by Shawna Lewis
The other woman laughed as she described that first night away from her husband, but failed to see why Belinda had been so offended. The way Marnie saw things, Bud had been drinking all day, the victim of suppressed grief, of lost childhood and opportunities, overcome by guilt and regrets. In all honesty, she didn’t understand Belinda’s response. As for the “cremated four fathers” jibe, maybe the first three had been step-dads and this was the real one. Regarding the ‘artwork’, why would Bel put her good name and her nice, quiet, safe life in jeopardy by such a vindictive act against someone who had turned to her for comfort?
Bel bridled. She was the nice one, the one who offered comfort and reassurance! OK so she had been vindictive, but wasn’t that what strong people were like? The ones who didn’t get taken for granted?
“You see, that’s exactly it,” she protested. “You have no idea how dull my life is. People take me for granted. There’s always something to be done for someone. I wanted to make a point.”
Marnie smirked. Her expression hardened.
“Do you know what it’s like not to have anyone? To have no-one to care for? You don’t know when you’re well off.”
Belinda was disappointed by the turn the conversation had taken. She’d expected a bit of help from Marnie. Some advice on how to become a bolder person, less of a dogsbody, wouldn’t go amiss. Marnie seemed to think that being hard and calculating was a character flaw. To Belinda, it was a trait to be cultivated.
She tried to explain what it was like to be ‘that woman from ’village hall’. She tried to explain about the responsibility, the worry, the work, the always being blamed when things broke, of not wanting to be the last in the line of volunteers. She asked herself, and Marnie, why she bothered. Why did it matter so much? Marnie seemed to envy her involvement, the knowing who lived where and who could or could not be relied upon for what.
The two women had left the galleries and were strolling round the park, pausing as they came upon more sculptures which seemed to have become part of the landscape.
“I did some work in a village hall once,” Marnie reminisced. “It were a nice little place and I had a good thing going till someone grassed. Put me inside for months.”
“Inside?”
“Prison. For what? For earning a crust and helping people out!” Marnie was getting angry. She’d come to the YSP to get away from the harsh realities of her life, not to be reminded of its lowest ebb. Her explanation was curt and brief, leaving Belinda only half-informed.
They walked on in silence. Marnie rolled another cigarette on the move, scowling. Her demeanour had changed. Now she looked hard.
Belinda felt awkward. She’d spoiled Marnie’s day, on top of ruining the old couple’s anniversary. This vindictiveness lark was not a bed of roses, especially when you missed your target.
“It’s really hard to get enough hirers to keep the place running,” Belinda explained. “We do it voluntarily but there’s always someone telling you where you’ve gone wrong. They never attend fundraising events or donate raffle prizes – just point out that the place belongs to everyone in the village.”
This silenced Marnie for a while. She’d never thought about who kept these places running.
“When it’s the Annual General Meeting we’re lucky if anyone turns up, though we drop leaflets in every house.”
Belinda’s committee had lives of their own to lead.They were not professional fundraisers or buildings managers, cleaners, decorators, accountants or impresarios. She wished she’d never mentioned it.
“Well, let’s forget my troubles.” She was trying to placate. “Sorry for spoiling the day. Just let me know if you have any other good ideas I might use.”
They walked in silence back to their pitches and back to work where one or two of the group were experimenting with power tools. Harsh sounds of electric grinders converted the glade into some surreal giant’s dental surgery and set Bel’s teeth on edge. She remembered that Melanie had an appointment with the hygienist that day, and hoped Doug would not forget.
Gradually the grinders ceased and peace seeped back. The women lost themselves in their work, stroking and smoothing, feeling the textures, tracing the whorls and knots in their individual, small piece of creation. Spirits soothed, each fell to musing privately.
Marina Thorne’s schooling had been fragmentary; her acquaintance with mathematics, science and literature less than rudimentary. Her historical and geographical awareness was limited by what she’d picked up from various foster parents and social workers, until one of her fellas had, in the days before sat navs, taught her to map-read.
Had the ball bounced in her favour from time to time, Marnie may have developed her innate entrepreneurial talents and led a different life, but balls had never bounced to her advantage. Whenever she looked like finding some stability, some security, maybe even a deposit on a place of her own, fate had come in with a sidetackle and put the boot in. The attack on her VHB business was a case in point. She had worked hard to drum up trade from the villages around the city, trying to make sure the punters could arrive on foot and alone.
She’d befriended women and girls on her nightly walks through the parks and back lanes, offering them access to sexual health checks from a registered practitioner (only debarred on a technicality) whom she knew, and a warm, clean, safe place to work. OK, so it hadn’t been what you’d call private, but privacy was a luxury these women could not afford and the boys didn’t care about. And they had mostly been boys, the punters, or young men with no confidence or personal graces but a few spare quid in their pockets. She hadn’t made a fortune, just taken a twenty-five percent share of the girls’ earnings. Sometimes there were eight or nine at a time, offering half-hour sessions over the three hours each night. Marnie had an appointments diary and always insisted on cash up front. She kept her accounts in a proper book she’d bought from WH Smith and got the girls to sign for their money at the end of each shift. It had all been done properly, by her own lights.
Sometimes, during that winter, one of the coldest on record, she had been forced to turn on the central heating, though she worried that the increased usage might be spotted and arouse suspicion. She kept the lights off. With curtains drawn, and just a few tea lights placed here and there, the atmosphere was subdued and subtle, making up for the lack of privacy. The yoga mats had been a bit thin and narrow but they would have done until she’d made enough money to invest in some of those high-quality inflatable beds and an electric inflator pump. She would have been able to take them home with her each night. But that was destined never to happen.
Admittedly, she had never contemplated paying rent for the hall. She already paid for her keep fit classes and assumed she was entitled to come and go as she pleased. In any case, the committee would have to have said no. Some goody two-shoes would have looked down her nose. They wouldn’t have given her houseroom and she’d have lost the little bit of keep-fit income as well.
Marnie craved respectability. Husband, children, home, love: she had been denied these things. From childhood, her focus had been on survival. Now she knew that her future survival would depend on her ability to make changes. No one wanted forty-three-year-old pole dancers or glamour models. She’d always been a bit scrawny for that anyway, but there had been a few backstreet photographers who weren’t too demanding.
Now the ones she knew were retiring or going legit, offering soft-focus wedding packages in padded white albums, in which the bride, always plump, looked unrecognisable from her daily self and the groom, even plumper in his tailcoat and pink cravat, gurned uncomfortably under spiky, gelled hair. These packages, priced to undercut the upmarket firms, managed to include the DVD and CD of the 200 wedding snaps. Technology is a wonderful thing, thought Marnie. If she’d ever had a wedding, one of those albums would have done for her.
Respectability: how to make that change? She knew so litt
le of the life she longed for – had only caught brief glimpses of normal family life when billeted in foster homes for one of her longer stays.
She remembered one couple around the time she was eleven, who had actually seemed to love her. Each one fat and cuddly, they’d worked together as comfortably as her own two hands. Marnie shifted position as she thought of them, observing her grip on mallet and chisel. That was comfortable, too. They’d had children of their own: two boys who had enjoyed having a younger sister for a while and treated her as someone special. Smiling, she recalled how they’d all gone together to choose wallpaper and curtains for her tiny room. How thrilled she’d been.
That was her ideal… yet it was strange how she’d forgotten their names – all of them. She had longed for this to be her real life, but even then had known it couldn’t last. If she had lived that life, Marina could have blossomed.
After an absence of almost a year Marnie had, without explanation, been reclaimed by her mother, who had set up home with some Joe from the Caribbean not averse to having a pre-teen daughter about the house. Normal life had resumed for the twelve-year-old.
Her name had always puzzled her. The only other Marina she’d heard of had been royalty, though it was unlikely she’d been named after some princess. It was too late now to ask, but the obvious conclusion was that her mother had been ahead of the trend whereby the child is named after the location of its conception. If it was good enough for the Beckhams…
Britain’s coast is lined with marinas. Had it been one of those, bobbing with small yachts and motor cruisers at the edge of a seaside town? Or somewhere seedier, like the rundown, flooded canal-side clay-pit on the edge of the city, where dads taught their kids to tack in Mirror dinghies and teenagers tumbled into murky water from sailboards hired from the council-owned sports centre? Probably the latter.
She had been called Marnie for as long as she could remember, except by school teachers and social workers before they’d got to know her. At some schools she’d been given the nickname “Mardy Marnie” even before the first day was over. It was difficult not to appear mardy when you knew no-one, in a strange building which roared and heaved with even stranger, noisy teenagers and odd, inquisitive teachers with unfathomable whims and quirks.
Some people still thought her a bit po-faced, but what was there to smile about? The here and now, she answered herself. This place and these few days were the best thing since the fat foster family, apart from Mick. She let the sounds of the place fill her ears, breathed in its smells and concentrated on her work. A gaggle of elderly people walked along the visitors’ path, stopping every few feet to point at the works in progress and pass the time of day with the sculptors. Marnie hoped they wouldn’t want to chat, and turned back to what was beginning to look like a swaddled infant roughly carved in cedar wood.
Ten yards away, Belinda was developing some pride in her art. She had managed to chisel out a snail-like shape from the forked log, with the smaller branch signifying a head. That still needed work. At present, following the tree rings with a gouge was creating a whorl effect which pleased her. The work took time, concentration and a steady hand. Her forearm was numb, her back ached, but her mind was at peace. She did not dwell on her faux pas.
Easing her muscles, she caught the eye of a grey-haired chap in a smart beige jacket, flanked each side by two elderly women with cardigans and leather handbags, obviously part of a pensioners’ coach trip.
He complimented her on her work in progress and smiled happily. It was so nice, Bel thought, to meet people when they were enjoying themselves.
In an instant her mood changed. Standing next to him, stony-faced and looking straight ahead, was Dorothy. Belinda’s heart pounded. She felt invaded.
The pleasant-eyed man continued. “We’re the Cup of Cheer Club,” he said wryly, “though you wouldn’t always think so.” He nodded towards his two companions, who had walked ahead rather than converse with an outsider. “Dorothy, there, saw a poster in the library and thought this would be a change from Chatsworth and Filey. We try to have a trip out once a month during the summer.” He nodded, and moved on to offer an arm to each of his waiting companions.
At the next break, Belinda was bursting to offload her fury. She sat on a log, rough through her jeans, drinking rose hip tea.
“What’s up?” Marnie hitched up her denim mini-skirt to sit down.
“I’ve had a shock. One of those old women on the path.”
“What about her?”
“I sort of know her.”
“So?”
“Well, you’ll never believe it, but… I think she’s my dad’s bit on the side.”
Marnie laughed out loud. “What? She must be eighty at least!”
Belinda brushed splinters of wood from her trousers. “Maybe not now, but it went on for a long time. She’s been stalking me for years.”
“Go on.” Marnie was doubtful.
“I was ten or eleven, on my way home from school, and I saw my dad coming round the corner of a house on Station Road.”
“So what?”
“When I got home, I told Mum and she went all quiet. When Dad got in from work I could hear them arguing in the kitchen but couldn’t make out what they were saying. They kept their voices down, so it must have been something secret. We had sausage and mash for tea that night – I can still remember it – and when I told Dad I’d seen him coming out of a gate on Station Road, he just denied it. Said he’d been at work all day, nowhere near Station Road. But he was lying. I could recognise my own father.
“Later, I told Fiona, my sister. She used to treat me like a kid and not take much notice of me, but this time she said, ‘Oooh! Maybe it’s his bit on the side,’ and giggled. Older than me, Fiona is – she’d have been around fifteen at the time, and very keen on boys. I didn’t know what ‘bit on the side’ meant, but I didn’t like the sound of it.
“Mum often seemed sad after that, as if there was a weight on her mind, but I never asked why.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions. Maybe it was just grown-up stuff they wanted to keep private.”
“Hmm. Perhaps. Over the next few weeks I hung around Station Road on my way home. There was sweet shop on the corner and I’d take my time choosing a ten-penny mix-up each day. I liked listening to the chat. One day a woman left her purse on the counter. The shopkeeper, said, ‘Run after her. Catch her up and say I’ve got her purse. Her name’s Dorothy.’
“I caught her up just as she reached a white gate – the same one I’d seen Dad come out of. I walked back to the shop with her but she didn’t speak. The shopkeeper gave me a stick of liquorice but there wasn’t even a thank you from Dorothy.”
Marnie kept quiet, remembering the joys of a ten-penny mix-up. There’d been few of those for her, as a child.
“And another thing,” Belinda was winding down now, “Mum and Dad don’t live anywhere near Station Road, but every so often I see her walking past their bungalow. Never speaks. Always looks the other way.”
“Maybe she’s visiting.”
“Hmm.” Her gut feeling persisted, but maybe it was time to give the old woman the benefit of the doubt. It would be a shame to spoil the holiday with negative thoughts. After all, Belinda herself had displayed the poster in the library for others to see. Some yoga this evening, she decided, as she returned the mugs to the pavilion.
*
At the end of the day, Marnie, unlicensed and unconcerned, followed in a tired, borrowed grey Nissan as Belinda drove back to Hepworth House, wondering if they’d meet up with Bud this evening, and what Marnie would make of him if they did.
Avoiding his eyes, she introduced the new guest to Ron, picked up her room key and left them to it. There were two hours before dinner, in which she would do nothing but soak in scented water, snooze and think positive thoughts about Dorothy.
For fift
een minutes she emptied her mind, drifting towards sleep despite the cooling bath. She hooked her foot around the plug chain and tugged, lying there until only the bubbles were left. She had not yet reached the ‘understanding Dorothy’ phase.
Her phone rang as she stooped to dry her toes. It was Melanie: according to the hygienist, she needed to buy some tiny brushes to clean between her teeth in order to prevent gum disease. The mention of the word disease had spooked the girl. Convinced that she would lose her teeth like Granddad and need recourse to dentures within the year, Belinda’s daughter was close to tears. Grotesque images of naked gums and false teeth in a glass on her bedside table filled her imagination. How would she ever get a boyfriend now?
Belinda made reassuring noises and managed to convince her daughter that the problem would wait a few days. Then, certainly, they would seek out and purchase the recommended product. After a quick word with her mother, she ended the call and lay on the bed.
In vain she tried to recapture the tranquillity. What was she doing here when she ought to be at home, safeguarding her daughter’s oral health? Why had she not phoned Doug? Why had neither he nor Aidan bothered to ring her?
She had to face up to last night’s ‘adventure’. There would have been no remorse if it had actually been Bud’s car she’d decorated. He was a double-crossing, bald-headed rat, despite Marnie’s comments. But it hadn’t been his car, had it? The 4WD didn’t even belong to Gordon and Sheila, but to their son. And because of what she, Belinda, had done, the anniversary of their wedding was turning into its funeral. Should she do something… or nothing?
Who could say what Ron and Blondie might throw into the mix if she started stirring? It was best just to wait and see.