Isabella: A sort of romance

by R. A. Bentley

  Pat, waves her fork dismissively. "Take no notice. I'll show you the best place to go. It's only a problem when it's actually raining. No, what I mean is: logically, wouldn't a bomb be fire, if it was anything? That would make you, let's see . . . earth. In the order you've given, it would make you earth – although, of course, there are twenty-four possible ways of ordering four things – so you'd want to avoid earthquakes or landslides or maybe getting buried alive by mistake. Then again, I suppose that might be air. Or the lack of it anyway."

  "Ach, she means the blast, wumman," snaps McNab. "Shockwave, propeegated throu air. Ah shoudae thocht that wis obvious. An' the best place tae deefeecate, in ma hummle opeenion, is in ma Mark IX, vacuum assisted portable privy — clean, comfortable an' enveeronmentally friendly. And wi a ruif oan, sae ye dinnae hae tae wirry aboot the rain. Or drounin, ah daursay."

  "It's not safe," says Pat, flatly. "Ask my daughter."

  "Och, it wis naethin! A meenit or twa wi a wranch haed it sorted. Dinnae haud at it."

  "Bluebell doesn't think so. She was nearly ruined for life."

  "She's fine! Her wee bum wisnae within ma design parameters that's aa. It wis jist a maiter o adjustin the suction a bittie."

  Bella finds her poor head beginning to spin again. "You design lavatories?" she says.

  McNab nods complacently. "Ay, amang ither things. Shankies, windmills, tree pumps, solar heaters, solar showers, water filters, bio-gas generators. Alternative technology ye ken."

  "He's mad," says Pat, sawing vigorously at a sausage. "He'll kill someone one of these days."

  "Och awa wi ye! We'll see wha's mad." Taking another swig from his bottle, McNab gestures expansively around the circle of vehicles. "Tell me whit ye see."

  "Er, travellers' encampment?" says Bella. "New Age travellers, is that right?"

  "Ay, if y'like, but whit else?"

  Bella looks again and shrugs. "Buses, vans, lorries? Mud? More mud?"

  "Och ay, suir, but it's mair than that," says the little man, clearly irritated by her lack of imagination, "Whit we hae here, Bella, is naethin less than the futur, the futur o the human race: smaw, autoneemous communities, gangin aboot as the fancy taks 'em, followin the seasons, followin the wark – insaemuckle they'll need tae wirk – livin wi nature, no fightin it. The semple life! An' wha will they come tae for thair semple yet functional machines? Fowk like masel!"

  "Gosh!" says Bella. "And are those your lavvies?" For she has suddenly noticed that many of the vehicles have a small, gaily painted hut tucked beside them, every one a different colour and each more eccentric in appearance than the last.

  "Ay, they are. Ah'll tak ye on a wee tour later, if ye like. Ye can try 'em oot an' tell me whit's best. D'ye see the yin wi the wheels on? That's ma Mark IV. Note the aerodynamic shape. It's fou towable: pruived up tae sixty! E'en the bucket's gimbaled, sae ye dinnae hae tae cowp it first. An' the yin owerby is a Mark II, ma economy recyclin' model. Jist a hauf duir for cheapness, an' a buird wi a hole in, an' anither wee duir for the pig. Nae waste! Ah've biggit ferr a few. D'ye like the colour? It's called Passion Flower."

  Bella agrees that it's very nice. "Is that how you make your living, then?" she asks. "Do you sell them, or rent them out?"

  "Humph," snorts Pat derisively. "That'll be the day."

  McNab balls his fists and shakes them in frustration, the fiddle-string, thus released, immediately flying onto Carol's plate. "Och, that's the problem! They're guidly fowk, but they cannae affuird tae pay. Whit ah need is some sort o government grant, some sort o subsidy. It's important work ah'm daein here. It oughtae be recognised." He grabs his bottle and upends it, a long, angry pull.

  Putting aside her plate, Bella sits back and reflects on the strangeness of it all. Since nothing happens by chance there must clearly be some reason for her meeting these people, especially at a time like this, but what? Is her destiny somehow bound up with theirs? What can they possibly have to do with her? And what about the others, this peculiar extended family that has taken her in? There was so much toing and froing during the chaos of the night that for a while she was quite unable make out who lived where, or with whom. Indeed, though she is being fed by Pat she eventually found herself sleeping not in Roz, but in Shangri-la.

  Shangri-la is a purple-painted, ex-removal van with tiny windows set high in its towering sides, home to dumpy, frizzy-haired Sandy and her slightly retarded, grown-up daughter, Crystal. There is also Jason. Despite close observation, Bella still cannot decide which of them Jason belongs to. All she knows is that she was sleeping in his bed. Before she finally turned in, Kiss brought her a slice of cake and a cup of very odd-tasting tea, insisting she finish both. Whatever was in them she slept like a baby, despite the rather smelly sheets. Kiss and Phil, neither, by the look of them, much under eighty, live in a tiny green caravan, named Ilfracombe, permanently attached to a rusty and battered Austin Westminster.

  Roz, Ilfracombe and Shangri-la have been drawn together to make three sides of a rough square, a little apart from the rest of the encampment. Judging by the large, rectangular patch of dead vegetation there must once have been a fourth vehicle in the group, but this is now the site of McNab's tepee, if that is the right word to describe the sprawling, canvas and polythene dwelling spread before them. Scattered around it is an immense quantity of what must be his construction materials – copper and plastic pipes, rusty galvanised tanks, bicycle parts, old lavatory bowls and cisterns, timber off-cuts and plywood sheeting – over which it is necessary for everyone to scramble to get in and out. Sandy and Crystal have just done so, waddling off to the horse-trough together dressed as geishas, with black wigs, whitened faces, and wooden pattens (rather handy in the mud).

  Jason, a quite creditable Elvis (late period), is reclining on Shangri-la's lowered tailgate sharing a companionable joint with Kiss. Wrinkled, brown and toothless as any third-world granny she is wearing, of all things, a flapper's outfit. Revisiting her youth, perhaps. Bella has yet to be formally introduced to Phil, but she did see General Kitchener earlier, tottering, apparently unscathed, from what she now realises must be the Mark IX, vacuum assisted, portable privy.

  Indeed, looking around, it would seem that the whole camp has been making free with her stock-in-trade. At first there was nobody much about, presumably they were still sleeping off their hangovers, but the sun is creeping above the treetops now and suddenly, as if in some surreal avant-garde film, every one of her fifty-odd costumes seems to be taking on a life of its own.

  Nearby, Mark Anthony, or perhaps Julius Caesar, sits at the door of his caravan, gazing blearily about him. He tries to roll himself a cigarette as a seemingly endless succession of small animals with face-paint whiskers shove past him to scatter noisily in all directions. Cleopatra appears and leaning over his shoulder throws out a bowl of sudsy water. She nudges him and indicates with a plump, asp-encircled arm a decrepit Transit van of the mattress-in-the-back variety where a half-dressed St. Trinian is taking passionate leave of Superman while keeping a weather eye out for Captain Hornblower, who, together with a Red Indian, a Viking and a Womble, is still slumbering by the remains of the bonfire. A pantomime horse appears and gambols awkwardly among them until it trips and collapses in a giggling tangle of hooves. Hornblower sits up indignantly and throws a beer can at it before falling back into the mud.

  Elsewhere, a ballerina hangs out washing, en pointe; a burly executioner in mask and black tights chops up firewood; a circus strongman in leopard-skin leotards helps a scarecrow change a wheel and a Pierrot clown squats disconsolately over a deconstructed gearbox, watched by a sceptical-looking Wonder Woman nursing a mug of coffee.

  A belly dancer swings slowly by, picking her way among the puddles. She is lugging a bucket of water in one hand and leading by the other a grubby toddler in an ankle length 'Terry's Mobile Party Hire' complimentary T-shirt. He whines and drags at her arm, eager to stop and play with two small teddy bears who have found a discarded condom and are seeing
how much they can stretch it between them.

  "Twins, come and get your breakfast," calls Pat.

  Bella wonders what she should do. She no longer has any real sense of her mother's presence and is even beginning to entertain the possibility that she imagined the whole thing. The strange feelings have all but gone now, and who is to say they were not her own? It is all very unsettling.

  Should she telephone Simon? She longs to hear his voice. There must surely be a phone-box somewhere nearby, if she can borrow some change. Then again, won't he be terribly cross? After all, he's Terry's best mate. And what on earth is she going to do about Terry? Would he take her back now? It hardly seems likely, given that the van is now a burned-out wreck and the costumes all gone.

  "Look at the state of you," says Pat to the teddy bears. "You'd better go and get cleaned up."

  "What's this thing, Mum?" asks one of them, dangling the condom.

  Pat stiffens. "Put that down this instant and go and wash your hands."

  "Yes, but what is it?"

  "Hello Mummy, who am I?" demands the other bear, clinging to her skirts.

  "Primrose of course. Narcissus, put it down now."

  "No I'm not," laughing, "I'm Narcissus, she's Primrose."

  "Well she'll be Little Miss Smacked Bottom in a minute if she doesn't do as she's told."

  "I only want to know what it is," says Primrose. "What's this stuff in it?"

  "I said, go and get washed," says Pat, slapping it out of her hand. "I don't want to be getting breakfast all morning. Go on, before I get cross."

  "I was wondering about the costumes," says Bella, diffidently, "Do you think I should start collecting them up or something?"

  Pat seems not to hear. She is fiercely trying to work the condom into the mud with her heel. This proves remarkably difficult as it keeps floating back up. Finally she stoops and hurls it into the hedge where, inevitably, it gets caught on a hawthorn spike, dangling like some obscene fruit from its knotted end.

  "Honestly!" she says, "They're no better than cats and dogs, and in the pouring rain too. They'll catch their deaths and serve them right."

  "It's just that they're not actually mine," persists Bella. "I mean, morally they're mine, but not actually legally, if you see what I mean. I could get into trouble."

  "Salvage," mutters McNab. "Law o the sea. Finders keepers." He has finally finished re-stringing his fiddle and has begun to tune it.

  Bella begins to be annoyed. "What's the sea got to do with it?" she demands. "This is Wiltshire! I wouldn't mind so much if they'd had the decency to ask, or even if they were taking proper care of them, but they're ruining them. Just look at that Womble, rolling around in the mud. I hate to think what the dry-cleaning bill will be."

  I'm awfully sorry, really I am," says Pat, blushing, although whether from Bella's scolding or from the condom it is hard to tell. "We did try to stop them, but once they got into the drink there wasn't much we could do."

  "If it wisnae for them," McNab points out. "It wad aa be brunt onyweys."

  "I know that, and I'm very grateful. But as I say, they're not actually mine. It's not fair on poor Terry. He'll be ruined."

  McNab looks aggrieved. "Fair! By the time we gat ye oot o there – riskin oor verra lifes, ah micht say – they'd skeiched the lot! The fuid, the bouse, hilt an hair. Aa that wis left wis the nun, an' the safari suit an' the teddy beirs. Call that fair?"

  "And the nurse," Pat reminds him.

  "Och ay, the nurse, but Bluebell's takken that."

  "Well can I at least have the Safari suit back?" demands Bella. (It seems churlish, somehow, to ask for the teddy bears).

  "Hae it back!" cries McNab. "Wid ye see the puir lassie in the scuddie? Shame on ye!"

  Bella can't decide if he's teasing or not. His already threatening aura has begun to flash ominously; usually a sign of high emotion, or advanced inebriation. She glances at his bottle, now three parts empty, and decides it's the latter. She is not sure what to expect from an irascible drunken midget and isn't terribly keen to find out.

  "No, no," she says, playing safe. "Obviously I don't want it this minute. I mean, when she's finished with it will do. I mean, she must have other clothes surely? What did she wear before I came along?" But even as she asks, she guesses the answer: an oversize rugby shirt and some nasty stretched overalls.

  "Ye can hae the nun," says McNab grudgingly. "It disnae fit onyweys."

  "I'll see what I can do," says Pat, "but I'm not promising anything. Most of them are anarchists I'm afraid; they don't believe in property rights. Come to that, neither do I, in theory, but I don't interpret it quite as literally as they do." She sighs sadly. "I wish Thurston were here. He wouldn't have stood for any nonsense. He'd have taken a big stick to them."

  "Well he isnae," snaps McNab, with sudden rancour. "Thocht he coud dae wi'oot me, an leuk whit happens."

  "You don't know that anything has happened," snaps Pat. She looks furtively over her shoulder and lowers her voice to a whisper. "I worry about Bluebell. She's, you know — developing. And they've no morals, some of them, no morals at all. Sometimes I really wish they hadn't come here. We were perfectly happy with just our own little crowd: the Shangri-las, and Thurston, and Kiss and Phil. The trouble is, it's so handy for everywhere: Glastonbury's not far, and Stonehenge is only just down the road. They usually start arriving for the solstice about now and then it's even worse. You get what I call the weekend hippies.

  "I mean, I'm not saying they're all bad. One or two are quite nice, though they're mostly very young and out of their heads on drugs most of the time. I suppose that's partly Kiss's fault, although she only sells cannabis and they've got to make a living, but now we're getting some real riffraff. That Tom Kite is a terror, and Mr Bewick's lost patience which means we've all got to go. He used to sell us milk and eggs and everything, but now they're ruining his crops and he's really cross."

  "Who's Mr Bewick — the farmer?"

  "Yes. He's served notice on us, quite some time ago actually, and now the police are coming to move us on; or tow us away, those that can't move. A lot have gone already."

  "Gosh, when?"

  "Next Tuesday."

  Bella finds herself oddly disturbed by this, as if she were already a part of their community, sharing their fate. "That soon! But where will you go?"

  Pat shakes her head mournfully. "I wish I knew. Thurston was going to Bristol to look at a pitch but he never came back. We've been waiting till the last minute in case he turns up. Now it'll have to be a layby or somewhere; wherever we can get in. It's not as easy as it was; people aren't as friendly now there are so many of us. And we've been here such a long time that I've come to look upon it as home. It'd be almost perfect if it wasn't so far from the shops." She tails off, looking rather lost and distraught. "I'm quite worried about him really."

  "It wis Plymouth onyweys, no Bristol," says McNab, reaching for his bow. "We gree'd the sooth coast, dae you no remember?"

  "It was Bristol," said Pat irritably. "He said Bristol."

  "It wiz Plymouth, ah tell ye," growls McNab. "We shoud gang doun there in case he needs us."

  "I need to get to Bradport, in Dorset," says Bella hopefully. "That's on the way to Plymouth, and Bristol's not too far, so you could try both places. If you were to drop me off, you could stay the night with my aunt and uncle, or even use it as a base for searching. They've plenty of room."

  Pat looks questioningly at McNab who shrugs and nods. It seems that it's agreed. Tucking the fiddle under his chin, he carefully fingers the strings – though there hardly seems room on the fingerboard for such huge, banana digits – and draws the bow smoothly across them. Everyone winces at the horrible noise, especially Bella, who has a good ear. McNab frowns, peers doubtfully at the instrument for a moment and does it again.

  "But why were you dressed for work, if you were going to your aunt's?" says Pat, frowning. "You're a kiss-o-gram girl aren't you?"

  "Oh I do everythi
ng: kiss-o-gram, strip-o-gram, Punch and Judy operator, sandwich maker, washer-upper, receptionist. I'm pretty indispensable really, though I say it myself. It's a smashing job and I love it. Unfortunately I've got to go home to Bradport. There wasn't time to change; though I might as well have done, as it turns out." She is about to add that she is now the two hundred and twenty-third Priestess of the Tenstones, condemned to be their lonely servant for the rest of her natural life, but is not sure how it will go down with these stern rationalists. Perhaps it isn't worth all the arguments and explanations. Instead she finds herself saying: "My mother's just died, you see."

  "Your mother! Oh my goodness that's awful!" exclaims Pat. "Oh dear, I really am most terribly sorry. When did it happen?"

  "Yesterday, or perhaps the day before, I'm not quite sure to be honest."

  "Yesterday! But why on earth didn't you tell us?"

  Bella shakes her head. "Oh no, you mustn't worry. I shouldn't have said anything; it's not important. I mean, obviously it is important, sort of, but it's only the death of the body, you see. The soul goes on forever; it's immortal. I'm not in mourning or anything."

  Pat stares at her nervously. "Well of course, it's wonderful if you can see it that way."

  "Provided it can find a suitable vessel, of course," adds Bella. "The soul, I mean. It has to have a near-identical body and a suitable mind, which means me, unfortunately. My sister would have been hopeless. She's totally wrong psychologically for one thing; she hasn't the depth. Also, she's running to fat. I don't think Mummy would like to live in anybody fat." She glances at Carol as she says this, but neither she nor McNab seem to mind. "Actually, I was a bit worried at first because she's got a rather strong personality – Mummy, I mean – but she seems to have settled in quite nicely now. In fact, I'm not really aware of her at all any more. I think we've probably merged. I expect what you're getting is a sort of combination of the two of us." Is that really it? she wonders. She wishes she could be sure. How would one know?

  "Well that's all right then," declares Pat, suddenly eager to clear away the breakfast things.