Tracey Emin - Strangeland

STRANGELAND

TRACEY EMIN

www.hodder.co.uk

Contents

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Sceptre An imprint of Hodder and Stoughton
An Hachette UK company

Copyright 2005 by Tracey Emin

A version of Like a Hook from the Sky was previously published as Exploration of the Soul (Tracey Emin, 1994; reprinted by Counter Editions, 2003). Excerpts from Like a Hook from the Sky appeared in Typical Girls (Sceptre, 1997). The Proper Steps for Dealing with An Unwanted Pregnancy appeared in i-D Magazine (Anniversary Issue, 2002). Excerpts from The Mummy Screams were published in The Times (24 January 2001), and in GQ Magazine (July 2001).

The right of Tracey Emin to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Sun Has Got His Hat On Words and Music by Ralph Butler and Noel Gay 1932, Wests Limited/EMI Music Publishing Limited (50%)/Richard Armitage Limited (50%). Reproduced by permission of Wests, London WC2H 0QY and Music Sales Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

Night Boat To Cairo Words and Music by Michael Barson and Suggs 1979 Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC2H 0QY.

Stuck In The Middle With You Words and Music by Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan 1972, Icon Music Limited Universal Music Publishing Limited (50%)/Baby Bun Music Limited (50%). Used by permission of Music Sales Limited and Baby Bun Music Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN: 9781444719871
Book ISBN: 9780340769461

Hodder and Stoughton Ltd
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH

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For my mum and dad with all my love and thank you for making me so independent

I poured out my worries to a friend

Hoping it would make me feel better

But what I told him became an open secret

Fireflies in the dark.

Ahmad Ibu-al-Qaf,

eleventh century

MOTHERLAND

Like a Hook from the Sky

When I was born, they thought I was dead. Paul arrived first, ten minutes before me. When it was my turn, I just rolled out, small and yellow with eyes closed. I didnt cry. But at the moment of my birth into this world, I somehow felt a mistake had been made. I couldnt scream or cry or argue my case. I just lay motionless, wishing I could go back where Id come from.

They put me into a little glass box and slowly I came round.

Paul and I would lie together in our cot. He would always be going on about something or other and no one could understand him, except me. But I would lie quietly on my back with my arms stretched out towards the sky, constantly pulling my hands through the air, holding on to the invisible lines that only I could see, the strands that join every moment: past, present and future. The lines that join every part of human destiny from eternity to the stars.

As a baby, I tried to die a couple of times. My most successful attempt was suffocation by pressing my mouth against the side of the carrycot. But Paul saved me saved me with his constant screaming. It seemed that he would always be there, looking out for me. It was hard not to feel resentful. After all, my soul had been floating along when, somehow, it got caught up in his conception. It was like a hook in the sky I was pulled down and turned into a creature of this world.

The first words I ever heard the first that werent Pauls were The deaf and dumb are one year old, one year old today.

I didnt talk until I was three. One day, my dad took me into the garden. He lifted me in his arms and pointed to a tree. And as he held me on that autumn chill morning, my first words sprang from my lips. Look. Apple.

It was supposed to have been the last night our mum and dad spent together. This was 1962; Mum was married, Dad was married, but not to each other. My mum was twenty-one when she first gave birth to my older brother, Alan and she always said that you could not imagine the pain, that any woman who claimed it didnt hurt was lying. When she fell pregnant by my father, she booked into a clinic to have an abortion, only to talk herself out of it at the last moment.

This wild, roaming Turk, who had hit the London property scene and swept her off her feet, now came up with an offer: three days a week or nothing. Mum changed her name from Cashin to Emin and settled for three days a week, knowing he would never divorce his wife. Later, after his bankruptcy and a trail of financial disasters, she would be left with nothing.

But some things are meant to be for ever

I sat by the tomato plants, Mum and Dad screaming at each other. I pulled a bamboo stick away from one. The weight of the tomatoes dragged the green stem down to the dirt. As they argued, I pushed the stick through the top of my thigh. Blood started to pour. And they stopped screaming.

Hotel International, that was where Paul and I grew up. A seventy-bedroom maze, along Margate sea-front, overlooking the Winter Gardens. It was actually six small guest-houses joined together, full of strangers, guests, kitchen staff and chambermaids, a juke-box and the Blue Room, where we used to dance. We were rich and spoilt and spoke three languages: English, Turkish and, of course, our own.

Because the hotel was six guest-houses, it had six backyards, connected via holes smashed in each of the adjoining walls: a world of camps and bases, sheds and chalets, roofs and garages. A vast territory, a kingdom, our domain. We were rich and envied. I remember hiding unwrapped Christmas presents under the bed, just hoping they would disappear.

All Paul and I wanted was to be normal, like other children. But it was impossible. We were the twins. We had our own language until we were five years old. We shared a bedroom and sat next to each other at school. Once, we had shared a womb and now we shared a compulsive need for attention, which at times we liked and at others we hated.

Mum explained to us that they werent sweets: they were pills, very special pills. And because of these special pills, Paul and I stayed special. If she took one every day, she would not have any more babies. We were six years old and tired of being special. We went to her handbag, removed the pills and, one by one, put them down the sink.

We didnt get a baby brother or sister. Instead we were given a rabbit. A tiny white ball of fluff. It had a little house. Paul made it a bed out of shoeboxes and I started on its clothes: a jacket, hat and tiny shoes made of serviettes. On warm summer days it would bounce round amid the wild strawberries and Paul and I would laugh, the joy of unconditional love.

As we got older, our world came to seem more and more unnatural and we knew it. We first began to notice around the time our rabbit died. Of course, it had not simply died: it had been murdered, starved to death by the kitchen staff. We had been away in London. When we came home, the first thing we did was rush through the hotel into the yard and through the hole in the wall to what we called the green garden where our rabbit lived. The hutch was there, but no rabbit. The staff came out of the hotel in twos and threes calling, Rabbit, Rabbit. They looked under pieces of wood, behind doors, under car wheels, in bushes, sheds and bins. Paul and I stared deep into each others eyes: it didnt matter what anyone said, we knew they had killed it. The one real living thing that, individually, we had both chosen to love: gone. Our fluffy white rabbit.