The More You Ignore Me (30 page)

Alice
arrived in Birmingham some hours later and changed buses at the grimy bus
station, feeling a little bit apprehensive as she drew nearer to her
destination.

She
arrived at about six o’clock, with an hour or so to go until the event began.

To come
from her silent and solo adoration of Morrissey to a huge crowd who absorbed
and analysed his every word and felt that he spoke only to them was traumatic
and inspiring all at the same time. The streets were teeming with an army of
people under the age of twenty, all of whom seemed to be dressed in a uniform
specified by Morrissey himself. Quiffs, cardigans and NHS glasses were
everywhere, scuffles were breaking out between groups of excited people and
Alice felt frightened by it all rather than borne aloft on the sheer
uncontrolled exuberance that filled the air like drugged oxygen.

There
were obviously far too many people to fit into the civic hall and Alice
wondered what would happen. It was clear from the atmosphere that things could
turn nasty at any time and Alice wondered how best to deal with it.

As she
was tossed about in the sea of people, catching odd snippets of conversation
from what were mainly young men, she decided to find somewhere to get herself
together, remove her jumper and head on into the show. She wandered around
looking for a toilet where she could stow her jumper in her bag, have a pee and
check her appearance, but the only one she could find had a long, snaking queue
of young girls chattering excitedly.

Alice
decided to find a quieter place off the beaten track. In a quietish street and
despite the cold, she lifted her jumper over her head, opened her rucksack and
started to stuff her jumper into it.

As she
was doing this, she failed to notice a group of young men, two of them
skinheads, heading towards her down the narrow street. They stared at her.

‘Look,
Mac,’ said one. ‘She’s got a fucking Moz T-shirt. That’s what you need, mate,
or you won’t get in,’

The Mac
in question looked her up and down.

‘Give
us your T-shirt, love,’ he said in an emotionless voice.

Alice’s
heart thudded.

‘No,’
she said. ‘I need it to get in.’

He
continued to stare at her while the others looked at the ground and laughed
nervously.

‘Look,
I’ve asked nicely,’ he said, ‘and now I’m getting angry.’

How on
earth, thought Alice, do I get this monster to leave me alone?

She
barely had long enough to articulate this thought before she heard Mac say,
‘Hold her, lads,’ and he pounced on her like an animal, pulling, grabbing,
grunting until she felt the T-shirt tear and lift over her head. She could hear
her own voice, weak and pleading, saying to him, ‘Oh please don’t, please
don’t.’

Two men
let go of her arms, someone giggled and one of them at the back caught her eye
and looked ashamed to be part of this assault.

Alice
fixed her eyes on him but there was nothing he could do. Mac held her T-shirt
triumphantly aloft for a second and then began to pull it over his own head.

The one
she’d been staring at spoke.

‘Mac,
for fuck’s sake, she’s only a girl, give it back, mate.’

Mac
turned to him. ‘What did you say?’

The boy
looked back at him for a brief second, then his gaze dropped to the ground.

‘You
fucking tosser,’ said Mac. He grabbed the boy’s ears and head-butted him with
huge force on the bridge of his nose. The boy fell to the ground and Mac kicked
him in the back, laughing, before the group turned and headed away,
joke-punching each other and singing, ‘Morrissey, Morrissey, Morrissey’ like a
football chant.

Alice
looked up from her foetal position on the wet ground and began to cover herself
up with her jumper. Then she noticed the bleeding boy leaning against the wall.

Are you
all right?’ she said and, without thinking, put her hand out to touch him.

He
propelled himself away from her and scrambled to his feet.

‘Fuck
off,’ he cried over his shoulder as he ran. ‘Fuck off, you stupid cow.’

Alice
sat on the pavement for about five minutes. She felt she should cry but
couldn’t because she was so angry. Angry that she could be bullied like that,
angry that she was too weak to fight back, angry that the so-called genius,
vegetarian, fucking Morrissey allowed his fans to behave like that.

She
decided to do her best to get into the civic hall. She would not be cheated
again, especially by scumbags who were no more fans of Morrissey than Wobbly
and Bighead. Oh, how she wished they were here, with their huge fists and their
pit-bull temperaments. She could almost have enjoyed watching those boys get
beaten to a bloody pulp.

Alice
followed the crowds and the noise until she stood outside the entrance to the
civic hall. It was ten minutes from the start of the show and she could see
that hundreds of people outside were not going to get in. She manoeuvred
herself through the throng until she stood staring up at the face of a security
guard.

‘Someone
mugged me and nicked my Morrissey T-shirt,’ she shouted above the noise.

‘Good
one, love,’ said the guard. ‘You’re only about the four hundredth person to try
that on me tonight.’

‘But
it’s true,’ shouted Alice.

‘Out
the way or you’re going to get hurt,’ said the guard. ‘You’re not getting in,
all right?’

Alice
could not believe her night had turned to dust. Tears began to sneak out of the
corners of her eyes and blurred the angry and ridiculous scene in front of her.
She tried to see if there was a path through the madness when a face appeared
in the crowd that made her whole body react as if a wave of electricity had run
through it.

‘Mum!’
she shouted. ‘Bloody hell! Jesus Christ! Fuck! Mum.’

It was
Gina, cutting a swathe through the crowd with a look of determination on her
face. Alice stepped towards her and above the noise shouted, ‘Mum! It’s me,
Alice. What are you doing here?’

Gina
looked at Alice as if she didn’t really know her and then an expression of
recognition flitted across her face.

‘Alice,’
she said. ‘Have you come to see Morrissey?’

‘Yes,’
said Alice, ‘but some boys took my T-shirt and they won’t let me in.

‘Never
mind,’ said Gina. ‘I’ll see you later.’

She
headed towards the same security guard who had just turned Alice away and
pointed at her chest. Until that point, Alice hadn’t even realised she was
wearing a Morrissey T-shirt.

The
security man nodded curtly and ushered her through.

‘Mum!’
shouted Alice. ‘Come back, I need to talk to you.

Gina
shot her a look then turned round and entered the hall with all the other
fortunate people who had a passport to their hero.

Alice
was at a loss. Should she call the police? Her dad? Mark?

She
moved away from the crowd and tried to find a phone box. After walking around
for a few minutes, she eventually spotted one of the familiar red boxes and
found some change in her pocket. She opened the door. There was an overwhelming
stench of urine, not something she was familiar with in the local call boxes at
home. She lifted the receiver to listen for a dialling tone. There was nothing.
Alice banged the receiver on the side of the box. Still nothing.

‘Shit,’
she said aloud to herself. ‘I’ll have to sort it out on my own.

She
wandered back to the front of the civic hall. There were still crowds of rowdy,
angry people who hadn’t been able to get in, although some realised there was
no point in hanging about and started to drift away.

Mercifully
Morrissey did a rather short set and it didn’t seem very long before the people
inside started to pour out.

Alice
had positioned herself in the middle of the doors so that she had a reasonable
view of every single person exiting the building. Eventually carried along by
the crowd, she saw Gina coming towards her.

‘Mum.’
Alice grabbed her mother’s arm. She could tell immediately that her mother was
somewhere between sedation and wild-eyed madness.

‘Mum, you’ve
got to come home. We’ll help you sort things out.’

Gina
looked at her daughter. ‘I don’t want to come home. I’m happy where I am.

‘Where
is that?’ said Alice desperately ‘And who with?’

‘Got to
go,’ said Gina breezily and headed up the road more jauntily than Alice had
ever seen her.

‘Mum.’
Alice tried to hold her by the arm.

Gina
shook her off. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said dangerously.

‘Please,
Mum,’ said Alice. ‘Please.’

They
reached a huge lorry. Gina banged on the door and the driver leaned across and
opened it. Gina began to climb up.

Alice
craned her neck to see who the driver was. Inside the lorry, Gina turned to Dunk
and said, ‘Let’s go, I’m starving.’

‘Righto,’
said Dunk. He could see a young woman trying to peer in. ‘Who’s that?’ he
asked.

‘My daughter,’
said Gina. ‘Come on, Dunk, I want to go. Bye,’ she said to Alice, motioning her
to move away from the door.

Alice
stepped back, Gina slammed the door and the huge lorry wheezed away.

Keith was pottering around
in the kitchen, putting the kettle on and making toast. The phone jingled in
the corner.

‘Dad, I
just saw Mum at the Morrissey gig,’ Alice had said in a voice thick with
distress. ‘She’s gone, she went off in a big lorry with someone. I didn’t see
who. Dad, I …’ Her words stopped and after a short pause, a man’s voice came
on the line.

‘Keith,
it’s your dad. I was worried about your Alice getting to our house so late at
night, so I came over to Wolverhampton to look for her and I found the poor
girl in a right state.’

‘Is she
all right?’ said Keith. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Well,’
said Norman, ‘from what I can tell, she didn’t get into the show because some
thugs nicked her T-shirt off her and they wouldn’t let her in, but she saw Gina
getting in there and waited for her to come out. I think they spoke briefly but
then Gina ran off and jumped in a lorry and that was it, gone like a puff of
smoke, who knows where.’

‘Oh
God,’ said Keith. ‘Shall I come and get Alice?’

‘No,
you’re all right,’ said Norman. ‘I’ll take her home to me and your mum’s and
drop her over tomorrow. Is that OK?’

‘OK,’
said Keith. ‘Thanks, Dad. I’ll see you in the morning. ‘An exhausted Alice
arrived the next morning, looking like a tearful ghost. Keith managed to glean
a few more details of the previous night’s events and then sent her up to bed
for the day.

He
called Marie Henty.

‘I’ll
come over straight away’ she said, ‘and we’ll discuss what to do.’

They
sat in the little front room with a cup of instant coffee and talked.

‘She
must be OK,’ said Marie. ‘She can’t be being held against her will by someone
or why on earth would she be running around Wolverhampton with a Morrissey
T-shirt on to get her into the concert?’

‘I
can’t imagine,’ said Keith, thinking how sweet the word ‘concert’ was coming
from Marie’s lips. ‘What shall we do? Should we call the police? What?’

Marie
put her hand on his. ‘We could try the police. And I could ring the hospital,
see if there were any patients on the ward that might be the man in the lorry,
or anyone who knew him.’

Keith
nodded. He would speak to the police and Marie to the hospital. Neither held
out much hope, but it was all they could do.

The
hospital threw up no clues and Keith felt even more hopeless after he had
visited the police station and given some details to a bored young female constable.
He felt there was no point going to Wolverhampton, Gina could be anywhere by
now. But in a little corner of his mind he was slightly reassured by the
circumstances of Alice’s meeting with her chaotic mother, although he worried
that this feeling was mainly due to his strong wish for Gina to be safe.

Wobbly
and Bighead didn’t seem surprised by what was going on and Keith’s news was met
with a curt yet strangely friendly nod when he drove up to their cottage to
tell them. Keith refused their offer of a cup of tea and managed to escape back
home, thinking to himself that this was the most solicitous exchange they’d had
for ages.

Mark
listened with a serious expression to Alice’s description of the events of 22
December. He felt so sorry for her; it seemed so unfair that her difficult life
had not been somehow briefly put on hold by her trip to see Morrissey He
suspected Gina would never come home and that this would leave Alice suspended
in her guilt-filled universe, where only her dependency on and obligation to
her lovely father were important.

Marie
hoped Gina would never come home but she knew this was a rather adolescent hope
and that there could be no conclusion to Keith and Gina’s marriage if she did
not. And marriage was Marie Henty’s aim. She had tried to deny this fact to
herself but couldn’t banish the feelings of longing from her mind any more. She
sat agitated and despondent in her home and wondered if anything would ever
change.