Granta - The Magazine of New Writing 55, Autumn 1996 [antikvár]

Adam Mars-Jones M y mother was born on 20 August 1923 and christened Sheila Mary Felicity Cobon. At some stage she was told the supposed meaning of these names, or looked them up in a book. Her forenames meant by dérivation Blind Bitter Happiness. As an adult Sheila found this augury ruefully amusing, or faintly anpoying, in its mixture of the appropriate and the hopelessly wrong. Sheila was both a wanted and an unwanted child. Charles and Gladys Cobon already had a daughter, three-year-old Margaret ('Peggy'). What they wanted was not Sheila the eventual alto but a boy, who would in time sing treble in the same choir as his father. There was a name prepared for the invited guest: Derek. Sheila was a failed Derek, a fact that was not entirely kept from her. Sheila was keenly aware of the différence in status, as far as her father was concerned, between herseif and her sister. The family lived in Wembley, in north-west London, while Charles worked for a firm of marine engineers in Rotherhithe, on the river to the east of the city. As a matter of routine, Peggy would meet Charles's train after work on a Saturday. When Sheila was old enough to deputize for her sister in this coveted duty, Charles's first question would always be: 'Is Peggy ili?' This was before parenting skills. He didn't have the sense to wrap it up. To say: Lovely to see you, Sheila. Kind of you to come and meet your old man. How's your mother? Good, good. And Peggy? As children, Peggy and Sheila competed over such important matters as who could eat slowest. Peggy was particularly skilled at hiding, say, a straggling line of peas in the shadow of a földed knife and fork, so as to thwart Sheila's triumph and eat the stragglers with a relish out of all proportion to their deliciousness. As a girl, Sheila's candidates for the title of Naughtiest Words in the World were bosom and spasm. She would say them in her head continuously, until the laughter burst out of her. Bosom spasm bosom spasm. A litany of taboos. A wicked prayer. Sheila was ten when Gladys died, after a stroke, and it was Sheila who found her stricken, incapable, labouring for breath. Ever after, Sheila was hysterically distressed by physical impairment, by paralysis and mutilation, even the malformation of a London pigeon's feet. A pigeon with fused feet was still a