The More You Ignore Me (6 page)

The
truth was the only option, so Keith detailed the events of the morning and
crossed his fingers behind his back as their expressions went through several
emotions, including disbelief and horror, and ended up being a sort of
quizzical amusement.

‘Fucking
starkers on the roof?’ said Bighead. ‘You having me on, Keithy boy?’

‘No, I
swear,’ said Keith. And shouting to the four winds the name of this weather
forecaster she thinks is in love with her.’

‘Bastard.’
Alice was standing there cradling Smelly in her arms.

‘Alice,’
said Keith, ‘that’s not a nice way for little girls to speak.’

‘Sorry,
Dad,’ said Alice, ‘but that’s what Mum called him when she saw him when we was
shopping.’

‘Were
shopping,’ Keith corrected her. Even in the midst of this potential shooting by
his in-laws, he couldn’t stop himself steering her towards correct usage.

‘We’ve
got to get her out,’ said Bighead. ‘We can look after her at home, can’t we,
Mum, seeing as this useless lump ain’t up to it?’

‘I
reckon,’ said Ma Wildgoose, although to Keith the prospect of the three of them
attempting to manage a serious psychotic illness within the confines of their
gothic cottage seemed a non-starter.

‘Look,’
said Keith. ‘Gina really isn’t well at all. Please just give them a chance to
make her better, a few days even, and if things aren’t getting better I’ll come
and help you get her out.’ He couldn’t quite believe he had allied himself with
the Wildgoose family in a potential attempt to spring his wife from a locked
psychiatric ward but, well, he thought, there’s got to be some give and take
with this lot. He continued, ‘And if it doesn’t work out after three days you
can shoot me then,’ he indicated the shotgun.

Wobbly
and Bighead laughed out loud.

‘Thought
we was coming to shoot yer, Keithy, did yer?’ said Bighead. ‘No, we’re going
after some pheasants up in the woods.’

Keith
wanted to say, I think you’ll find those pheasants belong to the estate and
they’re being reared for a lot of posh blokes in Land Rovers to knock off more
easily than a clump of skittles, but he knew better than to intervene in the
minor criminal activities of the Wildgoose family.

All
right then,’ said Ma Wildgoose, ‘but three days is all you’re ‘getting and then
we’re taking over.

The terrifying
trio then turned on their heels and walked down the drive to where their
ancient Cortina was parked half in the ditch. With a splutter of exhaust and a
dangerous-sounding roar, they were gone down the country lanes.

The
rest of the weekend was spent calmly To Keith, Alice seemed fairly unaffected
by the traumatic events of Saturday She spent time playing in the garden with
Smelly and drawing some pictures of the hospital that Mum had gone into, and on
Sunday they went fishing down on the River Clun together, spending hours with
their lines bobbing jauntily in the water although they didn’t catch a thing.

But a
cloud had hovered over them all day, because Keith knew that in the evening he
and Alice would have to go and visit Gina and brave the confined space of the
acute admission ward which would throw into their path a selection of the
Herefordshire mentally ill, an ordeal he didn’t want to put Alice through. He
had the option of leaving Alice with his nearest neighbours, a kindly old
couple called the Wellingtons, and he put this to Alice, but she had spent one too
many afternoons in their fusty front room with some horrible biscuits and
revolting-tasting milk, and she opted for the visit.

‘I’ve
got to pack some things for Mum,’ said Keith before they left. ‘Do you want to
help?’

‘Yes,’
said Alice excitedly and while Keith laid out a selection of Gina’s least
sexually provocative clothes on the bed and some toiletries and towels, Alice
assembled a couple of Noddy books, some of her dolls and a packet of Gina’s favourite
biscuits from the back of the kitchen cupboard.

Keith
didn’t have it in him to veto Alice’s little collection which she had stuffed
into a carrier bag, so they set off for Hereford, Keith in sombre mood,
wondering exactly how Gina would be when they arrived, and Alice cheerfully
singing a selection of nursery rhymes.

Keith
marvelled at the ability of his five-year-old daughter to seemingly accept
without question the admission of her mother to a local psychiatric hospital
following weeks of increasingly strange behaviour, but realised he was imposing
his own adult values on to Alice; he did not quite grasp the fact that a child
who knows no different just accepts what is happening at face value.

I
suppose it’s the intervention of adults and their values who ruin children’s
lives, he thought sadly to himself and wished he could suspend Alice in time to
prevent the inevitable encroachment of the shame and distress she would feel
when she eventually came to the realisation that her mother wasn’t like
everyone else’s.

‘You
look grumpy, Dad,’ said Alice, breaking off from singing her favourite line
about a blackbird pecking off someone’s nose which she thought was enormously
funny and wished it was Mr Jarvis the headmaster’s nose.

The
interference of the outside world and its harsh judgements on those suffering
with mental illness became apparent even sooner than Keith would have imagined.
Alice, back at school the following day, after the visit to Gina, encountered
Stephen Matthews in the playground at break time. Stephen, the son of a local
cowman, had picked up from his parents’ gossip in front of the television that
Alice’s mum had been ‘taken away’ and locked up somewhere. Stephen was two
years older than Alice and about twice her size and he threw his considerable
weight around whenever he got the chance. The objects of his disdain were
always the children of those adults whom his parents felt most threatened by,
and mental illness terrified them because it had been identified in successive
generations on both sides of the family So Alice found herself surrounded by
Stephen and his cowardly mates in a corner of the playground less well policed
by the teaching staff.

‘Your
mum’s in prison, she’s a bloody nutcase!’ Stephen led the chorus and the others
joined in as best they could.

‘She’s
not in prison,’ said Alice, cowering under the eclipse caused by Stephen’s huge
frame. ‘She’s in a big castle with lots of circus people. She got on the roof
on her own with no clothes on.’ Alice was rather proud of this and communicated
it as if her mother had achieved something spectacular.

The
boys simultaneously uttered a honk of disgust.

‘Your
mum showed her bosoms and she showed her—’

‘Stephen
Matthews!’ Miss Mount strode across the playground, having spotted Alice
surrounded by the little group. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing,
miss,’ said Stephen, who had learned at a young age it was best to deny all
knowledge.

‘Well,
off you go then,’ said Miss Mount, who defused many a potential drama this way.

She had
heard some talk in the staffroom about Gina and felt very sorry for the naive
husband and his sturdy little daughter.

Are you
all right, Alice dear?’ she said.

‘Yes,’
said Alice. ‘My mum has gone to a castle and is with people from a circus.’

Miss
Mount hesitated. Is this what the father has allowed her to believe? she
wondered. She resolved to speak to Keith when he came to pick Alice up that
afternoon.

Alice
fled back to the safety of the two friends she had managed to cultivate in
spite of the whispering campaign against her mum and her strangeness. Mark,
whose blond, wild hair seemed to have been stolen from a girl’s head, was
sweet-tempered and effeminate and eschewed the ‘hitting things’ games that the
other boys seemed to prefer in the playground. His attempts at home to shy away
from the more manly pastimes of football and shooting had been met with some
despair by his father, a red-cheeked arable farmer, but secretly with huge
fondness by his mother whose revulsion towards the ‘huntin’, shootin’ and fishin”
ethos of the locals was barely contained. Her unconscious encouragement of
Mark’s feminine side from an early age was subtle and all but hidden but the
constant questioning by his father of why he wouldn’t pick up a toy gun or why
he wanted to indulge in baking with his mother when wading through mud was on
offer was frequent and oppressive.

Karen,
on the other hand, Alice’s other friend, was tougher than most of the boys in
the playground. Her long black hair, secured in two plaits with rubber bands,
had been pulled only once in the playground. It had resulted in such a rage
that Stephen Matthews, his little bulbous nose bloodied from Karen’s flailing
punch, retired howling to report the incident to Miss Mount. Her pleasure at
this nascent bully receiving his comeuppance from a mere girl was well
disguised under the mild ticking-off she felt obliged to give Karen in front of
Stephen.

Stephen
and Karen accepted the castle and circus performers story without question and
both thought this sounded very exciting. Mark wondered if perhaps they could go
to the circus, while Karen wisely cautioned a decent waiting time so the
performers could get their acts together and find a suitable venue. What she
actually said was, ‘Let’s wait till they’re in their tent,’ and Mark and Alice
nodded sagely.

Keith,
having managed to get his employer to agree to his having some time off while
his wife was in hospital, found Miss Mount waiting at the school gate for him.
Keith felt relieved that John his boss had serendipitously mistaken his
reluctance to elucidate on his wife’s condition as a sign that her admission
was necessitated because of ‘women’s problems’ and he’d escaped without having
to explain any further. Now here was Miss Mount telling him that Alice had been
saying her mum was in a castle with some circus performers.

‘Have
you told her the truth?’ said Miss Mount, pushing her hand through her thinning
grey hair.

‘Um…’
Keith hadn’t and thought this made him seem like a bad parent.

‘It’s
just that if she goes round saying these things in the playground, other
children may tease her,’ she said.

‘It’s
hard,’ said Keith. ‘She definitely knows it’s a hospital but it’s so hard to
explain to her what mental illness is, so when she said they looked like people
in a circus, I just let it pass.’

Miss
Mount desperately wanted to ask Keith how it had really been but felt it too
intrusive a question. Keith, on the other hand, desperately wanted to tell her
but didn’t know if it was appropriate because although she was kindly and
sympathetic, she was after all one of Alice’s teachers and he couldn’t be
absolutely sure that she wouldn’t gossip.

The
visit to the hospital had been a pretty dreadful experience. Gina had seemed
like a different person, drowsy and floppy like a big, smoking puppet, all her
personality carried away by the power of the anti-psychotic drugs she had had
pumped into her against her will. Her fellow sufferers were in varying stages
of madness and recovery. One had stood singing ‘Oh What A Beautiful Morning’ on
a table, attempting to conduct the rabble in front of him with manic charm,
while ghosts moved around him, seemingly barely in touch with the real world. A
man had sidled up to Keith and Alice and conspiratorially whispered, ‘Watch the
nurse with the ponytail, she’s working for the government, we’re all being
experimented on.’ Keith could only nod helplessly, having not the faintest idea
how to handle this half-dressed blank-eyed giant and shielding Alice in case
he lashed out. At the other end of the ward, several patients sat on threadbare
chairs watching
Songs of Praise
and singing along barely audibly to
Keith’s favourite hymn, ‘For Those In Peril On The Sea’.

The
charge nurse, a middle-aged time-server called Steve, wearily informed Keith that
Gina would probably be ‘zonked out’ for a week or so and that once the drugs
wore off, a period of assessment would take place. Keith felt it imperative to
explain to the nurse that the Wildgoose clan might pay a visit and not be best
pleased, but Steve reacted to this with barely a flicker of anxiety, so Keith
decided to hand over responsibility and let the Wildgoose family be an
unpleasant surprise at visiting time.