Read Online Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson - Free Book Online
Authors: Jeanette Winterson
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fall out. But the words did not fall out and her feelings hung inside her, preserved.
When we had finished scooping out the dunny, and put fresh sawdust in the bottom to activate the new midden, my grandmother said she had a surprise for me. She made me stand in the corner of the kitchen behind the memorial oilskin, while she wheezed and whirred something out of the coal-hole. I could hear a crackling and a scratching and what sounded like fluff on the end of a record-player needle.
'Come out,' said Grandmother.
On the kitchen table was a brand-new bright blue Dansette turntable. On the turntable was a 45r.p.m. of the Beatles singing 'Help!'
Whilst I was adjusting to this unlikely apparition, my grandmother was doing the Twist or perhaps it would be better to say the Wiggle, since the two mobile parts were her bottom and her head. Her arms, bent at the elbow, were rigid in front of her, her feet were planted apart.
'I'll teach you,' she said.
She did teach me and we did not tell my mother or my father about the privy or the scones or the dancing lessons or the unnamed grog or the teenage turntable in its vinyl zip case or the happiness that was unhygienic or the sense of peace that had the smell of buttered kippers.
'You must be bored there,' said my mother.
My parents' house was so clean it made me ill. Much has been aired about the benefits of sanitation but less is told about the eczema of washing powder, the asthma of fitted carpets, allergic reactions to cream cleaner, itchy fingers round the bleach bottle, drug-out on the fumes of metal polish. Worse, my mother had discovered nylon, so easy to wash, and ignored my athlete's foot and the red weals between my legs where the nylon lace of the nylon knickers warred against my non-nylon skin.
It would have been better if I had been made of nylon; easier then to soak out the miseries that were soaking in.
I grew. At nine, tall and silent, I was unhappy. My father, who had given up his religion but not the superstition that accompanied it, interpreted my misery as proof positive of Original Sin. Since there could be no reason for me to be unhappy, unhappiness must be the human condition. How could he hope to escape what an innocent child could not escape? Like my grandmother, he had a Gothic disposition, but she had kept her God and therefore her mercy. My father could find no mercy for himself and offered none.
As his world darkened, the shadows in our house increased. "We lived in a big light spacious well-windowed generous house, designed by Lutyens. My father had bought it for my mother in a grand gesture of love and pride. Not for her a poky terrace with a dog kennel and an outside toilet. The garden shrubbed and green had a noose of trees all round it and in the centre of the rolled lawn was a Victorian sun-dial of granite and slate. At the bottom of the dial was the hooded figure of Time scything the hours, but at the top, over the position of the twelve was an angel with a trumpet bearing the inscription 'Aliquem alium internum'. I did not know what this meant and when I was able to translate it I did not understand it. Later it came to mean a great deal to me but that is not yet.
When the hours were golden and green it seemed as if the whole house levitated. My father pleased with his work, my mother pleased with her home and her children. I don't remember the exact moment of the eclipse, only a gradual chilliness and the golden light paling yellow-pale-yellow-yellow to fade. I do remember that my father felt cheated. His salary was insufficient, his bonus was insufficient, his challenges were puny, his achievements were not fully recognised. He said those things to my mother, I heard him, but to me he said, by the sun-dial, 'I'm forty-one and the sea is dying.' He ran his finger back and forth over the hooded Time. In my nightmares Time scooped up the sea in his hood and carried it away. He stood at the end of the world and poured the sea into
When we had finished scooping out the dunny, and put fresh sawdust in the bottom to activate the new midden, my grandmother said she had a surprise for me. She made me stand in the corner of the kitchen behind the memorial oilskin, while she wheezed and whirred something out of the coal-hole. I could hear a crackling and a scratching and what sounded like fluff on the end of a record-player needle.
'Come out,' said Grandmother.
On the kitchen table was a brand-new bright blue Dansette turntable. On the turntable was a 45r.p.m. of the Beatles singing 'Help!'
Whilst I was adjusting to this unlikely apparition, my grandmother was doing the Twist or perhaps it would be better to say the Wiggle, since the two mobile parts were her bottom and her head. Her arms, bent at the elbow, were rigid in front of her, her feet were planted apart.
'I'll teach you,' she said.
She did teach me and we did not tell my mother or my father about the privy or the scones or the dancing lessons or the unnamed grog or the teenage turntable in its vinyl zip case or the happiness that was unhygienic or the sense of peace that had the smell of buttered kippers.
'You must be bored there,' said my mother.
My parents' house was so clean it made me ill. Much has been aired about the benefits of sanitation but less is told about the eczema of washing powder, the asthma of fitted carpets, allergic reactions to cream cleaner, itchy fingers round the bleach bottle, drug-out on the fumes of metal polish. Worse, my mother had discovered nylon, so easy to wash, and ignored my athlete's foot and the red weals between my legs where the nylon lace of the nylon knickers warred against my non-nylon skin.
It would have been better if I had been made of nylon; easier then to soak out the miseries that were soaking in.
I grew. At nine, tall and silent, I was unhappy. My father, who had given up his religion but not the superstition that accompanied it, interpreted my misery as proof positive of Original Sin. Since there could be no reason for me to be unhappy, unhappiness must be the human condition. How could he hope to escape what an innocent child could not escape? Like my grandmother, he had a Gothic disposition, but she had kept her God and therefore her mercy. My father could find no mercy for himself and offered none.
As his world darkened, the shadows in our house increased. "We lived in a big light spacious well-windowed generous house, designed by Lutyens. My father had bought it for my mother in a grand gesture of love and pride. Not for her a poky terrace with a dog kennel and an outside toilet. The garden shrubbed and green had a noose of trees all round it and in the centre of the rolled lawn was a Victorian sun-dial of granite and slate. At the bottom of the dial was the hooded figure of Time scything the hours, but at the top, over the position of the twelve was an angel with a trumpet bearing the inscription 'Aliquem alium internum'. I did not know what this meant and when I was able to translate it I did not understand it. Later it came to mean a great deal to me but that is not yet.
When the hours were golden and green it seemed as if the whole house levitated. My father pleased with his work, my mother pleased with her home and her children. I don't remember the exact moment of the eclipse, only a gradual chilliness and the golden light paling yellow-pale-yellow-yellow to fade. I do remember that my father felt cheated. His salary was insufficient, his bonus was insufficient, his challenges were puny, his achievements were not fully recognised. He said those things to my mother, I heard him, but to me he said, by the sun-dial, 'I'm forty-one and the sea is dying.' He ran his finger back and forth over the hooded Time. In my nightmares Time scooped up the sea in his hood and carried it away. He stood at the end of the world and poured the sea into
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