by Graham Joyce
He wore a scarf even though he was indoors. Unbelievably he returned to a game of Patience, as if not five minutes had passed since I last saw him. His cottage had a downcast air. The place badly needed a dust. ‘Would you like me to come and do a bit of cleaning now and again, William?’
Without looking up from his cards he showed me his bottom lip again. ‘Everybody wants to do me a bit o’ cleaning. That Judith wants to bring her bloody vacuum cleaner. What is it with you girls?’
‘Well I don’t want to, really. Mammy mentioned I might. She was mithering about you and I was just offering.’
‘Well don’t.’
I pulled a chair from under the table and sat down. ‘I’m ready to Ask.’
‘I know.’
‘You know?’
‘Yes, I know. And I don’t think you should.’
‘Why say that?’
He stopped turning cards and looked directly at me. ‘Cos you ain’t full-on.’
‘Not full-on? What does that mean?’
‘It means you don’t believe it. You know you don’t, and there’s no need to argue. You think it’s tripe. That’s fair enough. Nobody will bother to persuade you. Not even Mammy.’
‘Not all of it!’ I protested. ‘I don’t disbelieve all of it!’
‘But it adds up to the fact as you ain’t strong enough’ – and he tapped the side of his head – ‘up here.’ He went back to turning his cards.
‘I’m going ahead,’ I insisted.
‘I know that, too. So you will. Agin my advice.’
‘Any other advice for me?’
‘Empty your mind. Don’t force it. Wait like a bloody midwife, ha! That’s it.’
‘But how should I know what to ask?’
William let a little gasp of air shoot from between his teeth. ‘What to ask,’ he muttered, but remained focused on his cards. I waited a while but he never did answer my question. I could see nothing worthwhile coming from the old man, so I got up to leave. ‘How will I know when I see my mine?’ I said, almost as a parting shot.
‘You’ll know. I can see it already. Anyone can.’
‘Oh?’ I said.
He dropped a card and pushed out his rubbery, moist bottom lip. Then he gazed at me with rheumy eyes. Painfully slowly he lifted his bunched fists either side of his head, extending his forefingers upright, like they were two long ears. He made his fingers move minimally, and the skin under my collar flushed.
His hands dropped to the table and he went back to his cards. I let myself out.
I went home and made the cake. Emily Protheroe’s wedding cake. It wore me out pouring all that love into the mix, baking in so much goodwill. I worked well into the night and it exhausted me. But I made a fine job of it. I whispered into that cake. Only I know how much love went into it. Only me. In the morning I sent a lad with a message, and Emily and her mother came and collected the cake, and they were thrilled with it. They paid me well.
Because I made the cake.
22
In the afternoon Chas’s van lurched to a halt outside the gate and both he and Judith got out. Judith must have come straight from school because she was wearing her teaching clothes. She hardly seemed the same person in her pencil skirt and with her hair piled in a bun. Chas carried a bloodied dead rabbit by the ears. He’d obviously spent the morning poaching. They came up the path and he handed me his pretty peace offering.
‘You might have skinned it for me,’ I said.
‘Gratitude! Anyway you’ll do it in one tenth of the time I could.’
It was true. I could skin a rabbit. I let them in and hung the rabbit in the back porch while the kettle boiled. When I returned they had a plan for me. They’d been putting their heads together about my future.
‘Remember that odd chap you told me about?’
‘What odd chap?’
‘The one who came from Cambridge. The university bird. I was telling Chas what he wanted. And it turns out Chas knows the man.’
I looked hard at Judith. Telling him what Bennett had wanted from us was tantamount to saying what we know and what we do. And I remember Mammy saying to me, ‘The bed knows no secrets.’
‘I don’t actually know him,’ Chas said. ‘I know of him.’
‘Chas was at Cambridge,’ Judith said. ‘And he knows why Bennett was here.’
‘He wanted to make a few quid out of you,’ Chas put in. ‘Those Gardener and Murray books have really taken off, especially since the pair died. He wants to cash in.’
Chas went on. He told me there was a fresh wave of interest. He told me that I didn’t read the Sunday scandal sheets but that he did, and that they would eat anything you gave them. In fact he said he knew he could make easy money just by getting a photographer and a journalist down and putting on a hippie show up at the farm. When I asked what sort of a show, he shrugged and said ten people dancing round a fire naked would do it. He knew it was all rubbish, he said. But it was money going free.
‘You’re mad,’ I said, ‘if you think I would do anything like that.’
Judith tried to fend off trouble. ‘Fern! That’s not the idea! We’re not talking about dancing round a fire. We’re talking about a book.’
‘A book?’
‘Yes, a book. With pages, and words printed on the pages. You know what a book is, don’t you?’
I admitted I did know what a book is. Judith talked at length. Together Chas and she had hatched an idea to solve some of my financial problems. Her idea was for me to write the book, and for her to help me, and for Chas to get it published. They didn’t want anything from it, she said. Not a bean. Chas wasn’t into money she said, and she’d have the pleasure of helping a friend in a spot. It wouldn’t solve my immediate problems with the rent, she admitted, but it would help in the long run. And it would be so easy to write. Child’s play, she said. Child’s play.
‘We’ve talked about this before,’ I said suspiciously. ‘And we concluded it was a bad thing.’
‘No,’ Chas dived in, ‘that’s not the point. It’s not as if you’re actually going to give away any secrets.’
‘What secrets?’ I said rather sharply. ‘What secrets do you think I have?’
‘Give him a chance!’ Judith said. ‘Listen to him!’
‘The point is you don’t give anything away. You just give them what they want. A few herbal remedies to make it sound authentic and Bob’s your uncle.’
‘You’re suggesting I make it up?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Look Fern, if I were to dance around a fire, and I got paid for it by some bloke who then deliberately misrepresents it in his poxy newspaper, and his readers shell out for the paper knowing perfectly well that what those papers do is misrepresent everything, who is to blame? The wilfully gullible reader? Or the cynical newspaper? Or me, for dancing for money?’
I still thought it was a terrible idea, and I said so. I also reminded Judith that Mammy had strong views on this.
Judith weighed in with, ‘You’re missing the point. You wouldn’t even have to fake it. You could offer incomplete recipes. Keep a portion back for Mammy, so to speak.’
Then she must have read some hatred in my eye, because her manner suddenly hardened. ‘We’re offering to help you here. I don’t know why we’re trying to persuade you. If you don’t want our help then you can stew in it.’ She got up and made to go.
Chas got up, too. ‘Well, kiddies, let’s not have a fall-out.’
But Judith was on her way. ‘Think on it, Fern. What else have you got going for you?’
I watched her march down the path, puffed with anger and pride. Her face was flushed and her eyes were like hard glass buttons of spite. Chas followed behind her. The spring on the gate snapped back at Chas’s legs. He stopped and looked back at the gate, as if he were contemplating some small revenge, as if it were a live thing that had wanted to hurt him.
‘Judith!’ I shouted. I ignored Chas and ran to the privet hedge at the border of th
e garden. ‘Judith, it’s Friday! Friday!’
I know she heard me but she made no answer as she climbed into the van. Chas got in and started the engine. Judith never even glanced at me through the window as they drove away.
I had three days in which to think about it and I had to clear my mind of all other things. I needed to think about what I was eating and what I was drinking and to prepare all the ingredients. I had to make sure I got enough rest but I also had to make sure that my mind didn’t go to sleep.
When Mammy was on her feet, and when we were gardening or walking or gathering or washing, she would creep up behind me and whisper near my ear. ‘Hark!’ she would go. Or she would say, ‘List!’, meaning I should listen. It wasn’t that Mammy was telling me to listen to something in the fields or in the woods or in the streets: she was telling me to listen to myself.
‘Listen to what a mean old girl you are,’ she would say, but with a chuckle. She wasn’t saying that I was mean in particular; she meant herself, myself, everybody. Mammy said that in our everyday work, in our everyday thoughts, we fall asleep, we lose awareness, we miss what is going on. And when we sleep on our feet like this, she said, we fall back on a grumbling and discontented voice in ourselves, on our lower instincts. And if only we could wake up and listen, then a dirty film of lazy thinking might be scrubbed away, and everything would look bright and polished, and we might be thankful.
And I missed that. Mammy speaking in my ear that way, at irregular intervals. Once or twice Judith and I had done it for each other, but it lacked the authority somehow. Mammy had a better instinct for knowing when you needed the imp of lazy thinking to be knocked off your shoulder.
I had a wind-up alarm clock I used to set at varied times, to lift me; but if you set the clock then you know the clock, don’t you? Yet, it was all I had. And if I was going to Ask then I had to have some practice to make sure I didn’t sleep or doze the whole way through.
If I only had Mammy to say ‘Hark!’
I had a shock when I arrived at ward twelve that day. I saw Venables, the Norfolk Eel, the vile Estate Manager, leaning over Mammy’s bed and speaking in her ear. It turned my stomach. Meanwhile the curtains were drawn around the next bed and nurses were wheeling out its recent occupant with a sheet over her face. I raced up the ward to confront Venables. ‘What’s going on?’
He straightened his back. His face flushed and he seemed startled. ‘Hello,’ he said.
‘What are you doing?’
‘A courtesy call. Simply to see how Mammy is progressing. I brought some flowers.’
I saw at the foot of the bed a bouquet of spring mix still in its wrapping from the florist. I looked at Mammy. She seemed frightened and confused. ‘What have you been saying to her?’
‘Calm down now. I haven’t been saying anything. I’ve only just got here.’
‘Well you can just get out, can’t you?’
Venables held his hands up in a gesture of placation. Then he turned to Mammy and said, ‘I hope you get well quickly, Mammy. Enjoy the flowers.’ With that he walked out of the ward.
One of the nurses had come by to see what the fuss was about. She picked up the flowers from the bed and suggested she put them in water. I told her no, that there were things that could be sprinkled on the flower-heads, and that we didn’t want them anywhere near Mammy. She looked at me very strangely, but fortunately she took them away.
‘Mammy, I won’t be in to see you for three days.’
‘Untie my feet, Fern,’ Mammy said. ‘Untie them.’
That bastard had got her agitated. I lifted the sheets at the foot of the bed and made as if to loosen straps. ‘There. You’re free. Mammy, did you hear me? I said I won’t be in for three days.’
‘Tell that woman in the next bed to stop making faces at me.’
I looked at the bed, emptied of its corpse not more than five minutes ago. There was a gap in the curtains and I closed it. ‘There. That’s stopped her game.’
‘She’s been making faces at me all night.’
‘Well she can’t now, can she?’
‘Have you got everything you need, Fern?’ Mammy said. ‘Because if not you only have to ask.’
‘I know Mammy, I know.’ I had an uncomfortable sensation that one of the other women on the ward was now making faces at me, and behind my back. I turned around. It was one of the painted old women across the ward, tilting her hand to her mouth, making a drinking motion and nodding at me suggestively.
*
So distracted was I by it all I failed to pay proper attention at my evening class. It wasn’t that I thought MMM was wrong in her views – as I sometimes did – it was the hideous language she used to describe the ordinary.
Something about her voice chewed at the air like blunt episiotomy scissors. ‘The lie of the foetus describes how its long axis is placed in relation to the long axis of the uterus. Usually this lie is longitudinal but it may be transverse or oblique. Normal presentation is vertex, and its opposite is breech.’
If there was such a problem Mammy would say, ‘Baby is upside down.’ Or, ‘Baby is lying across.’
I stared very hard at these words on my notepad and I couldn’t see any extra value in them. Any at all. Vertex presentation? We say: head first. I counted up the syllables. That’s three times as long to say the very same thing. Why had I come to college to learn words that added no more than a lot of extra noise to the sum of my knowledge? I had to stop myself thinking about it because it made me quite angry. All because of the ticket. The damned ticket. Mammy never had her ticket because she said ‘head first’. Anybody who said ‘vertex presentation’ to Bunch Cormell would get a split lip, and quite right too. But I knew that if I was going to get the ticket I was going to have to speak in this phoney three-times tongue.
I wondered in how many schools and colleges and universities and research centres and educational institutions up and down the country this fraudulent language passed for learning. How many permits and diplomas, warrants and certificates, licences and degrees it could earn you. How many tickets you could get just by pretending to be other, to speak other as if you had a hot potato in your mouth.
Then MMM promised to tell us about something called ‘external version’ as a treatment when the baby is breech. I was staggered when all it meant was trying to massage the baby into the proper position. I’d seen Mammy do it (but she never liked to because it always hurt the mother and it didn’t always work). MMM told us that only a qualified doctor should attempt this and I thought, Why? Why, when a midwife has touched more babies through a hard belly than doctors have felt their own arses? The only thing I’ve seen doctors massage is the clip on their bags when they want to prescribe sugared water to get you out of their way. It’s because of the damned ticket.
‘Miss Cullen! You don’t seem with us again!’
Miss Marlene Mitchell had crept up behind me in her soft-soled shoes. I don’t know how she did it, but it gave me the creeps. ‘I’m sorry Miss Mitchell, I was thinking on what you’d said.’
She put her mouth close to my ear and spoke in an undertone. ‘There’s some anomaly with your registration documents. You must sort it out with the administration.’
After class I went to the offices, but they were closed. I would have to come early the following week to find out the nature of the problem. Outside, Biddy saw me looking apprehensive.
‘What’s up then, Fern? You look like someone pinched a pound out of your back pocket.’ She had a packet of Black Cat Craven A and was withdrawing a cigarette. ‘Want a smoke?’
I rarely smoke but that time I took a cigarette from her. We were near the building’s front door, Biddy leaning against her bike, enjoying the evening air. After we had puffed away a bit the silence became uncomfortable. Wanting to make conversation I said, ‘They’re docking, aren’t they? Tonight.’
‘Who are?’ said Biddy.
‘Astronauts. Up there.’
‘Are they?’
‘Is it?’
Biddy looked perplexed. I’d heard on the radio that the crew of Gemini 8 were going to attempt to dock with an orbiting Agena rocket. Biddy’s nostrils twitched once or twice while I explained to her the technical difficulties of the manoeuvre. She squinted at me strangely, before taking a thoughtful drag on her cigarette. I was amazed she didn’t seem to know anything about it. All that activity going on in space, and down here it seemed like most people didn’t give a gnat’s knackers. As Mammy would say.
MMM came out of the building, hems of her coat flapping. She looked down her nose at our cigarettes before skipping off to catch her bus.
‘Bloody hell,’ Biddy went. ‘She’ll tell us not to smoke around pregnant women next.’
‘All her big words!’ I said.
‘What that woman needs is – well I shouldn’t say it – what she needs is a good seeing to.’
‘Seeing to?’
‘Yes, a bloody good seeing to. A good shagging.’
I tried not to look shocked, but Biddy saw that I was. She dropped her cigarette butt on the pavement and ground it out with her toe.
‘Mind you, so do I!’ she laughed. ‘We all do, don’t we, m’duck?’ Then she swung her heavy buttocks on to the stiff saddle of her bicycle and pedalled off into the night.
23
When I listened to my head things made no sense. Yet my heart told me a different tale. And even if part of me thought that Asking in this way could not possibly solve my problems, I felt a duty to Mammy to go through with it and thereafter let the pump run dry before moving on with my life.
It had been too long in me to ignore. The notion had been planted in my life on my seventh birthday and watered at the root on an almost daily basis. So why did I doubt? I wondered how many church-going Christian girls proceed doubting into their confirmation. Or do they surrender everything to the inducement of the pretty white dress and the snare of the lace gloves? I suppose they have the excuse of powerlessness, or of youthful compliance. But I had to either be free of Mammy or bound by her ways once and for all. I had to Ask.
