English-Language Arts Network

Excerpt from the Novel, Baglady: Ashley's COPE BOOK for Stepchildren

Autumn, 1962

I should have known it would be a bad day. A thick-larded fog smothered the road to the airport. Then, of course, the car heater wasn't working and to keep warm, Father and I laid newspapers, rolled around steaming portions of fish and chips, on our laps. Droplets of oil oozed from his lower lip as steadily he chewed his way through our communal feast. His fleshy fingers, bedecked in New Age crystals, gripped the steering wheel; with the piercing gleam of a would-be visionary, his eyes strained to divine the inscrutable road ahead.

"Damn!" he muttered. Irritable, as always. He, of course, had known that her plane would be late. This was another of his gratuitous predictions that I usually ignored. Occupational hazard, it must have been. Unavoidable. As traveling salesman for ZODIAC PRODUCTIONS, he sometimes dragged home whole boxes of chipped crystal balls, cracked ouija boards, dog-eared Tarot Cards, or remaindered books entitled Baleful Influence of the Stars.

Over the years, Father had struggled to master the mathematics of Foresight and eventually sketched his own celestial blueprint on discarded sheets of office stationery. It was not an edifying sight. I couldn't make sense of the squiggly Suns and Moons and Venuses littering his life's Occult Plan. It seemed to depress him an awful lot though until, with the help of some creative accounting and thoughtful number jigging, he custom-designed his horoscope to suit himself. But there was no sense in finagling the positions of today's planets in the Ephemeris. What else could you expect on a night when Saturn was in square formation to the Moon? Nostradamus, roll over-Stepmother's plane was going to be late.

And, of course, it was late. At first they postponed it for an hour, and then two; so Father and I whittled away the time drinking coffee in the tearoom, laughing greenly about the good old days when I was a pert and sassy young miss who had sabotaged the very short-lived relationship with his last live-in girlfriend. He went on to warn me, with a ferocious smile, to be nicer to 'this one.' This was my very last chance, or else he would ship me straight home to Mother.

How did Father get custody of me? Well, he kidnapped me one day, guessing that Mother wouldn't notice my departure for several days. When she did she wept copiously, cried foul, and tried to engage a lawyer. But she soon ran short of energy and funds and eventually was obliged to give me up for lost. The normal day's work was exhausting at the best of times. Just opening her eyelids each morning required a heroic effort. It was an Olympian feat-a repeated miracle. And when she was up and about, for the first few hours she shambled around in her mind like a swollen gourd, swilling down oceans of tea.

There was one sacred rule in our house-bring your ragged, bony body home alive before midnight. Mother hardly ever knew where I was, or what I was up to. She spent a lot of time drooling over the otherworldly colours of a sunset or the seductive sheen of a Spanish onion. "Darling—" I shall always remember her calling, whenever she heard me slam the front door and run upstairs to forage into our near-empty larder,"—do mummy a big favour and make a pot of tea."

Father had had a succession of disappointments in his search for a life partner. As he approached his mature, not to say declining years, he decided to go the fool-proof route. His new mail-order bride hailed from some mountainous hamlet in eastern Europe, neither of whose unpronounceable names (bride or hamlet) he could remember. But what did that matter? Zsuzsa's black-and-white snapshot and her 'curriculum vitae' charmed him into a state of expectant bliss. She had all the necessary virtues he required. She was young, thin, beautiful and fully domesticated. She scarcely spoke a word of English, into the bargain. Father seemed to consider this not a handicap of any kind, but rather an unexpected stroke of luck. Of course, being a salesman wine-aged in duplicity himself, he had cautiously pored over the contract-to-purchase before signing below the prominent block letters which promised: 100% SATISFACTION-OR REPLACEMENT. RETURN POSTAGE GUARANTEED.

At 9.45pm I wandered into the airport rest room and scrutinized my pale larval features in the depressingly truthful looking glass. Would Zsuzsa like me, I wondered, or would she reluctantly take me in, a grimy stray, at the tips of her fastidious fingers? To my dismay, I had stumbled into the butt end of a fairy tale. Perhaps you've heard of the swan who turned into an ugly duckling? It is I. The most pampered and adored of children, with gold-leaf skin and cornsilk hair, had been transformed, seemingly overnight, into a malcoordinated giant that thumped and bumped into the protuberances of tables, chairs and staircases. And had my very life depended upon it, I could not manage to keep my muddy thatch of hair out of my squinting eyes.

Mother said I was at the awkward age, a fuzzy caterpillar suffering the longest winter of its discontent. Perhaps that's why my features were still indistinct, a half-finished bust of clay some artist was puzzling over with muddy hands. My starry eyes had lost their lustre, hidden behind the ugly spectacles I'd acquired last year. And my once-satin skin was now coarse and oily and pocked with stubborn blackheads that spread like a rash over my developing Pinocchio nose. Sad to say, I was no longer the little darling I once had been.

When I got back to the lounge Father had, at last, located his Beloved-to-be. She had wandered into the airport terminal with a home-made name tag around her neck, trailing behind her the scent of fresh marigolds and looking desperately lost. Her hair, even her skin was rough and exotic-like cinnamon bark. Her dark, angst-ridden eyes scanned the crowd, and she glanced at me with a vaguely hostile air, as though I represented the competition; no doubt because I clung as possessively as she did to Father's other arm. At first glance, I didn't like her either. No doubt, the feeling was mutual. I wonder if Father dared hazard a prediction on that?