The More You Ignore Me

by Jo Brand

  The next morning, having sneaked Marie out of the house like a teenager, Keith shouted up the stairs, ‘Breakfast!’ and Alice padded down in her dressing gown to inform him of Mark’s presence in her bedroom.

  ‘Well, I hope you didn’t get up to anything,’ he said with a grin.

  Karen would have said, ‘I fucked his brains out,’ thought Alice, but she just said, ‘Oh Dad,’ and smiled.

  Over breakfast with a tousle-haired Mark, who felt like a condemned man even though there was no reason to, Keith produced his surprise.

  A Morrissey T-shirt,’ said Alice. ‘Thanks, Dad. Lovely’

  ‘Not just a Morrissey T-shirt,’ said Keith with a flourish of the tea towel. ‘This will get you into his gig in Wolverhampton in five days, on the twenty-second.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘I’ll finally get to see him. How incredible.’ She jumped up and hugged her dad.

  ‘And I’ve arranged for you to stay the night with Grandma and Grandad,’ said Keith.

  This was a bit of a depressing thought, but she would have stayed with Wobbly and Bighead in a haunted house if it meant she could see Morrissey. She was flooded with happiness and all her worries about her mum suddenly seemed lighter. Alice lay awake in bed that night, with Morrissey crooning on her record player, and blissfully contemplated the transcendental experience of being in the same room as the lovely man.

  Keith found himself thinking about Gina many times during the days that followed her exit from his and Alice’s life. He didn’t know whether to trust his instincts that all was well and that somewhere Gina was safe and being cared for by a good, patient person. In his mind’s eye he saw some nuns in a small rundown city convent ministering to Gina in a cosy cell-like room while she recovered. He knew this was solely a result of his fervent wishes rather than reality but the strong feeling still existed that somehow everything was fine for Gina.

  One day without even thinking about it, Keith sank to his knees in the little sitting room and found his hands touching each other in the manner of a prayer.

  ‘Please keep Gina safe, God,’ he found himself saying. His own voice sounded very strange to him in the empty room.

  He laughed. ‘Sorry, God, for laughing. I’m not really used to this and I’m sure you’re mighty fed up with those of us who experience a little tragedy in our lives and turn to you because we can’t think of anything else to do.’

  Keith had always thought God was fundamentally a good bloke who had a sense of humour and was pretty laid-back about human weakness. This he had gleaned from an upbringing in the Church of England and the inability of the vicar in his local church to be anything other than a charming and feckless libertarian. His unspoken acknowledgement to the children of the parish, whom he saw mainly at weddings and harvest festival, that church services were meaningless and dull for anyone under the age of ninety had endeared him to all the local children, whilst simultaneously making a few elderly matrons suspicious of his motives. But, to Keith, the vicar had always sat in his head as the representative of a benign institution to which he could turn in times of crisis and from which he could receive some sort of spiritual relief.

  Gina, meanwhile, remained with Dunk in his crummy little abode outside Chester.

  Gina’s mental condition was not something Dunk was particularly uncomfortable with. His own mother had been prone to what the rest of his family had called ‘funny little turns’, when she took herself off to bed and refused to come out. Sometimes this would last a couple of days and at other times as long as three weeks. She would emerge only to go to the toilet or poke around in the cupboard in the kitchen in a desperate search for something she actually wanted to eat. Dunk’s railwayman father had accepted these trips to a parallel universe without fuss, and his relaxed approach to the strangeness of their family life had engendered in Dunk and his sister Joy an altruistic and easy-going temperament.

  In his tiny shambolic home, Dunk surveyed Gina as she stared at the loud television which was his constant companion.

  ‘Tell me something about yourself, love,’ he said to her. ‘Where do you come from? Have you got family? What am I going to do with you?’

  Gina never liked these verbal excursions other people tried to take into her life. She grunted something unintelligible in reply but Dunk was not to be put off.

  ‘Come on, Gina,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to give me something. I’ve got to know a bit of who you are. You can’t just stay here if I don’t know nothing about you.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about Gina,’ said Gina. ‘She’s a person who’s fucked. Let me stay here, please. I like it.’

  She genuinely did like it. For the first time, she felt she could truly be at ease. In this grubby little place, with this big lump of an old man, she felt protected and relaxed. Sexual favours seemed a small price to pay for using him as a stepping stone to greater glory with Morrissey Although she could not really articulate it in her muddled brain, somewhere down deep she was well aware that she could be lying in a dark wood with a ligature round her throat or floating face down in some dank canal.

  ‘Please, Dunk, I like it here,’ she said again.

  Dunk grinned. It was a compliment and one he couldn’t really understand. Why did this much younger, albeit weird woman want to be here in this neglected hovel? Perhaps she really liked him.

  ‘Well, let’s play it by ear then, you funny girl,’ he said fondly He looked her up and down and took in the shabby stained skirt, the over-large, nylon cardigan and the dirty slippers.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘We’ll take you to the shops and get you some new clothes tomorrow and see how things go, shall we?’

  Gina got as near to a smile as she could.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said and turned back to the telly.

  Later that night, Dunk bathed Gina as if she was a child. Gina sat in the scummy bath quite contentedly as Dunk lathered up an old flannel and ran it over her back. He put shampoo on her hair and massaged it into her scalp, rinsing it with water poured from an old plastic jug his wife had used for cooking.

  It was Dunk’s complete acceptance of her as she was now that Gina found comforting. Even through the fug of her illness and the deadened edges of her emotional responses she could sense the disappointment Keith carried behind his resigned smile and his regret that he seemed to have lost her forever. Gina was aware she would never really get better and something told her that she would be better off with Dunk than with those people who mourned the loss of her old self and moved round her like wounded ghosts.

  That night as they lay in bed together, Dunk with his arm round Gina, exhausted after brief yet energetic sex cut short by premature ejaculation, Gina closed her eyes and smiled. The voices had quietened a bit. She believed that the nearer to Morrissey she got, the less they harangued her. She was sure that a meeting with him would transform her into what and who she wanted to be.

  The following day the pair set off into town to buy Gina some clothes. Dunk, as ever thinking of saving a few pence, even though he could afford to pay more, jumped off the bus with Gina near a factory outlet shop which seemed to be selling a selection of clothes for depressives. Gina looked doubtful until a record shop next door to the factory shop caught her eye because there was a picture of Morrissey in the window. Clasping Dunk by the hand, she dragged him towards the shop.

  ‘Come on,’ she said excitedly ‘Let’s go in here instead.’ A young man stood at the counter with an image of Morrissey on his T-shirt. Gina felt she was getting closer to her love all the time. It didn’t occur to her to feel guilty about Dunk. Dunk was safely installed on a different planet from Morrissey; he didn’t really figure in her calculations.

  Gina approached the young man who was surprised to see what he considered to be two inappropriate old people cluttering up his shop.

  ‘Can I have your T-shirt?’ said Gina. ‘Please, I’ll give you anything.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ said the shop assistant dis
dainfully ‘I need it.’

  ‘No, I need it,’ said Gina. ‘It’s a matter of life and death.’

  ‘You trying for the Wolverhampton gig?’ said the assistant, somewhat incredulous that this tramp of a woman could have any idea about Morrissey and his tour schedule.

  Something made Gina say yes.

  ‘I can’t, love,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.

  ‘Please,’ came back a small but determined voice.

  Something about the desperation in Gina’s voice caused Dunk to step forward.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a tenner for it.’

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ said the boy ‘I paid twenty for it.’

  The tense auction that ensued was something to behold. A small audience built up around them consisting of an erstwhile Hell’s Angel from Chester and a couple of punks, all of whom felt moved to ally themselves with the underdog.

  A hundred and twenty,’ said Dunk, eventually ‘and that’s my final offer.’

  ‘Come on, mate,’ said the Hell’s Angel. ‘For fuck’s sake let them have the bloody thing.’

  There was a mild threat in his voice which the assistant could not ignore. Eventually he caved in and said, ‘Oh, all right then, hang on.’

  He disappeared into the back of the shop and came out with a carrier bag which he handed to Gina. Her face crumpled and she began to cry.

  The little group clapped and whooped and Dunk handed over twelve ten-pound notes, double his budget for Gina’s new wardrobe.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Gina and kissed a surprised Dunk full on the lips. The audience felt a very slight ripple of disgust run through them but continued to whoop and cheer.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ said Dunk.

  They passed a newsagent’s on the way home and Dunk bought a Daily Mirror and some tobacco while Gina chose a KitKat and an NME with Morrissey on the front. Normally Dunk would have added something from the top shelf to his purchases because his sexual energy demanded that he have some focus for his lone nocturnal activities. But in deference to his new ‘friend’ (he didn’t really know what to call her) he forwent this pleasure. After all, he said to himself wryly, I’ve got the real thing now.

  At home, he lovingly hand-washed the T-shirt for Gina, which even Dunk with his minimal attention to personal hygiene surmised had been worn for at least a week. It hung, dripping, in the bathroom and every ten minutes or so Gina fluttered towards it to check whether it was dry or not. Eventually, after many hours, she plucked it from the mouldy shower head on which it was hanging, despite the fact that it was still slightly damp, and a beatific smile spread across her face as it appeared from inside the T-shirt.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Dunk. ‘You don’t half like this geezer, don’t you?’

  ‘Love,’ said Gina, correcting him. ‘Love.’ And seeing a shadow flit across his face, she for the first time in years considered someone else’s feelings and said, ‘And you’re fucking brilliant too, Dunk.’

  Dunk smiled.

  The five days before Morrissey’s gig dragged interminably for Alice, with an attendant anxiety that somehow everything would go wrong. The Smiths split, which had occurred the year before, had been a terrible blow and had made her depressed for days, but the news that Morrissey would carry on alone had lifted her spirits and given her hope for the future. In truth, Alice didn’t really care about the members of the band or Johnny Marr, she was only interested in Morrissey He was the only one she considered really held her life in his hands. He was the one who knew her inside out, who understood her lonely weird life and had the answer to where her damaged soul could proceed in a world full of dark dreams and sadness.

  As the days passed, there was no news of Gina and Keith and Alice persuaded themselves that she was probably all right and that at some point she would reveal herself somewhere in the country in a disturbed state and be arrested by the police and brought home. This transition from constant worry to uneasy acceptance had been tackled by each of them in their own way Although Keith knew Gina was chaotic and vulnerable, he had faith in the nature of other human beings and convinced himself that she was safe. Alice had managed to transfer her worry into a parallel universe and to her it was almost as if Gina had gone on a long holiday and at some point would turn up with some tasteless souvenirs and a dirty tan.

  Keith found that he missed Gina in a strange way He didn’t miss the chain-smoking, unrecognisable person that she had become, but he thought more about their initial meeting and their courtship than he had for years. Most days he would drive out in the evening in his little van, scouring the roads and streets in nearby small towns where he thought she might be. Wobbly and Bighead were doing the same and coming home frustrated and tired most evenings. Bert, too, spent his days running through his memories of how Gina had been as a girl, a wild teenager and a hot-headed woman, with a degree of affection he had not felt at the time.

  He missed his wife, too, and was surprised by the strength of his feelings, given that after five or six years of marriage they had merely rubbed along in a rather grumpy fashion. But behind that there had always been the unspoken understanding that they were two halves of a whole, Bert dealing with the outside practicalities of life and Violet keeping the home and fostering what emotional stability she could in her wayward children.

  Marie Henty, meanwhile, played a waiting game. She observed the depleted little family consisting of Keith and Alice with a great deal of fondness as they coped with the trauma of their missing member. Marie was desperate to offer them more help and support but she was wary of being seen to try and muscle in on their vulnerability So she sat at home in the evenings, trying not to think about Keith, and staying her hand as it wandered towards the telephone.

  Keith did call Marie a number of times, but he was reluctant to introduce her into the household while Alice was there, because he could not fathom Alice’s feelings about himself and Marie and he felt too weary to plumb those depths until the situation with Gina was resolved. He spoke to the hospital at regular intervals, although each call was pretty much a carbon copy of the last, as no new information about Gina’s whereabouts relieved the pattern of their conversations.

  Finally the big day dawned and Alice woke excitedly from a shallow sleep. She had decided to get the bus into Wolverhampton and then, after the show, make her way across to Norman and Jennifer’s, hoping that by the time she arrived they would be soundly asleep in their twin beds in the cream-coloured room with its nylon floral curtains.

  Keith could see the excitement in every aspect of Alice’s demeanour. It was as if she was preparing for the most important rendezvous of her life. She spent four times as long as usual in the bathroom, slapping things on and pulling things out and generally trying to create a sophisticated, educated townie out of a rather natural, artless country girl.

  Alice had packed and repacked her rucksack, undecided about whether to wear her Morrissey T-shirt all day or lovingly fold it and try to find a women’s toilet to change into it. Eventually she decided she would wear it under a jumper; as she approached the venue, the jumper would be discarded and she would walk into the place, free and deserved, a reward for all her commitment over the years.

  She was so excited that she decided she could not possibly wait until the afternoon to travel; she would break her journey at Ludlow and meet Mark for a midday meal before she journeyed on to Birmingham and from there to Wolverhampton.

  She and Mark sat in De Greys in Broad Street, he staring at a huge steaming bowl of soup and she picking bits off a cheese and pickle sandwich.

  ‘I’m rather jealous,’ said Mark, ‘about your adventure today I wish I was coming too.’

  ‘But you can’t stand Morrissey,’ said Alice, wishing she was going to the gig with him. Part of the churning she felt inside her was due to the fact that she was making this trip alone.

  ‘It’s not him particularly’ said Mark, ‘it’s your loyalty and your complete absorption in
him that I envy. I don’t think I ever managed it with anyone. Maybe I’m just not that sort of person.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve used him as a crutch over the years to keep me going and to put me somewhere other than in my own life. He’s there in my head all the time and I feel him watching me in some way knowing what my life is about and wanting it to be better.’

  ‘Well, if it’s helped, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ said Mark. ‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ said Alice. ‘God, there have been so many times I needed not to be in my own life, to have someone I could talk to, when I was alone in bed at night and I could hear my dad crying.’

  Mark didn’t know what to say.

  Alice looked at her watch. ‘Will you come and wave me off?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mark.

  They walked to the bus stop and stood chatting neutrally about Mark’s boring job and the gradual thawing of his relationship with his dad.

  ‘He hasn’t got another son,’ said Mark. ‘He’s got to come to terms with what he’s got and I think my mum has managed to chip away at him and make him think a bit.’

  The bus pulled up and Mark grabbed Alice, gave her a hug and kissed her on the mouth.

  ‘I wish I was Morrissey,’ he said, ‘and in some ways to you…

  ‘Why?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Because you seem…’ Mark’s sentence tailed off. ‘Oh nothing,’ he said. ‘Have a brilliant time, call me when you get back.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Alice.

  She got on the bus and moved to sit at the back so she could wave. As her smiling face got smaller, Mark was aware of a strange thought he could not shift from his mind: that he would never see her again.

  Alice settled down in her seat and enjoyed the silent progress of the bus through the Shropshire countryside. Two chattering women in their seventies who were going to visit a friend in Birmingham spoke barely at whispering level and seemed afraid that this young woman two seats back would somehow take the content of their conversation and use it against them.