The Second Life of Sally Mottram

by David Nobbs

  She has enjoyed the journey, although she has noticed nothing. She has been buried in her two books, with their description of the purposes and the achievements of the Transition movement.

  Of all the people in the world, who would she least like to come and sit next to her on the last few miles of her return to the town she had never loved until this day? Sadly for the future of our democracy, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are high on the list. But at the top, towering above them all, is Linda Oughtibridge. She looks squarer than ever as she asks, ‘Is that seat taken?’ and replies to her question so swiftly that Sally has no opportunity to speak, says, ‘No? Splendid,’ and plonks herself down on three-quarters of the seat, ‘plonks’ being the operative word.

  ‘Train’s late, isn’t it?’ she bellows.

  ‘Yes. Cake on the line at Pontefract.’

  There’s something about Linda Oughtibridge that leads one irresistibly to frivolity.

  ‘That’s a new one,’ she says, taking it seriously. ‘You been away? I heard you had. Now, let me see, what’s happened? Let me fill you in.’

  I’d like to fill you in. Sally! Don’t be nasty.

  ‘Nothing much really. The vicar’s had another cold. I think he’s run down. I said to him, “Vicar …”’

  Sally has found that she can switch Linda Oughtibridge off almost entirely, only half listening, and she can venture an occasional ‘oh dear’ in perfect safety. In twenty-four years she has never heard Linda Oughtibridge say anything to which ‘oh dear’ is an unsuitable response. She resorts to it now.

  ‘… lots of people got the same.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  She peers out of the window, noticing with pleasure all the ordinary little streets, noticing also …

  ‘… awful lot of mucus with this one.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  … the way the town had spread over the hills in its heyday.

  ‘… late spring. Hard work for flower arrangers.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  The train is slowing down. The arrival is spoilt. But no, nothing can spoil this astonishing joy. She is back, back in the town she has never known she loved.

  ‘It’s been really nice to have you to talk to.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Oh dear, we’re there. And we’ve hardly begun to talk.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Yes. Yes. Shame.’

  She has to wait for a taxi. She doesn’t mind. Mrs Oughtibridge has gone. Sally had taken a good look at Mr Oughtibridge’s face, to see how much his suffering showed. Disappointingly little. Sally! You used to be a Christian.

  No. She doesn’t mind waiting. She drinks the air. It smells of stone walls and distant shit.

  And there is the town, spread out before her in its narrow valley, its slate roofs hiding its dark secrets. So much dereliction. So much to save.

  There are very few people in the streets. All that will change. What’s that wonderful thing the Italians have in the early evening, where they all go out and walk? Perhaps they don’t have any equivalent of The One Show. The Passeggiata, is it, or is that a kind of tomato sauce? That thing where they dress so smartly and parade round the streets, anyway. Will they one day have the Passeggiata of Potherthwaite?

  Oxford Road is deserted. No Sparlings, no Kenneth, no Hammonds. There are no lights on, of course, in ‘The Larches’, and the grass has grown terribly long and unsightly. She should have asked the estate agents to arrange for the lawn to be cut. It’ll never sell in this state.

  Her heart is beating ridiculously fast as she opens the front door. The air in the house smells of emptiness. It has been in the house too long.

  She carries her two suitcases upstairs one at a time. It’s hard work. Four times, twice going up, twice coming down, she has to pass the spot where he had been hanging. The first time isn’t easy, but by the fourth time she’s feeling almost nothing. This is an unwelcome relief.

  She can’t stay in. She just can’t, not all alone, not tonight.

  She almost rings Judith.

  She dresses up in hat, coat and gloves. It’s going to be cold, after Devon.

  She walks down Oxford Road. There’s no sign of life at ‘Mount Teidi’. The Hammonds must be in Tenerife again. Their carbon footprints could melt glaciers.

  From inside ‘Ambleside’ there comes one short bark. A message from Kenneth? Does he know she’s back? It’s tempting to think so, and nothing would surprise her about that dog.

  There’s no sign that any of the mentally challenged of Potherthwaite are visiting Dr Mallet this evening.

  The air is hard and chill and fresh. None of that warm Devonian mush.

  She turns left out of Oxford Road on to the beginning of High Street West. There are no coughs from the allotments tonight.

  The Rose and Crown has gone. It’s boarded up. If only it could have hung on a few more weeks, till … till what? A cold gust of doubt rides towards her on the evening breeze. Hasn’t she just been dreaming in her seat in the train’s warm mouth? Can she really make a difference here, in this harshest of realities?

  She hesitates slightly before turning into Cadwallader Road. A disturbing truth has struck her. She needs Ellie as much as she thought Ellie needed her.

  She climbs the spotless step to the front door of number 6. She rings the bell. The moment she has rung it she wishes that she hasn’t. Ellie will be watching her favourite television programme, her one way of escaping the prison she has built for herself.

  You can’t de-ring a bell.

  She hears footsteps. The door opens. It’s Ali.

  ‘You’re back.’

  It’s amazing how often people tell you things that you obviously already know.

  ‘Yes, I’m back.’

  It’s amazing how often you give an unnecessary reply to the unnecessary observation.

  ‘Is it a bad time?’

  ‘Noooo! She’s always pleased to see you, Mrs Mottram.’

  Ali leads her along the corridor into the tiny kitchen. Oli is seated at the table, watching the television. This time she makes no effort to get up.

  ‘You’re back,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, I’m back. How are you?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, Mrs Mottram.’

  ‘I’ll tell her you’re here,’ says Ali.

  Ali goes through into the front room. A few moments later, Sally hears Ellie’s television being switched off. She shouldn’t have come.

  There’s the same very faint smell of festering humanity throughout the house. It’s never any better, but then it’s also never any worse, whatever time she comes.

  ‘I have a plan,’ Sally tells Oli. ‘It’s too late to tell you tonight, but it’s very exciting.’

  ‘That sounds exciting,’ says Oli.

  Ali comes back in.

  ‘Right,’ she says. ‘She’s ready for you.’

  Sally enters Ellie’s bedroom. Ellie is lying in the bed, exactly as usual.

  ‘You’re back,’ says Ellie.

  ‘Yes, I’m back,’ says Sally. ‘Ellie, I have a plan for you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘For Ali and Oli too.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes. It’s too late to tell you tonight, but it’s very exciting.’

  ‘That sounds exciting,’ says Ellie.

  Sally realizes that she is more tired than she had thought. How stupid to announce that she has a plan when she knows that she hasn’t the energy to reveal her plan.

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ she says. ‘I’ve made you excited for no reason.’

  She’s made things worse still. She feels that she needs to explain.

  ‘But I just had to tell you,’ she says, ‘because if it works, your lives will be transformed for the better.’

  Now I’ve really done it, she thinks.

  At least Ellie has company. When Sally gets home she has no company. She walks around the house, looking in the various roo
ms: the sitting room, the dining room, the kitchen, Barry’s study, their bedroom. Everything is neat. Everything is tidy. In each room she remembers some moment or other that, at the time, seemed happy. Now she has to reinterpret these moments from a different historical perspective. In every memory, now, and in every photograph in every silver frame, there is an extra dimension. Barry was playing a part. He felt nothing for her.

  It will be a long night. It will not be an easy night.

  The girl with the garish red streak in her once glorious golden hair, in her fifteenth year of explosive life, looks up and down the street. It is past midnight and there is nobody about. The wall at the side of the police station is high and smooth; there would be nothing to grab hold of even for somebody who wasn’t carrying a spray gun in her left hand.

  There is one tree which might serve her purpose. She eyed it up a couple of days ago, on her reconnaissance. This girl is thorough. If she paid as much attention to her lessons as she does to her graffitist activities she would get good exam results.

  She climbs the tree with astonishing ease, and virtually one-handed too, for she is still holding her spray gun in a duster in her left hand. Now she is above the level of the wall. Beyond the wall, in the bare side garden of the police station, there is a row of bushes. She has achieved far more demanding feats of balance, though of course she had a safety net in those days. As these thoughts pass through her agile mind, she feels a sudden pang of loss. She wonders where her father is now. The thought horrifies her. She needs to concentrate on the job in hand. This is no time for emotion.

  She jumps on to a magnolia and clings to it. The branch sways but she is so light that it does not break. She is breathing hard, her heart hammering at her ribcage. This is so exciting. One cause of fear is eliminated. The security lights have not come on. Nobody has expected any threat from the side.

  She crawls over the branches of the magnolia. She will have to stretch to deliver her message, but she can do it.

  She reaches forward, points the spray gun, sprays the black letters on to the bare stucco on the side of the police station. This will not be a beautifully written graffito. Twice she almost falls forward off the slender, swaying branch of the magnolia, but she manages to cling on. There aren’t many words – two, in fact – and the job is soon done. She can’t see the letters in the dark, the writing won’t be level, it will be a regrettably sloppy job, but that can’t be helped.

  Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness. It is never fully dark in a town centre. She can distinguish where the flower bed ends and the concrete path begins. She doesn’t want to drop the gun on to the concrete. The noise would be very dangerous. She pulls the duster off the spray gun and drops the gun to the ground. There’s a faint thud that nobody passing would notice. But she almost falls as she stuffs the duster down the front of her jeans. She will need two free hands on her journey back.

  She slithers easily back over the magnolia. Now she has to jump up and grab the wall. It looks impossible. But it has only been five years. She won’t have lost the knack. Will she?

  She hesitates. Five years is a long time. Suddenly it dawns on her how stupid this is. She’s tempted to just drop down to the ground and give herself up. But no. She could never give up. She calms herself down, balances herself, crouches, tenses, jumps, manages to cling to the wall, folds her arms over the far edge of the wall, pulls herself up on to the wall, hears the cheers of the crowd – where was that last performance? Harrogate, the Stray. The flash of memory takes her away from the present danger. She was an infant prodigy. Fame beckoned. Nothing is beckoning now. She’s lying on top of the wall. She has to get to her feet with nothing to cling on to. Her legs don’t have that old strength. She’s gone flabby. Ugh! She starts to pull herself to her feet, the old balance isn’t there, the legs are throbbing, she makes a supreme effort, she’s standing, she’s done it, but she’s swaying, she’s going to fall, she just manages to hold herself upright, she’s going to fall, she has to jump before she’s ready, before she’s composed, before she’s balanced. She crashes into the fork of the tree rather than landing on it, but she’s there, and now it’s a simple drop down to the road, she’s in control again, but that was too much, too perilous even for her. She’s badly bruised and cut – that will need some explaining – but she’s safe again.

  She looks to left and right. There is nobody about.

  But, unbeknown to her, there was a witness to her activities, and he told the police what he had seen through the gates at the front. He hadn’t been able to see very clearly – it had been very dark down the side of the police station, and he had consumed several pints in the Baggit Arms – but what he saw was unmistakable. A monkey had jumped from a bush on to the wall and then on to a tree outside the wall.

  The police didn’t believe him. They were aware of the fact that even if twenty thousand monkeys sprayed graffiti for fourteen years, the chances of any of them producing the words ‘FACSIST PIGS’ were infinitesimal, and who had ever heard of a dyslexic monkey?

  SIXTEEN

  The Great Bruise Special

  It was supposed to be a wonderful and very important evening, the first of many wonderful and very important evenings. It was not supposed to be a farce.

  The Weavers’ Arms had an Early Bird menu every evening from Monday to Thursday. If you placed your order any time between 5.30 and 7.15, you got two courses for £10.95, or three courses for £12.95. This was considered, even by Arnold Buss, to be good value.

  On this particular Tuesday evening, just a week after Sally’s return to Potherthwaite, the Early Bird dinner at the middle of the five tables that ran alongside the windows of the pub was transformed into something that may possibly be unique in the annals of British dining out. A further reduction was made to the bill on account of the extraordinary fact that all six diners had suffered nasty bruising in various unpleasant accidents. The meal became known, to the diners and to the management of the Weavers’, as ‘The Great Bruise Special’.

  There was also an element of thanksgiving. It was extremely fortunate that not one of the six had suffered anything more than bruising. There could easily have been broken bones.

  The meal had been arranged by Sally, who had great things to tell them and great things to ask of them. None of her five guests knew that, while she looked like the same attractive, intelligent but unremarkable Sally, she had spent the week since her return full of thought, lit up by ambition. How could they possibly have known that this simple meal was actually the first great step in her campaign for the Transition of Potherthwaite?

  The subject of the bruising came up over their pre-deal drinks at the bar. Rog liked to pretend that his pub was a real drinking pub, which wasn’t true – he was only truly welcoming to diners – but he did like it if some of them spent a bit of time at the bar, giving the illusion of a pubby atmosphere.

  Rog was out that night, as he was most nights, and when Rog wasn’t there Sue, his manageress, made sure that she heard every bit of the tittle-tattle around the counter. The fact that they all had bruises came out in the course of the conversation. How, you might well ask? Did a researcher approach them and say, ‘Excuse me, you guys, sorry to bother you, won’t take three minutes, but we’re doing a survey about the extent of bruising in Britain. We want to know how many people in Potherthwaite had any bruising on their bodies at seven o’clock this evening. Hands up, please, guys. What, all of you??!! That’s incredible.’ No. It came up quite naturally, because several of the people knew that others among them had been involved in accidents. Olive and Arnold had been too shy with each other ever to mention the location of their bruising, but little references to the colour – ‘mainly orange now’, ‘quite a lot of purple’ – provided a mild frisson over their subsequent lunches. When Harry and Jill got home after safely depositing the yawl in their chosen marina, they had heard – with just a touch of suspicion? – about Olive and Arnold’s bruises and had mentioned, in amazement, that the
y both had bruises too – was there a touch of suspicion there from Arnold and Olive? – and it was natural, that evening, for them to mention to the other two diners that they were similarly inflicted, at which point the other two exclaimed in amazement that they had bruises too, and in the general astonishment, Sue announced that an Early Bird dinner in which all six diners had substantial bruises was such an unlikely event statistically that she would further reduce their bills by no less than £2.00 per person. Rog wouldn’t approve, but Rog had no vision, and she, who had once been in PR, could see that ‘The Bruise Special’ would make a nice little piece in the Chronicle, and the news of her generosity would do the pub much good.

  We know how Sally got her bruises. She fell more than once during her nightmare night in the muddy, cow-rich countryside of Devon. We know how Olive and Arnold picked up theirs. They crashed into each other, and both fell, in Olive’s lounge. We know where Jill suffered her purler. She fell in panic in crowded waters in the Channel.

  We have not yet revealed what caused the bruising of the other two members of the party. Harry’s accident will be no surprise to you. Like Jill’s, it was a misfortune at sea. A series of waves of foaming grey North Sea water caught his beloved yawl by surprise a few miles off Cleethorpes, and sent her lurching and wallowing helplessly in their peaks and troughs. As the first wave struck, Harry was propelled head first down the companion-way, where he crashed on to the cabin floor. He was still limping badly. All this had happened on a cold, wet, wretched day quite close to the mouth of the Humber, but the wind wasn’t strong enough to cause those waves. Harry was convinced that they had been caught in the wash of a ferry that was going too fast. He hated ferries.

  You will also not be surprised to learn that the sixth member of that historic party was Marigold Boyce-Willoughby. In all provincial towns there is at least one woman who turns up everywhere, often for perfectly good reasons. Marigold was one such woman, and in her case the good reason was that Sally believed that, if she could help Marigold recover from the humiliation of Timothy’s behaviour, her energy and enthusiasm would make her a first-rate right-hand man. Right-hand woman? Right-hand person? First-rate, anyway.