The More You Ignore Me (4 page)

‘Marie,’
she said. ‘What the hell do you want?’

‘Well,’
said Marie, ‘I haven’t seen you at the surgery for a bit and I just thought I’d
pop down and see how you’re doing.’

‘Bullshit,’
said Gina. ‘Someone’s been talking about me. It’s not that creep John Jarvis,
is it?’

‘I’m
not allowed to say,’ said Marie, thereby getting Keith off the hook and
implicating John Jarvis, a good result.

‘I’m
fine,’ said Gina. ‘In fact, couldn’t be better. ‘Her appearance belied this
statement. She looked unwashed and out of control and Marie wondered how Keith
could have let it go this far without trying to do something. But she knew the
answer really Keith’s head was buried in the comforting mire of denial, because
Gina’s threats to kill him last time and her screeching accusations of betrayal
as she disappeared into the back of a police car were something to be avoided
at all costs even if it meant allowing her to deteriorate further.

Marie
wished she could just lay it on the line. In an ideal world she would say to
Gina, ‘Look, Gina, it’s obvious to everyone, even your five-year-old daughter,
that you’re as mad as a snake and you need some treatment. Let’s not let it go
any further or we’ll all be up shit creek and the emotional debris will cause
even more damage than last time.’

Instead,
she smiled a benign smile, which irritated Gina enormously, causing her to look
for a missile. Marie encouraged her to call if she needed to and quickly
walked away A handful of chicken droppings landed a few feet behind her,
accompanied by Gina’s personal parting shot.

‘There’s
more of that in your face if you come back, you nosy cow!’

Marie
knew it wouldn’t be long before the woman would be sectioned again.

And it
wasn’t. The following day, a Monday, Keith took Alice to school before work up
at the farm. Gina seemed to be completely absorbed in a book about the weather
in space that she had managed to pick up in a second-hand bookshop in Ludlow
on one of her shopping trips. The more disturbed Gina became, the less likely
she was to come back from a shopping trip with what she had originally intended
to buy On the Ludlow trip she had gone on market day to get some fresh
vegetables and meat but had come back with a book and a barometer she’d found
at the back of an antique shop. Inner Keith said, ‘What the fuck are we going
to do with a barometer, you silly mare?’ Outer Keith said, ‘Hmm, a barometer.
Well, I suppose that’ll come in useful.’

Gina
caught the humorous edge in his voice and said, ‘It’ll come in useful for
knocking you out.’ And that statement had no humour in it.

Keith
wished the Wildgoose family could be a bit more help but the last time he’d
called upon them to try and persuade Gina to go into hospital voluntarily,
Gina’s mum had screamed down the phone, ‘Over my dead body, you useless lump,’
and hung up. Not a bad exchange, Keith had thought and took refuge in some
mother-in-law jokes he’d heard on telly.

Keith’s
parents were equally unhelpful. Their dislike of Gina had moved up the scale
from ‘Give her the benefit, Norman’ to ‘Can’t abide the woman.’

It was
hard to even get them to come to the house and look after Alice. They didn’t
like the countryside because it had a funny smell and all the people they met
looked like sex offenders. Added to that, Jennifer didn’t have any suitable
shoes and refused to wear her beige suede K-Skips anywhere near mud, of which
there was copious gloopy amounts down Keith and Gina’s lane.

So
Keith was a lone sailor in this sea of madness, apart from a few lifebelts
thrown at him by Marie Henty and Doug in the shop. Doug was an ex-psychiatric
nurse from Chester who had realised that he was so inured to people’s pain
after ten years on a general psychiatric ward that he was surplus to
requirements in the field of solace. Ironically, though, he was the last person
who should have left nursing because he possessed a cheery disposition, true
empathy and an endless supply of fags.

It was Saturday morning
and Keith, exhausted from grafting all week and lying awake all night smoking
some very big joints, trying to work out a way to talk Gina into some treatment,
lay in bed snoring gently, protected from the day ahead by a thin sliver of
sleep. Alice had woken and, as she normally did at the weekend, ran downstairs
in her pyjamas to see how Smelly was and give him some food.

Her
heart somersaulted in her little chest when she saw that Smelly’s cage was open
and her beloved guinea pig was nowhere to be seen. She hoped that her mum or
dad was up and had put Smelly’s garden run out for him to sniff and nibble at
some fresh grass. She went out on to the dewy lawn in her bare feet and looked,
panicked, around the small garden.

A
strange moaning noise from the top of the house distracted her and she turned
to see her mother sitting naked on top of the roof, holding aloft the
aforementioned Smelly and crooning a song with which Alice was unfamiliar.

‘Mum,’
she called. ‘Why are you on the roof with no clothes on?’

This
perfectly reasonable question was greeted with a string of random words which
Alice didn’t understand and she thought she’d better call her father. Sucking
her thumb, as she did when the world presented an insurmountable problem, she
climbed the stairs to her parents’ bedroom and gently shook her dad. He opened
his eyes.

‘Hello,
sweetheart,’ he said, his voice thick with sleep. ‘Everything OK?’

‘I
think so,’ said Alice, because at this point no one had fallen or died. ‘But
Smelly and Mum are on the roof and Mum’s got no clothes on.’

Keith,
still half in his dreaming state, laughed.

‘Alice,’
he said, ‘what a daft thing to say Come on, let’s get you and Mum some
breakfast.’

‘But
how are we going to get Mum and Smelly down for breakfast?’

Keith
sat up in bed. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.

‘I
think he’s too busy to get Mum and Smelly down,’ said Alice.

Keith
threw the bedcovers back and ran downstairs and out into the garden, the last
few blissful seconds of half sleep tearing away from his brain and catapulting
him into the familiar waking nightmare of his wife’s deteriorating mental
state.

Sure
enough, there was Gina, on the roof holding the guinea pig — minus her clothes.

‘Go
away,’ she screamed at him. ‘I don’t want you, I want little Teddy Fairfax.’

The
possibility of luring the local news programme’s best-loved weather forecaster
down to their scruffy cottage seemed unlikely and Keith found himself shifting
into the most banal of communications to try and resolve this farcical
scenario.

‘Come
down for breakfast and we’ll talk about it, love. ‘He tried to say this as if
his wife wasn’t sitting naked on the roof clutching the family pet.

‘Mum, I
want Smelly!’ shouted Alice and began to cry, realising that even for her
unpredictable mother this was most unusual.

‘Smelly’s
my present for Teddy,’ she called back, ‘to show him I truly love him.’

By this
point Smelly had set up a fearful squeaking and was wriggling dangerously in
Gina’s hands.

‘Come
on, love,’ said Keith. ‘Poor old Smelly’s scared. Let him come down and we’ll
clean him up a bit and feed him. We couldn’t give him as a present to anyone in
that state.’ Keith realised with some surprise that he was as concerned for
Smelly’s safety as Gina’s.

Gina turned
Smelly to examine him as if he was a piece of old rag.

‘All
right,’ she said. ‘Here you go,’ and she rolled Smelly from the top of the roof
down towards Keith.

Alice
squealed with delight. Not realising the consequences of Smelly hitting the
ground at some considerable speed, this was the funniest thing she’d seen for
ages, her rotating pet heading earthwards, a bit like when she rolled down the
top meadow in summer, gathering speed until, hysterical with laughter, she
landed in a heap at the bottom.

‘Fuck!’
Keith braced himself for the most important catch of his life.

Smelly
dropped off the bottom of the roof and landed in Keith’s large and capable
hands. Alice clapped with joy and gently relieved Keith of the luckiest guinea
pig in Herefordshire.

‘Take
Smelly inside,’ said Keith, ‘and I’ll talk to Mum.’

Alice,
only too happy not to be caught up in the naked-mum-on-the-roof-drama any
more, disappeared inside the cottage while Keith came at the problem from
another direction.

‘Gina,
come down and I’ll drive you to Hereford to see Teddy,’ he called.

‘I
don’t believe you,’ she shouted back, clinging to some vestige of sanity.
‘You’re just saying that to make me come down.’

Never
had Keith felt such a strong desire to walk away from a crisis. I could take
Alice, he thought, and we could spend a lovely day at the seaside, have fish
and chips and just walk along the waves until she gets bored. We could drive to
Aberystwyth, find a little B and B and then come back the next day and see if
she’s still up there.

But
poor Keith wasn’t made of that kind of stuff. Irritating, demanding, out of
control as she was, the lovely, wild Gina was still under there somewhere and
he just wanted her to be better and to be the weird and wonderful woman he had
married. He knew at this point that there was no getting away from treating her
against her will. She must go into hospital and suffer the indignity of forced
injections and twenty-four-hour surveillance by the motley crew of people who
staffed what the locals called ‘the bin’. But how best to do it? He knew the
police would take one look, laugh inwardly and drag her screaming from her
perch with all the empathy of a group of teenage boys given sole responsibility
for a younger brother. Would Marie Henty be a better bet? Or what about Doug
from the shop? He might help and at least he had some experience of this sort
of thing. Keith ran into the house and dialled the number. Doug picked up after
one ring.

‘Doug,
I’m sorry,’ these days Keith seemed to preface every conversation with these
words, ‘but I’ve got a problem at the cottage. Gina’s on the roof, starkers,
and won’t come down.’

‘Righto,’
said Doug, as matter-of-fact as if Keith had asked for his newspapers to be
cancelled for the weekend. ‘Give us five minutes.’

The ability
of time to stretch itself never ceased to amaze Keith. He heard the chug of
Doug’s ancient Escort in the lane after what seemed to be forty minutes and yet
when he glanced at his watch, Keith saw that it had only taken six minutes.
Doug parked his car in the lane and walked up to the cottage. His red,
quizzical face appeared round the hedge first — he seemed to be checking this
wasn’t some sort of joke before he dragged the rest of his body after it.

‘Blimey,
Keith,’ said Doug, ‘see what you mean. We’ll need to get her down and take her
to hospital, get her sectioned and then everything will be fine. Just give me a
brief picture of how long this has all been going on and what it involves.’

‘Well,
she’s been deteriorating for weeks,’ said Keith, ‘but this very mad behaviour’s
only been going on for a few days. She’s obsessed with this weather forecaster
on telly and has been to his house, not really sleeping very well, talking a
bit of rubbish, you know.’

‘Oh
yes,’ said Doug, for he did. ‘What we gonna do then? Shall I get a ladder up
and talk her down?’

‘Do you
think you can?’ said Keith, more grateful than he could say to this big,
bumbling giant of a man for taking the responsibility off his shoulders.

‘Dunno,’
said Doug, ‘but I’ll give it a try.’

Keith
produced a rusty ladder from the shed and Doug laid it up against the house.

‘What’s
going on?’ said Gina, suspicion evident in her voice.

Keith
shouted up, ‘Doug’s coming up to talk to you.’

‘Oh,
not that ginger fat arse,’ said Gina loudly.

‘Sorry,’
said Keith.

‘That’s
all right,’ said Doug. ‘I’ve heard far worse than that, you know, mate,’ but a
little arrow of pain still flew directly towards his heart, a minor injury in
the lexicon of the tragedy of the fat bloke, re-lived time and time again at
the hands of drunks, teenagers and mad people.