The Second Life of Sally Mottram

by David Nobbs

  When she had finished eating, Judith brought more strong coffee, and joined her.

  ‘You look as though you’ll live,’ said Judith.

  ‘I think so.’

  Something in the way Sally said it caused Judith to look at her with an expression she had never seen from her before. She suddenly realized what was different. Judith was taking her younger sister seriously.

  Sally took a gulp of coffee and braced herself.

  ‘You’re not angry with me any more?’ she began.

  ‘I rang my doctor to discuss you. I had to. I was worried. He took it all very seriously. He told me to be very careful, and I do what doctors tell me, Sally. I think you ought to see him and get yourself checked.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘You should see him.’

  Sally decided to give way on that one. The next few minutes were going to be hard enough, without an added disagreement over the doctor.

  She forced herself to say what had to be said. She felt very nervous. She wasn’t yet quite as strong as she had thought. ‘I … I’ve a lot to tell you, Judith. Yesterday, I began to realize, without really realizing it, if that makes sense, that – this’ll sound trite, but to me it’s massive – that I have only two ways I can go. Up or down. I decided to go up. Again, I didn’t really realize I had decided.’

  Judith didn’t speak. Sally had the distinct impression that she was listening properly to her, with all her being, for the first time in her life.

  She told Judith about the cliff edge, about how she strode towards it before she saw the boat. If Judith had been silent before, she was now very silent. Sally was grateful for that. She sensed that if she didn’t tell the whole story now, she never would.

  She told her next about her financial situation.

  ‘You mean …’ said Judith. ‘No. Carry on.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Sally. ‘Doing those three viewings was a farce.’

  ‘You could have told me.’

  ‘No. I couldn’t.’

  ‘But you can today?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And then she told Judith about the letter to her son. She had an awful feeling that she was going to cry. She didn’t want to. She hoped that she had cried herself out. If she cried again, she felt that she might let it destroy her, that she would cry and cry and crawl away to die like a sick rabbit.

  She had an awful feeling, also, that Judith was going to cry. She had never seen her sister cry. She wondered if she ever had cried. She didn’t cry now, but Sally believed that she had come close to it, that she had been truly moved. But the memory of how utterly she had failed to recognize what was going on in Barry’s head was too recent; understanding Judith was a hope, an objective, but not yet, if ever, a reality.

  Even when Sally had finished speaking, Judith said nothing. Sally had the impression that she had hunted for the correct words and not found them.

  ‘Well, Judith,’ she said. ‘We’d better cancel that viewing.’

  Judith looked shocked, almost as shocked as at anything in Sally’s tale.

  ‘Do we need to? Can’t we just go?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve already rearranged it. Difficult now to cancel it.’

  ‘They’d rather that than waste their time.’

  ‘Yes, but they wouldn’t know they were wasting their time. That’s the point.’

  ‘Well, I think we should cancel.’

  Judith looked very embarrassed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sally,’ she said. ‘I can’t do it. I was so embarrassed postponing. I can’t speak to them again.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, it’s no problem.’

  ‘Well, thank you. I’m grateful.’ Judith paused, hesitated, at last spoke. ‘This is going to sound awful, Sally, but would you … you know … sort of … take the blame?’

  Sally looked at her sister in astonishment.

  ‘Well … OK. Yes. Yes, of course.’

  ‘It’s just that you don’t live here, I do. And you see, I just don’t do that sort of thing. Cancel. Mess people around. I’m probably the only woman in Totnes who has never cancelled a hair appointment. It’s the way I am, Sally.’

  ‘Right. OK. Right.’

  ‘Thanks, Sal. I really appreciate that. I’ll dial it for you.’

  As Judith dialled, Sally tried to remember if she had ever called her Sal before.

  Judith handed the phone to her.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ said Sally. ‘My name’s Sally Mottram. I’m Judith Carpenter’s sister. We have an appointment for three o’clock this afternoon … That’s right … yes, that’s right, we postponed it from this morning. Well, I’m very sorry, but we’re going to have to cancel … no, not postpone again, cancel. I’m very sorry to mess you about, but, you see, I …’

  She gave Judith an apologetic look.

  ‘I find that I won’t be coming to Devon after all.’

  Judith’s mouth dropped open. For the first time in her adult life she didn’t look elegant. She must have caught sight of herself in the mirror, because she snapped her mouth shut very quickly.

  ‘… Thank you. Yes, I find …’ She glanced at Judith again. ‘I find that I’m needed in my own home town … Thank you. That’s very kind of you. As I say, I’m sorry, but I thought it better to let you know and not waste your time … I thought you would. Thank you.’

  She put the phone down and looked across at her sister.

  ‘You sounded as if you meant that,’ said Judith.

  ‘I did, Judith. I’m terribly sorry. You wouldn’t want me here anyway, when you’d got me. I’d interfere with your routine. And I wouldn’t be able to stand your sort of life. What would I do in Totnes? Soak up the sun? Learn bridge? Learn golf? Meet people for coffee? Become friends with ladies who lunch? Live through my children’s children? Join a rambling club? I don’t see redemption that way.’

  Redemption? Who said anything about redemption?

  I did.

  Sally didn’t actually say any of that. All she said was, ‘I think I must have.’ She didn’t want to fall out with Judith. There was no need. There was no point. They were inhabitants of different planets.

  Judith shook her head.

  ‘“Needed in your own home town”?’

  ‘So it seems. Did it sound terribly pompous?’

  ‘Well … a bit, perhaps. Yes.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, I … it’s just … I was surprised.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. I was more than surprised. I was astonished.’

  BOOK THREE

  The Work Begins

  FIFTEEN

  A Tuesday in spring

  It’s Tuesday, a very English Tuesday in spring. It’s coming to the end of daffodil time, and the beginning of tulip time. Showers are passing from west to east across the bursting, fertile fields. The sunshine between the showers is all the more glorious because of its fragility.

  In exploring Sally’s reactions to the great traumas that had so abruptly changed her life, it has been necessary to rather neglect some of our new friends from Potherthwaite. It has been unavoidable, for without some understanding of why and how she had come to take on the great role that she was soon to play in the transformation of the town, it would be difficult to appreciate where her great strength came from.

  But on this particular Tuesday, we can perhaps dare to leave her to her own devices. She’s travelling back from Totnes to Potherthwaite by train. Surely nothing untoward can happen to her today?

  On second thoughts, maybe we should see her safely on to her train first. An apology has been broadcast over the tannoy at Totnes. The train is eleven minutes late, due to badgers on the line between St Austell and Lostwithiel. On the platform, Judith and Sally stand side by side, all smiles, touching each other affectionately every now and then, in a very public display of devotion, but from time to time each of them turns to stare down the life
less, trainless line, imploring the train to appear. Sally is anxious because they have run out of conversation. Everything that could be said has been said, perhaps there will never be anything to be said between them ever again. What can they speak about now, to avoid the void between them becoming obvious to them both? For Judith the anxiety is both deeper and more shallow. She has booked a hair appointment, knowing that the wind on the platform will disturb her immaculate curls. Should the delay increase to fourteen minutes or more, should this be a day of unexpected badger activity in Devon as well as in Cornwall, she will be late for her appointment, and, as we have seen, she doesn’t do lateness.

  ‘Don’t forget, Sal,’ says Judith, ‘you are welcome here any time.’

  ‘Except Henley week,’ says Sal, as she seems to be becoming, dryly.

  Judith doesn’t pick up on the dryness.

  ‘Except Henley week,’ she says, ‘and Wimbledon. I’m not good company during Wimbledon.’

  The train arrives, blessed lovely friend, but etiquette demands that Judith stand there on the platform, smiling an ‘oh good, you’ve found your seat’ smile and a ‘your fellow passengers don’t look too bad’ smile. The train starts to move, Judith waves, but at least she doesn’t walk along with the train and break into a run as it increases its speed. Sally cannot see her sister now and it is by no means clear that she will ever see her again.

  Now we really can leave Sally to her journey. Nothing will happen to her now. Her travelling companions have received Judith’s seal of approval. She is safe, and she is already feeling, we sense, a great wave of relief. It’s a long journey, eight hours at least even if both the connections work. Each change will involve moving on to a smaller train, a dirtier train, but this will not upset her. She has discovered, to her great surprise, that she has real affection for the town that has been her home for almost a quarter of a century. She is looking forward to coming home, even though that entails walking past, every evening, the spot where she saw her husband hanging, not eight weeks ago.

  But wait. She is standing up. Why?

  She goes to the luggage racks at the end of the carriage, opens one of her cases, and removes two books from it. She bought them in Totnes. They are both by a man called Rob Hopkins. They are called The Transition Companion and The Transition Handbook. She knows what the word ‘transition’ means, but she had never heard of the concept of Transition until this visit and Judith’s obvious pride at what the concept has done for her beloved Totnes, and later, it seems, for a lot of other places.

  On the phone to the estate agent’s in Totnes, Sally had said, ‘I find that I’m needed in my own home town.’ Don’t deduce that she has already decided on her great plan, her destiny. Nothing of the sort. She was actually thinking of Ellie, poor obese Ellie, about whom she was actually quite obsessive. If she could save Ellie from her obesity, her life would not have been in vain, and, if her life turned out not to be in vain, then she had been justified in not hurling herself on to the rocks below just three days ago. Her logic was as simple as that. It explained why she was so keen to get home, why that strange interlude of lovely houses, excited cows and a rather unusual lorry driver had meant so little to her.

  And yet, she has bought these books. The seed of the idea must have been planted. She begins to read. The books are full of small details of little things that have been done to change and improve many places, mostly quite small places, but their underlying subject matter is not small. It is, simply, the saving of our planet. Implicit in Rob Hopkins’s writings and actions is that big things come out of little things, that out of a thousand tiny acts, if they can be joined up, one mighty act may emerge. There are two great strands to his writings, two great hazards that he sees looming. They are peak oil and climate change. Sally knows a bit about climate change, nothing about peak oil. She settles down to read. As the train slides joyously alongside the Devon coastline, she puts the books down and watches the scenery. It’s beautiful, but a great shudder passes through her. She is thinking of the rocks on to which she might have fallen. She is thinking of the sea that would not now claim her. She is thinking of a small boat, something called a yawl, that had saved her life.

  The train moves inland, following the estuary of the River Exe. Soon the scenery, while still lovely, will be a little more ordinary. Sally turns back to Transition. Perhaps she is just getting the first, faint inkling of what her future will hold. If so, this is the beginning of her times of revelation. If so, it is a very personal time and a very exciting time. It would be polite now, perhaps, to leave her in peace, and to visit our new friends.

  Where shall we start? The obvious place would be with Harry Patterson and Jill Buss. We have just mentioned the yawl in which they are travelling. For, yes, the happy news is that the little boat that saved Sally’s life was the boat in which her good friend Jill Buss was travelling. It wouldn’t have made much difference, to be honest, if it wasn’t, and possibly it would have been wiser of Sally just to dream that it was than to risk disappointment. But Sally has a romantic streak, a streak that has long been dormant due to lack of opportunity, and, eventually, she will ask Harry if he kept a log of the trip, he will tell her that he did, and the log will prove, beyond doubt, that the yawl at which she had waved in vain had indeed been his yawl, that he had literally, though unknowingly, saved her life.

  Harry and Jill are in crowded waters that morning. They are approaching the Straits of Dover. They can see the English and the French coasts clearly. They can see the towns where ordinary people are going about their tedious business. That’s what a boat does to you. It makes you instantly superior. It turns you into kings and queens of the water. It turns landlubbers into serfs.

  Jill has told Harry, after her first night alone on watch at the helm, as the sun has slowly risen over an empty sea, that she has never seen anything so inspiring in her life. The night has been cold, and long, and uneventful, though frightening. She has never felt quite such responsibility as she has for Harry’s lovely thirty-foot yawl, the sails on her great mainmast amidships and her smaller mizzenmast aft billowing strongly in the stiff breeze. Now she is at the helm again, the sea is distinctly choppy and this time it is not empty, there’s a confusion of boats, a long long tanker, a bulky, ugly ferry, two other sailing boats. Suddenly it’s all very confusing and very nasty.

  But Harry seems oblivious of everything. He isn’t, actually, he’s oblivious only of the sea, of the sky, of the boat, of the ferry, of the tanker, of the other two sailing boats, of the danger. He’s oblivious of everything except Jill. He adores her. He loves her. She is the soulmate he never quite had in Olive. He touched her as she brought him a cup of tea at the end of his watch that morning, and he’d gone stiffer than he had been for years, suddenly splendidly stiff, stiffer than the breeze, as stiff as the mainmast and the mizzenmast put together, gloriously, disastrously stiff. He was stiff again now.

  How beautiful she is, how she defies her age, mocks it, laughs in the face of it as she now laughs in the face of the wind. But then he realizes that she isn’t laughing. She’s screaming. ‘Harry! Harry!’ Harry looks around and sees instantly that it’s a disaster, there’s no escape, he’s done what no good sailor ever does – he’s taken his eye off the other ships.

  He grabs the helm, pushes Jill roughly out of the way, she falls, he should have used the engine, his pride in manoeuvring through these crowded waters under sail alone has been arrogance, he just manages to avoid one of the other sailing boats but he has gone too close to the wind, there’s no wind in his sails, he’s drifting, drifting towards the great bulk of the ferry, which is hooting messages that in his panic he can’t interpret. He keeps his eyes on the sails, he’s going to have to go about, right under the ferry, Jill has scrambled out of the way and is looking like a ghost, he is hardly aware of her, they are going, this is it, goodbye Jill, it would have been great, goodbye Olive, I’m so sorry, most of what we had was good, my darling. Somehow, as if of her own acco
rd his faithful, hungry yawl finds some wind, the sails fill, she has a bit of way on her again, she’s moving, still towards the ferry but at a lesser angle now, he can see the stern of the ferry, they’ll still catch it, he wrestles with the helm, they may not hit, they will, they won’t, they don’t, they slide inches rather than feet past the stern of the ferry, they wallow horribly in its wake, but it has gone gone gone, they are alive, alive alive, the wind is still stiff, but Harry isn’t, he will never be stiff again, that was criminal. He’s the sailor, she is his responsibility, he has almost killed her, there is nothing between them, he is married, she is married, he had promised Olive, she had promised Arnold, what had he been thinking of?

  ‘Are you all right?’ he says. ‘I can’t leave the helm to help you.’

  ‘I’m all right. Bruised, that’s all.’

  They’re silent then, and grim-faced, as the boat slides away from trouble. Their hearts beat more slowly. Breath returns. Harry’s prick is a tiny thing now, it’s shrivelled by the cold, his manhood is a frightened little boy, ashamed. He hopes that Jill is unaware of this, but also, and much more urgently, he hopes she didn’t feel, as the waves brought them briefly together that morning at the top of the companion-way, that it wasn’t a tiny thing at all, that it had been a stupendous thing, in a way that it must never be again.

  It’s ironic, really. At the exact moment when a collision is being narrowly avoided in the English Channel, a collision actually occurs in the far calmer environment of the cul-de-sac in Potherthwaite’s Conservation Area. Arnold has gone round to Olive’s for a cup of coffee, taken with a squirt of the sweetener that he has brought with him in order that he may avoid being killed by Olive’s reckless use of sugar. As a direct result of the intake of liquid resultant upon his consumption of said drink, he has needed to use the smallest room. He returns in rather excited mood – he has examined his urine for blood, and found none. Olive, meanwhile, has decided to clear the occasional table of its contents, two dirty cups, two dirty plates, one containing crumbs, the other still holding a complete piece of her famous – nay, legendary – lemon drizzle cake. She is not in the very best of moods, truth to tell. She has baked the cake specially, only to find Arnold refusing to eat it. He has a good reason. He has tested his blood pressure that morning, and it’s up. But Olive cannot accept this reason. She doesn’t believe that, if he consumes a slice of her cake, he will drop dead, or worse, far worse, have a stroke and survive helpless and needing to be fed his cake for the next eleven years.