I wrote this story in 2001, when we first moved to Australia. I wanted to be part of our local church community but everyone there ignored us apart from three people. This is where the idea for the Tettelbacks came from. The story is also based on memories of the Voe Show in Shetland.
I have tried to be brave and not tinker with "The Normality Game" to make it reach my current standards, yet I cannot help but cringe at my (frequent) (use) of (brackets). I rarely use brackets nowadays. I have grown allergic to them, perhaps after overdosing on them in this story. Apart from the bracket splurge, I would say this story is a reasonably good example of the way I write, although I hope I have greatly improved since 2001.
The Normality Game
by Helen Parocha
by Helen Parocha
Emmeline lay with her eyes shut. She was not asleep. Wind howled round the timber shack and the bedroom air was cold on her face and she could see a line of grey light through her eyelashes (the sunlight here was always grey, morning or otherwise). Pocahontas, Sharon’s tabby cat, scratched at the door and the smell of bacon, stewed tea and doughy rolls seeped up through the fibres of the house. Clack, clack went the typewriter downstairs. Busy. Emmeline knew she was not supposed to be awake while Sharon was busy. This was their unspoken rule and as far as mothers went Sharon did not have many rules so it was important to follow this one. You see, the longer Emmeline kept her eyes shut, the sooner Sharon would finish her book. This book, Wedded to the Land: Women and the Rural Dream, was not the sort Emmeline could picture herself reading. But it was still the most important book ever because when it was written they could stop living on this island and move back home to the city. Emmeline wouldn’t have to do correspondence school from tapes and a plastic bag. Sharon might even take her to the ballet and let her wear jeans with hearts sewn on them, and so she lay with her eyes shut, hoping. She was not asleep.
Most mornings when she was not asleep she played the normality game. The normality game had one contestant: Mother, whose name was not Sharon but Crystal or Barbara. Mother looked like the plastic bride off the top of a wedding cake only instead of a gown she wore a white tracksuit. She lived in Emmeline’s head in a series of rooms, which preserved her as well as Tupperware. The most important room was of course Home. Not a shack which Mother rented in exchange for doing the sheep farm accounts. Home. Home looked like the dollhouses Emmeline used to make from boxes when she was younger. Two windows upstairs, two windows downstairs, the panes cut out neatly. No door (that had not seemed to matter at the time and, all things considered, at least Mother could not escape to the mobile library and not return for hours). Each room was white and the furniture pink and Mother had a wardrobe where she hung her tracksuits. Points were deducted if she ever painted murals.
In reality their shack teetered on an overhang above a beach of black boulders. The kitchen took up the ground floor and a steep staircase led to two attic rooms (the toilet and bath were in a shed outside). When they had first arrived here, there had been no ivy painted up the banisters, no clouds on the bedroom ceiling. The solid fuel stove had had a rind of grime and floorboards were missing on the stairs. Sharon had stood with her hands on her hips in the gloom, muttering about paint and stencils, but honestly anyone normal would have viewed the place before signing the lease! Emmeline did not point this out. Instead she had wandered into the back garden, plaiting the tassels of her red poncho. Twilight was falling and she could smell the honeysuckle that trailed round the windows of the house next door. Oh if only they could live in this house with the rose bushes and white walls and terracotta roof. Emmeline could see right into the dining room: pink wallpaper with a gold pinstripe, mahogany shelves for encyclopaedias, an upright piano with a bowl of bananas on top. Suddenly a face popped up at the window. Emmeline smiled. But the frosted lips pursed and down came the blind.
This had been her first encounter with Mrs Tettelback. Mrs Tettelback had helmet hair and a white leather golf bag and did word puzzles on Sundays. She came back from the supermarket with a car full of oven chips. She gardened with a kneeling pad and a pair of fluorescent gloves. Evidence to date suggested that she had never, ever tried to tie-dye anything. Emmeline could not have imagined a more ideal Mother. (The only smudge on the Tettelback varnish, unfortunately, was Mr Tettelback, who ran Tettelback’s Happy Cod Eatery in the main town and went around in an ice cream van that played Greensleeves. Mr Tettelback could neither be trimmed nor airbrushed to fit the normality game so Emmeline left him out. She did not need a father anyway.)
Downstairs the typewriter stopped and the house fell silent. Ominously silent. Emmeline sat up and pulled on her old pink dressing gown, watching her breath billow in clouds. Whale song echoed from downstairs. It was OK to be awake now. Whale song was the signal (the sitar meant writer’s block, Gregorian chant was bad news). She tiptoed across the landing, the floorboards biting her bare feet (Sharon had crocheted some mats but Pocahontas had this habit of hunting them). The front door was open – that was why it was freezing – and there was Sharon facing the wide sea, doing Qigong in her furry claw slippers. The waves were ugly with drizzle and the sky was yellow above the hills. Emmeline wanted to like Qigong, wanted the slow movements to look attractive against grey, wet and cold. But they did not. This was a climate for mud-wrestling and tug-of-war. She did not say this. Instead she filled a mug half with milk, half with stewed tea and danced up and down on the doorstep.
“Breathe… and breathe…” Sharon remarked instructively after ten minutes (how did she manage without shivering?) “Not joining me this morning, Janey?”
As if she ever joined her. Anyway Emmeline did not answer to the name Jane or its variants. She had spotted Mrs Tettelback stalking out of her front gate. Mrs Tettelback twitched, got into her haggard old Mercedes and reversed up the driveway at top speed without including them in her field of vision. This was an accomplishment. Emmeline watched in awe as the dust cloud settled at the end of the road. Not again. Unsurprisingly, they were still failing to make the right impression on Mrs Tettelback. What was Emmeline going to do with Sharon?
But a plan was forming in her mind. While Sharon was never exactly going to play golf, she might be persuaded to give some ground to normality: make shopping lists and ice cakes, for example, plant bulbs like Mrs Tettelback did. She might let Emmeline go to tap-dancing lessons in the church hall and after that anything was possible – school – a sensible car instead of the old telecom van – trips to the cinema. Sharon might even become Mother. The idea was daring. Almost unthinkable.
“And flow… and flow.” Sharon exhaled, wriggling the furry claws against the frost. “So what’s your name today, Jane? Trixie? Colette? Barbara Cartland?”
“Mum. I’ve explained heaps of times, and you’re not supposed to laugh at me.”
“Leave off the Mum and I’ll call you Emmeline.”
This deal had been struck more than once in the past. Emmeline wavered.
“But you’re supposed to be Mum! That’s your job!”
“All plumbers aren’t called Plumber are they?”
“That’s beside the point! You’re just being difficult! As usual!”
“How sharper than the serpent’s tooth it is to have a conventional child.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.“
But Sharon had breezed into the kitchen and was lighting the candles on the table. These candles had followed them on their journey: the gold one Emmeline had stuck with sequins, the cluster of wax lotus flowers, the Santa Claus who had burnt down to a pair of boots.
“Are you sure that dressing gown’s small enough yet?” Sharon said. “The sleeves are only up to your elbows. Keep trying and by Christmas it’ll be sleeveless.”
Emmeline put on her Dame Margot Fonteyn face and picked up a cold bacon roll. She was a vegetarian. Sharon knew she was a vegetarian but their fridge contained nothing but a murky pot of coffee, two packets of bacon, a blue clump of broccoli and a mouldy loaf. Emmeline did not want to look at the broccoli. She swallowed the sandwich in gulps. Never mind. This was a perfect chance to put the normality game into action.
“Can we go to the supermarket today?”
Sharon took a sip of dark tea and looked blank.
“I was hoping you’d run up the shop and get us some teabags and… I don’t know.”
“Teabags! What are we going to have for dinner?”
“You’re turning so suburban, Jane! Derek said he’d bring us a salmon from the farm.”
Oh no. Not Derek. Derek was a beachcomber who painted faded scenes of daisy chains and had a guitar permanently strapped to his back. The salmon idea did not fill Emmeline with hope. She remembered Derek’s mushrooms.
“We can’t just have that! You know how much the hippy can put away! He’ll want wine and- and potatoes and green beans and parsley sauce!“
She stopped. Sharon was getting up to switch on the water heater. Round one to Emmeline.
Sharon parked the telecom van outside Tettelback’s Happy Cod Eatery, where a plastic cod with a frying pan greeted customers. The cod looked ominously happy about being fried. Emmeline made out the mighty bulk of Mr Tettelback behind the counter and his pebble eyes slid over her as if she wasn’t there. Well. She retrieved Sharon, who had slid into a nearby second-hand shop, and propelled her in the direction of the supermarket.
The one and only island supermarket had three aisles and a floor paved with cardboard. Bags of rice leaked, a man in a cage sold cigarettes and there was one bumptious checkout lady who was never in a hurry. Emmeline found a trolley. A wheel was on backwards and kept steering towards the cans of Sweetheart Lager in the bottle-shop next-door. Sharon had discovered the magazine rack.
“Mum! We can look at those later! Come on!”
Emmeline wrenched the trolley forward, at the same time fishing the Shopping List from her pinafore pocket. The list was on the cherry blossom paper Gran had sent, written in the italics which were Emmeline’s speciality (learnt from Penmanship For Ladies, an elegant tome found at a jumble sale). This made no bones with Sharon, who snatched the list.
“Black cherries. Tofu. Organic honey. Jane! Explanation please.”
“I’ll do the cooking.”
“Not the Haven and District Show. I’ve told you before, I’m interviewing all day.”
“But Mum, you only have to put it in the cake tent, the judges do the rest. I’ve even filled out the application form to save you time.”
Sharon’s lips tightened. “What am I supposed to be making?”
“Baked Tofu and Black Cherry Cheesecake.”
Emmeline had found the recipe in Delectable Entertaining (courtesy of the mobile library).
“Call me a culinary dunce,” Sharon said, “but there doesn’t seem to be any cheese in it.”
“Exactly. It’s a vegan cheesecake.”
With a flourish Emmeline threw some meringue nests into the trolley, followed by six jars of strawberry jam. Sharon, fortuitously, was absorbed in the Shopping List, bell tassels jingling as she wandered.
“Why’s a livestock show so important to you anyway? When I was your age my aim in life was to nick my mum’s cigarettes not hassle her into entering cake contests.”
Emmeline gave her a dark look. Trust her to drag Gran into it. Gran who lived alone in a city high-rise and grew geraniums in window boxes. Gran who they had left behind. She served tea with chunks of lime, never lost at cards and had a budgie that said: “Ye Gods!” Poor Gran. Emmeline put a bottle of chocolate sauce into the trolley as Sharon took out five of the jars of jam.
“Don’t go glassy eyed on me,” Sharon muttered. “I’ll have a stab at the tofu whatsit, but golden syrup not this, OK? Now where’d they keep the bacon?”
Two sets love to the side of normality!
But that was when everything went wrong.
The night before the Haven and District Show, Sharon vanished with the telecom van, the typewriter and a bag of cassettes. This was not entirely unexpected. She was always finding random folk to interview and if she had attempted the whatsit she’d have added cheese. Or so Emmeline told herself. Emmeline was left alone in celebrity chef mode, pushing tofu through a sieve. Heat the spoon, she told her audience bossily, running the dessertspoon under the lukewarm tap. I prefer organic honey myself but you at home may use golden syrup. Treacle curdled amongst the tofu. Doesn’t that look great? She eyed the blobs apprehensively then ladled them into the tin. Heat your oven well in advance. Through the cooker door the molten cheesecake lurked. The recipe said twenty minutes. Shouldn’t the mixture be growing? Half an hour passed. Emmeline watched. It was slightly brown or was that the tinted glass? Forty-five minutes later the concoction was as shrivelled as an old piece of foam. She tipped it springily onto a plate and put it in the fridge, a safe distance from the broccoli.
As Emmeline did the washing up she schemed. So Sharon thought she’d be wearing that fake fur vest and crocheted maxiskirt tomorrow? Not on your life. Sharon’s wardrobe now contained nothing but a pair of cowboy boots, white jeans and a lilac jumper with a satin kitten sewn on the front. Emmeline had put the rest of the clothes in… The shack door flew open. Derek staggered in with two tins of yellow emulsion.
“Greetings Mademoiselle Chef! What are you creating for us ziz evening?”
Emmeline’s face remained expressionless.
“We’re going to paint the shed!” Sharon appeared, dumped the typewriter on the floor and hauled the barbeque out from under the stairs. Oh. Emmeline stared. Barbeques were as elegant as Qigong in the cold and grey. This was a climate for roasting pigs and refusing to go outside. She did not say this.
“Come on Jane. Why don’t you get your painting shirt on and help us?”
Good job Sharon wasn’t the noticing type. The painting shirt had long ago been sewn into legwarmers and a cloak for Pocahontas (who unfortunately shared Emmeline’s aversion to homemade clothes).
“Sorry.” Glare at Derek. “I’ve lost my inspiration.”
“Do us a favour then. Take this outside and put charcoal in it.”
Emmeline drew herself up to the height of Cinderella and wheeled the barbeque over the doorstep. Outside indeed. Wind breathed wetly across the patch of lawn and clouds mottled the sky. On midsummer nights the island stayed dusky until morning leaving a cold ghost space most unsuited to fried sausage.
She was just dragging the charcoal across the grass when Mrs Tettelback scurried out of her garage clutching a picture frame.
“Hello!” (More Marie Antoinette than Cinderella).
Silence. Mrs Tettelback opened the Mercedes and shot the picture frame inside. Back to the house she scurried, to return with a dress in drycleaner plastic, three bags of knitwear and an ominous cake tin.
“Are you entering the show?” (More Cinderella).
The Mercedes door slammed, the engine roared and Mrs Tettelback was gone. Charcoal dribbled across Emmeline’s bare toes but she did not move. She remembered the wizened tofu whatsit and felt sick. How, in under ten hours, could she make Sharon normal yet not so threatening as to provoke the Tettelback scorn? A seagull cackled. Then an idea came to her. She knew exactly what to do.
The next day in the telecom van, Emmeline surveyed Sharon, whose hair was streaked with paint but clipped up almost neatly. Well, she had been prancing round the shed until the early hours. She’d only staggered out of bed ten minutes ago, pulling on the jeans, cowboy boots and kitten jumper without even seeing them. Then, when she’d lurched from the shack in the claw slippers she had stopped, stared and gone back and changed them. As a concession to this burst of normality Emmeline had put on the homemade dress, that one with the patchwork, the brocade and flower-petal pockets. Her own appearance did not count, luckily.
As soon as Sharon had parked the telecom van, Emmeline leapt out.
“Bye! See you later have good interviews don’t worry about me!”
Then set off at a run through the handicraft stalls. Out into the summer air she ran, across the car park, through pens of Aberdeen Angus, to the marquee gleaming white in the sun. In she ran, along rows of prize leeks and wildflower arrangements, breathing the close scent of crushed earth and withered grass. The cakes were arranged in tiers up ahead. Torpedoes of strawberries, dark pats of gateaux, small lurking fairy cakes studded with ball bearings. Each creation had a sheen of sweat and a piece hacked out where the judges had taken a taster. Desperately Emmeline’s eyes searched for the winning rosette – there – there – on a dripping chocolate bombe with frosted roses. “FIRST,” the pink tag announced, “Mrs Robina G. Tettelback”.
Emmeline saw Sharon’s entry, small and guilty at the bottom. The bundle of cherries gleamed temptingly and the fudge icing was swirled in a homemade way. Only Emmeline knew that the cake inside was one of the bakery’s Fudge Fancies, cut from a misshape by Friendly Les last night at lock up (he took pity on this Flower Power kid whose mum couldn’t make potato soup). Emmeline thought it had been disguised with frosting (five melted down fudge bars mixed with icing sugar). Certainly the judges had taken the most enormous chunk. But the SECOND tag had gone to a grinning choo-choo train and the THIRD was next to a nasty pineapple round. Her skin prickled. The judges knew. In a radius of fifty kilometres there was, after all, only one bakery and its selection was not staggering. People were going to talk. From now on Sharon would stop being the hippy from the shack and become the despicable fraud who tried to grab the cake prize. Emmeline stood, throat tightening, watching sweat glisten on the cherries. She had framed her own mother.
This was not what the normality game was about. She ought to flush the evil fudge fancy down the portaloos. But no. That would make Sharon seem more of a desperado. There was only one thing for it. Emmeline unpinned the entry coupon and, with her best glitter pen, scored out Sharon and wrote in bold italics: JANE.
Then she wandered out, ignoring a leek farmer who yelled: “Give us a twirl, Batgirl!” She knew she was not meant to be around while Sharon was interviewing but she could at least find her and make sure she had not been attacked by judges. A gaggle of people had packed into the hall, squashing around a runway of trestle tables that led from the stage. A dumpling man was testing his weight eagerly on the tables, which looked like a bad idea.
“About time her reign was broken,” she heard somebody mutter.
“Well, she’ll have hauled in prizes for everything else, won’t she?”
A microphone whined. “Ladies and gentlemen! Take your places please for the thirty-seventh Haven and District Fashion Show!”
A fashion show! Emmeline squeezed through until she could see the dummies lined up on the stage. That was odd. One of the child mannequins was wearing an exact replica of her own dress and pinned to the bodice was a rosette with the word FIRST.
Was there another criminal at the show? Had some sneaky islander broken into the shack and made off with Sharon’s patterns? She spotted Sharon waving a bag of popcorn and wading towards her. Oh no…
“Go on!” Sharon yelled. “You like floating about looking lovely. Here’s your moment of glory!”
“You are so NOT FAIR! Entering the show and not telling me! That’s fraud!”
“You’d never do something like that, would you?”
“JANE!” The dumpling man boomed. “Come and show us that pretty frock!”
Pretty frock. But a pro never walks out on the show. Emmeline gave Sharon a look of poison then walked elegantly up the steps into the wings where a clutch of little girls were tittering. She could see the stage clearly now. Beside Sharon’s mannequin was another wearing a party dress with a high collar and fake tusk buttons. “THIRD,” said the green rosette, “Mrs Robina G. Tettelback.” Emmeline imagined going to some dire party in this dress and not being able to bend her elbows. She felt the scratch of lace under her chin and the wobble of the buttons. This was a dress for a golden child who lived in knitting pattern photos and did not breathe or go to the toilet. Sharon’s dress was much better. It was real.
Emmeline gritted her teeth and swept out under the lights, copying the haughty way Gran used to walk before she did in her knee. Ripples of laughter and applause followed her. By the door a bunch of farmers exchanged glances. She paused at the end of the trestle tables, hand on hip, eyes stony.
“Quite the professional,” she heard one of the women giggle. Oh yuck. There was Derek hanging about under the wool skeins. What was he eating? Crumbs of tofu stuck to his beard and he was taking a bite out of an unmistakable springy lump. He gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up. Raiding their fridge indeed! At least he found it edible. Emmeline struck another pose, unable to subdue the smile that was rising. Then she saw them.
At the back of the hall, a hulk was standing next to a bony figure. Mr and Mrs Tettelback. Emmeline’s arm dropped and she gazed at them, willing them to be happy, willing them to clap. Mrs Tettelback’s cheeks were grey, her lips white. She fixed Emmeline with a glare of congealed hatred then marched out, Mr Tettelback waddling behind. Emmeline did what she could to make a gorgeous turn, only to collide with the little girls who had been fidgeting behind her.
That night Sharon lit the candles and Derek made a leek pie and they had leftover tofu whatsit as well as rogue fudge fancy. Emmeline still had the dress on – Sharon had actually taken orders – and she did a twirl under the cloud murals. The smell of sugar, pastry and wax surrounded her as they sat around the kitchen table, Derek talking almost interestingly about being an art teacher and getting locked in the supply cupboard by some kids. He was as unlike Cary Grant as anyone could be (except Mr Tettelback) but that did not matter. He said he would help her with correspondence school then winked when Sharon ran upstairs for her sitar.
“You’ll be at the school in town by autumn term. I’ll talk her round.”
Ordinarily Emmeline would have told him no thanks because they were leaving, but tonight she didn’t bother. Instead she gave him her gracious smile and told him the leek pie tasted OK. For the rest of the evening Sharon played her sitar and Derek strummed along and they made up songs until the cake was gone and the light outside was golden green.
Emmeline was half asleep by the time she caught Pocahontas and took him to the landing window. From here you could spy Mrs Tettelback, sitting upright and alone in her dollhouse living room. Where had she put the chocolate bombe? Mr Tettelback had swallowed it whole, probably. Emmeline pictured the party dress, the scratchy lace and tusk buttons and remembered what she had realised at the hall. No kid would ever wear that dress. Mrs Tettelback had no children.
“I’m not giving up on her,” she whispered to Pocahontas, who mewed nastily. “I’m going to make friends with her and she’ll be happy although she doesn’t know it yet.”
Pocahontas struggled free and galloped across the floorboards and so Emmeline drew the curtains and went to bed.
© Helen Parocha
