More Than Love Letters (23 page)

Love,

Margaret xx

 

 

WITCH

Women of Ipswich Together Combating Homelessness

 

Extract from minutes of meeting
at Della’s house, 7th July 2005, 8 p.m.

 

We were devastated to learn yesterday of Helen’s death. She hanged herself with her dressing-gown belt in the hospital bathroom at 9.30 a.m., while all the staff were in a ward meeting. The hospital manager informed Helen’s parents immediately, but did not ring Witch House. Emily found out the news when she went to visit Helen in the afternoon. She returned at once to tell the other residents, and she and Pat T. phoned members of the collective to let them know.

From:
Richard Slater
[[email protected]]
Sent:
7/7/05 22:16
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

Hi Michael,

Yesterday afternoon at four o’clock Margaret phoned me, and I knew at once something was terribly wrong – her voice was fugged with tears. One of the women in the hostel has committed suicide. Or rather
not
in the hostel, that is the sickening irony of it. This girl – Helen, her name was – had recently gone into psychiatric hospital because she was depressed and suicidal and it was felt that the levels of cover in Witch House were insufficient. Then, after all the care and support she has had from that ill-assorted bunch of untrained and largely unpaid women, she goes into hospital, where the professionals turn their backs for a moment and let her die. Of course it is a sickener for the nurses, too – what a bloody awful job they have – it’s no good feeling anger towards them. But I do feel anger, Mike – I feel absolutely churning with it. But mainly (and probably quite illogically) I feel, poor Margaret, this is so unfair!

After I’d put down the receiver all I could think about was getting to her. There were ample opportunities, had the press posse been able to see my tail-lights for the smoke from the burning rubber, for ‘Minister in Road Rage’ stories all the way up through north-east London, and when I reached the open tarmac of the A12 I just sank my right foot to the floor and held it there. I don’t know if the speed cameras caught me, and it probably makes little difference, because the needle reached 140 mph and proceeded to get stuck there, so that there is indelible evidence of my insanity. I didn’t care – I don’t care. I can lose my licence, go to prison – I just needed to be with Margaret.

When I reached the house, she opened the door and she was in my arms at once. I really didn’t plan any of it. She was crying freely now, and I was rubbing her tears away with my thumb, and then (why am I telling you this, Mike?) kissing them away, and suddenly she had turned her head a fraction and her mouth was underneath mine, and I was tasting the salt of her tears on her lips, and then on her tongue . . . But into my spiralling consciousness there then obtruded an unexpected scrabbling at my hip, gentle but insistent. Hang on, this doesn’t feel quite right, I thought. Looking down, I encountered two accusing, liquid brown eyes. We broke apart, and Margaret effected a formal introduction to W. G. Snuffy Walden. This was the spaniel, the disposal of whose bodily wastes, you may recall, featured large in our early correspondence. She doesn’t permit any public demonstrations of affection from which she herself is excluded, Margaret explained.

Snuffy and I were just getting acquainted when Cora the pale green landlady emerged from the kitchen, trailing plumes of malodorous steam. She was displaying more normal skin tones this time – except immediately round her eyes, where livid red weals were beginning to delineate themselves with alarming rapidity as we watched. ‘It’s the nettles!’ she cried, brandishing aloft half a hedgeful of greenstuff in her gloved hands, rather in the manner of Ophelia clutching the fantastic garlands of crow-flowers. (What
are
crow-flowers, anyway?) It seems she had made the mistake of rubbing her eyes in the middle of a tricky leaf-stripping operation. Margaret escorted her to the bathroom to apply Optrex, Savlon, and copious amounts of cold water, leaving me alone with W. G. Snuffy Walden, who produced a red plastic hedgehog with a surprised expression on its face, and proposed that she and I might engage in a little light throwing and fetching to pass the time.

After this, there seemed little hope of any reprise of the earlier interrupted and all too brief amorous explorations. Margaret made us all cocoa and toast, and Snuffy squeezed jealously between Margaret and me on the settee. But when we talked a bit about Helen, Margaret’s fingers crept silently into my hand under the long, silky fringed cover of Snuffy’s outspread ears.

When the cocoa was all drunk and the toast eaten, I came back to my Ipswich flat. Geoff Howard and his cohorts at the
Town Crier
seem to have stopped picketing it, and I got in undetected. This meant that it was safe to come and go tonight, too, with caution. I saw her after school, but not for very long, because it was the WITCH meeting at eight o’clock. Cora had invited me to eat with them, and we had shepherd’s pie, which was odd, because I could have sworn Margaret said she’s a vegetarian. The meeting was in the same street as the hostel, at the house of a new member. I drove her there with one hand, holding hers pressed tightly to my thigh with the other. I drove slowly – partly to make the drive last longer, and partly in order to keep to the 30 limit without any functioning means of gauging my speed. I pulled up, and at the last moment, just as she was about to get out of the car, I managed to blurt out ‘Come back to mine tonight?’ and she just said ‘Yes’ quietly, and was gone. Now I am sitting here waiting for her like an over-excited schoolkid before his first date, and feeling guilty for thinking far too little about poor Helen and far too much about Margaret.

Richard.

 

 

From:
Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent:
8/7/05 07:03
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Dear Becs,

Well, I think I am about to be stripped of my habit and wimple. My vow of chastity has effectively been breached, at least in thought and word if not technically in deed. But I haven’t told you yet how it all started.

Helen is dead. Writing it down like that doesn’t make it any more real, but it is true. She hanged herself in hospital while the nurses were in a meeting. We were so sure that hospital was the safest place for her to be – I even tried to persuade her to go in, several times, and I’m sure the others did too. Now I can’t help feeling as if we just passed the buck, abdicated responsibility for her. To be honest, my mind still just blanks off if I even try to think about what I feel about it.

As soon as Pat T. rang off after telling me about Helen, I dialled Richard’s number. I didn’t even think about it. Cora wasn’t home from the bank yet, and I needed to hear his voice. He said, ‘Wait there, I’m coming over,’ although I’ve no idea where he thought I might go. Cora came in, and I told her, and she gave me a big hug and tried to feed me toad in the hole, which she claimed has comforting properties, but on this occasion I couldn’t even pretend to want it, however kindly it was meant. She then produced a large bin-liner full of nettles (I’ve no idea where she got these after a day working in a bank in central Ipswich), donned an enormous pair of gauntlets which she said were Pete’s old motorcycle gloves, and went back into the kitchen to start on what she described as her ‘herbalism homework’.

Considerably before the earliest time at which I had calculated it to be possible that he might make it here from central London, there was a ring at the front door. I flew to open it and straight into Richard’s arms. Suddenly the tears that I had been holding back started to flow in earnest, all over the front of his shirt, and he was murmuring soothing words and wiping the tears away with his thumb, and then catching them with his lips on my cheek. I wasn’t aware of making any decision, Becs, it was just the most natural thing in the world to turn my head towards him, and then he was kissing me and I was kissing him, I don’t know which, both at once, all together. It didn’t go on long – not nearly long enough! – because Snuffy came and got in the way, and then Cora had a crisis with her nettles that needed sorting out. But my pulse didn’t go back to normal all evening, and that night the fearful images of Helen that were keeping away sleep were confusingly interwoven with the memory of how his mouth had felt against mine.

Anyway, last night he came over for supper, and later on, after the Witch meeting (which passed in a sort of collective daze – no pun intended – with almost everyone red-eyed and shaky), I came back to his flat. I haven’t been here before, though he told me the address ages ago. I knew it was in an old converted warehouse down at the docks, but I hadn’t realised it was right on the waterfront, with a view out to the estuary. You can sit at his desk, where I am writing this now, and watch the shipping come and go. Well, I climbed the stairs – he’s right near the top – and rang the bell, and we were soon kissing again, his hands were in my hair, and it was wonderful, Becs . . . But I had this feeling that he was holding back somehow, that something was wrong, when all I wanted was just to carry on sliding down the glorious slope that was leading into bed. After more hesitancy, he finally extracted himself completely, and picked himself up off the floor (where we somehow found ourselves), taking my hand and pulling me up too. There was quite a bit of panting going on by now on both sides, and there had been a certain amount of disarrangement of clothing, but he stood his ground, and told me what was on his mind. Apparently he thought he mustn’t take advantage of my grief and shock over Helen, and my resultant putative need for comfort. (Bloody hell, Becs – why did I have to find the only male in East Anglia with such an overdeveloped conscience? Maybe it’s my vicar’s daughter sonar.) I knew what I needed, and comfort may have been a part of it, but isn’t it always? And what is wrong with a bit of mutual physical comfort between consenting adults, anyway? But he was not to be swayed (and it didn’t seem fair to try
too
hard, when the poor man was attempting to be noble), and we ended up sleeping curled up together in his bed as chaste as two babes in the wood. In some ways it was an agony, all that touching-but-not-touching, but in the end it
was
a comfort just to have his reassuring warmth round me, and I slept much better than the night before.

Oh, God – school today, and I haven’t given a thought to my lesson plan. I’m going to be dragging myself in wearing yesterday’s shirt and no knickers under my trousers because I don’t have a clean pair. Maybe I am the slut that half the parents believe I am after all!

And you – still celibate? Must be getting on for a fortnight now . . . something of a record!

Love and hugs,

Margaret xx

 

 

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
8/7/05 22:08
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

Hi Margaret,

Blimey! I needed a cold shower after just reading your e-mail – I don’t know how you managed to be so restrained. As for him . . . you should have picked a Tory MP. They have any vestiges of conscience surgically removed by the Party chairman when they accept the candidacy.

And yes, my nunnish lifestyle here continues unstained. Men are right off my menu.

But it is just horrible about your friend Helen.

Big hugs,

Becs xx

From:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent:
11/7/05 21:43
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Dear Becs,

Well, life goes on . . . in the shape of the St Edith’s sports day this afternoon. We have separate events for boys and girls, to mask differences which are, I suspect, due not so much to their pre-pubertal musculature as to socialisation. In the practice sessions, the girls always win the skipping, with even the tubbiest and most knock-kneed rotating the rope in smooth synchronism to their stride, while the boys (those that do not end in a tangled heap) either lollop along awkwardly or else simply sprint, half-halting to put in a token turn of the rope every few metres. All, that is, except David Phillips in Year 4, the sole brother among four sisters, and a veritable wizard with the rope. At running, the boys excel almost uniformly, but I wonder whether this is also more down to nurture than nature. They just spend a higher percentage of their lives careering at full tilt – and a correspondingly lower percentage talking to one another.

Also, if you ask me, the peculiar Britishness of all those skipping ropes and hoops and bean bags and eggs-and-spoons is not preserved out of any respect for quaint tradition. Nor is it merely, in these egalitarian days, intended to introduce a random element in order to disguise the innately competitive ethos of the whole event, sparing the blushes of the wheezy, the overweight and the uncoordinated. I’m sure I’m not allowed to say this, but my observations suggest that it is primarily to stop the black children from winning everything, and to leave the weedy white and Asian kids in with a fighting chance.

The biggest excitement of the afternoon came when the hot favourite for the infant girls’ egg-and-spoon race (a leggy, high-stepping Year 2 with a flowing pale chestnut mane) was dramatically brought down by toddler with a pushalong tractor, straying out from the crowd at the rails in a manner reminiscent of Emily Davison at Epsom in 1913. Sniffling and lame, she subsequently pulled out of the sack race without coming under starter’s orders, causing major readjustments in the trackside prices, and confounding those who had laid large sums upon her ante post.

Richard has gone back to London and out of the way of temptation (i.e. me), but he has promised to come back for Helen’s funeral.