Only Strange People Go to Church (4 page)

Next morning Maria is meditating. Her body is lying on the bedroom floor in her flat but she is simultaneously inhabiting another, more idyllic location: the sky is blue, the forest is piney fragrant, the shimmering river glints in the fresh morning sunshine as she stands and waits for her spirit guides. This is often a difficult time in the meditation.

If they take too long to come Maria might decide that she’ll do spag bol tonight. Use up that leftover mince. Pop into Waitrose for tomatoes on the way home. But she pulls her mind back. Meditate.

One of the fun things about meditating is that spirit guides can be different every day. She’s never entirely sure who’ll turn up. Sometimes they are generic, kindly, smiling, wise faces, usually older men and women, sometimes famous people, like Nelson, and sometimes just ordinary people who’ve made an impression on her: a considerate boy on the bus giving up his seat to a blind man, a cheery mother of a seriously disabled child. Arlene, Maria’s ex-next-door-neighbour, has become quite a regular.

Arlene and her husband Norman lived next door to Maria’s family until, when Maria was only thirteen, Norman’s job forced them to move away. She has wonderful memories of Arlene and Norman: they were such a glamorous couple, the Charles and Diana of the neighbourhood. Arlene wore beautiful clothes, not like Maria’s own dowdy mum, and Norman was incredibly handsome. Arlene was kind and funny, and Maria always wishes she’d gotten to know her better, but she was only a kid. Arlene and Norman didn’t have kids of their own and didn’t socialise with anyone Maria knew.

Arlene has become a prominent spirit guide because of one particularly strong memory Maria has of her: Arlene and Norman were in their living room sitting at their built-in nautically themed bar, which was always bright with tiny coloured lights. Maria couldn’t see clearly, but they were probably drinking Martinis. She wasn’t spying, she was just doing her paper round and as she was outside she couldn’t hear anything, but there must have been music playing because suddenly Norman swept Arlene into his arms and waltzed her around their beautiful white-carpeted living room. As they swung past the window Arlene’s full-skirted dress fanned out gracefully and Maria caught a close-up of the couple laughing. Arlene was happy.

Arlene is turning out to be a good spirit guide, too. All her advice so far has been spot on and she’s very encouraging.

‘Good on you!’ says Arlene, out of the blue. ‘Great stuff!’ Nelson nods.

‘Well, it’s all thanks to you guys.’

Maria throws her arms around Arlene, then she kisses Nelson’s hand.

‘If it wasn’t for you two, I’d never have had the nerve.’

Nelson shakes his head in disagreement.

‘Don’t give us that crap. The concert was your idea. It was you who brazened it out to ask for the promotion.’

‘Nelson’s right, credit where credit’s due. You’re smarter than you think, Maria, the concert idea: pure genius. But talking of credit, you haven’t even noticed my new dress!’

It’s true. Maria has been so caught up in her victory that she has failed to spot Arlene’s outfit. It’s an expensive looking peach and cream nineteen-fifties-style dress with a plunging neckline perfectly displaying her enviable décolletage. She wears a matching cream-coloured straw hat and shoes and delicate little lace gloves.

‘Oh, it’s gorgeous, Arlene!’

‘Cheers. You really think so?’

‘Definitely, peach is so your colour!’

‘Well I thought your bouquet should have some of those pale orange roses that you like and that would set off my dress.’

‘Do I really have to wear this tie?’

For the first time Maria notices that Nelson is wearing a morning suit with a white shirt and a tie in the same peach shade.

‘I’m not liking it,’ he says in his regal Thembu growl. ‘It’s too girly.’

‘Oh for God’s sake Nelson, how many times?’ says Arlene. ‘You’re going to spoil the whole effect if you insist on wearing one of your African numbers.’

Maria smiles. This is a well-worn routine. Outside of her meditation Maria’s mum died three years ago; they didn’t particularly get on. Inside the meditation Arlene represents the mother figure, Nelson the dad.

Arlene and Nelson are trying to marry Maria off. She’s not entirely unenthusiastic. Ever since she brought Arlene in they’ve been preparing for her wedding. Arlene often comes up with new designs for her own and Maria’s dresses. There seems to be no limit to her imagination. Until recently there were no contenders for the role of groom but that has never put Arlene off.

For Maria, Arlene is planning a traditional white dress with a wee tartan trim. This is slightly ticklish, they all know Maria is no virgin. There has been, of course, her promiscuous, or ‘blue’ period.

But it was all a long time ago now, years ago, not long after graduation, after the Kelvin Street Kids split up. Anna and Colette went down south chasing careers and Bethan, who swore she’d never go back, ended up returning to Inverness where her boyfriend Craig had managed to get work. Maria kept on the lease but things were never the same. The new flatmates weren’t so keen on pyjama parties and girls’ nights.

One of the new girls, Janice, started bringing guys back at the weekend, different guys. Maria would be in the kitchen making cocoa and a half-naked lad would stroll in, open the fridge and swig milk straight from the carton without asking. Maria was intrigued. Janice was quite plain looking; how did she manage to snare so many boys? One night Maria accompanied Janice to the pub, watched and learned, and before long Maria too was bringing lads back.

Thus far she hadn’t been very good with boys but under Janice’s tutelage she became a practiced seductress. She didn’t even have to do much, clothes loaned from Janice’s wardrobe helped
a lot
. Short skirts, low tops, high heeled shoes which, Janice assured her, were not only slimming but positioned the foot exactly as in the moment of orgasm, these all spoke eloquently on her behalf of a desire for sex. They declined to mention a need for love.

One night she and Janice brought one guy back between them and took turns snogging him until he got scared and left. That felt good, powerful. Another night Maria found herself slapping the naked backside of a boy whose name she couldn’t remember and requesting that he give her it
hot and hard
. That felt fake and embarrassing.

In time she began to question the efficacy of this strategy. Maria had a new boyfriend virtually every week; enough ex-boyfriends to fill a playing field. If she’d put her exes end to end they would have reached to the moon and back. If she’d put the ones who ever mentioned the word ‘love’ end to end they wouldn’t have made it to the bedroom door. Casual sex was exciting but ultimately fruitless and so she went back to waiting and hoping that someone who might potentially be husband material would find her.

Dirk found her. The last place Maria imagined a boyfriend would find her – a real boyfriend, not a Saturday night random pick-up – was in a bicycle repair shop. She was having her brake cables tightened. Dirk wasn’t a cyclist; he was buying a tricycle for his nephew. He asked Maria for her number and he called and she went out with him. It was that simple.

She didn’t sleep with him for weeks. She didn’t sleep with him until he had stopped arranging a specific time to call and began just calling when he felt like it. He was calling every day.

Despite the obvious comic potential of his name, Dirk was a serious person. He was a lawyer. He was four inches smaller than Maria and had a prosthetic right foot. Sex with Dirk was good and, once they got over her initial chastity, they did it a lot. They did it anytime, anyplace, anywhere, even, once, on a train, which wasn’t easy given Dirk’s limitations.

Dirk was bad tempered and dominating. He didn’t believe in Valentine’s or birthday cards. He never took Maria on holiday or introduced her to his family. And then he dumped her.

‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ says Arlene. ‘You were way too good for that Dirkhead.’

Arlene always advises her not to sell herself short, advice that she nowadays takes seriously.

‘Well, what about Dezzie then?’ Arlene suggests for the umpteenth time.

Desmond Stewart she means, the new Key Worker at the centre. Maria fancies Dezzie, how could she not? He is perfect boyfriend/husband material as he’s decent, caring, tall and, most importantly,
available. But on so many levels Dezzie is different from her. At twenty-four he’s two years younger than Maria but he has knowledge and experience way beyond hers. Three years in the Royal Navy took him all around the world, while Maria’s only been to Spain a few times.

‘But,’ says Nelson, ‘like all human beings, you and Dezzie have more similarities than differences.’

This is the great thing about her spiritual advisors: because they’re already inside her head she never has to explain anything to them. And it’s certainly true what Nelson says; she and Dezzie have many similarities.

Like her, Dezzie has a bike, but while Maria’s is an old pedal powered Raleigh tourer, Dezzie’s is a souped up Suzuki: bright blue, so big it takes up a whole parking space. Maria’s handlebars are high and ladylike; she pedals around in a stately Mary Poppins attitude while Dezzie’s riding position is that of a Grand National winner. She’s scared of motorbikes, especially big powerful ones, but she occasionally fantasises about Dezzie taking her for a spin along a country road with her hair flying behind her.

‘Maria, get real,’ says Arlene. ‘Riding without a helmet is illegal. A girl’s got to be practical.’

Maria doesn’t want to be practical; she has to do it all day every day. Every day she has to apply practicality not only for herself but for all of Blue Group, the most impractical people on the planet. She wants to run away, to flee screaming from practicality, that’s why she comes here. Here, down by the shimmering river, she can do what she wants. She can turn Dezzie’s image round in her head, put him in whatever poses she fancies, a virtual Action Man figure.

‘I know where you’re going with this, you dirty girl,’ says Arlene.

Having them inside her head can be a disadvantage, too.

‘You can get the sex carnival out of your head right now.’

‘Yes,’ agrees Nelson, ‘this kind of objectification is de- humanising.’

For the moment Maria will have to suppress any raunchy Dezzie thoughts.

‘Let’s just focus on Dezzie’s husbandly qualities, Maria,’ says Arlene. ‘Now, he’s not the brightest but he has the look of a man who would be handy with a screwdriver and a B and Q flat pack.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a snob,’ Maria says. ‘Okay, so he’s not a graduate. It’s only a piece of paper. A degree’s no guarantee of being smart. Look at Mike for instance. Dezzie’s smart in other ways, he’s people smart, and that’s what matters. He understands things about people and situations that it’s taken me years to learn.’

The other thing that’s different about Dezzie, and the thing that makes him most attractive, is that he is so stupendously, unrelentingly kind. The kind of guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly, who’d go to hell and back to do you a favour.

‘He’d literally give you the shirt of his back,’ says Nelson, to general agreement.

Dezzie used to wear a T-shirt to work that proclaimed
Live fast
die young
. It was the tour T-shirt of the 80s heavy metal band
Daughter Slaughter,
a band both Dezzie and Bert, the centre manager, are massive fans of. Last week, on Bert’s 40th birthday, Dezzie made him a gift of it. No one else seemed to think this was exceptional, after all it was just a beat up old T-shirt, some of the staff even thought the new guy was trying to toady to the boss, but Maria knows the real story. Maria knows how Dezzie treasured that Tshirt, given to him by Orny, the iconic singer of
Daughter Slaughter
, at a concert just days before Orny was killed in a drug-crazed motorbike accident. Maria knows she could never be that generous.

Arlene is fussing around Nelson trying him this time in a pale green top hat and tails.

‘Generosity – an excellent husbandly quality,’ says Nelson. ‘And the sooner we get you married off the sooner we can stop this ridiculous fashion parade.’

To Maria, Dezzie is a God. If she were a Christian she could believe that Dezzie was a new Messiah, the second coming. That’s how much she fancies him. More importantly, he also appears to fancy her.

‘Arlene, I’ve told you, Dezzie’s a colleague,’ says Maria, playing the coquette.

‘Oh come off it Maria, he fancies you.’

‘D’you think?’

‘Duh!’ says Arlene, ‘Does a one-legged pope shit in the woods?’

‘Yuhuh!’ says Nelson the lawyer. ‘The evidence is quite compelling. If he doesn’t fancy you, why was he licking you in the coffee room?’

The other day Maria sat with Dezzie in the staffroom enjoying a cappuccino from the machine. He made her laugh while she was mid-sip. Dezzie always makes her laugh, and she spray-snorted milk foam all over the place. A dribble of creamy spume ran down the hollow between her thumb and forefinger and while they were laughing Dezzie traced his finger along her thumb, snowploughing the white foam towards her wrist. When he had gathered the froth onto his finger he sucked it into his mouth.

‘Apart from the sexual athletics of your mono-footed friend, Dirk, this is the most genuinely intimate thing that’s ever happened to you, isn’t it?’ asks Arlene.

Maria has to agree.

‘But if he fancies me, why isn’t he asking me out?’

‘Patience,’ says Nelson, twiddling his pale green tie impatiently. ‘You must learn patience.’

Because of her meditation, after getting off the bus and while walking to the centre, Maria smiles at everyone she sees. She loves them. Waves of her love engulf passers-by without them ever knowing it. They don’t know it because, apart from her bright smile, the waves are invisible. If they were visible, bright love fumes would be seen in a pinkish vapour trail as she passed.
As she walks she feels a violent tenderness for the people she passes. She sees how they hurry around, engaged in unstinting service to their family, working hard to please them, yearning to give and receive love. She sees that even with their hacking coughs or bandy legs or rosaceous noses they are loving, loved, lovely.

When she reaches the centre, still buoyed up and feeling brave, she phones round the community groups. She explains that she’s organising a community show. A ‘Diva Tribute Night’ and explains this means Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Adele, Amy Winehouse, or any other diva they care to pay tribute to. Non-singing acts are also welcome. This way everyone can be included. She’s heard that they have some terrific singers and she’s calling to invite them to take part. Some of the groups, assuming it’s a hoax call, put the phone down, some laugh, others simply tell her to piss off.

Piss offs don’t bother Maria. Over the last three years she’s had plenty, had them all her life in fact. Since Social Dancing at secondary school, where the boys were forced to choose a girl, Maria has become familiar, comfortable even, with rejection.

There were good reasons why she was the only girl never to get picked. She was what was pityingly called a late developer. While other girls were straining in B- and even C-cup bras, Maria wore
a vest. More problematic was the undisguisable fact that she was a head taller than all the boys. Fair enough, nobody’s fault, no big deal. She could understand their reticence to dance, eye-level with her breastless nipples.

Every week, while the boys and girls giggled and Gay Gordoned their way around the gym hall, Maria sat alone. Alone and still. Silently fighting the irresistible rhythm of the country dance music, she girded her loins. Her pride would not let her yield to pathetic toe tapping.

‘Early rejection has been the making of you,’ Nelson frequently tells her. Probably it has, how else could she have continued for three years with the farce of the Inclusion Initiative? And so when community groups tell her to piss off and slam the phone down she stoically re-dials and explains that no, it’s not a hoax call, and yes, they are welcome to come and sing at the auditions.

At the second call they are all interested, some more than others. The Elderly Forum Events Co-ordinator is polite but snooty. Alice Boyd, one of the few who didn’t request that Maria piss off, tries to throw her weight around. She tells her that the Glee Club members are unable to travel to Hexton High for the auditions.

‘It’s not safe for senior citizens around that school. Too much neddery.’

It is a few seconds before Maria realises that Alice is talking about neds: hooligans, yobs, local young people.

‘You’ll have to come to us,’ states Alice.

So that’s it. The Elderly Forum won’t audition amongst the hoi polloi.

‘I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, Alice. I’ve already arranged it with the headmistress, Miss Bowman. All the other groups are coming to the high school.’

‘Look, pet, we might be old but we’re not bliddy stupid.’

Maria laughs. Alice doesn’t.

‘How d’you mean, Alice?’

‘You’re trying to get this Inclusion Initiative scheme that you’ve been banging on about for years going again, aren’t you?’

‘Well, yes, that is part of it.’

‘And you need to have all sections of the community represented, don’t you?’

Maria can see where Alice is going with this. The Elderly Forum have the political savvy to know that to meet the criteria they must be included. They know that when it comes to auditions they can call the tune. ‘So you’ll have to have at least a few coffin dodgers in your show then, won’t you?’

‘Eh, we’d certainly like Hexton’s seniors represented,’ says Maria lamely.

‘Aye well, you can bliddy come to us then.’

Reluctantly, Maria agrees to schlep round to the Elderly Forum Centre, euphemistically named Autumn House, and hold their very own and – Alice has made quite clear – preferential audition.

As if she hasn’t got enough to do. But at least she’s got them on board. Maria has hit on the one thing all the groups have in common. Everyone, even the coffin dodgers, want to be in show business.

Hexton is a breeding ground for two British institutions: British Army recruits and
Britain’s Got Talent
contestants. There are rich pickings, quantity if not quality. Hextors are foot soldiers, cannon fodder for TV talent shows, falling usually in the first wave of elimination rounds. Their ambitions do not extend to stardom in their own right, they only aspire to imitate. Naïve enough to dream, they make great television with the disparity between their nervous shivering voices and flamboyant yet brittle self-confidence. People watching at home never hear the true music of these voices. They would need to come to Hexton for that. Maria has made it her business to thoroughly research local talent. All of Hexton loves to sing. The Hexton Arms is full of it, for example: the Saturday Singalong from 2pm to 4.30pm with Bobby McCann and his Mighty Hammond.

This is mostly an over-fifties event, Bobby himself is fifty plus. Still with a full head of hair, he stands outside, clogging the pub doorway, smoking unfiltered fags in the breaks between his regular numbers on the Mighty Hammond.

There is a lively atmosphere and the regular crowd are comfortable with each other. Bobby is extremely versatile, he can play anything pre-1989, including
Too Drunk To Fuck
by The Dead Kennedys and
Girlfriend in a Coma
by The Smiths. Sadly, music stopped for Bobby in 1989 when his partner, Marjory, a nonsmoker, entered a coma after a protracted battle with lung cancer.

Despite Bobby’s enormous repertoire each singer has three or four favourite songs they have made their own. Singalong etiquette is such that no singer is allowed to appropriate another’s song. Lifelong rifts have apparently been caused by just this kind of wrongheadedness. Bobby will not countenance it, refusing to provide accompaniment. Songs only become available when the singer reluctantly relinquished them through long term ill-health or death.

Bobby’s crowd don’t drink much by Hexton standards, perhaps five or six shorts, but the combination of skipping lunch and the adrenaline buzz of performing gives the oldsters a heady Saturday night out on a Saturday afternoon. They roll home pished to sleep it off in front of
Britain’s Got Talent
. Old people drunk in daylight is the norm for Hexton.

The generations use the pub in sittings, the pensioners giving way to the Saturday night karaoke for the younger ones. Rab, the karaoke singer, is a local celebrity. He’s handsome and trendy and powerful in that he chooses who gets to sing next, if at all. He always keeps the last twenty minutes, and all the best contemporary hits, for himself. Invariably he finishes the evening dressed as an American navy officer singing
I’ve Had The Time of My Life
before ripping his kit off to Tom Jones’
You Can Leave Your Hat On
. The pristine white jacket is first to come off, slowly, teasingly, exposing a thin smoker’s chest on an orange sunbed tan. With a prodigious tug the trousers come off in one piece. For decency Rab retains his black leather thong as well as his hat.

When the Stop The Motorway campaign first began they had a rally. Feral looking dreadlocked environmentalists came to tell the locals about the new motorway. Most of the protestors were arrested and were forced, as they were being dragged away by the
police, to leave their amplifier and microphone with an obliging local family. When the campaigners were released and went to find their equipment they told Maria that they heard it before they saw it.

From three streets away a rich baritone crooned
Love Me Tender
in a passable Elvis impersonation. Bewitched, they followed the haunting voice, like shepherds following a star, until it brought them to a humble tenement flat. The family who had offered to look after their sound system were now holding their own top volume karaoke party. The treehuggers, as the locals had begun to call them, not wishing to upset anyone, agreed to come back the next morning.

Between songs the family told jokes through the microphone loud enough to be heard in back courts and lanes and middens throughout Hexton, the comedy amplified by the joker’s sudden celebrity. Later, as the drink took hold, there were scuffles for control of the mic. Later still, police arrived and politely requested that the music cease.

When the treehuggers returned the next morning they were told that their equipment had been impounded by the police on a subsequent visit.

But there are plenty of opportunities for showboating talent other than at the pub or impromptu shebeens. There’s the school choir, the Elderly Forum Glee Club, the treehuggers circus skills and the Victory Mission. Not to mention the various talents of their own centre clients. In Blue Group alone Maria has the drama workshop and Fiona might make a good actor if she could ever be persuaded to stop munching crisps.