Mary George of Allnorthover

by Lavinia Greenlaw

  ‘I expect so. But you’ll want to know more than what a place looks like, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, what do the people look like, what are they like?’

  Mr Travers stopped. ‘What people?’ He gave her a university application form to practise filling in.

  Autumn was the busiest time in the village economy, even this year. People washed jars and dusted off preserving pans. They gathered windfalls or picked fruit in the hedgerows and from their gardens. Jars of plum jam and green-tomato chutney were left on doorsteps. Marrows that had managed to bloat in spite of the drought were hoarded for the Horticultural Society Show or forced onto neighbours who cooked them the only way they knew how: boiled well and served with diluted tomato ketchup.

  Buckets of wormy, blighted apples were left outside garden gates for people to help themselves. There were cobnuts, hazelnuts, blackberries, elderberries, rosehips, sloes and haws. Stella heaved what Mary called her ‘cauldron’ onto the stove and, for days on end, the kitchen was filled with chopping, bubbling and dripping. Everyone used the same ingredients but the result was their own. Stella made jellies that were strained, skimmed clean of any cloudiness and barely sweet. Her chutneys were firey and smooth, and her sloppy jam had a raw fruitiness that came, again, from skimping on sugar. Mary liked to help with the chopping and stirring, but she kept out of the way when the time came for Stella to judge a setting point. She would tip a little into a saucer and blow on it, and took great trouble to get it right but didn’t bother soaking the labels off the jars and loathed the frilly paper discs others used for covers. Stella’s gifts to her neighbours were often redirected, sometimes more than once.

  People who would do no more than greet Tom in the street, and who would never cross the threshold of the Chapel in order to see him, left jars and baskets on his doorstep. He lined up the jams and jellies on the window sills, and watched the light struggle through them. The apples, plums and pears looked pretty and he did not notice them rot.

  One Saturday, at Stella’s insistence, Mary took in jars for May and her girls in the salon. They thanked her politely. After closing, when Mary stayed behind to clear up, she found one jar under a chair and another dropped into the dirty towel basket. She left them where they were and was still blushing when the door opened with its ding-donging bell and flutter of curtain.

  It was Billy. ‘Are you done?’

  ‘I’m still here. An appointment, Sir?’

  He didn’t laugh. ‘Since you’re offering …’

  ‘What?’ Mary yelped.

  ‘I was thinking of a bit of a change.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, stop it. I want a haircut. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘It’s just you’ve never, I mean, have you had one before?’

  Billy tutted and pushed past her. He slouched low in one of the chairs and put his feet up on the counter. ‘Just get on with it, George.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Stop being so bloody astonished. You work here, so you can cut hair.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Cut mine.’

  ‘A trim?’ She picked up Jeanette’s scissors and slipped them out of their vinyl sheath, relishing their sharpness and the specialised curve of their handles.

  ‘No. A real cut.’

  ‘I’ll have to wash it.’

  ‘But then you won’t be able to see what you’re doing! I’ll wash it later.’

  ‘Sit up, then. I can’t get at your hair as it is.’ Billy sat up straight, but didn’t look into the mirror.

  Mary cut round, taking off a couple of inches. ‘That do?’

  Billy didn’t even look up. ‘More off. A lot more.’

  She cut again, and now it sat on his shoulders in a limp bob. This time, Billy looked. ‘God, George, that’s somewhat terrible. Can’t you do, watchamacallit, layers?’ Mary studied Jeanette’s scissors and tried to remember how they travelled slowly and vertically at a sharp angle to the head, cutting as the hair slipped through the comb.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, do them then. But not soft. You know, hard.’

  Mary thought of the boys that hung around in Flux Records. ‘Sort of like spikes?’

  ‘Yeah. Might as well.’

  She felt more sure now that she had got the idea. May had gone off on a Rotary Club outing and her girls were doing some early Christmas shopping in the precinct in Havilton New Town. The light was already weakening. No one would disturb them.

  Mary took her time. She didn’t find the combing part as easy as it looked but Billy wasn’t to know. She experimented with speed and angles, pretending to snip. When she finally found the courage to start cutting, she was surprised to discover that if she kept going, the hair fell in smooth, even fronds. She started with the front right side, working backwards from Billy’s face although she knew that the girls always started at the back, clipping the front hair up out of the way.

  ‘Hold on a minute.’ Billy leaned forward. ‘Let’s have a smoke.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘I could cope better with the pictures if we did.’

  Mary agreed. It might help. She sat down in the next chair and waited while Billy rolled a joint. It did help. When she returned to her cutting, she snipped confidently and then spent long minutes contemplating the effect. Each time, she decided that she needed to take it shorter. Eventually, she declared the right side of his head done. Billy studied the ragged wisps he was left with (‘spikes’), and was about to pronounce his verdict when the lights went out.

  The dark was so concentrated that Billy and Mary could not see their hands in front of their faces, let alone one another. Mary tried to take charge, fumbling around on her hands and knees, finding sockets in the skirting board, flicking switches, plugging and unplugging, but nothing worked.

  ‘It must be a power cut, Billy. Let’s go back to mine and I’ll find a lantern or a torch or something, and finish it.’

  ‘I am not walking through the village like this.’ Billy was adamant.

  Mary laughed. ‘What better moment?’

  ‘It might only last a few minutes. Let’s wait.’

  So they settled down in the dark, crouched close together on the floor, hand in hand, too uneasy to sit apart. Neither spoke for a while and when they did, it was in whispers.

  ‘What’s the time?’ Mary was agitated.

  ‘God knows. Why?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be, you know, going out.’

  ‘Going out?’ Billy echoed sarcastically.

  ‘You know …’

  ‘You mean going out of here? Or the village? The country? The universe perhaps?’

  ‘Stop being so childish, Billy! I’m meeting my, a friend. For a drink. That’s all.’

  ‘Oh. Him.’

  ‘What’s the matter with Him?’

  Billy shuffled about, restlessly. ‘George, he’s perfectly OK but really, I mean …’

  ‘What? You mean what?’

  ‘He’s not really, you know, serious. Not your type.’

  ‘My type? What the fuck is my type, Eyre?’

  ‘I don’t mean … you know, I mean he’s a bit pretentious.’

  ‘Because he doesn’t wear orange flares or drive around attached to a clog?’

  Billy tried to swipe her but missed. ‘No! Don’t be silly.’

  ‘You’re the one being silly. Fucking stupid, more like!’

  Billy flinched. ‘Look, George. That gang, the doctor’s daughter and that arty lot. They’re only killing time, passing through. They’re snobs, you know? People like us are just passing phases. They find us “amusing”. They’ll be off in London next year –’

  ‘So will I.’

  ‘London? You never said.’

  ‘Where else? And anyway, who is this “us”? You think Tobias is just amusing himself with you, too?’

  ‘No! That’s, he’s, not like that.’

  ‘And how would you know?’


  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  Mary moved away so Billy had no sense of her. ‘No, it’s not. But what is obvious is that you think I’ve been taken in and you haven’t.’

  Billy considered this. ‘Yes,’ he said, eventually. ‘That’s right, I do.’

  Mary kicked out and caught a stand of perm curlers that toppled silently to the floor. She heard their almost inaudible scurry across the linoleum and began feeling around for them but soon gave up. She had begun to think of them as malevolent creatures.

  Billy spoke when she went quiet. ‘Where’ve you got to, George?’ He heard a shuffle, a rattle and clink. ‘George?’ The door flew open with a crashing ding-dong and there was a shock of cool, wet air. Billy got up and made towards it. When he was outside, he pulled his jersey over his face as Mary locked up.

  ‘Finish it at yours?’ he asked timidly. The village was so dark that the Green and Mary’s cottage might as well have been on the other side of the world.

  ‘Sorry.’ Mary retorted. ‘No scissors.’ She slipped away. Billy flailed around, not realising that she had gone, then heard her bump against a car, stumble over the kerb and collide with her garden gate. He heard Mim’s bark and saw the small light of a lantern swing out through the opening front door, and the darkness swing back as the door shut again.

  On Sunday morning before church, May Hepple waited until she saw Lucas leave through the front gate, and then went and knocked on Stella George’s door. She had just been to check the salon after the power cut and had found all the lights on, and hair and curlers all over the floor. Mary should have finished and locked up before dark. Stella tutted and soothed, but she couldn’t really help. Mary had said she was staying with a friend and hadn’t got back yet. Stella offered May a cup of tea and let her talk.

  ‘So you’ve still got June?’ Stella tried to change the subject.

  ‘Oh, yes. Tom’s settled in the Chapel now but Christie’s twins are a growing handful.’

  ‘How old are the boys now?’

  ‘Ten. The spitting image of Tom and Christie at that age.’

  ‘Really?’ Stella thought they were fairer, more open-faced, nothing like.

  ‘Yes. Darren is big, stubborn. Little Sean, well, he’s quick, good at numbers but not, we hope, too sensitive.’

  ‘You say Tom’s settled now? That’s good.’

  ‘We’re doing what we can to make him cosy. Christie’s set up some heaters and I’ve dug out some old curtains. That Valerie Eyre girl has got quite friendly with him and she’s a nurse.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t know.’

  ‘Yes, and always ready to help. Unlike our Sophie …’

  ‘Sophie?’ Stella remembered the sweet-featured girl that the Hepple brothers had seemed to court together. How at ease Tom had been in her company and then how from one day to the next, things had changed and she’d looked stung. There was a rapid wedding, June arrived and they all disappeared into the Dip; or so it seemed, as Sophie rarely managed to get into the village once Iris became ill. June was seven before the twins were expected, as if Sophie had waited until she knew for sure that after those creeping years of sickness, Iris was dying at last. Stella refused the complicity she was being offered, in which she would be expected to make some lazy, vicious judgement of someone she barely knew. ‘Sophie has done a lot of looking after.’

  ‘You mean Iris?’

  ‘And Tom.’

  ‘But she won’t go up to the Chapel!’ May burst out. ‘She cooks things for him but sends one of the boys! And it’s me that’ll have to go in and give the place a once over, if I can persuade Tom I won’t disturb his studies.’

  ‘What’s he studying?’

  May thought for a bit. ‘Just … studies. Piles and piles of studies.’

  June was in the kitchen making tea when someone knocked on the back door. It was Billy, wearing a knitted tea-cosy on his head.

  ‘New hat?’

  ‘Couldn’t find a hat. Quick, let me in. I’m freezing. I’ve been waiting ages for the old dear to go.’ He sat down at the scrubbed linoleum table folded against the wall and pulled off the tea-cosy to reveal his hair: one side still long, the other hacked into short, uneven clumps.

  June gasped. ‘Who did that to you?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Can you finish it?’

  June reached out and separated some of the flattened wisps. ‘You’ve got bald patches.’

  ‘What!’ His hands flew to his head. ‘What the fuck am I going to do?’

  June tried to be decisive. ‘Shave it all off.’

  Billy’s face brightened. ‘Would you?’

  ‘If you like.’ May was going from church to a golf-club luncheon and wouldn’t be back till late afternoon. ‘Come on.’

  They went upstairs and Billy sat on the toilet with a salon towel round his shoulders. June produced a packet of pink-handled disposable razors. ‘Ladyshave?’ Billy groaned. ‘Do they work? On real hair, I mean.’

  June was too mortified to answer. She found some of May’s scissors in a drawer and quickly cut away as much hair as she could. When Billy’s head was nothing but tufts, she let him feel it. He tried to get up and look in the mirror but June pushed him back down. He closed his eyes as, trembling, June ran her hand over his scalp, trying to find more hair to cut. Billy’s face was emerging not only from behind his sheet of hair but also from behind its adolescent softness. He was falling into place. June looked and looked.

  She lifted a razor and made a tiny scrape. Billy winced. ‘Shouldn’t you use foam or soap or something?’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. And hot water to open the pores.’ She leaned over the bath, and turned the hot tap full on. Within seconds, the small room was full of steam. June wet a flannel and held it against Billy’s head. She lathered some soap and began, working slowly and stopping to rinse the razor under the basin tap, which she left to run as well.

  At first she tried short hesitant lines, wincing at the idea of the delicate skin beneath it. Billy, too, was tense and hunched. But as June grew more concentrated, she passed the blade over his head in firm sweeps, progressing methodically from one side to the other and going over each part in the opposite way. She traced and retraced the shape of his head, its dips and curves and crown, and felt it told her all she needed to know about him. Billy breathed in the steam and with it, the scent of June as she turned this way and that and caught against him.

  All the things that happened next, happened together. June put the razor down and wiped Billy’s head, and then was stroking it and could not stop. Billy raised his hands, wanting to feel too, then grasped her fingers and pulled her down. The forgotten bath overflowed and Billy plunged in his arm to pull out the plug. June knelt down to mop the floor and when they stood up, she caught at the drenched sleeve of his jersey and he wriggled out of it. The steam had condensed and settled on the mirror, the walls and window, and Billy’s fine hair was everywhere. June felt it prickle on her hands and face. The bath was half empty when Billy put the plug back in. June turned off the running basin tap. She went to open the window but Billy stopped her. He pointed at the wet patches on her jeans and she undid them. She tried to brush hair from the neck of his t-shirt and he slipped that off too. The bones of his thin body were as clear as those of his face, his skin a pale brown she would never have imagined. Then they were naked and stepping one after the other into the bath where Billy leant back against June, mesmerised by her full dark softness as she whispered against his naked head and let her hand follow his to his cock and they made him come, together.

  The first frosts that had brought Valerie Eyre to the Chapel were also the reason Tom had become so ill. He had had to start digging before the ground hardened but he mustn’t be seen so had gone only at night, fetching his spade from behind a poplar and trying to loosen the earth in a way that he could disguise. It was a neglected corner, where some small disturbance would not be noticed. Even though he wasn’t really ready, hadn’t got everything in place and
still needed to persuade the girl to go with him, he felt wonderful to have started at last. So he had dug for hours while the hurricane lamp he’d carried guttered and burnt out. Then he had to wait for first light, to make sure he had left everything looking alright. When he got back to the Chapel, his cramped hands could hardly open the door.

  The next night he decided to stay indoors, but still couldn’t sleep. He bundled up May’s old curtains into a long thin shape which he weighed in his arms. He tried dropping it from the upstairs gallery to the ground floor and made notes on how it fell. But all that wasn’t much use unless he had everything right about the water.

  On the third cold day he had got up and dressed, and had begun to make tea, but then felt tired and went upstairs for a sleep.

  Valerie came twice a day now and may, or may not, have stayed the night. She tidied up a bit, changing the sheets and cleaning around the sink and cooker, but he wouldn’t let her touch anything – not the streams of wax, the heaps of rubbish, the up-ended filing cabinet or the chaos of paper. Christie came every other day, to refill the paraffin heaters and to hang blankets that made Tom feel as if he were living in a series of tents. He had an electric bar-fire that May had brought over and often someone – Valerie, May or Sophie – sent a hot meal. There were talks with Father Barclay and the odd drink with Christie. May said Sophie complained that her husband was out almost every night but no one saw him in The Arms more often than a Wednesday and Friday.

  One afternoon, Valerie watched Tom moving sheets of paper and making notes, and as she knew better than to ask him what he was doing, found a compromise. ‘What’s missing?’

  He looked intently at her. ‘What’s missing is the girl, what she saw, where it was.’

  ‘You mean Mary George?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You think she really – ?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it might help to see her do it again.’