Mary George of Allnorthover

by Lavinia Greenlaw

  By the time Mary reached The Arms, the public bar was packed, so she hovered in the porch. Someone was playing the piano and people were singing. She caught sight of Billy and June, all four Laceys (Trevor, Julie, Martin and Kevin, who was still on crutches), Sophie and Christie and, to her surprise, Stella, wearing a paper hat and duetting with Edna as they sat together on a settle near the fire. Several people caught sight of Mary, smiled, waved and gestured her over but she felt, with horror, that everyone there was stuck together, and that if she entered the room, she would never leave. There was no space, anyway, not even a gap left by those who were missing – her Dad, Lucas and Tom.

  Mary walked down the middle of the High Street. The snow lit the night and opened up the village. For once it seemed spacious. Mary felt as serious, sad and calm as she had the day Julie told her about how Lucas died. What could she have done? What could she do?

  The police cordon around the Chapel had sunk into the snow that had settled in a high drift against the front of the building, almost reaching the window. A narrow path had been cut to the door and was half-filled in again, but Mary managed to make her way along it. She scraped the door open a few inches and squeezed inside. She felt around for the light switch and found it, and a bulb that hung through the floorboards above came on. There was a heap of paper in the middle of the room and Mary felt excited. This must be evidence. There might be clues the police had missed. She wanted to work out her part in it all, or part of the truth at least.

  The room had the deep cold of a place left empty for a long time. Mary turned on the bar heater and when that wasn’t enough, turned up the wicks on the paraffin heaters and lit them, too. There was a blanket on the floor that she wrapped around her shoulders.

  Midnight Mass in the Catholic church was packed. Judge Smallbone played the organ just as he did every Sunday, and the choir endeavoured to follow him. Father Barclay loved his congregation and never failed to be moved by the Judge’s arthritic but dogged performance, or the cracking voices and shambolic descants of the ageing singers. Only half of those there were regular attenders. The others had rolled out of the pubs and stumbled off the last bus, or had torn themselves away from the television. They stood up throughout the service, swaying and blearily singing the carols they half-remembered, their eyes wet with sentimental good will. Father Barclay’s eyes were wet too, but he was thinking of Tom Hepple and Lucas, and what the village of Allnorthover might really mean or be. He went into the service as nervous as ever, stuttering and hesitating, losing his place on the page or, when he extemporised, his train of thought. He broke into a sweat and felt his voice disappearing, but got through it somehow and with some sense of how much his congregation loved him back. There was too much incense and not enough wafers for Holy Communion, and the inevitable bleats from the drunks when they got to ‘Lamb of God’. At the Sign of Peace, though, everyone calmed down and solemnly shook hands with their neighbours. Father Barclay wandered the aisle, greeting whomsoever he could and getting so involved in exchanges of good wishes that he almost forgot to go back up to the altar.

  Dr and Mrs Clough were regular attenders. They arrived just before the service started with their three youngest children, all, except the doctor, in foreign-looking fur coats. Their eldest son, Tobias, arrived late and saw the church was full. He was relieved, having enjoyed the slow walk across the village alone, and turned back immediately.

  The pavement edge of the High Street was puddled with footprints, but one person had taken to the middle of the road and walked straight out of the village. Tobias followed them.

  The papers were a mess but among those spilling out of the filing cabinet, Mary recognised both Matthew’s writing and Stella’s. She pulled these sheets out first and was dismayed to find they were only old invoices, receipts, records and accounts. She reached back into the cabinet to see what else there was but whatever Mary found, she knew about already.

  Disappointed, she turned her attention to the heaps in the middle of the floor. The first page she picked up was crammed with numbers, diagrams and, in several places, what might have been her name. It was hard to tell as the writing was so small and difficult to read. Every bit of space had been used and on some sheets, the filled page had been turned sideways and new lines added at right angles, like stitches running over and under. The next sheet she picked up had a list of times and places on it and, again, her name. There were long passages that appeared to have been copied from old books. They were legal or historical, about land and property. There were sketches of maps on which she could make out local names, but the shapes were so askew that they could have been foreign countries. Even the puddles of wax on the floor were scratched with figures or letters.

  Mary got up and wandered round, peering through the little windows at the snow and thinking that if this place didn’t make her think of that madman, that murderer, it would be a good place to be. The snow would soon swallow it up. She opened and shut the cupboards above the sink, struck by how empty they were, turned the taps on and off, and jumped as the geyser ignited. Then she saw an odd collection of things on a shelf. She picked up the puddle of wax and shuddered as she remembered her foot sinking into the warm pool when she and Daniel had thought the Chapel was on fire. There were her old glasses, too, the ones with the cracked lens that had been knocked off at the bottom of the Clock House drive. How had he found them and known they were hers? This was creepy.

  Then the photograph. It was one Matthew had taken of her during another winter of snow. She had her hair in plaits and was wearing what she’d called her ‘cherry best coat’. Tom had torn out her eyes. Lucas. Mary’s first thought was to run and get Stella, to give her the photo and let her tell the police, but then she thought of how it would put her back at the centre of things when she’d managed, at last, to get to the edge.

  She crouched by the bar fire and held the photograph in front of it until the picture blistered and turned black. Then she gathered up the bits of paper with her name on them and began to light them with matches, but this was too slow. She made a little heap, quite carefully, on the floor, and cleared a space around it. She lit the corner of one sheet with a match. It did not catch so she unscrewed the lid to the well of one of the heaters and splashed a little paraffin onto it. This time when she lit the match, there was a whoosh of flame and the heap burned quickly down to cinders. Mary decided to get rid of the filing cabinet stuff too, all Stella and Matthew’s boring old history. The next fire was bigger and burned longer and while it was still smouldering, she decided to check upstairs.

  The window was covered in blue paper which Mary ripped down, taken aback to see nothing behind it but familiar glass. The bed was tidily made or not slept in, and piles of clothes and books were laid out in lines around it. The shelves that edged the gallery were bare. Disappointed she started back down the stairs.

  As she reached the bottom step, she saw that the smouldering pile she had left was now tall flames, and just as she was making herself believe this and working out how to get round it and out, there was a muffled but powerful bang as one of the heaters exploded. The force of it threw Mary back against the wall. The light went out.

  Too dazed to move, she was hypnotised by the blinding centre of the fire. It was such a pure light. She did not notice its edges spread, nor would she have cared, but her body was holding her breath and when it insisted, she gulped for air and choked on scalding smoke. Her body took over and pushed her away from the fire, back up the stairs, unable to think where she was going or what she was going to do. The smoke was crawling up through the floorboards. Mary crouched where she was, quite content to watch this astonishing spectacle, staring at the window at the other end of the gallery, illuminated by the flames below but gradually disappearing behind smoke. For a long time, Mary did nothing but wait. Then another explosion rocked the building and threw her forwards and she was moving, then running, jumping, flying.

  There were two things that Mary remembered and
told no one. The first was the stillness of the moment in which the window billowed and held her, and how it was long enough for her to realise what was happening, so that when the glass exploded and she fell, she wasn’t afraid. The second thing was that when she opened her eyes and found herself lying in the snow, there had been someone lying beside her holding her head in his hands, and this had brought her such peace that despite her shock and pain, she was angry when the village came towards them with all its noise.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author would like to thank the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation for the scholarship given to support the writing of this book, and the K. Blundell Trust for assistance in the early stages.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lavinia Greenlaw is the author of three books of poetry, Night Photograph (1993), A World Where News Travelled Slowly (1997) and Minsk (2003). She lives in London, where she works as a freelance writer, reviewer and broadcaster.

  PRAISE

  From the reviews for Mary George of Allnorthover:

  ‘Allnorthover draws its inspiration from the bleakness of south-east England: the foul estuary air, the glint of a razor blade during the Bank Holiday brawls on the seafront, the industrial estates that belch out fruit juice, electrical goods and sausages … But most recognisable of all is the panic and angry desperation all this creates in an adolescent girl who “dressed oddly and spoke well”; of whom it was said, “Her head was up in the clouds; she needed pulling back down”… Greenlaw writes like the poet she is. It is dramatic stuff, but the book’s real power lies in Greenlaw’s ability to evoke the despair and hopelessness of ordinary life: the well-presented man who hides booze in the bushes; the old lady who enjoys having a salon wash because it is the only time she is touched; the married man caught giving a teenage girl oral sex on a village bench. And towering over all this, mixed in with the arrival of punk and the petrol strikes, are the betrayals – most notably those of Mary’s father – and their legacy.’

  LOUISE CARPENTER, Daily Telegraph

  ‘Lavinia Greenlaw’s 1970s Essex is as remote and strange as a scene in a David Lynch film … I was happiest when Greenlaw was at her funniest, and she is a very funny writer.’

  Scotsman

  ‘Beautifully observed … In prose layered like paint, she conjures up the period through details – petrol shortages, power cuts, particular sweets and music, the regulation mini-bottles of warm school milk – that will strike endless chords with readers who grew up at that time. Greenlaw’s nostalgia is palpable, but it is never sentimental, nor is her portrait of the eccentric but loveable Mary George. This is a suggestive, elusive novel, which achieves a magical effect by the gradual accumulation of images.’

  KATIE OWEN, Vogue

  ‘A memorable portrait of youth.’

  Esquire

  ‘Perhaps the greatest strength of Greenlaw’s novel is its unsentimental and wholly convincing portrait of village life. This is rare in English fiction, and here it is beautifully done, from the sniggering girls at the bus-stop to the village disco at which an attempted punk concert gets brutally raided by riot police. The boredom of the English countryside, the static nature of its relationships and prejudices are quietly funny and true.’

  AMANDA CRAIG, The Times

  ‘A rites-of-passage novel with a difference. It’s about an England on the verge of irrevocable change. It’s also about Mary, the novel’s sweet, misfit heroine, who, as she tries to work out where she belongs, attracts obsessive attention … Beautifully written and old fashioned – in a good way.’

  Big Issue

  ‘Greenlaw portrays Mary and the other characters with such conviction, accuracy and nuance that we can’t help being drawn into the story … The action is suspenseful, the dialogue acutely rendered, and the book as a whole is exceptionally well thought out, well written and well paced.’

  LA Times

  ‘A lovely book … Mary George of Allnorthover is about church jumble sales and vindictive social workers and industrial England winding down like a cheap watch. And it’s about the magic influence of the punk culture which – although it should be tearing village life apart – paradoxically keeps it together. These beautiful people, with all their intrigue, and past and present crimes, make up what Chaucer once called “a field of folk”, enough human beings to put together a perfect, representative world.’

  Washington Post

  ‘Compassionate and slyly funny about teenage desire … What is most impressive, ultimately, is the strength and solidity of the house Greenlaw builds around the reader: every brick carefully aligned, necessary and true.’

  SUZI FEAY, Independent on Sunday

  ‘Gorgeous writing … There’s an intelligence and textured richness to Lavinia Greenlaw’s writing that feels almost old-fashioned. She writes for readers who savour rich images and singing sentences and perfectly constructed paragraphs.’

  Chicago Tribune

  ‘Mary fits nowhere. Nor do her friends … A fine novel, Mary George of Allnorthover brilliantly remembers the tedium that seemed a necessary condition of youth.’

  London Review of Books

  ‘Lavinia Greenlaw’s intense first novel is both a moving study of coming of age and a dark glimpse into the workings of an obsessed mind. Greenlaw depicts Allnorthover in prose that is darkly iridescent and evokes Edna O’Brien.’

  Baltimore Sun

  ‘Precise, lyrical prose distinguishes Greenlaw’s haunting novel … Mary and a band of sympathetic characters move slowly in different directions, but also toward an inexorable and tragic dénouement.’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘From the opening pages of Lavinia Greenlaw’s Mary George of Allnorthover I found myself equally spellbound by her endearing, myopic heroine and her witty, wicked prose. This is a vivid and absorbing novel, with a wonderful sense of surprise.’

  MARGOT LIVESEY

  ‘With perceptiveness and verve, Lavinia Greenlaw charts the travails of a spunky new heroine, Mary George, caught in the treacheries and stagnancy of an English backwater in the 1970s.’

  EDNA O’BRIEN

  ‘A significant book … What appears as a novel of its time soon grows to become a portrait of the ebb and flow of perception, reality and fate. Time and memory, death and loss flow through the narrative … and those brief moments when we glimpse beyond our fates.’

  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

  ‘An imaginative fusion of past and present … In times past, when news travelled more slowly, the subject of this book would have suited a ballad or a novel by Hardy. Instead, the author transcends the boundaries of the poetic tradition from which she writes but does so to salvage its heritage for the here-and-now. A radical, poetic novel.’

  Süddeutsche Zeitung

  COPYRIGHT

  Harper Perennial

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  This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006

  FIRST EDITION

  First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2001

  Copyright © Lavinia Greenlaw 2001

  Lavinia Greenlaw asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catatlogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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