Mary George of Allnorthover

by Lavinia Greenlaw

  ‘Do you know there were letters? Hate mail or whatever.’

  ‘Hate mail? To Tom Hepple you mean?’

  ‘No, to his Mum.’

  Mary had hidden the letters in her room. She fetched them now and laid each envelope in front of Julie, pointing at the name, address and date. ‘See? See?’

  Julie frowned. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Iris Hepple was dead. That New Year. I checked again on her gravestone.’ Mary tried to remember the grave in that overgrown corner of the Catholic cemetery as having been disturbed. She couldn’t though; she’d never have noticed.

  Julie picked the first letter up and Mary nudged her. ‘Go on.’ She watched Julie read all five, her expression changing from embarrassed amusement to shock, pity and disgust.

  ‘Who would do this?’

  ‘That’s the thing, Julie. It was my Mum!’

  Julie shook her head vigorously. ‘No! Oh no, not your Mum, never in a million years!’

  Mary explained about the typewriter and Julie thought for a bit and then sat up. ‘Of course! I know who it was! Mary, where was that typewriter kept after your Dad did his moonlight flit?’

  ‘It sat around in the Chapel and then Mum brought it down here. But it wasn’t my Dad, you can see that from what’s said!’

  ‘When did she bring it here?’

  ‘How would I remember? Some time later …’

  ‘How much later?’

  ‘Maybe years later.’

  Julie asked, ‘Who really hated Iris Hepple?’

  ‘My Mum. She took Dad away from us.’

  ‘Maybe so, but do you know who else hated her?’ Mary shook her head. Julie whispered it. ‘Christie.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘From Sophie first. We had a chat, see, when she realised what Christie was up to.’

  ‘And she told you he hated his mother?’

  ‘Said he hated her, too.’

  ‘But you think they still, you know …’

  ‘I don’t think he hates her. He’s bloody awful to her, though.’

  ‘Wasn’t she angry with you?’

  ‘Just sad, really. Nice, even. Concerned for me, oddly enough.’

  ‘She was right to be.’

  ‘I know that now, but I thought I knew it all then. I laughed all the way home but god I was scared. She thinks she put an end to it. I thought she had too, but after Tom came back, Christie started coming round me again.’

  There were several things Mary didn’t understand, so she tried to ask about them together. ‘If he hates Sophie, and hated his mother, why is he so mad about you? Won’t he end up hating you too?’

  Julie stuck to the least personal point. ‘Sophie was right about that, you know, it wasn’t just her saying it. It comes out when he cries, like when Tom got sick again or was in that crash with our Kevin. I was crying that time too, Hallowe’en I mean, when you saw us. I didn’t know if Kevin would even walk again, but Christie sort of took over. Anyway, sometimes it was about Iris and … well … your Dad. He’s got some bloody weird ideas about them. You know, when there was the first talk of the water, Christie offered to build her a new home, up out of the Dip. She said he was not an architect or something, and laughed in his face and he spat in hers, Sophie said.’

  ‘Will you stop it, Julie?’

  ‘Oh, I think it’ll stop itself now Tom’s going to be gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘He’ll go to prison or one of those hospital prisons, won’t he?’

  ‘And not come back?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Anyway, I’ll be gone, too.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ve wasted enough time helping Barry run his business while having to wear this tarty outfit and getting the pay to match.’

  ‘Are you going to come back to school?’

  ‘Not a chance! I’m going to get some proper business training, a course in London next year. After that, I want to set up with our Trevor.’

  ‘Furniture?’

  ‘Antiques. He’s been doing well enough out of his reproduction stuff but this place is swimming in the real thing! I’ve persuaded him to start dealing in the proper stuff, to work on some of his contacts.’

  Mary was exhausted. ‘I’d better get a bit of rest.’

  ‘I’ll be off to work,’ Julie said.

  As she was going, Julie prodded the letters and said, ‘You know, Mary, your mother’s a daft bitch for not warning me you didn’t know about Lucas and all that. She’s weird and moody, and dresses like she should be dancing round under a full moon, but how could you ever have thought she’d do something like this?’

  Mary didn’t know what to say.

  The local reporters banged on front doors and if no one answered, they went away, whereas those from the national papers, the television and radio, pushed notes through letterboxes and waited. Sophie took the twins to her mother’s, saying she’d be back for Christmas. Mary returned to school on the Wednesday, leaving by the garden gate and meeting up in Low Lane with Julie and June and the others. While reporters loitered at the bus stop, Father Barclay and Father Swann, Dr Burgess and a retired commuter, a lawyer, ferried the children out of the village and dropped them off at a stop well past the Dip.

  Christie gave the police the keys to the Chapel and they cordoned it off; Lucas’s hut, too. Stark flash photographs of his shed, his stained mattress, the bucket and bin bags, the bloody rags and rat droppings in the corners, appeared in the papers, and the village was ashamed that people would think they had let one of their own live like that. No one outside would know that Lucas had insisted. The pictures of Tom, too, snatched headshots of him being led in handcuffs from a car through a door, his bleached-out face and wavering eyes, made it obvious that the man was dangerously disturbed. But they knew him, didn’t they?

  The journalists circled the field where Charlie Spooner had found them and tried to open the rusted gate in the fence around the reservoir. Both sites were being minutely examined by men in plastic suits.

  The day of Lucas’s funeral was as bitter and still as that of Iris’s had been. Once again, Mary, Stella and Matthew George were there together. When Mary’s father had turned up at the house, Stella hadn’t looked surprised. No one in the village batted an eyelid. They said cheerful hellos and patted and pulled him in, just as they had Tom. Mary was amazed to see him so at home in the village, and now walking into church with her and her Mum. She could take in nothing of Father Swann’s service, nor of the many things said about Lucas’s life. Dr Burgess and Judge Smallbone spoke, as well as one of the domino players, someone from the Royal Legion, and more people Mary recognised but couldn’t put a name to. They were all people she had grown up among, in a small place where it was possible for paths to cross without trace.

  There was a tea in the Village Hall, with Constable Belcher on the door, only letting in those he knew. Afterwards, Matthew said he had to go and Mary walked back to the house with him. He went straight over to his car, gave her a big hug and asked if she’d like to come for Christmas.

  ‘You know, Dad. Now that it’s all, now that he’s, I mean, couldn’t you …’ She could hardly form the words, ‘come back?’

  Matthew bent down, as if she were still a child, and laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘I didn’t leave the village because of Tom Hepple.’

  ‘Because of the house then? The reservoir?’

  ‘No.’

  Mary turned away before he could tell her more. ‘I’ll see you in the New Year then, Dad.’ She walked quickly off, ‘Around. Whatever.’

  The next day, the press disappeared and the village began to emerge once more.

  On the last day of term, Billy and June approached Mary in the Sixth Form Common Room, and asked her if she wanted to come down to Terry Flux’s Christmas Party at The Stands with them that night. Crêpe streamers and paper chains drooped across the prefab’s low ceiling, and someone had tried to spray Merry Christmas across the wind
ows in fake snow but had run out of space.

  Mary was struck by how alike Billy and June looked now, their expressions and how they dressed and stood. Billy’s hair had been shaved again and June’s was a nest of plaits and beads. Mary was touched, both by her friends (who were holding hands quite casually) and by their invitation. When June went off to a class, Mary was embarrassed to realise that she was still wearing Billy’s leather jacket.

  She took it off. ‘Give it to June.’

  Billy smiled. ‘No. Keep it, George. It suits you.’

  ‘You’re in a generous mood, Eyre! Must be love!’

  He threw the jacket back at her. ‘Fuck off!’ Mary caught his smile, his happiness, and was glad for him, although sorry to be losing him and sorry, too, that she hadn’t noticed.

  Mary thought all day about whether or not to go to The Stands, and if she should go alone or with Billy and June. What she was trying not to think about was the possibility of bumping into Daniel. It had been weeks now since she had seen him, and although there had been no proper ending, it appeared that they had stopped. She dreamed her way through her classes just as she had as a child and when the last bell rang, went to the toilets, squeezed some soap into her hair, sprinkled on a little water and backcombed it. The girls in the salon dyed it regularly now, and she was getting good at messing it up as soon as she got home, using soap or sugar, hairspray and a fine-toothed metal comb. She could pencil in her eyebrows, line her eyes and paint her mouth in a matter of minutes, and she carried her compact of white face powder everywhere.

  Mary walked out of school into the dark afternoon. She crossed the road and went into the park, then the playground where she saw some kids, too old for it but younger than her, thirteen or so, lounging on the swings and smoking. Unseen, Mary withdrew and continued down towards the river. She turned up the collar of Billy’s jacket and wrapped her scarf round her chin. Her eyes stung in the icy air but did not water and she was warm enough in her father’s long shirt, a pinstriped jumble-sale waistcoat, her mohair cardigan, flannel trousers and big boots. At the river, she sat down on a bench and lit a cigarette.

  Camptown wasn’t built on the Wene, but had grown up beside it. Here at the edge of the park, the river was shallow and sluggish, frothy with chemical waste. Pale reeds grew just taller than the dead grass. The asphalt path that ran from the gate by the school to the gate by the industrial estate crossed over a little bridge here. Several people passed, cycling slowly home, by which Mary supposed the time to be after five o’clock. The lamps that lit the path cast a dingy pink light across the water. Mary considered the flatness of the town, of it being neither one thing nor the other, and wanted more than ever to get out. She didn’t feel scared now, or even excited or impatient, just clear.

  When she had decided what to do, she walked the long way round, past the bowling green and the boating lake and out onto the bypass link road where she doubled back on herself, following the broad curve of the Market Road back into town. It was past seven when she arrived outside Daniel’s house. He answered the door.

  ‘Are you coming out?’ Her voice was muffled behind her scarf.

  ‘Yes.’ He stepped back into the hall, called out something to his mother, and returned with his coat and a new Homburg hat. Mary took his arm firmly as they crossed town, reaching The Stands in what felt like a matter of minutes. She tried to think of things to say, but nothing that had been happening to her had anything to do with him. Daniel was tentative and treated her carefully.

  Her name had not been mentioned in the papers. Valerie had kept her promise not to tell anyone about that afternoon and it certainly didn’t matter now. Even so, Mary had no idea what Daniel knew and didn’t know, so she couldn’t work out how to be with him.

  Terry Flux set aside his planned first few records. The kids literally needed a warm-up; they had been queuing outside for over an hour and could also do with a reminder that school was over for the year. He went straight for punk and then decided to push it, to keep the speed up all night.

  When The Stands closed at eleven, the audience staggered out, filthy, sweating, exhausted and excited, and feeling such a sense of camaraderie that they called goodnight to people they barely knew. Mary and Daniel reached the pavement and stopped. They had been alright inside. Now what?

  Billy and June went by smiling and waved as they set off on the bike. Then Clara appeared and put her arms round them both. ‘Lovely to see you! Well, I’m off!’

  She solved it for Mary, who shouted after her, ‘How are you getting back?’ Clara turned and raised her thumb, and Mary said to Daniel, ‘She can’t hitch back alone, I’ll go with her, goodnight!’

  Daniel held her. ‘I’m glad you came round. It was good to see you. I’m sorry about all that, when you were upset and I didn’t understand. I don’t understand really, but it was lovely … to see you.’ Mary stared into his eyes. He wants me, she thought, and let herself believe it. She still wanted to go home, but wanted to leave him something so he’d know she hadn’t meant to disappear again. While he kissed her, she tugged a gold sleeper from her ear and pushed it into his pocket, then ran to catch up with Clara.

  They walked up to the Malibu Motel roundabout, Clara chattering on about T, whose coat she was wearing again, about how he wasn’t remotely interested in music or clothes. He talked about the weather, and land and water, how one became the other, and what he told her made her want to paint and paint.

  They stopped at the first lay-by on the Allnorthover road, close enough to the roundabout to be seen by drivers before they found it too much of a bother to stop.

  ‘So, how is it?’ Clara asked with her usual intensity.

  ‘The village?’ Mary countered.

  ‘God, no! That’s all too awful to think about. I mean you, you and Dan?’

  ‘Nothing.’ As Mary said it, she knew it. ‘I mean, it’s gone, I think, I don’t know.’

  ‘Poor you.’ Clara’s face was so at odds with her expressed concern that Mary resisted it. ‘I’d be surprised if you could feel anything much at all at the moment.’

  That made sense. She said nothing, still confused by this glamorous, volatile, ugly, mesmerising enemy/ friend. She decided to be more careful, and to wait and see what she felt.

  They got a lift from a peculiar little man in a stripped down green car, who pulled out of the Malibu Motel. He said he was a lawyer and had been to a client’s drinks party, a local government team. He lived in Camptown but had seen the girls with their thumbs out and felt like a spin. By the time they got to the Verges, he was trying to persuade them to come back into town, to his ‘studio flat’ for a Christmas drink and a bit of fun. He could show them his new ‘hi-fi’.

  Mary and Clara sat in the back, too uproariously amused to be frightened as the car slewed across the road. Just before they came into the Verges, it coughed to a stop. ‘No petrol,’ the man said flatly.

  Clara nudged Mary. ‘We’ll go get you some. We know a place, oh, just over there …’ and they jumped out and began walking down the road. The man followed and caught Clara by the shoulder, letting his hand slip down onto her breast. She drew back from his milky, beery breath and shouted ‘Fuck off!’ in his face. The girls hurried on and he followed again, baying incoherently.

  Mary couldn’t stand it. ‘Come on, let’s run!’ She could make out a gate and they scrambled over it. The man was still behind them, and he sounded angry now. ‘You little tarts! Come back!’ They heard him crash into the gate, and give a loud grunt as he fell over the other side.

  ‘Fucking creep!’ Clara screamed, and she grabbed Mary’s hand as they ran out into a ploughed and frozen field. They lost the footpath almost immediately and stumbled on, as best they could, from one gouged furrow to the next, falling and laughing until the road and the man were far behind them, and they were nowhere.

  Mary was woken up the next morning by Clara’s little brother Freddie. ‘Tea?’ He held out a cup. He was wearing a red silk dressing
gown that trailed a good yard behind him. Mary was in his bed.

  ‘It was most kind of you to give me your room.’ She spoke to the child as if he were an old man, as everyone did.

  He shrugged, graciously. ‘Not at all. I gather that when you and Clara arrived home, I was in any case in with my parents. I walk, you see, in my sleep and sometimes I end up there.’ He turned and left. Mary could hear music coming through the wall from Tobias’s room. She leant back against the black wall painted with lightning. She looked up at the ceiling and was startled to see that she had slept beneath an enormous round yellow face, a sun split by a smile.

  The snow that fell that week was heavy enough to cover everything. It piled up in drifts against the hedgerows, and turned the High Street and the Green into a continuous expanse of white in which every journey from house to house or shop or anywhere, was recorded. Walls and fences were blurred by slopes of snow that soaked up what little noise remained when there was no traffic and most people were indoors. The snow joined everything together and lay across every roof.

  Mary had meant to go into Camptown on Christmas Eve and meet Daniel for a drink, but the roads were closed. She didn’t mind, not even when all there was to do was walk down to The Arms and hope that the landlord would realise that she had to be more or less eighteen by now, would be, in fact, in a couple of months’ time. Valerie would serve her. Before going to the pub, she watched a music show on television. The reception was poor, and the picture warped and disintegrated, but she could hear it. One of the bands was the trio of girls that Terry Flux had put on at the Odeon. He’d got Mary to buy their record and there they were on the cover, sticking up their fingers and sneering – just brilliant.