The More You Ignore Me (23 page)

‘Oi,
Wobs!’ he shouted when he caught his breath. ‘Come ‘ere, we have a victim of
extreme violence.’

Wobbly
appeared from the outside toilet, pulling up his trousers.

Bighead
pointed to Doug’s head and spluttered, ‘Langforth done that with her walking
stick!’

‘Yes,
all right,’ said Doug. ‘Can we get on with why we came?’

‘Some
fighting lessons?’ said Bighead. ‘How to pound an old lady? Wrestling a baby? How
to keep a teeny weeny little kitten under control?’

The
brothers laughed heartily holding their crotches to communicate to Doug that
they were in danger of pissing themselves.

Keith
and Doug gritted their teeth and waited for them to finish pulling faces and
punching each other in the arm and doing impressions of old women.

‘We’ve
come about Gina,’ said Keith at last.

‘Oh,
right,’ said Bighead. ‘What about ‘er?’

‘She’s
really not well and we need to get her into hospital again.’

This
time the brothers didn’t protest, given Gina’s recent behaviour and their total
inability to fathom it, let alone deal with it.

It was
decided that Wobbly and Bighead would also go out and search for Gina, and
local areas were allocated to them.

‘Bring
her to our cottage if you find her.’

‘OK,’
the brothers chorused meekly which was probably the first time in their lives
they hadn’t been combative towards Keith.

Gina,
meanwhile, was becoming ever more distressed. She had been wandering about on
the outskirts of the village for some time, confused and frightened, and had
decided that the only two people who could save her were Jesus and Morrissey A
pilgrimage to Manchester seemed out of the question even to Gina, so she
slipped quietly into the church to try and find her saviour. But the church was
empty, dark and cold. Her footsteps echoed round its huge expanse. The relief
she had expected to discover there was nowhere to be found. She called, ‘Help
me, Jesus, please come here and help me.’ Echoing silence. Maybe something
louder was needed. Gina climbed the bell tower to the little chamber where the
ropes were neatly hooked to the wall. She snatched a rope free and began to
pull on it with all her might, expecting help to come. The bell had been left
in the down position and a professional ringer would have brought it up to rest
on the wooden stay in readiness for ringing. But Gina didn’t know this and the
harder she pulled, the higher she flew with the rope until she was a good twenty
feet in the air. Something about this was exhilarating and she screamed with
excitement, lost in the rhythm of it all, until she became aware of the figures
of Doug and her husband staring in disbelief at her swinging form. She couldn’t
hold on much longer and let go… landing on the pre-positioned heap of Doug
and Keith.

‘Gina,’
said Keith. ‘Time to go home.’

Alice was sitting by the
fire when Keith and Doug arrived with Gina who was alternately protesting
vehemently and singing hymns and Morrissey songs. They brought her into the
house between them like two security guards.

Marie
Henty was on her way and had called an ambulance to meet them at the house. The
ambulance centre had told her there would be a wait of about two hours. When he
heard this, Keith’s heart sank. How would they contain Gina for that length of
time? Doug offered to stay in case there were any escape attempts and the four
sat together in the sitting room, with Gina glowering at them.

‘Gina,’
said Keith. ‘Dr Henty has organised an ambulance to take you to hospital. We’re
very sorry this has happened, because in a way it’s our fault. We just wanted
to see how you were without too much medication and it hasn’t worked and we
wish it had.’

‘Reel
around the fountain, smack me on the patio,’ sang Gina.

‘It’s
“slap”, Mum,’ said Alice, unable to let this minor slip go.

‘Reel
around the fountain, fuck me on the patio.’ Gina upped the volume to an almost
unbearable level.

‘Mm,
that’s a nice song,’ said Doug. ‘Who’s that by then? Des O’Connor?’

Gina
glared at him and then stood up and started to scream. ‘Oh God, can we cope
with two hours of this?’ said Keith quietly.

‘I have
to cope with a whole fucking lifetime of it!’ Gina shouted in his face. ‘Just
let me be on my own.

‘Do you
want to go in my bedroom, Mum, and listen to some Smiths?’ said Alice,
desperately thrashing around for some way to calm her mother.

Gina
nodded like an acquiescent five-year-old and put her thumb in her mouth.

‘Come
on then,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll come with you, ‘No, I want to go on my own,’ said
Gina. Alice’s stomach churned minutely when she thought of all the precious
Morrissey objects in her room.

‘OK,’
she said tentatively ‘I’ll bring you a cup of tea in a minute.

Gina
climbed the stairs and disappeared into Alice’s room and then there was
silence.

‘Oh
God, this is worse in a way’ said Keith. ‘What do you think she’s doing?’

‘Go and
have a look through the keyhole, Dad,’ said Alice. ‘I don’t want her to ruin
anything.’

‘All
right,’ said Keith. He tiptoed up the stairs and knelt to place one eye against
the keyhole.

Alice
and Doug stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting for news.

‘She’s
eating something,’ said Keith in a stage whisper. ‘But there’s no food in
there,’ said Alice. ‘What does it look like?’

A piece
of paper,’ said Keith. ‘Maybe a letter?’

‘Oh
Jesus!’ Alice took the stairs two at a time and flung open her bedroom door to
see the final scraps of her letter from Morrissey disappearing into her mother’s
mouth.’

‘Oh
Mum,’ she shouted. ‘How could you? My most loved and precious thing.’ She
launched herself at Gina and grabbed what paper she could from her mother’s
mouth. Gina began to laugh hysterically.

Keith
stood helplessly in the doorway as Alice sat on her bed and cried, clutching a
tiny saliva-covered piece of paper with some writing on it, and his wife stared
out of the window, laughing uncontrollably.

‘Fuck,
Dad,’ said Alice through her tears. ‘She’s eaten the only thing that means
something to me.

Keith
wanted to laugh, even though he was desperately sad for Alice.

‘Never
mind, love,’ he said as if she’d grazed her knee in the playground.

Gina
turned to them. ‘He’s inside me now,’ she said, ‘and no one can get him out.’

At a
loss to know what to say or do next, Keith was relieved to hear a knock on the
door. He went downstairs, followed by a disconsolate Alice. It hardly mattered
what her mother did now, it couldn’t be any worse than what she’d already done.

Please
let it be the ambulance, Keith said to himself as he opened the door.

‘Surprise!’
His parents were standing on the doorstep, his mother with her arms
outstretched. ‘We came out for a drive in the country, love, and Norman said we
should make a detour to see you, didn’t you, love?’ She turned to Keith’s dad
with a flourish as if they were in a play and it was now his turn to speak.

‘Yes,
dear,’ said his dad.

‘Mum,
Dad,’ said Keith, ‘it’s lovely to see you but I’m afraid it’s not a good time.
Gina’s very ill and we’re waiting for an ambulance to come. This is Doug, a
friend of ours who’s been helping. Say hello to Nan and Grandad, Alice. Maybe
another day, Mum?’

But
Jennifer was not to be deterred. Sailing into the cottage like a nylon armada,
as if the last and only time she’d been there wasn’t sixteen years ago, she
said, ‘We won’t be any trouble, honestly I’ll just put the kettle on and make
Norman a sandwich, he hasn’t eaten for a couple of hours and you know what his
digestion’s like.’

Keith
didn’t, thankfully and he realised that his mother was not going to be put off
by the mere presence of a seriously disturbed woman.

‘Have
you got any liver pâté?’ said Jennifer, continuing her progress towards the
kitchen. ‘Norman loves that.’

‘I do,’
said Norman, patting his stomach.

As
Keith foolishly asked himself the fate-tempting question, ‘Can this get any
worse?’ Wobbly and Bighead exploded through the front door.

‘Is she
here?’ said Bighead.

‘Yes,’
said Keith, retreating into monosyllables.

‘Keith,
this bread is days old,’ said Jennifer, re-emerging from the kitchen massaging
a perfectly good loaf. ‘And where’s the Hoover, dear? Oh heavens.’ The sight of
Wobbly and Bighead stopped her in her tracks. ‘How lovely to see you two boys.’

Their
expressions betrayed the fact that they had absolutely no idea who this woman
was, having met her only once at Gina and Keith’s wedding, during which Wobbly
and Bighead had only taken notice of those guests they could have sex with or
beat up.

“Ow
do,’ said Wobbly, and Bighead released a very loud fart.

‘Better
out than in,’ said Norman.

Jennifer
looked as if she might faint.

‘Too
right, mate,’ said Bighead and slapped Norman heartily on the back, making him
fear for the continued wellbeing of his ribs.

‘Right,
who wants tea? Hands up,’ said Jennifer, rallying bravely.

Everyone
raised their hands.

‘Would
Gina like one?’ said Jennifer.

Jennifer’s
response to any crisis was to make a cup of tea, whether it was for a visiting
friend or a daughter-in-law with chronic schizophrenia in the acute phase of
her illness. Norman had always assumed that given half a chance Jennifer would
have popped into Hitler’s bunker and offered him a cup of PG Tips.

‘Hmm,’
said Doug quietly to Keith. ‘Tea as a cure for schizophrenia, it might just
work.’

‘No
muttering amongst yourselves,’ said Jennifer. ‘Come on, lay the table, Keith,
and I’ll knock up some rock buns to go with our tea, as you don’t appear to
have any biscuits in your tin.’

And she
did. Within twenty minutes tea had been made, cakes had appeared on plates and
everyone stood around as though life was completely mundane.

‘I’ll just
pop a cuppa up to poor Gina,’ said Jennifer. ‘In bed, is she?’ as if she had
flu.

‘I’d
better do it,’ said Keith. ‘She’s in Alice’s room.

‘No,
it’s all right, dear,’ said Jennifer. ‘Haven’t seen poor Gina in an age, we’ll
have plenty to chat about.’

Bloody
hell, thought Keith. Absence does make the heart grow fonder. I wonder if my
mother has early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Jennifer
tripped up the stairs like a teenager, humming a tune from
The Sound Of
Music.

‘Hello,
Gina dear,’ she called. ‘Tea.’

She
entered Alice’s room. Gina had torn the big Morrissey poster from the wall and
stuck her head through it.

Jennifer
decided to ignore this and put the tray on a chest of drawers.

‘So how
are you?’ she said.

Gina
sang, ‘It’s time that the tale were told of how you took a boy and you made him
old.’

‘Nice
tune, dear,’ said Jennifer pleasantly, ‘but I think you’ll find that you’re the
one who’s made my poor Keith old before his time. Do you ever spare him a
thought in all this … this … this … disorderliness, dear?’

Gina
snorted and launched into the chorus.

‘We’ll
talk later,’ said Jennifer. ‘Try a rock bun, Gina. Everyone at the bridge club
swears by them.’ She left the room, shaking her head.

Gina
did try a rock bun — as a missile. She had spotted Marie Henty’s car arrive and
as Marie climbed out of it, a couple of rock buns whistled past her ears.

‘Piss
off,’ shouted Gina. ‘We’re having a nice time without you.’

This
cut right to the heart of Marie Henty’s deepest fear, that everyone did have a
better time without her and people said things like, ‘Oh shit, here comes Marie
Henty, now the party’ll take a nosedive.’