by Ivan B
“What are they?”
“Marmite and tomato.”
He put it back. Mary almost choked with laughter at the expression on his face.
“Not to your taste?”
He almost shuddered.
“Josie loves the stuff, but I can’t even bear the small.”
Mary stopped chewing.
“And I’ve slept on it; I will be Josie’s surrogate aunt.”
His face practically split into two.
“Actually I’ve had an idea. Josie has never been baptised, so I wondered if we could change you from aunt to Godmother, it would be a natural step for Josie to think of you as Godmother.”
Mary sighed and he held up his hands.
“Let me guess, you want to think about it?”
She nodded.
“Aunt is one thing, Godmother is quite another.”
They sat in silence for a few moments with Mary eating and Robert grimacing at every mouthful. He suddenly said, with exaggerated carefulness.
“Josie told me that your on holiday next week.”
Mary nodded as her mouth was full.
“Anything planned?” He said.
Mary shrugged.
“I was going to take mum out for days, but she’s in Devon with my sisters.”
He shuffled his feet.
“Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea and I’m not making any sort of improper suggestions, but if you wanted you could come to London with us.”
Mary looked at him in total amazement.
“Pardon?”
He hurried on with eagerness in his eyes.
“We’ve got plenty of room; I’m borrowing a friend’s London flat and it’s got two bedrooms and a fold-out sofa. It would be a good chance for you to get to know Josie better and you’d be in the centre of London for a week, so you could do some shopping.”
The look on Mary’s face made him carry on without pausing.
“And we could take in some shows and suchlike, Josie would love that.”
He petered out and then managed a feeble.
“It was just an idea.”
Mary reached for her second sandwich.
“Have to take my car.”
He looked startled.
“Pardon?”
“Have to take my car, it’s insured for any driver so you could drive it, but I wouldn’t want to be without my transport, just in case.”
He blinked as if not quite believing what she had said.
“Josie said that your car was sort of funny.”
“It’s left hand drive and automatic.”
He looked surprised and then understanding crossed his face.
“Of course; leaves your right hand for the auxiliary controls, that must be a boon.”
He hesitated.
“So you’ll come?”
She nodded.
“Haven’t been to London for years, but I won’t come out with you every day mind.”
He looked like a schoolboy who had found a cache of cream cakes.
“Wouldn’t expect you to.”
He looked at his watch and Mary brushed some crumbs off her jeans.
“When do we leave?”
He suddenly looked sheepish again and re-shuffled his feet.
“Friday evening; I’m supposed to pick Josie up at Aldeburgh at seven?”
Mary tut-tutted.
“Don’t give a girl much time do you? I’ll pick you up after work at about five-forty, OK?”
He looked at his watch again, Mary decided on a tease.
“Boring you am I?”
A momentary look of apprehension crossed his face before he saw the smile on hers.
“Got a planning committee presentation at two-thirty, it’s my third attempt to get an extension on the old-people’s home on the cliff-top.”
Mary started peeling her banana.
“What’s the problem, I thought space in old-people’s homes was at a premium.”
He shrugged.
“Local conservation society is objecting; the original building is Edwardian and they want an Edwardian style extension, but that is economically unfeasible.”
Mary gave a malevolent smile.
“Town Hall is Edwardian, but that didn’t stop them sticking a glass and plastic monstrosity on the back of it?”
Robert gave a slow smile.
“You know I’d never thought of that.”
He hesitated for something to say and then turned and stopped at the door.
“You sure about London?”
She gave him a withering look.
“If I say yes I mean yes.”
He scuttled through the door without answering.
When Mary finished lunch she checked the library and then went down to the book-shop. She waited while Serena served a young boy and then said quietly.
“I’m popping out shopping for a moment so your in charge; upstairs seems all quiet, Bella is briefing Charlotte; Lorna and Sally are on the desk. I’ll be about an hour.”
Serena nodded and Mary left the shop for the high street. Olga gave Serena a mystified look.
“What’s up with her? She normally never stops working, but this week she’s taken time out to have her ears pierced and now gone shopping!”
Serena gave her gentle smile.
“Don’t begrudge her a little time off, we owe our jobs to her.”
Olga looked up from pricing the sale books.
“Pardon? I thought John was our employer, not her.”
Serena half nodded and half shook her head.
“You haven’t been here long, but six years ago everything was a lot more uncertain. John had lost interest following his wife’s death and the place was a financial disaster area, down here we were living from hand to mouth. For two months I had to wait till Saturday to get paid and take the money straight from the till. When he hired Mary it was like a breath of fresh air, she’d turned the place around within a year, enlarged the children’s section, stocked up with cheap romances and opened the Internet Café; mark you she worked ten or twelve hours a day. John may own the shop and library, but Mary is the one who keeps us employed. John just likes to come in and be the figurehead, I think he treats it like a glorified hobby, but everyone is aware that without Mary he’d have a serious problem.”
Olga considered this.
“But she can be so prickly at times.”
Serena slightly shrugged.
“It’s her way, we’re all different; she may be prickly, but she’s never rude and she always respects other points of view.”
Olga picked up the pile of sale books.
“I suppose you’ll be queen bee next week while she’s away.”
Serena nodded.
“Reluctantly. I like the book-shop, but the library is not really my cup of tea.”
Olga sniffed.
“Guess it just runs itself really.”
Serena smiled.
“Have you ever seen the staff rota? Have you any idea what happens when someone goes sick?”
They both laughed.
Mary returned just after three and staggered to her desk. She sat down and took some deep breaths, her right leg ached really badly and she’d had enough of walking around. She got straight down to tackling her paperwork to clear the decks as much as she could to make it easier for Serena the following week. Just before closing time she looked up to see her Vicar smiling down at her, he waved his hand around.
“I can’t seem to find the reference section?”
Mary nodded.
“That’s because we haven’t got one; we’re a lending library not a public library.”
He seemed taken aback.
“I just wanted to look at an encyclopædia.”
Mary pointed down the library.
“See either of the two ladies at the main console and they’ll log you on to an on-line encyclopædia.”
The concept seemed beyond his grasp, but he smiled benevolently at her.
“Don’t forget, if you want to come, there’s my discussion group this evening.”
It took a few seconds to remember what he was talking about.
“Sorry, off on an unexpected holiday tomorrow so I’ve got to pack.”
He smiled in understanding.
“I guess your daughter will like that.”
Mary had a million things to do, and explaining her relationship with Josie to the vicar was not one of them. However, one thought did cross her mind.
“But I would like to talk to you sometime about something private.”
He rotated his Panama hat in his hands.
“Before or after your holiday,?”
She hesitated and he read the inner anguish somewhere inside her.
“I could see you early evening tonight, say about six?”
He looked round absently.
“Or if you want I could hang on, I think you shut soon.”
She looked at her watch in surprise and looked back at him.
“I would be grateful, but I don’t want to trouble you.”
He smiled.
“No trouble at all.”
He ambled over to talk with Charlotte and Mary began to wonder if she had made a wise decision.
Chapter 9
How far?
Forty minutes later Mary sat the other side of one of the library windows from the vicar, she was beginning to wonder if this was a good idea. She looked at him.
“I don’t know where to begin.”
His eyes took on a far-away look.
“Begin anywhere, I’m sure you’ll say all you want to in the end.”
She looked out of the window and then looked back.
“This is confidential.”
He face took on a look of absolute understanding.
“Between you, me and God; nobody else.”
She hesitated and paused for what seemed like an age; he didn’t stir. Eventually she said in a matter of fact tone.
“I’ve been getting nightmares. Two years ago it was one a year, one year ago it was once a month, now it’s nearly every night.”
He didn’t bat an eyelid.
“What sort of nightmares?”
She swallowed, knowing that she was going to eventually reveal some family secrets.
“I had a bad accident fourteen years ago, I keep re-living that in a surreal way.”
He nodded.
“And is that the only one?”
“And I was bullied when in my early teens, I dream about that. If I’m honest just about anything gets caught up in them and I always come to a sticky end.”
“But there is always one of the same two core subjects?”
She looked out of the window.
“And I’m frightened of being alone.”
She turned her head to look him straight in the face.
“I don’t mean frightened as in mildly alarmed, I mean frightened as in absolutely bloody terrified. So frightened that I’ve accepted a holiday with people I don’t know so as not to be in the house alone.”
She saw some perplexity in his eyes and she added.
“Josie doesn’t live with me.”
He said quietly.
“What makes you so frightened?”
She gave a fleeting smile.
“I can analyse it in my head, but it doesn’t stop the nightmares. When I was young if I was alone at home and my sisters came in I got bullied. When I had my accident I couldn’t communicate as I couldn’t use either arm and my tongue and nose were so swollen they had given me a tracheotomy. No-one seemed to understand what I needed and I felt dreadfully isolated. That is until my mother arrived; she just knew what I needed.”
He seemed to backtrack.
“You said that you were bullied in your youth, when did it stop?”
Mary looked out of the window, she knew that she could end the conversation now, but she also knew that her family secret would go no further.
“It stopped when my mother caught my sisters red-handed.”
She studiously studied the sweet-shop across the road.
“It was the Easter holidays and my sisters favourite trick was to roll me in a blanket so that I couldn’t move my arms or legs, stuff my mouth with a couple of pairs of their dirty knickers and then sit on me. They even did it once or twice when my parents were downstairs. They’d lay me on my belly and Jenny would sit on my hips so she could pull my hair while Cathy sat on my legs so she could nip the skin on the soles of my feet between her fingernails.”
Mary didn’t realise that tears were beginning to roll down her face.
“But that Easter they got it wrong, they were sitting on me in mum’s bedroom and using her make-up thinking that she had gone to work, but she had forgotten her purse and came back and found them. She made them take the blanket off me and once she saw the bruises on the back of my legs she knew that there was something dreadfully wrong.”
He didn’t say anything so after a moment she continued.
“She went ape. I think she would have thrown them out, I was fourteen and they were seventeen. In the end Dad prevailed, I think he preferred them anyway, firstborn and all that; so we all went to a family therapy unit.”
He murmured.
“Was it helpful?”
Mary shrugged.
“It stopped the bullying if that’s what you mean, but I came away thinking that I must have done something frightful to provoke them. I think only mum understood that the bullying had been happening on and off for years in different ways.”
She suddenly realised that she was crying and pulled a tissue out of her sleeve.
“Six years ago I had a drink with my younger brother and he became slightly drunk, he would have been ten when it all came out in the open and he wasn’t involved in the group therapy, he told me that they’d bullied him as well.”
She looked at the vicar.
“I’d spent years believing that I was to blame, when it was just them.”
The vicar nodded and there was another silence, he suddenly spoke gently.
“So it was your mother who found out about the bullying and your mother who helped you after your accident.”
Mary nodded.
“And my mother who nursed me when I came home from hospital and found out that I could do sod all.”
She suddenly realised who she was talking to.
“Sorry.”
He smiled.
“Don’t mind me, I was in the army for ten years.” He leant forward. “And how is your mother now?”
She went quiet and then said hesitantly.
“I’m not sure, she says that she is OK, but her angina is getting worse and her blood pressure can be out of this world.”
She looked out of the window again.
“I know, I know, she has to die sometime.”
He sat back in his chair slightly.
“But you’d rather it wasn’t now?”
She looked at him for a moment and then said passionately.
“I’d rather she didn’t die in pain. I hate pain, I’ve always hated pain, even as a child I wouldn’t brush my teeth with cold water in case one of my teeth gave a twinge. I can’t bear the thought of her dying in pain, I spent two years in absolute bloody agony and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, especially her.”
He nodded in understanding.
“But how she dies is out of your power, unless your suggesting…”
A look of horror crossed her face.
“I could never kill mum, no matter what the provocation. She couldn’t kill me when I begged her to and I couldn’t bring myself to kill her either.”
She calmed down.
“It’s just the nightmares, I can cope well now, it’s just the nightmares.”
He looked out of the window and said almost casually.
“And how’s the pain now?”
Mary froze and then shrugged.
“I’ve got use to the aches, there’s nothing
you would really call pain.”
“So which part of what you don’t call pain is getting worse?”
She looked out of the window and said in a flat voice, almost as if she was talking about an abstract object and not her own body.
“They always told me that I’d have trouble with my right leg; they initially wanted to amputate it, but Mum threw a wobbly. It took most of the energy out of my fall and suffered in the process. They said that they doubted I’d ever be able to walk on it properly, but after three operations and months of physio I managed to walk and a year later walk unaided. But the knee joint is aching more than usual and when I do my leg exercises I can’t lift as much weight with it as I used to.”
She closed her eyes.
“I know I should go and see the doctors, but I need to be mobile. My mother needs looking after and I haven’t got the time, or the energy, for another operation.”
She suddenly looked at him.
“But you’re right. I can’t keep putting it off, mum my live another twenty years.”
He smiled.
“Practically speaking, can you give your knee a rest, perhaps you’ve been working it too hard?”
She gave him a withering look.
“Do you know how awkward a walking stick is when you only have one hand?” She blinked. “Sorry; you’re probably right, my physio always said ‘so far and no further’, and that ‘trying too much generally causes problems later on.’”
She stopped talking and the vicar didn’t respond for a moment, then he said.
“You only really wanted to talk, but may I say a prayer?”
She laughed.
“You can if you want, but he never answers.”
He gave a gentle smile.
“Maybe it’s us not wanting to hear the answers we get.”
They prayed and he left. Mary sat in the dark building for a while considering what she had said. Just talking to him made her feel more at peace. After some while she reached out for the phone and made a call.
She spent the evening packing, arranging for a neighbour to look after the house and generally sorting things out. She got to bed, past midnight and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
The following morning when she arrived Jasmine was standing by the back door. As Mary dismounted for her car she grinned at her.
“Keen aren’t we?”
Jasmine smiled and was clearly exited.
“Didn’t want to be late and the bus arrives at half-past.”