Making Marion (14 page)

“Welcome, Marion. How are you then?” Mrs Brown ignored my
dishevelled appearance. “It's great to have you here. Are you looking forward to it?”

I nodded my head, realized that I was on trial, and took a deep breath. “Yes, thanks. Mrs Brown.”

“Please, call me Colleen, now we're workmates.” She walked me over to the tiny office behind the help desk. “And somewhere in here is my assistant manager.”

Towering stacks of books packed the tiny office. From behind these floated out the sound of humming: the theme tune from
Neighbours
, I think.

“Harriet!”

A blueberry-coloured head popped up above one of the book towers. Harriet crawled out on her hands and knees. I had never seen pink jeans before. I had certainly never met anyone who wore pink trousers over the age of eight, or teamed them with a red cardigan. Harriet, who I later found out was twenty-nine, hauled herself up by a spinny office chair. Her cardigan flapped open, revealing two rows of hand-sewn badges on her shiny top.

“Harriet.”

“Hi, Coll.”

“Are those swimming badges?”

Harriet brushed her hands over her chest and stuck out her not-inconsiderable breasts.

“Aye. What of it? I'm proud of my aquatic achievements. Thought I might inspire the weans with my hard-earned success.”

“Five hundred metres?”

“Aye. I can swim to shore. That's enough.”

“Harriet, why are you wearing your old swimming costume to work?”

Harriet hummed a few bars of Aretha Franklin's “Respect” as she very deliberately buttoned up her cardigan.

“My washing machine's broken. I had no more clean knickers and I've done the inside out thing already. I'll buy some more after work. Sorry, Coll.”

The strange thing to me about this was not that I had met somebody who wore a swimming costume to work when she ran out of clean knickers, nor that she hadn't thought to buy either a new washing machine or more knickers before she used up all the dirty ones. It was that she was possibly the first person I'd met who hadn't got a ma, a granny, half a dozen aunties, numerous family friends she called aunties anyway, old school friends –
anyone
– who would put through a load of washing for her. My neighbours and relatives would have burned with shame had they known the many times my mother was too ill to wear clothes, let alone wash them. Nothing had me shipped off to Auntie Paula's house quicker than a creased blouse or a stain on my cardigan. I had grown very good at doing laundry.

My clothes may have been shabby, sparse hand-me-downs, but there was no disgrace in being poor. Being dirty, slovenly or downright disorganized, now that was another matter entirely. When they arrested Mary Milligan for running a brothel on the top floor of her bed and breakfast (which more than one of my male relatives had been known to frequent), my Auntie Jean commented: “To be sure, it wasn't right what she did; but I'll say this much: those sheets on her washing line were always beautiful. The whitest on the street. A woman who gets her washing that white can't be all bad.”

“I hear you, Jean.” Auntie Paula shook her head in wonderment at whites so white. “All those filthy bodies, rubbing themselves up and down, all hours of the day and night. I'd love to know her secret, that I would.”

I hungered for independence, craved escape from a town full of prying, well-meaning relatives. I dreamed of a world where I would be no longer labelled or judged. Where I could have a broken washing machine and nobody would know
or care.
Or perhaps, more significantly,
I
wouldn't care even if they did. In the humming, pink-jeaned Harriet, I had found my hero.

How was my first day as a library assistant? Stressful, emotionally exhausting, awkward, uncomfortable, brilliant. I spoke four hundred
and seventy-eight words. This both terrified and exhilarated me at the same time. I stomped on the little girl who kept screaming that I would kill my mother with my worthless chatter as I read a story to a baby. Squashed the breath out of her when Colleen invited me for supper that evening and I didn't even phone Ma to check if she was okay first. Punched her temporarily unconscious when Eamonn walked me home and I was the first one to say goodnight.

I walked in the door and found Ma not wondering where I had been, or concerned about how my first day had gone. She was, on the contrary, seething with crazy, jealous rage that I had been working all day, and had not, as she'd predicted, been sacked for being “a pathetic, wallowing, useless dud who creeps people out with attention-seeking behaviour and melodramatic moping”.

I had managed to push every one of her buttons by working for the doctor's wife, a “manipulative, snotty camel with man's hands”. If ever I had doubted words were brutal weapons, one conversation with my ma during her plunge back down to serious illness could have convinced me. I prayed she would keep taking her tablets, hold on to the fraying thread connecting her to sanity until I was old enough to avoid another holiday. That she could find a way to love me. Or maybe that my words would spill forth until I killed her after all.

O
ver the next few weeks, life at the Peace and Pigs settled into a steady rhythm. We worked on campsite repairs and improvements when weather permitted, looked after the animals, dealt with caravan guests and took bookings for the following year. Jake convinced Scarlett to let him design us a website, though since the campsite was often filled to capacity throughout the high season this could bring only limited benefit to the holiday park income. Grace spent more and more of her time after school at my caravan, occasionally bringing her homework, usually working on her shoes. It turned out we had some things in common. Loneliness, mainly.

Initially I worried Valerie might get jealous. She too often came knocking at my door on her free evenings (did I know the four largest doors in the world are in the Kennedy Space Center and are four hundred and fifty-six feet high?), but I'd underestimated the extent of her pure unselfishness. Valerie often annoyed Grace, who treated her as a pesky little sister with caustic put-downs and mass eye-rolling, but Valerie either didn't notice or didn't care.

I spent Saturday afternoons chopping and stirring, blissfully lost in the high of combining different ingredients to produce food that actually began to taste pretty delicious. Reuben, a hands-off teacher, let me rummage through recipe books and experiment by myself while he read the paper to a steady background drone of football commentary. I fell in love with the rhythm of cooking, the focus and patience the process required, finding it an unexpected balm on
my turbulent soul. In a few short weeks, cooking became a secret garden where I could forget the world outside and lose myself in the pleasure of my senses. Engagement rings were hidden in the steam of a freshly baked loaf, the memory of photographs overpowered by the smell of herbs lingering in my hair, and the sour taste of threatening messages was drenched with a symphony of new flavours.

Threatening messages. Number three appeared the week after Bonfire Night. No words this time, just four slashed tyres. To claim on my insurance I had to involve the police in the form of Brenda, thorough in her enquiries and quietly concerned that somebody might be trying to scare me out of the forest. I suggested they slashed my tyres because they couldn't bear the thought of me leaving; got my head down, kept breathing, tried not to get on anyone's nerves. I wasn't going anywhere just yet.

 

The 1st December fell on a Saturday. Valerie and I had spent the previous week stringing blue and white Christmas lights from campsite trees. We had created, following Scarlett's strict instructions, a Christmas trail through the woods, hiding a star, a robin, elves and a present, along with other festive objects, leading a trail to where Jake was building a Christmas grotto. Archie turned up in his antique Father Christmas costume, ho-ho-hoing and proudly stroking his three-inch beard grown especially for the role. On Thursday and Friday we displayed notices and placed leaflets around Hatherstone and a couple of other nearby villages. Elf Valerie visited the local schools, winning them over with her sparkly, Christmassy exuberance.

In a jovial, buoyant atmosphere we got everything ready, wrapping presents for the grotto, decorating inside and out. Even the pigs embraced the festivities, allowing us to stick antlers on the back of their heads. But as Scarlett tacked up the sign detailing our price list, her face looked drawn and tight.

This was business, not pleasure – at least for all of us except Archie. We were throwing crumbs at a starving bank account. But it
was a start; it was something. As the person responsible for keeping the bank fed put it: “Sugar, if that moist-skinned bullfrog with a lump of concrete where his heart's supposed to be is goin' to take my Peace and Pigs offa me, I'm goin' to make darn certain that every day before he does we fill this place with love, laughter and gingerbread snowmen.”

 

Having worked late Friday night wrapping hundreds of tiny gifts, I was given the next day off. So, while carloads of children full of December-flavoured beans hunted for miniature reindeer and wooden angels, I hunched in my caravan contemplating a postcard with a red phone box on the front and a swimming costume.

Harriet had given me her swimsuit on my sixteenth birthday. I unwrapped it in the library office, still shy of Harriet's gusto, and unable to quite believe she considered me a friend.

“Um, thanks.”

“Come on, Marion. Aren't you going to ask me why I've given you an old cossie for your birthday? On the face of it, it's not a great present.”

“Why did you, then?”

“Courage.” Harriet pointed one jewel-encrusted nail at my chest. “Think about it, now!”

I thought about it. “This is an adult-sized swimsuit. With all your swimming badges on it.”

“So?”

“So, either you transferred the badges from your school costume. Which you would never have done because you couldn't be bothered. Or you only learned to swim as an adult.” I glanced at Harriet for confirmation. “Which needed courage. You were scared of water.”

Harriet lifted a heap of books off one of the plastic chairs and sat down. “When I was six years old I watched my brother get swept away at Bundoran beach. For the next fifteen years I could brave nothing bigger than a bathtub. But I knew however much I buried
fear under bravado, so long as I was scared it had control of a piece of me. So I signed up for swimming lessons. For the first five weeks I sat there like an eejit shivering on the side. Then I paid the lifeguard ten quid to push me in.

“Life is too short to let fear make your decisions for you, Marion. Too much gets thrown at you as it is. So, I'm giving you my cossie of courage. I figure you could use it.”

“Thanks.”

“Well? Aren't you going to put it on?”

I did, allowing my fear of Harriet to make the decision for me, fantasizing about how awesome it would be if some of Harriet's courage seeped out of the fabric into my pores.

Every birthday after that, Harriet ordered me to don the cossie of courage. She would wave her hands and preach about how it was time for me to stop existing and start living, to throw off the cloak of mousiness and run naked and brazen through the streets of planet earth.

“Don't let yourself dither about one more year in this town, killing time and watching the clock tick by!”

“But I'm waiting for Eamonn.”

“Yes, Marion. I understand why you feel the need to wait for that handsome, presentable, nice young man to finish his studies. I accept that you want to hang about waiting for that lovely, boring, patronizing, spoiled man. But why are you waiting for him
here
? You have sixty years to spend picking up his socks and cleaning his toilet, being a grand wee wifey. This could be your only chance. I'm booking two tickets this time. And yours will be one way only.”

I could have pointed out to Harriet that she too lived out her days in this small town, working at the same small library, dealing with the same small-minded customers. The difference was, every winter Harriet booked eight weeks off work and went on holiday. And these vacations did not include lounging by the pool – unless maybe a natural pool in the middle of some mountain where a near-extinct flower bloomed for the first time in a hundred years. The
only occasion she went to the beach was to protect baby turtles from birds of prey as they flippered themselves to the sea. She had been to forty-nine different countries, never to the same place twice and always with an itinerary ensuring she spent each and every day “justifying the use of every molecule of oxygen I breathe by doing something I can honestly call worthwhile”.

Harriet said she could only bear to look after other people's stories for a living if she spent the rest of her time creating her own. She remained my hero.

The postcard was not for Harriet. Once I had replaced my tossed-away phone I texted her that I was doing fine (her reply: “Of course you are. Now stop wasting time texting me and get yourself a life that is a lot better than fine”). I also sent her a photo of me wearing one of my new outfits, flicking my hair about (the reply: a photo of her with a load of children from the library story time all flicking their shoulder length black wigs and sticking their thumbs up).

The postcard was not for Eamonn, either. I shrivelled up inside when I thought about what I had done to him. However much he had taken me for granted in the last few years, or thought only of how I fitted into his life – if he considered me at all – I had behaved appallingly. I had no excuse. Not cowardice, or selective mutism, or a rubbish childhood, or a mother who bequeathed me a thousand issues and taught me nothing about how to relate to people in an appropriate manner. And I knew that though my continued silence was not the answer, a postcard didn't cover it either.
Hi. How are you? Don't wish you were here. Don't know when, if ever, I'll be back. Weather is fine. From Marion. P.S. Are we still engaged?

I pulled the swimsuit on, slipping my new jeans and soft grey jumper over the top of it. I picked up a pen. This was not the first time in recent months I had attempted to write this message. However, this time would be different. It was my birthday, and I had on my cossie of courage. Go, me! I wrote:

I put it in an envelope, knowing my mother would be livid if she thought every postie between here and her letterbox had feasted their eyes on her personal business. I felt fairly certain she would rip it into tiny pieces and chuck it into the fire, cackling as it burned to ashes. Whether she read it first or not was impossible to predict. But I had written it. I would send it, and I would feel no guilt whatsoever regarding my relationship with my mother. She had plenty of people to support her and take care of her, to help her through the more serious bouts of illness. At twenty-six years old, I could finally accept that however much I longed for it, however hard I tried, until my mother chose to forgive me I could not be in her life.

I was late for my cooking lesson by the time I had composed myself. Writing that postcard had felt like taking a meat fork and jabbing the prongs into my liver with every word. I threw on my old raincoat to ward off the sleet tumbling down from steel skies, and trudged in my new fur-lined boots through the fields to the Hall.

Hallelujah! Yet again Erica had been unable to come over. Her excuse, passed through Reuben, was that she was flat out throughout the Christmas season at work. I understood this, but noted how conveniently that enabled her to avoid facing an employee from the holiday park plunged into crisis following her father's decision. I also felt relieved because Erica, underneath her sugar coating, was patronizing, dictatorial and frustratingly intimidating. Reuben, left with the task of teaching me the arts of haute cuisine, dumped a side of beef, a box of muddy vegetables and some suet on the table, and let me get on with it.

It was all going well. My casserole was bubbling nicely in the oven. I made us each a mug of coffee, after which I planned to start on a Christmas cake, which, according to Ginger's antique copy of
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management
, must be baked by the 1st December at the absolute latest so you can then spend the next three weeks feeding it brandy.

But my foot caught on an uneven flagstone. I lost my balance and the scalding hot coffee flew out of the mugs and drenched my new jumper. Wrenching it off, I ran over to the Belfast sink and started running the tap. Reuben startled me with a hand on my shoulder.

“Marion, you need to take this top off too. You're getting scalded.”

“What?” Only then did I notice the searing pain of freshly boiled water soaking through my top. The adrenaline kicked in, and I dropped the sweater, panicking.

“Here. Keep your arms still.”

I couldn't keep my arms still. I was burning. Reuben tried to pull my top up, but it wouldn't budge.

“Your top's stuck.”

I started to cry. Big, jerky sobs. Lucy stood up on her cushion and began to join in with anxious whines. I put my hands to my top and when my fingers hit the fabric I remembered.

“Oh no.” I could see my alarm mirrored in Reuben's eyes in front of me. His may have been for slightly different reasons.

“I have to take my jeans off.” No longer sobbing. Too mortified.

“Your jeans are fine. You need to get your top off – now!”

I undid my belt, wrestling my skinny jeans down – a manoeuvre I hadn't yet managed to perfect without falling over. I tugged them over my big feet like a child yanking her wellies off, wanting to cry again when Reuben grabbed one trouser leg to speed up the operation. By now he had realized that the rainbow-striped garment covered in badges ranging from five metres to five hundred metres in distance was, in fact, a swimming costume. All this, although long enough for me to have died a thousand deaths, had only actually
taken less than a minute. The coffee must have been cooling by this point, but my chest was on fire.

“I have to take this off.” I was gabbling. “Sorry.”

During emergencies such as this, when trying to avoid causing yourself serious bodily harm, while simultaneously plummeting into new depths of humiliation, a small part of the brain always remains detached, as if observing the catastrophe from outside the rest of the head. This part of my brain took a moment to be very,
very
thankful I had kept my bra and knickers on underneath the cossie of courage.

This separate, objective bunch of brain cells similarly, two seconds later, reflected on the irony of having removed my pluck-producing one-piece, because in the next few moments I would need a lot more courage than dealing with a mug of hot coffee required.