The More You Ignore Me Page 9

  Alice?’ His voice was relaxed and sleeply sounding. ‘We were expecting to hear from you much earlier. Have you had a good time? I thought you were going to ring me at the station and let me know what time to pick you both up from Shrewsbury.’

  ‘Dad…’ Alice faltered. She didn’t really know how to put it. Finally she said, ‘It’s Nan.’

  ‘What?’ said Keith, starting to sound worried.

  ‘Nan’s … Nan’s…’ She couldn’t go. on any further. She began to cry again.

  The receptionist took the phone from her.

  ‘Hello, to whom am I speaking?’ she said.

  Keith said something at the other end.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said the receptionist, ‘but your mother has passed away’

  Keith was puzzled at the other end of the line and wondered briefly how his mother had managed to turn up at a Smiths gig in Leicester. At the same time, Alice was saying to the receptionist, ‘No, it’s not his mum, it’s my mum’s mum.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said the receptionist. ‘It’s your mother-in-law who’s passed away’

  ‘Can you put my daughter on?’ said Keith.

  Alice was handed the receiver.

  Alice, what happened?’ said Keith.

  ‘Nan just fell over at the bus stop,’ said Alice, ‘and I couldn’t wake her up.’

  ‘Oh, you poor girl,’ said Keith. ‘Hang on there and I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  Marie Henty was drafted in to sit in the little cottage while Gina slept fitfully, dreaming of being in heaven.

  Keith drove like a maniac through the night and arrived in Leicester at two o’clock in the morning to find Alice with panda eyes and a face as white as a snowdrop. He picked her up and held her tight.

  ‘I’m sorry this had to happen to you.’ he said. ‘And I didn’t even see Morrissey.’ Alice sobbed. Keith let it pass and after some hellish bureaucratic interplay with the hospital staff, he and Alice left hand in hand and got into the van.

  They arrived back at five thirty. It was still dark and raining and Marie Henty snoozed in a chair by the fire, dreaming of Keith kissing her feet.

  Alice had fallen asleep in the van and Keith carried her, staggering, into the house, thinking back to when she was a baby and how he had done this so many times after days out at fairs and fetes.

  He then woke Marie Henty who, looking up into his lovely, beneficent face, gave a little squeak of pleasure as she woke from her dream.

  ‘Thanks, Marie,’ he said. ‘You’re released from your duties.’

  ‘Is everything OK?’ said Marie, now fully awake.

  ‘My mother-in law died in Leicester tonight,’ said Keith. ‘Poor Alice was all on her own with her.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Marie, secretly thinking to herself, one down and three to go. That’ll make my life easier. ‘Have you told the family?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh fuck… sorry,’ said Keith. ‘For swearing,’ he added. ‘No, I hadn’t even thought of them. God, I’d better get over there.’

  ‘You’ve had no sleep,’ said Marie. ‘Can’t you leave it till the morning?’

  ‘It is the morning,’ said Keith, ‘and I think it’s a job better done in a state of semi-consciousness’

  ‘Shall I stay in case Alice or Gina wake up?’

  ‘Would you?’ said Keith. ‘I feel like I’m asking you too much.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Marie. ‘I haven’t got surgery till the afternoon. Go on, off you go, and I wish you luck.’

  Keith drove the few miles to the Wildgooses’ isolated cottage. The darkness was broken occasionally by a tepid moon peeping through the clouds but as he turned into the potholed track that led to the grimy cottage, it disappeared, leaving just the insipid headlights of the van to guide him.

  The cottage was in darkness.

  Keith realised that if he banged on the door he risked a shotgun blast of the ‘ask no questions’ variety, but he could not see any way round it. He tried to knock in as officious a way as possible so it sounded as if someone respectable had come to call for tea.

  A light went on upstairs and a dog barked, causing some hens to start clucking in a panicked way.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Bert’s pinched face appeared at the tiny window.

  Keith had always rather liked Bert who seemed, underneath, to be a civilised man caught in a family of rabid animals. He looked so benign that Keith couldn’t believe he didn’t have a core of goodness hidden under the tacit approval of the extreme antics of his Stone Age sons.

  ‘Bert. it’s me, Keith,’ said Keith.

  ‘Missus run off with a train driver in Leicester, has she?’ said Bert cheerily, expecting some banal news about his wife being too pissed to come home. ‘Hang on, I’ll be down,’ he said.

  The noise of bolts being drawn back and the door opening was more reminiscent of a medieval castle than a small cottage in Herefordshire, security put in place by Wobbly and Bighead because quite a few unsavoury types came looking for them.

  ‘Hello,’ said Bert and gestured for Keith to come in. Without Ma Wildgoose at his side he seemed smaller and more vulnerable than usual.

  ‘What is it, boy?’ he said when they got into the cramped sitting room.

  ‘I’m afraid Violet has passed on,’ said Keith. ‘It happened in Leicester when they were walking to the show.’

  Bert stared uncomprehendingly at him for a few seconds and then his face crumpled into that of a small boy and he bent his head, crying silently, the odd tear leaking out between his dirty uncut fingernails.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Bert,’ said Keith. wanting to put his arms round him but holding back because he was embarrassed. He wondered when Wobbly and Bighead would burst into the room and try and kill him. Are the boys around?’ He tried to sound confident, as if he wasn’t shit scared of them.

  ‘They were out drinking last night. They won’t be up for hours. I’ll tell ‘em, lad,’ Bert said almost kindly.

  He then asked Keith the sort of questions that revealed just what an innocent he was. He had absolutely no idea where to go from here, how to get his wife’s body transported back to them, how to arrange a funeral or how to get his own breakfast. Keith found himself feeling sorry for him for perhaps the first time ever as he realised that as a package they were ferocious, but on his own Bert was just a sad, tired, lost old man who didn’t know how to cope. Perhaps, on waking, his sons would restore him to his full intimidating glory but Keith doubted it. The spark had gone out of the Wildgooses and he wondered whether it could be relit.

  ‘I’ll ask May down the road about the arrangements,’ said Bert. ‘She lost ‘er ‘usband last year. She’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Call me if you need anything,’ said Keith, but he knew he wouldn’t; he suspected Bert had never lifted a telephone receiver in his life.

  Back at home, Keith discovered a quiet house. Alice and Gina were still asleep upstairs and Marie Henty drooped over the edge of an armchair, looking very uncomfortable.

  ‘Off you go,’ Keith said, waking her. ‘I’ll look after everything here. And thanks, I really appreciate your help.’

  Upstairs, Alice was penning another letter to Morrissey.

  ‘Dear Morrissey, I came to see you in Leicester last night with my nan (don’t ask). I’m afraid she died on the way.

  Then she wrote. ‘I didn’t know she hated you that much!’ and then put big black lines through it, screwed the paper up and put it in the bin.

  She started the letter several times but it just didn’t sound real, so in the end, she left her bedroom, kissing his photo before she went, and found her dad downstairs in a chair, staring at the wall.

  Are you all right?’ she said.

  ‘Fine,’ said Keith, rousing himself and going into the kitchen to make their breakfast. ‘But I don’t know how your mum is going to be.’

  Gina reacted to the news with her usual blank expression, uttered the word. ‘Oh,’ and went into t
he kitchen to make toast, where she sat munching several slices before she went back to bed.

  Right, thought Keith. That’s that for now.

  Ma Wildgoose’s funeral was arranged, with the help of May, for the following Tuesday The small group consisting of Bert, Wobbly, Bighead, Keith, Alice, Gina and May stood in the little church while the vicar made heavy work of the funeral service. No hymns were sung as the vicar had made a unilateral decision that the number of mourners precluded any decent performance, so after a fairly short time the pallbearers — Bert, Wobbly, Bighead and Keith — struggled outside and made their slow progress towards the freshly dug grave.

  Keith had wondered whether the brothers would find some spurious reason for starting a fight, but they were unusually subdued as everyone stood round the grave and threw a handful of earth on top of Ma Wildgoose.

  Bert shook the vicar’s hand.

  ‘Bit of tea back at ours?’ he said. ‘May’s laid on a nice spread.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the vicar, ‘I have another engagement, please excuse me.’ And he escaped to the womb-like safety of his den in the vicarage and finished off The Times crossword.

  May’s ‘spread’ seemed to consist mainly of huge doorstops of bread, between which lay an unidentifiable slimy meat. On inquiry this turned out to be tongue. The sandwiches were accompanied by a huge amount of cider and a sad-looking bottle of sherry. May had also included a cake which looked as if it had literally been thrown into the room, its original shape completely lost after it had been stuffed by May into a carrier bag and then sat on by Bert who had taken up his usual seat in the kitchen without even noticing it.

  Cider was poured into a selection of unclean glasses and Bert proposed a toast.

  ‘To my old missus,’ he said, ‘who was often a pain in the arse but a good woman all the same. To…’

  ‘Nan,’ said Alice.

  ‘Mum,’ said Wobbly, Bighead and Gina.

  Keith, after a split-second decision, said ‘Mum’ too and Bert whispered ‘Darling’ which was heard by no one and harked back to the day they had met at a funfair and her wild cackling and flashing eyes had inexorably drawn him towards her.

  Alice felt sick. Her head was aching and spinning. Either the cider was so strong, one sip had altered her equilibrium, or she was ill. She sat down but didn’t feel any better. Eventually she said, ‘Dad, I don’t feel well, can I go home?’

  ‘Go on then,’ said Keith. ‘We’ll see you there later.’

  On the way home, Alice threw up in a ditch and covered it over with some stray branches. She went immediately to her bedroom, put on her Smiths album and lay on the bed thinking about how Morrissey would feel when she eventually wrote to him about the events on the night of his Leicester gig. He’ll have to come and get me, she thought. He’ll know how much I need him.

  Keith, who had felt duty bound to stay at the wake until the bitter end, was beginning to regret it. Wobbly and Bighead were becoming more animated with every pint and had begun to tell each other dirty jokes. And then the atmosphere abruptly changed when Wobbly said, ‘Of course, if poor old Mum didn’t have had to drag herself all the way to fucking Leicester, none of this would ‘ave ‘appened.’ His eyes glinted, showing the room some concrete evidence of his dangerous spirit.

  Aw, come on, son,’ said Bert. ‘It weren’t their fault. Mum didn’t have needed to go if she didn’t want.’

  ‘Who are these Smiths anyway?’ said Bighead, yawning and scratching his hairy gut, most of which had lost the battle to be contained by his tight trousers.

  ‘Well, just a group that Alice really likes,’ said Keith. ‘I don’t really know much about them.’

  ‘I’ve seen ‘em in the paper,’ said Wobbly, whose reading age was about nine. ‘They say ‘e’s a poof who’s a vegetarian.’ To Wobbly, being a vegetarian was only marginally above being gay on the scum scale.

  ‘Sounds like a right wanker to me,’ said Bighead. ‘Why can’t your Alice like someone decent like Elton John or Barbra Streisand?’

  Keith was desperate to point out that Elton John was not the full-blown heterosexual male the brothers assumed and that most of Barbra Streisand’s fans also batted for the other side. Still, it was a wake, so he desisted, unwilling to return home with some physical evidence upon him that Wobbly and Bighead had abused him.

  ‘Well,’ said Keith, ‘I’d better be going. Alice didn’t look too well. Gina, are you coming?’ He turned to Gina who had sat silently by the table guzzling cider and smoking for the last hour.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to stay here with my brothers.’

  All right, love,’ said Keith. He turned to the boys and Bert. ‘Phone me when you want me to pick her up,’ he said.

  All right, Keefy,’ said Bighead in a high-pitched little girl’s voice which scared Keith.

  Once out of the door, he breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  Alice realised on waking the next morning that something wasn’t right with the middle section of herself. Odd rumblings were occurring which felt strange and uncomfortable. She ran into the bathroom and vomited into the sink, immediately regretting that she hadn’t gone for the toilet as it would have been so much easier to wash away.

  It hit her like a punch.

  Jesus Christ, she thought. I’m pregnant.

  And so she was. The encounter with Mark in his bedroom had resulted in the tiny coming together of their genes which in some months from now would bind them forever. She found herself thinking that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Images passed through her mind of herself and Mark alone in a small house with a little gurgling bundle which knitted together their physical and emotional characteristics.

  Are you all right, love?’ Keith had heard the noises in the bathroom.

  ‘Fine,’ said Alice. ‘I think the food at the cottage yesterday was probably a bit dodgy.’

  ‘OK,’ said Keith. Are you all right for school?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Alice sat on her bed feeling less like school than she’d ever felt but it was important to stagger through the day as best she could without anyone noticing that she, as so many before her, carried the country girl’s shame inside her.

  Her mind whirred. She would need to find out for sure if she was pregnant and this would involve travelling to a far-flung chemist where nobody knew her, to buy a pregnancy test. Hereford was out of the question. She didn’t know if she could sit on the rumbling bus without throwing up.

  She conjured up an image of the transaction in her head. She entered an empty shop staffed by a friendly, weary-faced woman, asked for a pregnancy testing kit and left, unsullied by human dialogue. It all seemed so easy She decided to go to Knighton on her bike after school. The fact that Knighton was in Wales, a different country, somehow set it apart, increased her anonymity. She just had the school day to get through.

  She clasped the secret to her like a little package of woe all day.

  The cycle ride to Knighton was lovely despite it being a journey towards potential catastrophe. When Alice arrived, she leaned her bike against the clock tower and entered the chemist. Of course, the scenario she had imagined had been replaced by a horrible reality. There was Mrs Percival from the farm near Mark’s, chatting away to the pharmacist as if she was going to be there all day They both turned their eyes towards Alice.

  ‘Can I help?’ said the pharmacist.

  ‘Hello, Alice dear.’ said Mrs Percival at the same time.

  ‘Er, no… I…’ Alice trailed off lamely ‘Hello, Mrs Percival,’ she added.

  The two adults continued their conversation, giving Alice a few precious seconds to account for her hesitation.

  ‘My grandad wanted me to get him something and I can’t remember what it was,’ said Alice. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What was it for, love?’ said the pharmacist.

  ‘Upset tummy,’ said Alice, thinking that was probably general enough.

  ‘Milk of magnesia’s probab
ly best,’ said the pharmacist reaching behind him and getting a bottle.

  ‘Thanks.’ said Alice.

  She paid the pharmacist and turned to embark on the well-worn walk of the teenager exiting the chemist bearing a product she neither wanted nor needed.

  Mrs Percival turned to the pharmacist with a grin. ‘Well, Bert Wildgoose has a cast-iron stomach and her other grandad lives over Birmingham way,’ she said triumphantly ‘What do you reckon she was really after? Condoms or a pregnancy test?’

  Alice arrived home, frustrated, sweaty and nauseous.

  ‘Spag bol for tea,’ said Keith as she lingered in the small dingy hallway, hoping she could avoid him.

  ‘Right,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll just go and change.’

  She lay on her bed underneath her poster of Morrissey and was struck by an unfamiliar sensation, a hundredfold period pain ache accompanied by a somersaulting sensation.

  ‘Something is happening, Morrissey,’ she said aloud, ‘and I don’t like it.’

  Whatever was happening to her, she didn’t want it to happen in this small bedroom in the dark cottage; she felt she needed to be outside on her own.

  She stood up and staggered a little, the change from lying to standing causing her blood pressure to drop. She walked gingerly downstairs, shouting to Keith as she went, ‘I’m just going for a quick walk. Can you keep my tea warm?’

  ‘Okey dokey,’ he replied from the kitchen, feeling strangely miffed at her exit.

  Alice walked quickly up the hill, her boots squelching on the mash of grass, oak leaves and brambles that lined the road. She opened the gate into the field that led up the small path into the wood. A dog-walker on the horizon above her raised a hand. She raised her hand and turned away. taking a less well-worn path which was nonetheless familiar to her in the gloom.

  As soon as she was concealed by the trees from any passing strollers and their weak torches, she sat down on the earth and felt the wet and cold begin to seep into her as a warm rush of something poured out from inside her, accompanied by a great spasm, not so much painful as rolling and uncontrollable. The physical sense of loss was accompanied by a sharp pain in what she assumed was her heart as the tiny thing she had created with Mark began to fall out of her. She stopped a great roar which was rising in her throat for fear of attracting attention and just let it happen to her there in the darkness, with the drip of water from the trees pinging around her face.