by Beth Moran
Instantly, my need to get away from Jake seemed a lot less urgent. I clutched hold of his arm and shuffled along behind as he approached the caravan. He gestured for me to stay at the bottom of the veranda steps, and stealthily moved up to the door. I didn’t stay. It was my caravan, the first place I had lived in by myself, and my initial moment of fright gave way to indignation. I’d locked up before leaving for Fire Night but, as Jake cautiously tried the door, it opened now. He slowly turned the handle, waiting for another wailing cry before he threw the door wide open, disappearing inside. I followed a milli-second behind him. And then sort of wished I hadn’t.
It was one of those times when your eyes see something so awful your brain can’t get the message down the nerve endings to “Stop looking! Turn away! Turn away!” That gross image has about thirty seconds to burn itself onto the back of your retina only to forever pop back up at the most inappropriate moments…
Okay. So maybe I overreacted, but I had never seen two old, wrinkled, saggy, hairy, dangly people naked before. Naked and entangled. Except that the man still had on a pair of socks held up with those old-fashioned garters. Pink socks.
Jake twizzled around, facing me. Thankfully, that broke the hypnotic spell and I was able to take my eyes off the sight in front of me. He grinned.
“Good evening, my lord. My lady. Can I pass you your clothes?” he called over his shoulder.
Lord and Lady? Hatherstone?
“Good evening, Jacob.” The man spoke. He sounded like an English aristocrat from a cheesy sitcom. “Good Fire Night? We were on our way, but got slightly diverted. I am afraid our clothes are in the forest. No problem! We’ll get them. Looks as if we weren’t the only pair wanting to make use of the spare caravan. Nothing like a change of scenery to add a bit of rumpy to your pumpy!”
I was still temporarily speechless. I had never seen two people naked and rumpy-pumpying before. Ever.
“This isn’t the spare caravan, Lord Hatherstone. Marion is living here now. I was just walking her home.”
“Oh! Right. Well, pleased to meet you, Marion.” The lord and lady helped each other up and reached around Jake to shake my hand. Lady Hatherstone leaned forward and kissed me on each cheek, prompting her husband to follow suit.
Do not look down! Do not look down!
Of course I looked down.
It was the day of my father’s funeral. For the past three days, the body that had belonged to Daddy had been laid out in the dining room. He wasn’t in it any more. People hadn’t stopped coming and going the whole time. They kissed the face that used to be his, and stroked his hand. My aunties cried and my uncles said: “One of the best,” and, “Don’t worry, son, we’ll see the wee girls right,” and blew their noses. My mother sat in the corner chair twisting one of Daddy’s hankies round and round in her fingers. She seemed tinier every time I looked at her. There was only a little bit of her left. Her sisters tried to press cups of tea into her hands, but she wouldn’t take them; she just kept twisting the hanky. She had not looked at me. This was because she knew it was my fault. Nobody else did, but I knew and Ma knew, and now she could not look at me.
Right now there was nobody here. Auntie Jean had gone back to get the boys smartened up for church. I had put on my blue dress with the matching cardigan. It was too short and the collar pinched my neck, but it was the one Daddy liked best. Now, I sat on my bed and listened to the sound of my mother moving about in her room. After a long, long time, she opened the door of my bedroom and stood there, watching me. At first I thought this was better, but then she spoke. The voice that came out was not my mother’s voice. It was twisted and raspy and thin.
“You did this. With your constant noise and banging about. Running up and down the stairs like a herd of elephants! And you never left him alone. How many times did I tell you to leave him be, let him sleep? Chattering on about this and that. Stupid nothing-talk that wore him out and drove him to his grave. As if a man in his condition wanted to hear about spelling tests and silly little girls’ parties. You sucked the life out of him. He was too good to tell you to stop bothering him. Too kind. And you just wouldn’t let him rest. Didn’t I tell you this would happen? I will never forgive you for this, you selfish cow. You talked your own father to death. Every time I hear that whiny little voice of yours I remember what you did like a blade through my heart. I will never forgive you.”
She left the room. I did not cry. She had told me a hundred times to leave my father alone, to stop bothering him. That it was the Naughtiest Thing. But Daddy loved me, and when he asked me to come, I had to. I knew my stories made him tired, but I told them anyway. Now he was gone. I had killed him and I would never see him again.
I did not speak again that day. Or that week. Ma didn’t notice, lost in her anger and grief. My other relatives tried to coax words out of me. They all thought they knew best how to get me to talk. One hugged me for hours and hours, smashing my face tight against her enormous chest. Some tried sweets, or put their babies in my arms. One talked sternly at me, told me to pull myself together, and that’s not what my daddy would have wanted, now, was it? Life goes on. They pleaded with me for my mother’s sake. They did not know. My words had killed my father. I would not kill her too.
Thursday was my first day off. I didn’t want it to be. I had spent Monday learning how to look after Little Johnny, his wife Madame Plopsicle, and two daughters Louisiana and Mississippi. Valerie showed me the ropes. Did I know that pigs are the fourth most intelligent animal in the world? And that pigs have no sweat glands – that’s why they roll around in mud, to keep cool?
Tuesday I was back in reception, and had a lesson from Scarlett on cleaning bathrooms that have been messed up by someone other than myself.
“Think glorious sunsets over the ocean. Walkin’ through crisp, fresh snow. Dancin’ in the moonlight in a strong man’s arms. Do not, whatever you do, think about what you are scrubbin’, scrapin’ and scoopin’. Focus on the hot and happenin’ dress that you are goin’ to buy with the money you are earnin’ right now. Do not let yourself wonder how that hair got where it did, or what that glob of somethin’ might be. For the next half hour, your body is a machine, operatin’ on automatic. Your mind, sugar, had better take itself somewhere else.”
Wednesday I was on chicken duty. Did I know the chicken is the closest living animal to the tyrannosaurus rex? No, but I have learned that they are nearly as scary, and chicken pecks leave a bruise. I weeded, sold ice-creams and picked up litter. My muscles got so sore, but the ache that dragged deep within my bones melted away in the sunshine. And the evenings! Three nights sitting counting stars, a good book and a soft blanket over my knees.
I must have opened my bedside drawer a hundred times and peeked inside the envelope. I was not ready to do anything about it yet. Soon. Getting sooner.
When Scarlett announced I could have Thursday off – I must have Thursday off – I had to try to cover up my disappointment. I spent an hour cleaning my caravan, did a load of washing and finished my book sitting in the sunshine, but I was starting to wake up, and it felt so good that I daren’t stop or slow down for even a day. I would have gone shopping. My fridge was just about empty, and had it not been for the bag of leftovers firmly placed into my hands after Fire Night, I would have been living off stolen ice-creams by now. But I didn’t have enough money to do a decent shop, and with pay-day coming up it made more sense to wait.
I could have gone to the Sherwood Forest visitor centre. But I tried that idea on and found it too big a fit for me that particular day. Soon. Getting sooner.
I fidgeted and faffed about for another half an hour until I spotted Jake making his way down the gravel path toward my caravan. I had managed to successfully avoid him for most of the previous three days. The times we had crossed paths I had scuttled past and mumbled something about an urgent message for Scarlett, or hid behind a tree. He smiled at me as if I were an amusing puppy, and left me to my fumbling blushes. But here he ca
me now, and he had caught sight of me through the window before I had time to duck into the bathroom.
He knocked, and walked straight in. He wasn’t wearing the campsite T-shirt today, just a plain white shirt and a pair of khaki shorts.
“Hi.” He glanced around, his eyes settling on the middle of the floor. “Bit quieter than last time I was here. Seems more spacious too.”
“Yes. Thanks again for, you know…”
“No problem. Not the best timing, though.”
Oh dear.
He looked up and levelled his gaze on mine. His eyes were hazel, with long, thick lashes. I got the feeling he had used this look once or twice before. “What are we doing today, then?”
I stood up, and pretended to hunt for my shoes. They were in the bedroom, but honestly, to go into my bedroom in that tiny caravan with a man who had just looked at me without blinking for at least thirty seconds standing right there – I daren’t do it.
“Well, actually I have the day off,” I mumbled, poking my head under the table in my feigned search. The room was empty. Only a fool would be scrambling around under there, but if he decided I must be an idiot maybe he would leave me alone.
“I know. I thought we could go into Nottingham, maybe. See what’s on at the cinema. Grab some lunch. Visit the castle.” My heart stopped for a second. The castle! A ripple of yearning spread through my insides, sending goose bumps down my bare arms. I hungered to visit the castle. But not today. Not with Jake. I pulled myself upright.
“That sounds great. But I have some things I need to do. Some shopping to get. Boring stuff. Women’s issues.” I have seventeen male cousins. I knew that the mention of women’s issues would squash his manly urges quicker than a Polaroid of Lord and Lady Hatherstone rumpy-pumpying on the brown lino. I slipped on my sandals, one glance confirming it was now safe to open the bedroom door, and grabbed my bag from the sofa.
“Sorry about that. Maybe another time?” No! Not another time! Shut up, Marion!
“Yeah – sure. I’ll see you later?” He was out of the door and backing down the steps. “Maybe not today, I mean if you’re – like – busy. Um, Fire Night?”
“Okay. Bye, Jake.”
He was gone.
To keep up the pretence of going out, even though I no longer had anybody to pretend to, I walked up to my car, still parked at reception, and clambered in. (It is a very small car. It requires clambering. Sexy slithering would get you nowhere in my £400 Deal-of-the-Day junkmobile.) The steering wheel was so hot I thought I might have blistered the palms of my hands, and I detected a faint stink of warm rubbish. So when I turned the engine on and found I had nearly run out of petrol, I felt glad of the excuse to scramble out again. I couldn’t take the car out when I had no money to refill the tank. Scarlett poked her head out of the reception door. Her hair was up in a bun today. She looked like the principal dancer in a royal ballet from somewhere stylish and European.
“Car trouble, honey?”
“No. I just decided I might prefer some fresh air.”
“Where you off to?”
“I don’t know, really.”
“Well, why don’t ya check out the village? It’s two and a half miles – a fair way to trek on a scorcher like this one, but you can take Pettigrew.” Scarlett emerged from the doorway in a pair of soft grey linen trousers and a silk top. Leading me around to the side of reception, she introduced me to Pettigrew. A bike. The sort of bike that deserves a name: rainbow striped, with a gold basket on the front and shiny plastic flowers clipped to the wheel spokes. The tyres were turquoise, and the seat and handlebars orange. Streamers adorned the basket and on the handlebars an enormous clown horn replaced the usual bell. I stepped back, held my breath. Scarlett met my eye, her face set firm.
Well. I wanted to stop being invisible. This would do it.
“There is a slight problem.”
Scarlett narrowed her eyes at me, preparing to swat away any excuse.
“I sold my bike after I failed my cycling proficiency test at school when I was ten. I used the money to buy a copy of Little Women.”
“Hmm. What did you fail on? Somethin’ dangerous?”
“I don’t know specifics. The examiner just wrote an exclamation mark on the test sheet.”
She smiled, and wheeled Pettigrew over to where I hunched in the shade of the reception wall.
“Scarlett’s lesson on ridin’ a bike. One: don’t witter, waver or worry about wobblin’. Get up, get on and get goin’. Just keep pushin’ one foot in front of the other. Don’t stop, don’t slow down and – whatever you do – don’t look back. Do not turn to the side, do not focus on any obstacles in your way, look to the wide-open spaces and roll right on through ’em. It’s all about keeping balanced. Two: feel the wind whistlin’ in your hair. Shoulders back, chin up! Breathe in and breathe out, open your eyes and take it steady over the bumps. Three: and most important of all…” She lifted her hand and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. Her voice grew soft. “Be free.”
I wheeled Pettigrew over to a break in the treeline where a signpost told me the small wooden posts with blue arrows would lead me to Hatherstone village. A bag containing my purse and caravan keys sat in the basket. Buried underneath them I had tucked the brown envelope containing the photograph. Moving it from the drawer to my bag felt like a big step. I whispered a prayer into the woods that I was not kidding myself; that I would not slink back to Ireland one day with the photograph untouched and unseen.
Scarlett tactfully returned to her post at reception and, peering into the darkness ahead, wishing my phone had not been tossed into a bin at Dublin Docks, I braved the saddle for the first time in fifteen years.
“Okay,” I huffed to myself twenty metres down the path. “It’s true, I haven’t forgotten how to ride a bike. I’m still dangerously incompetent.”
Initially I creaked and teetered through the trees so slowly I felt tempted to get off and push the whole way there, to save time. I jerked to a stop at every sharp turn or fallen branch, failing to notice anything beyond the dirt path in front of my nose or the blue arrows every few hundred metres. But eventually, as I eased off my white-knuckle grip on the handlebars, I began to get the hang of steering while keeping my balance; my shoulders relaxed. The thrill of being entirely surrounded by the forest – this forest – wrapped itself around me.
I could have been the only person alive. It was fabulous. The trees rustled and rasped with the wisdom of a thousand years, and it seemed as if every other creature kept silence in honour of their age and beauty. I soared through dozens of miniature spotlights, where the sun’s rays flickered through chinks in the verdant roof above my head, illuminating the insects in their dance shows, warming my skin with an ancient blessing. Nothing mattered for those two miles. My messy life unravelled like a snagged jumper behind me as I pedalled on, swallowed up by the mystery and grandeur of a road well travelled. Nothing like a few hundred-foot oaks to help you find perspective.
The path led right up to the village. Hatherstone consisted mostly of a main street lined with imposing red-brick houses and a handful of shops. A shabby looking pub, an old church and a village hall interrupted the row, and on the forecourt of the hall I saw a cluster of market stalls. I rode proudly along the street, managing to smile at a bunch of holidaymakers ambling along, licking ice-creams.
I dismounted at a market stall laden down with tourist items. One corner displayed expensive woollen sweaters, trinkets and ornaments that nobody would buy unless they were on holiday. The rest of the stall was crammed with Robin Hood souvenirs. Plates, spoons, felt hats, wooden swords and teddies dressed up as Robin or Marion jostled for space alongside wimples and old-style maps of Sherwood Forest. I hovered there long enough for the stallholder to ask me three times if he could help me. Worried he would think I was waiting for an opportunity to pilfer a plastic Little John tankard, I quickly searched for something worth spending my dwindling pennies on.
“Do yo
u have any postcards?” My voice was a creak, and I had to repeat myself before he could understand my accent. Oh yes, he had postcards. Racks of them. Merry men and evil Sheriffs, a dozen different pictures of the forest itself, Hatherstone village, even the campsite. And a selection of legendary graves. Nice.
I bought one with a red English telephone box on the front.
Wheeling back down the path, I paused by Robin Hoode’s Tea Shoppe to try and picture myself relaxing at one of the plastic tables outside, sipping an iced coffee while I wrote the postcard. Sitting by myself in a café seemed as impossible right then as riding Pettigrew to the moon, ET-style. And I was about as ready to write that postcard as I was to enter into the Irish Olympic cycling team.
I did go inside to buy a bottle of water. A reluctant purchase, but I knew I wouldn’t survive the return journey without it. As I stepped back out into the glare of the sun, it took me a couple of moments to realize that my bag had gone from the basket. I had taken my purse with me into the café, and as I frantically searched the street either side I could see where the thief had pulled out the remaining items from the bag, dropping them onto the pavement every few metres.
The market trader who had sold me the postcard barrelled over, while his friend chased down the road in the direction of the strewn items. As I stood there, frozen, he called the other stallholders to help gather up my keys and emergency box of tampons, along with some dirty tissues, a melted mush of old toffees and other assorted pieces of embarrassing rubbish. One trader, a middle-aged woman with a frazzled brush of deep pink hair, picked up the envelope, which had been ripped open, and the photograph, lying next to it. I clutched one of the plastic tables as the relief threatened to knock me over. It felt like an omen. The photograph should have stayed in the drawer.
