Only Strange People Go to Church (7 page)

Jane, who is supposed to be playing the customer to Martin’s shopkeeper, dithers on the sidelines.

‘Jane, what is it?’ says Maria, frustrated.

‘What am I supposed to say?’

‘Just say what you say when you go into a shop.’

Jane thinks about this while everyone waits and then she says, ‘I’m not allowed to go into a shop by myself.’

‘
I’m
not allowed to go into a shop,’ concurs Fiona, casually leafing through a magazine. ‘Mum says I’ve not to, that bastard at the end of the street steals my money, Mum says.’

Fiona licks her fingers every time she turns a page so that the corners become damp and dog-eared, curled at the edges like an ancient manuscript.

‘Yes, thanks for that Fiona,’ says Maria briskly. ‘Anyway, Jane, let’s pretend that you are allowed. Improvise, just make it up, okay?’

They begin again. Martin goes through his elaborate mime with the heavy box for the seventh time, still with all the freshness of the first. As Jane enters the performance space Martin puts down his clipboard with studied calm and greets his customer.

‘Good morning Madam, can I help you?’

Jane hesitates. She seems to be searching the invisible shelves and Martin, following her gaze, turns and scrutinises them too.

‘Can I get a shot now?’ says Fiona, bored already.

‘Hold on a minute Fiona, let Jane get her turn.’

Jane stops looking at the shelves and stares at her feet.

‘See anything you fancy Madam?’ says Martin.

Jane shakes her head.

‘Jane, what is it you want to buy?’ asks the director.

‘Don’t know.’

‘Well, think something up, what about a Mars bar?’

‘Not fair!’ cries Fiona. ‘I’m going to buy a Mars bar!’

‘I don’t like Mars bars,’ says Jane quietly.

There are few things that Jane likes, and even those she does like she’s probably scared of.

Jane was not always like this. Jane was once an intrepid adventurer in her spare time. She and her husband spent their holidays crossing deserts, canoeing rivers and climbing mountains. That was until she fell off a mountain. Without the recent improvements in medical technology she would have died but a thin sheet of titanium has been patched over the part of her brain that got pulped.

‘Well, what do you like?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘She’s rubbish Maria, it’s my turn now.’

‘Not yet Fiona. Jane, can you…’

Jane turns back towards Martin.

‘Mars bar.’

‘Certainly Madam,’ says Martin, making an elaborate mime of putting a Mars bar in a paper bag. He holds the corners of the invisible bag between the pincers of his thumb and forefinger twisting the bag, tossing it up and over, around itself several times.

‘Anything else I can help you with today Madam?’

Jane grabs at the imaginary bag and turns to leave.

‘That’ll be fifty-two pence, thank you Madam.’ Martin says, holding out his hand.

‘That’s it Jane, give him the money.’

Martin takes the mime money and rings it up on his till before returning to his stocktaking.

‘Good. Well done!’ Maria says.

Jane scurries back to her seat. Before she fell off the mountain, when Jane was not being an intrepid adventurer, she was a nurse.

‘It’s my shot now.’

‘In a minute, Fiona. Now, everyone, what do we think of that?

‘Crap,’ says Fiona.

‘Compelling. Drama.’ says Brian.

It would be wrong to say that Brian has a sarcastic tongue, in fact he has an ineffectual lolling mouth muscle that only frustrates him because it refuses to work properly. He does however have a ruthlessly incisive left-hand middle finger. This he uses, when the spasms allow him, to poke at the Dynavox touchscreen mounted on his chair. The regulated monotone voice of his machine sometimes makes it difficult to know when Brian is taking the piss but in this case there can be little doubt.

Maria chooses to ignore their negativity.

‘Now, let’s take it on a bit further. Remember last week when we said there could be some conflict?’

All except Fiona nod their heads.

‘Well, let’s think of ways we can expand the plot by bringing in a bit of conflict. Now when I say conflict I mean trouble, something exciting that makes it more interesting. Successfully negotiating the purchase of a Mars bar is hardly high drama, is it? Okay, never mind. Martin, you’re always good at thinking up ideas and you’re pretty good at making trouble. Can you think of a way we can make it more exciting?’

‘She could be a robber!’

‘Good.’

‘She could steal the Mars bar and I could shoot her!’

Martin mimes pulling a rifle and firing it at Jane.

‘Doof! Doof!’

Jane is alarmed; the familiar expression of panic crosses her face.

‘I’m not a thief!’

‘No, Jane,’ say Maria gently, ‘we’re not talking about you. We mean the character you’re playing. What did we call the customer last week? Mrs Jones, was it?’

‘I’m not married.’

‘I know that, but…’

‘Divorced.’

This is a painful subject for Jane and one that frequently makes her cry. When the consultant said she might never walk or talk
again, Jane’s husband left the hospital that afternoon. Despite the tremendous progress she has made, she has never seen him since.

‘Now Jane, please let’s not think about that. We’re having a nice time this afternoon.’

Jane does not cry, although some saliva escapes from the side of her mouth.

‘I’m Mrs Jones, not her,’ says Fiona.

‘Now, be fair Fiona. You played Mrs Jones last week. It’s Jane’s turn today.’

‘So who’s my husband? Is it still Brian?’

‘No, Brian was the shopkeeper.’

‘He’s my husband and he’s to kiss me!’

‘Fiona I don’t think…’

But Fiona has taken the bull by the horns, the boy by the lips, and planted a ferocious kiss on Brian’s mouth. Brian is taken by surprise. The rest of them giggle or gasp. Martin jumps up and down.

‘Me! Me!’ he cries, ‘I’ll be her husband!’

‘Fiona, leave Brian alone! Fiona!’

Maria tries to gently disengage the kissing couple but Fiona wriggles away from her while maintaining a fierce clamp on Brian’s lips.

‘Fiona, stop it! For goodness sake, Brian’s half your age, leave him alone!’

Fiona, insulted, comes up for air.

‘He likes it!’

‘Do you, Brian?

All eyes are on Brian. The middle finger of his left hand hovers provocatively over his keyboard. He begins to lift his head in preparation for a nod or a shake, it’s hard to tell, but instead he throws up.

‘See what you’ve done now, Fiona?’

‘He’s my husband!’

‘You don’t have a husband,’ says Maria.

‘
You
don’t have a husband. And neither does she!’ shouts Fiona, pointing an accusing finger at Jane.

‘Behave. You’re upsetting everyone with your carry-on. Look at what you’ve done to poor Jane.’

Jane is quietly crying now.

‘
You
behave!’ screams Fiona.

She launches a punch at Maria that glances off her shoulder. Maria dodges out of range of Fiona’s fists but she comes after her.

This is not a problem. Maria has been trained to deal with this situation. The thing to do is not to retaliate, that’s illegal. The thing to do is direct Fiona’s attention away from the subject of her anger, i.e. Maria, and towards a pleasant and peaceful activity.

‘Fiona, do you want a packet of crisps?’

Fiona stops.

‘Yes.’

‘What do we say?’

‘Yes please.’

The soothing effect of the crisps is immediate. To calm things down a bit and because everyone has been so good this afternoon, Maria rewards them all with a bag. Once they have sorted out who wants salt and vinegar and who wants cheese and onion, everyone sits contentedly munching while Maria wipes the vomit from Brian’s clothes. These kinds of outburst are commonplace, easily managed and quickly forgotten. But Fiona, possibly feeling some remorse, wants to make amends.

‘I don’t want to be Mrs Jones,’ she says, tongue-sweeping her mouth for crisp crumbs, ‘Jane can be Mrs Jones, I can sing a song. I’ll sing Donal Og.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Fiona, I’m sure Jane appreciates the gesture but…’

Even while Maria is still talking Fiona begins to sing. A love song, soppy and sentimental, the tune is unfamiliar to Maria but she remembers the words well enough from studying the poem at school.

Fiona sits amongst Blue Group with her head tilted back and her eyes closed. Her hair, black and messy, curly and beautiful, flows to her waist. At key points in the song her eyeballs roll behind squeezed-shut lids, her chubby cheeks jiggling slightly on the high notes, her full lips stretching wide to accommodate the beautiful sound.

This is not commonplace. Maria and the other members of Blue Group have never heard Fiona sing before and are so stunned by the beauty of her voice that they forget to eat their crisps. Or perhaps they don’t want to make any rustling sound. Maria sees that Jane is crying again, tears are plopping into her crisp bag. Maria pulls Jane to her and wraps her arms around her. She rubs her back, her palm gently warming Jane’s knobbly spine.

Maria continues to comfort Jane throughout Fiona’s mesmerising rendition of Donal Og. She can already feel her jumper soaked with tears and saliva.

Ray has wired up the speakers and placed them facing out the way at either side of the church altar. This is where he’ll get the best acoustic effect. Now to choose what to play. It’s important that he christens the place with something appropriate. Sacred would be best seeing as it is, or was, a church. And yet he wants it to be cheery and celebratory. Ah yes, he thinks as he rifles through his extensive Mozart collection, the very dab:
Exsultate Jubilate
: Exult! Rejoice! In Hexton terms: cheer up and straighten your miserable face.

And indeed within the first opening bars his miserable face does miraculously straighten. Despite the nightmare of the last years, he feels exultant. Mozart is working his usual genius. Ray raises his awl like a conductor’s baton as he anticipates the singer’s entrance. Repeatedly she advises him to cheer up but it is not so much what she sings as the way she sings it that he finds so irresistibly uplifting. Mozart has given her a brilliantly fun and inspired vocal work-out, her beautiful voice trilling up and down, filling the church space like an orchestra of birdsong. He can’t help but smile, and here in Hexton it’s okay to smile.

No one in Hexton knows him; they don’t care that he feels good. They won’t think he’s insensitive if he rejoices in life. That’s why he moved here, that and the fact that he neglected the business so much that this is all he can now get.

Hexton is a designated Initiative Area, an Area of Priority Treatment and a recipient of The European Social Fund. Bedecked with every badge of deprivation and poverty, it wears them like a blinged-up Chav.

No one wants to live here or even nearby. Hexton is isolated from the city, hidden away from foreign visitors, and becoming more so. This is one of the few places left in Britain where the green belt is actually widening; where factory yards are being reclaimed by weeds, turning from rust and muck to green again. Flat-capped granddads point to the emerging meadowlands and say wistfully, ‘Once, this was all factory land.’

So that local people might be offered credit or employment in the city, local government has tried to eradicate the stigma of the area by the revisionist tactic of simply changing the name. Hexton has been broken down into smaller areas, grouping four or five streets together and calling them something cute and rural like Pine Walk or Pheasant’s Close. But no one has ever heard of Pheasant’s Close and eventually locals have to make the shameful admission that it is actually the housing scheme formerly known as Hexton.

The council does try. Embarrassed by the shocking health statistics, it throws money at well-intentioned high-target low-expectation projects. These at least look good on paper.

When the factory shut down, the butchers, the dairy and the ironmongers went with it. The mini-marts were not far behind. Within a radius of four miles, excluding the all-night garage that sells milk, fresh produce is no longer available in Hexton. The council has set up, as part of the Hexton Healthy Heart Campaign, a mobile shop; a van which goes round the streets selling fruit and vegetables at subsidised prices. Business has always been slow although there is no shortage of customers. Twice the drivers have been sacked; caught selling contraband sausages and duty-free fags. Ray has heard unsubstantiated rumours from his young friends that, like the countless ice cream vans that ply their trade around the neglected streets, the Healthy Heart mobile shop also sells hash, eckies and whiz.

To Ray, or any business willing to operate from Hexton, the government offers sweeteners: start-up grants, employment grants, interes- free loans, preferential rates for business equipment, free rent of premises, rates rebates, tax breaks. Yet, apart from Ray and a few corner shops, there are no businesses.

The disused church is a long way from the smart custom-built carpentry workshop he used to have. This place is far too big. Along with the church there’s a kitchen, a meeting hall, an office and various committee rooms, there’s even a bell tower he hasn’t explored yet, with bells and everything. On the pews he’s pushed back to make space for his work bench lie red leatherette hymnals inlayed with a flaking golden cross. They’re piled on top of each other, ready and waiting for the congregation to return. The sad little books have been softened by time and dampness, the page edges faded to a dirty grey from all the fingers and thumbs that have leafed through them, searching. Searching for what?

The foosty smell pervades all the rooms. There are curtains limp with dirt, broken-backed chairs. There are shelves of dusty books, religious ones as well as old Penguin novels. On the walls, the green paint bubbling with rot, there are small tapestry samplers with quotations,
Love Thy Neighbour, God is Love
, And a longer one,
Yeah though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I shall fear no Evil
. The whole place has a musty deadness to it that comforts and spooks him in equal measures.

Ray understands death.

But his favourite aphorism is in the kitchen. Beside the yellowing painted cupboards with the brown stained mugs and the tea towels with printed recipes for scones, there is a postcard which reads,

This makes him smile; perhaps those are his reasons too. He’s rattling around in this scary old church all on his own. He had to let the four other carpenters, the two apprentices and the part-time administrator go when he ran out of money and customers.

After the liquidators came in he was lucky to get out with his tool bag. Hexton council gave him this place for free. He can make
furniture here and sell it; it’s the only way he can keep himself in work. He has to keep working just to keep his brain active, to stop the horrible memories coming back, and carpentry is all he knows.

He doesn’t have a plan other than to keep going. He stopped making plans when he realised the futility of planning, of dreaming, of hoping and wishing. He’ll make furniture, what else can he do?