The More You Ignore Me (29 page)

It was
Dunk’s complete acceptance of her as she was now that Gina found comforting.
Even through the fug of her illness and the deadened edges of her emotional
responses she could sense the disappointment Keith carried behind his resigned
smile and his regret that he seemed to have lost her forever. Gina was aware
she would never really get better and something told her that she would be
better off with Dunk than with those people who mourned the loss of her old
self and moved round her like wounded ghosts.

That
night as they lay in bed together, Dunk with his arm round Gina, exhausted
after brief yet energetic sex cut short by premature ejaculation, Gina closed
her eyes and smiled. The voices had quietened a bit. She believed that the
nearer to Morrissey she got, the less they harangued her. She was sure that a
meeting with him would transform her into what and who she wanted to be.

The
following day the pair set off into town to buy Gina some clothes. Dunk, as
ever thinking of saving a few pence, even though he could afford to pay more,
jumped off the bus with Gina near a factory outlet shop which seemed to be
selling a selection of clothes for depressives. Gina looked doubtful until a
record shop next door to the factory shop caught her eye because there was a
picture of Morrissey in the window. Clasping Dunk by the hand, she dragged him
towards the shop.

‘Come
on,’ she said excitedly ‘Let’s go in here instead.’ A young man stood at the
counter with an image of Morrissey on his T-shirt. Gina felt she was getting
closer to her love all the time. It didn’t occur to her to feel guilty about
Dunk. Dunk was safely installed on a different planet from Morrissey; he didn’t
really figure in her calculations.

Gina
approached the young man who was surprised to see what he considered to be two inappropriate
old people cluttering up his shop.

‘Can I
have your T-shirt?’ said Gina. ‘Please, I’ll give you anything.’

‘I’m
sorry, love,’ said the shop assistant disdainfully ‘I need it.’

‘No, I
need it,’ said Gina. ‘It’s a matter of life and death.’

‘You
trying for the Wolverhampton gig?’ said the assistant, somewhat incredulous
that this tramp of a woman could have any idea about Morrissey and his tour
schedule.

Something
made Gina say yes.

‘I
can’t, love,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.

‘Please,’
came back a small but determined voice.

Something
about the desperation in Gina’s voice caused Dunk to step forward.

‘Come
on, mate,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a tenner for it.’

‘You’re
joking, aren’t you?’ said the boy ‘I paid twenty for it.’

The
tense auction that ensued was something to behold. A small audience built up
around them consisting of an erstwhile Hell’s Angel from Chester and a couple
of punks, all of whom felt moved to ally themselves with the underdog.

A
hundred and twenty,’ said Dunk, eventually ‘and that’s my final offer.’

‘Come
on, mate,’ said the Hell’s Angel. ‘For fuck’s sake let them have the bloody
thing.’

There
was a mild threat in his voice which the assistant could not ignore. Eventually
he caved in and said, ‘Oh, all right then, hang on.’

He
disappeared into the back of the shop and came out with a carrier bag which he
handed to Gina. Her face crumpled and she began to cry.

The
little group clapped and whooped and Dunk handed over twelve ten-pound notes,
double his budget for Gina’s new wardrobe.

‘Oh,
thank you,’ said Gina and kissed a surprised Dunk full on the lips. The
audience felt a very slight ripple of disgust run through them but continued to
whoop and cheer.

‘Let’s
go home,’ said Dunk.

They
passed a newsagent’s on the way home and Dunk bought a
Daily Mirror
and
some tobacco while Gina chose a KitKat and an
NME
with Morrissey on the
front. Normally Dunk would have added something from the top shelf to his
purchases because his sexual energy demanded that he have some focus for his
lone nocturnal activities. But in deference to his new ‘friend’ (he didn’t
really know what to call her) he forwent this pleasure. After all, he said to
himself wryly, I’ve got the real thing now.

At
home, he lovingly hand-washed the T-shirt for Gina, which even Dunk with his
minimal attention to personal hygiene surmised had been worn for at least a
week. It hung, dripping, in the bathroom and every ten minutes or so Gina
fluttered towards it to check whether it was dry or not. Eventually, after many
hours, she plucked it from the mouldy shower head on which it was hanging,
despite the fact that it was still slightly damp, and a beatific smile spread
across her face as it appeared from inside the T-shirt.

‘Blimey,’
said Dunk. ‘You don’t half like this geezer, don’t you?’

‘Love,’
said Gina, correcting him. ‘Love.’ And seeing a shadow flit across his face,
she for the first time in years considered someone else’s feelings and said,
‘And you’re fucking brilliant too, Dunk.’

Dunk
smiled.

The five days before
Morrissey’s gig dragged interminably for Alice, with an attendant anxiety that
somehow everything would go wrong. The Smiths split, which had occurred the
year before, had been a terrible blow and had made her depressed for days, but
the news that Morrissey would carry on alone had lifted her spirits and given
her hope for the future. In truth, Alice didn’t really care about the members
of the band or Johnny Marr, she was only interested in Morrissey He was the
only one she considered really held her life in his hands. He was the one who
knew her inside out, who understood her lonely weird life and had the answer to
where her damaged soul could proceed in a world full of dark dreams and
sadness.

As the
days passed, there was no news of Gina and Keith and Alice persuaded themselves
that she was probably all right and that at some point she would reveal herself
somewhere in the country in a disturbed state and be arrested by the police and
brought home. This transition from constant worry to uneasy acceptance had been
tackled by each of them in their own way Although Keith knew Gina was chaotic
and vulnerable, he had faith in the nature of other human beings and convinced
himself that she was safe. Alice had managed to transfer her worry into a
parallel universe and to her it was almost as if Gina had gone on a long
holiday and at some point would turn up with some tasteless souvenirs and a
dirty tan.

Keith
found that he missed Gina in a strange way He didn’t miss the chain-smoking,
unrecognisable person that she had become, but he thought more about their
initial meeting and their courtship than he had for years. Most days he would
drive out in the evening in his little van, scouring the roads and streets in
nearby small towns where he thought she might be. Wobbly and Bighead were doing
the same and coming home frustrated and tired most evenings. Bert, too, spent
his days running through his memories of how Gina had been as a girl, a wild
teenager and a hot-headed woman, with a degree of affection he had not felt at
the time.

He
missed his wife, too, and was surprised by the strength of his feelings, given
that after five or six years of marriage they had merely rubbed along in a
rather grumpy fashion. But behind that there had always been the unspoken understanding
that they were two halves of a whole, Bert dealing with the outside
practicalities of life and Violet keeping the home and fostering what emotional
stability she could in her wayward children.

Marie
Henty, meanwhile, played a waiting game. She observed the depleted little
family consisting of Keith and Alice with a great deal of fondness as they
coped with the trauma of their missing member. Marie was desperate to offer
them more help and support but she was wary of being seen to try and muscle in
on their vulnerability So she sat at home in the evenings, trying not to think
about Keith, and staying her hand as it wandered towards the telephone.

Keith
did call Marie a number of times, but he was reluctant to introduce her into
the household while Alice was there, because he could not fathom Alice’s
feelings about himself and Marie and he felt too weary to plumb those depths
until the situation with Gina was resolved. He spoke to the hospital at regular
intervals, although each call was pretty much a carbon copy of the last, as no
new information about Gina’s whereabouts relieved the pattern of their
conversations.

Finally
the big day dawned and Alice woke excitedly from a shallow sleep. She had
decided to get the bus into Wolverhampton and then, after the show, make her
way across to Norman and Jennifer’s, hoping that by the time she arrived they
would be soundly asleep in their twin beds in the cream-coloured room with its
nylon floral curtains.

Keith
could see the excitement in every aspect of Alice’s demeanour. It was as if she
was preparing for the most important rendezvous of her life. She spent four
times as long as usual in the bathroom, slapping things on and pulling things
out and generally trying to create a sophisticated, educated townie out of a
rather natural, artless country girl.

Alice
had packed and repacked her rucksack, undecided about whether to wear her
Morrissey T-shirt all day or lovingly fold it and try to find a women’s toilet
to change into it. Eventually she decided she would wear it under a jumper; as
she approached the venue, the jumper would be discarded and she would walk into
the place, free and deserved, a reward for all her commitment over the years.

She was
so excited that she decided she could not possibly wait until the afternoon to
travel; she would break her journey at Ludlow and meet Mark for a midday meal
before she journeyed on to Birmingham and from there to Wolverhampton.

She and
Mark sat in De Greys in Broad Street, he staring at a huge steaming bowl of
soup and she picking bits off a cheese and pickle sandwich.

‘I’m
rather jealous,’ said Mark, ‘about your adventure today I wish I was coming
too.’

‘But
you can’t stand Morrissey,’ said Alice, wishing she was going to the gig with
him. Part of the churning she felt inside her was due to the fact that she was
making this trip alone.

‘It’s
not him particularly’ said Mark, ‘it’s your loyalty and your complete absorption
in him that I envy. I don’t think I ever managed it with anyone. Maybe I’m just
not that sort of person.’

‘You’re
lucky,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve used him as a crutch over the years to keep me going
and to put me somewhere other than in my own life. He’s there in my head all
the time and I feel him watching me in some way knowing what my life is about
and wanting it to be better.’

‘Well,
if it’s helped, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ said Mark. ‘Yeah, I suppose
so,’ said Alice. ‘God, there have been so many times I needed not to be in my
own life, to have someone I could talk to, when I was alone in bed at night and
I could hear my dad crying.’

Mark
didn’t know what to say.

Alice
looked at her watch. ‘Will you come and wave me off?’

‘Of
course,’ said Mark.

They
walked to the bus stop and stood chatting neutrally about Mark’s boring job and
the gradual thawing of his relationship with his dad.

‘He
hasn’t got another son,’ said Mark. ‘He’s got to come to terms with what he’s
got and I think my mum has managed to chip away at him and make him think a
bit.’

The bus
pulled up and Mark grabbed Alice, gave her a hug and kissed her on the mouth.

‘I wish
I was Morrissey,’ he said, ‘and in some ways to you…

‘Why?’
asked Alice.

‘Because
you seem…’ Mark’s sentence tailed off. ‘Oh nothing,’ he said. ‘Have a
brilliant time, call me when you get back.’

‘Will
do,’ said Alice.

She got
on the bus and moved to sit at the back so she could wave. As her smiling face
got smaller, Mark was aware of a strange thought he could not shift from his
mind: that he would never see her again.

Alice
settled down in her seat and enjoyed the silent progress of the bus through the
Shropshire countryside. Two chattering women in their seventies who were going
to visit a friend in Birmingham spoke barely at whispering level and seemed
afraid that this young woman two seats back would somehow take the content of
their conversation and use it against them.