I am often asked where I get ideas from. "You must be very imaginative," people say. Well, not really. Most of my ideas come from real life, that is - real situations, real conversations (often overheard conversations) and real people - past or present. For example, meet Cora Pearl (nee Elizabeth Emma Crouch) a 19th century courtesan who, although born in England, crafted a career for herself in France. She became the mistress of several aristocrats, for example: the Prince of Orange and the Duc de Morny.
In 1864, Pearl was living in a chateau in the Loire region of France. One evening she decided to have some fun with the aristocratic guests sitting around the dinner table. First, she dared the group to "get stuck in" to the next dish served. This "dish" was Cora herself. Carried in by 4 large men, she was presented on a very large silver platter, stark naked and sprinkled with parsley.
One of my early short stories (Carla's Birthday) was inspired by a short article on the inside pages of a regional newspaper. It concerned an Italian schoolgirl who, having failed her exams, was sent to bed by her mother. She lay in bed for more than 10 years until neighbours, who eventually wondered why they had not seen the girl for such a long time, alerted the police. This story of an outrageous mother committing an outrageous act was read on BBC Radio in 1996. Cora Pearl will probably play a small part in future writings - perhaps served up with the cheese and biscuits. In the meantime, here is my 1996 story, Carla's Birthday.
It was Carla’s birthday, and the family were going to celebrate. Their mother, Maria Pia, had decided. At daybreak, she set to work like a typhoon, dusting and scrubbing with a ferocity that suggested she was ridding life of impurities. During breakfast, she sat like a schoolmarm at her desk while young Claudio and his sister, Sabina, sipped at their coffee, nibbled at their brioches and withered under their mother’s critical eyes. Maria Pia got to her feet and arched colossus-like over the table’s end.
“Tonight,” she announced, “we shall celebrate.”
Claudio pushed his spectacles onto the bridge of his nose, glanced at Sabina and then across at the stairs that led to Carla’s room and, opening his mouth to speak, said nothing. Mother had decided. Tonight they would celebrate. At a signal from their mother, the children jumped up and stood to attention in their green, school tunics. With elbows jutting and with her legs solid on the kitchen flagstones, Maria Pia mauled them with a sweep of her eyes.
“And like every year,” she said, “we shall celebrate Carla’s birthday in Carla’s bedroom.”
The children marched through the door and out over the furrowed earth that curved downwards to the valley. Claudio and Sabina would not work on that earth. They would rise above it. Aloof and educated, they would leave this basic life behind them. Mother had decided.
Standing at the doorway, Maria Pia looked beyond the fields and towards the valley below. The town, with its fourteen clock towers, was spread out like a carpet. The river snaked its way through the houses, under the bridges and wound out into the Veneto plain. This town, with its rich and sophisticated people, was where her children deserved to live. This was their destiny, and Maria Pia would sacrifice everything to achieve it. For Carla, of course, it was too late. Still, that was no reason to ignore her birthday.
Maria Pia swung round and grabbed at the doorknob. An uncomfortable silence, as of a death unspoken, hung in the stairwell and spilled into the kitchen. Carla would still be sleeping. Maria Pia pulled the door shut, strode to the garden gate and turned to look at her house. This building, which was as old as the earth and which appeared to grow naturally out of the ground like the cypress trees around it, was now a prison for Carla.
Maria Pia set off for the village. A stiff breeze was blowing up the valley, and she clenched her fists and leaned into the wind as if it were a force against her will. She grimaced when she saw the women in the street. Their thick calves bore witness to their peasant forebears. Her own children would be forever divorced from these villagers. Her children would pass their exams, go to university and marry into the well-to-do townsfolk. It was a pity that such a future was already denied to Carla.
Maria Pia was jolted from her daydreams by a clamour of voices and laughter. The baker’s shop in the piazza was often an impromptu meeting place for the gossiping locals, and Maria Pia’s top lip curled and the eyebrow above it rose in sympathy when she heard their rough dialect. The clamour faded on her arrival, and the knot of gossiping villagers drew closer together. Signor Bertone, the baker, detached himself from the group. His face hardened as if he had an unpleasant task to perform. Wiping his hands on his apron, he reached down under the counter and placed a cake under Maria Pia’s eyes. He leaned forward and stared at the counter, his shoulders hunched and tense.
“Exactly what you ordered, signora,” he muttered.
Maria Pia nodded. The cake was basic, but it would do for Carla’s birthday. Maria Pia counted the twenty-six candles. She shrugged. Twenty-six candles or forty-six, what did it matter? Carla would never leave the village. Maria Pia accepted the situation now. Once her pride and joy, the one into whom she had injected her hopes and her ambitions, Carla was a discarded toy. She was moth-eaten, deformed and useless. Still, it was right to celebrate her birthday.
Back at the house, she religiously re-cleaned and re-scrubbed. She made some bread, she prepared Carla’s lunch and she placed it outside her door. One hour later, she collected the plates and clattered back down the stairs. At four o’clock, when the children returned from school, that uncomfortable deathly hush hung over the entire house. Carla was still sleeping.
Maria Pia’s eyes lashed the children as they walked through the door.
“Before we celebrate Carla’s birthday,” she said, “you are to do your homework.”
Claudio and Sabina stood with their backs to the wall and cowered. Maria Pia looked at the ceiling and, clasping her hands together, she said:
“Let us pray to God that you don’t finish up like Carla.”
Darkness had fallen when Maria Pia indicated that celebrations were to begin. She took the cake from the fridge, turned off the light and lit the candles. Claudio pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose, looked at the moon and the stars shining in the sky, and for one second his eyes reflected a yearning to run away, to be free and unfettered. Dark before him rose the figure of his mother, the upward light from the candles decorating the flesh of her face with a flicker of shadows.
“It’s time,” she said, and holding the cake before her like a sacrificial offering, she led the family up the stairs.
Each creak on the floorboards snapped the deathly hush like the crack of a whip but not a sound emanated from Carla’s room. Maria Pia stood for a second before the door, and Claudio and Sabina waited in line behind her. Maria Pia brushed the latch with her shoulder, and with a click, the door swung into the darkened room. Maria Pia took one pace forward, and the light from the candles threw dancing shadows onto the walls. Claudio recoiled and, in a convulsive movement, his hand rose to cover his nose. Sabina swayed against the door, her forehead resting on her arm as she watched her mother approach the shape on the bed.
The shape was Carla’s body, and its face was so white it seemed moulded from the pillow on which it lay. Below the pillow, her body stretched out like a sarcophagus, and it was shrouded in a faded-green school tunic. Maria Pia approached slowly, dropped to her knees, and lowered the cake towards Carla’s bloodless lips. Carla raised her hand, let it rest on her mother’s shoulder while she lifted her head from the pillow and blew on the candles. And Maria Pia wondered at this body that she had once inflated with her ambitions. Carla, who was to be the embodiment of her dreams and hopes, had returned from school on her sixteenth birthday and admitted the ultimate sin. She had failed her exams.
“Go to your room,” Maria Pia had said.
Carla had deflated before their eyes.
“Yes, mama,” she had said.
She had gone to her room and she had taken to her bed. She had lain there for ten years.
And as Carla extinguished the candles on her twenty-sixth birthday, her hand caressed her mother’s head in a gesture that begged forgiveness. Eight times her breath kissed the eternal flames before the dancing figures on the wall staggered and the room was plunged back into darkness.
Robert Goddard, Manchester 1996
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