The Portrait of a Skunky Lady

Chapter the First

In which I am born, discover a talent and learn the truth about my situation. I embark on a journey. Many adventures ensue.

I was born at half past two on a Tuesday afternoon of a non-specific and highly variable date in what historians like to call ‘the olden days’. I was pleased to be born in the past, I have always liked foreign countries, but I hoped there were no tigers. Glad though I was to be released from the confinement of the womb, I was disconcerted to find that my limbs were not under my control, I could make no sense of the shapes and sounds that assaulted my senses and, worst of all, somebody seemed intent on making me cry. Since there seemed little else to do, I cried, and wondered what was for dinner. It was milk.

Over the coming years I leaned to poo in a nappy, in a pot, and then in a loo. I was proud of my versatility in the pooing department and still consider it one of my finest accomplishments. In those times people were much taller than today and I lived in a world of legs. Sometimes a head would descend from the heights at a terrifying rate to deliver a message from the gods. It was usually something like, “googy diggums, den?” By the time I had framed a suitable response the head had invariably disappeared and a new one had arrived with an equally fatuous message. I couldn’t think why they bothered since the gods evidently had no interest in my reply. I burped and wondered what was for dinner. It was sludge, conveyed to my mouth by a train in the shape of a teaspoon.

By the age of three I began to suspect that I might be a little girl. There were many clues, but the clincher was that my clothes were all dresses. I searched in vain for a pair of trousers and a top hat, but found only pink stuffed toys and ever more dresses. Nanny Macjoyce confirmed my suspicions and informed me that I was a fabulously wealthy heiress, which, she told me, was a bit like a princess, only not. She also broke the news to me that I had parents, but that since they lived in the east wing, a day’s journey from here by bicycle and even further by train, I was unlikely to be troubled by them. I also had a brother who was away at school being thrashed and starved into a man fit for parliament or prison. I accepted my lot gracefully but was a little miffed at not having been consulted. I wanted to be a pony.

One day I decided to play in the garden. I had never seen it, but Nanny Macjoyce had told me that we had a front garden called Cornwall and a back garden called Devon. I wanted to see our tin mines, which my extensive looking at pictures had convinced me were some kind of explosive device. I looked forward to screaming when they went off. Nanny furnished me with a map, a solar topee, sufficient provisions for a week’s march and a fleet of servants to take turns at carrying me. Ladies were not expected to walk, it blunted their glass slippers and overheated their fragile brains. I peeked in the provisions sack to see what was for dinner. It was curds and whey, a transitional state between milk and cheese, suitable for making children eat but not fit for consumption by humans.

First to carry me was Footsie. I rode his shoulders, clinging to his neck like an albatross to a sailor. Footsie wasn’t his real name, he told me. As a youth he’d had ambitions to be a footballer, but as this required talent and an understanding of the offside rule he had instead enlisted as a footloose foot soldier. These days he was a footman. A decent working-class lad should always take good care of his feet, he opined, since so many jobs depended on them. However, his nickname arose from an addiction to boko-maru, which he practised at every opportunity. I had studied the picture book of Cat’s Cradle and informed him that Bokononism wasn’t a real religion. “How do you tell the difference?” he asked. I considered the questions, but it was too complicated for my fragile female brain, so I peed down his neck instead. “Where’s the cat?” I demanded. “Where’s the cradle?” He looked uncomfortable, although that might have been the pee, and said it had all happened on his day off and he was miles away at the time, although he’d gladly eat my curds and whey if I promised never to mention the matter again. I had his dinner instead. It was beer.

Next to carry me was Tony, the cook. I was too drunk to balance on his shoulders, so he put me in a harness to which were attached a pair helium-filled pigs’ bladders, and pulled me along on a string, like a party balloon. He explained to me his theory that food could be made from the flesh of dead animals and stuff the gardener had dug up out of the ground. It seemed highly improbable and an awful lot of trouble when all you had to do was sit at a table and servants would bring you proper food, but I supposed it must be his hobby.

I snoozed for a while and woke up with a stinking headache. We were passing through the ideas market where men in strange costumes tried to sell us zoroastrianism, handymannerism and sloth. We were the first customers that had passed this way in nine years and they were keen not to let us go without making a sale. Footsie bought a pound of nihilism and a brace of untenable beliefs, but found them burdensome and dropped them in the river, where a swan ate them. I wanted to believe in a world where everybody rode dragons and I was a renowned ballet pony, but nobody was selling that one. The stallholders followed us for several miles along the corridor, calling out the benefits of their wares and threatening us with the wrath of their gods if we didn’t make a purchase. Eventually Dr. Ewan, my bother’s old tutor, took out a blunderbuss, loaded it with common sense, and threatened to reduce them all to blithering heaps of contradiction. They retreated, cursing us with every magic charm they possessed, but they knew they were beaten. Tony offered to share his dinner with me, but I didn’t like to think of what it might previously have been, so I was for once grateful for my curds and whey.

Next it was Shamrock the gardener’s turn to convey me. His implement of choice was a wheelbarrow, painted in bright colours for the occasion and equipped with cushions and a play station. I asked about the latter and Shamrock told me that he knew nothing of the railways, but supposed it was where actors would disembark. It looked a little small for the purpose, but sure enough some tiny figures emerged and began to act out a play called Catbag. When Catbag woke up, it transpired, all his friends woke up too. They helped Emily with her ballet block until she produced some of the highest wutherings of her age, kicking her legs way up in the air like a tin-can dancer. Then they sang a song, bowed, and disappeared back into the station. I shook it to make them come out again, but they were gone.

The river we were following had taken to flowing along the ceiling, much to the consternation of a family of ducks, who would fly up, try to land on the water, and fall back down to the floor of the corridor. From time to time a fish would fall out and Footsie would dust it off and give it to Tony in case he could make it into food. Miss Magic, my fairy godmother and the expedition’s navigator, turned the map this way and that, and eventually informed us that we would either have to walk on our hands or go back the way we came. She had originally planned to navigate by the stars, but so far we had only met two. Lillian Gish was in her silent period and could only mime, while Harold Lloyd was too engrossed in climbing a grandfather clock to take any interest in our affairs. Magic had been reduced to asking directions from Large Sister contestants, none of whom knew about anything beyond the rooms they were brought up in, and who treated the requests as some kind of trivia quiz, making wild guesses at the answers.

Then Dr. Ewan showed us a trick he’d learned in cleverness school. He took out his explorer’s compass and explained to us that North would always be where the needle pointed. He then fished out a magnet from another pocket and demonstrated that the needle could be made to point wherever you liked it best. I felt seasick as the world swung around to accommodate itself to the compass, but Dr. Ewan was too preoccupied with his experiment to notice. A shoal of disorientated fish showered down on Tony; enough to make a jelly and custard, I hoped. Magic, who had grasped a door handle to steady herself, suddenly found herself precipitated into the room beyond.

All of a sudden, the first chapter ended.