The More You Ignore Me (20 page)

‘He’s
fine,’ she said. ‘He’ll decide in the next couple of days what to do. I said I’d
keep him stocked up with food and drink.’

Much as
he hated to hear himself say it because it was an adult thing to say and he
didn’t really mean it, Keith said, ‘Don’t you think he’d be better off going
home?’

‘Dad.’
Alice’s expression said everything.

‘S’pose
you’re right,’ he said.

‘How’s
Mum?’ said Alice.

‘Slightly
odd,’ said Keith.

‘As
opposed to really fine most of the time?’ said Alice. ‘Oh, you know what I
mean,’ said Keith. ‘Different. More alive. Slightly out of control. She hit
Marie Henty.’

‘Marie Henty’s
been here?’ said Alice.

‘Yes,
just to chat about how Mum is,’ said Keith, denying the tiny electric ping in
his brain.

‘That’s
all?’ said Alice. ‘No other reason?’

‘Like
what?’ said Keith.

‘Oh,
nothing,’ said Alice, knowing he wouldn’t tell her if anything had happened
anyway ‘Christ, that’s loud,’ said Alice, realising she was having to raise her
voice. ‘Has she been playing it all night?’

‘Yes,’
said Keith, ‘and it’s getting on my bloody nerves.’

‘Dad,
how can you say that?’ said Alice. ‘It’s gorgeous, he’s gorgeous, and it’s the
first thing Mum’s shown any interest in for years.’

‘Yes,
you’re right,’ said Keith. ‘Sorry to be a grump.’

‘I’m
going to bed,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

That night in bed, Keith
lay looking at the ceiling while Gina snored beside him, feeling a little
stirring inside that he had not experienced for so long. He felt slightly dirty
because of it. He tried to imagine Marie’s face and relive the moment she had
kissed him so softly on the mouth he had barely felt it. But he just could not
conjure up her face and remembered with some shame that when he had first
fallen in love with Gina, he could never imagine her face either.

Keith
could not deny that Gina seemed to be more alive, more in touch, more alert and
more human. But he feared that the consequences of her re-entry back into the
human race would be a huge deterioration in her behaviour and ability to
control herself. Various clichés arrived in his head — ‘a double-edged sword’,
‘an iron fist in a velvet glove’.

Alice lay
thinking of Mark and Morrissey until in her half-waking state the two merged,
Morrissey lying pained, crying and lonely in a dark wood without anyone to help
or hold him. She began to weep softly and decided she would rescue him and hide
him somewhere less dank and inhospitable.

Phil
sat up watching television, asking himself over and over again in his head what
he had done to deserve such a wet son. ‘Probably homosexual too,’ he muttered
to himself as his wife, devastated by the loss of their only boy, seethed with
hatred beside him.

Gina
dreamed of Morrissey astride her, like a great animal grunting and sweating,
and called out in her sleep. Keith stroked her arm and murmured, ‘It’s OK,
love,’ and she moved out of her dream cycle and down into a deep sleep.

Marie
Henty was still awake, endlessly replaying the three seconds it had taken for
her to walk across the room and kiss Keith. Each time, a wave of anxiety swept
over her and the more she tried to visualise Keith’s face, the less she was
able.

Over the course of a few
weeks Keith and Alice noticed a marked deterioration in Gina’s behaviour. Keith
had known this would happen. There was simply no way round the fact that an
illness such as Gina’s could not be controlled without strong drugs. As her personality
struggled out from under the tranquillising effect of her pills, the illness
which had hidden beneath the enormous ingestion of chemicals inevitably came
with it. It was a relief to both of them in some ways to see the fiery and idiosyncratic
Gina begin to live again. For many years she had spent endless hours in bed or
sat gloomily staring out of the window at the mean little garden; now she rose
early, did some things which resembled taking care of her appearance, put her
old wellington boots on which hadn’t seen the lanes of Herefordshire for years,
and began to appear all over the village and at her father’s little cottage on
regular occasions and without warning. Wobbly and Bighead were not quite sure
what to do with her when she turned up because if they were honest with
themselves they felt slightly frightened of her, as if she was some
contemporary witch with medieval power who could lay a curse on the house and
bring them to their knees. She seemed happier but there was no doubt she was
madder too.

Despite
many reassuring signs of the old Gina, worrying new developments in the way she
talked and behaved were an unavoidable accompaniment. She had been to the
cottage on three occasions since her medication had been cut down and with each
appearance her conversation seemed wilder and more unintelligible, leading them
to think that either she was drinking or, in their parlance, ‘becoming fucking
mental again’.

As
children, a constant low-level niggling had gone on between them all, which
frequently bubbled over into chaotic violence. Wobbly and Bighead had fought on
many occasions, once or twice injuring each other quite badly with hastily
picked-up pieces of wood from the garden or anything suitable from the big toy
box. The pecking order was established when Gina was about seven. Wobbly was
top dog because during one of these fights he had delivered a glancing blow to
the side of Bighead’s face, drawing blood. It had almost necessitated a visit
to the local hospital but Nan Wildgoose’s instinct was to let the boys deal
with any injuries on their own. Gina had mainly been a bystander when these
fights occurred but had somehow felt it important even at that young age that
she make her mark and establish some credibility as a family member. So one
bright crisp morning when they were standing at the edge of the pond in the
clearing up past the dark wood, she pushed the pair of them into the freezing
water. They went in with an enormous splash. Neither of them were swimmers and
with the shock of the cold water, they were both immediately in trouble.

‘Fuck,
bollocks, Christ!’ shouted Bighead. ‘Help us, you shitter!’

Gina
moved towards a large strong branch she had prepared earlier for the task.

‘All
right,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you both grab this if you promise to be nice and
not hit me again or put my dolls in the cow shit.’

‘Yes!’
screamed Wobbly as he disappeared under the water and came up again spluttering
and gagging.

‘I
could push you further out,’ shouted Gina, quite enjoying the moment and not
really aware that they were a few seconds away from drowning.

‘Gina!’
Bighead had started to cry in the water. ‘I’m going to die!’

‘Promise
then!’ she shouted back.

‘We
promise,’ they screeched together and she manoeuvred the branch towards them.
They climbed shakily on to the bank, both too weak and shocked to grab Gina and
give her the beating they wanted to.

With a
shriek of delight and a cry of, ‘Got you!’ Gina ran for it, leaving the
shivering pair to make their way home, both too ashamed to admit that their
younger sister had got the better of them and even prepared to risk a number
ten walloping from their mum rather than admit their humiliation.

From
that day onwards they treated Gina with a grudging respect and very seldom bullied
or whacked her. If she was prepared to drown them to move up the pecking order,
Wobbly and Bighead weren’t going to mess with her.

This
very memory coursed through Wobbly’s head as he saw Gina walking purposefully
up the rutted dirt track towards the cottage. Bighead, who was out the back
chopping some logs, had also seen her. He tended not to have memories like his
brother. Wobbly was the more sensitive of the two. Bighead tried not to think
about the past at all because he did not like the sensation of nostalgia and
regret that flooded over him and’ made his eyes moisten. In Bighead’s book, men
didn’t behave like this, they did things but they didn’t have feelings.
Feelings were for homosexuals and women. Consequently he very rarely let slip
any sign that he had experienced an emotion at all, unless it was anger or
frustration, something well up the manly end of the spectrum.

‘Gina!’
he called. ‘What you doing up this way?’

‘I’ve
come to talk to you about someone called Morrissey,’ said Gina.

‘That poof
fucker,’ said Bighead. ‘What about him?’

‘You
know him?’ said Gina, surprised.

‘Course
I bloody do,’ said Bighead. ‘It was ‘im what Alice went to see the night with
Main when she died.’

‘Really?’
said Gina, as if this was news to her.

‘For
Christ’s sake, Gina,’ said Wobbly, coming out of the front door. ‘Don’t you
remember?’

Gina
stood thinking for a bit.

‘Not
really,’ she said. ‘When was that?’

‘Be
about four years now,’ said Bighead, not one for anniversaries.

‘Really?’
said Gina again as if her mother’s death was something akin to a slight mishap
instantly forgotten.

The
implications of Gina’s reaction to their words hit both brothers; up to this
point they hadn’t really taken on board just how much damage Gina’s so-called
illness had done. Neither of them was overtly sentimental about their mother
but they had loved her in an instinctive way and were both shocked Gina seemed
so unconcerned.

‘Mum’s
dead,’ said Wobbly.

‘I
know, you said,’ said Gina irritably and that was the last mention of their
mother that day.

Luckily
Bert had heard none of this as he would have been heartbroken to think his mad
daughter’s madness had progressed this far. He lay snoozing upstairs waiting
for Wobbly or Bighead to bring him some tea the colour of oxtail soup and their
customary huge chunk of badly buttered bread and jam.

Anyway,’
said Gina, ‘Morrissey would be well pissed off with you two calling him names.
All right, he looks a bit weird and too feminine, but he is very intelligent
and his songs are all directed towards me, you know.’

‘How
does that work?’ said Wobbly genuinely interested in how Gina could have come
up with this statement.

‘I
don’t know how it works,’ said Gina, ‘but I just feel that he’s trying to tell
me something.’

‘You
and a million others,’ said Bighead. ‘He’s trying to tell you he wants your
fucking money.

‘No!’
Gina screamed. ‘You don’t understand, you stupid
thick bloody tossers. Christ, is there no one I can talk to about this without
getting a load of shit back?’

‘I
would’ve thought Alice would talk to you about ‘im seeing as she likes ‘im
too,’ said Wobbly.

Gina’s
eyes narrowed. ‘That’s exactly why I can’t talk to Alice, you knobhead,’ she
said. ‘Alice wouldn’t like it if she knew about our special bond.’

Because
Gina was a good six inches smaller than her brothers, they were able to
converse in soundless sentences over the top of her head.

‘She’s
talking bollocks,’ mouthed Bighead.

‘What
the fuck shall we do?’ replied Wobbly.

‘Send
her home then we can talk.’

They
came up with some spurious reason why Gina couldn’t stay She went along with
this, if rather disgruntled by the fact that neither of them was prepared to
discuss the centre of her universe with her. Wobbly walked with her down to the
gate.

‘Do you
think I’ve got a chance with him?’ she asked, turning to face Wobbly.

‘Dunno,’
said Wobbly disinterestedly, but inside he was saying, ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’
He realised he preferred the damped down Gina, whose sole ambition in life, it
seemed, was to make her fingers yellower with nicotine.

The
brothers’ discussion consisted of saying to each other, ‘She’s mental,’ a few
times.

Finally
Wobbly said, ‘Shall we talk to Keithy boy?’