AN IRRELEVANT WOMAN Read online

  Janet was driving in the direction of the town. She was not quite sure why, but perhaps by the time she arrived it would all fall into place, just as on stage, when the next bit of the action has gone completely from one’s mind, the cue is given and the lines are ready to be spoken. That was what happened on stage. The dreams were different – standing in the wings, not having learned the lines; or worse, on stage, realising that other people were enacting an unfamiliar play. Very soon, with no hope of escape, one was going to let everyone down. What would they say? How could one ever live with them again?

  But this was not a dream, only the usual stage lapse of concentration – it would all come right the moment she got into the supermarket car park. The supermarket was very important. It was a symbol of modern living and she must learn to find her way about it. Once she had done that, she would be well again.

  The road stretched over the heath like a giant toll-bridge with wilderness on either side. The wind buffeted the car and she had to grip the steering wheel tighter and tighter, fighting to keep the car on its course while waves of nausea assailed her.

  And suddenly, there it was – a rough stake driven into the grass at the side of the road, bearing a board with the invitation “Come to the Fayre”. The cue given in the nick of time. She accepted it gratefully. An arrow pointed westwards down a narrow track. On either side the heath bore the scars of clay workings and fine white sand was blown on to the windscreen. Its glitter hurt her eyes. She remembered running down a sandy track, her eyes stinging, crying out joyfully, ‘The sea! The sea!’ For a moment it ceased to be a memory and she was that enraptured child plunging towards the ever-miraculous blue. The child was always there, but only very occasionally, when its guardians relaxed their hold, could it be free again to run, arms outstretched. ‘No one knows we are here,’ she said to the child. ‘We have the whole day.’

  The track did not bear marks of recent passage. Possibly she was the only person to turn off the main road. She thought how some fifty years ago people would have walked miles on foot to sample the fun of the fair. Perhaps a few still did? Gypsies, a tramp . . .

  The track ran downhill and soon she saw the roofs of houses and the field on the outskirts of the village where the fair had been set up. She bumped the car onto the grass at the side of the track. ‘I might come back,’ she said as she got out. ‘On the other hand, I might not.’ She could hear music and she walked towards it.

  The front of the fairground organ was decorated with brightly painted flowers and a variety of precocious animals. ‘Did you paint it yourself?’ she asked the man who seemed to be in charge of it. She spoke in a tone appropriate to a work of art.

  ‘I do the painting.’ He was flattered. ‘My mate does the mechanics. Most people don’t notice the painting.’

  ‘The colours are so wonderful.’

  ‘I reckon I’ve a bit of an eye for colour,’ he conceded modestly.

  His mate was at the back of the organ divulging the secrets of the mechanics to an audience of small boys who received his words with the solemnity appropriate to revelation. For them, the miracle was not in the music, much less the painting, but in the all-important matter of how the machine worked. Janet could imagine Hugh among them, but not Malcolm.

  She walked on, past a stall where a man in a striped apron was grilling hamburgers, to a tent in which a dog show was being held. A voice over a loudhailer repeated, ‘Ringer. Have we got Ringer?’ Then, in an aside, ‘Oh, the plum duff? All right. Which one is it we haven’t got? Pickles?’ His voice blared into the loudhailer. ‘Can we have Pickles, please. Pickles to the dog tent.’ Pickles was a Jack Russell who had been entered in the contest for the Dog with the Waggiest Tail. Janet watched as the entrants received encouragement of the kind judged by their owners to produce the maximum agitation. Rope-tailed German Shepherd dogs, feathery-tailed retrievers, wagged accommodatingly; but the very weight and majesty of their appendages imposed a certain gravity of pace which prevented their indulgence in the uncontrolled ecstasies of Pickles’ little travesty, which responded so furiously one might have expected him to become airborne at any moment. After he had been rewarded for this vulgar display, there followed a contest for the Dog with the Best Party Trick. None of the contestants was on form and the award went to a ragged black mongrel who loped by and paused to pee against the judge’s leg. To the relief of the shambling youth who came in some trepidation to claim him, he was presented with a bag of Winalot.

  ‘What is his name?’ Janet asked the boy.

  ‘Beresford.’ He noted her surprise with satisfaction. ‘One of my stepfather’s jokes.’

  He was a tall lad who did not seem easy within his own skin. He had big shoulders and a small, round head and his limbs moved awkwardly as though he had not yet claimed these bones for his own and imposed his personality upon them. Or perhaps it was the awkwardness of the personality which had imposed itself on the bones? Certainly he paraded his anger – not a man’s anger, but the anger which some teenagers use as a protective shield with which to batter their way through situations which they have no other means of handling. There had been a difficult spell when Malcolm was like that, before he became so involved in the theatre. Janet had seemed to dig so deep into her resources of love and understanding that she had feared a time would come when she had nothing left to give. Was it the memory of this which made her feel suddenly threatened?

  ‘Does your stepfather know you are here?’ she asked the boy.

  He was old enough to resent that question, but had a bigger resentment to air. ‘He wouldn’t care where I was so long as I was out of his sight.’

  They walked out of the tent together. It seemed to Janet that there were three of them now. The third person walked close as a shadow to her, whispering, ‘Don’t waste sympathy on this load of trouble. You will only come to grief if you do.’

  The boy broke open the bag of Winalot and threw pieces to the dog who cavorted around him barking hysterically.

  Janet said, ‘You don’t live at home?’

  ‘That’ll be the day!’

  ‘Where, then?’

  ‘There’s an old place out on the heath.’ He was nonchalant, but hoped she would not be. ‘It’s for sale but no one wants it. I doss down there.’ It’s an everyday occurrence, his manner implied while inviting her to be shocked so that he could become even more indifferent. ‘Manipulative,’ the shadowy companion warned.

  ‘Your family must be worried.’

  ‘My stepfather won’t have me in the house. Mum gives me meals when he’s not around, but I’m not allowed to sleep there.’ He noted that this disturbed her and said, ‘It happens all the time, you know,’ wanting her to be angry.

  ‘Where is your real father?’

  ‘He went off to Canada with this bird from his office, didn’t he.’

  ‘You are an only child?’

  ‘I’ve got a sister. She’s like our cat. So long as she’s fed regularly she’s no trouble to anyone.’

  ‘Break this up now,’ the shadow advised, urgent, agitated. Janet dug her fists into her jacket pockets and asked, ‘Did you try to get on with your stepfather?’

  ‘You can’t get on with him.’ He spoke as though her obtuseness had been maddening him for a considerable time – perhaps she reminded him of his mother. ‘You just have to do everything the way he thinks it should be done and like the things he likes. He’s got a sailing boat – so you’ve got to like sailing or there’s something wrong with you. Same with rugger.’

  The shadow was at her elbow whispering, ‘Kids are spoiled nowadays. They are brought up to think the world revolves around them and the first time they encounter any real opposition they turn nasty.’ Janet forced herself to study the boy carefully. She saw a big, sensitive, truculent, vulnerable, clumsy, opinionated teenager who must have tried his stepfather hard; but she saw nothing spiteful in his face, detected no real viciousness in his anger.

  ‘Are there many of you out the
re?’ she asked. ‘In this place that no one wants.’

  ‘A few. They come and go.’

  ‘Tramps, some of them?’

  ‘Some.’

  They walked past a group of punks sitting on the grass drinking beer. All in black, Janet noted; shiny black blouses, tight black trousers, black boots, only a spume of pink at the ends of the silver-feathered hair. The day seemed to be getting darker and yet she could feel the sun on the top of her head.

  ‘Are you still at school?’ she asked. ‘Or do you have a job?’

  ‘A job! You’re joking!’ He looked around him, baffled, seeking someone to blame. ‘I’ve been for a few interviews, but they’re so stupid, the people who interview you. I don’t bother with them any any more. They don’t know what they’re talking about most of the time. All they want to know is what exams you’ve got. Provided you had exams they’d give you a job in a workshop if you didn’t know the difference between a meat cleaver and a hack saw.’

  ‘Do you want to work in a factory?’

  ‘I thought of management at one time. But those clowns are the worst of all. They can’t do their own jobs so they don’t want anyone around who knows better.’

  ‘You see!’ said the shadow. ‘Wilful, spoiled . . .’ Janet shook her head vehemently. ‘Knowing better than other people is another defence. It may lose him the chance of work and in a few years’ time he may be unemployable; but what if he were to humble himself, try to present the required image, promise to take exams? The chances are he still would not get a job and he would have lost his dignity,’ The shadow warned, ‘You are losing your balance.’

  ‘There’s a lot of things I might do,’ the boy was saying. ‘Journalism, publishing, something in that line. Or I might start up on my own. I’ve got ideas.’ The statement carried no conviction. The world was too stupid a place for him to have any confidence in the future.

  This is Patsy’s nuclear winter, Janet thought, beginning to shiver. The shadow said, ‘That’s going it a bit!’

  Nearby on the boundary hedge a man dressed as a friar was standing guard over a straw figure with an enormous trunk and disproportionately short limbs. ‘They’ve done that all wrong,’ the boy said.

  The friar was being interrogated by two children. ‘When you going to burn it, then?’ the little girl asked.

  ‘Not for hours and hours and hours, so it’s no use your hanging around.’

  The little boy said, ‘My teacher says they used to burn a real person in it – a sacrifice, like . . .’ He eyed the figure dubiously.

  ‘Are you going to burn a real person in it?’ The little girl appeared to have no misgivings.

  ‘One of you two, if you don’t buzz off.’

  ‘How’d they pick on him?’ The little boy was clearly anxious – anxious and fascinated, just as Malcolm would have been at his age. ‘The one they burned, I mean. How’d they decide?’

  ‘I expect it was the one that talked the most,’ the friar said.

  ‘They drew cards,’ the little girl said in a superior tone. ‘The one that got the Ace of Spades got burnt.’

  ‘They didn’t have cards then, did they, mister?’ The boy appealed to the friar who ignored him. The little girl said, ‘Yes they did. Cards are ever so old.’

  ‘But they didn’t have paper.’

  ‘There’s always been paper,’ she said resentfully. ‘Look at the Bible. How’d we know all about the Ark and that if there wasn’t paper?’

  ‘How did they decide who to burn?’ Janet wondered as she and her companion walked away.

  ‘At random,’ he replied with relish. ‘They just pointed a finger and said “you for the bonfire”.’

  All random, she thought – my children loved and cared for and wanted however badly they behave and this lad turned out with nowhere to stay and no one to care. The shadow said, ‘He will set up in a flat somewhere with a couple of friends and social services will foot the bill.’

  They stopped to watch a thin girl edging forward like a caterpillar across a slippery pole. ‘Why don’t you have a go?’ Janet said to the boy.

  ‘It’s only for kids,’ he said scornfully. ‘It’s the weight that counts. Don’t you understand anything?’ He was disgusted by her stupidity.

  ‘Very little, I’m afraid,’ she said wryly.

  ‘Oh, well . . .’ He seemed dismayed rather than mollified. After a few moments, during which the thin girl fell off the slippery pole, he said, ‘I’d like to buy you something. Will you have an ice cream?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’ She wondered if he could afford it, but knew he could not afford to be asked.

  ‘Wait there!’ he said sternly to the dog who squatted obediently at Janet’s feet, peering anxiously between the forest of legs and occasionally snapping at an ankle, his temper obviously as unpredictable as his master’s.

  When the boy returned it was apparent that his goodwill gesture had unsettled him. He pushed an ice-cream cone at Janet and said, ‘Well, I’m off now.’ Before she could thank him he had whistled the dog and was elbowing his way into the crowd.

  ‘I don’t know your name,’ she called. She tried to follow him but soon lost him. ‘And if you had caught up with him – what then?’ her shadowy companion asked. ‘He’s none of your business.’

  People moved from stall to stall. Janet watched them as she stood licking the ice cream. None was known to her. As she studied them, she noticed that several of the children had clowns’ faces, bright red noses, red weals on the cheeks, brilliant slashed mouths. The bizarre faces seemed more appropriate than those of the blue-rinsed matrons presiding over the cake stall. ‘We keep some back, you see,’ one of the inappropriate ladies said kindly, leaning across to speak to Janet. ‘Otherwise they all go in the first five minutes.’

  Janet bought a cake because this seemed to be expected of her. She walked on and came eventually to the booth where the faces were painted. The woman in charge looked surprised when Janet presented herself, but all she said was, ‘What do you want? Clown, witch . . .?’

  ‘The one with the brightest colours, please. Nothing black.’

  ‘Clown, then.’

  The making of the new face excited her. She felt the stirring of an unknown spirit and dared to ask, ‘Where am I?’

  The woman regarded her creation uncertainly.

  ‘I mean, what is this place?’

  ‘Molt,’ the woman said, and added, reluctant to give so much away, ‘Molt Magna.’

  ‘And how do I get out?’

  ‘Out?’

  Janet raised her arms, embracing the field and its gallimaufry. ‘Of this?’

  The woman pointed and Janet saw the fairground organ, the gate near by. ‘Where did you want to go?’ The woman was looking at her intently now.

  ‘I know the way, thank you.’

  Even had that been true, there was the matter of how. But the new spirit moved daringly up the lane. ‘A clown and a witch!’ she cried, ‘for here is my broomstick!’ There were other cars parked behind hers now and she had some difficulty in getting out. When eventually she reached the road across the heath she turned to the left. She seemed to remember that at some stage she had had a loss of concentration and had told herself that it would all come right once she got into the supermarket car park.

  It was the shadow and not the new spirit who travelled with her in the car. She pleaded with it, ‘How can I not care about lads like him? How could I reject them?’ The shadow pointed out that she had been unaware of them for the greater part of her life and had managed very nicely. If that was so, then it was a blow in the area where she had most pride. She, who was so loving, so caring . . . It was like failing at O level in the subject in which one was particularly gifted. Pride apart, it was unforgivable.

  She parked the car and went into the supermarket. People were looking at her strangely. One woman who had been lifting down a bag of sugar almost dropped it. She said to the woman who was with her. ‘Gave me quite a turn!
I thought it was blood all over her face.’

  Janet walked towards the fruit counter and people eased away, allowing her passage. A woman said to a child. ‘It’s all right, lovey. She won’t hurt you.’ Janet looked at a vast mound of grapefruit and had a mental picture of Sherpa Tenzing holding a flag aloft. Behind her a voice which was familiar but not identifiable said, ‘That’s Murdoch Saunders’ wife. What a thing!’

  Janet did not know which way to move or what to do. ‘God,’ she prayed, ‘help me! Please, please help me!’ She put out a hand and stirred among the grapefruit for some clue which might indicate her next move. One grapefruit toppled, then another, then the whole pile avalanched onto the floor. Janet sat among them, talking to the shadow. ‘I should have taken him home with me. Why, oh why, didn’t I take him home with me?’ She clenched one hand round a grapefruit and drummed it on the ground.

  An elderly assistant hurried up. ‘And they came from Israel only yesterday!’ he said, as though the grapefruit were visiting dignitaries upset. When at last he had gathered them up, he looked at Janet. ‘What am I to do?’ he asked.

  Janet, still bashing the grapefruit, cried out, ‘I was afraid. You made me afraid of what my children would say.’

  He appealed to the onlookers. ‘What am I to do?’

  The woman who had previously identified Janet said, ‘You could try getting her husband. But I don’t suppose he will answer the telephone in the morning. That’s when he works. He wouldn’t expect to be disturbed by anything in the morning.’ Nevertheless, she gave the name and address to the assistant. ‘He’ll be lucky!’ she said grimly to her companion as the assistant departed to the manager’s office. ‘I know all about that house. My sister does for them.’

  In a few minutes the manager arrived. ‘Now, wouldn’t you be more comfortable sitting down in my office,’ he said to Janet who had by now reduced the grapefruit to a pulp.