the air: up, up and away.

  ‘And here we are,’ my grandma whispered, surrounded by ghosts. One hugged her chest, and she patted its head. ‘Some say we’ve become ugly. They think that we’re dying. I say: look at all the colours, floating in the air.’