The More You Ignore Me

by Jo Brand

  ‘Shit, I wonder if that’s my dad,’ he said.

  It wasn’t.

  Keith had steeled himself for a nasty encounter but the door opened to reveal Marie Henty.

  ‘Is Alice in?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ answered Keith.

  ‘Great,’ said Marie Henty. ‘Can we talk?’

  Keith motioned towards the sitting room.

  Gina sat upstairs in Alice’s room and softly crooned ‘This Charming Man’ to herself.

  Marie Henty just wanted to see Keith. She arrived at the cottage on some spurious pretext, having told herself she must maintain Alice’s confidences. She found herself, however, somewhat disappointed that Alice had told Keith everything.

  ‘I think Alice is quite angry with Gina’s lot in life,’ said Marie, feeling simultaneously that she wanted to put her arms round Keith and rock him backwards and forwards in the squeaky rocking chair, and — rather unsettlingly for a girl from a family of prudish agnostics — that she wanted to fuck his brains out. Even the phrase going through her head strangely excited her and she looked up in alarm towards Keith in the hope that he hadn’t picked any of this up.

  Of course he hadn’t. He sat looking benignly at her face.

  ‘What are the chances of her ever making a recovery?’ he said after a few minutes, even though he knew the answer.

  ‘I’m sorry, Keith, they’re pretty slim,’ said Marie, who had been reading up on Gina’s condition. She knew from letters that had been sent to her from the hospital that the doctors in charge of her care had never been sure whether she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia or De Clerambault’s syndrome. The fact was that Gina’s symptoms had now been so dulled by the amount of chemicals coursing round her system that it was very difficult for anybody to tell what was going on with her.

  Poor Gina, Keith found himself thinking. Standing in a huge pit of fog, unable to think, to sparkle or to be what she had been when he first met her. Just like Alice, a part of him wanted Gina to have another chance.

  ‘I can really sympathise with Alice’s feelings,’ he said to Marie. ‘She wants her mum back. She can hardly remember the old Gina but it would be so wonderful if she had the chance to see just what a great woman her mum is.

  Marie’s heart started to sink gently Did he mean that for himself or just for Alice? Did he want his wife back? She would have to try and find out.

  Right, she thought to herself. I’ve loved this man for years, he’s had a shit time with his ill wife, bringing up his daughter on his own virtually and there’s so much I could give him. I’m going to kiss him because I’ve got to know one way or the other whether he wants me or not.

  She got up, moved towards him in the darkened room.

  ‘Keith,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Marie,’ he said.

  She couldn’t think of anything to say Instead she put her hands on his face and just managed a glimpse of his nonplussed expression before she pulled his head towards her and touched his mouth very gently with her lips.

  ‘You cunt!’

  Gina stood in the doorway clad only in a very scruffy diaphanous nightdress which outlined her figure against the miserable electric light in the hallway.

  Keith wanted to say ‘Which one of us are you referring to?’ for a joke but knew this might encourage some sort of violent episode, so he said very quietly to Marie, ‘I think you’d better go now.

  Marie thought the same and as she walked, trying to look purposeful, towards the door, she realised she would have to run the gauntlet of Gina to get out. Holding her head up in a semblance of innocence, she got her hand on the door handle before she felt a sharp pain in the back of her head. She didn’t look back but pulled the door open, ran to her car and drove blindly through the lanes, not even allowing herself to think until she was safely in the emotionally sterile area of her small cottage.

  Gina, meanwhile, was laughing hysterically in the bedroom, Morrissey turned to full volume, while Keith sat downstairs thinking about Jane Eyre, waiting for Alice to come in and pondering the implications of the evening’s proceedings.

  He liked Marie Henty, even quite fancied her, but his feelings over the years had become almost as dampened down as Gina’s because he’d had to live for so long denying himself the pleasure of being able to relax and just be content with his life. And had it not been for Gina’s illness, he would have been perfectly happy He loved the brooding, dark nature of the Herefordshire countryside with its bloody history, he liked his undemanding job, his home and his family, and he could have stayed contented for the rest of his life living out an uneventful day-to-day existence full of pleasure at the lack of pressure. Instead, the duress he felt from having to be father, mother and housekeeper to his child had pushed his naturally humorous optimism to the back of his being to be replaced by a weary resignation.

  He looked at the clock. Ten past ten. He had supposed Alice would be back a long time before now given that it was cold and slightly damp. Perhaps he should go and look for her and ask Mark to come and stay and bugger the consequences. He wondered if Gina would burn the house down if he went out. He wondered if Marie Henty had gone mad. There was a knock at the door.

  Oh God, is it Marie back? What shall I do? What the fuck will Gina do is more to the point, he thought bitterly to himself.

  He opened the door to Mark’s father.

  ‘Hello, Phil,’ he said as neutrally as he could manage. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Just tell me if my son is here,’ he said wearily.

  ‘No,’ said Keith. He wanted to keep the conversation as brief as possible with this alien being.

  ‘I don’t believe you, Keith,’ said Phil.

  ‘Nothing I can do about that,’ said Keith. ‘Now excuse me, I’m busy.’ He started to shut the door but Phil put a hand up to stop him.

  ‘I want to have a look in the house,’ he said.

  ‘Be my guest,’ said Keith, opening the door, thinking he wasn’t taking a battering from this thug tonight.

  Phil stepped into the hall and then Gina, with perfect timing, came to the top of the stairs, now wearing only a very small towel and, for some reason Keith could not fathom, an old hat of his.

  ‘Is it Morrissey?’ shouted Gina down the stairs.

  Phil looked up at her with an expression of pure terror. He turned to Keith.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I believe you.’ He turned and disappeared, calling behind him as he went, ‘Let me know if you see him.’

  ‘Not Morrissey,’ Keith shouted to Gina, ‘more like Meat Loaf.’

  Gina seemed happy with that answer and disappeared back into Alice’s bedroom and tried to turn the volume up even higher.

  Keith was just climbing the stairs to ask her to turn it down when he heard the door go. It was Alice.

  ‘I just saw Mark’s dad’s car,’ she said. ‘You didn’t tell him, did you?’

  ‘Course not,’ said Keith, putting his arm round her. ‘How is he?’

  Alice didn’t really know whether to tell her dad the whole truth. That Mark was damp, cold, tearful but determined to shun offers of help and comfort.

  ‘He’s fine,’ she said. ‘He’ll decide in the next couple of days what to do. I said I’d keep him stocked up with food and drink.’

  Much as he hated to hear himself say it because it was an adult thing to say and he didn’t really mean it, Keith said, ‘Don’t you think he’d be better off going home?’

  ‘Dad.’ Alice’s expression said everything.

  ‘S’pose you’re right,’ he said.

  ‘How’s Mum?’ said Alice.

  ‘Slightly odd,’ said Keith.

  ‘As opposed to really fine most of the time?’ said Alice. ‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ said Keith. ‘Different. More alive. Slightly out of control. She hit Marie Henty.’

  ‘Marie Henty’s been here?’ said Alice.

  ‘Yes, just to chat about how Mum is,’ said Keith, denying the tiny electric
ping in his brain.

  ‘That’s all?’ said Alice. ‘No other reason?’

  ‘Like what?’ said Keith.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Alice, knowing he wouldn’t tell her if anything had happened anyway ‘Christ, that’s loud,’ said Alice, realising she was having to raise her voice. ‘Has she been playing it all night?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Keith, ‘and it’s getting on my bloody nerves.’

  ‘Dad, how can you say that?’ said Alice. ‘It’s gorgeous, he’s gorgeous, and it’s the first thing Mum’s shown any interest in for years.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Keith. ‘Sorry to be a grump.’

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  That night in bed, Keith lay looking at the ceiling while Gina snored beside him, feeling a little stirring inside that he had not experienced for so long. He felt slightly dirty because of it. He tried to imagine Marie’s face and relive the moment she had kissed him so softly on the mouth he had barely felt it. But he just could not conjure up her face and remembered with some shame that when he had first fallen in love with Gina, he could never imagine her face either.

  Keith could not deny that Gina seemed to be more alive, more in touch, more alert and more human. But he feared that the consequences of her re-entry back into the human race would be a huge deterioration in her behaviour and ability to control herself. Various clichés arrived in his head — ‘a double-edged sword’, ‘an iron fist in a velvet glove’.

  Alice lay thinking of Mark and Morrissey until in her half-waking state the two merged, Morrissey lying pained, crying and lonely in a dark wood without anyone to help or hold him. She began to weep softly and decided she would rescue him and hide him somewhere less dank and inhospitable.

  Phil sat up watching television, asking himself over and over again in his head what he had done to deserve such a wet son. ‘Probably homosexual too,’ he muttered to himself as his wife, devastated by the loss of their only boy, seethed with hatred beside him.

  Gina dreamed of Morrissey astride her, like a great animal grunting and sweating, and called out in her sleep. Keith stroked her arm and murmured, ‘It’s OK, love,’ and she moved out of her dream cycle and down into a deep sleep.

  Marie Henty was still awake, endlessly replaying the three seconds it had taken for her to walk across the room and kiss Keith. Each time, a wave of anxiety swept over her and the more she tried to visualise Keith’s face, the less she was able.

  Over the course of a few weeks Keith and Alice noticed a marked deterioration in Gina’s behaviour. Keith had known this would happen. There was simply no way round the fact that an illness such as Gina’s could not be controlled without strong drugs. As her personality struggled out from under the tranquillising effect of her pills, the illness which had hidden beneath the enormous ingestion of chemicals inevitably came with it. It was a relief to both of them in some ways to see the fiery and idiosyncratic Gina begin to live again. For many years she had spent endless hours in bed or sat gloomily staring out of the window at the mean little garden; now she rose early, did some things which resembled taking care of her appearance, put her old wellington boots on which hadn’t seen the lanes of Herefordshire for years, and began to appear all over the village and at her father’s little cottage on regular occasions and without warning. Wobbly and Bighead were not quite sure what to do with her when she turned up because if they were honest with themselves they felt slightly frightened of her, as if she was some contemporary witch with medieval power who could lay a curse on the house and bring them to their knees. She seemed happier but there was no doubt she was madder too.

  Despite many reassuring signs of the old Gina, worrying new developments in the way she talked and behaved were an unavoidable accompaniment. She had been to the cottage on three occasions since her medication had been cut down and with each appearance her conversation seemed wilder and more unintelligible, leading them to think that either she was drinking or, in their parlance, ‘becoming fucking mental again’.

  As children, a constant low-level niggling had gone on between them all, which frequently bubbled over into chaotic violence. Wobbly and Bighead had fought on many occasions, once or twice injuring each other quite badly with hastily picked-up pieces of wood from the garden or anything suitable from the big toy box. The pecking order was established when Gina was about seven. Wobbly was top dog because during one of these fights he had delivered a glancing blow to the side of Bighead’s face, drawing blood. It had almost necessitated a visit to the local hospital but Nan Wildgoose’s instinct was to let the boys deal with any injuries on their own. Gina had mainly been a bystander when these fights occurred but had somehow felt it important even at that young age that she make her mark and establish some credibility as a family member. So one bright crisp morning when they were standing at the edge of the pond in the clearing up past the dark wood, she pushed the pair of them into the freezing water. They went in with an enormous splash. Neither of them were swimmers and with the shock of the cold water, they were both immediately in trouble.

  ‘Fuck, bollocks, Christ!’ shouted Bighead. ‘Help us, you shitter!’

  Gina moved towards a large strong branch she had prepared earlier for the task.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you both grab this if you promise to be nice and not hit me again or put my dolls in the cow shit.’

  ‘Yes!’ screamed Wobbly as he disappeared under the water and came up again spluttering and gagging.

  ‘I could push you further out,’ shouted Gina, quite enjoying the moment and not really aware that they were a few seconds away from drowning.

  ‘Gina!’ Bighead had started to cry in the water. ‘I’m going to die!’

  ‘Promise then!’ she shouted back.

  ‘We promise,’ they screeched together and she manoeuvred the branch towards them. They climbed shakily on to the bank, both too weak and shocked to grab Gina and give her the beating they wanted to.

  With a shriek of delight and a cry of, ‘Got you!’ Gina ran for it, leaving the shivering pair to make their way home, both too ashamed to admit that their younger sister had got the better of them and even prepared to risk a number ten walloping from their mum rather than admit their humiliation.

  From that day onwards they treated Gina with a grudging respect and very seldom bullied or whacked her. If she was prepared to drown them to move up the pecking order, Wobbly and Bighead weren’t going to mess with her.

  This very memory coursed through Wobbly’s head as he saw Gina walking purposefully up the rutted dirt track towards the cottage. Bighead, who was out the back chopping some logs, had also seen her. He tended not to have memories like his brother. Wobbly was the more sensitive of the two. Bighead tried not to think about the past at all because he did not like the sensation of nostalgia and regret that flooded over him and’ made his eyes moisten. In Bighead’s book, men didn’t behave like this, they did things but they didn’t have feelings. Feelings were for homosexuals and women. Consequently he very rarely let slip any sign that he had experienced an emotion at all, unless it was anger or frustration, something well up the manly end of the spectrum.

  ‘Gina!’ he called. ‘What you doing up this way?’

  ‘I’ve come to talk to you about someone called Morrissey,’ said Gina.

  ‘That poof fucker,’ said Bighead. ‘What about him?’

  ‘You know him?’ said Gina, surprised.

  ‘Course I bloody do,’ said Bighead. ‘It was ‘im what Alice went to see the night with Main when she died.’

  ‘Really?’ said Gina, as if this was news to her.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Gina,’ said Wobbly, coming out of the front door. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  Gina stood thinking for a bit.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘When was that?’

  ‘Be about four years now,’ said Bighead, not one for anniversaries.

  ‘Really?
’ said Gina again as if her mother’s death was something akin to a slight mishap instantly forgotten.

  The implications of Gina’s reaction to their words hit both brothers; up to this point they hadn’t really taken on board just how much damage Gina’s so-called illness had done. Neither of them was overtly sentimental about their mother but they had loved her in an instinctive way and were both shocked Gina seemed so unconcerned.

  ‘Mum’s dead,’ said Wobbly.

  ‘I know, you said,’ said Gina irritably and that was the last mention of their mother that day.

  Luckily Bert had heard none of this as he would have been heartbroken to think his mad daughter’s madness had progressed this far. He lay snoozing upstairs waiting for Wobbly or Bighead to bring him some tea the colour of oxtail soup and their customary huge chunk of badly buttered bread and jam.

  Anyway,’ said Gina, ‘Morrissey would be well pissed off with you two calling him names. All right, he looks a bit weird and too feminine, but he is very intelligent and his songs are all directed towards me, you know.’

  ‘How does that work?’ said Wobbly genuinely interested in how Gina could have come up with this statement.

  ‘I don’t know how it works,’ said Gina, ‘but I just feel that he’s trying to tell me something.’

  ‘You and a million others,’ said Bighead. ‘He’s trying to tell you he wants your fucking money.

  ‘No!’ Gina screamed. ‘You don’t understand, you stupid thick bloody tossers. Christ, is there no one I can talk to about this without getting a load of shit back?’

  ‘I would’ve thought Alice would talk to you about ‘im seeing as she likes ‘im too,’ said Wobbly.

  Gina’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s exactly why I can’t talk to Alice, you knobhead,’ she said. ‘Alice wouldn’t like it if she knew about our special bond.’

  Because Gina was a good six inches smaller than her brothers, they were able to converse in soundless sentences over the top of her head.

  ‘She’s talking bollocks,’ mouthed Bighead.

  ‘What the fuck shall we do?’ replied Wobbly.