The More You Ignore Me (32 page)

Everyone
inside seemed oblivious of the sordid incident that had just occurred in the
garden and the music played on loudly and unrelentingly.

Mark
found his scruffy jacket and Alice’s donkey jacket and they walked out into the
dark, each step taking them towards a more peaceful and forgiving night.

It was
a long, cold walk back to Ludlow. They held hands and occasionally the moon
came out and silvered the road ahead as they walked through Wigmore, the little
hamlet of Elton and began to climb up towards the forested area of the High
Vinnalls. Most of the time they walked in silence, the occasional hoot of an
owl and the familiar rustling of woodland creatures accompanying them on their
journey.

Just
outside Ludlow they paused to look at the imposing dark shadow of the castle
and then they descended past the little church and over the weir.

Mark’s
room looked delightful, a sparse sanctuary of warmth and carelessness. Alice
sat on the bed. As he started to remove his coat, Mark grinned and produced a
bottle of vodka.

‘Found
it on the table,’ he said. ‘Obviously nicked from some mum and dad’s drinks
cabinet.’

He got
some orange juice from the little fridge and poured them two big glasses.

They
talked most of the night, sitting at opposite ends of the bed, neither
realising that as the night travelled towards the dawn, they inched nearer to
each other.

Had
Alice been quizzed on the subject of their conversation the following morning,
she would not have been able to remember a single thing, but they covered their
families, school, Mark’s work, Morrissey, world politics, hunting, and Karen,
who at this point was on her back in the garden, laughing delightedly, her legs
clamped tightly round Stephen Matthews.

Eventually
the conversation came round to the pair of them and their friendship over the
years. Fuelled by the cumulative heat of each glass, Mark looked solemnly into
Alice’s face and said very quietly, ‘Did you know I…?’

He
stopped but Alice knew what the end of the sentence was.

Some weeks after the
Second Morrissey Night, as it came to be known, the phone rang very late at
night. Keith, dozing in his chair, sat forward in the armchair and lifted the
receiver to his ear.

‘Hello,’
he said, half asleep. ‘I want a divorce,’ said Gina. ‘Gina?’ said Keith.

‘Yes,’
said Gina. ‘Did you hear me, Keith?’

‘Yes,’
said Keith. ‘I did. Where are you? What are you doing? Who are you with?’

He
heard Gina say, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Dunk, you talk to him.’

A
friendly male voice said, ‘Hello, you must be Keith.’

‘Yes,’
said Keith. ‘And who am I speaking to?’

‘Look,’
said Dunk, ‘I’m Dunk. I don’t expect you to understand any of this or like it,
but it’s true, me and your missus want to get hitched.’

Keith
found himself sounding pinched and outraged. ‘My wife is a very disturbed woman
who needs treatment and must come home,’ he said.

Aw,
come on, mate,’ said Dunk, ‘she ain’t that bad, are you, Gina? I’ve been
looking after her since she ran away from that mental place — yes, I know all
about it — and since she’s been with me, she’s been fine.’

Keith
said helplessly, ‘Look, we need to talk face to face. Can you come here?’

‘Hang
on,’ said Dunk, and Keith heard him place his hand over the receiver and then a
muffled argument.

‘All
right,’ said Dunk eventually ‘We’ll come over at the weekend, but don’t you go
calling them mental doctors or Gina and me will never forgive you.’

Keith
woke Alice and phoned Marie, who drove over in her dressing gown.

‘What
did he sound like?’ said Alice. A bit pervy?’

‘Evil?’
said Marie.

Keith
shook his head. ‘I know it seems weird but he sounded nice.

The two
women looked at him as if he was the one with a chronic mental illness.

‘I
think we should have the police standing by when they come,’ said Marie.

‘Yes,’
said Alice, ‘me too.’

Keith
looked at them both. ‘We are not going to do that.

We are
going to meet this man, assess the situation and then call the police if
necessary.’ The normally gentle, humorous timbre of his voice was shot through
with a hitherto unheard steeliness.

Marie
and Alice nodded.

And so
Dunk and Gina arrived at the cottage on Saturday morning in Dunk’s enormous
juggernaut of a lorry which completely blocked the lane for the duration of
their visit.

Keith
observed the almost gentlemanly way in which Dunk helped Gina down from the
cab, their closeness, and Dunk’s very obvious fondness for her. He felt no
jealousy or anger but was slightly ashamed of himself when he realised that he
had not seen his wife as anything other than a problem for so many years now,
she had ceased to be a person and a woman to him.

It
wasn’t a long visit. Tea was made, Gina slurped a bit and let biscuit crumbs
fall down her front, but Dunk didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed or
censorious. He simply dabbed her chin with his hanky, brushed the crumbs from
her face and went back to holding her hand.

By the
end of half an hour, Keith had agreed to everything Gina and Dunk wanted.
Alice had also warmed to Dunk and as much as she wanted her mum and dad to stay
together, she could see that this big lump of an ageing lorry driver was a far
more loving and caring partner than Keith could ever be now.

At the
door, Keith and Dunk shook hands.

‘Thanks,’
said Keith simply.

‘No
problem,’ said Dunk.

Once
Gina had freed everyone of their obligation to live a life tied to her illness,
Keith and Alice became aware of an enormous number of possibilities in both
their lives.

But
nine months later their thoughts of travel, new houses and different people had
all melted away.

A beautiful September day
burst open with the rising of the sun, the best type of day to stand back and
take in the unparalleled, uniquely English beauty of the Herefordshire
countryside. It was more than they as a family, could have hoped for.

Gina and
Alice got up at six, to give themselves plenty of time to prepare for what was
going to be the strangest day the village had seen for many years, a day in
which all its members could play a part.

They
joined Marie outside the village church and waited for their respective future
spouses to walk them through the lych gate to be married by a new, fresh-faced
vicar, Tom Akins, who was blissfully unaware of the mayhem the Wildgoose family
were capable of.

The
ceremony itself was a strange hotchpotch of favourite hymns and a Morrissey
anthem, chosen by Gina and Alice to accompany their process up the aisle. Tom
Akins had been a little reluctant when he heard the content of ‘There Is A
Light That Never Goes Out’; he considered the words, ‘If a double-decker bus kills
the both of us’, slightly morbid for a wedding ceremony, but both Gina and
Alice were so determined, he was unable to refuse them.

Wobbly
and Bighead had managed suits of sorts and Bert had been primped and scrubbed
so thoroughly that he looked every inch the proud father and grandad as he
shuffled up the aisle with Alice on one side and Gina on the other. Alice was
wearing a plain but beautiful lavender dress, and Gina wore what seemed to be a
female clown’s outfit.

Marie
Henty came behind dressed in a fussy cream frock, escorted by her confused
father, a retired surgeon who had come down from the Lake District for the
weekend with Marie’s mother. Joan Henty was relieved to see her only daughter
at last hitched, even if it was to this hippy with the odd family Norman and
Jennifer were ecstatic that finally they had a daughter-in-law to boast about.

The
villagers had all piled into the church too, including Doug, red-faced and
grinning at this marvellous outcome to many years of chaos, strain and heartache.

Then came
Dunk, Keith and Mark, the prospective husbands, all smiling broadly and hardly
able to believe that things had turned out so well for all of them.

Dunk
was resplendent in a badly cut, cheap suit adorned with several incongruous
gladioli, an intervention of Gina’s to remind her of her hero Morrissey, who
seemed to all of them to be present at a ceremony that to some extent he had
been responsible for.

After a
short service the three couples were pronounced men and wives and they all
returned back up the aisle to stand smiling and blinking in the late summer
sunshine.

Bouquets
were thrown, two of which were caught by May Budd and Annie Wilsher who,
looking up at the Wildgoose family in her triumph, secured a wink from a very
frolicsome Bert. The third bouquet fell on Doug’s head, causing a ripple of
laughter round the group and some very rude jokes from Bighead and Wobbly.

Due to
financial constraints, everyone had decided that the best place to hold the
reception was back at the cottage. Keith and Alice had scrubbed, hoovered and
washed the place until it looked as good as it possibly could, which was faded
and worn out. Beer, wine, sausage rolls, cheese and cake had been purchased
from Hereford and was all laid out on trestle tables in the front garden.

The
phalanx of newlyweds moved up the hill with family and villagers and tucked themselves
into the little garden to begin the festivities.

As the
sun began to go down, Wobbly and Bighead announced to the assembled party that
they had a surprise for the newlyweds and Wobbly went to the van and returned
with the biggest rocket anyone had ever seen.

‘Right,
you fuckers, stand back!’ he shouted.

Jennifer
shuddered at the language and Norman looked embarrassed.

Bighead
cleared a space and moved everyone back behind the rocket which he had got
cheap off a bloke in Cleobury Mortimer. He stabbed the rocket into the ground.
Bighead produced a box of matches and lit the fuse.

Everybody
held their breath. As the fuse neared blast-off, the rocket slipped from its
position pointing directly at the stars and started to sink towards the earth.
Without warning and with a huge whooshing noise, it took off straight towards
Gina and Keith’s cottage. It hit the window in the front and went clean through
it, landing with a massive bang in the tiny front room.

Everyone
hooted with laughter and then looked at each other as if trying to isolate a
responsible person to deal with the problem.

Within
seconds the front room was alight and smoke began to pour out of the window.

‘Bollocks,’
said Wobbly ‘Shall I get round the back and get some water?’

‘Wouldn’t
it be a good idea to call the fire brigade?’ said Jennifer.

‘Yes,’
said Keith to both questions, but before anyone could move, Gina laid a hand on
Keith’s arm.

‘It’s a
shithole,’ she said. ‘We were never that happy there. Shall we just leave it?’