When the article first came out, Margaret and I sought temporary asylum at her gran’s near Winchester, just until Sunday night. She’s sweet, the gran, but she doesn’t miss a trick. And the pair of them are great together. There’s a real warmth – I could have settled into it very comfortably, stayed all week and pretended everything was all right. Margaret had nothing to wear, so I lent her some jeans of mine and a belt. Why is it so unbearably sexy when a girl wears your clothes? Then on Sunday we dug out some old clothes of her gran’s, and she chose a 1960s summer dress, blue rosebuds on a creamy white background, and because she’s taller than her gran it showed a curved sweep of calf. It’s funny – when she had it on she suddenly struck me differently. Fresh and lovely and wholesome, like something from a more innocent age – Elizabeth Montgomery in ‘Bewitched’, or Jackie Kennedy in those home movies of her with the kids, before the assassination. And I thought how much Margaret is all of those things all of the time, actually. I told her the dress suited her, and then felt how inadequate that was to express what I really meant.
Then of course she had to go back to school on Monday. I know she’ll have had some explaining to do, though she laughs and plays it down – how can I have got her into this mess? And now of course I can’t see her, can’t go to Ipswich and meet her after school, and risk leading the wolf pack to her door. I’ve called her a few times, but I never know what to say. God, Mike, this is absolute torture!
Richard.
From: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent: 30/6/05 21:53
To: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
I’ve been thinking about it, Margaret, and looking at the pictures again, and whichever way you look at it, it’s hard to avoid one conclusion. Men (and news editors in particular) are just plain peculiar.
Feathers, well OK, just maybe. But even at telephoto range, and reproduced in grainy newsprint, I can make out distinct traces of chicken wire and papier mâché.
Love and hugs,
Becs xx
From: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent: 30/6/05 22:19
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Dear Becs,
Sadly, I fear it may not be that implausible. Remember that girl at college, Nicole, the one doing the M.Sc. in sedimentology? She was once waiting for a taxi in the city centre after coming back late from doing fieldwork, measuring silt deposits over at the reservoir. Half of it was still adhering to her oilskins and waders, but some chancer pulled over and asked her if she was doing business. Clearly mistook her for a specialist of some sort. And it’s only a short step from rubber to bird-fancying, I’d say.
Love,
Margaret x
42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich
Suffolk IP3 2DA
The Today Programme
BBC Radio 4
Television Centre
Wood Lane
London W12 7RJ
1 July 2005
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to complain about the way in which tabloid news stories are occasionally taken up and discussed on the Today programme as if they were established fact.
Repeating unsubstantiated allegations which have been made in tabloid newspapers, under the guise of reporting upon the political fall-out from those stories, is poor journalism, and unworthy of a public service broadcaster with the (usually deserved) reputation of the BBC. You are only encouraging the printing of these scurrilous and ill-researched pieces, by giving the papers concerned extra publicity. These people do not care whose lives they ruin – and you are making yourselves complicit in the damage they cause.
Yours faithfully,
Margaret Hayton.
PS. I still think that John Humphrys does a marvellous job.
From: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent: 4/7/05 21:40
To: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Jeez, what a day, Margaret! In a misguided moment of cultural head-rush a couple of weeks ago, the head declared today to be Music Monday, and all the kids were invited to bring in musical instruments from home. Now, if this were Chorlton-cum-Hardy, we’d have had guitars, a smattering of assorted woodwind, and perhaps even an ABIE mum who’s a concert violinist showing up with a Stradivarius under her arm in lieu of egg-boxes. All very nice and civilised. But not so at Brunswick Road, oh no.
We did get a sitar and a pair of clay ghatams, and luckily I had laid in a more indigenously British supply of combs and greaseproof paper, and some rice and empty Pringles tubes for making impromptu shakers. But it appears that the main recourse for infant music-makers in the homes of Moss Side is a distinctive form of battery-operated plastic keyboard. Between them my class brought in nine of them. Approximately fifty centimetres in length, they are preprogrammed to play a medley of the first lines of various well-known nursery rhymes and cheesy pop classics, at a frequency precisely calculated to fry the cortex of the human brain, particularly when deployed in an enclosed space, such as a classroom. I suspect that the technology is directly descended from that used by the Kremlin to beam destructive rays at the US embassy in Moscow during the height of the Cold War. To say that I now have a headache is a bit like saying that Joan of Arc felt a mild burning sensation. It is a miracle that I am not yet bleeding from the eyes or ears.
Rather weak and sickly hugs,
Becs x
From: Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent: 4/7/05 22:06
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Dear Becs,
Poor you – and that on top of the rigours of your self-imposed abstinence. I must say, my lot’s music sessions are surprisingly melodious: I really have nothing to complain about. Except, oddly enough, Jack Caulfield. I mean, you somehow expect blind people’s other senses to be compensatingly finely tuned, don’t you? Like the way impeded sight seems to be de rigueur for piano tuners – it’s practically a requirement of the job, I’ve always thought. But in this case, nature has dealt Jack another set of sensorily challenged organs, in the shape of the most solid-rubber of unmusical ears. He’s tone deaf, and has the singing voice of a laryngitic herring gull.
Cora and Persephone are downstairs concocting something that would probably have helped with your head. Apparently Professor Sprout, their herbology teacher, has set them an assignment involving the blending of infusions with supposedly analgesic properties. (OK, so her name is actually Spreight, and anyway, the allusion is lost on Cora. I have yet to set her on to reading Harry Potter.)
Persephone turned up with some lemon verbena which her niece had brought over from Jamaica for her. The niece is nursing in a specialist neonatal unit in London, and Persephone is immensely proud of her, you can tell. She knows that Persephone is fond of Jamaican verbena tea, so she brought some back for her after a recent trip over there. Apparently she just waltzed straight through customs clutching this large polythene bag full of suspicious-looking dried leaves. Persephone says they are so busy treating as putative mass killers anyone with unbarbered facial hair and a Muslim name on their passport that they no longer give a second glance to a black kid with a bag of weed. She admits to quite missing the old familiar days of the tail end of the last century, when even institutional racism seemed to take a simpler and more innocent form!
Meanwhile, I am still keeping away from London and Richard. I stayed here at the weekend, did nothing more about looking for Nas, and nothing to support Richard through his press nightmare. He says they are still hassling him. He plays it down, of course, because he doesn’t want me to feel more guilty than I do already, but I can tell that he’s upset. And I so want to be there with him, even though I know it’s impossible, and would make everything ten times worse. It’s not the same at all to talk on the phone. I get tongue-tied and never seem able to say the things I want to. It’s really killing me!
; Love,
Margaret xx
WITCH
Women of Ipswich Together Combating Homelessness
Extract from minutes of meeting at Della’s house, 7th July 2005, 8 p.m.
News of residents
We were devastated to learn yesterday of Helen’s death. She hanged herself with her dressing-gown belt in the hospital bathroom at 9.30 a.m., while all the staff were in a ward meeting. The hospital manager informed Helen’s parents immediately, but did not ring Witch House. Emily found out the news when she went to visit Helen in the afternoon. She returned at once to tell the other residents, and she and Pat T. phoned members of the collective to let them know.
From: Richard Slater
[[email protected]]
Sent: 7/7/05 22:16
To: Michael Carragan [[email protected]]
Hi Michael,
Yesterday afternoon at four o’clock Margaret phoned me, and I knew at once something was terribly wrong – her voice was fugged with tears. One of the women in the hostel has committed suicide. Or rather not in the hostel, that is the sickening irony of it. This girl – Helen, her name was – had recently gone into psychiatric hospital because she was depressed and suicidal and it was felt that the levels of cover in Witch House were insufficient. Then, after all the care and support she has had from that ill-assorted bunch of untrained and largely unpaid women, she goes into hospital, where the professionals turn their backs for a moment and let her die. Of course it is a sickener for the nurses, too – what a bloody awful job they have – it’s no good feeling anger towards them. But I do feel anger, Mike – I feel absolutely churning with it. But mainly (and probably quite illogically) I feel, poor Margaret, this is so unfair!
After I’d put down the receiver all I could think about was getting to her. There were ample opportunities, had the press posse been able to see my tail-lights for the smoke from the burning rubber, for ‘Minister in Road Rage’ stories all the way up through north-east London, and when I reached the open tarmac of the A12 I just sank my right foot to the floor and held it there. I don’t know if the speed cameras caught me, and it probably makes little difference, because the needle reached 140 mph and proceeded to get stuck there, so that there is indelible evidence of my insanity. I didn’t care – I don’t care. I can lose my licence, go to prison – I just needed to be with Margaret.
When I reached the house, she opened the door and she was in my arms at once. I really didn’t plan any of it. She was crying freely now, and I was rubbing her tears away with my thumb, and then (why am I telling you this, Mike?) kissing them away, and suddenly she had turned her head a fraction and her mouth was underneath mine, and I was tasting the salt of her tears on her lips, and then on her tongue . . . But into my spiralling consciousness there then obtruded an unexpected scrabbling at my hip, gentle but insistent. Hang on, this doesn’t feel quite right, I thought. Looking down, I encountered two accusing, liquid brown eyes. We broke apart, and Margaret effected a formal introduction to W. G. Snuffy Walden. This was the spaniel, the disposal of whose bodily wastes, you may recall, featured large in our early correspondence. She doesn’t permit any public demonstrations of affection from which she herself is excluded, Margaret explained.
Snuffy and I were just getting acquainted when Cora the pale green landlady emerged from the kitchen, trailing plumes of malodorous steam. She was displaying more normal skin tones this time – except immediately round her eyes, where livid red weals were beginning to delineate themselves with alarming rapidity as we watched. ‘It’s the nettles!’ she cried, brandishing aloft half a hedgeful of greenstuff in her gloved hands, rather in the manner of Ophelia clutching the fantastic garlands of crow-flowers. (What are crow-flowers, anyway?) It seems she had made the mistake of rubbing her eyes in the middle of a tricky leaf-stripping operation. Margaret escorted her to the bathroom to apply Optrex, Savlon, and copious amounts of cold water, leaving me alone with W. G. Snuffy Walden, who produced a red plastic hedgehog with a surprised expression on its face, and proposed that she and I might engage in a little light throwing and fetching to pass the time.
After this, there seemed little hope of any reprise of the earlier interrupted and all too brief amorous explorations. Margaret made us all cocoa and toast, and Snuffy squeezed jealously between Margaret and me on the settee. But when we talked a bit about Helen, Margaret’s fingers crept silently into my hand under the long, silky fringed cover of Snuffy’s outspread ears.
When the cocoa was all drunk and the toast eaten, I came back to my Ipswich flat. Geoff Howard and his cohorts at the Town Crier seem to have stopped picketing it, and I got in undetected. This meant that it was safe to come and go tonight, too, with caution. I saw her after school, but not for very long, because it was the WITCH meeting at eight o’clock. Cora had invited me to eat with them, and we had shepherd’s pie, which was odd, because I could have sworn Margaret said she’s a vegetarian. The meeting was in the same street as the hostel, at the house of a new member. I drove her there with one hand, holding hers pressed tightly to my thigh with the other. I drove slowly – partly to make the drive last longer, and partly in order to keep to the 30 limit without any functioning means of gauging my speed. I pulled up, and at the last moment, just as she was about to get out of the car, I managed to blurt out ‘Come back to mine tonight?’ and she just said ‘Yes’ quietly, and was gone. Now I am sitting here waiting for her like an over-excited schoolkid before his first date, and feeling guilty for thinking far too little about poor Helen and far too much about Margaret.
Richard.
From: Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent: 8/7/05 07:03
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Dear Becs,
Well, I think I am about to be stripped of my habit and wimple. My vow of chastity has effectively been breached, at least in thought and word if not technically in deed. But I haven’t told you yet how it all started.
Helen is dead. Writing it down like that doesn’t make it any more real, but it is true. She hanged herself in hospital while the nurses were in a meeting. We were so sure that hospital was the safest place for her to be – I even tried to persuade her to go in, several times, and I’m sure the others did too. Now I can’t help feeling as if we just passed the buck, abdicated responsibility for her. To be honest, my mind still just blanks off if I even try to think about what I feel about it.
As soon as Pat T. rang off after telling me about Helen, I dialled Richard’s number. I didn’t even think about it. Cora wasn’t home from the bank yet, and I needed to hear his voice. He said, ‘Wait there, I’m coming over,’ although I’ve no idea where he thought I might go. Cora came in, and I told her, and she gave me a big hug and tried to feed me toad in the hole, which she claimed has comforting properties, but on this occasion I couldn’t even pretend to want it, however kindly it was meant. She then produced a large bin-liner full of nettles (I’ve no idea where she got these after a day working in a bank in central Ipswich), donned an enormous pair of gauntlets which she said were Pete’s old motorcycle gloves, and went back into the kitchen to start on what she described as her ‘herbalism homework’.
Considerably before the earliest time at which I had calculated it to be possible that he might make it here from central London, there was a ring at the front door. I flew to open it and straight into Richard’s arms. Suddenly the tears that I had been holding back started to flow in earnest, all over the front of his shirt, and he was murmuring soothing words and wiping the tears away with his thumb, and then catching them with his lips on my cheek. I wasn’t aware of making any decision, Becs, it was just the most natural thing in the world to turn my head towards him, and then he was kissing me and I was kissing him, I don’t know which, both at once, all together. It didn’t go on long – not nearly long enough! – because Snuffy came and got in the way, and then Cora had a crisis with her nettles that needed sorting o
ut. But my pulse didn’t go back to normal all evening, and that night the fearful images of Helen that were keeping away sleep were confusingly interwoven with the memory of how his mouth had felt against mine.
Anyway, last night he came over for supper, and later on, after the Witch meeting (which passed in a sort of collective daze – no pun intended – with almost everyone red-eyed and shaky), I came back to his flat. I haven’t been here before, though he told me the address ages ago. I knew it was in an old converted warehouse down at the docks, but I hadn’t realised it was right on the waterfront, with a view out to the estuary. You can sit at his desk, where I am writing this now, and watch the shipping come and go. Well, I climbed the stairs – he’s right near the top – and rang the bell, and we were soon kissing again, his hands were in my hair, and it was wonderful, Becs . . . But I had this feeling that he was holding back somehow, that something was wrong, when all I wanted was just to carry on sliding down the glorious slope that was leading into bed. After more hesitancy, he finally extracted himself completely, and picked himself up off the floor (where we somehow found ourselves), taking my hand and pulling me up too. There was quite a bit of panting going on by now on both sides, and there had been a certain amount of disarrangement of clothing, but he stood his ground, and told me what was on his mind. Apparently he thought he mustn’t take advantage of my grief and shock over Helen, and my resultant putative need for comfort. (Bloody hell, Becs – why did I have to find the only male in East Anglia with such an overdeveloped conscience? Maybe it’s my vicar’s daughter sonar.) I knew what I needed, and comfort may have been a part of it, but isn’t it always? And what is wrong with a bit of mutual physical comfort between consenting adults, anyway? But he was not to be swayed (and it didn’t seem fair to try too hard, when the poor man was attempting to be noble), and we ended up sleeping curled up together in his bed as chaste as two babes in the wood. In some ways it was an agony, all that touching-but-not-touching, but in the end it was a comfort just to have his reassuring warmth round me, and I slept much better than the night before.
More Than Love Letters Page 18