The Second Life of Sally Mottram

by David Nobbs

  She drew the curtains on a stunning scene. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. There was barely a breath of wind. There were just the faintest ripples on the water. There were now almost twenty narrowboats moored along the quay. There was barely a space left between the bridge and the winding hole, and it was only a week since the canal had been officially reopened.

  The morning didn’t fool her. It was one of those great British mornings, when you laid the table for breakfast in the garden, only to find the first cloud, fluffy and innocent, forming itself as you brought out the cushions for the chairs. A larger cloud, with a hint of darkness at its centre, drifted slowly over as you laid out the marmalade and honey. A spiteful little wind waited for you. A larger cloud, distinctly threatening, drifted over as you hovered uncertainly in the doorway with the bacon and eggs. This was the wind’s cue. ‘Piss off, you pampered people,’ whispered the wind. You took the whole lot indoors, and dreamt of Corfu as you ate it.

  Sally felt sad that only she was witnessing this stunning scene. There was no sign of life from Terence and Felicity Porchester on this their last day in Potherthwaite. There was no sign of life from Eric Sheepshank on the day his sculptures in the Sculpture Trail would be admired by local and visitor alike. Someone that day would no doubt call him the Henry Moore of Potherthwaite. (Someone did. It was Eric himself.) And there was no sign of life from Harry and Jill. They had sued the boatyard for the inadequate work that had caused the boat to sink on the night of the flood, they had been helped by many people, notably the Porchesters, and they had repaired the boat and were living in her, watched over, they chose to feel, by Olive and Arnold with a generosity that they had never quite been able to manage in life itself.

  Sally showered, dressed, made herself look as lovely as befitted the Queen of the Day, and walked out into the pure air of morning. This air came from the Pennines. It had to be breathed with care. Too much of it would overload the lungs.

  She walked slowly past Eric’s boat, slowly past Harry and Jill’s boat where, she guessed from the smiles on their faces in recent days, they would be in deep post-coital slumber. She didn’t begrudge them this. In any case, for the moment she wanted to be alone. For the moment, as Queen of the Day, she was pleased to wander among her subjects unencumbered.

  She walked slowly on to the little hump-backed bridge. Here, this evening, the lovely Arabella Kate Hendrie, the Pride of Potherthwaite, the Yorkshire Callas, would sing.

  Sally stood with her back to the sun, and drank in the scene. To her right, along the wide quay, there were tables and chairs outside the restored Terminus Bistro, outside the reopened Canal Bookshop with the added words ‘and Café’, outside the new, gently trendy Navigation Inn and outside the reincarnation of the Quays Café as the Sir Norman Oldfield Tea Room, renamed in tribute to the town’s benefactor, against his wishes, but, to his joy, not remotely trendy.

  Sir Norman had told her that he would try to find the courage to come to the town that afternoon, but he was promising nothing. ‘If I do come, I will be accompanied by your old friend, Lennie Tiptree.’ There is, Sally had thought on hearing that news, no such thing as a complete utopia.

  On the left, on the towpath side, temporary seating had been erected. Everything was ready, waiting. And still the sun shone, wasting itself on all this emptiness. It was a huge thrill to Sally that she had this great scene to herself, but at the same time it gave her a sharp sense of frustration.

  She walked along Canal Approach, past the turning on to Vatican Road, where as always she looked at the mean block of flats where she had lived, and gave a little private thank-you to Sir Norman.

  And there, spread before her, was High Street East, with its new shopfronts, its fresh paint, its gleaming readiness for custom. Some of the buildings were still the product of sixties budget architecture, but Ben’s masterly design helped to obscure this and drew them all into a communal elegance, a retail event, a shoppers’ paradise. There were days when the pedestrian strollers in High Street East and High Street West gave the town the feel of a small Italian town. There were three new restaurants here too, one Italian, one Indian, one vegetarian, none of them part of chains. And only two of the shops were still empty. Everyone wanted to be part of Ben’s High Street.

  Poor Ben. He was most upset, deeply upset. His beloved Lucy would not be with him on his great day, when his graceful sculptures, quite large but light as froth, would be a sensation on the Sculpture Trail, where they would outclass Eric’s efforts, making them look cumbersome and clumsy, in many people’s eyes, though Sally would defend the contrast as being the most essential element in the success of the trail.

  What a problem Lucy had faced. Her father, Lionel Basridge, had written to her after five years of total silence and neglect.

  My darling Lucy,

  How can I write those words when I’ve completely nelgected you for five years? How could I not even have sent you cards at Christmas? I was so angry sweetheart for your mum going and taking you and with you for going but I realize now you were too young to blame. You’ve inherited so much of me – my athelticism, my courage, even my dylsexia. Your teacher wrote me that you are a wonderful girl and produced a play wich was very good and I felt so proud of you and I cried and cried and was so sorry I was so uncaring. You have a good life and are acamedic and are well out of the circus wich is not for the modern life. But I am having a big party for my fitfieth birthday with all the circus and I would like you to come and be my Guest of Honour, my darling.

  The date of the party – Sod’s Law in all its glory – was today. Lucy had set off to catch the 6.22 from Potherthwaite. Ben had found it extremely hard to accept that a man who hadn’t even sent Lucy Christmas cards should take precedence over the day when at least two prominent art agents were expected to be in the town to see his sculpture and his High Street. She had said that they would have a whole life together, the High Street was permanent, he would see the art experts unencumbered, and her father would never have another fiftieth birthday and it was an honour to be invited to be guest of honour and if she missed the chance she might spend the rest of her life without a father. Also, it might hurt her mother and make her mother care about her a bit more. Ben understood with his old head, but failed to understand with his young heart. She had promised to keep in contact with text messages.

  Sally walked into the still-deserted Market Place, the southern third of which was now pedestrianized to link up with High Street East and High Street West. Use of cars in the town had declined by 47 per cent in one year. A service of free small buses had been introduced a month ago to take people from the outlying districts into the Market Place, and a further reduction in car use was expected.

  Over there on the north side, in the charmless rooms of the George Hotel, her sister Judith would be sleeping as soundly as the hotel’s elderly water pipes and bad sound insulation permitted. She had thanked Sally for her offer of accommodation, but had said that she couldn’t cope with staying with people any more.

  Sam and Beth, who was pregnant again, had also opted not to stay with Sally. They’d combined the visit with a little holiday, and had rented a simple cottage on the moors, silent except for the cries of the lapwing and the grouse. When this great day was over, she would have time to work on their relationship. She had been shocked to hear of Lucy’s mother’s lack of love. Was she so very much better?

  She turned right and walked past the side wall of the George. The gentle slope led to the upper part of the town, the railway station, Baggit Park, and the Baggit Estate. The gates to the park were locked overnight, and it was not yet quite six o’clock in the morning, but she could see four of the sculptures on the Trail, including a massive one by Eric and a slender, twisting, sadly elegant entwined couple by Ben. It looked so light that the wind might knock it down, but it had taken two strong men to carry it.

  She wandered round the once dreary streets of the estate. Now the walls were covered with paintings, bright, somet
imes gaudy. The idea for a whole housing estate with house-to-house murals had come from articles that she had read about the Dutch architects Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, who had turned estates in the poorest parts of ghettos in Rio de Janeiro, North Philadelphia and other places into amazing works of art. Sally had taken a different line, which had grown out of her direct experiences in Potherthwaite. She hadn’t wanted to create a lovely little upmarket centre in a surrounding desert. She had realized that to impose any artist’s dream upon the estate would be to at best divide opinion and at worst foster resentment and destruction. The residents must create their own dreams. They would just have to live with the consequences. She had only imposed one condition. Nothing must be painted for a month, giving them the chance to debate what they wanted, rule out what they didn’t want, make their own rules. They made three rules. No depiction of sex with children or violence with children. And no bad weather. There were enough of those three things in the outside world. Sally had cried with pride when they told her these rules.

  And now, the real sun shone on a thousand painted suns. There was a lot of bare flesh, mostly attractive flesh. A more attractive race of people lived on the walls of Mural Land than in the houses behind them. Some people, including a particularly sensitive post girl, took exception to a huge penis on the southern wall of number 53 Prospect Close, but Sally pointed out that among the great chalk figures crafted in ancient times on the hills of England and preserved as great art there was the Long Man of Somewhere or Other, immortalized in our culture due solely to his vast chalk plonker. Millie Rathbone, a delicate old lady who lived opposite, did complain about it, but on being told that she didn’t need to look at it, had said, ‘What? I look at it at least three times every day,’ so her complaint wasn’t taken too seriously.

  There were snakes, dragons, tigers, exotic birds, vast feasts, succulent breasts, sandy beaches, impressive viaducts, noble towers, fast cars, muscled footballers, well-known pop stars, beautiful yachts, scenes from a better, greater, idealized Potherthwaite, and all under blue skies and a shining sun.

  By the time Sally had feasted on all these wonders the park was open, and she walked through it, past the bandstand, the small lake, the cages of exotic birds, and, gloriously, ten new sculptures, three by Ben, three by Eric, the others by artists from other Pennine towns.

  She felt tired, and slightly weak. She’d had no breakfast. So she sat in the sun, by the lake, watching the birds, trying to spot the sixteen varieties of duck which were listed on a board at the lakeside. A few joggers were about now, and some dog walkers, and a man who rode to work on a unicycle.

  Sally moved on, down to the roundabout where the pedestrianized High Street met the old through road, with Oxford Road branching off to the right. Here she saw a sight that astonished her. A large furniture van was coming slowly down Oxford Road towards the roundabout. Her mouth opened in surprise. It was uncanny. It was the same van that she had seen bringing Harry and Olive’s furniture, on the day that Barry had killed himself, on the day her first life had died. ‘Barnard’s Removals. Serving Chichester and the World’. Its appearance led Sally into a host of brief, vivid memories, of Olive and her worries, of Arnold with his unfinished book, of Ben as an awkward young boy on the waste ground, of Johnny Blackstock destroying Ben’s column of stones.

  The van manoeuvred slowly round the roundabout, and Sally saw that in its wake was a car that she recognized but couldn’t place. The driver wound the window down and called out, ‘See what you’ve done to me.’

  It was Dr Mallet, the psychiatrist.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sally.

  ‘Everyone’s happy. I can’t make a living here any more. I’m having to go south, where they’re bored and rich and guilty.’

  There was a low moan from the back of the car.

  ‘It’s all right, Diana,’ said Dr Mallet soothingly. ‘Everything’s all right.’ He turned back to Sally. ‘Car sick already, and we’re still in Potherthwaite. Well, I’ll be on my way. Sorry for what I said. I like you. You’re one of the better ones.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sally dryly. ‘I’ll put that on my gravestone. “Here lies Sally Mottram. She was one of the better ones.” Well, good luck down south, Dr Mallet.’

  ‘Bronovsky,’ said Dr Mallet.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m changing my name to Bronovsky. I should have done it years ago.’

  Dr Bronovsky – let us give him his wish on this fine and happy morning – moved off round the roundabout. A man was approaching the roundabout from the allotments, wheeling a barrow full of lovely vegetables. Dr Bronovsky wound down the window, shouted, ‘Bastard!’, closed the window and accelerated angrily up the new bypass, which was called Pennine Way. The council had wanted to call it Sir Norman Oldfield Boulevard, but Sally had known that, while Sir Norman would accept the use of his name for the tea room, and secretly be pleased because it was his kind of place, he would never want a road named after him, and she had fought successfully against it. Users of the original Pennine Way objected, but it’s easier for councils to upset large numbers of ramblers than one billionaire.

  The man with the barrow was Matt Winkle, who had been busy on his allotments since half past five. He had three adjoining allotments, and tried, every day, to have some fresh vegetables for his shop, ‘Matt’s Market’. He placed these in a special corner, labelled ‘Today’s Allotment from my Allotment’. The allotments were all in use now, and busy. The town had adopted another Transition idea called ‘Gardenshare’, whose name was self-explanatory and which was helping towards their ultimate aim of a self-sufficient town.

  ‘Morning, Sally.’

  ‘Morning, Matt.’

  They kissed on both cheeks. Matt’s cheeks had colour in them, now that he saw fresh air every day.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Sally, as they walked slowly along High Street West, past the refurbished and reopened Rose and Crown.

  ‘He’s angry with me because I’ve stopped going to him. I told him I was cured. He told me I was only NHS cured. I don’t feel that, Sally. I feel utterly cured. You can’t go to a shrink when you’re cured, can you?’

  ‘Of course you can’t. You mustn’t feel guilty about that.’

  ‘I got cross in the Dog and Duck and called him a shrink. He went berserk. He said, “I am not a shrink. I am a psychiatrist. I have sixteen letters after my name. Sixteen. And you call me a shrink. How many letters have you got after your name? Three. FSM. Failed Supermarket Manager.”’

  ‘Oh dear. Poor old Dr … Bronovsky,’ said Sally.

  The supermarket company had dismissed Matt and threatened to sue him for the loss of revenue and the cost of the repairs caused by his actions. He had told them that he had built his little canal to help save the town, and that his actions had indeed done just enough to prevent a major catastrophe. He was a saviour, not a wrecker. Conrad had sent the supermarket’s owners a letter in which he calculated that the amount of water diverted from the river and the canal might have been just sufficient, if not diverted, to have caused the banks of the cut at Canal Basin and the river under the bridge across High Street West to burst, thereby creating incalculable damage, or rather, damage that he would happily calculate. They should offer Matt a generous redundancy package, which would be good publicity. They should not sue, which would be very bad publicity. Matt had used his redundancy payment to buy a nice little property in the High Street, and achieve his ambition, to be the greenest greengrocer in the grocery world.

  They had reached the corner of Cadwallader Road.

  ‘I have to pay a call here,’ she said.

  She kissed him impulsively, out of sheer affection. He tried to kiss her on the lips. She turned away.

  He blushed.

  The Kosy Korner Kafé was open, and before she made her call, Sally had breakfast. After all, she had been out walking for two and a half hours. She had two poached eggs with hollandaise sauce on a muffin.

&nb
sp; Matt’s attempt to kiss her on the lips had disturbed her. Well, no. It was more true to say that her refusal to let him kiss her on the lips had disturbed her. He was nice, he was gentle, he was ethically sound on vegetables, his carrots were awesome, his broccoli was sprouting more purple than any north of Watford, he had colour in his cheeks, he was in no way repulsive to look at, and she was all alone on this, her great day. But no, she had already decided that it was a virtue that she was on her own today. Tomorrow now … no. Sadly, nice happy Matt would not be the man of her dreams even tomorrow.

  As she finished her delicious eggs, she forced herself to think of a subject other than men. She thought about the supermarket. It had been repaired. It had reopened. But in the brief period of its closure very few people had missed it, and they were growing to love their refurbished High Street, their ripe fruit, their fresh vegetables, their ability to buy two potatoes when they didn’t want a bag of twenty-four, their meat that contained no horse, their fish that, in the words of ‘Prop M. Sibley’ on his board outside the wet fish shop, contained no seahorse. Sally hoped that the supermarket would cut their losses and leave, that the area would become an arts centre. It might never happen, but it was a nice story to dream of.

  She paid for her breakfast and set off down Cadwallader Road to number 6. On the pavement opposite, a small group of people were sitting on folded chairs. She walked across to them and asked them what they were doing there.

  ‘We’re waiting to see her,’ said one of them.

  ‘See her? See who?’

  ‘The very fat person. We’ve read about her. We’re waiting to see her. See how she does. Cheer her on.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait hours.’

  ‘We know that. We don’t mind waiting. We like waiting. We waited six hours for Mrs Thatcher’s funeral. All night for the Centre Court. There’s no point if you just walk in, is there?’