Mary George of Allnorthover

‘It’s not my picture, though, is it?’ Mary had surprised herself and now felt scared.

Stella lost patience. Her head snapped back as her fist smashed down on the table. The bangles on her arm chinked – ridiculously, Mary thought, and as ever felt ashamed of her mother whose long skirts and dresses, shawls and scarves, beads, feathers, ribbons and lace looked like costumes rather than clothes. At primary school, the other children had called her mother a witch. (‘A nice witch,’ Julie had assured her and it was true that she was kind and helped anyone she could, and other children adored her.)

‘Damn it, Mary! You were not supposed to be there!’

Mary couldn’t tell if this was admonition or regret. ‘I was only walking home,’ she muttered.

‘But you were supposed to be in school!’

‘School? What do you mean?’ Mary was confused.

Stella gave a hissing sigh. ‘There’s a law in this country that says six-year-olds have to go to school.’

‘Six-year-olds? What’s that to do with me? Mum, it was Saturday morning, right? I cut across from Ingfield, round the water. I didn’t know who he was! I didn’t even know he was there!’

‘Ah.’ This time, Stella’s exhalation was hard and sharp, the sound someone might make after running into a wall.

‘Don’t be angry, Mum, please!’ Mary was clutching her cardigan to her with both hands. ‘I’m not six, I’m seventeen and all I was doing was walking home and stopping to look at the water.’

‘When was this?’

‘That Saturday he followed me home. When else?’ Stella gave a very small nod which made Mary feel, briefly, like explaining herself. ‘There’s a tree, see, with a branch stretching out over the water. I like to go along it. He saw me there. He said I was near the house.’

‘And?’

‘I walk out along this bough.’

‘You little fool, you could fall in and drown!’

‘But I don’t fall. I keep walking.’

‘And then?’

‘And what?’

Stella stood up and Mary stood up to meet her. Neither raised her voice. When Mary said nothing, Stella lowered her eyes, and asked almost timidly, ‘Did you see anything?’

Mary was about to begin but changed her mind. ‘I had my eyes shut,’ she whispered and ran up to her room.

‘What did you say?’ Stella followed so fast that she filled the doorway before Mary could shut herself in. She spoke so evenly that Mary felt sick. ‘It’s not a joke or a game. Christie’s been and Tom is very fragile. What he has been through, what we have all been through. Your father. I just want to go over it again, to get things straight.’ Mary was shaking her head. ‘I know you were only six but you do remember, don’t you?’ This wasn’t really a question and she didn’t pause for Mary to answer it. ‘That’s what I’m talking about. Not whatever went on the other day. When you walked out of school, remember? Went to look for your daddy. What you saw in the Chapel, remember?’

The village school had still been in the old building then. Mary hadn’t liked it because the tables and chairs were so low, and the windows so high. The children were divided two school years to each of the two rooms, but tended to sit where they liked. The elderly teachers, Miss Benyon and Mrs Snape, found it hard to tell the pupils apart, not least because so many were related. Mrs Snape, who was in with the younger ones, would draw a map and forget what went on it, or fall asleep halfway through a story, and while the other children welcomed these lapses, Mary felt cross. She wanted to know what went where, what happened.

Mrs Snape was fat, smiling and vicious. Anger woke her from her slowness – she became fast and precise, cracking heads together or swishing a ruler across the backs of hands or knees. She likes places with lots of small and complicated bones, thought Mary, noting that Mrs Snape looked as if she had no bones at all.

Mrs Snape was not fond of clever girls, especially those who dressed oddly and spoke well, like Mary George. You never could tell what the child was thinking. Her head was up in the clouds; she needed pulling back down. That morning, she had had enough of Mary daydreaming, doodling, singing to herself and still knowing all the answers, so she sent her out into the corridor. Mary relished this sudden out-of-placeness; it made her concentrate. Being alone was always a relief and the corridor, though chilly, wasn’t dark. The front door was hooked back onto the wall and was open all day, so Mary could see the low autumn sun, papery pale and far away but still strong enough to make the scratched varnish on the door gleam.

Mary amused herself deciphering hieroglyphics and making out treasure maps in the scratches on the door until a draught carried a dying bumble bee in over the step. She watched it stagger in circles on the tiled floor, inches from her feet. She studied its bristling stripes, the worn thread of its legs and bent antennae, and listened to its fading buzz. The other children would have pulled off its wings or taken it outside in a handkerchief to be laid tearfully and ceremoniously under the hedge. Even when it bumped into her shoes, Mary didn’t move but only wondered why it seemed to take longer crossing the red tiles than the black, and how such silly little wings could have carried so much. When confronted with something that demanded her attention, she often felt like this – as far away as the sun.

The bee crawled over to the skirting and disappeared. A shadow swung across the doorway and a crate of milk was set down, the free compulsory miniature bottles the children drank each day. The older ones took it in turn to be Milk Monitor, to puncture the foil caps with a knitting needle, push in the straws and force everyone to drink it. Even in winter the milk was warm, sweet and cheesy, turning to curd on the tongue. The children spat it out wherever they could, making the spider plants sallow, clouding the goldfish tank, and adding to the rancid stench of the gerbils’ cage.

Mary looked out across the playground, a sloping strip of tarmac that ran the length of the school. It was too narrow for any exciting games. Just as you speeded up in British Bulldog or Tag, you met the hedge on one side or the wall on the other. It was too easy, in such a confined space, to catch or be caught. It just wasn’t interesting.

Mary considered the milk and realised that if she was not in the classroom, she wouldn’t have to drink it. The playground gate stood permanently open, grown over by privet. Only the sound of Mrs Snape’s rasping voice held her back so she blocked her ears and then it was easy. She didn’t want to go along the High Street because that was the way home and somebody who knew her was sure to see her, so she slipped up Back Lane and into the fields.

It was almost October and the blackberries were at that stage when they were as plump and purple as they would ever be but still sour. Mary followed them, pulling the fruit from their fiddly clumps, trying and spitting, captivated by their colour and baffled by their taste. Eventually, she felt the tiny scratches rising on her arms and legs. She stopped and found that she had reached the end of the single field that now ran the length of the back of the village. She began to think about where she might be.

There was a stile ahead so she clambered over and found herself on the main road. She was out past the first tied cottages, further away from school and home than she could have imagined. She had lived in Allnorthover all her life and here was a part of it she didn’t know at all, at least a part she only ever passed through quickly. What if this were a different village, not her village at all but somewhere else? How could she get back into it if it wasn’t hers? A lorry rattled past, too close, its clanking undercarriage and blustering exhaust level with Mary’s eyes. The combined force of its size, speed and noise knocked her off her feet. Mary sat, tearful, on the verge. Then she realised she could see the roof of the Chapel, opposite the first cottages, and decided to find her father.

Mary pushed open the door but dared not go in. Matthew was crouched on the floor, doing something with a big piece of paper, chalk and pencils, that reminded Mary of what she ought to be doing right then at school. The piece of paper was a map, or the beginnings of one. It needed names adding and some colouring in.

‘Are you looking for me?’

‘Are you here?’ Mary was delighted when she amused her father, even though she rarely understood why.

‘And school, Miss Merry Blackberry?’ Matthew smiled as he spoke but Mary could see she’d worried him. He did things carefully and definitely, and had a strong voice that made her feel safe.

‘Mrs Snape put me out so … I thought I’d go.’

He nodded, accepting the logic of this, and rose to his feet ‘And have a feast in the fields by the look of you. Let’s get you washed up and I’ll take you back. They’ll be fretting.’

‘What country is that?’ Mary pointed at the map, stalling for time. She knelt down beside it and Matthew joined her.

‘Let’s see,’ he began. ‘There’s a big road,’ his finger traced a curving line from top to bottom. ‘Now that there, that little cross on a triangle, what does that remind you of?’

‘Church steeple?’

‘Good girl! So if that’s the church, what’s this bit of land along from it?’

Mary studied the long rectangle that began by the steeple and was split by the big road. ‘It’s a green.’

Matthew ran his finger along the row of narrow, different-sized boxes, some missing corners, some with extra corners, that lined the road. Mary caught on: ‘The High Street.’ His finger continued to the end of the row, along the road, to a bigger box, on its own. ‘It’s here! It’s us!’ Matthew lifted his hand and made to get up but Mary was enjoying her success. She leaned over and put down her forefinger where he had left off. ‘And this is where the bus goes to Camptown, out through the curvy Verges … here’s trees … it’s Temple Grove, isn’t it? And Ingfield Dip … and you’ve coloured this bit in, why blue?’

Matthew grasped her waist and swung her into the air, but too quickly, so it hurt. He put her down by the door. ‘I was seeing what it would be like if we filled the Dip with water,’ he said, his speech now careful.

‘Oh!’ Mary was thrilled. ‘You mean we’d get great big hoses and fill them up with the sea and pour it all out again here?’

‘Something like that.’

‘And then Christie and Tom and Mrs Iris could live underwater, with fish swimming past their window and we could dive in and visit them?’

Matthew propelled her down the path. ‘Something like that.’

Stella was still standing in the doorway, still talking: ‘… and when I told you about the plans for the reservoir, you already knew, didn’t you?’ Mary shook her head. ‘You’ve always been good at secrets, haven’t you? Like the hospital? No … you couldn’t quite keep that one in, could you? Oh, sweetheart, you were so little and didn’t know, and he thought he could take you about with him and you wouldn’t tell, how could you help it, poor duck?’ This was worse. Stella came and sat beside Mary and stroked her hair but, able to tell how determinedly Mary had disappeared inside herself, she stopped and moved away. ‘Just try, please, to remember what happened. It’s going to come up, you see, with Tom back and all. You remember Iris, don’t you? Remember how she was with your dad?’

What Mary couldn’t remember was what had made her say it that night, after she’d found her father drawing the map. They had been finishing supper and she had asked Matthew, ‘Is Christie’s mummy your mummy Daddy, only she’s not my gran?’

Stella had laughed but it hadn’t been a happy sound, more as if she’d dropped the plates in her hands and they were bouncing and breaking on the floor. Matthew had picked up his knife and fork again, although the dishes had been cleared. Then Stella was in the kitchen, banging things.