by Helen Slavin
I always sat in the same pew up on the balcony. Others came and went in their chocolate brown poke bonnets or breeches with their waistcoats and pocket watches. They sat beside me, some railed at him. There was a woman and a baby. She never said anything, she simply got out a breast and fed the baby.
Every time, it stopped the preacher. The first time I expected him to rant at her, to put away her shameful nakedness in the House of God. But he didn’t. He stood in the pulpit and he watched her. They are his unfinished business. His Emma. His Luke.
Atalanta was not offended when I opted to squat in the Zion Chapel preachers’ rooms. They needed a body in there anyway, to scare off the vandals. The ghosts should have done that. But no one believes in ghosts. Except me of course. They’ve only got me to rely on.
We dropped the boxes off and we headed out for something to eat and a drink. We headed to a new American-style restaurant and bar that the Donovan’s Wharf people had developed. We stuffed our faces with potato skins and dips. For the first time I sat and simply watched the chocolate-brown-clad people. There had been a factory on the site and they seemed puzzled by the new place. A holiday from their work. Something interesting to look at after all the years of dereliction. No one seemed interested in passing messages and I felt privileged, for once, to be the only person in the room who could see these people, this small window onto another world, another edge.
This was about the point that I felt that Sam didn’t have a heart unless he had one that was made of wood. If you tapped on it, it sounded hollow. I wanted Hal to come along now and tell him what for. Where are these dead people when you need them? Not that Sam was fazed by that. He didn’t really believe that I was a medium. He regarded it as a sort of minor league mental illness that wouldn’t affect our relationship but would affect his chances of keeping me. Only someone as sensitive and caring as Sam would take on such a liability of a woman. I know that is what he thought. I knew him so well, I should have married him.
But I didn’t. I kept working at The Glade. Donovan’s Glade was doing well, so I had my share of that franchise and now they were building a new shopping mall on the far side of the dual carriageway at Askey’s Field. They were advertising shop premises and I sold another franchise to open another Glade there. I was, at that point, the Tea Shop Queen of Town.
Sam made wedding plans. A wedding surprise he called it. The Wedding Nightmare it became. His work friends all helped him to do it, all as thoughtless and foolish as they could be.
See what a sour old cow I am? They wanted Sam to be happy. To be happy ever after, married to me and living in a lovely house in Dollyville. So they planned and they plotted and they organised. A June wedding. One of them, Beth, was a solicitor and should have known better about the legal technicalities of marrying someone else before your first spouse is declared legally dead.
Out of sight. Out of mind. Sam was certainly out of his.
I received a formal letter asking if I could attend a meeting about the new franchise being negotiated for the Askey’s Field development. This was the entirely new purpose-built mall just off the dual carriageway. Where once there had been clapped-out industrial warehousing and a vast scrapyard, now there was a temple of retailing, restaurants and a multiplex cinema.
The marketing men had been extra hard at work renaming the site. It was thought that it was called Askey’s Field because good old Farmer Askey had once owned it in the dim and distant past. Then an historical researcher stepped forward and told them that it was Askey’s Field because that’s where his hideously butchered body had been found in 1690. The marketing men had been up all night, it was clear, when the new advertising hoardings were erected declaring that this was Heron Corner Shopping Mall.
I was arguing that the new Glade should not be called Heron Glade. I wanted it to be called Askey’s Glade. I felt we owed him. The arrival of the formal letter and the mention of ‘discussion’ and ‘negotiation’ gave me new hope. I was feeling quite bolshy then. My eviction from the shed, my anxiety over Sam, grief, uncertainty…I could have made a list. My world was rocking like the boats that had once docked at Donovan’s Wharf, tossed on the seas, storms above, another world of unknown fish and marine life below.
I dressed for the occasion. I had one good outfit, a smart jacket and long thin skirt which gave me the semblance of a grown woman who knows what she is doing. I should have worn a clown suit, complete with giant shoes.
I arrived at the solicitor’s office and she instantly asked if we could hold the meeting at County Hall as she had to see a client there at the Magistrates’ Court shortly afterwards. I assumed from the buttonhole she wore that this meeting was a court appearance that had come up unexpectedly. I assumed that she was a Robin Hood style of solicitor, defending the rights of the poor and frankly defenceless. We got into a taxi and drove across town to County Hall.
I was shown into an anteroom where a smartly dressed woman greeted me with an officially polite handshake. Then we sat down and she started to take down some particulars. She checked my right name, age, address, occupation, everything except my shoe size.
All this time I did not click that this was preparation for a civil wedding ceremony. I had been married before in a cathedral, with an emphasis on the spiritual rather than the municipal. Yes, you filled out a form at some point, but mostly you declared your love from on high with trumpeting angels. So I let her fill in the forms, with her ink pen scratching at the paper.
Then they opened the door on a larger room and there was cheering, people throwing confetti, wearing hats, chucking rice, flash photography like mini lightning bolts. It was a maelstrom. A surprise party. A practical joke. In the midst of it was Sam. I tried backing up but the door to the anteroom had been shut behind us. I bumped into the door. Locked out by the angels yet again.
The way forward seemed to be to take Sam’s hand. To take the posy offered like a miniature wreath, to stand and take vows and not mean them. To be manipulated and live to regret.
I did nothing. I stood frozen like a rabbit in the headlights, a rush of serotonin surging through my veins. Sam held my hand tight, kissed my cheek. I could see the registrar’s mouth moving, but no sound seemed to be coming out. Her official smile. Her neat clothes. Her neat hair. She was like a new person, fresh from the packaging. As if for the next wedding she’d be disposed of and they would tear the cellophane off a new registrar.
I looked round hoping for Mr Anstey and Mr Jellico and a getaway wheelbarrow. I hoped for Brian with his giant’s arms to lift me up and take me back to Goatmill, to The Glade so I could rest my head in a pat of butter, wipe over some tables, brew tea. And at last I hoped for Evan Bees.
‘But she’s already married…to me.’ And he would look right into my eyes before slinging me over his shoulder and taking me away.
‘Do you, Annie Colville, take this man, Samuel Webster Cartwright, to be your lawful wedded husband?’
I was choking. I couldn’t breathe. I could feel Sam’s hand and wanted to tear free, leave my hand in his and escape with the stump. I could feel them all watching, waiting as if the room were full only of breath and anticipation. I looked at the registrar. Her official smile was becoming more official than smile.
‘I can’t. I’m already married.’
Before you find yourself teary-eyed at Sam’s humiliation, be informed that everyone was on his side. They all commiserated with him and looked at me as if I should be burned as a witch. Cast out as a demon. Here, I had broken his heart.
‘No. She’s not. He’s going to be declared legally dead. It’s a formality.’ Sam piped up. A formality. Sam was businesslike, a man closing a great deal. My heart, full of hairline cracks already, shattered. And no one noticed.
Sam’s heart suffered a clean break which was soothed and healed by Beth the solicitor. In less than three months they were married. They now have four children with another on the way and Beth is a senior partner in the law firm. One of the top firms in t
own. They don’t live in a Dollyville box house either. Somewhere between babies one and two they upped sticks and moved to a Victorian villa in Old Town on Crimea Avenue. Tree-lined, stained-glass porch and an original conservatory.
Do I look at them with jealous eyes? I did. Not now. Besides, it would not have turned out like that for me and Sam.
It was quite late one evening when Valerie came to call. I knew instantly because she had always worn a white pinny. It was a pinny so white it glowed. She might have painted it, it was so pristine. So when she showed up at The Glade, the original shed one, I was almost heartbroken to see her chocolate brown coloured pinny and her mocha shirtwaist dress.
She wasn’t. She smiled. Valerie had a warm and genuine smile, she was just built that way. She ran her tea shop because she liked to see people eat her cakes. It wasn’t just business, it was pleasure. Now she was here with her unfinished business.
Only Valerie knew the recipe for those rock buns. On that night, her last night on earth, Valerie gave me the secret. She stayed with me to bake the first batch, showed me how to warm the lemon, how to pinch the cinnamon, told me how to soak the sultanas in warm water to plump them up and where to buy the juiciest sultanas in the first place. It was at a stall on the market, next to the pet foods. Run by a woman called Maeve who also sold olives that hummed with garlic, were glossy with oil and speckled with green herbs.
Valerie, if you can hear me, those rock buns were never the same. But I keep trying.
July, the seventh
IT WAS the seventh year and the spell was breaking. Just like all the fairytales I had ever been told. In December, less than six months, Evan Bees was to be declared legally dead.
I made rash decisions. I sold up everything, all The Glades including the original shed, The Glade at Goatmill. I sold that to Atalanta; she would be a custodian. She would treat it right. I sold Askey’s Glade at Heron Corner Shopping Mall—I sold up everything I owned except the clothes I stood up in and a toothbrush.
I opted to live at a small bed and breakfast on the edge of town. It stood amongst a row of similar bed and breakfast establishments that caught the passing trade from the main road into town. I had one room and a shower room with no window and a fan that hissed long after you turned the light off. I ate breakfast sitting in the window of the dining room looking out onto the street. Breakfast was from seven until nine and I stayed there until Mrs Harkness, the owner, pulled the tablecloth out from under my elbows at nine-thirty each morning.
I wandered. I wandered round to Heron Corner Shopping Mall and took in all the shops. I had a cafe latte at Askey’s Glade. I wandered across town, passing over the footbridge that crossed the dual carriageway and I wandered amongst the charity shops and the chemist and the shoe shops. I made my way down through the park to Donovan’s Wharf and I had lunch at Donovan’s Glade before I headed up the hill towards Goatmill Country Park.
I wandered round and round the ancient woodland, picking out the less popular paths, avoiding the lake and the barbecue area. I walked and walked until it was almost dark and Brian would come to search me out so he could lock the gates. I would see his torch beam most nights and like a ship entirely lost at sea I would head away from it. I became the ghost of Goatmill Park.
I would walk down the grass verge of the main road back into town. The cars buzzing past on one side, fields and farm buildings and night sky on the other. I had nowhere to go other than my room. There was a restraining order preventing me from visiting the allotments. So I found myself following in Aunt Mag’s footsteps and I made my nightly circuit of the Claybank, the Robin Hood, the Freemasons Arms, the Hark to Towler.
I didn’t drink. I didn’t fall that far. I would order a lemonade and sit in a corner, watching the people at the pool table, the old men in the corner, the TV with the sound turned down. The lemonade was different in each place. Sugary in the Freemasons. Sour in the Robin Hood. Flat in the Towler, with a hint of washing-up liquid. Burningly fizzy in the Claybank.
One evening after being turfed out into the rain, I saw that the puddles outside the door of the Claybank were glowing and golden. I looked up to see the streetlight above and the amazing glow it cast. I thought that perhaps there had been vodka in the lemonade to make this puddle so golden. There was no street-light. Only the lights from the Spiritualist Church across the way.
I stood for a long moment in the driving rain looking at the golden windows, the soft glisten of that brass doorknob. A woman in a chocolate brown raincoat halted outside. She opened the door, stepped into the light to shake off her umbrella before disappearing inside. It was as if the building winked at me with that door. The rain pelted harder then, the sound of it rising in volume and up a semi-tone, angry seeming. Or excited. Urging me, anyhow.
Inside it looked like a more modern version of the Zion Chapel. Long rows of seating. A balcony area, like the circle in a theatre. The damp problem had been solved years ago with a grant for improvement from the council. The wall was white now, some original heritage white from a specialist company. Other than that it was exactly the way it had always been. Even the medium sitting on a chair was looking sleepy; and then just as suddenly was standing up and asking for Jim.
I could see the chocolate brown brigade clearly. They were seated next to their relative, or as near as they could get. It was an orderly crowd and they were all tired of this Jim person not showing up. Then of course Jim nudged me.
‘I’m here. What’s he want?’ Strange way around this, Jim was in chocolate brown butcher’s apron, chocolate brown straw boater. Jim Hobbs, local butcher in about 1910. Jim Hobbs who sold catmeat for mince and put sawdust in his sausages. Not that I was aware of it at that moment. That came with research, later. Jim was asking for the medium.
‘What does he want?’
I stood up and asked the question.
‘What do you want?’
‘You want to speak to Jim?’ he seemed uneasy at the prospect. He was in fact lying and had no message from anyone except his bank manager. This man pretended to be a medium and made up most of his messages trusting in the willingness of people to spill beans and fill in gaps.
‘You wanted to speak to Jim? He’s here,’ I said. ‘Jim Hobbs, the butcher. Is that the right Jim?’
The medium, Alan Carney was his name, was utterly silenced. He kept looking down at me.
‘I…I…’ was about all he could manage.
‘Has he got a message for me or what?’ Jim Hobbs asked. ‘Only I’m a very busy man. I’ve got a shop you know.’
I looked up at the medium. At Alan Carney.
‘You said you had a message for Jim.’
‘From Jim. My message is from Jim for someone in the congregation.’
Jim Hobbs looked very put out at this and another chap in a chocolate brown security guard uniform leaned down from the balcony now and chipped in.
‘I’m Jim. Perhaps the message is for me.’
‘Fine. I’ve got another Jim now Alan. He says perhaps your message is for him.’
Alan Carney looked ill then.
‘You’ve got this the wrong way round,’ he said. ‘Can you please sit down, this is a message from Jim to someone in this congregation.’
‘Who? Isn’t he giving you a name?’
Alan Carney’s face was turning a mixture of puce and ash grey. The congregation were moving from polite silence to restive whispering.
‘I have a name. Jim. Does anyone here know a Jim?’ But the congregation were resolutely unresponsive. No one was owning up to knowing a Jim. The two Jims, the butcher and the security guard, looked at me.
‘Can’t you sort this? You seem to be on the right wavelength.’ The security guard Jim was coming down the side stairs under the window to join us on the main floor of the church. Alan Carney was looking down from the platform at me. I was not going up onto the platform. He looked like a lemon up there. A sour and foolish lemon. I looked round at the audience. They were anxious, wait
ing. One or two were whispering and a few clutched their bags tighter or folded their arms, defensive or challenging.
Which is when I saw him. Up at the back in his usual seat.
He was cheery looking, handsome, hair with a slight wave to it, slicked back. He had on a chocolate brown tweed jacket and a waistcoat with a pocket watch. He was looking very relaxed and he smiled at me. He smiled as if he knew me. Which of course he did.
When I looked round a queue had formed, chocolate brown, beside me. I looked at the first woman. She was waiting, very patient. Behind her a tall man was looking at his pocket watch.
‘What’s your hurry?’ I asked. He looked up from the watch. Suddenly I knew. It’s like being in the airport. No matter how many magazines you buy and how much coffee you drink, in the end you want to get on that plane and arrive. You don’t want an endless journey. But sometimes you have to say your farewells to the people at the gate. I looked at the patient woman.
‘Can I deal with him first?’
Sidney sat at the back the whole time as I worked my way through the queue. As the last couple of people drew nearer Sidney joined the end of the queue. I got to him last. I was very tired now. There was hubbub in the Spiritualist Church. My messages had been specific and precise. Sidney smiled at me now and offered a hand.
‘I’m Sidney Colville, Annie. Thought I’d pop back, give you a hand.’
That night, everyone got their message. Everyone.
Some of the messages they didn’t want. I saw it in their faces. In the turning away, the looking down. The setting in stone of their public face. I considered then. As a messenger, perhaps I should have edited the highlights. But I thought only of myself. I didn’t want to be plagued with other people’s unfinished business. It isn’t my gran shaking me awake in the middle of the night to hiss at me, ‘Over my dead body.’