Relatively Strange (12 page)

The room descended into noisy chaos and excitement with Merry having to raise her voice to make herself heard and get everyone re-seated. Tight-lipped, clipboard rammed to chest, she surveyed us for a moment in silence. Someone, she suspected, was making a monkey out of her and although I kept my eyes studiously down, I thought she looked at me a little longer than the rest and, for a moment, I picked up her confusion and the strength of her cold anger. Merry with the laughing eyes was a scientifically-minded individual and for her, there always had to be pattern, consistency, logic and reason even within the field in which she was working. Today wasn’t panning out that way and anything that didn’t fit her parameters disturbed the order of things, provoking a violent frustration, the force of which I sensed, alarmed even her. As she moved her head, I could see where sharp, starched white shirt collar had scored an angry red mark below her chin. I hoped it was sore.

“Well,” she unclenched her jaw, “I don’t think we’ve ever had quite so much success on that one before. Thank you everybody. Now, Mrs Metcalfe,” she nodded and her assistant turned to gather up an armful of boxes from a pile in the corner of the room, “Is going to give each table a Snakes and Ladders game board. We’ll do girls against boys again as you’re already sitting that way. Yes,” she snapped in answer to a raised arm, “Of course you can use your hands this time.”

Now, here was another fine dilemma I’d got myself into, what exactly were they looking for this time? Would it be a good idea to lie low and do nothing or should I rig some scores across the room? All action seemed fraught with possibly un-visualised traps. By this time I’d acquired a solid headache, the uneven rhythm of discomfort that was the familiar follow-on from too much activity on the cerebral front. As I dithered, Miss Merry glided to the door in response to a knock, it was the young woman I’d seen earlier on the stairs – longer ago it seemed, than the few hours it really was. Miss M put a hand on her arm as she entered and they stood conversing quietly for a moment.

It was hard to tell her age, anywhere between eighteen to late twenties and she was smaller than I’d thought, shorter by a head than the older woman. Slim, finely boned, holding herself as if to balance the mass and weight of the hair dressed high on her head. The material of her dress, close up, was richly gold and orange, the colours changing where they reflected the light as she moved. Cut away at the shoulder it left narrow arms bare except for several thin gold bangles that jangled musically as she moved.

Her face in profile was as expressionless as Merry’s, together, these two must be the life and soul of any staff do. When she turned slightly I thought she looked – carved – is the best way I can describe it, with the fine line of her forehead moulding, seamlessly arrogant into nose and mouth. I wondered why she wasn’t wearing dark glasses like other sightless people I’d seen. In fact her eyes, depth-filled and dark seemed focused not on the woman now earnestly speaking to her but on a far-beyond point. Merry finished what she had to say and the younger woman nodded, murmured something and turning, swept her sightless (were they sightless?) eyes over the room.

Everyone of course had stopped what they were doing, it was impossible not to stare she just seemed so oddly out of place in the pedestrian grey setting of the Portakabin. Holding the white stick before her, she began now to move slowly round the perimeter of the room. It was quite clear to me why she was there and who she was looking for. I knew now that what I was, was more than just a socially embarrassing problem for my parents.

People had turned back to the Snakes and Ladders but the whole pace of things had slowed, all surreptitiously watching the young woman slowly circling. Every now and then she would pause by a child, her head slightly tilted while the object of her attention sat wide-eyed and very still, and then she’d move on. I didn’t know whether to try and scan, but the very act of doing so might draw the attention of the ‘diviner’ for I had no doubts at all that’s what she was. In the next instant I realised I was being a fool, of course I could be heard, even if I wasn’t doing anything, how else had Irritable found me? Desperately I tried to haul everything inside my head and blank my mind. For a moment I thought I’d succeeded – a cat smugly hiding under the curtain, with tail twitching in full view. The woman paused by our table, turning her face to me across the heads of the three boys sitting opposite. She couldn’t see me, but she flooded my head.

“Hallo,” she said aloud, a low voice, surprising from such a small frame, “We bumped into each other earlier didn’t we?” I sat mute, sweaty and gawping.

“You were waiting your turn at some tests.” she reminded me politely and, with fizzy lemon-sherbet recognition, came a familiar irritable snap in my head.

“Answer me –
aloud. Now
!”

“Ah yes,” I said, nodding my head up and down. Turning to Merry with a slight smile, she answered the unasked question,

“Soap,” she said, “This young lady uses my favourite, Morny, Lily of the Valley, I’d recognise it anywhere. Right?” She raised an eyebrow in my direction, I continued to nod, then realised belatedly she couldn’t see.

“Yes, yes, that’s right. My mum always buys it.” I had not the faintest idea what soap we used, but if she said it was Morny, then Morny was fine with me.

“You had a bit of a funny turn – feeling OK now?” she asked,

“Yes, thank you.” like a nodding toy dog in the back of a car on a bumpy road I was having a terrible problem with my head.

“Good,” she said and made to move on. Miss Merry, grasped her arm and asked a soft question, her eyes on me and I saw the woman shake her head and shrug. Miss Merry said something else, sharply and from where I was sitting I could see white indentations where her nails were digging into the flesh she held. For a moment the younger woman was still, then gently but firmly she lifted the spitefully restraining hand from her arm, “No, I’m sorry.” She said, “Nothing.” And she moved on.

Baffled, but emboldened and, as fright receded, dangerously nosy, I reached out tentatively and was slapped down hard, a sharp mental cuff round the ear.

“Scat.”

“One question?”

“Quickly.”

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Glory Isaacs.”

“No, I meant …”

“I know what you meant.”

“You work with them? I thought … I don’t understand. Why?”

“Go home, forget about today.”

“But …”

“I said shut it.”

“Right.”

Shadowed by Merry, Glory continued her deliberate circumnavigation of the room, once or twice she stopped and spoke to people but I didn’t think it was politic to stare. When I looked up again she was at the door. I saw her shake her head firmly in answer to more questions and then she turned to go. She couldn’t see the expression on the face of the lovely Miss M. – but maybe she knew anyway. They say the eyes are the windows of the soul, for a moment as Merry turned back to the room those eyes met mine and I felt an atavistic shiver run all the way up my spine and lodge jarringly in the back of my head. This was one lady not to be on the wrong side of and unless I was mistaken, that’s exactly where I was and I certainly didn’t need any special powers to tell me that in the Merry popularity stakes, Glory wasn’t lagging far behind.

After the drama of preceding events, the rest of that day was anti-climactic, even though about twenty of us were kept behind after two of the coaches and the majority of children had left. We were required to do a further hour-long session of what they called Rorschach Tests, which involved looking at splodges and saying what they looked like. I studiously followed the earlier-given advice, kept my answers random and ignored the images being broadcast by the members of staff with whom we were working. Despite this, I didn’t relax, even a little, until we late-stayers were finally given the go ahead to clamber wearily on to the last coach and head back to London. We would be informed by letter which of us, if any, had been picked to continue.

Chapter Fourteen

There returned from Newcombe an infinitely wiser, more cautiously subdued person. Everything had suddenly moved on to a different and altogether more serious level. Grandma’s pronouncements suddenly didn’t seem quite so paranoid and my parents saw all their vague fears coalesce into clearly identifiable threat.

“Work harder at pretending, sweetheart.” my mother demanded again and again, “Keep telling yourself you can’t do … things and after a while, perhaps you won’t be able to.”

And I did try. After all, I wasn’t stupid. At home there was a radical change of regime and foibles, tolerated over the years, were now banned completely. The phrase ‘Hands, darling, hands.’ became part and parcel of our lives and I woke on several occasions, sweaty from nightmare scenarios featuring slick-soled Merry, the unctuous Doctor and small animals blasted bloodily apart. Two weeks after my return, to our relief, a letter arrived informing my parents that regrettably I was not one of the pupils selected to continue on to the next stage and we blessed Glory, whoever she was, whatever her motivation.

Fright engendered by the Newcombe experience lingered, reinforcing the value of tight control. But raging hormones and the ups and downs of early teenage angst don’t lend themselves to restraint. As I reached adolescence, all hell seemed to break loose. Looking back, I’m filled anew with admiration and wonder at the way my family coped, unperturbed by temper tantrums but, as always, concerned about how much might be revealed.

When I’d just turned thirteen, Dawn was seven with, it seemed, the sole aim in life of making mine a misery. One day a bicker grew into a row which escalated into a fight. My mother hot-footing into the room to haul us apart, as usual, blamed me – I was older, more responsible. Hot, bothered, scarlet faced, chest aching where my sister had punched me – I turned away in high dudgeon. It wasn’t fair, she’d started it. I could feel the rise of frustration and anger. Beyond my control? Probably not at that exact point but heading there fast without any argument from me. Two books flew off my bedside table, and thwunked heavily against the far wall.

“Stop that, right now.” ordered my mother. A china ornament, one of my favourites – a little bit of martyrdom creeping in maybe, rose and smashed oh so satisfyingly against the opposite wall.

“Stella.” a rising note of alarm, “Enough now, you’ve made your point.” The light in the centre of the ceiling began to sway, at first gently then faster, my mother and sister looked apprehensively upwards.

I started to cry. Not sad, simply constipated with crossness and frustration and all the feelings that come with being thirteen and sorely misunderstood. Events suddenly took off of their own accord and I temporarily, and not unwillingly, mislaid the off-button. My bedside table heaved ponderously sideways sliding alarm clock, lamp and glass of water in leisurely fashion to the floor, while a large framed poster of Sean Connery ripped sharply away from the wall to swamp the cat just emerging from a favoured position beneath my bed. Dawn, shrieking with fear-fed outrage rushed to the rescue. Connery was shaken but not stirred, unlike the cat who was patently both. Things were well and truly out of control now and what was coming out was unstoppably on its way. Around and above all three of us, crouched now in the middle of the room, swirled ever-faster, pictures, books, clothes, pillows and finally and ignominiously the cat.

I honestly didn’t think I
could
stop until I saw the sharp end of the broken china Dresden lady slam sharply into Dawn’s forehead. With the welling of blood and the expressions of horror on the faces of my mother and sister, I remembered the Russian girl I’d seen and what she could do. I was suddenly appalled beyond words. I’d never for one moment in all the years imagined this thing could move beyond my ability to control, become almost a separate entity. The indisputable fact that it could, was a salutary lesson that maybe I had to learn the hard way.

I made myself an Angry Box which had, in an earlier incarnation held Quality Street but now became the repository of so much more. I worked desperately hard at analysing and focusing. I had no real terms of reference but knew I had to recognise and haul back those high-voltage surges I could haul back, and channel safely to a specific point, those I couldn’t. The box lies today, dented and scarred with frustrations and failures, at the back of my wardrobe, an ever-lasting reminder of and testimony to the values of self-discipline.