The More You Ignore Me (24 page)

She
nearly got back into her car, but as she turned she saw an ambulance crawling
up the road, seemingly in no hurry.

‘After
all, it’s only a fucking nutty bird,’ as Gil the driver had remarked to his
partner, Shaz.

The
ambulance stopped a few inches behind Marie Henty’s car and Gil wound down the
window.

‘Nutter
patrol,’ he said cheerily saluting Marie. ‘That’s rather unprofessional,’ she
said. ‘I could have been a relative or indeed the patient herself.’

‘Sorry,
love,’ said Gil. ‘Only having a laugh.’

‘You’d
better come in with me then,’ said Marie. ‘I’m Gina’s GP’

Gil
noticeably stiffened in his seat and muttered, ‘GP,’ out of the side of his
mouth at Shazzer, who mentally put on her professional hat too. The pair
descended from the ambulance.

Keith
opened the door and relief swept over his face when he saw the trio.

‘Great,’
he said. ‘Let’s get going then. ‘Jennifer appeared behind him. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘I’m Keith’s mother, Jennifer.’ ‘Marie Henty GP,’ said Marie.

What a
lovely young woman, Jennifer found herself thinking. If only Keith could have
married someone like her.

Keith
and Doug went up to Alice’s bedroom and found her still wearing the Morrissey
poster.

‘Come
on, love,’ said Keith. ‘The ambulance is here, we need to go.’

In the
deepest part of her Gina knew it was the right thing and if she was honest with
herself, the fight had gone out of her. She pulled the poster off and stood up.
Keith handed her a little bag containing some toiletries and clothes he had
packed for her. He put one of his old jackets round her shoulders and she smelt
him sitting round her like a protective cape and smiled as a part of her
remembered how it had been right at the beginning. Then she was assaulted by
how it was now and tears began to roll down her cheeks.

‘Don’t
worry, sweetheart,’ said Keith. ‘Let’s try and get things back on an even
keel.’

‘To die
by your side…’ sang Gina.

‘I
know,’ said Keith, ‘I know.’

Alice
volunteered to stay at home. Secretly she had no wish to go in the ambulance,
since the last time she’d been in one it had carried her and the recently
departed Nan Wildgoose to hospital.

Keith
saw this and nodded in agreement. He, Doug and Marie Henty went towards the
ambulance with Gina.

‘Shall
we strap her in, guv’nor?’ said Gil too cheerily and too loudly.

‘No,’
said Keith with a thunderous expression, all his contempt, misery and anger in
that one word.

‘Shall
we come?’ shouted Bighead as the trio propelled Gina into the ambulance.

‘No,
you’re all right,’ said Keith, and then mischievously he added, ‘Stay and have
a cup of tea with my mum and dad. I know they’d be interested to hear all about
your lives in the country.’

Jennifer
heard this and blanched. She gazed very pointedly at her delicate,
expensive-looking (she thought) lady’s wristwatch.

‘Norman,
dear,’ she said. ‘I believe some football you might want to watch is on tonight
and we should be making tracks.’

Nonplussed,
Norman nodded, hoping against hope that the afternoon’s proceedings had evoked an
empathy in his wife which presaged a rosier future together.

As they
stood and waved the ambulance off as if it was going to war or on holiday, he
was rapidly disabused of this belief when Jennifer turned to him and said,
‘Well, I had to say something to get us away from these pungent bumpkins.
There’s an extended
Corrie
tonight.’

His
heart sank in rhythm with the sun, which disappeared behind the hill, flooding
the countryside with black.

In the ambulance,
a subdued Gina turned to Keith and said, ‘I know I’m not very well, Keith, but
Morrissey will make me better.’

That
the one and only time Gina had ever shown any insight into her illness should
be tempered by this ludicrous belief made Keith despair.

Gina’s arrival at the
hospital was a slightly quieter affair than her previous admission. Keith was
surprised at how calm and compliant she seemed and wondered what lay behind it.
After a brief interview with the duty doctor, he, Doug and Marie accompanied
Gina down the usual paste-coloured corridor to the admission ward. At the door
Keith kissed Gina goodbye and told her to call him if she needed anything. Gina
nodded in assent and then walked into the ward as if she was off for a two-day
break at a health farm.

‘They’ve
no idea what she’s planning,’ whispered one of the voices in her head.

The
other voice laughed in agreement.

In the
taxi on the way home, Marie sat next to Keith in the back and Doug sat in the
front.

‘Thanks,
guys,’ said Keith and gave Doug a pat on the shoulder and Marie a squeeze of
the hand which woke a few sleeping butterflies in her stomach.

‘You’re
welcome,’ they said together and laughed at the sound of their chorus.

Doug
was deposited at his shop and the taxi continued on its way with Keith and
Marie.

‘I’ll
collect my car at yours,’ said Marie, ‘and then I’d better be off. I’ve lots to
do at home.’

The
years had taught her that as a woman whose physical charms put her some way
down the universal list of beddable females, it was always better to appear to
be busy, to be on your way somewhere, to not care whether someone invited you
for further contact or not. Each time she made one of these self-protective
statements, she awarded herself a point which pushed her, in her own eyes, up
the scale of independent women who did not give a toss about whether the male
in their life cared or not.

At the
cottage Marie followed her rules and did not hang around to see what Keith
would do, particularly given that she had so spectacularly broken her rules
recently by kissing him. She headed for her car and was about to unlock it when
Keith called out, ‘Do you want to come in for a drink?’

She
knew a few strategic refusals might bolster her chances with many men but
something instinctively told her that this was a milestone for Keith and that
she should accept. Shouldn’t she? Maybe he wanted to talk wife, medication,
daughter or — horrors — some physical problem he was suffering from.

‘OK,’
she found herself saying, and turned back to the cottage.

Alice
was in front of the television, staring gloomily at it but not really seeing
it.

‘Hello,
Dad, Marie,’ she said miserably.

‘Don’t
worry, love, Mum’s in the best place,’ said Keith, assuming the failure of her
plan to free her mother from the yoke of long-term medication was the reason
for her gloom.

‘It’s
not that,’ said Alice. ‘She ate my bloody letter from Morrissey The one thing
I’ve got that’s truly from him, and it was such a beautiful letter as well.’

Keith,
whose raison d’être was to make everyone’s life better, said, ‘I’m sure I
could—’

‘What,
get it back? Get him to write a copy? Oh, for Christ’s sake, Dad, that’s one
thing you can’t do,’ said Alice angrily, one of the few times in their
relationship when she’d turned on him. ‘I’m going to bed.’ She got up and
walked out of the room, with Keith’s hurting, helpless heart following behind.

‘Oh
dear,’ said Marie. ‘Poor Alice, she’s had a rough time of it lately’

‘Yes,’
said Keith. ‘I really wish there was something I could do to cheer her up.’

‘Well,
how about getting her some tickets for Morrissey?’ said Marie. ‘I’m sure he
must be playing somewhere reasonably near and perhaps you could write to him
and ask him if she could go backstage and meet him afterwards.’

‘You’re
a bloody genius,’ said Keith. ‘That never even occurred to me. Let’s celebrate
with a beer and a smoke.’

Marie Henty
was a little bit naive about drug consumption and assumed Keith was going to
produce a packet of Number Six. She didn’t smoke but she grinned encouragingly
because she didn’t want to appear too much of an innocent.

Keith
came in from the kitchen with two cans of Heineken.

‘Sorry,’
he said. ‘It’s not exactly posh.’

‘It’s
fine,’ said Marie, taking the can and waiting for him to hand her a glass. But
he didn’t, so she opened her can and began to drink, thinking her mother would
be more than disapproving if she saw her daughter behaving in this loutish
country way Keith disappeared and returned with an old tobacco tin, out of
which came Rizlas, a rolling machine, filters and a tiny lump of cannabis. He
set to work rolling a joint while Marie observed the process with fascination,
having bypassed drug experimentation and piss-ups at medical school in favour
of dinner parties and behaving like a middle-aged church-goer from the Home
Counties.

Should
I say something, she wondered, about never having done this before? Should I
point out it’s illegal?

Keith
seemed to have guessed her thoughts.

‘It’s
all right,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.’ He lit the joint, had
a few big draws on it and then handed it over to Marie, who took it rather
gingerly.

She had
only once had a puff of a roll-up at school and it had caused her to throw up
in a bin by the hockey pitch, so she was slightly worried about what it would
do. But in the spirit of the hour she drew in a huge amount of smoke and then
found herself coughing, gagging and laughing all at the same time.

‘Steady
on,’ said Keith. ‘I’ve only got a little bit, you know. ‘The ‘little bit’
extended to five joints, by the end of which Marie felt distinctly weird. She
and Keith were chatting easily about Gina, about the village and about Keith’s
parents when Keith turned to Marie and said, ‘I’m sorry to ask you a
professional question amongst all this, but my dad, Norman, who was here today,
was complaining about his haemorrhoids. Is there anything you can suggest?’ He
looked very serious.

Marie
felt an uncontrollable urge to laugh. She attempted to hold her features in an
expression of concern but the effort proved too much and she let out an
explosive guffaw, soaking Keith’s elderly Aztec-patterned tank top with a
mouthful of lager.

Keith
looked horrified and then his features began to crumble and he let himself be
overtaken by a fit of the most adolescent giggling he could ever remember.

This
only made matters worse for Marie and through her tears of laughter she
suggested, ‘How about poking them back up with a sharp stick?’

‘He
hasn’t got a stick,’ said Keith simply, which was possibly the funniest thing
Marie had ever heard in her life and her laughter became a torrent of
hiccupping, scattergun cackling which she could not rein in.

‘He’s
got some golf clubs,’ said Keith and this set them both off again until Marie
felt there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room to supply their breathing.

‘I
recommend a nine iron,’ she said, at which point Keith sank on to the floor and
pummelled the ancient Axminster rug with his fists, shouting, ‘Oh stop it! Stop
it!’ between cascades of laughter.

Marie
got up to help Keith off the floor, wobbled and then keeled over on top of him,
both of them still laughing. And then out of all the ridiculous, uncontrolled
jollity came a moment when they stared directly at each other and their
expressions changed.

Even in
this state of advanced intoxication, Marie found her inner self telling her
outer self, ‘Don’t pounce, what-ever you do, don’t pounce.

She
didn’t need to because Keith did. Fuelled with two cans of Heineken and five
joints, the realisation dawned on him that Marie Henty was the most captivating,
most entertaining, most articulate and most intelligent woman he’d ever met.
They kissed each other like drunken teenagers and every now and then broke
their embrace to stare at each other, giggle and then kiss again.

Upstairs,
Alice started and woke out of her miserable sleep. She heard a thump downstairs
and wondered what could be going on. Surely her dad couldn’t be stumbling
around at this time of night and there wasn’t a burglar in the county who could
find anything remotely interesting to steal in their mean little cottage.