by David Nobbs
Sally was very surprised to see Matt Winkle, the manager of the supermarket, but, as he explained later, it was logical to oppose the introduction of a rival, and a rival with a more central site. She thought it unnecessarily combative of his unsmiling wife Nicola to watch the parade from the doorway of the deli, carrying a laden ‘Potherthwaite Deli’ shopping bag. Sally saw a woman approach Matt aggressively, and in the ten seconds of silence as the band finished one number and wound themselves up for the next, the indignant words ‘went sodding bad before they sodding ripened’ floated down High Street West. Nicola’s marble face almost cracked into a smile.
Now Sally saw, to her pleasure, a few faces from Oxford Road, including the Hammonds, who, amazingly, were not in Tenerife, and Peter and Myfanwy Sparling with an excited if slightly overwhelmed Kenneth. Dr Ian Mallet was there too, unaccompanied by his wife due to her fear of crowds.
The marchers began to stream into the Market Place, still headed by the brass band, who were now into the ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ some fifty-five minutes after her departure. There was already quite a crowd waiting, and more people were streaming in up High Street East. There were also, in the crowd, to Sally’s knowledge, at least five councillors. That was promising, and on a Saturday too.
The crowd stood facing the Town Hall, which occupied more than half of the southern side of the square. It was an exuberant early Victorian affair, a fantasy of power in stone, heavy with gables and towers and turrets, mocked for its excesses and inconsistencies by students of architecture, and looking badly in need of maintenance.
Wide steps led up to the great doors with their peeling paint. Sally climbed as far as the fifth step, and turned to look down at the crowd. What a sight it was. Cars had been banned, to avoid trouble and damage, and every corner of the square was jammed with people. At the front of the great crowd stood all the independent shopkeepers, their black-lined placards resting on the ground in front of them like an impassable line of shields. Favoured customers of Lloyds and Barclays banks, warmly welcomed from one o’clock (the moment when mere mortals were less warmly excluded), were sipping champagne as they watched events from the double-glazed windows of the upper storeys. There hadn’t been a crowd like this in Potherthwaite since VE Day, and perhaps not even then. And it was she who had done all this.
Above her, a few brave people appeared on the balcony, including the Leader of the Council, Councillor Stratton, three Heads of Departments, and His Honour the Mayor, who this year happened to be the popular window cleaner, Sid Haynes.
Sally was handed a loudhailer. An eerie silence fell. There was not a sound in the packed square.
To her amazement, she felt no nerves. The size of the crowd, and their marvellous discipline, gave her confidence.
‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she said. ‘I am astounded and encouraged by your numbers, and by your conduct. Every one of us is here today to show our elected councillors what we feel about the issue that they will be debating next week. We beg you, for the sake of our town, to turn down the proposal for a second supermarket on the waste ground next to the Potherthwaite Deli. I can see the deli’s placard now, with a stunning, slightly surreal pork-and-apple pie upon it. I could eat that right now.’
Everyone could hear the confidence and passion in Sally’s words. Everyone could see the pride she had in her adopted town. Only Sally knew that, on another level of consciousness, every word was also spoken to impress Conrad.
‘You know the rest of what we ask. We ask for the planned new road to go straight on west instead of turning to service the supermarket. It would therefore become what we so sorely lack, a bypass, so that High Street East and High Street West can become pedestrianized, with motorized access to the Market Place only via its northern side. We could have asked for the Market Place to be pedestrianized in its entirety, but we are not unreasonable people. We are not asking for the moon, and we do not ask for all this to be done at once in these cash-strapped times. Nor have we any gripes with our existing supermarket. Supermarkets have their place, provided there are not too many of them. The one condition on which we will fight, is that the waste ground, that dreadful eyesore, becomes a small park in the centre of town. What an asset that could be.
‘We for our part undertake to work our socks off to reverse the decline of this once great manufacturing town. We have all sorts of plans and we will work night and day to achieve them. One thought is a Sculpture Trail. Britain is waking up to the importance, and the financial importance at that, of the arts. Let Potherthwaite not be left behind. We also undertake to clean out the whole length of the Potherthwaite Arm of the canal through voluntary work, so that the Quays can be restored to their former glory. I personally would like to see the allotments extended and run as a cooperative, so that more and more of us can enjoy local fruit and vegetables. In one stroke we would reduce our carbon footprints and eat things that taste of something.
‘I will argue no longer. The size of the crowd here today is the only argument we need. The people on the balcony have paid us the compliment of listening. Ladies and gentlemen of Potherthwaite, please pay them that compliment too.’
There was loud applause and cheering. Sally tried to spot Conrad among the throng, but couldn’t. How could he not be impressed, though?
Now that she had finished speaking, Sally felt exhausted. The blood drained from her face. Marigold noticed, and hurried forward to support her and help her back down the steps. On her other side Jill came forward, and the two women held their leader firm.
The Mayor was handed a loudhailer, and he addressed the crowd.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘This is a day. Haven’t had a crowd like this since VE Day. I wasn’t here then, mind. When I took job on I was told I was mainly ceremonial. So I’ll leave Councillor Stratton to respond. Councillor Stratton.’
He passed the loudhailer on.
‘I admit it. That were a grand speech. Persuasive,’ said Councillor Stratton. ‘I’m only one man on the council. I can make no promises on behalf of my fellow councillors. I have no idea how we’ll vote. How could I have? But I do make this promise. We will consider what we have seen and heard today very carefully. You elected us. We won’t forget that on Monday evening. We will consider your views, your strong views, with great respect. Thank you.’
Sally applauded loudly and gave a signal to the people around her to do the same. The last thing she wanted was for Councillor Stratton to feel slighted.
Suddenly the vicar jumped on to the steps. The communal groan of that great crowd was silent, but Sally felt it distinctly. Only last Sunday his sermon had come in at eighteen minutes and seventeen seconds. No one had got near enough to it to be paid out. It had been a rollover.
But his audience underestimated their spiritual leader on this occasion.
‘I’ll tell you why I’m here today,’ he said. ‘Because I want our town to have a human face.’
When they realized that he had finished, that his message had been of wonderful simplicity and brevity, the crowd cheered heartily. Never perhaps, in the history of the town, had a man been so cheered for shutting up.
And now, to everyone’s astonishment, a young girl, aged about fifteen, slim as a mermaid, with scarlet streaks in her hair, rushed forward on to the steps and grabbed the loudhailer from the astonished clergyman.
‘You won’t know me,’ she cried out in a surprisingly strong voice, ‘but you’ll know my graffitis. I’m Lucy Basridge and I’m young and silly and dyslexic, but I’m not thick. So please hear me out.’
Sally buried her head in her hands, realized that this was not the thing to do, and looked up bravely. A murmuring of astonishment had been rumbling through the great crowd. Lucy Basridge waited calmly till it subsided. Now you could have heard a pigeon landing on the Town Hall.
‘My life in this town is ahead of me. Don’t take my town away from me. I love this town, me, and I love the little shops and the folk that run them and we
all have a little natter, don’t we, we do, and it’s lovely, and that’ll all get squeezed out if we have a great big supermarket bang in the middle, and they say it’ll create jobs and it will but they don’t say it’ll destroy jobs too and of course it will. I’ll make you a promise. If you vote to throw supermarket plan out I’ll clean up all me graffitis. I will, I promise. Thank you for listening.’
There was a moment of utter silence, then the crowd burst into applause.
The march moved away, down High Street East. A small man with greasy hair and a large paunch hurried up to Sally and said, in a very cockney voice, ‘That was impressive.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘That was well impressive.’
‘Well, thank you very much.’
‘I was well impressed.’
‘Good. That’s great.’
‘I’m going to report back, and I’m going to tell the boss straight out, “Boss, I was impressed.”’
He seemed to assume that Sally knew who his boss was, and she felt curiously unable to ask.
‘And when I tell the boss I was impressed, I can tell you, lady, he’ll be—’
‘Impressed?’
‘Got it in one. You have got it in one, lady. You have hit the nail well and truly on the bonce.’
He held out his hand. She shook it. His handshake was wet and clammy. He moved off so suddenly that she had no chance to say anything more. She hated wet, clammy handshakes. She wiped her hand surreptitiously on the back of her trousers, and with the gesture she dismissed all thoughts of this man.
The band led the march into Quays Approach. The plan was for a short final burst from the band, and then an orderly dispersal.
Sally didn’t want to miss all that, but she was very shaky now, she was utterly exhausted, and the handshake had made her all the more conscious that her clothes were sweaty and unpleasant. She felt a huge need for a full change and a shower. By the time she came out, most of the crowds had disappeared. It didn’t matter. Their spirit still lingered in the deserted streets, her triumph still warmed her blood. If only she could see Conrad. If only she hadn’t had to break away. He might have been looking for her, to show off his friendship with her to his colleagues from the water industry.
She phoned Marigold on her mobile, and explained why she’d had to slip off. Marigold told her that she was in the Potherthwaite Arms.
Sally had never been in the Potherthwaite Arms, which had a reputation as being one of the town’s less salubrious pubs. That early evening she hesitated outside, she felt suddenly shy, she hardly had the energy left to open the door.
Marigold’s appearance in the pub had clearly been a bit of a sensation. She was sitting on a bar stool with her legs crossed as if she had been designed for just such a pose. She was surrounded by a gaggle of excited men. It was clear immediately that the vicar, sitting in a corner with Matt Winkle, couldn’t take his eyes off the fleshy splendour of those crossed thighs as she perched on her bar stool in the simple little bar. Matt Winkle couldn’t take his eyes off them either, but that was more to be expected in a supermarket manager than in a vicar.
Marigold gestured for Sally to join her at the bar, but she couldn’t. That was Marigold’s place, not hers. The vicar saw her hesitation and his chance. He hurried over, and bought Sally a glass of white wine, while also buying two pints of bitter and a large whisky chaser. Sally was surprised to find that the whisky chaser was for himself and not for Matt. Having been bought her drink, she felt obliged to join them, though they weren’t highest on her list of people she’d like to spend the next hour with.
Warmed as she still was by the glory of the march, she wished she could just sit with a silly smile on her face, and perhaps accept a few compliments gracefully. She wanted to sit on a bar stool beside Marigold and perhaps be gloriously insalubrious for the rest of the evening. Instead she was sitting in a far corner with a vicar who was depressed because he couldn’t hold a crowd the way she could and a supermarket manager who was still angry because his day had been spoilt by a very public verbal attack on the quality of his pears.
She decided to finish her drink rapidly, make her excuses, and leave the two men to their sorrows. But at that moment, Matt tossed back the remains of his drink with a grimace, stood up, said, ‘I don’t want Nicola attacking me as well,’ and strode out of the pub. Not for the first time Sally regretted her good manners. There was no way she could abandon the vicar to solitude.
‘Same again, Dominic?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes, please. Thank you.’
The vicar apologized when he saw that she’d bought him another large chaser.
‘Didn’t mean the chaser as well,’ he said, but he poured it into the remains of his previous chaser just the same.
‘I don’t blame people for not coming to my services,’ said the Revd Dominic Otley. ‘I wouldn’t come to my services if I was a member of my congregation. And I’ll tell you why. I’m not inspiring. And I’ll tell you why I’m not inspiring. It’s because …’
But Sally didn’t yet find out why the vicar wasn’t inspiring. That treat would come much later.
She was rescued by Marigold.
‘I forgot,’ she called out. ‘Ben Wardle was looking for you. He said he’d be up the allotments. He left his mobile number. He said it was important.’
She apologized to the vicar and said that she would have to go.
‘Ben’s sensitive,’ she explained.
She saw his reply in his eyes. And I’m not? But he didn’t say it. He said, ‘Of course. He’s young. He needs you.’ She saw in his moist, milky eyes the words, And so do I, but he didn’t utter them. She downed the rest of her wine in one gulp, and wished she hadn’t.
The Revd Dominic Otley stood up. He swayed slightly, like a tower block in a gale.
‘Congratulations for today, Sally,’ he said sadly. ‘A triumph.’
Then he kissed her on both cheeks.
The cool air of the street seemed lovely after the hot breath of the vicar’s maudlin regrets.
Sally switched her mobile on, phoned Ben Wardle, and arranged to meet him in the Market Place. It was empty now, except for the people on that afternoon’s voluntary clean-up roster, who were busy removing the detritus of the crowd.
‘You’ve drawn the short straw,’ she called out over the cobbles.
‘A privilege, Mrs Mottram,’ called back Linda Oughtibridge with a blush.
Praise from Linda Oughtibridge. Did life get any better than that? Her words fanned new life into the smouldering embers of Sally’s joy.
She sat down on one of the benches, and looked around her. The great emptiness of the square spoke vividly of how full it had been so recently. The deserted balcony rang with fine words by the very fact of its silence.
Ben came running, stopped when he saw her, and walked slowly towards the bench where she was sitting. He looked down on her solemnly. He was embarrassed.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘What are you sorry for?’
‘For not telling you.’
‘For not telling me what?’
‘Oh, sorry, don’t you know?’
‘I don’t know what it is I’m supposed not to know so how can I know whether I know it or not?’
Ben considered this.
‘That’s very true, actually,’ he said. ‘The placards.’
‘The placards? What placards?’
‘The ones I did. For the shops. With the little paintings and the black edging. I didn’t know if you’d like them, so I just … did them.’
‘You did those placards?’
‘Yes. Sorry.’
‘All of them?’
‘Yes. Sorry.
‘And did you do the paintings? The bream. The pork-and-apple pie. Those dancing greetings cards from “Send It With Kisses”.’
‘Yes. Sorry.’
‘All of them?’
‘Yes. Sorry.’
&
nbsp; ‘You’re not at all sorry actually, are you?’
‘No. Sorry.’
Ben grinned. She had never seen him smile before. His smile was a window with a view into a secret and wonderful world.
‘Nor am I. They were brilliant, Ben. Brilliant.’
‘I know,’ said Ben calmly.
‘So why didn’t you tell me you were doing them?’
‘I didn’t know if you’d know they were brilliant. You can’t know, with art.’
Sally stood up, shook Ben’s hand, and kissed him on both cheeks.
He looked very embarrassed. He struggled to find words.
‘Cool,’ he said.
Well, it would be unfair to expect you to be original with words as well as paint, thought Sally.
Ben walked away. He was getting tall. He was ceasing to be a child before her very eyes.
He turned round. He was smiling. He was excited, and in his excitement he became a child again.
‘I’m well pleased you knew it was a bream,’ he said.
‘A black bream.’
‘Cool.’ He twisted his face into an expression of utter scorn. ‘Dad thought it was a pollock.’
He walked away. The clear-up was finished, and when Ben had disappeared up High Street West, Sally had the whole scene of her triumph to herself.
She walked slowly across to the Town Hall, walked up to the fifth step, turned round, and looked across at the great crowd that was no longer there.
Slowly, very slowly, the faces and the placards faded. Slowly, very slowly, now that there was not a single fan to revive them, the embers inside her faded.
Her sense of triumph had been pathetic. It had been sheer vanity. She had achieved nothing at all unless they won the vote.
The agony was going to go on. And on. And on.
Sally raised her shoulders, stiffened her back, and marched home alone.
TWENTY-FOUR
The waiting