Mary George of Allnorthover

by Lavinia Greenlaw

  The doctor held all this knowledge but tried to meet Tom’s eyes without it. ‘Do you think coming back here will do you any good?’

  ‘Dear M,’ the postcard began. The writing was tiny, disjointed and precise. ‘Dinner at CC’s on 26th. Would you come? D.’ The message took up hardly any space. Equally tiny, and far off to the right, the card was addressed to ‘Mary George of Allnorthover’. Who was CC? Mary turned the card over. It was a portrait of a woman, painted entirely in shades of red. She lay on a crimson sofa in a cherry coloured dress. The wall behind her was a shadowy plum. She looked old fashioned, powerful, comfortable and foreign. Her bare arms were somewhere between pink and gold, suggesting skin of a smoothness that if it changed at all, became darker and stronger. Most of her face and much of her dress were covered by her hair, which was exaggerated and simplified into a solid mass of red-brown, a shade that should have suggested rich earth or old wood but made Mary think more of a precious metal, an element rarely seen and with properties not yet understood.

  Clara Clough. And not a party or a pub but ‘dinner’. Mary put the postcard in her father’s pipe-box, along with the cigarette packet on which Daniel had written his number.

  ‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’ Stella asked Mary over supper that evening. She kept blinking as if caught by surprise, and her gaze was heavy and direct.

  ‘The lenses.’

  ‘You don’t have to. We can get your glasses fixed.’

  ‘I’ll get used to them.’

  ‘How long did it take you to get them in?’

  ‘Not long.’ Mary had been fitted with contact lenses two months earlier, but had given up trying to get them into her eyes. This was the first time she’d managed to wear them for longer than half an hour, and they felt sharp and pinching. She’d been in front of the bathroom mirror for forty minutes trying not to blink and then, when she’d got one lens in, had dropped the other and had had to search for it with her one good eye, terrified that it would be scratched or cracked. A second pair would be out of the question.

  ‘Well don’t overdo it.’ Stella considered her daughter’s large, weak eyes which were a changeable cloudy grey-blue, and wanted to go and find her glasses and put them back on. She’d always hated Mary’s glasses. As soon as she had them on her nose, her head tipped forward. She mumbled and didn’t hear what was said to her, and still didn’t notice anything. Contact lenses had been Stella’s idea but she thought now that Mary looked like a young owl caught in daylight. Her face had no expression, as if it took all her concentration just to keep her eyes open.

  ‘I’ll take your glasses into town and get them fixed, anyway. Just in case.’

  Mary shrugged and finished her food quickly, in silence. As soon as her plate was empty, she jumped up, ‘Going out for bit,’ and hurried off before Stella could respond.

  There were two phone boxes in Allnorthover. The one you went to if you didn’t mind being seen or overheard was by the crossroads, just along the High Street. It was next to the village’s only signpost, whose spindly white arms were embossed with flaking black place names and numbers of miles that drivers could barely read. Even if they could make this information out, they did not necessarily head off in the right direction. The village boys regularly climbed onto one another’s shoulders and turned the signpost like the hands of a clock. The phone box proved useful to travellers who found that their maps or the directions they had been given, were at odds with the way in which they were now being pointed.

  The other phone box was out past the Chapel, on the straight run just before the first curve of the Verges. It was neglected and overgrown, and several of its glass panes had cracked or slipped from their rusting red iron frames. The light was erratic and there was a lingering smell of something like a trapped animal. An injured fox had got caught in there and Brian Stroud, whose farm was close by, had gone down with a stick and a sack, or so it was said.

  Now, the door was jammed half open and so nothing shut out the noise of the lorries that thundered past, even at this time in the evening, accelerating out of the Verges and into the straight run of the High Street, close enough to London now to see some point in hurrying. Mary pulled her money out of her pocket. The pennies and halfpence were useless, but among them there were four two pences. She recited the number and checked the code for Camptown on the chart, even though she had known it for years. Her eyes ached as the lenses dragged in whatever direction she looked. It was hard to focus on something so close and the light was flickering. She made a pile of her money and dialled the number and then, as it began to ring, slammed the receiver down. She panicked. I haven’t remembered it right. There weren’t two sevens. And so she set off again, crossed the Green and slipped into the house. She could hear Stella in the kitchen as she crept upstairs. She took the cigarette packet from the box and checked the number. Although she’d been right all along, this time she took the packet with her.

  Back in the phone box, she rang the number again. A woman answered and Mary pushed her first two-pence piece against the slot as the pips went, but pressed too hard and dropped it on the floor. As she reached out to grab another coin, she knocked the whole pile over. Leaning down to find them, she could hear the woman’s imperious voice shouting, ‘Press Button B! Press Button B!’ and Mary, curious and still given to taking orders, stopped scrabbling around for her money and studied the box. Where was Button B? She even wanted to speak to the woman again but when she rang back, it was Daniel who answered.

  ‘Your card. I’ll come. I’d like to,’ Mary gabbled.

  ‘Good!’ He spoke so lazily that his one word was as long as her seven. ‘Shall I collect you?’

  ‘No, I’ll meet you there. What time should I come?’

  ‘Time?’ She heard a hiss or yawn and then realised he was smoking a cigarette. ‘I don’t know. Whatever.’ She listened more closely. There was music in the background, some kind of jazz, and someone singing, not on the record but in the room, and someone else shouting at them to be quiet. Mary could feel the space of Daniel’s house, its age and polish and glow, and she knew that that was what Clara’s house would be like too, full of candles and flowers and people shouting over music.

  ‘Daniel?’ The pause in their conversation had gone on too long. ‘What’s Button B?’ It was all she could think of to say.

  ‘Button B?’

  ‘In the phone box.’ A lorry hurtled past as Mary spoke.

  ‘Sorry? Did you say you’re in a phone box?’

  ‘Button B? Your mother said to press Button B,’ Mary tried again.

  Daniel laughed. ‘Don’t take any notice of my mother! She’s about a hundred and eighty, and she hasn’t used a phone box for fifty years!’ Someone near Daniel screeched their indignation and he turned away to speak to them. Another three lorries sped by. The pips went and Mary fumbled another coin into the slot, but by the time the line cleared again, he had gone.

  It was Saturday night in Allnorthover. At seven o’clock, Ernest Yeo dried the last of the dishes and told his wife he was taking a walk. He set off along the High Street, leaning heavily on his stick. His suit was pressed and his hat was brushed but his belly spilled out of his shirt. While Mary was laying out her dresses, Ernest Yeo crossed the Green, passed her front door and made for the bushes that ran along the side of the Perrotts’ garden wall. Using his stick to push back nettles and branches, he made his way in among them. Ten minutes later, he emerged and went carefully home.

  The bottles in the bushes were Ernest’s secret – one he believed nobody shared. Everybody who lived on the Green made a point of not leaving their house at that time on a Saturday.

  After dark, the girls who were old enough to go out with their friends in the evening but too young for the pubs or for going into town, gathered under the bus shelter on the Green. They smoked one cigarette after another, holding them against their palms and keeping a watch for grown-ups who knew them. They scrutinised each other’s erupting bodies, the pup
py fat, volatile skin and growing breasts. They knew the awkward muddle of mortification and pride that caused a girl to wear her loosest clothes, to hunch over or smooth her skirt, and they mocked one another for it. They laughed violently at anything potentially embarrassing such as Lucas passing on his bicycle, Mrs Eley carrying a tray of meringues, or someone’s sister in Brownie uniform. If any among them tripped over or spilt something, or had a button undone, a lovebite, or muck on their shoes, they were turned on avidly by their screeching friends.

  They watched for boys, too, who met at the crossroads and hung about kicking the signpost and carving their initials in the phone box, just as some of the girls would scratch a boy’s initials into their arm. When the boys got bored, they would strut past the girls, calling and mocking, up the High Street and out along Blind Lane to Cricket Common. Eventually, the braver girls would follow and find the boys out in the middle of the Common, from where they could still see the road, but were not easily to be found. Sometimes, someone had beer or cider bought by an older friend or a cocktail of spirits stolen from home, just a little from each bottle, making a kind of cough mixture in a jar. The girls liked these sweet concoctions and drank them too fast. Sometimes they would vomit and weep, or sing. A sober friend might march them up and down, feeding them mints, or a boy might persuade them to take a walk, and he might be worried and hold back their hair while they were sick, or he might push his hand inside their skirt or blouse. If a boy got drunk, he might punch his best friend, or go off and look for something to climb or break, or fall silent, or sleep.

  At thirteen, Mary and Billy had spent a few evenings on the Common, excited to be out at night and briefly keen to be part of the gang. They were tolerated because they were known. Mary remembered being kissed once by the youngest of Julie’s three big brothers, Martin Lacey. Billy had helped to turn the signpost but the boy whose shoulders he was on had ducked and run off, and Billy had fallen hard on the ground and winded himself. Constable Belcher had picked him up and had chosen to believe his story about a back flip. He hadn’t been strong enough to budge the signpost anyway.

  While the stack of singles perched on the spindle of her box gramophone dropped one by one onto the turntable, Mary tried on each of her dresses twice. A short, clingy black dress she’d never yet dared wear, a silver-blue cocktail number, her blue print and her pale lemon shift.

  In the end, she wore the shift, and combed her hair to one side and fixed it with a diamanté clip. She got out her high-heeled sandals, slung them over her shoulder and set off barefoot, with a small bag for her contact-lens case and mascara. At the front door, she met Stella.

  ‘Going somewhere special?’ She smiled.

  ‘Clara Clough asked me round.’

  ‘Party?’

  ‘Dinner.’

  ‘Ah! Dinner!’ Stella paused and then said ‘Wait a moment,’ and went into the kitchen. She came back with a bottle of elderberry wine she’d won at the Fête. ‘You should take something.’

  Mary blushed. ‘I know. I mean, thank you.’ She took the bottle and hurried away.

  When she reached the gravel drive that led to the Clock House, Mary pulled on her sandals. They were a pair Stella had thrown out and were too big for Mary, but she loved their delicate apricot-satin bands and the sudden height they gave her. She thought about Clara at the Fête, her long brown legs and how you could see their outline through her chiffon dress. You could see the strong curves of Clara’s whole body through that dress. Mary felt like a child in her shift, so straight up and down.

  It was half past seven, which had seemed to Mary like the right sort of time to arrive for ‘dinner’. As she approached the house, the crash of her feet on the gravel got louder and louder. By the time she reached the front door, it was so deafening that Mary was surprised no one had rushed out to see what the racket was. She looked for a bell but couldn’t find one. The door, in any case, was open. She was about to knock when she noticed a rapid hammering sound. She turned her head towards the noise, slowly, anxious not to unsettle her contact lenses, which still felt tight and heavy. There was a motorbike and she walked over to it, expecting to find someone lying next to it. Nobody was there. Mary looked up and around, unaccustomed to taking in so much and at such a distance. Across a lawn of worn-out grass, there was another motorbike, upside-down, a sidecar, and further off, a car with its bonnet up, and something that looked like a go-kart or a small tractor. Someone had begun to take apart each of these machines. There was a single heap of wheels, and one each of engine parts and bodywork.

  Mary looked back at the house and realised that she’d thought it would be beautifully kept and bright white. Three immense cedar trees cut out the light and the house’s cement frontage had a dank sheen, like the underside of a stone that had lain for years in forest darkness. The house’s embellishments, the parapets with their castellated balustrades, were clogged with moss and weed. The ivy that had crept around the doors and windows had recently been cut back so that the walls of the house were covered with its pallid imprint.

  The famous clock tower was supported by crumbling buttresses and wooden joists. When Robert Newling had moved in, he had installed a clock that chimed so loudly it could be heard on the village green. He spent most of his time on the Continent and so, rather than disrupt his habits, went by what he believed to be Continental time at home as well. The villagers, who lived by the church bells, were confused to hear different hours being chimed. Robert Newling refused to adapt and it was only after his death that someone tried to turn the clock back and it had stopped for good.

  ‘You looking for Clara?’ A boy of about her age had appeared. His height and thinness were exaggerated by his big head and baggy overalls. He looked like a plant that had grown up in shadows. He had Clara’s big nose and black eyes but in a face with such different proportions that their effect was altogether something else. Mary was fascinated. She put out her hand but his hands were full of tools – a spanner, three screwdrivers and a hammer. Confused, she lifted her fingers to her face to take off her glasses and then remembered she wasn’t wearing them, so she waved in what happened to be the direction of the pile of engine parts. Then she had to think of something to say.

  ‘How do you know what belongs where?’

  The boy smiled. ‘I’m building something new.’ Mary kept looking as two tortoises ambled out from between the machinery, one slowly chasing the other.

  The boy walked past her into the house. ‘CLARA!’ He roared. There was a distant reply. He turned to Mary, ‘Sounds like she’s in the bath. Come on.’ Mary followed him across a large hall, tripping over toys and slipping on the parquet floor. A trail of nails and screws fell from the boy’s torn pockets. They went upstairs and along a corridor full of piles of books and open boxes in which Mary could see important-looking stone sculptures and porcelain vases alongside toy guns, records, table-tennis racquets, snorkelling masks. They passed a guinea-pig cage on a polished walnut side table that was shoved up against a set of chipped white shelves. The boy pushed open a door, and Mary saw Clara lying in a deep bath, her hair in a knot, a cigarette in one hand.

  ‘Bit early,’ Clara’s mouth snapped momentarily into a smile.

  ‘Don’t be a cow,’ the boy said and grabbed the bottle from Mary’s hand. ‘She brought you this.’

  Clara sat up so suddenly that the water crashed against her back and ran down her front. Mary retreated, shocked by Clara’s nakedness, her long neck and strong shoulders, her jutting dark nipples and muscular breasts. Mary tried to make sense of the tiny flowers scattered over the peeling wallpaper. The boy put the bottle down on the floor and went behind Mary, opening an airing cupboard. Clara pushed on a tap with her toes and the spurting hot water made more foamy bubbles that rose and spilt over the bath’s edge. Mary watched.

  ‘Wait in the garden,’ Clara sounded more friendly now. ‘Thanks for the wine. Take it down with you. I won’t be long.’ The water coming from the tap shrank to a dribb
le, coughed and stopped.

  ‘Tobias!’ she screeched. The boy emerged from the airing cupboard, holding a wrench.

  ‘I’ve disconnected your supply.’ Tobias handed the bottle to Mary and steered her away.

  ‘It’s round the back.’ Tobias left Mary where he had found her, and returned to his machines. She smashed her way across the gravel, her feet already swelling and aching in Stella’s sandals. They tipped her forward as much as her glasses ever had. Thinking about her shoes, she found she could no longer walk in them. One foot lagged behind the other and she fell.

  Grateful that nobody had seen, Mary picked herself up and looked for some direction to head in, somewhere she was supposed to be or wait. In front of her was a tall hedge, behind which a number of lights flickered. She skirted the hedge and found that the lights came from candles burning inside a row of pewter lanterns that had been arranged on a trestle table set up on the floor of an empty swimming pool. The table was covered in a white cloth. There was a pile of white plates and a pile of white bowls and half a dozen glasses. In the middle of the table was a bowl in which floated red, orange and pink flowers. They were radiant, intricate, hothouse flowers, not garden flowers, and had been crammed into the bowl until they turned in on themselves.

  The pool was about seven feet deep. Its dusty tiles were cobalt blue. Mary kicked off her shoes and lowered herself down into it, surprised not to feel a cool smooth floor but the scratchiness of dead leaves, seed husks and grasses catching between her toes. She waited there, alone, for an hour. She sat first of all in the nearest of the six folding garden chairs and then realised she was at the head of the table, and moved on. By the time she heard a car in the drive, she had sat in every chair, opened and shut every lantern, rucked and smoothed the tablecloth, spun the knives by their handles and rotated the glasses by their stems. Moths battered themselves against the lantern glass. Mary tried to put everything back as she had found it and when she heard shouts from the front of the house and Clara’s hooting call of ‘Darlings!’, she got up and straightened her chair. Too nervous to stand and wait, she climbed out of the pool, slipped on her shoes and hurried round to the front of the house, in the opposite direction to the one in which she’d come. She reached the drive just in time to catch sight of five – was it? – figures, one unmistakeably Daniel, disappearing round the other side of the house. Mary doubled back on herself and managed to arrive back beside the pool just after everybody else.