The More You Ignore Me (21 page)

‘Do we
have to?’ replied Bighead. ‘Let’s leave it a few weeks and see what happens.’

‘All
right,’ replied his brother. ‘Shall we go to the pub then?’

‘Yeah,’
came the reply.

Similar
turmoil was occurring in Mark’s life. He had lasted three nights in the open
and finally been defeated by sheer boredom. Visiting him on the third day Alice
noticed a considerable downturn in his mood.

‘You
can’t stay here, Mark,’ she said. ‘What are you going to do?’

Mark
honestly didn’t know. He was fed up with having to even think about his
situation and just wished he could turn back the clock and slip once more into
the uneasy dishonest relationship with his father, protected most of the time
by his mum. He wondered whether he should leave college and get a job. Mark had
fantasised about walking into an army recruiting office in Hereford and being
immediately accepted by the SAS as it would be apparent to them straight away
that he was a fine specimen, rugged and capable. He knew the reality was
different, though, and someone who was sensitive, liked reading and could only last
three days on his own in the woods probably wasn’t what they were looking for.
The only thing he was sure about was that he didn’t want to go crawling back
home like a guilty dog to be further abused by his master.

‘Come
round to our place for a decent meal,’ urged Alice, ‘and then you can stay
tonight and we can sit and discuss a plan.’

‘What
about my dad?’ said Mark. ‘Isn’t he likely to turn up?’

‘He’s
not been round since my mum scared him off,’ said Alice with a rueful laugh. ‘I
think you’re safe.’

So they
tidied up Mark’s makeshift camp and headed down the hill towards Alice’s house.
Keith was still out at work and Gina was not there. Strolling round the countryside
talking her nonsense to anyone who will listen, thought Alice.

‘It’s
really weird,’ she said as they sat down with a cup of tea. ‘My mum has really
got into Morrissey since she came off her drugs,’

‘Does
that make her madder or saner?’ said Mark, hoping that Gina would stay out all
evening and he wouldn’t have to face this woman about whom he’d heard so much.

‘Saner
in my book,’ said Alice. ‘She’s still a bit odd but since she stopped her
injections she’s got some of her old self back, though she sometimes talks
rubbish and does weird things.’

‘What
sort of weird things?’ said Mark, not really wanting to know but at the same
time fascinated.

‘Well,
she keeps trying to hide her Morrissey crush from me.’

‘Perhaps
she’s embarrassed,’ said Mark.

Alice
made a snorting noise. ‘My fucking mother has never been embarrassed in her
entire life,’ she said. ‘I have my suspicions that maybe it’s something going
on inside, you know…’ She pointed to her head.

Mark
was on shaky ground here. He didn’t know anything about mental illness, let
alone any specifics about schizophrenia; like most people he thought
schizophrenia was a multiple personality condition.

‘I’m sure
she’ll get better,’ he said, more in hope than anything else.

‘Fucking
hell, Mark,’ said Alice bitterly ‘She’ll never get better. People with this
never do. I’ve read about it. The best we can hope for is to find some sort of
happy medium between her being a fucking blob and a maniac.’

‘I’m
sorry,’ said Mark. ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about. ‘‘I’m sorry too,’ said
Alice. ‘I didn’t mean to snap. I don’t think most people are ever going to
understand because they’re too scared or uninterested. Anyway, let’s talk about
what you’re going to do.’

‘Well,
I’m not going back home,’ said Mark. ‘That would mean I have to be the sort of
person my dad wants me to be and I just don’t know if I can live like that,
listening to all the shit he talks about politics, about women — about
everything.’

‘You’ll
have to get a job then,’ said Alice. ‘You’ll have to give up college.’

‘Yes,’
said Mark. ‘For now anyway A friend of my mum’s runs a shop in Ludlow, they’re
always looking for people to help out there.’

‘So
we’ll have to work out a way for you to get hold of your mum,’ said Alice.

Alice waited outside the
village shop the following morning and when she saw Mark’s mum’s little blue
car approaching, she steeled herself because she didn’t have any idea what
reaction she’d get. The car drew to a halt and Mark’s mum got out. Normally she
was immaculately turned out with spotless clothes and a face which had had at
least half an hour spent on it. But that veneer had vanished in the three days
Mark had been away, for not only was she mourning the loss of her son but she’d
had to weather the unpredictable rages of her husband as he oscillated between
‘leaving the bastard to get on with it’ or ‘calling that fucking useless excuse
for a policeman to go and look for him.

‘Hello,’
said Alice.

‘Oh
Alice.’ She began to cry. ‘Have you seen him? Is he OK? Where is he? What’s he
doing?’ The desperate questions spewed out almost in relief.

‘He’s
OK,’ said Alice. ‘I need to talk to you. Shall we walk?’

Alice
went through what she had agreed she would say. By the end of the conversation,
Mark’s mother had agreed she would talk to the friend in Ludlow, not tell
Mark’s father and drop off some cash for Mark to survive in a cheap B and B for
a couple of weeks until he found a job.

‘Can’t
he come home?’ she asked sadly.

Alice
shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I’m sorry.

‘His
dad’s not as bad as you think, you know,’ said Mark’s mum. But they both knew
that wasn’t really true.

Alice
agreed she would call Mark’s mum as soon as Mark was settled and at that point
they could negotiate between themselves as to whether they might meet.

Mark
and Alice went to Ludlow that weekend and met the friend of Mark’s mum, who
predictably offered him a part-time job in the little shop. The two then sat in
a cafe with the local paper and ringed all the possibles in the accommodation
section.

Within
two days a very small, grimy room had been found; it was the kind of room that
would make Mark’s mother burst into tears but it was affordable.

Alice
spent Mark’s first day at his new accommodation with him to try and banish the
gloom and grime. She bought scented candles and covered the walls with a few
Morrissey posters, despite Mark’s protests. After cooking him a celebratory
vegetarian breakfast of scrambled eggs and beans, they decided to head forth
into the nice bit of Ludlow and browse around the market. As they approached,
they heard laughter and noticed a large crowd gathered round someone.

‘Oh
God, please don’t let it be a juggler,’ said Mark in mock alarm.

Alice
smiled and the pair squeezed in between the laughing, fascinated crowd to see
what the attraction was.

The
attraction was Gina, who had somehow acquired a guitar from somewhere and was
sitting on a stool dressed in a loose white shirt, NHS glasses, a bunch of
gladioli stuffed into the back of a pair of Keith’s trousers, and her hair in a
pretty bad attempt at a quiff. She was making a very bad fist of ‘William It
Was Really Nothing’ and Alice was put in mind of stories she had read in
history books of mental hospitals where the public paid to go and look at the
mentally ill for entertainment.

‘What
do you want to do?’ whispered Mark.

‘Just
disappear,’ Alice said hoping that no one in the crowd had made the connection
between herself and the obviously disturbed woman on the stool with the guitar.
But it was too late. A face she knew well from school turned with a sneer
towards her. Stephen Matthews, the school’s most accomplished bully looked at
her with a mixture of sadism and amusement.

‘Still
cracked, I see,’ he said and the group round him joined in with his loud laugh.

Mark threw a punch at
Stephen and Stephen’s yobby friends attempted to make short work of Mark in
return. Alice got stuck in and put herself between Mark and the group of evil-smelling
ne’er-do-wells that Stephen counted as his friends, in the expectation that
they would not hit a girl. Either they were blinded by excitement or less moral
than Alice had hoped because a fist hit her in the stomach and another one
caught the side of her face. A few stallholders decided that a girl being used
as a punchbag by a gang of youths was socially reprehensible and joined in and,
hey presto, a fully fledged fight began.

For
once Alice hoped for the appearance of Bighead and Wobbly who were remarkably
accomplished at this sort of thing. Unfortunately they were still in bed at
home following a night out in the pub and both snored on, oblivious of the
distressed maiden Alice felt herself to be.

Eventually
a few languid policemen spilled out of a car on the fringes of the scene and
peace was restored. During the fight, Gina had managed to slip away unnoticed.
As policemen turned to various culprits to ask them what had started it all,
they pointed vainly around, trying to locate the strangely dressed woman. Some
policemen began to think she may have been a figment of their imagination. Gina
slunk through the alley beside the Butter Cross building, divesting herself of
the more extreme elements of her costume, realising even in her disturbed state
that it was advisable perhaps to merge into the background of shoppers and
traders.

Eventually
Stephen and his friends were cautioned after Alice and Mark said they didn’t
want to press charges, and their departure from the scene was supervised by an
overweight policeman with a stubby beard just in case ill feeling caused
another outbreak of belligerence. An old woman coming out of the chemist’s
jumped and let out a little squeak as she nearly stepped on what she thought
was an injured kitten. She bent down to take a closer look and realised it was
an inanimate object. She held it up to her bespectacled eyes, wondering how on
earth an Elvis wig could possibly have found its way to this sliver of pavement
in the centre of Ludlow.

Mark
and Alice wandered back to the grimy room, feeling shocked and hurting. Alice
bore the beginnings of a black eye and Mark was feeling distinctly put out that
he had been beaten twice in a couple of weeks. But as they sat in front of the
small black and white portable TV that Alice had brought from her bedroom, Gina
was the sole topic of conversation.

‘Where
do you think she’s gone?’ said Mark eventually after they had sat staring at
the local news for some minutes.

‘Christ
knows,’ said Alice, ‘but we’d better find her soon because I’ve made a mistake
and she’s really ill again.’ She started to cry. ‘All I wanted to do was give
her a taste of real life,’ she said through her tears. ‘Oh God, Mark, I must
have been mad.’

‘Well,
she
definitely is,’ said Mark, trying to lighten the situation. It only made
Alice cry harder.

That night, under a full
moon, a woman called Grace was driving through the Shropshire countryside on
her way from London to see her parents for a few days. She’d had a stressful
week. Her job as a social worker in child protection had left a trail of
unfinished work, angry clients and even angrier bosses. But as her car
struggled up Clee Hill in the moonlight, her spirits began to lift. She knew
that once she crested the hill, she would freewheel down into an area which to
her was untouched by modern life. She could leave her burning, negative
thoughts at the top of the hill and soak up the therapeutic rustic rhythms of
the countryside down in the sheltered valley.

Sheep
stood dead-eyed along the road and she slowed to make sure she didn’t hit one
as it ambled across the deserted ribbon of tarmac in search of more interesting
grass. She passed through the sprawling village noting the landmarks, the
viewing point, the chippie, the high-set Edwardian villas which gazed towards
the Black Mountains. She often arrived at this very late hour in an attempt to
avoid sitting in traffic on the beleaguered motorway She became aware of some
movement ahead of her. She blinked her tired eyes, having forgotten her driving
glasses, and wondered if she was so exhausted she was hallucinating. She wasn’t
hallucinating. A seated figure appeared to be bouncing towards her in the
middle of the road. An invisible hand clutched her heart and a welter of fear
shot through her. Almost unconsciously she pressed the little button on the car
door, locking herself in, in case her progress was somehow halted by this
strange apparition. As the figure bounced closer, she realised it was a woman,
wild hair streaming out behind her, dressed in men’s clothes. Impossible to
tell her age, though. She dropped her speed down to twenty and as she drew
almost level, she realised the laughing figure was sitting on a space-hopper,
one of those big, orange, rubber, bouncy balls with ears to hold on to,
something she’d had when she and her brothers were younger.