Mary George of Allnorthover

by Lavinia Greenlaw

  ‘I’ve been for a walk …’ Mary began.

  ‘Meet our surprise guest!’ Clara laughed. She was wearing what looked like a very beautiful nightdress made of purple silk, with spindly pink velvet straps. Her shoulders now looked delicately bony and deep brown. ‘Mary George. She’s Daniel’s surprise, actually. Say hello to your surprise, darling!’ She took Daniel by the elbow and pushed him towards Mary.

  Mary turned to Clara. ‘You mean you didn’t know I was coming?’

  Daniel shook Clara off and smiled at Mary. ‘Don’t worry. She said bring a friend, didn’t you Clara? I didn’t realise she’d want to vet them first.’

  Clara gave a flick of her head and softened. ‘Don’t be stupid, D, Mary and I have met already, haven’t we? She’s no surprise to me. For God’s sake. Jump in, everyone!’ And the others, who had stayed out of this exchange, moved towards the pool and climbed in, introducing themselves to Mary. There were two girls, both in short black dresses. The one with the blonde bob and an oriental tattoo was called Julia, and the dark one whose hair was in dozens of tiny plaits, and who had lots of bangles on her right arm, was called something like Dora or Flora, only Mary hadn’t taken it in. Nor could she remember which of the tall skinny boys with black curls and white scarves was Ed and which one, Paulie.

  Clara accepted their bottles of wine and bunches of flowers, and lined them up on the pool edge. She turned back to the table. ‘And where shall I sit?’ All the chairs were taken. ‘Looks like someone forgot I was coming!’ She pulled her dress high up over her thighs and her hair flew as she swung herself gracefully up out of the pool and marched into the house shouting, ‘Eat! We must eat!’

  ‘I’ll find another chair.’ Ed or Paulie made for the swimming-pool steps.

  ‘Clara will need a hand.’ Julia followed.

  The evening was a long and complicated sequence of people following Clara back to the house, fetching and carrying, and lowering food and wine into the pool. Mary moved to get up once but Daniel’s hand on her knee stopped her. She tried to follow a conversation, even to join in, but the swimming pool’s odd acoustic blurred words and everyone was talking at the same time. The conversation was loud, fast and brittle, and veered from one crescendo to another. Daniel sat very close to Mary. He leaned forward and propped himself on one elbow, almost in front of her.

  ‘Where’s my plate?’ Clara demanded, once all the food was on the table and everyone else had taken the plate she’d offered them.

  Daniel passed her his. ‘I’ll share Mary’s.’ He gave Clara his glass, too.

  Mary was transfixed by Daniel’s proximity. Although he was turned away, because he was turned away, his body curved towards her, his back almost touching her shoulder and his propped hand loose and open, as if cupping her face. As she leant forward to pick up her glass, he straightened and her lips met his bare arm. The shock she felt was matched by a jolt in Daniel. He turned suddenly and began to talk to her.

  The swimming pool was filling up with everyone’s noise and Mary could hardly hear him. Eventually, he just picked up the fork and they took it in turns to eat. Mary couldn’t remember exactly what they had. There had been some wet pink beef, and a vivid salad of something like beetroot, red cabbage, radishes, tomatoes and red peppers.

  ‘And now pudding!’ Clara announced. She was standing at the head of the table, with the bowl of flowers in her arms. ‘Mary!’ Mary looked at her, confused. ‘Help yourself!’ Clara thrust the bowl towards her.

  ‘Christ, what is this muck!’ Ed or Paulie spat their wine onto the floor. Clara looked angry. ‘I don’t serve muck, Paulie sweetie!’

  He held up a bottle. ‘Elderberry? A berry?’

  Clara put down the bowl. ‘Let me see.’ She snatched up the bottle. ‘Who brought this?’ Her eyes lighted on Mary and she smiled. ‘A local delicacy?’

  ‘I … my mother …’ Mary began, reaching out to take the bottle from Clara, to put it out of sight.

  Daniel caught her hand and held it. He took the wine, poured some into his glass, picked a nasturtium from Clara’s bowl, dipped it in the wine and put it in Mary’s mouth. Everyone watched. The drenched flower weighed on her tongue. It had an unexpected sharpness. Mary swallowed it.

  Paulie smiled and held out his glass.

  Since the Fête, Tom had not stopped counting. The towers of cake and roads of biscuits he’d built while working out who’d won, had reawoken the part of his mind that loved numbers. His memory had once had endless room for numbers, and while other parts of his head rested, sleepy and vague beneath the blanket of the coloured capsules, numbers had begun to accumulate again. They would rush at him in elaborate conundrums that he found, to his delight, he could solve. They made beautiful patterns that he could see entire, and twisting threads he could follow all at the same time. Tom amused himself calculating the melting point of a strip of tarmac caught in the sun, or how long it would take for the blistered paint on the Chapel door to split and peel. He found some of Matthew’s old drawing paper and made intricate geometrical designs on the different-sized squares, without actually drawing anything.

  He could remember. He could remember figures, shapes and sequences. He tested himself. The trees from the Chapel out along the Verges: oak, hawthorn, hawthorn, elder, oak, ash, ash, elder, elder, hawthorn. He traced their shapes like a graph, in an unbroken line. How many buttons had there been on Sophie’s white dress? Nine. The fourth one down, the one that strained on her belly, had slipped half undone.

  Tom had heated a tin of soup. He washed up the saucepan and the bowl, threw away the tin and wiped the stove. He felt fine and then he didn’t. The tall, thick candles he’d found under the eaves and set to burn on the window ledges and along the shelves, helped. They made him think of the Chapel as a chapel again, or maybe a lighthouse, out here on the edge of the village, warning and guiding. But the old wooden filing cabinet that Christie had pushed into a corner was worrying him – those three deep drawers tilted and strained, and Tom knew he wouldn’t like what was inside them. He decided the cabinet had to be turned round. He leant his body against it and inched it forward a little. He pushed again, hard, and the front edge caught on a ridge in the floor, and the whole thing tipped forward with a crack and a slam. Tom circled it like one animal trying to find a way through the defences of another. He squatted in front of it, squeezed his hands under two corners and tried to lift it upright but the brass lock-fitting on the top drawer had broken open and the drawer slid hard against him. While he managed to push the cabinet back up, and it stayed up, the drawer forced him backwards. It landed at his feet. Without rising, he gathered up some of the papers scattered around him. There were letters and photographs, but his head hurt and he was holding them too close to his eyes to be able to see what they were.

  When Tom sat up, the things he’d been holding fell from his hands, unnoticed. He looked at the cabinet with its odd empty space, the fallen drawer, the mess, and was frightened. He wanted Christie.

  Christie had said, Come to the Arms on a Saturday night, I’ll pick you up. But this Saturday, he’d been working on the other side of the county and wouldn’t be back till late. He might have got back by now, though. Tom set off into the village. It was getting dark and the High Street was empty, or seemed empty, till he noticed shadows and then voices calling softly, whispers and a bray of laughter. Some of the houses he passed were lit and had their windows open. There were more voices, a bored half-formed call, a repetitive imprecation, an angry command, a nervous continuum, the rapid fire of television shows and the tinkling chatter of guests. All this made him anxious as it always had done, only now the anxiety was displaced. He felt the wave of panic precisely, but it was no longer at his core. This gave it limits, a shape, a form. He could watch it rise and fall, and survive it.

  Christie wasn’t in The Arms. The public bar was full of noise and smoke, and Tom almost turned back at the door but a big man with a red familiar face, a Lacey of almost thirty, clapped him
on the back and hauled him into the room. The Lacey was with a number of younger men, all dressed in dazzling blue-white shirts or t-shirts, who filled the middle of the room, surrounding a billiard table. They were in their early twenties, earning but not yet married. They wore the latest heavy watches with dim, digital faces and dropped their chunky, laden keyrings on the table as they sat down. Most of them had driven in from other villages and their cars were parked untidily along the Green. The fuel crisis had not affected their journeys. There was always somebody with a siphoning hose and a canister, and more than one villager had found their petrol tank unexpectedly empty. It had happened to Father Barclay twice.

  In a little while, these young men would be driving into Camptown, to Blazes the nightclub, or just on to another pub where there might be a lock-in and they could go on drinking past closing time. Their well-shaven faces were sharply scented. Those with curly hair were relieved by the fashion for a mop of ringlets that made them feel like Continental football players, and the rest styled theirs in tame versions of what was called a ‘rooster’, a pop-star cut with spiky strands on top and long layers over the shoulders and ears. The overall effect was flamboyant, even effeminate, although they would never have seen it in themselves. They didn’t think about what suited them or look in the mirror and see spikes or curls. What they saw was, to their relief, a face that fitted in with those of their friends.

  Older men, and one or two of their wives, sat at tables or along settles around the edge of the room. It had last been decorated thirty years before with cream and gold striped paper that had faded and thinned to greaseproof. Where the plaster had warped, it had bulged and split. The four-foot pike in a glass case over the bar was almost as old and colourless. It was supposed to have been caught in one of the nearby River Mund’s deep pools by a great-uncle Kettle who’d been the landlord here, only some claimed he brought it home ready stuffed and framed. Although the hunt drank its stirrup cup outside The King’s Head, The Arms had three of its foxes in this bar and several in the saloon. Their desiccated fur didn’t polish up like their new glass eyes, and had faded to sour orange. Fixed in a staid trot, they looked persistent but down on their luck.

  As Tom made his way into the room, people nodded and grinned. Florrie Stroud patted the bench beside her and he sat down. She said something about Iris which he didn’t catch, but he smiled. Three pints of bitter were set in front of him.

  Tom watched as the Lacey continued his game. When he saw him hesitate over lining up a difficult shot, he rose and studied the table. His mind ran lines between the balls, computed angles. He walked along the side of the table and placed a finger on its edge.

  ‘About here,’ he said, shyly.

  The Lacey looked up, frowned, then relaxed. ‘Says you were always a dab hand, Tom,’ and he took his shot, bouncing the cue ball off the exact spot Tom suggested, and potting the red he wanted. There was a round of muttered approval in the bar, more smiles and nods, and Tom stayed standing, watching the game. He liked the bar, its solidity and crush. He drank his three pints quickly and when two more appeared, he passed one over to Lucas in the corner.

  When the Lacey had finished his game he pulled Tom down into a seat beside him. ‘Says you’ve a head for numbers.’

  Florrie Stroud leaned over. ‘Iris’s boy has the memory of an elephant!’

  ‘That so?’ The Lacey smiled. He reached over to the table in front of Lucas and scooped up a dozen dominoes. Lucas mumbled a protest which the Lacey ignored. ‘A quid says you can’t tell me what these add up to.’ He slammed them down one after the other and then collected them back up. Tom closed his eyes, keeping his gaze fixed on the white dots on black rectangles, two patterns, two numbers, per tile.

  ‘A hundred and two.’ Tom was sure but he didn’t like this game. Quite suddenly he felt drunk, not pleasantly so, but floppy and dizzy.

  The Lacey laid the tiles back down on the table, slowly, adding them up as he went along. He shook his head, laughing, grabbed Tom’s hand and slapped the pound note into his palm.

  ‘Drink?’ Tom offered back. The Lacey laughed approvingly, and threw an arm round Tom’s shoulders, yanking him up out of his seat and towards the bar.

  ‘It’s on him,’ he said, handing over the engraved pewter tankard that was kept for him on a ceiling hook. Seeing Tom scan the bar, he spun him round and said, ‘Another quid says you can’t tell me all the shorts and that, along the bar, in the right order.’

  Tom trembled, and someone called out, ‘Leave alone, Trevor. And stop throwing your money around!’

  There were mumbles of agreement but Trevor took no notice. He grasped Tom’s arms and shook him, like a farmer trying to shake fruit from a tree. ‘Good game, eh?’ All the boredom of Trevor Lacey’s life had taught him to find a game and to make people play.

  Tom wanted to please. The room slipped but his mind, that part of it, was still sharp. He nodded, and Trevor turned him round to face the bar again, just for a second or two, and then back. It was there, just behind his eyes, the inverted bottles with their tinted optics: ‘Beefeaters, Gilbey’s, Black Grouse, Jameson’s, Naval Rum, Smirnoff, Remy Martin’. Beneath them on the counter, the heavy, dark, sweet drinks: ‘Cherry brandy, advocaat, sherry, crème de menthe’; and then the cordials, ‘orange, blackcurrant, lime.’

  There was a cheer from the men sitting along the bar. Someone tapped Trevor’s shoulder and offered him another game of billiards, and he pushed another pound at Tom and turned away.

  ‘Can you remember like that, from far back, like? Not just this minute?’ It was someone he didn’t recognise, an old man on a stool, drinking from a tankard like Trevor’s.

  ‘Some … I don’t know …’ Tom felt nervous and thirsty, and even though he knew he’d drunk enough, he was glad when his remaining pint of beer was passed across the room and put in his hand.

  The man patted the empty stool beside him and Tom sat down to listen. ‘I know the place better as it was than I do now.’ He sounded friendly but he wasn’t smiling. There was a long silence, and the man looked sad. When he spoke again, it was abruptly. ‘I knew your mother when she was in the dairy. I was delivery boy for Garnett the grocer’s, next door.’

  Tom shook his head vehemently. ‘Not next door, Garnett’s. Opposite.’

  The man sat back. ‘What’s that? Opposite? Sorry, lad, I remember right as rain. I worked there for years!’

  Tom shook his head again. The man looked angry now. He raised his voice, addressing the group sitting playing dominoes with Lucas. ‘Weren’t Garnett’s next to the dairy, boys?’

  ‘Was that the butcher’s?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. The butcher was Maynard’s, on the corner.’

  ‘Garnett’s. Oh, yes. Garnett’s was right across from the dairy.’

  ‘Garnett’s!’ Florrie Stroud caught the name out of the air. ‘Right across, that was it.’

  The name was passed round the room, as some remembered and some didn’t but all agreed that it was opposite the dairy.

  The man kept shaking his head. ‘Well, I never.’ He crumpled down on his stool again, bent over his drink. Tom didn’t notice: the names going round the room had captured him.

  ‘Garnett’s, then the hardware, Freans, and the Co-op,’ and he was back there, thirty years ago, on errands for his mother. ‘Then the cottages, your cottages, Florrie, with the Post Office on the end, across Hoop Lane and the smithy.’

  ‘That blacksmith! The noise!’ Florrie was with him, and Lucas, ‘Collecting up iron railings in the war’, and others, each remembering a part of the village as it had been, all talked at once, to themselves as much as to each other, about characters and shops and horses, romances and scandals and accidents, the Big Freeze and the Spanish Influenza, what chicken used to taste like, and hare and rabbit, and pheasant poached from the estate.

  Trevor Lacey swept up his cigarettes and his keys. ‘Bloody hell! You all make it sound like one of them Saturday matinées!’ And so they
began to remember the films, Whisky Galore, Brief Encounter, The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp. Trevor and the boys pushed their way out of the door, mocking and chuckling. Florrie began to sing.

  Every person, place and drama mentioned, even those he could never have known, rose in Tom’s memory, painfully vivid and unreachable. He needed something to concentrate on, to take his mind off it, ‘Test me! Try me again!’ he called and, partly to pass the last hour of the evening, and partly to humour him, they gathered a collection of small objects out of their pockets onto a tray. He was allowed to study them for thirty seconds; first ten things, then twenty, then thirty. Tom remembered every detail, the holes in a button, the initials on a handkerchief, the nick in a pipe. He grew more and more excited, but the drinkers were tired and finding him tiring now. They began to leave. ‘Test me again!’ Tom called after them. Only Lucas and his fellow domino players remained and they had kept out of it, keeping their backs to the fuss and getting on with their game. Tom saw them as his remaining and so most eager audience. He grabbed their dominoes with both hands but clumsily, so some fell on the floor. He laid the rest out flat on the table, ran his eyes over them once and turned away.