by Graham Joyce
‘Turpy what?’
‘Turpitude. Child molesters and the like. Drug users. That sort. Someone at the school says she’s been seen talking to or ‘‘consorting’’ with known drug users. Who saw her, and why they thought it important enough to tell the Department of Education and Science I don’t know. But she could be suspended from her job.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘You’re another person she’s been told not to be seen with.’
I let the sheet fall from my fingers. It trailed in the mud. ‘What?’
‘That’s right. So you’ll be doing her a favour by keeping away from her. Though I know Judith. If she wants to do a thing, or see a body, she’ll do it. She at least knows who her friends are.’
‘She’s no friend of mine.’
William wiped a finger under his nose. ‘The reason Judith didn’t believe you is because Chas can’t get a stand, at least not with her. She keeps no secrets from me. None at all. Like I said, she knows who her friends are. Can you say the same?’
I looked at the washing, crisp and white, bleached and dried by the sun. Then I ran at it, dragging it all from the line, grabbing as many sheets as I could and trampling them into the wet earth by the water pump. I shrieked and kicked at the white linen. I screamed and got down on my knees and rubbed the beautiful clean sheets into the dirt until they were filthied and muddied. Then I squealed and tried to tear them with my hands. Finally I fell sobbing on to the pile of muddy sheets.
William stood over me, pushing out his bottom lip, but looking across the gate. He was embarrassed. ‘Come on, Fern. Get up.’
‘Am I going insane, William? Am I?’
‘Come on. Stand up.’
‘I hate all this washing,’ I sobbed. ‘Hate it.’
‘I know you do. Get up. Let’s go inside. We’ve got to make a bit of smoke.’
‘Smoke? Whatever for?’
‘To quiet the bees,’ he said.
I felt so wretched. I couldn’t stop the sobbing, and I had to ask him, ‘William, were you and Mammy once lovers?’
‘Maybe we were. We all had our youth. Then we had a fallout. And I know what you’re thinking, and no, I’m not your bloody father.’
I got to my feet. ‘You’re Judith’s father?’
‘As far as any man can be sure, I’m sure I might be.’ William gathered up the big, spoiled pile of laundry in a bundle and carried it into the cottage. ‘You’ll have to do all this again,’ he said.
31
After my next midwifery class MMM called me aside and hit me with crushing news. The administration had searched my references and couldn’t find any record of a basic qualification in nursing. These credentials were a prerequisite of the course. MMM had my original application form and showed me a box, clearly ticked, saying I was a qualified nurse. An adjacent box asking for my reference number had been left blank.
I admitted I must have ticked the box in error. I wasn’t accustomed to filling in forms, I explained.
MMM looked bewildered. She took off her glasses and glowered at me with half-closed eyes. Then she sucked the earpiece of her glasses. It was impossible, she said, impossible. And so disappointing, she said, what with me being her most promising student. This last remark was news to me of course, but of no help. I asked if I could still come to her lectures, but she avowed that there would be no point. No basic qualifications would mean no diploma at the end of it.
It was a long journey home. Perhaps it was all expressed in my face, because no one wanted to give me a ride. Though it was a beautiful spring evening with blackbirds darting in the dusky hedgerows I couldn’t feel any of it. When I got to my cottage I found Arthur sitting on my step and smoking a cigarette. I was heartened to see him. I so needed to be distracted from my worries.
‘How long have you been waiting there?’
‘A while. Want to take a stroll to the Lion?’
I’d never been to the Red Lion, though I’d passed by it many times and wondered what it was like, so I heard myself saying yes. It was very quiet inside. Two grizzled old boys sat in opposing corners of the lounge bar drinking pints of mild and passionately ignoring each other. A couple sat at a table holding hands and whispering. On one wall there was a huge stuffed pike in a glass case. The landlord seemed to know Arthur well enough. I didn’t know what I wanted to drink. The landlord tilted his head forward and said lots of his lady customers liked a Babycham. So that’s what I had. Arthur bought himself a pint of bitter and a Babycham for me.
We sat down at a table. Arthur set his bitter down on a beer mat and I put my Babycham on a beer mat, too. When Arthur sipped his beer I sipped my Babycham. It was fizzy and very sweet, and maybe it put an idea in my head about Arthur, but it made me snigger for the first time since Mammy had died.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘What?’
I shook my head. Actually I was thinking about what he had in his pants that day, and whether it had ever gone down.
‘Do you like your Babycham?’
‘I quite like it. I wouldn’t go mad for it though.’
‘You don’t have to go mad for it.’
‘No, well I wouldn’t.’
I took another sip to show Arthur I didn’t mind it. Then I looked round the pub. One of the old boys stared at me across the foamy top of his pint of mild. I ran a hand through my shorn hair.
Arthur told me his good news. He’d been selected to carry one of the three ‘Bottles’ or barrels of ale in the Hallaton Easter parade. Hallaton was home to an annual and ancient festival known as ‘Hare Pie Scramble and Bottle Kicking’. The position of Bottle carrier was highly prized by the local lads. Arthur swelled with pride as he told me.
‘That’s so nice Arthur!’
‘Yeh. It is, ain’t it?’
‘Wonderful.’
We looked round the pub again, at the other drinkers. Then Arthur cleared his throat. ‘They’re out to get you, Fern.’
‘Are they?’ I said lightly.
‘Someone ought to stick up for you. To protect you.’
‘Would you do that then, Arthur? Stick up for me?’
‘I would, Fern.’ He took a sip of his bitter. The creamy head smeared his upper lip. ‘I would if I could think how to.’
‘That’s nice.’ There was a silence, and it was broken by laughter coming from the room on the other side of the bar. ‘I didn’t know there was another room.’
‘The Smoke Room. Beer a penny cheaper in that room. I get in there with my biker pals some nights.’
‘I’ll bet that’s a laugh.’
‘It is.’ He missed my irony, but went on, ‘See that back room? You can be in there without being seen and catch everything that’s said in here. One time I heard Venables talking to Jane Louth. Right? He’d knocked her up, and she said she’d been to see Mammy. And he says, ‘‘That’s no good, you’ve got to take these.’’ I was going to tell you all this the night I came round your cottage. But it got lost.’ The recollection of that evening made him squint into his beer.
‘But what was it? What did he give her?’
‘No idea. I could hear but not see. Anyway I’d heard him say it works for sure.’
I looked into the bubbles of my Babycham. I could think of a few things it might have been. But mostly I thought, Poor Mammy. Because now I was sure she hadn’t made a mistake, but she’d gone to her grave thinking she had.
‘Another Babycham?’ said Arthur.
‘No. One of them’s enough for anybody.’
After we’d finished our drinks Arthur walked me back to the cottage. We stood at the gate for a while. We agreed it was a beautiful evening. I looked up at the stars and Arthur asked me what I was looking for.
‘Satellites. Sputniks and the like.’
Arthur told me that the first commercial satellite had just been launched into space. I didn’t know what that meant. ‘Non-government, Fern. Business. Private.’
I
was appalled. ‘You mean anyone can put one up there?’
‘If they’re rich enough. Yes.’
‘But that’s terrible!’
Arthur shrugged. I was going to tell him about the dead dogs and monkeys in space but it seemed so unromantic, and I thought he was going to try to kiss me. But he didn’t. I was a little disappointed when we said goodnight.
The next morning another letter arrived. I thought I understood it but I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I took it along to someone who would know for sure. At Croker’s Farm Chas, Luke and two other hippies were still building their monster-size greenhouse. Chas was puttying around some glass when I approached him. The grey putty was all over his hands. I took a deep breath. ‘I’m still not sure if I was wrong,’ I said, ‘but if I was then I’m sorry. Very sorry. But I’m still not sure that I was.’ Then I turned on my heels and walked away.
‘That’s an apology?’ I heard him call after me, but I ignored it and went inside the house. I asked another woman where Greta was and was directed to a bedroom upstairs.
Greta lay on a mattress on the floor, her head propped up with pillows. She was reading a book, and though she was pale she didn’t appear too bad. The room reeked of incense. She looked up at me, and with only the faintest flicker of her old infuriating smile, she said, ‘Hi.’
I sat on the floor and held her hand. ‘How are you?’
‘Not bad. Feel sick all the time.’
‘It’ll pass. Drink lots of water. These joss sticks aren’t good. It’s all the wrong smells. I’m going to put them out. I’ve bought a tea made from lemon and vervain—’
‘Herb of Grace,’ Greta said.
‘That’s what my Mammy used to call it. And here, look. I’m going to stick a sprig above your bed.’ There was a postcard tacked to the wall and I used the pin to stick the vervain over it. ‘That will stop you having the nightmares.’
‘How did you know I had nightmares about it?’
‘How can you ask me that question?’
Greta started crying. ‘Come on Greta, you made a decision. Now be strong in it.’ These were Mammy’s words. Mammy always said if there was no suffering in it then it never needed a decision in the first place. I told Greta I would go and make her some tea from the vervain and lemon.
When I returned with the tea she’d stopped crying and was looking a little brighter. She seemed grateful for the tea anyhow. ‘Tell me how you’ve been,’ she said. ‘Take my mind off things.’
‘My trouble for your trouble,’ I said, and I showed her the letter.
She read it and frowned, her eyebrows knitting. ‘It’s from the local Health Authority. They’re going to make an assessment, it says here. My God! Can they do this?’
‘That’s why I brought it to you, Greta. You having studied the law and all.’
‘Well I suppose they can,’ she said. ‘I suppose this is how it’s done.’
‘What will they do on the day?’
‘They’ll tie you in a sack and then they’ll throw you in the river,’ Greta said. ‘So to speak.’
‘So to speak,’ I said.
Greta smiled back at me, but rather thinly.
32
I went to Mammy’s grave in the night – not the fake grave, the real one in the woods. I sat with my back against the broad oak and I talked with Mammy. The moon was strong and clear and if I half closed my eyes I could easily see her, sitting with her back to a neighbouring oak, talking to me in the silvery light, taking in the moon.
Now perhaps I was going a little bit mad at that time, and I’m not sure if I saw it or I simply remembered it. Or perhaps in remembering it I somehow saw it all over again. What’s the difference between memory and imagination if there is no one who can tell you whether a thing happened? Mammy was talking to me about my singing, how I was a chanter and I shouldn’t hide my gift. ‘See them little babies?’ she says. ‘What’s the first thing they do when they’re out?’
‘They wail,’ I says.
‘That’s right,’ she says, ‘they wail, because they’re hurting at the world, blinking and smarting at the sudden violence of the light. But after a while they stop, because the hurt falls away and they see only the beauty, but they don’t know what it is. And when you’re a-chanting, that’s what you’re doing.’
‘What, hurting?’
‘Yes. You’re wailing. But you’re on the way to mending it. To making the hurt fall away. All singing is about a hurting, ain’t it? Oh, there’s funny songs here and there, but there’s a hurt even in them if you listen. And though the song can’t put it right, it makes the hurt fall away for a moment, and lets you see what’s behind it. And a fine chanter like you, well, that’s what you give people.’
I said I understood. I thought perhaps I did.
But Mammy would never stay serious too long. She got to her feet and she kicked off her shoes. ‘Come on Fern, count me in. One little last dance afore we go in. One little last dance.’
I got to my feet, too, and with the moonlight drenching the woods and pouring between the trees I clapped my hands to count time and I gave her a lively Marrowbones, that being her favourite tune for ever. And she hitched up her skirts around her knees and she danced, with such a look of happiness and wicked joy etched on her features that I could barely hold the tune for laughing.
‘Look at these old bones!’ Mammy called as she kicked up her legs amid the bluebells. ‘Look at this old bag of bones a-dancing under the moon! And we don’t care what they’ll think of us!’
And I clapped my hands for her and I just couldn’t keep the song going for laughter. The moon was on her. She seemed to call it to her and it soaked her as she capered and danced. It drizzled from her. It was her mantle. I could never love her more than at that moment.
And then in the next moment I was alone, under the tree where she was buried, and Mammy was gone, and I didn’t know if I’d just recalled her shade to the world or only remembered something that happened, and I knew that dwelling on such an idea could tip you over the edge.
That very night someone desecrated Mammy’s churchyard grave. They had cracked the headstone and had painted vile words on the stone, and they had scattered all the flowers that had been placed there. I was informed of this by a local woman I barely knew. She was full of sympathy. She couldn’t understand how anyone could be so hateful. Mammy had helped a lot of people, she said. Did I think it was those longhaired yobs at Croker’s? I said no, they weren’t bad people at Croker’s, and I knew it wouldn’t be them. She asked me if I wanted her to get some people to tidy up the grave. I thanked her and said I’d see to it myself.
I had other things to think about. Greta had suggested that I find some people who would speak up for me at the assessment, so I went to Bill Myers and showed him the letter. He and Peggy Myers sat me down and we discussed it, but not before they’d both expressed their outrage at the spoiling of Mammy’s grave. Bill was livid and he said if he found the culprits he would give them a pasting, and Peggy said she would, too. They both said they thought I had enough to put up with without this. They wanted to know if I’d been to the churchyard to sort it out, and I admitted I hadn’t.
But sympathy only extended so far. When it came to discussing the letter and the pending assessment, Bill said he couldn’t speak up for me. ‘I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, Fern. A policeman’s friends often find out that his allegiance to the law usually comes before friendship. That’s why we’re outsiders Fern, we bobbies. We have to stand apart.’
She doesn’t want to hear all that, Peggy said, she wants to know if you’ll speak up for her. I can’t, Bill said, because it might even come to it that’s she’s charged and I have to stay out of it. That’s sitting on the fence, his wife said. It may well be, Bill said, but that’s the position I’m in. You owe your life to Mammy Cullen, Peggy said, when you were newborn. What’s that got to do with Fern? Bill wanted to know. She brought you back from the dead, Peggy insisted.
Bill looked thoughtful at that. I sensed a row breaking out between the two of them, and that’s not what I wanted. I thanked them and I got up to go. As I went out I thought Bill looked sad.
Peggy followed me out into the hall. I said to her, ‘They want to put me away, just like they did with Mammy.’
‘There’s a difference,’ Peggy said. ‘When Mammy was put away, my mam told me, it was true she was a little bit crazy for a while. She’d lost her husband and then she lost her son. She went around for a while trying to conceive as if she didn’t mind who the father was. But then once they have you inside that bloody place, well. Did you know they sterilised her when she was in there?’
I was shocked. ‘I didn’t know that.’
Peggy nodded. ‘Look, Bill might not be able to speak up for you,’ she said as she let me out, ‘but I know someone who can.’
I looked her in the eye to try to decipher her meaning, but she gently closed the door on me.
As I made my way back to my cottage another lady stopped me and expressed her horror at what had happened at the churchyard. She said she didn’t know what the world was coming to if even the dead couldn’t be left in peace. The desecration had upset everyone.
That evening I was visited by William, Peggy Myers and a woman I’d never seen before, an old lady suffering from dowager’s hump and the disadvantage of very thick spectacle glass. I didn’t even know that William and Peggy were acquainted. William had his hands plunged in the jacket pockets of his dark official-looking suit with the fob-chain. He behaved as if he’d never met me before in his life, said nothing and looked as if he cared even less. I asked them all in.
When they were seated, Peggy Myers was cordial enough, though William looked bored, surveying the cottage with an air of mild disapproval. I thought it better not to let on that I knew him. It was the lady with the dowager’s hump, rubbing her arthritic fingers together, who came to the point. ‘We’ve come about the pie, m’dear.’
