The More You Ignore Me (18 page)

‘All
right,’ said Alice, ‘I’ll come, but only to keep an eye on you.

Mark
grinned. ‘Bring a balaclava,’ he said, ‘or something that covers you up and
makes you disappear into the crowd. There’ll be a lot of people there that we
both know and we don’t want to be recognised by anyone.

‘All
right,’ said Alice, thinking it was probably time she supported her friend in
his endeavours.

At
home, she listened to ‘Meat Is Murder’ again and couldn’t get the phrase
‘unholy stench’ out of her head. Keith, passing her room on the way to the
toilet, called in, ‘How did that man know I was on my way for a poo?’

‘Dad,’
said Alice reprovingly.

They met early on Saturday
morning and lingered just outside the small town centre where the hunt was
meeting. A compact group of so-called ‘hunt saboteurs’ were there, maybe
fifteen or sixteen, a high number of whom did this all over several counties
and were poised ready for the fight. Alice was aghast to see quite a few of
them appeared to be concealing rudimentary weapons, like homemade truncheons,
under their clothing.

‘Is it
going to get nasty?’ she said, turning to Mark who had a determined look on his
face.

‘Don’t
know,’ he said. ‘It has done a few times.’

Oh God,
thought Alice. Out loud she said, ‘If it all goes off, I’m legging it. I can’t
stand violence of any sort.’

‘Fair
enough,’ said Mark. ‘I’m not expecting you to knock anyone out.’

When
the hunt was fully assembled and had gone through much patting of each other
and the raising of glasses of unidentifiable alcohol, it left the square and
began to head out towards the fields. Mark and the rest of the little gang lay
in wait in a lane which led down towards the woods and, as they passed, the
beagles yelping and playfully nipping at each other’s paws, the gang appeared
from the camouflage of several large trees and implemented their plan which
seemed to be shouting a lot of abuse at this early stage.

‘Fuck
off, you bunch of towny fairies,’ shouted one of the huntsmen, who turned out
to be Mark’s dad. He obviously had absolutely no idea that his son was
concealed amongst these well-wrapped and heavily disguised students. Another of
the huntsmen took a swing with his whip at one of the girls who stood by the
side of his horse, shouting something slightly more conciliatory and more
constructive than most of the others.

The
whip caught her on the side of the face and she screamed out in pain. Someone
shouted, ‘We’ve got one of the bitches!’ causing the hunters, including some
relatively young children, to cheer at the top of their voices.

Very
quickly, everything became uncontrolled and chaotic. There was some shouting
and scuffling around the legs of the horses, some of whom became frightened and
started to rear up, others to bolt. At this point, the huntsmen, fed up with
their morning’s entertainment being interrupted, decided to split into smaller
groups and pursue the protesters. They almost seemed to have a plan, as pairs
of riders each isolated one or two saboteurs and began to chase them through
the woodland or along the muddy, rutted paths that ran beside them.

Alice
didn’t have enough time to slip away unnoticed and divest herself of her
disguise. Instead she found herself running as fast as she could alongside Mark
as they were driven further into the darker part of the wood. Alice could hear
her own heart thumping in her ears and felt as if her lungs were bleeding. She
knew it was ridiculous to try and outrun a horse and prayed they would come to
a small river they could wade through or a fence they could climb. They did
finally hit a barbed-wire fence and exchanged frightened glances as they
attempted to scramble over. It was no use, though, and the more they tried, the
more entangled they became until two huntsmen appeared behind them wearing
sadistic grins and shouting abuse. They pulled Mark down and one of them
produced an evil-looking lump of wood with which he battered Mark until blood
began to seep out of the scarf wound round his head.

‘Stop,
for Christ’s sake, stop!’ screamed Alice and looked up to see Mark’s father in
a frenzied rage standing over his son, about to deliver yet another blow.

Alice realised that the
two furious huntsmen had no idea who they were and pulled off her balaclava and
the scarf hiding her face.

‘Now
will you stop!’ she screamed, as Mark’s father paused for a moment, weapon in
mid-air, and looked at her, nonplussed. Rather than the shock followed by
sympathy that she had expected, a sneer appeared on his face.

‘I
might have known it would be you with the fucking mental mother,’ he shouted in
her face, spittle flying from his mouth. ‘I’ve told my son to keep well away
from you and your mad family and I’m glad I did, you stupid little tart. And
who have you got with you then? Some cretinous posh wanker from Birmingham, I
expect. Well, a beating never went amiss with those sort of arseholes, eh,
James?’

He
turned to his comrade who chuckled and nodded. ‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’

He bent
down towards Mark and pulled off the bloodied balaclava and scarf to reveal his
son.

A
greyness filled his face for a spilt second and then he was comfortably back in
his unfeeling skin.

His
friend, however, looked as if he might faint. Mark groaned, blood coming from
his nose and from a cut on his face, and he curled into a foetal ball.

‘Jesus
fucking Christ, Mark,’ shouted his father. ‘What the hell do you think you’re
playing at? I’ll never live this down in the village, you stupid little
arsehole.’

‘He’s
really hurt,’ said Alice. ‘Shouldn’t we take him to hospital?’

The
friend nodded in accord and Mark’s father grunted and sat his son up. He pulled
him across his body and managed to get Mark’s slim frame over his shoulder.
Once Mark was secured in the manner of a fireman’s carry, his father turned to
James and Alice and searched their faces with a venomous expression.

‘No one
is to hear about this, do you understand?’

James,
who was obviously terrified of him, nodded and mumbled his agreement. ‘Yes,
Phil, I promise, wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Right,’
he said, looking slightly disgusted by James’s grovelling capitulation. ‘And
you?’ he said, turning to Alice as if she was a prostitute he’d just used,
which he did frequently in the grimmer part of Hereford.

Alice
stared defiantly at this brutal man, a rather more upmarket version of her
uncles, and nodded her head. She didn’t want to make things any worse for Mark.

‘Right,’
said Phil. ‘This is the story. Me and Jim found you in the woods and you’d been
attacked by two blokes who could have been with the hunt, you’re not sure. The
police will not be involved, but that is the story you will tell people. Do not
elaborate on the incident, decline to give descriptions and we’ll leave it at
that.’

Then he
turned and began to move through the tangle of the woods like a man in his
twenties, at such a pace that Alice could hardly keep up. She and James threw
glances at each other every time Mark groaned and Alice realised that James was
a coward, the sort of man who clings like a frightened animal to whoever is
winning. She noted a tiny glimmer of sympathy in his expression and smiled
reassuringly at him. But this was too much of a betrayal for James and he gave
her a hard glare.

When
they reached the road, Phil flagged down a Land Rover belonging to Stan, a
smallholder from the edge of the village. James helped Phil into the car with
the semi-conscious Mark. As Alice tried to climb up too, Phil turned to her and
under his breath said, ‘Not you, you can walk home.’

‘Is she
not coming?’ shouted Stan from the driver’s seat. ‘She’s welcome, you know.’

‘It’s
all right, I’d rather walk,’ said Alice and despite Stan’s protestations she
headed off up the lane without a backward glance.

As the
Land Rover disappeared round a corner, the shock of the attack overcame Alice
and her legs started to buckle. She sat down on the verge and began to cry.

Some
hours later she arrived home to find a quiet house. Keith was asleep in front
of the telly and her mum was upstairs in the bedroom. Alice calmed her shaking
body. She didn’t want to tell Keith about the scene that had just occurred in
the woods unless she absolutely had to.

‘Hello,’
shouted Alice up the stairs, more out of habit than any expectation that her
mum would answer.

‘Hello!’
came back the reply.

Alice
raced up the stairs two at a time, not quite believing what she had heard. Her
mum was not in her bedroom but in Alice’s room where Alice found her staring at
her big poster of Morrissey.

Gina
looked her normal dishevelled self and although there had been no miraculous
transformation into the old Gina, something about her facial expression told
Alice that a sense of interest in her surroundings had begun to re-emerge.

‘Who’s
that?’ Gina asked.

‘It’s a
singer called Morrissey,’ said Alice.

‘Oh,’
said her mum and retreated back into her normal silence.

When
Keith woke up and shouted up the stairs, Alice raced down to meet him.

‘Mum
answered me!’ she shouted as she ran triumphantly towards Keith and hugged him.

Keith
simultaneously managed to think how wonderful this was and also how tragic that
the mere answer to this question should elicit such joy.

‘So,
what’s different?’ he asked.

Alice
looked a bit defensive and said, ‘Nothing really’

Alice
wondered if it was time to tell him about Gina’s new regime of medication. She
felt shaky and damaged after the incident with Mark’s dad and a longing to
confess nagged at her.

‘Alice?’
He only needed to use a certain tone of voice and out came every piece of
relevant information he needed about what had been going on. Alice detailed the
two visits to hospital, and her meetings with Marie Henty, although she left
out the bits about promising to facilitate a romance between Marie and her
father.

‘Alice.’
This was an angry voice laced with a tiny shred of concern.

‘I’m
sorry, Dad,’ said Alice, ‘but I can’t stand it for Mum. And I don’t suppose she
can stand it either.’

‘I
know, love,’ said Keith wearily ‘All right, we’ll try it for a couple of months
and we’ll see how it goes. If not, she’s straight back on her injections.’

‘OK,’
said Alice. ‘Marie Henty’s been great, though, Dad. She really does care, you
know.’

‘Yes,’
said Keith, somewhat surprised by this positive refraining of Marie Henty, who
for years had seemed to irritate Alice.

‘Yes,’
Alice went on. ‘I had a really long talk with her and she wants the best for
Mum like I do — well, she wants the best for all of us, you know.’

Keith’s
expression of increasing bemusement stopped Alice in her paean to Marie Henty
Realising she was laying it on a bit thick, she said, ‘I’ve got some work to do
upstairs, I’ll see you later.’

‘Okey
dokey,’ said Keith. ‘I’ll make us some food. Cheese and toast OK?’

‘Vine,’
said Alice, smiling to herself. Poor Keith struggled to come up with ideas
suitable for a recently spawned vegetarian. Alice climbed the stairs again to
find her mother still sitting in her bedroom staring at the poster.

‘Tell
me some more about Morriston,’ she said as Alice came into the room.

‘Morrissey,’
Alice corrected her. ‘Well, why not listen to some of his music and see what you
think?’

‘OK,’
said Gina.

The
pair sat on the bed and Alice put on the first Smiths album and they listened
all the way through, neither saying a word until Keith came into the room.

‘Well,
I never,’ he said. ‘Mum’s listening to that Morrissey, is she?’

‘I like
it,’ said Gina. ‘He’s saying something to me. Keith and Alice exchanged
half-worried, half-bemused glances.