Mary George of Allnorthover

by Lavinia Greenlaw

  A police car’s lazy siren wound down as it pulled up in the road. The punched girl leapt at the car, hammering on the window. The two officers took in the scene, locked their doors and stared straight ahead. They had radioed for back-up on the way and had colleagues from the riot squad on call. Everyone had been talking about this punk do for weeks. They had been looking forward to it.

  Tense men in helmets and body protectors ripped the identifying numbers from their lapels. Their Black Marias parked in a sidestreet and they fanned out sealing off the area as they approached. The first people they confronted were frightened teenagers trying to get home, but from behind a visor, one looked as unsavoury as the next. Silently, the officers formed a wall and pushed the audience back towards the fight. Anyone who refused to move was shoved in the chest till they were provoked into shouting abuse or trying to force their way through. Then they were passed back behind the line and dealt with. There was a sound of plate-glass breaking as someone threw a bin against a shop window. The boy who did it later said in court that he had been trying to make the police get out of their car and help the injured. This didn’t wash with the magistrates.

  The riot squad was made up of policemen who worked in small market towns in one of the country’s quietest counties. They had trained for this and knew that among these youngsters who looked still wet behind the ears, were anarchists from the city, foulmouthed, drug-ridden and dangerous. They would not want to come here again. Among the shouts and snarls, kicks and punches, there was suddenly a long high cry, and someone shouted, ‘He’s got a knife, for fuck’s sake, a knife!’ Then everything was still and quiet for a moment, and Terry Flux appeared on the steps, having ushered the Icecream Ladies back indoors. ‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ he said and walked towards the boy who was kneeling on the ground, slumped forward as blood flooded his bare back. Terry Flux pulled off his own shirt and held it against him. The riot squad were busy corralling the audience up against a wall. Their batons cracked against heads, chests, legs and arms. Several people were crying.

  Daniel and Mary were among the last to leave and were caught almost at the cinema doors. ‘I don’t understand!’ Mary shouted in Daniel’s ear as he clutched her. ‘It’s just a gig! Why are the police dressed up like that? Who’s fighting?’ Daniel began pulling her sideways, trying to reach the edge of the crowd. When they got there, Mary caught sight of JonJo in the middle of a fray and Trevor Lacey pulling someone off him, shouting ‘Not him, mate! I know him!’ before turning round to kick someone else’s head.

  Daniel pulled Mary round a corner where they bumped straight into three of the riot squad officers. ‘Please help!’ Mary began. ‘There’s a terrible fight going on, someone’s been stabbed and no one can get home!’ The officers laughed and began prodding Mary and Daniel with their batons, forcing them to walk backwards and rejoin the crowd.

  An ambulance appeared behind them and as the paramedics jumped out, the police changed demeanour and called ‘This way lads!’ and trotted off, swinging their batons.

  Daniel yanked Mary round the corner again, but now she was too angry to want to leave. ‘The bastards! We should complain! Take them to court! Those cowards in the car, too!’

  Daniel put his arm round her and held her so tightly that she had to stop speaking. ‘Forget it. Let’s get home while we can.’

  Mary wrenched herself away. ‘But that boy! I saw the blood, Daniel. He might die! And what about those others getting kicked to death! It might have been us!’

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t, was it?’

  She tried to calm down and do what he said, forget it. He was sounding bored already.

  Daniel sat Mary in the living room, put on the television and went to make some tea. His parents were in bed. They watched a Marx Brothers film, A Night at the Opera, and Mary waited for Daniel to talk about the evening: the bands, the atmosphere, the weird police dressed up like baddies from a twenty-first-century space war. Daniel was glued to the film, laughing at every wisecrack and reciting many of them simultaneously. Then the film started repeating itself, the same scenes and gags and helter-skelter sequences, and Mary became agitated.

  ‘Isn’t this wrong? Haven’t we already seen this?’

  ‘That’s the point!’ Daniel snapped. But as the repetitions accumulated, his attention began to sag and when the credits rolled, the announcer apologised for one reel of the film having been played twice. Mary was cautious enough not to say anything. Daniel switched off the television and took her up to the attic. Lying naked beside him, the stunned unreality Mary felt gave way to panic, and that in turn took her back to what he couldn’t help her with. As he stroked her, she began to shake and cry. He kissed her face and hushed her, but stopped when she didn’t calm down. ‘Come on. It wasn’t that bad.’ Mary tried but even though she was weeping now, the pressure did not ease. Instead it seemed to grow, as if there were more bad things piled up inside her than she had been even vaguely aware of.

  ‘Settle down. My parents will hear.’ Mary shook her head, sat up and pulled on her clothes. ‘What are you doing now?’ She grabbed her bag and Billy’s leather jacket and hurried down the stairs. Daniel caught up with her at the front door. ‘What is it with you? Always on the verge of some bloody great eruption, always disappearing, always scared or sad or furious or what?’ He looked angry but reached out with both hands and held her face. She kissed the corner of his mouth and ran.

  ‘Will you come and get me?’

  ‘I thought you were staying at your friend’s.’ Stella sounded half asleep.

  ‘I was, Mum. But I really want to come home. Please?’ Mary hated herself for this when Stella pulled up half an hour later in the orange Mini, wearing a kaftan and shawl, and driving in bare feet. On the way back, Stella didn’t ask any questions but she noticed Mary was wearing her old dress and tried to remember when she had last worn it, when she had been a shape to wear it, and what it had meant to her to wear it. A little black dress. The child appeared to have cut it to shreds and pinned it back together.

  Mary took out her lenses over a handkerchief on her lap and fingered them into their case. She remembered to keep it with her now, ever since Daniel’s mother had almost washed up the egg cups she had borrowed. She started to cry again and was grateful to Stella for pretending not to notice. She felt pleased to see her mother, in spite of everything and not just for the lift, and this confused and surprised her.

  Five days later, the village gathered on the Common for Guy Fawkes Night. The fog of Hallowe’en had been blown away by a wind that brought with it a gale. Christie had stopped off before work, a local barn conversion, to check on the tarpaulin that he and the rest of the Bonfire Committee had used to cover the wood. A heavy rope was laced through holes punched in its hem which was also weighed down with bricks but the thing still looked as if, without one more adjustment, it would topple at any moment, never mind let in rain. They had managed to gather up quite a number of floorboards and offcuts to burn. There were wooden crates, a couple of railway sleepers, even the old plough that had been getting in the way in Stroud’s yard for years. Christie had got hold of some oak panelling that had been stripped out of another conversion and had pulled several pairs of shutters out of the site’s skip. Others had brought along unwieldy rocking chairs, settles and claw-footed tables, bedframes and chests of drawers. There were also things in the heap that contained asbestos, foam and plastic, even glass, but if no one minded the smell and a bit of black smoke, they would add to the fun as they sizzled and exploded.

  By evening, the wind had worn down to gusts that flung intermittent bursts of rain across the Common. The fire was lit in one of the lulls and glutted with paraffin so that by the next downpour, the flames were strong enough not to be quenched. The Refreshments Committee had set up in the cricket pavilion, where Stella was persuading Violet Eley to let the baked potatoes char as they would if cooked in the embers of the fire. One of the commuters had set up a barbecue grill on the pavil
ion’s verandah and was trying to take charge of the sausages. His wife was getting in Violet’s way at the stove, pouring bottles of red wine into a big pan along with spices, sliced oranges and hot water.

  Billy and June climbed on top of the pavilion and huddled together under Billy’s big cycling cape. June tried not to keep stroking the soft silver stubble on Billy’s head. He waved to Tobias, who arrived with both of his little brothers on the back of his bike. Tobias sized up the fire. Christie was frantically splurging paraffin onto one side of it as the wind threw a burst of rain against it and the flames petered out. Tobias slipped round to the opposite side and began opening up the fire, creating channels for air that would draw the flames towards the most flammable materials, forcing them to catch. He pulled out and discarded a fibreglass seat and three ripped, scorched and mouldy cushions.

  Billy pointed out the rest of the Cloughs to June as they arrived under colourful umbrellas: the doctor with his wife on his arm in a flared fur coat that swung like a bell; Juliette, the brainy one, whose heavy-framed glasses Billy privately thought made her look rather sexy; and Clara, with some man in tow. She looked different but it was hard to tell whether this was because she was swaddled in a big old tweed coat that obviously belonged to her friend, or because her face had lost its restless avidity.

  Tom had arrived with Father Barclay and was hanging back in the shadows, near Tobias. He had been hoping to enjoy the fireworks but then he saw the heap of smouldering cushions and remembered where they came from – the treehouse he and Christie had built behind the house in the Dip. What were they doing turning up now? Where had they been all this time? He tried not to think about it, tried concentrating on the fire and Christie’s proud face as the flames grew and consolidated, but the cushions were bothering him.

  As soon as the first fireworks exploded, Mim whimpered and scuttled up the stairs. She jumped onto Mary’s bed and settled down beside her.

  ‘Poor old thing. You never liked them, did you?’ Mary gratefully pulled the dog against her. The room was dark, cold and silent, making each explosion acutely noisy and bright. Mary had meant to go to the Common, she always had, but was feeling weak and tearful again, and panicked at the prospect of having to deal with any of her friends. Daniel hadn’t rung and it had been five days. Even curled up in bed, Mary felt so heavy that she was surprised she didn’t sink into the earth. Mim whined and licked the tears on Mary’s cheek, which made her cry even more.

  ‘You awake?’ Mary was lying facing the wall and only turned over now because she didn’t recognise the voice. It was the evening after Guy Fawkes and she was still in bed and beginning to feel grimy. Stella had not been able to persuade her to eat but brought up a posset every few hours, Mary’s favourite childhood drink of hot milk, honey and cinnamon. Mary’s eyes were swollen with crying and sleep, and she blinked as this visitor turned on the bedside light. A tall silhouette fell across the bed and climbed the wall where it flared into shadow. It took a moment for Mary to put the two things together: the scattered mess of her room, and Clara. Mary leaned forward and felt around for her glasses. Clara passed them over and sat on the very edge of the bed. She was wearing her paint-splashed dungarees with a ragged guernsey over the top and had thrown down a big tweed coat on the floor. Her hair was scraped back in a complicated knot.

  ‘I met your Ma at the fireworks last night. She said you weren’t too well.’ She almost yawned it.

  ‘My mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ Clara replied. Then added warmly, ‘She’s really nice, isn’t she? And so stylish!’

  ‘My mother?’ They both giggled.

  Clara stayed for two hours, chattering about college and the village, parties and clothes. She hadn’t been at the Hallowe’en gig and wanted to hear all about it. She also had something she wanted to tell.

  ‘Weren’t the village fireworks a bit of a bore?’ Mary wondered. ‘I mean, you could’ve gone into town …’ London.

  Clara licked her lips and patted her hair. ‘No, no, it was great. I mean, T came along.’

  ‘T?’ Mary was tired but Clara’s wide grin made her sit up and pay attention.

  ‘Torquil Cholmondeley, actually. But everyone calls him T.’

  ‘Choll-mond-olay? Oh, you mean Chumley.’

  ‘No, it’s spelt CHOLMON …’ Clara looked nervous.

  ‘Yes, I know. Chumley.’

  ‘Chumley?’ Clara repeated, weakly. Mary nodded. ‘Oh Christ, darling! I sat through Sunday lunch calling his mother Mrs Choll-mond-olay! No one said a thing except his father, the swine, who kept calling me Miss Klowg and I thought he’d just misheard or something.’ Mary was rocking with laughter, and Clara soon recovered herself and scowled, ‘Fucking English!’

  ‘But you’re half-English.’

  Clara shrugged. ‘Yes, but you’re all so inbred, the gene’s recessive. I’m far more Italian and I have lived there half my life! It’s infectious, you see. Even Papa’s quite Italian and he only married into it.’

  ‘But I thought you grew up in Camptown, next door to Daniel?’

  ‘Daniel? Did I say that? We rented the house next door for a year or two, after America. Anyway,’ she curled up at the foot of the bed, ‘I was telling you about T.’

  Torquil Cholmondeley was not a painter or a pop star or even a Londoner. He was more or less local, the son of a farmer, a landowner really, and T wanted to farm too, ‘but small scale, without chemicals, rare kinds of vegetables and extinct breeds.’

  Mary didn’t know what to say. ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘Painting.’

  ‘So he paints?’

  ‘No! I was painting – on his land.’ Mary realised she had never seen a picture by Clara, had never thought to ask, so she asked now. Clara pulled a small watercolour pad from her dungarees bib pocket and tossed it into Mary’s lap. The sketches were tiny landscapes: liquid but precisely stratified, two-thirds fiery sky. Mary was astounded.

  ‘When do you paint?’

  ‘Every day.’

  ‘These?’

  ‘I like the early winter light, so I walk till I find the right sky.’ Clara sounded offhand, even embarrassed.

  Mary put the pad down and crumpled into herself. ‘You work every day.’

  Clara shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I don’t even know what work I want to do,’ Mary said, ‘and I’m bloody well going to cry again! I can’t bloody stop!’

  Clara leant forward and patted her. When Mary was quiet again, she asked, ‘Shall I ring Dan? Let him know you’re not too well?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘What do you mean what for?’

  ‘He’s not been in touch. For ages, actually.’ She had already told Clara about the Odeon, the bands and fights and police but not about the Marx Brothers or going home. Once she had explained all that, she felt incredibly tired and sidled down under her covers.

  Clara waited till she’d settled. ‘What did he say, then, when you said you had to go?’

  ‘Something about me going inwards or outwards, up or down. Can’t remember exactly but he sounded pissed off.’ She was speaking into her blankets.

  ‘What would you think if he was always running out on you like that?’

  ‘What do you mean, “always”?’

  ‘After the party in Crouchness where you met, after my dinner, the Harvest Festival disco, Hallowe’en …’

  Mary was startled. ‘How do you know about Crouchness?’

  ‘He told me, silly!’

  ‘He told you?’

  ‘He talks about you all the time!’

  ‘He does? But I thought …’

  ‘Thought what?’

  ‘You and he?’

  Clara looked astonished. ‘Me and D? God, no! I mean, he’s like a brother or something!’

  ‘But you danced … and kissed … I saw you!’

  ‘Mary George. You may have seen me trying to teach him to dance or trying to get you to pay the poor sod some attention and whisp
ering a few hints in his ear, but I never went so far as to kiss him!’

  ‘To get me to pay him attention?’

  ‘The poor boy doesn’t know if he’s coming or going! You’re so cool and mysterious! So distrait!’

  By the time Clara left, Mary was tingling with excitement, delighted at how wrong she had been. Clara wrapped herself in T’s big coat and walked home, trying to convince herself that it was alright, what she’d said was basically true, her part of it anyway, and Daniel was very taken with little Mary, he’d just about said as much.

  Tom kept his fortnightly appointment at the surgery, but arrived an hour early and couldn’t sit still. He paced the waiting room, three steps one way, three steps back, till Betty Burgess nudged her trainee replacement, Melanie Pannessey, and muttered to her to watch. Betty came out via the dispensary and offered Mr Hepple the blue chair in the hall. She spoke to him loudly enough for the doctor to hear from behind the closed door of his room. When his present consultation ended, Dr Clough was prepared. He invited Tom straight in. He listened as Tom talked rapidly and continuously for twenty minutes. Not a single sentence connected with the one that preceded or followed it. Tom’s eyes were bloodshot and dilated. He licked his lips and chewed his tongue as he spoke.

  ‘How are you finding your medication?’