The More You Ignore Me (14 page)

Ma Wildgoose’s funeral was
arranged, with the help of May, for the following Tuesday The small group
consisting of Bert, Wobbly, Bighead, Keith, Alice, Gina and May stood in the
little church while the vicar made heavy work of the funeral service. No hymns
were sung as the vicar had made a unilateral decision that the number of
mourners precluded any decent performance, so after a fairly short time the
pallbearers — Bert, Wobbly, Bighead and Keith — struggled outside and made
their slow progress towards the freshly dug grave.

Keith
had wondered whether the brothers would find some spurious reason for starting
a fight, but they were unusually subdued as everyone stood round the grave and
threw a handful of earth on top of Ma Wildgoose.

Bert
shook the vicar’s hand.

‘Bit of
tea back at ours?’ he said. ‘May’s laid on a nice spread.’

‘I’m so
sorry,’ said the vicar, ‘I have another engagement, please excuse me.’ And he
escaped to the womb-like safety of his den in the vicarage and finished off
The
Times
crossword.

May’s
‘spread’ seemed to consist mainly of huge doorstops of bread, between which lay
an unidentifiable slimy meat. On inquiry this turned out to be tongue. The
sandwiches were accompanied by a huge amount of cider and a sad-looking bottle
of sherry. May had also included a cake which looked as if it had literally
been thrown into the room, its original shape completely lost after it had been
stuffed by May into a carrier bag and then sat on by Bert who had taken up his
usual seat in the kitchen without even noticing it.

Cider
was poured into a selection of unclean glasses and Bert proposed a toast.

‘To my
old missus,’ he said, ‘who was often a pain in the arse but a good woman all
the same. To…’

‘Nan,’
said Alice.

‘Mum,’
said Wobbly, Bighead and Gina.

Keith,
after a split-second decision, said ‘Mum’ too and Bert whispered ‘Darling’
which was heard by no one and harked back to the day they had met at a funfair
and her wild cackling and flashing eyes had inexorably drawn him towards her.

Alice
felt sick. Her head was aching and spinning. Either the cider was so strong,
one sip had altered her equilibrium, or she was ill. She sat down but didn’t
feel any better. Eventually she said, ‘Dad, I don’t feel well, can I go home?’

‘Go on
then,’ said Keith. ‘We’ll see you there later.’

On the
way home, Alice threw up in a ditch and covered it over with some stray
branches. She went immediately to her bedroom, put on her Smiths album and lay
on the bed thinking about how Morrissey would feel when she eventually wrote
to him about the events on the night of his Leicester gig. He’ll have to come
and get me, she thought. He’ll know how much I need him.

Keith,
who had felt duty bound to stay at the wake until the bitter end, was beginning
to regret it. Wobbly and Bighead were becoming more animated with every pint
and had begun to tell each other dirty jokes. And then the atmosphere abruptly
changed when Wobbly said, ‘Of course, if poor old Mum didn’t have had to drag
herself all the way to fucking Leicester, none of this would ‘ave ‘appened.’
His eyes glinted, showing the room some concrete evidence of his dangerous
spirit.

Aw,
come on, son,’ said Bert. ‘It weren’t their fault. Mum didn’t have needed to go
if she didn’t want.’

‘Who
are these Smiths anyway?’ said Bighead, yawning and scratching his hairy gut,
most of which had lost the battle to be contained by his tight trousers.

‘Well,
just a group that Alice really likes,’ said Keith. ‘I don’t really know much
about them.’

‘I’ve
seen ‘em in the paper,’ said Wobbly, whose reading age was about nine. ‘They
say ‘e’s a poof who’s a
vegetarian.’
To Wobbly, being a vegetarian was
only marginally above being gay on the scum scale.

‘Sounds
like a right wanker to me,’ said Bighead. ‘Why can’t your Alice like someone
decent like Elton John or Barbra Streisand?’

Keith
was desperate to point out that Elton John was not the full-blown heterosexual
male the brothers assumed and that most of Barbra Streisand’s fans also batted
for the other side. Still, it was a wake, so he desisted, unwilling to return
home with some physical evidence upon him that Wobbly and Bighead had abused
him.

‘Well,’
said Keith, ‘I’d better be going. Alice didn’t look too well. Gina, are you
coming?’ He turned to Gina who had sat silently by the table guzzling cider and
smoking for the last hour.

‘No,’
she said. ‘I want to stay here with my brothers.’

All
right, love,’ said Keith. He turned to the boys and Bert. ‘Phone me when you
want me to pick her up,’ he said.

All
right, Keefy,’ said Bighead in a high-pitched little girl’s voice which scared
Keith.

Once
out of the door, he breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Alice realised on waking
the next morning that something wasn’t right with the middle section of
herself. Odd rumblings were occurring which felt strange and uncomfortable.
She ran into the bathroom and vomited into the sink, immediately regretting
that she hadn’t gone for the toilet as it would have been so much easier to
wash away.

It hit
her like a punch.

Jesus
Christ, she thought. I’m pregnant.

And so
she was. The encounter with Mark in his bedroom had resulted in the tiny coming
together of their genes which in some months from now would bind them forever.
She found herself thinking that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Images
passed through her mind of herself and Mark alone in a small house with a
little gurgling bundle which knitted together their physical and emotional
characteristics.

Are you
all right, love?’ Keith had heard the noises in the bathroom.

‘Fine,’
said Alice. ‘I think the food at the cottage yesterday was probably a bit
dodgy.’

‘OK,’
said Keith. Are you all right for school?’

‘I
think so.’

Alice
sat on her bed feeling less like school than she’d ever felt but it was
important to stagger through the day as best she could without anyone noticing
that she, as so many before her, carried the country girl’s shame inside her.

Her
mind whirred. She would need to find out for sure if she was pregnant and this
would involve travelling to a far-flung chemist where nobody knew her, to buy a
pregnancy test. Hereford was out of the question. She didn’t know if she could
sit on the rumbling bus without throwing up.

She
conjured up an image of the transaction in her head. She entered an empty shop
staffed by a friendly, weary-faced woman, asked for a pregnancy testing kit and
left, unsullied by human dialogue. It all seemed so easy She decided to go to
Knighton on her bike after school. The fact that Knighton was in Wales, a
different country, somehow set it apart, increased her anonymity. She just had
the school day to get through.

She
clasped the secret to her like a little package of woe all day.

The
cycle ride to Knighton was lovely despite it being a journey towards potential
catastrophe. When Alice arrived, she leaned her bike against the clock tower
and entered the chemist. Of course, the scenario she had imagined had been replaced
by a horrible reality. There was Mrs Percival from the farm near Mark’s,
chatting away to the pharmacist as if she was going to be there all day They
both turned their eyes towards Alice.

‘Can I
help?’ said the pharmacist.

‘Hello,
Alice dear.’ said Mrs Percival at the same time.

‘Er,
no… I…’ Alice trailed off lamely ‘Hello, Mrs Percival,’ she added.

The two
adults continued their conversation, giving Alice a few precious seconds to
account for her hesitation.

‘My
grandad wanted me to get him something and I can’t remember what it was,’ said
Alice. ‘Sorry.’

‘What
was it for, love?’ said the pharmacist.

‘Upset
tummy,’ said Alice, thinking that was probably general enough.

‘Milk
of magnesia’s probably best,’ said the pharmacist reaching behind him and getting
a bottle.

‘Thanks.’
said Alice.

She
paid the pharmacist and turned to embark on the well-worn walk of the teenager
exiting the chemist bearing a product she neither wanted nor needed.

Mrs
Percival turned to the pharmacist with a grin. ‘Well, Bert Wildgoose has a
cast-iron stomach and her other grandad lives over Birmingham way,’ she said
triumphantly ‘What do you reckon she was really after? Condoms or a pregnancy
test?’

Alice
arrived home, frustrated, sweaty and nauseous.

‘Spag bol
for tea,’ said Keith as she lingered in the small dingy hallway, hoping she
could avoid him.

‘Right,’
said Alice. ‘I’ll just go and change.’

She lay
on her bed underneath her poster of Morrissey and was struck by an unfamiliar
sensation, a hundredfold period pain ache accompanied by a somersaulting
sensation.

‘Something
is happening, Morrissey,’ she said aloud, ‘and I don’t like it.’

Whatever
was happening to her, she didn’t want it to happen in this small bedroom in the
dark cottage; she felt she needed to be outside on her own.

She
stood up and staggered a little, the change from lying to standing causing her
blood pressure to drop. She walked gingerly downstairs, shouting to Keith as
she went, ‘I’m just going for a quick walk. Can you keep my tea warm?’

‘Okey
dokey,’ he replied from the kitchen, feeling strangely miffed at her exit.

Alice
walked quickly up the hill, her boots squelching on the mash of grass, oak
leaves and brambles that lined the road. She opened the gate into the field
that led up the small path into the wood. A dog-walker on the horizon above her
raised a hand. She raised her hand and turned away. taking a less well-worn
path which was nonetheless familiar to her in the gloom.

As soon
as she was concealed by the trees from any passing strollers and their weak
torches, she sat down on the earth and felt the wet and cold begin to seep into
her as a warm rush of something poured out from inside her, accompanied by a
great spasm, not so much painful as rolling and uncontrollable. The physical
sense of loss was accompanied by a sharp pain in what she assumed was her heart
as the tiny thing she had created with Mark began to fall out of her. She
stopped a great roar which was rising in her throat for fear of attracting
attention and just let it happen to her there in the darkness, with the drip of
water from the trees pinging around her face.

It took
hours and she knew that Keith would be worrying. Torchlight flickered beneath
her at the bottom of the hill and she heard a voice calling her from below. It
was her dad. More than ever she wished for a nice, comfy, all-enveloping mother
but she knew that it was her dad who would always be the one to rescue her from
the depths.

She
stood up, her jeans soaked in blood, and wondered if she could hide it from
him.

‘Dad, I’m
here!’ she called and stumbled through the undergrowth towards him.

His
worried face broke into a smile.

‘Bloody
hell. Alice.’ he said, ‘I thought it was going to be a short walk. It’s half
eleven.’

‘Sorry,’
said Alice. ‘Can I not talk about it?’

Are you
sure?’ he said.

‘Yes,’
said Alice.

‘All
right.’ he said and he put his arm round her. They descended slowly, neither of
them saying a word, although Keith was humming a Bob Dylan song that Alice
really liked and she began to sing the words as they got nearer the house.

He
turned to her. Are you tangled up in blue?’ he said.

‘I’m
tangled up in black at the moment,’ she said.

In her
room she took off her blood-soaked jeans and pants and put them in a carrier
bag under her bed, not wanting to lose what remained of her first experience of
motherhood. Then she put on her pyjamas over some big pants stuffed with a big
wodge of folded toilet paper and went down at midnight to eat her dinner.