by David Nobbs
‘But don’t you get bored?’
‘No. We get chatting. You meet some very nice people in queues.’
‘Nothing much’ll happen, you know. It’s not like Wimbledon or Mrs T’s funeral.’
‘We know that. We waited nine hours for the Olympic torch. This feller, like, walked past with it. That were it, know what I mean? It were great.’
‘Oh. Well. Right.’
The woman’s husband, who had said nothing, spoke for the first time.
‘I like the clapping,’ he said. ‘Clapping some bugger that’s done summat. Makes me feel good about life. And your Ellie, she’s done wonders, hasn’t she? Course she has.’
‘Course she has,’ echoed his wife.
‘Well, enjoy yourselves,’ said Sally.
‘We will,’ the onlookers chorused.
Sally knocked on the door. After quite a long pause, Ali opened it.
‘I hope I’m not too early,’ said Sally.
‘No. Come in, Mrs Mottram. Ellie’s still in bed, but she’s having her breakfast.’
Ali led Sally into the front room. Oli was sitting by the bed, watching Ellie eat a small bowl of Fruit ’n Fibre.
‘Good morning, Mrs Mottram,’ said Ellie. ‘They didn’t want to get me up too early, so that I’d get all nervous hanging around.’
‘That makes sense. But I do wish you’d call me Sally.’
‘I’ll call you Sally when I’ve done me walk,’ said Ellie. ‘When I’ve earned it. When I feel I’m worthy to be your friend.’
‘Oh, Ellie, you shouldn’t feel like that,’ said Sally.
‘Oh, but I should,’ said Ellie, ‘and I do.’
‘Ladies,’ said Sally. ‘I’ve … um … something I’ve got to tell you. There’s some people outside.’
‘What sort of people?’ asked Ali.
‘They were opposite when you answered the door,’ said Sally. ‘Tourists. With folding chairs.’
‘Oh aye, I saw them. Who are they?’
‘They’re the audience.’
‘What audience?’
‘Ellie’s audience. They’ve come to see you walk, Ellie. To cheer you on.’
Oli went to the window, moved to draw back the curtain.
‘Don’t let them see us peeping,’ cried out Ellie. ‘We have us pride. Don’t let them see us peeping.’
Oli peeped out very carefully.
‘Whar are they like?’ asked Ellie.
‘They’re just, like, people,’ said Oli.
‘They’ve come to see me?’ asked Ellie in disbelief.
‘Yes.’
‘Stood standing there just to see me?’
‘Well, they have chairs.’
‘Still … long wait. And just to see me!’
‘Wonderful. That’s great, is that. That’s amazing. All to see little … well, no, not so little …’ The three Fazackerly sisters laughed.
‘Just to see Ellie Fazackerly from Potherthwaite. Eh up, that’s fantastic, is that.’
‘You don’t mind?’ asked Sally.
‘Why should I mind? Hey, I’ll be on telly. I will, won’t I?’
‘You may.’
Sally dug into her handbag and produced an envelope.
‘I’ve got something to show you three ladies,’ she said.
‘A present?’ asked Oli eagerly.
‘I suppose so. Ladies, your tickets.’
She handed a ticket to each of the three.
They examined them in bewilderment.
‘What’s a dampshiffart?’ asked Ellie. ‘Sounds horrible.’
‘Hope I don’t have to clean up after it,’ said Ali.
‘No, no. It’s German. It means a boat journey. These, ladies, are three tickets for a journey down the beautiful Rhine Gorge by boat.’
‘The one you telled us about with all them castles?’ said Ellie.
‘That’s right. It’s dated next year, in August. And I’m coming with you as promised. Our first holiday. Amsterdam to Basel, on the Rhine by boat. Holland, Germany, France and Switzerland. Four countries.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Oli.
‘That’s Ellie’s next target,’ said Sally.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Ellie. ‘But you should of got five tickets.’
‘Why?’ asked Ali.
‘One for her feller,’ said Ellie.
‘She hasn’t got a feller,’ said Oli.
‘No, but she bloody should have,’ said Ellie. ‘If I was a feller, which I’m not, and if I wasn’t so fat, which I am, I’d shag her summat rotten.’
The Fazackerly sisters shook with laughter. All three insisted on kissing Sally, and then she took her leave. As she closed the door on number 6 Cadwallader Road, she waved to the little crowd on the opposite pavement, and all seven waved back.
Seven? The crowd was growing!
The first clouds, small and as yet unthreatening, were bubbling up in the atmosphere. These were the most unfair of clouds. They didn’t come floating in over the horizon. They formed out of the air itself, right overhead.
Ellie’s remark had affected Sally. She was trying not to think of the nagging loneliness hidden far below, but always there. It wasn’t the day for it.
As she turned the corner into High Street West, she caught sight of Ben admiring his handiwork. He blushed. She would miss it when, if ever, his blushing days were over.
‘You must be so proud.’
‘Oh, I am.’
‘You’ve nothing to worry about with your career. Nothing.’
‘I don’t think it’s quite like that, Sally. I look at my work and I think, “I don’t believe Rembrandt was any better than this at my age.” I shouldn’t say that, should I?’
‘Well, possibly it might be better just to think it.’
‘But what people don’t understand is, it doesn’t give me any right to say I’ll ever produce anything as good again. Even produce anything good at all again ever. It’s a knack. Came to me, might just as easily go from me. I’ve not heard anything from Lucy, Sally. She said she’d text.’
‘It’s early, Ben. It’s not much past nine o’clock.’
‘True. Oh, thanks, Sally. I’m just being silly. There’s a surprise.’
Sally wandered on, past the turning into the cul-de-sac. It looked much as normal, but to her it was a forlorn, desolate place. Olive and Arnold were dead, Jill and Harry had moved to their boat, Marigold was living with Conrad in her old house. She had felt that she was all alone many times in recent months, but now she felt it more sharply than ever. Today, on her great day, she had wanted to be alone. This sudden ache was absurd.
FORTY-THREE
Afternoon
Bang on twelve, Sally entered ‘La Piccola’, on High Street East. The blue sky was by now almost entirely hidden by cloud. There were just two small patches of blue, darker than the morning blue, valiantly hanging on, but doomed. The whole street was throbbing with its normal Saturday-morning buzz. The shops were crowded. The police were everywhere, smiling as they put up barriers to hold back the crowds. Already, people were three deep along the route. The route! How that would fill Ellie with pride. Thirty-six years unnoticed, and now she had a route.
The sight of Inspector Pellet and PC Cartwright transported Sally back to that dreadful evening on which she had discovered Barry at the top of the stairs. It didn’t make a good prelude to the next hour and a quarter. She was having something that many people have regularly, but that she hadn’t experienced since the week of Barry’s funeral. She was having a family lunch. It wasn’t a large gathering, just Judith, Sam, Beth and her. Alice had been unable to make the trip from New Zealand. ‘It’s such a long way,’ she had wailed, as she always did, as if its location had been a secret withheld from her until she had arrived there. But Sally missed Alice so much. In Alice she could see something of herself. In Sam, she could only see Barry. A warmer Barry. A kinder Barry. But still Barry. Beth was pregnant. Very pregnant. All women who have babies get pregnant,
but some get more pregnant than others. Beth had been pregnant when Sally had visited her after her first meeting with Sir Norman, when she had just had that most upsetting offer of marriage. When Beth lost the baby, she had believed that this was her fault, that because she hadn’t wanted to know the baby’s sex, and had therefore been forced to refer to it as ‘it’, it had never become a real person. This time she knew the sex. It was a girl. No, she was a girl. They were going to call her Desiree, because they had desired her so much. Oh dear.
There was conversation, but it was hard work. It didn’t flow. Alcohol might have helped, but that didn’t flow either. Sam was driving, Beth was pregnant, Judith didn’t think the wine list was good enough and Sally had to keep a very clear head.
Sally couldn’t believe that Beth and Sam both chose lasagne, their staple dish at home, but she was too wise to comment. In fact she didn’t need to. Sam commented for her. ‘We find we pick up some great hints for our lasagne, eating it in restaurants,’ he said.
Judith ordered a veal cutlet, and salad. She finished neither. She went through life eating the bare minimum that would sustain her through eighteen holes of golf.
Nerves were making Sally extremely hungry. She had a rare fillet steak with pepper sauce.
Over the coffee, Beth showed them three little children’s books that she had bought that morning for the time when she would teach Desiree to read.
‘What age would that be at?’ enquired Judith dryly. ‘Eleven months?’
Careful, Judith, said Sally’s eyebrows.
Well, honestly, replied Judith’s.
Sally was delighted when the meal was finished. She insisted on paying, which she did very proudly with Potherthwaite Pounds. Judith protested with the first real vitality she had shown, but didn’t put up much of a fight. Sam, after a low whisper from Beth, tried to insist that they pay their share, but his generosity collapsed at the first resistance it met.
The joy that Sally felt on leaving the restaurant troubled her for a moment. She had no lover, and scarcely a family. But then she was swept into the day’s events. The sight of the crowds, four and five deep now, astonished her. The presence of the television cameras thrilled her. A few spears of rain came in on the westerly wind. Nobody minded. It was expected. It was Potherthwaite.
There was a stir among the crowd, and applause and a bit of cheering, as Sally arrived at number 6. Ali opened the door for her but stood shyly out of sight of the crowd. Ellie was up and dressed and waiting in the kitchen. She was wearing an enormous pair of beige trousers which, amazingly, were slightly too big. She had lost a little more weight than had been anticipated. She was still hugely obese, substantially fatter still than Ali and Oli had been at their peak, but perhaps not quite as much as Sally had expected. Ali and Oli no longer looked obese. They looked like two normal lazy women who ate too much and would need to watch their weight. They were wearing new dresses, Italian, as had been promised. They looked so proud.
At exactly two o’clock, Ellie came out of her front door sideways. A great cheer went up. She looked at the crowd in astonishment, and raised her fat arm and great podgy hand in acknowledgement. She was beaming from ear to ear, and from ear to ear was still quite a long way. Ali and Oli, both carrying umbrellas, stood at either side of her, smiling shyly.
They set off at a very slow pace, Ellie moving her legs in short, awkward shuffles. They were too heavy still to actually be raised. Ali and Oli supported her, one on each side. Behind them, at a discreet distance, her doctor accompanied them.
The cheering grew in intensity as the party reached High Street West and turned right. Ellie’s great mouth opened in astonishment as she took in the beauty of Ben’s design. She had heard all about it, of course, but the reality took the breath away.
Past Matt’s Market they went; past the new dress shop, Velvet and Verve; past Hopkinson’s Game Emporium, the specialist butcher’s; past Lidyard & Penfold, the most expensive of the town’s three independent grocers; past the wet fish shop; past the dry fish shop; past the Potherthwaite Deli; past the crowds standing around the colourful parterres in Central Park – a slow, slow shuffle. Behind them came four mounted police officers, two men and two women, and then there were eight police officers on foot. All the police officers were smiling self-consciously.
The little procession moved slowly over the river. Sally was disappointed that there was no sign of the bipolar mallard – it was wretched of them not to be there on the town’s great day. But even this view had changed since the project had begun. As the river swung to the right behind the churchyard and the car park of the George Hotel, a very brief shaft of sunlight lit up the row of cranes that had been brought in for the transformation of the town’s great mills into desirable but not huge apartments.
Now Ellie came in sight of the crowds in the Market Place. The loudest cheer of all went up at this point and there, standing on the crowded balcony of the Town Hall, were all the town’s leading public figures, crammed together, and all smiling and applauding. Sally thought that perhaps they should not have allowed car parking that day, but if they hadn’t she wouldn’t have seen the lorry.
A spatter of rain sailed in on the wind. Ali and Oli opened their umbrellas in unison. The rain stopped. Ali and Oli closed their umbrellas. The crowd laughed. Then the rain began again. Ali and Oli opened their umbrellas. There was even more laughter. The rain stopped again. Ali and Oli closed their umbrellas again. There was loud and prolonged applause at this very British little pantomime. Sally didn’t think she had ever seen so many smiles, and a huge feeling of joy swept through her. She had never believed that it would be like this. She had created all this, with a great deal of help from some wonderful people. Now at last she felt the full glory of the day and her part in it. Loneliness was banished. She was utterly happy.
A small settee had been placed in the square in front of the Town Hall. Nobody was quite sure how broad Ellie would be, and a chair might not have been wide enough. Ali and Oli led Ellie towards the settee and lowered her gently on to it. It sagged, but it did not split, and there was renewed applause at this successful manoeuvre, at this triumph for British furniture. Make the most of it, folks, thought Sally. Applause will never be so easily achieved again.
Her heart didn’t even sink when she realized that Councillor Frank Stratton was going to speak. He was handed a microphone and he moved forward to the front of the balcony. Silence fell rapidly. This was not only the largest crowd the town had ever seen, it was the most obedient.
‘This is a great day for Potherthwaite, for you, the people of Potherthwaite. The achievement is yours, and that in particular of one wonderful woman, Sally Mottram,’ said Councillor Stratton.
A great cheer broke out. Sally felt obliged to acknowledge it, with a mixture of joy and embarrassment. She was frightened that she might burst into tears. She turned her eyes away from the balcony, from Ellie, from the crowds. She found herself looking at the lorry again. Something about it puzzled her.
‘Your council, and its officers, have done very little except – which is quite important – that we have let it all happen,’ continued Councillor Stratton. ‘We take no more credit than that, so I’d like to pass you over now to the lady of the hour, Sally Mottram.’
Sally was thrilled by Councillor Stratton’s unexpected grace and modesty. Thrilled, but also shocked. She wasn’t ready for this.
A loudhailer was produced for her. Clearly all this had been prepared, and she hadn’t been told for fear that she would be overcome with nerves.
‘I’m not the lady of the hour,’ she said. ‘I’ve done what I’ve done and I’m proud of it. I couldn’t have done it without my second-in-command, Marigold Boyce-Willoughby.’
There was more applause, not huge because nobody really knew what Marigold had actually done, but not feeble either, because everybody liked her.
‘… or without my wonderful young artist, who has given us our magnificent, quite unique High Street, B
en Wardle.’
There was huge applause. Ben, who was bright pink, jumped up and down a couple of times to make himself visible, then slid hurriedly back into the crowd.
‘… or that great man of Potherthwaite, that most successful of all Potherthwaitians, our great benefactor, Sir Norman Oldfield.’
Again, there was applause, not as much as for Ben and Sally, but still a decent hand, although there was no sign of the man himself.
‘Finally, I must mention Luke Warburton and his gang, the Baggit Boys.’
There was loud cheering again.
‘They showed their true colours on the night of the storm and have been wonderful ever since, and I love their estate, even the naughty bits.’
There was laughter as well as applause at that.
‘But as much as anyone, I thank you, the people of Potherthwaite. Go on, give yourselves a clap.’
The people of Potherthwaite gave themselves an almighty clap.
‘And now,’ said Sally. ‘I call upon the real lady of the hour, Miss Ellie Fazackerly.’
She handed the loudhailer to Ellie.
‘I won’t get up,’ said Ellie. ‘I can’t.’
There was laughter and applause at this. It was true. Laughter and applause would never be so easily gained as this afternoon.
‘Thank you, Mrs Mottram,’ continued Ellie. ‘You’ve been wonderful. She’s been me helper, me saviour, has Mrs Mottram, and she wants me to treat her as a friend and call her Sally, and I’ve told her I won’t do this till I’ve finished me walk, but will I finish it, cos by heck, I’ll tell you, it looks a long way. Ee, this is an amazing day, and don’t town look lovely? Thank you, everybody. It’s funny, i’n’t it? I’m famous cos I’m fat and whar am I doing about it, I’m slimming, so I’ll not be fat no more so I’ll not be famous no more, will I? Listen. I tell you … there’s nowt funny in being fat. It’s horrid. I’m smiling cos I can walk … just … bur I’m not smiling inside cos I’m still fat. If whar I’ve done today helps other people to get less fat, I’ll be happy. I will. I can do it, you can do it. So thank you, Mrs Mottram, and thank you Ali and Oli, best sisters I could have had, love you, love you a lot, so come on then, sod all this sitting, let’s finish job.’