Pilcrow Read Free

knitting public. They knew what a marketing tool they had in me. I’m adorable. I’m enough by myself to start a craze for bootees and tiny cardigans, pale blue with matching pearlised buttons.
    I wasn’t always so groomed and wholesome. I remember playing in the garden, as a baby, as a toddler, and loving to eat dirt. It’s one of my strongest early memories. When Mum caught me doing it, she would scold and even shout. It was the first thing that I learned was wrong. Not that I stopped doing it. I liked the taste too much. Eating dirt was the first thing that I learned to do when Mum’s back was turned. It was the secret vice which turned the withdrawal of her attention into an opportunity rather than a bereavement.
    Mum hated dirt, though she also hated cleaning. The garden with its necessary dirt was unattractive to her. Dad took charge of all outside chores, until (much later) she discovered the joy of herbs, and a way of planting them which let her keep her shoes clean. Of course she kept a pair of old shoes to wear in the garden, but even those she hated to get dirty.
    Inside or outside the house, creating order was a burden to her. Dirt was her enemy, cleanliness not altogether her friend. There was something brusque and aggrieved about her housework. Every flick of the duster, every pass with the broom, every guilty glance at the cleaning lady (when we could afford one at last), was part of a life-long dialogue with her mother, with Granny, whose attitude to domestic hygiene was passionate and entirely single-minded.
    In Hindu cosmology it’s said of Krishna that he too ate dirt as a toddler. A playmate told on him to his mother. But when Krishna’s mother went to scold him and demanded that he open his mouth, he did – and then she saw that all the stars and the planets were held there in safety also. That was her revelation of her boy’s Godhead, when she saw the cosmos whirling in his little mouth, a mouth that still had its baby teeth. If Krishna’s mum had been mine, of course, he’d have been sent to bed without supper just the same.
    There’s a theory that children, when they put the wrong things in their mouths, are incorporating necessary impurities, building up their defences for later encounters. Mum took a more social view – eating dirt was common. When I put nasty things in my mouth I was showing her up, even when there was no one around to witness my vulgar behaviour.
    Once I found a red Spangle in the garden. It was caked with dirt, but I wiped it roughly clean and ate it. It was delicious. Afterwards I didn’t feel so good. When the taste wore off, there was nothing left in my mouth but fear, telling me that I’d done something terribly bad and wrong.
    The mouth, being at that age the cave of all pleasure and knowing, refuses admission to nothing. Another time my imaginary friend Peterkin and I ate some little black-and-yellow caterpillars we found in the garden, not for the flavour but to feel them wriggling in our tummies. Peterkin said that nobody could see him but me, but that was just him being silly. I only pretended to eat my caterpillars, but Peterkin didn’t notice and wanted to show he was as brave as me, so he swallowed his down. He said he could feel them moving for a long time afterwards. It wasn’t half as much fun as I’d said, but I knew he’d do the next thing I told him to do just the same.

Vomit of truth
     
    Near Christmas, I saw some holly bushes in full berry. I had Peterkin with me, and I told him they were the tastiest of all berries. ‘And now, Peterkin,’ I announced, ‘we’re going to eat tasty holly berries like the ones in the carols.’ Even after the berries had been heaved up on the kitchen floor I tried to talk my way out of trouble with Mum. I wasn’t ready to come clean even when my guts had made a full confession. ‘I only ate one,’ I said, ‘but Peterkin had lots and lots.’ There was no chance of my getting away with it, since Mum