Whistling for the Elephants.

SANDI TOKSVIG.

To Julie.

I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable a.s.sistance in writing this book: my editor, Ursula MacKenzie, and all the staff at Transworld; my agent, Pat Kavanagh; The Born Free Foundation for all the work they do and for introducing me to Cynthia Moss, elephant expert; the staff at the British Library Reading Rooms, Bloomsbury; the Gladys Society; and for love and support, my family and friends, my children and Alice.

Chapter One.

There are two basic types of creature in Nature's kingdom. The first, like frogs and turtles, produce many offspring and simply hope that some will survive. The second, like elephants and people, produce one, or two at long intervals, and make great efforts to rear them. My mother belonged in a cla.s.s of her own. She produced two at short intervals and made no effort to rear them whatsoever. Some people agonize over these things but I thank G.o.d. A hint more attention from my own family and things might never have turned out the way they did.

We need to go back a bit. 1968. I was ten. Almost certainly I was wearing a short tartan kilt (Clan McLadybird), a white shirt, a very neatly tied tie, a blue blazer and a peaked sailor's cap which hid my long curly ginger hair. No-one made me dress like that. It was a kind of school uniform I had invented for myself In the photos the combination tie and skirt make me look a strange boy! girl hybrid. My face, born with a frown, was obscured by the peak of my hat. I had spent most of my early childhood shielded from a full view of anything. The cap and I were inseparable. I was, even in my tender years, trying to develop a rakish look. I spent many hours trying to persuade people to call me Cap'n instead of Dorothy. It didn't work. Not a popular child. Not even with my parents.

Mother and I were, as ever, travelling. It was what we did. Always first-cla.s.s and always a long way. This is not a story about coming up the hard way. At least not financially. It should have been idyllic. It was, I suppose, an education of a sort. I could read a wine list and order any meal combination in perfect French by the time I was seven. My first sentence was reputed to have been 'What the h.e.l.l's happened to room service?', but that may be family myth. I know that my brother Charles and I thought laundry came out cleaned and ironed if you left it in a bag overnight. Our life only came home to me as strange when Father rented a car the summer I was nine, in Berlin. The car-hire woman wanted our permanent home address and none of us could think of one.

My grandmother thought we were growing up 'as gypsies', which is why Charles finally went to boarding school. The crunch had come during an annual visit to Granny.

'What's for dinner?' said Charles, then probably six to my four.

'Roast beef,' said Granny.

'What else is on the menu?' asked my brother, sealing his fate.

We didn't know about everyday life. We didn't know it was possible to have just roast beef Charles was dispatched to Father's old school on the Suss.e.x coast. He went off to learn a smattering of Hardy, an ability to distinguish places of interest on an Ordnance Survey map of the Rhine Valley and to decline absolutely anything in Latin - except occasional b.u.g.g.e.ry by the Latin master on exeat weekends when Granny wouldn't have him. Charles received the dubious honour of a public-school education because he had been clever enough to be born with a p.e.n.i.s. I, rather more stupidly, had come without and so carried on travelling with Mother.

Both my father and brother were called Charles. Always Charles. Never Charlie. It gives you some idea about our family that we didn't indulge in pet names. It wasn't deliberate. I just don't think anyone thought of it. Nor did we find it in the least bit confusing to have two males of the same name. This was probably due to the fact that on the whole we were not given to addressing each other directly. Anyway, my brother went off to learn 'to interact with the world'. I don't think he wanted to go. He cried for days before he went but he had no choice. In fact I think his crying rather confirmed the need for him to go. Learning to interact, not crying, was what men did. It was what Father did. I knew that because, wherever we were, he went off on the train every day to do it.

Mother didn't interact with anyone. It was not required. She was, even with the distance of time, a curious creature. Rosamund Amelia Dorland Kane. Everything about her was perfect. Her nails, her hair, her voice, all strictly first-cla.s.s. I remember her as having golden hair but I can't find a single photograph to make that true. Perhaps it is because I can only see her as a kind of aura. Not so much the woman but the fine mist of perfumes and powders which always hung about her. A woman whose entire appearance was constructed to suggest that she had never had a secretion in her life. There was absolutely nothing moist about Mother.

I can see her on that trip in '68. Sitting up in bed wearing a lace-trimmed morning jacket surrounded by her most devoted companion, Louis Vuitton. It is hard to imagine quite how much travel has changed in just these three decades or so. It makes me sound like an old fogey but it was so different then. There were no ziplock bags, absolutely everything was crushable and we always carried wooden hangers with our name embossed in gold on them. Mother and I were bound from Southampton to New York aboard the SS Hallensfjord. A five-day odyssey of c.o.c.ktail wear and endless food. Mother, always indescribably elegant, and I, almost certainly, an indescribable disappointment.

We were an odd combination, Mother and I. Early on in life she had discovered the pointlessness of enterprise. Being a married woman of some means, she had escaped the burden of usefulness. You have to understand -women's lib was still on the cusp then. No one talked about it or thought inactivity strange. Mother followed Father and his work round the world utterly disengaged from it and him. I don't know if she was bright. It never came up. She might have filled her time with religion, with some wider sense of responsibility, but being English she had escaped that too. Not for her the drive of the Protestant work ethic or the guilt of the Catholic. The Church of England was a comfortable backstay which functioned only on a social level, and then on predictable but limited days of the calendar. Mother travelled on. Going everywhere and seeing nothing. A shimmering varnish on life's great table. It didn't matter. There was plenty of surface life for her to lead.

I was, for as long as I could remember, seeking something else, but I didn't know what. I couldn't see a fresh ocean of anything but I wanted to dive headlong into it. Even at ten I longed for desperate romance, nerve- jangling drama, or even just a minor vision from G.o.d. I thought I was precisely the right sort of person to appreciate the significance of a burning bush or two and could never understand why I was not 'chosen'. Together Mother and I formed an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle. It was not a picture which screamed 'Mother and Daughter'.

On the boat, apart from supper, we didn't spend a lot of time together. In general I was expected to entertain myself. But we had two moments of scheduled daily closeness, one in the morning and one in the evening. After breakfast on my own, where I quite often ordered steak just because I could, I would go to my cabin for a while and look at my 'present'. The 'present' was the only unsolicited thing I had ever received. (I'm sure I'd had gifts from my parents at Christmas and birthdays and so on. They weren't unkind, just rather given to good form.) We had spent a short time in Singapore, I can't remember why, and I had a nice lady who looked after me called Anna. When we left she cried and she gave me my present wrapped in a silk scarf. I didn't open it for ages because I liked the idea of it so much. When I finally did it was a framed piece of illuminated ma.n.u.script. A strange thing covered in drawings and animals. Father explained that it was a tenth-century cla.s.sification of the animal world according to the Chinese. It wasn't an easy order to come to terms with, not when I was young and not really even now: 1. Those Belonging to the Emperor.

2. Embalmed 3. Tame.

4. Suckling Pigs.

5. Sirens 6. Fabulous.

7. Stray Dogs.

8. Included in the Present Cla.s.sification 9. Frenzied 10. Innumerable.

11. Drawn with a Very Fine Camelhair Brush.

12. Et Cetera.

13. Having Just Broken the Water Pitcher, and 14. That From a Long Way off Look Like Flies.

I studied the list every morning, partly to see if I could work out where I came and partly at the wonder of my unasked-for gift.

Then - 'Not too early!' - about eleven o'clock, I would knock on the connecting door between our cabins. When Mother was ready, I would sit beside her bed on a chair reading from the Hallensfjord News, which was slipped, freshly printed, under the door just after midnight each evening.

'There's clay-pigeon shooting on the top deck at twelve.'

'Oh no, dear, I couldn't stand the noise, the what do you call it, guns et cetera.' Mother lay back against the pillows, exhausted by the very thought of finishing a sentence. She often started quite well and then drifted away as if everyone knew what she was going to say anyway. She eyed me carefully. I knew even then that I wasn't right. Would never be right. I was like some very expensive appliance which she had bought in error. On paper I had all the functions of the required daughter, but she couldn't seem to make me connect to her system. I caught sight of myself in a mirror. A slightly plump girl in a tie. Too much nearly a boy. A miniature monsieur- dame that no frock could ever feminize, with impossible red hair for which there was no genetic explanation. Mother never directly criticized me. That would have been too close to an actual conversation. She looked at me closely.

'Darling, aren't you ... hot ... in that tie and jacket, you know...?' She waved a hand at my ensemble.

'No.'

Mother patted my cheek and sent me off while she powdered and dressed, which left me free till supper.

After my maternal moment, I spent my day exploring the boat. It was all old wood and reeked of polish and a tidy absence of children. I spent most of my time pretending I was a spy, but I don't think I was a very good one. In four days all I had worked out was that the lady in the Royal Suite was very kind to servants. One of the waiters visited her constantly and each time he came out he looked very happy. I took my time each morning making 'observations' as I worked my way from the Saloon deck down to Commodore. Through the library, past the ballroom and down near the shop, there was a closed, frosted-gla.s.s door. A green line on the carpet underlined the imprinted words Second Cla.s.s. I longed to go through it. I knew that beyond there was a world of mystery, where people ate chips with their dinner, fathers drank beer and children slept in the same room as their parents. This side of the door, ours, was an unreal world.

We had breakfasts of freshly peeled tropical fruit, bouillon on the Sports deck at eleven, grilled lunches on the afterdeck, tea in the casino, supper in the Polar Room and late snacks in the cabin. Not that Mother ate. She just ordered brilliantly. I don't remember there being any menus. I know the waiters might occasionally suggest things but mostly people ordered as the fancy took them. Gold-trimmed plates would emerge in triumph from the kitchen bearing a constant stream of seared steaks wrenched from the whole side of a cow, wild birds festooned with wilder berries, lobsters dancing with lemon sole, crabs clutching other crustaceans and flaming batches of Baked Alaska. Caviare nestled in the curved back of an ice swan as Mother's laugh tinkled over melting martinis.

Our other moment of closeness came every night after supper. We played bridge in the library with some cheerful octogenarians in evening wear. It was the only time I think Mother found me useful. She could never be bothered to remember what cards had been played. I usually bid rather wildly so that Mother was a.s.sured of being dummy. She liked the shuffling and the dealing of the cards because she thought it showed off her long fingers. After that she much preferred to lay her hand down and just pretend to watch while she sipped Brandy Alexanders.

'Oh, Dorothy has such a good brain, clever, numbers, et cetera. I'll leave it to ... her,' she would announce, smiling as if genuinely pleased.

Nothing stopped the elegant routine of those lazy days. At least it shouldn't have. I don't know what caused more stress to Mother that trip - the talent contest, my hair or the hurricane.

I signed up for the talent contest in secret. Before the New York posting we had been about five months in Paris. Usually Father's postings involved some nod towards my continuing education, but I don't remember even an attempt at school there. The only concession had been a Mine Henri who had provided pianoforte lessons on a Thursday afternoon while Mother rested. (Thursday lunchtime was the weekly gathering of the Parisian International Ladies Lifeboat a.s.sociation and she was always exhausted.) Mine Henri and I had worked rather hard at what I now realize was a simplified and possibly repet.i.tive version of Beethoven's The Bells. I thought it sounded wonderful. My new notion was that I was actually a child prodigy whose talents had inexplicably been overlooked. I was ready to sweep everyone away with my bit of Beethoven and the boat talent contest was, I knew, the place to do it. Mother had never heard my musical expertise and I thought to surprise her. I suppose in a way I did. We had gone to the lounge to watch the show and Mother had joined the captain and a group of socialites for coffee. She gave the tiniest murmur when my name was called and for a brief moment I swelled with pride at her unaccustomed full attention as I marched to the piano. I sat down and prepared myself My hands went to the keyboard and I began. My left hand carefully pounded up and down on the same two notes for the one-minute duration of the piece while the right plodded out something close to the tune. When I had finished there was complete silence. So, rather carried away, I played it all again. There was an even deeper silence when I had finished but I feigned exhaustion and left my instrument. Mother never opened her eyes once as I walked back across the dance floor to some belated but kind applause.

Had I been older I would have realized that I never had a chance. The prize was easily swept away by a man who did impersonations of World War Two bombers using only his tongue, a paper cup and a great deal of microphone technique. As the only entrant under forty, I got a consolation voucher to spend on board in the establishment of my choice. Mother never said a word but I knew I had let her down. Perhaps she too had expected that I was about to reveal a light under my rather ample bushel. I don't know which of us was the more disappointed. I should have been brilliant and I wasn't. I was just a kid. A regular kid. Mother went straight to bed. The next morning she didn't even want the newspaper read out. I wandered down to the Commodore deck a failure.

The Commodore deck was home to, amongst other amenities, the barber's shop. It had the most lovely smell outside it. I suppose it must have been bay rum or something. Men came and went in the big red leather chairs. It looked so comforting. Great hot towels gently wrapping their faces. A bit of jovial chat with the man in the white coat, who snipped away with hardly any hair falling on the floor at all. I had been to the ladies' hairdresser with Mother and that was quite different. All rather shrill. Lots of bright pink bottles of things, hundreds of little stabby hairpins and everything happening at too high an octave. The barber's looked and smelled more like Christmas. I stood there for about an hour looking in the window and watching customers come and go. After a while the place emptied as everyone went to change for something. There was always something to change for. The barber came out into the corridor in his white coat and shook a small towel in the air. He was about to go back in when I surprised myself.

'I've got a voucher,' I said. He looked at me as I produced the talent-contest voucher from my blazer pocket. 'Can I have a haircut?'

'What's your name?' he asked.

'Dorothy.'

'Well, Dorothy, I don't really do little girls. You need to go with your mother to see Mrs Harton down the hall at the ladies' salon.'

'But I want you to do it.'

'What sort of haircut?'

I wanted to say 'like a spy' but I knew that involved having a moustache as well so I said, 'A boy's one.'

He shrugged. 'Okay, it's your money.' And he did it. It seems odd now. Maybe he was sick of rich people and didn't care any more. A short haircut. A really short haircut. I didn't have the hot towel on account of not having a moustache, but otherwise it was wonderful. When he had finished I looked in the mirror and for the first time in my life I saw myself. An absurdly small, slightly freckled child with short red hair, now swept into a neat side parting. A young snake released from a confining skin.

The hurricane occurred that night and I remember feeling that somehow it was my fault. Had I known about Shakespearean portents in the weather then I would have been sure that my Samson-like shearing had angered the elements. I don't know why we didn't avoid the storm but we didn't. We steamed straight into the worst of it. The weather meant Mother didn't emerge for supper so I hadn't seen her between the haircut and going to bed. I awoke in my cabin to find a heavy blue-leather-and-mahogany chair walking slowly by itself across the room towards my bunk. Outside the porthole the sky had disappeared and been replaced entirely by sea. I wasn't a child given to panic but this didn't seem right. I crawled off my bed and had to clamber uphill to Mother's room. In my hurry I quite forgot my cap. All the pillows from her bed had slipped and she was now lying quite comfortably on what had previously been the wall. She was doing her nails and didn't look up as I came in.

'All right, darling? I didn't want to wake you, et cetera,' she said against the rasp of her file.

'I think we're on our side,' I said, looking at yet more water beyond Mother's window. Mother looked at the window.

'That can't be right, darling. Aaagh!' Mother fell back into almost a dead faint on the pillows.

'It's all right, Mother. I don't think we'll drown. We've been on our side for some time.

'Dear G.o.d, what will your father say?' I couldn't think what Father would say if we drowned. Something appropriate.

'I expect he'd have a word with the shipping company,' I replied.

'Oh darling, how could you? Your beautiful hair.' Mother began to weep. In the face of a potentially watery grave only my appearance was causing my mother grief I looked out of the porthole. Under the strain of the storm, the ancient stabilizers of the Hallensfjord had simply given way and we were, to put it mildly, listing. The Atlantic wind continued to whistle outside. Mother, unable to face anyone with me by her side, went back to sleep and I went to have a look. There was no danger of sinking and no one seemed in the least bit distressed. At least no one in first cla.s.s. They had paid far too much money to do anything as undignified as drowning. A rope had been strung up in the ballroom to a.s.sist pa.s.sengers with cabins on the raised side of the vessel to get to them. I spent some time with a Polish waiter hauling myself to the top of the shiny wooden floor and then sliding swiftly down to the other end. The only person I remember being at all put out was the chef He sat drinking gin in the Polar Room and weeping and weeping.

'My kitchen is ruined. I can do nothing for you. Steaks and lobsters. I am reduced to steaks and lobsters.'

'Nonsense,' said one of my octogenarians. 'We don't mind one bit. Come on. Chin up, man.'

Everyone was most sympathetic but there was an underlying sense that the chef was behaving rather badly. It was far too much emotion, even for a person allowed to be 'creative'. I think some attempt was made at a lifeboat drill in the Columbus Bar but Mother refused to go. She said her nails weren't dry yet and anyway what shoes could she possibly wear at this angle?, but I knew she didn't want to be seen with me. Mother liked the idea of lifeboats. She had raised money for them even when we lived in landlocked countries.

Everything was like a strange Alice in Wonderland dream. The library tables stood all askew. People picked a spot to walk to and then sort of fell towards it. That evening, in full dinner dress under large orange life-jackets, my octogenarians and I played gin rummy on the floor. As I was going to bed I met my Polish waiter in a corridor on the Boat deck. He was trying to push open the door to the wooden deck outside. I don't know why. There was no job to do out there. No one had had a drink on deck all day. He pushed at the door but the wind was too fierce. At last he managed it and the heavy door almost ripped from his hands as he flung himself outside. It was utterly foolish but I followed. The storm was blowing itself out but the wind didn't want to let go of the boat. The waiter turned his face to the blast and then slowly put his hands up as if arrested. He smiled as he leaned his whole body forward at an angle and began doing press-ups against the wind. It was so strong it held him easily. I struggled to his side and put my hands up in a great act of faith. We did press-ups on the wind and I wanted that. I wanted that feeling all my life.

Father was waiting for us at Pier 96 when we docked. We saw him from quite a long way off, like a patient fly waiting on a great wooden arm. I don't know what to say about Father. I didn't know him that well. I suppose a lot of people have never seen their father naked; I had never seen mine without a tie. We could see him from the embarkation deck. An immaculate, entirely white-haired head. His back ramrod straight and his collar so tight that he constantly twitched his head sideways to relieve the pressure. He saw us but he didn't shout. He never shouted. A cricket ball with an unlucky bounce had once hit him in the throat at school and I never heard him speak above a whisper. He didn't need to be any louder. You always knew where you were with Father. He was a man of few but clear notions in life. They were mostly to do with men: Manners maketh man Coloured shirts on a man are a sure sign of h.o.m.os.e.xuality and Never trust a man in a ready-made bow tie.

Ex-Army, he had a surprising amount of chin for an Englishman and rather more hair than must have been thought sensible in the mess. He had not been 'fast track' enough for the services and they had tipped him out as major, fit for nothing except to be in charge. After a comfortable and extended bachelorhood, at the age of forty-five he had made up his mind to marry and picked the first attractive woman who came along. Twenty years younger than him, Mother had rather shocked him by producing two children. I don't know what he thought about fatherhood except that it was an awkward announcement to make at his club.

After the Army, Father travelled with the Foreign Office. I'm not entirely sure what he did. I desperately wanted him to be a spy but in my heart I knew he wasn't. His shoes were too squeaky and he was clean-shaven. I think he was something to do with protocol. It was both his business and his pa.s.sion to know exactly how one ought to behave in any given situation.

'h.e.l.lo, my dear.' He patted me on the back and kissed Mother politely on a proffered cheek. 'No trouble, I hope?'

We were three days late. Mother dismissed it with her hand and frowned at the customs officer examining her lingerie.

'Hey, lady, whatja got here?' the Bronx officer shouted, holding up an intimate item. The family shuddered. We were not ready for New York.

I didn't know why but Father had done a very strange thing. We had had many postings and had lived in one city-centre flat after another. This time, he had rented us a house. Not just any house but one outside the city. The sort of place that families actually lived in. With a garden. I suppose it should have been the first hint that things weren't quite right. Now that I think about it, certainly it was a place where no one Father knew would ever b.u.mp into Mother by chance. It was a hideaway but I didn't take it as that. I was too excited. I had also fallen in love with Father's car. A station wagon. I had never heard of such a thing. Powder blue and unbelievably long. Longer than necessary for any conceivable car purpose. A huge, pointy, chrome-covered, road-eating monster. It was too big to be just for business. It was a family car. Our first family car.

'It's a Pontiac,' whispered Father.

I kept saying the word over and over to myself like a kind of mantra. 'Pontiac, Pontiac, Pontiac.' We headed off on the expressway. 'Pontiac, Pontiac, Pontiac,' all the way upstate, about fifty miles to Sa.s.saspaneck. I didn't know I was going home. Pontiac. Pontiac.

'Indian name.' I leaned forward to hear as Father whispered to me on the back seat. Mother slept bolt upright in the front, seeing nothing. 'Sa.s.saspaneck. They say it's Algonquin for "Where the fresh fish meets the salt". Been reading up on the history. Fascinating bit of colonial stuff' If Father had a pa.s.sion for anything it was for history. He liked anything which had already happened. Where you knew the end of the story. He was not given to fiction. 'Place used to be packed with Algonquin. Tricky fellows. Europeans had a terrible time. No crops, smallpox, and no one could calm the Indians down. Then the British sent in General Amherst. Jeffrey Amherst. Tremendous chap.'

We crossed over the Amherst River which ran down into Sa.s.saspaneck Sound. Congregational and Methodist churches, so white that they had to have been touched by G.o.d himself, dominated the street corners. Past Tony's Pizzeria and the Dairy Queen, and then we turned down into the residential area. I couldn't imagine the Indians living here at all. Clapboard houses with porches needing paintwork and swing seats that had lost their swing stood shielded behind acres of ripped flyscreening. Everything looked big and expansive to our English eyes but I guess even then the town must have begun to feel a little down-at-heel. It was ex-grandeur rather than grandeur.

'Know what he did? Amherst? Gave all the natives blankets from the smallpox hospital. I think it must be the earliest example of modern germ warfare. Tremendous. They all died of smallpox and the settlers used the Indian stores to survive the winter.'

It was what the town was famous for. The spreading of smallpox. The killing of Indians.

'Here we are.'

The house was right on the waterfront. 5 Cherry Blossom Gardens was in what the Americans call a dead end. The French call it a 'cul de sac', which sounds slightly exclusive. The English call it a 'close', which breathes their horror of proximity, but it was a dead end. A dead end of five houses. Four of them were rather large, with one lawn running casually into the next. Ours was the smallest and the only one with a holly hedge at the front. I think that's why Father chose it. I'm sure he could never have hired a house without boundaries. The house itself was a large bungalow covered in light green clapboard which on closer inspection turned out to be made of aluminium. (It would take me a while to learn it was a ranch-style house, not a bungalow, and it was made of aluminum, not aluminium.) The clang of halyards against masts rang out across the water. A real house. I couldn't believe it. It was wonderful. Mother got out of the car and stood in the driveway looking at the new place. Father didn't look at her. He busied himself with the luggage. Mother never travelled light. He would be busy for some time. I took my own bag and headed for the front door.

'What the h.e.l.l is this?' Mother didn't yell. She didn't even raise her voice but it was enough to stop us porters in our tracks. We looked at her. Standing in the driveway at Cherry Blossom Gardens, her expensive coat flung casually across her cashmere shoulders, Mother was patently entirely out of place. The Empress of Russia come to rest in some peasant quarter.

'You need somewhere quiet,' whispered Father. 'You've not been ... yourself lately ... have you? I thought by the water...'

'Charles, I am not living here. People with smallpox wouldn't live here.' She had been listening.

Father looked at me, his neck surging around his collar looking for air.

'We need to tighten our belts a little. It will be fun, won't it, Dorothy?'

I think I was supposed to help him but I wasn't sure how. I nodded, trying to imagine us having fun.

'I am not living here,' said Mother, raising her chin but not her voice.

Father addressed a large hatbox firmly. 'I spent the money on your tickets. This is what there is.

It had been quite close to a row and everyone felt most uncomfortable. I didn't know about money then. We had always had it and I had never thought about it. If not having money meant living in a real house then I thought it was great. Father opened the door and began staggering in with luggage. I dumped my bag and wandered around. The lounge was at the heart of the house. A vast room with plate-gla.s.s windows on to a flyscreened porch overlooking Sa.s.saspaneck Harbour. Dense flyscreening protected all the large windows and made the view of the bright harbour endlessly grey. Off the sitting room were the dining room and the kitchen. The kitchen was absurd: thirty feet of fitted shininess which Mother would never set foot in. It had the most enormous fridge I had ever seen. Taller than me with a great silver lever of a handle, it bulged as if it had already overeaten. The other side of the lounge was a large bedroom for Father and Mother, again facing the harbour, a small bedroom for me and a third room for Father's study. The furniture was all 'early American' - a heavy, semi-quilted look straight from a catalogue. There was nothing about the house which suggested that it was ours but I loved it. I wandered from room to room, trying to soak it all in and ignore the strong smell of mothb.a.l.l.s. When he had finished with the bags, Father went and stood by the front door. He held the screen open until Mother had no choice but to come in. She stood in the lounge looking down at everything. Father got her a drink of water.

'Have one of your pills,' he said quietly, getting them from her bag. Mother took it and handed him back the gla.s.s without looking. Each word she spoke came out like a telegram.

'We are not staying here. I won't. I can't. You know how I get all ... et cetera.'

'I'll see what I can do,' he soothed. He always soothed her in the end. Mother went to lie down. Which was probably just as well. Father had just helped her into the bedroom and was looking out to the boats with me. We were trying to think of something to say. I thought maybe I should ask what had happened and why we were here but I couldn't think where to begin. Anyway, I liked it. I didn't want to not stay. That was when the front screen door banged open and a woman with skysc.r.a.per hair appeared.

She was the most carefully constructed woman I had ever seen in my life. Everything about her was carefully polished and planned but it didn't quite work like Mother. It was a much cheaper imitation. A market-stall run-up of a Gucci bag. A whole beauty shop of smells enveloped me as I stood, gawky and unsure in the face of such blatant womanhood. Mother often complained about women who 'hadn't made the most of themselves'. This woman had made the most of herself some time ago and then just carried on, not knowing when to stop. Nothing, not a hair was out of place. She wore very tight trousers. Black pedal pushers in spray-on form. I had never seen my mother in trousers. Indeed I don't think at that time I even had a pair myself. Her fluffy white sweater finished rather too early around her midriff and her high heels stopped rather too late. She wasn't young. I guess she must have been as much as forty but she carried her youth preserved in pancake and powder.

In her arms she carried a very elderly white poodle, a hatbox of a cake and a large black bag. The poodle too had been manicured to within an inch of its diamante collar. It looked down its nose at me as water ran from its slightly yellow, rheumy eyes.

'Hey, honey. Judith Schlick. You have gotta be Dorothy. Ain't you cute? What do they call you?'

'Dorothy,' I said.

Mrs Schlick raised a pencil-line eyebrow. 'Well, I never. Is your father home?' She swept in, moving towards Father in a spectacular series of curves as if avoiding unseen sharp objects. 'Charlie, so they came. Finally. How fabulous. A little cake. What else could I do? Think of it as a kind of Welcome Wagon.'

'Mrs Schlick...' The dog wrestled its way to the floor and Father had no choice but to take the violent cake. I had never seen an American layer cake before. It was incredible. I couldn't take my eyes off it. For a start it was green. And not just any green. Mesmerizing green. A sort of poor-man's-St-Patrick's-Day celebration green. A green you couldn't imagine anybody coming up with for anything, let alone a cake. The bright green icing was raised up all over in sharp little spikes which spat from its sides. At least a foot and a half in diameter, the cake gave rather more the impression of having landed than having been baked. It was an alien thing.