Unhallowed Ground

by Gillian White

  Sometimes Georgie felt she had spent her whole life searching for that experience, ever since. When Toby died she gave up hope. She felt she would never find it.

  Yes, she was more lonely when she pleased Isla and went out with one of her ‘hangers on’ than if she spent the evening alone with a book and her feet up. Unbearably lonely.

  Everyone thought Mark was ‘lovely’. She called him Brillo, he referred to her as Snuffles. Educated, charming when he chose to be, he was interesting, too, in a mild kind of way. He worked at the British Museum, was an expert on the ancient Greeks. His wit and his humour, his hair and his lips, everything about him was desert dry.

  And she did like Mark. He was a decent man. The injustice of her own feelings troubled her, she was taken aback by her own malice because she was using him, pretending, giving nothing of herself, she, who had trained herself in compassion for others.

  ‘I’ll move in with you,’ was his immediate and generous response when she had felt so threatened by violence in London, when she was so lost and afraid to be left alone in her flat. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own.’

  But she couldn’t explain the truth to him, couldn’t tell him that sharing the flat with him would have afforded little protection, how could she say that in some odd way she would have found it more threatening to wake up every morning beside him and his big bare feet, to smell his peppermint, listen to him cleaning his teeth for hours like he did, and that damn gargling, to have to watch him hanging his clothes on the chair with such infernal neatness, just as he had been taught at school, so organized, so maddeningly sensible, even worse than she was. But it would be so easy to slip into this to answer a need for love.

  ‘I love you, Snuffles,’ Mark would sometimes whisper in her ear, mostly when he had drunk too much wine, marring an otherwise happy evening.

  ‘I really do. I love you.’

  And Georgie would try to reply in kind, try to soothe him, and try not to weep.

  ‘You have been on your own too long,’ scolded Isla. ‘You’re a dried up old walnut and you’ll end up cracking, that’s if you haven’t already. Far too choosy. Too selfish. You want too much. Mark adores you, he would do anything for you. He would be a dog at your feet if you’d let him, if you weren’t so bloody awkward.’

  Sadly this was true.

  ‘You need someone to help you fold your sheets,’ Isla said. ‘Everyone does. And someone to whip the cream when your arm aches, and support you in your dotage, if you play your cards right.’

  So Isla had been gratified to hear that Mark was arriving in five days’ time. She had that silly gleam in her eye and Georgie turned away in disgust.

  SIXTEEN

  IT WAS PAINFUL TO admit this, thought Georgie, even to herself, as she stared at the pendant Mark had given her for Christmas, as she fingered the greenish stone of archaeological interest, but Mark was an older, leaner version of Toby, safe as Toby, unthreatening as Toby. Yes, that is why she had married Toby, out of a need to be safe.

  She had married Toby for two reasons, first because she loved him, and second because she was terrified that anyone else might see through her. How she detested her own vulnerability. If she had had children she might have been different, less afraid for herself, and more concerned about them from the moment they rose from crawling position to sway on their tiny feet. She probably would have been overprotective, far too worried to endure the fear that some monster might hurt them—a teacher giving a thoughtless report, a team leader picking them last, a friend forgetting their birthday. Her vulnerability made her inadequate, as inadequate as her ‘clients’, who, in the words of her mother, ‘ought to be compulsorily sterilized’.

  Mark was a person everyone talked to because he did not. Because he mostly stood around staring with one raised, interested eyebrow, more interested in abstract matters.

  Perhaps that’s why women slept with him, too.

  It was Mark who built her that neat little hen house, and Georgie was glad he was with her when they went to fetch the hens because of the unpleasant business of pushing them into those dirty sacks. Their warm female bodies bundled in jute. Bump bump bump they went, their silence made a forlorn entreaty. ‘Oh, they’ll be fine,’ the farmer assured them, ‘they favour the dark, do chickens.’ But the journey back felt endless and Georgie could hardly wait to get them home and tip them into the bright daylight of her orchard.

  Mark wandered off to watch the milking at Wooton Farm on his first morning in Wooton-Coney. Funny how men can do things like that without being thought pushy. He brought her an early morning cuppa. Georgie peered at the clock to see to her horror that it was half-past six, but he said perkily, clapping his hands, ‘It’s a glorious morning, too good to be wasted, so I’m off to explore.’

  So Blytonesque. So Julian.

  He had arrived well equipped for the country with his new green wellies and his three-quarter-length Barbour. Georgie was already being nasty, she couldn’t help herself around Mark, she regularly had these unkind thoughts and it didn’t make her feel any better about herself.

  There was a fishing rod in the back of his car, an old MG, a collector’s item, not too comfortable for the passenger, not when you’re dressed for a night on the town.

  But Georgie had been relieved to see him after her five days alone, when she’d found herself doing worrying things like pacing the floor, glancing at her watch and speculating that he might not find her because Mark was not the most practical of men when it came to making his way about, or making love either. He never quite managed to hit the spot, there was so much fussing with maps and lists… He would find himself somewhere else. Somebody else would take him home.

  But she had no right to be so vindictive because it was with Mark that she went to the merchants and picked the items she would need to make a start on her cottage. And Mark’s advice was good. Practical in some small ways, why should he be practical in all? Georgie demanded too much of Mark, she too readily lost patience, she rarely bothered to be civil, but he invariably came back for more with his damn tail-wagging.

  She dithered for days over whether she should put him in the spare room, Stephen’s old studio, or if she should make it clear from the start that he could sleep in her bed? It wasn’t even a double, it was that strange size in between, which meant that sheets never fitted properly and double duvets touched the ground. So, if Mark was to sleep with Georgie they would be close, extremely close. He would not get up when he had finished, he would fall straight to sleep with his mouth wide open and she would be squashed against the wall.

  Oh no. Oh no.

  In the end, after much contemplation, on that first night she made sure they finished their lovemaking downstairs, uncomfortable though it was. He would not have the strength or the inclination to perform a second time, and he hated to miss Newsnight. When the programme had finished she noticed some relief on his face when she showed him to Stephen’s studio.

  ‘It smells in here,’ was all he said, wrinkling his freckled nose and dumping his Gladstone bag on the bed with such a thud that the bedsprings twanged. He had brought his Paisley pyjamas with him, he already wore his brown leather slippers. He had made love in his brown leather slippers.

  He put her in mind of Prince Charles. Damaged by privilege. ‘It’s the damp,’ she said encouragingly. ‘You get used to it.’

  Why did she let him? She never bothered to tart herself up, in fact, if anything, she dressed in her shabbiest, most-washed clothes in order to turn him off. For his arrival Georgie had worn torn jeans and a dirty old shirt, huge, like a smock. There were bits of old cobweb in her hair and she hadn’t bothered to wash it. Quite a statement, one might imagine. But with Mark, sex was like saying hello. He arrived with the lovemaking question in his eyes, like a worry. You had to get the ritual over before you progressed to anything else. In bed, Mark was the theme tune to Neighbours as opposed to the Planet Symphony. Oh why, oh why did Mark Bamber-Jones force her to thoughts mean and
unkind? Behaviour quite unworthy of her because Mark was a good friend of Georgie’s and she never intended to hurt him.

  She was downstairs cooking breakfast when Mark returned from the milking. He liked his meals at precise intervals, and his sleeping times to be regular. Routine was all important. ‘They’re a bit queer to put it mildly.’

  ‘Queer?’

  ‘Rustics, of the old-fashioned kind. Peasants, really, damn tricky to fathom out what they say.’

  ‘Oh? So they actually spoke to you then?’ Surprised, she turned round to study his face while her hands cracked an egg into the fat. It sizzled and spat, like Georgie’s own resentment at the easy way Mark seemed to manage to slot himself into every situation. ‘You’ve made more progress than I have. I went to order more milk when I arrived and got the same miserable reaction as the first time. I only see the men when they’re passing by on the tractor, or high on the hills with the sheep.’

  ‘Lot and Silas. The sons. The old man’s long dead.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Quite horrid,’ said Mark with a bit of a shudder and a nervous laugh. ‘There’s a filthy jar on a shelf, mixed up with capsules, detergent, syringes, rags and an old bacon sandwich. When I asked, they said it was the old boy’s ashes. Apparently he asked for his urn to be put on the parlour shelf. They told me he died twenty years back. They didn’t introduce themselves. I heard them calling each other. I wasn’t addressed directly at all.’

  Georgie was horrified. ‘Jesus. How grotesque,’ she said, wide-eyed. ‘They must have been kidding you. Twenty-year-old ashes on the shelf? But they let you stay and watch the milking?’

  ‘Naturally. They could see I was interested, and I kept well out of the way. Both somewhere in their thirties, I’d guess. You’d never imagine they were brothers, one a burly oaf and the other a nervy type with a wicked twitch in his eye. Both thick as shit, that’s obvious.’

  ‘I bet that mother gives them both hell. She’s a foul-tempered cow. And they didn’t even ask who you were?’

  ‘Didn’t seem bothered. Too busy. Both the silent, macho type. Can’t put more than two words together. Probably both illiterate.’

  ‘Of course they’ll already know who you are. They might be thick but they don’t miss a trick. Always staring. Whenever they drive by here they peer in, and if I’m out walking they’ll turn their heads a hundred and eighty degrees. They’ve never been told it’s rude to stare.’

  ‘Well, you get all types down here, products of incest, sheep-shagging and God knows what else.’ And happily Mark tucked into his breakfast. ‘I’d rather do without the milk. They piss in the parlour along with the cows and I’m not sure that’s all they do. There should be some law against it.’

  It was good, it was warm enough to open the top of the stable door and they sat in the kitchen together using Stephen’s scarred pine table with the morning sun streaming in. Georgie felt she could be in an advert with a packet of Cornflakes on the table.

  She had spent five long days cleaning. Not your ordinary sort of cleaning, it was scrubbing on hands and knees and on ladders, buckets of detergent slopping all over the floors. She scraped the grime off the windows with a pallet knife before she could see through them properly. She had washed all the blankets, chair and cushion covers by hand. Naturally there was no washing machine, and nowhere to plumb one in. No room in the kitchen anyway. But the sink was deep, made out of stone and back-breakingly low. The two huge draining boards were ample for dumping piles of wet washing. She had even made an attempt at turning over some ground for vegetables, but the ground was so heavy her hands got blistered before she could make much impression. Since Isla had left she had kept herself on the go every minute of the day, and she had dropped into bed at night exhausted. Her behaviour was obsessive, she hadn’t wanted to stop, even for a second. Sometimes Georgie caught Lola staring at her with a worried expression on her soft, wrinkled face.

  She was safe to slow down and relax a little now that Mark had arrived, and they spent his first day out in the orchard with him building the hen house and Georgie trying to assemble some sort of run. She asked him brightly, ‘D’you think that tomorrow, after we’ve been for the hens, you could help me clear out the woodshed?’

  Mark wandered over to have a look. ‘Bit of a waste of time, surely, as it’s half full of logs.’

  ‘I know.’ She picked abstractedly at the blistered skin on her fingers. ‘But I’d like to get it more organized, cleared out and whitewashed, perhaps.’

  ‘Well, yes, if you feel that’s important. One of your priorities.’ He looked doubtfully at the logs again. Typically, he had brought a clean set of overalls with him, he dusted them down where he’d vaguely marked them. ‘It’ll be one hell of a job. Wouldn’t it be better to wait till the summer when the wood’s mostly gone?’

  ‘I’d like to get it done now, Mark. You know I can’t stand clutter.’ She went back to wrestling with her sheets of netting. She could always wheedle him round to her way of thinking, he would do the job without argument, and yet she could be so unkind to him, so short with him, even rude. Why should poor Mark sweat and groan and wear himself out over her woodshed, just because of a whim? She didn’t know why. But she knew he would do it.

  That evening that old sex question put itself in his eyes again. They brightened in a familiar way after the sun went down and Georgie’s irritation grew as she wrenched the cork from the wine bottle and stirred the beef Bourguignonne. It was not a question of whether she’d let him, she knew that she would to save friction, it was the worry over the how and where. And the why, she supposed, she had to be honest. He had asked if she would rather go out for a meal, but she couldn’t be bothered to get tidied up, they’d be working again first thing in the morning. No doubt he’d be up at the crack of dawn, pottering, or at the farm.

  Remarkably insensitive, it never occurred to him that he, or his advances, might be unwelcome. In his day Mark was known to have gatecrashed the most delicate dinner parties and get away with it. Everyone liked him, that was the trouble, he was so well-meaning and naive. To be unkind to Mark was the same as being beastly to a child.

  But Georgie was unkind to him.

  In the past they had never talked much about Angie Hopkins because Mark was not really the type you could talk to in any deep sort of way. But every so often he had brought Georgie flowers, and he’d taken to phoning her up every evening to see how she was coping. This forced her into a different mode, she had longed to shriek out the truth, to tell him how hellish it all was, but you couldn’t with Mark, so she’d found herself talking about inconsequential, small talk, nothing important. She used to sigh and sag unkindly when she realized it was only Mark on the phone, Oh no, not him again. But he had always let her know he was there and she knew he would not let her down. Mark was reliable, but then so are most chair legs.

  They went to admire the finished hen house as the sun dipped over the hills. There was a night dew. The earth breathed out deeply. Georgie went barefoot and Mark held her hand. It should have been romantic but it wasn’t. He showed Georgie the ramp he had made, with struts to stop the hens from slipping. He slid open the little trap door and showed her the perches inside.

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful, Mark,’ Georgie exclaimed, as if to a child home from school with a painting. And Mark’s smile was childlike, he beamed because he had pleased her, and she wanted to slap him, she didn’t know why. He gave her the piece of wood which he called the front door lock, she fiddled with it, she obliged him. But she wanted to scream and race to the hills.

  ‘Don’t be so rough with it, do it more carefully, it’s quite delicate and you don’t want to smash it,’ he said.

  The forthcoming intimacy filled her with gloom. She wondered if she should offer herself here on the ground where they stood, among the tall grasses, and if they might do it standing still, like hens did. Georgie’s jeans were filthy, her hair tied back with a bit of frayed scarf, but Mark looked impeccable
, not one of his sandy hairs was out of place. He had even changed for dinner. He had met the challenge of Stephen’s shower. His checked Viyella shirt was new, Georgie suspected, specially bought for a country weekend. His moleskin trousers were perfectly creased, even his belt was on the right hole—not a spare ounce of flesh on Mark, he made sure of that; he played squash too regularly.

  So they went back inside, Georgie with that hollow of sadness inside her and Mark feeling it but not knowing why. His dry hand caressed hers. They ate their perfect dinner, profiteroles for pudding, with whipped cream and a chocolate sauce, and they drank their mellow red wine, they listened to some music. She decided to let him do it on the rug before the fire, with Lola locked in the kitchen so she didn’t try to join in the fun with licks and wagging tail. He made raucous love to her while she tried desperately to use her imagination. They had it all, didn’t they? The firelight, the dim lamps, the beams, soft music, Stilton and biscuits, there were even spring flowers on the table. And Mark was tall and ganglingly handsome in a harmless sort of way. He smelled nice, less of the peppermint than usual, more of his favourite herbal tea.

  ‘I love you, Snuffles.’ Ah, yes. So he had drunk sufficient wine.

  She played her part with kindness, self-control and patience. She made no complaint at all.

  They had coffee watching the news. They shared a packet of chocolate finger biscuits that left Georgie feeling slightly sick.

  Afterwards she listened when, flushed and happy, he climbed into the studio bed in his Paisley pyjamas. Georgie sat on her own bed, the three-quarter double, and watched the darkness out of the window until it must have been very late, because a soft white light silvered the horizon and she could hear the Buckpits’ cockerel as she slipped under her cover.