All Things
The sign on the door said: PRIVIT EXERBISHUM TIKITS 2d
A strange musty smell of roses with a topnote of cabbage crept under the door. A small voice within warbled snatches of All Things Bright and Beautiful, enhanced by the occasional squeaky riff on a recorder. Seven year-olds are best left undisturbed when on a mission.
The summer holidays had barely begun, and there was so much to discover, so much to do. Only when lunch was announced for the third time did Jennifer reluctantly emerge from her room. Bright and brown, gap-toothed and gangly, feisty and independent, she slid down the banister.
Lunchtime was a feat of impeccable timing. Daddy had cycled four miles home for lunch, his brow glowing with perspiration. Mummy also glowed, having produced perfectly timed egg and chips in the tiny kitchen. The three of them perched around the small kitchen table, while on the dresser, Timmy the tabby ate his customary portion of the same meal from a saucer. He especially liked the banana and custard for afters. Catfood had yet to be invented.
Daddy talked about the office, and rumours of a thing in America called a computer; Mummy talked about her mother, and while Daddy sliced the bananas with an engineer’s flourish, Jennifer made some important announcements about The Exhibition. She urgently needed some more old nylon stockings for her displays, so Daddy said he’d ask around the typists. The wireless in the corner warbled through the one o’clock news, and soon Daddy was donning his cycle clips and delivering forehead kisses before pedalling back up the road.
Clutching her Observer book of Butterflies and Moths, Jennifer cornered her teacher mother to explain a few big words. Most turned out to be boring, but the gateway word of the day was … Metamorphosis. At last, a glorious mouthful of a word to sum up all that she was in the very process of discovering - for herself and for the world. So, with renewed vigour, the fieldwork satchel was stuffed with i-Spy books, a few empty matchboxes, a ventilated tobacco tin, jam jar, and half a sticky packet of Spangles. She buckled her sandals and skipped off.
The afternoon was consumed by eager rootling and rummaging along lush suburban alleyways, via the jagged wilderness of the taboo bomb site, and back through the park shrubberies, until a twinge of teatime called her home. Back in her room, she proudly surveyed the growing exhibition, as she scoffed Grandma’s gooey bara brith with a glass of murky homemade ginger beer. On the table by the door lay a selection of pressed flowers; a row of matchboxes lined with cottonwool displayed a dead grasshopper, a dead bumble bee, a tiny anonymous skull, a wren’s egg, and a couple of precious owl pellets. Next, an old robin’s nest tucked snugly into a bag of nails, as discovered in the shed; several dried up conkers, a jar of feathers and a tray of shells and whiffy bits of crab from a day by the sea. On a nearby chair a tin bowl of rocks and water hosted dollops of frogspawn, and a few languid leggy tadpoles. Above it, a laboriously illustrated information sheet explained How Frogs are Made.
Next to her bed was a large enamelled saucepan. She reached into her satchel to add a few scarlet fistfuls to the sodden mass of browning rose petals waiting to be squished up into exclusive perfume. Perfume to sell at the bedroom door to raise funds for her campaign to save veal calves.
The cabbagey odour wafted warmly from the heart of the exhibition, where her attention now focussed. Murmuring encouraging small talk, she carefully unloaded her hostages onto a landing tray on the bed. From the matchboxes emerged a wriggly assortment of caterpillars; big ones, small ones, smooth and hairy ones, each bore the livery by which it would be identified, caged and laboriously labelled. Next from the bag sprang a large bunch of assorted feed foliage, and finally, the tobacco tin in which rested a magnificent green and pink hawkmoth awaiting lengthy petting and adoration prior to release at dusk.
The young curator proudly scanned the stacked displays. Shoe boxes cajoled from friends and neighbours were encased in old net curtain and abandoned nylon stockings, to enable visibility and ventilation. Daddy was a great inventor to have onside, and mummy was a good judge of kindness. Each labelled box held a little world of sand and twigs and a jam jar of appropriate food leaves. A large sign overhead said My Butterfly Fram. All in all, it was looking a jolly good deal for tuppence.
The next day was rainy. A day for writing labels and closely observing metamathingummy. She knew when a caterpillar was ready for change, because they’d stop munching and get dozy. Then they sought a quiet corner, and spun silk from their head to make an anchor. Within a few hours they would split open, and wriggle off their caterpillar skin to reveal a plain squirmy pupa, which would harden in a few hours. For awhile it might writhe feebly when provoked by a curious child, but eventually it would spend a few weeks or more as a hard inert chrysalis before bursting open to release the secret beauty within. Only once had she been present to witness the magic of an entire emergence.
Lately, she had been scrutinising a particularly large burnished specimen. Now she felt impatient: just what was this metamorphery business? How did a caterpillar know what to do? How could a seed know what to be? How did a tree know when to stop? How does a bird bird and how does a bee bee? How does the caterpillar remember which butterfly to be? Do caterpillars have flying dreams? Maybe it was time to find out.
Mummy was busy talking to her friend downstairs, Daddy was at work. She tiptoed into the bathroom and stood on a stool to reach the small out-of-bounds wall cupboard. Ignoring her telltale reflection in the bathroom mirror, she carefully selected one of Daddy’s new razor blades in its waxed wrapper, and crept back to her room.
Over by the window, she cleared the glass top of the old triple-mirrored dressing table and gently lay the prize chrysalis on a saucer. She prodded the elegant sculpted time capsule containing the secret link between the past and the future, but it barely stirred. Then humming her Exhibition theme tune, heart in mouth, she carefully unwrapped the blade and slid it along the length of the leathery sarcophagus. “All creatures great and … “, then she held her breath, as she peeled back the casing. Hoping to surprise a butterpillar or a caterfly she was so very unprepared for the slick of anonymous green gelatinous soup that spilled apologetically onto the white porcelain. Yet to register the slow sting of her razor-cut finger, she watched in awe as the green slime encountered the spreading dribble of the viscous scarlet soup that carried the mystery of her own unfolding life.
Feeling the first visceral thrill of Being a Part of Something Rather Big, she observed her own epiphany reflected into infinity through the dressing table’s angled side mirrors. Only then began the flood of salt tears - triggered not only by the sudden sharp pain in her finger, but also by the guilt of her innocent but destructive intrusion into the Way of All Things.
Just a human being being human …