‘How do you get rid of warts, Aunty?’ I was covered in them. Horrible gnarled things that encircled my fingernails like tree roots.
‘Let me see.’ Drenched in Chanel Number Five, my Aunt glided towards me and checked my hands carefully. She always wore black, as though expecting to be called away to a funeral at any moment. ‘Have you tried dandelions?’
‘No…I thought maybe the chemist would have something…’
‘They’re useless. Try dandelions. There’s milky white sap in the stalk. Put that on your warts, that’ll get rid of them.’
‘Okay, I’ll try it.’ I looked over at her sideboard, a huge black thing that seemed to dance on spindly legs, like a spider. ‘Have you got any chocolate?’
‘Not today, dear. Now run along.’
A week later, I was back. ‘I’ve tried the dandelions, Aunty. They didn’t work.’ Worse, the milky sap had turned black when it dried and made my hands appear covered in liver spots. And still the warts came thick and fast; the tally was now twenty-two and rising.
Aunty looked up from her saucer of tea. There were cake crumbs floating in it. She regarded me very carefully. I’d seen that look before when she was deciding whether to own up to putting the shoe polish in the oven. ‘What about bacon?’
‘Will that work, do you think?’
‘I remember it working for one of my father’s sisters.’ Anything that had worked for my great aunts was the family equivalent of a Royal Warrant.
‘Do I just rub it on the warts?’
She siphoned the tea through her false teeth. It sounded like calico ripping. ‘Mm. Just a small bit. And it has to be raw.’ She followed my glance to her sideboard. ‘I don’t have any chocolate today, dear. Maybe another time.’
I didn’t like this latest idea much but I was getting desperate, so off I went to the fridge and cut a small corner off a rasher of bacon when nobody was looking. Then I went down the bottom of the garden among the lilacs and started rubbing it on my hands. By wart number five the meat had disintegrated into small pink shreds and when I’d finished I squeezed what was left into a small ball and buried it deep under the bushes where the dog couldn’t get at it. I even pulled a loose brick off the wall and put that on top to make sure.
Next time I visited my Aunt for advice, she was sitting by the window knitting a striped tea cosy. Although she seemed to be chewing, there were no sweet wrappers anywhere. She looked up and smiled. ‘No luck still?’
I held out my hands. ‘They won’t go.’
‘You tried the bacon?’
I nodded.
‘What did you do with it afterwards?’
‘I buried it. So the dog wouldn’t eat it and get a warty tongue.’
She frowned. ‘They should be starting to go by now.’ She rummaged in her knitting bag and produced a fluffy looking sweet from its depths. ‘Would you like a toffee? I don’t have any chocolate at the moment.’
I shook my head. ‘No thanks, Aunty.’ It would be like trying to eat a sock.
‘Let’s have a look.’ She took my hands in hers, examining every wart in turn. ‘Maybe it’s the moon.’
‘The moon?’ I’ll swear the spidery sideboard started dancing a jig in the corner.
‘You can only get rid of warts on a waning moon, dear. What’s the moon like at the moment?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
She reached into her knitting bag again and brought out her almanac with the ragged pink covers. ‘Let’s see…. It was a full moon yesterday so it’s already waning now. Go outside tonight and prick every wart with a pin. Then bury the pin. That should do it.’
So that night I went out and pricked my warts by moonlight with a glass-headed pin. It wasn’t easy. Sometimes I missed and speared my hand instead. But I persevered because if my hands didn’t clear soon I’d be nothing but a giant wart with teeth.
When this too, failed, my mother intervened. She was sitting in front of the mirror doing her make up, the most important ritual of her day. Without it she never set foot outside the door, not even to bring in the milk. I didn’t think she’d noticed me, but suddenly she fixed me with that stare of hers, the one that looked like Joan Crawford trying to play Medea, and announced, ‘I see you’ve still got your warts.’
She could see them from across the room? I was horrified. What next? Maybe they’d become luminous. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve tried everything to get rid of them.’
‘Clearly you haven’t or they’d be gone by now. Have you tried selling them? And close your mouth, I don’t want to see your tonsils.’
Impossibly glamorous always, she turned back to her mirror. She was the only person I’ve ever known who could put on lipstick while still smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder.
‘Selling them? How do I do that?’
‘The same as you sell anything. Find a buyer.’
‘But nobody’s going to be daft enough to buy warts… Are they?’
‘They might, if they don’t know what they’re buying.’
‘But who do I sell them to?’
‘How should I know?’ Already she was irritated, and began brushing hard at her eyelashes using what looked like a miniature toothbrush and a tiny block of solid mascara. By the time she finished they’d curl up into her eyebrows. ‘Sell them to Susan, she won’t mind. Go on.’
Now there she was wrong. Susan would mind. She lived up the road and was the sort of girl who minded when anyone jumped in a puddle and splashed her socks. She prided herself on her pale skin and well manicured hands. But of course, my mother knew that. She also knew that Susan didn’t believe in wart charming or anything that couldn’t be sold in a department store.
So when I went up to Susan later that day and said ‘D’you want to buy some warts?’ she merely shook her head and smiled in that superior way of hers and laughed. ‘Of course not! Don’t be silly, you can’t sell a wart.’
‘I bet I can.’
‘No. You can’t.’
‘Can.’
‘Can’t. Nobody can. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll buy them.’ She leaned closer, and I could see she’d powdered her face. Specks fluttered on her pale moustache. ‘And if they haven’t gone from your hands two weeks from today, you owe me ten times what I paid for them.’
‘Give me sixpence then.’ I was reckless, maddened by warts.
‘No.’
‘Thruppence?’
‘No.’
‘Penny?’
‘No.’
I was running out of currency. The farthing had been abolished the previous year. ‘What about a ha’penny? Look, there’s one on the floor!’ Secretly I blessed whoever had gone by and dropped a ha’penny without bothering to look for it.
Susan went over and picked it up, using her hanky to protect her from its germs. Rumour had it she used to boil her pocket money before she’d touch it. ‘Here you are then.’
And that was how I sold my warts. A week later they had all vanished from my hands and a week after that I saw Susan coming out of the Chemist’s with her mother, her hands covered in sticking plasters. The pair of them scowled and crossed the road when they saw me.
My aunt was thrilled and ceremonially unlocked her sideboard. Inside there were dozens of chocolate bars and bags of toffees. A spider dangled above them like a grab-a-toy game in the Penny Arcade. She picked out and gave me the largest bar, together with a big hug.
‘She’s like you,’ I heard her telling my mother later, when she didn’t think I was around, ‘Don’t you think? I mean, she can do what you do.’ My aunt’s voice was soft with awe.
‘Maybe. It’s early days.’
My aunt, bless her, still persisted on my behalf. ‘With a little training-’
‘We’ll have to see.’
I remember feeling warm and proud that I had somehow pleased my mother. It was only years later that I realised her pleasure lay not in the fact I’d finally succeeded in charming my warts away, but because I had passed them on to somebody else.
) and throughout my childhood I filled up endless exercise books and sheets of paper with writing.
