The Fetch of Mardy Watt

CHARLES BUTLER

DEDICATION

To Alison Leslie

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

1: FAT TUESDAY

2: LOVE POETRY

3: URANIBORG

4: LOSING WEIGHT

5: DOUBTFUL THOMAS

6: ARTEMISIA

7: HAL AND THE FETCH

8: IN DETENTION

9: STREETS, SLAVES AND A CANYON

10: ALAN

11: PENS FROM HEAVEN

12: PARIS IN THE WINTER

KEEP READING

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

1 FAT TUESDAY

MRS WATT CAME into the bathroom without so much as a knock.

“There’s no such thing!” she complained.

Mardy jumped hastily off the bathroom scales and reached for a towel. “What did you say, Mum?”

Mrs Watt was carrying a rolled-up copy of Fave! She waved the magazine in Mardy’s face. “‘How to find your perfect weight and stay there!’ Do they realise that growing children read this nonsense? The perfect weight! There’s no such thing.”

“If there was, I’d be two stone over,” Mardy concluded gloomily. She stepped past her mother, through the scented bath steam to the door.

“There’s nothing wrong with the body God gave you, Mardy. Now then, have you seen my hair dye?”

Mardy discovered it behind the spare toilet roll. She knew what was coming next.

“If you want to worry about anyone’s weight, worry about your brother’s,” said Mrs Watt. “He’s a shadow of himself.”

“Yes, Mum. That’s different.”

“Different because it’s real.”

Mardy pulled a face. When her mother mentioned Alan it always made her feel guilty, though she didn’t know why. Probably guilt was just another way of worrying, like Hal said.

“Are you going to the hospital today? I’ll come with you – I’d like to.”

“I was going to drop in on the way home from work,” said Mrs Watt briskly. “But if you want, I’ll wait for you here. Just make sure you’re back by 4.15.”

“I will.”

“I don’t want to be late.”

“Of course not,” muttered Mardy.

Her mother made it sound as if Mardy hardly ever visited Alan. Surely that wasn’t true?

She mulled it over as she walked the mile to school. Mardy usually went the longer way, skirting the park because of the men who sat there drinking cheap vodka, the ones her mother called Undesirables. The park railings thrummed by and, in between bushes, she saw the raked soil where flowers were set to grow in spring, the paths and sludgy leaves. She saw the men too, lying on benches by the War Memorial – all stubble and urine and wheezing self-pity. They seemed not to notice the weather or even their own sad condition. But they must, she thought … they must. It made her angry that they could waste themselves like that while Alan lay unconscious week after week. And over the railings tinkled a thin, beaded string of notes, plucked from an instrument that Mardy could not name. The music crept between the railings and followed her some way down the street.

Alan had been in the General Hospital for three months now. He was in a coma and nobody knew why. At first he had been very ill indeed. Her mother had not said so, but Mardy knew she had believed Alan would die. For days the house had been deathly still. Even to turn on the television would have felt heartless. Besides, there was nothing Mardy had wished to see or hear, except that Alan was well again. Photographs of her elder brother – humorous, elegant, ironic – sat on every mantelpiece. It had been a terrible time.

But Alan had not died. “He’s a fighter, that one,” the doctor had told Mrs Watt, the day his breathing had first stabilised. “We thought he was fading, but he just refused to let go. I don’t know where he gets his strength from.”

Mrs Watt knew. She said that Alan had his strength from her.

“He’ll never leave us,” she said.

Alan had not left them, but he had not come back either. Ever since, he had hovered between death and life. Sometimes, when Mardy visited, he seemed barely more than an object, a half-wrapped parcel in folded blankets. On other days his sleep seemed so light that she would not have been surprised to see him sit up and say “Morning, Spud! Did I doze off? I could murder a bacon butty!”

Mardy turned up the collar on her coat. She was walking down a long straight road with two lines of plane trees and Victorian, stone-clad houses behind them. The road itself was spacious and clean, and might have been called handsome but for the cars cluttering it on either side. But Mardy could never love its unbearable straightness and muscle-aching length. It made her feel small and lacking in purpose. Behind, the iron railings of the park were still visible; before her was the school itself. The two held her between them like a pair of cupped hands, and would not let her go.

As usual, Mardy stopped halfway down the street to call for her best friend Hal. Hal’s was a large stone house too, but where most had a patch of grass and a flowerbed in their front garden, his had gravel and a fountain. The fountain was made of a green, glowing, jade-like stone and on a grey day like this was the brightest object in sight. Hal’s family called it their “splash of colour”.

Hal’s mother was outside, raking the gravel. She looked up as Mardy’s watery shadow crossed her own and smiled. “Upstairs,” she said, with a jerk of the head. Mardy went through the kitchen, where Mr Young and Hal’s little sister were debating the nutritional value of Honey Loops, and so to Hal’s room.

Hal was tilting a tray of school books into his backpack.

“How’s our project going?” Mardy asked. “I want a full report.”

“See for yourself,” said Hal, nodding to a computer screen.

Mardy looked. One half of the screen displayed a photograph of a sheep in a field. In the other a second sheep (which Mardy vaguely recognised) was sitting in a railway carriage with some knitting. Above this picture Hal had printed “THE SHEEP OF THINGS TO COME?” in lurid letters, dripping blood.

“I know it’s not exactly right for the ‘Ethics of Cloning’, but I got carried away.”

“It’s great,” Mardy said encouragingly. “Just Yarrow’s thing. You’re a marvel, Hal, a marvel.”

Hal looked relieved. “I’ll work on it some more tonight.”

They left the house – Mardy leading, as was her right. At primary school Mardy and Hal had not been close. There, Mardy had been the queen of her own court, the most popular child in class. Hal, at best, had been her court jester. Popularity was a strange thing. Mardy had been neither the prettiest, nor the cleverest, nor the nicest person in her year. She dressed well enough, but was not spectacularly fashionable. She was barely above average in art, in sport decidedly below. Yet she was the one whose friendship counted – and whose dislike could send a child to lonely exile at the fringes of the class. Mardy could not have explained this herself, but had seen no reason to question an arrangement so much to her own advantage. She had assumed it would go on for ever.

Then came secondary school. Most of Mardy’s friends were heading to Marshall Community. Juanita, Carrie and Charlotte were all going there, along with half a dozen more of her hangers-on. The only one of her group destined for Bellevue School was Hal Young. At the time she had thought of Hal as a kind of consolation prize. Not that Mardy had been worried. True, she would miss her old friends, but soon she would be enthroned at the centre of a fresh set of admirers.

Yet Bellevue School had remained indifferent. Mardy’s face was just one among hundreds. Most of her new classmates had arrived with friendships intact and felt no need of her. She was not disliked, no one bullied her – but no one sought her out either. When it came to picking teams, she found herself relegated to the middle of the list.

If Mardy had been a weaker girl, or a more truly conceited one, she might have coped far worse. As it was, she was soon reconciled to her modest position. It was even a relief not to be continually looked to for her opinion. There was always good old Hal, she told herself, if she needed to practise her leadership skills. Next to Alan’s illness, what did any of it matter?

The plane tree road was longer than ever today. By the time Hal and Mardy reached its end a sharp hissing rain was falling.

Hal consulted his watch. “It’s 8.58 already, Mardy.” He was always precise about time, and kept and spent it carefully. “Better give Hobson’s a miss.”

Mardy paused, but only for a moment. She thought about her perfect weight briefly, but habit got the better of her. “I’ll only get the plain bar this time, not the double chocolate.”

She was already halfway through the newsagent’s doorway.

When Mrs Hobson saw her she reached automatically for the double chocolate Nut Krunch Bars, while Mardy found the right money. “Just the plain today,” Mardy told her virtuously.

“On a diet, Mardy?” Mrs Hobson smiled knowingly.

“Certainly not!”

But Mrs Hobson’s knowingness was proof against indignation. “I’ll be sure to lay in a stock of low-calorie bars,” she confided in a very audible half-whisper. The only other person in the shop – a twiglet in a mini-skirt – turned and looked Mardy over. Mrs Hobson continued: “I know just how hard it can be, believe me. Fighting Temptation.”

Hal was waiting by the school gate. “Got your chocolate fix? Then let’s go, before you rack up a detention.”

Two lates in one week equalled one lunchtime detention and Mardy was riding her luck. They skidded up the empty corridors of C Block to the corner classroom, where Mrs Yarrow was already halfway through the register. Luckily both their surnames came late in the alphabet. A number of children smirked as they came in together. One group in particular – that snooty lot from Bluecoat Primary – exchanged looks as if they were in on a scandalous secret involving Mardy and Hal. It didn’t matter that the secret wasn’t true. What mattered was being in on it.

Mardy sat in her place and answered Mrs Yarrow in her turn just as if she had been there all the time. She knew how seriously to take the Bluecoat lot. They knew nothing of her and cared even less. It was Rachel Fludd she was interested in.

Rachel was the only other girl who had arrived in the class without a ready-made set of friends. Her family had only just moved to the town, it was said. Rachel herself had a slight accent, pearled with rolling ‘r’s and lazy, hissing ‘s’s – but it was hard to pin her down. Sometimes, she would make a remark that suggested English was not her first language. She had odd little areas of ignorance, had never heard of Christmas cards, seemed not to know what milkmen were. But Mardy could never be sure, for Rachel was not communicative, on that or any other subject. She sat by the window as often as she could, and sulked.

Mardy was not quite sure how she had come to dislike Rachel so much. Both were strangers, both a little lonely: they could so easily have become friends. Yet even their likenesses drove them apart. Skinny, and taller than Mardy by two inches, Rachel might otherwise have been her sister. If Mardy had stood in front of a fairground mirror to see her reflection stretched out long and squeezed in thin, that reflection would have looked a lot like Rachel. But that just made Mardy remember how far she was from her perfect weight and she resented Rachel all the more.

Outwardly, Rachel took no more notice of Mardy than of the other children. But Mardy was sure that Rachel both recognised her own dislike and heartily returned it. It was a secret between them – the kind of personal, wordless secret usually shared only by close friends.

Rachel, naturally, had not even glanced up when Mardy and Hal had made their entrance. What she could see in the playground outside was bound to be more interesting, even if it was only a pyramid of swept leaves being rained on. Her hair was black like Mardy’s, but not well-brushed, and with a dusty look as if she had had to push through cobwebs to leave the house. Her clothes were dusty too, especially the hand-knitted cardigan she always wore, so small it barely covered her shoulders. But that face! Those dark eyes! Mardy was frightened by Rachel’s eyes sometimes – by the things they were looking at, that Mardy could not see. Her face was long and solemn when she was left to herself and that was most of the time. Spoken to, she started like a hare.

Mardy fumed. It was an act, it had to be. Probably Rachel was thinking of her at that very moment.

And – at that very moment – Rachel turned in her seat and looked directly at Mardy. She put her finger to her lips, and shushed.

“Did you see?” Mardy asked Hal in French, half an hour later. “As-tu vu?”

“Je ne comprends pas,” shrugged Hal.

“Blockhead!”

“Quiet, Mardy!” Mrs Mumm was listening in on her headphones.

“Did you see?” Mardy mouthed at Hal. “She must have heard me thinking about her. I always thought she could.”

Hal, quite reasonably, was unconvinced. “Mind games. Don’t let her get to you.”

Mardy looked despairing. “You don’t understand about Rachel at all.”

“What’s to understand? She keeps herself to herself, that’s all. Or would if people let her.”

This way Hal had of being ploddingly sensible about everything was more than Mardy could bear. She made a disgusted noise in French. And that, for the moment, was the end of it.

But even Hal had to admit that what happened next was no accident.

Mrs Mumm was checking last week’s homework, which had been to memorise the months of the year and the days of the week. She went round the class, asking each pupil in turn. Slim, pretty Mrs Mumm was another one who made Mardy think about her perfect weight. She seemed almost too young to be a teacher and so demure that an angry word would probably make her burst into tears – though her pupils soon learned that with Mrs Mumm appearances could be deceptive. Mardy liked her classes, but thought her far too fond of the language laboratory. The headphones made Mardy’s ears sting.

Mrs Mumm was talking to Rachel. It seemed that Rachel had asked a question about one of the days of the week.

“Gras means ‘fat’, literally,” Mrs Mumm was saying. “So Mardi Gras is just the last day before Lent – the last day of feasting.”

“Thank you,” said Rachel. “Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. I get it.”

“That’s the literal translation, yes,” Mrs Mumm agreed cautiously. “But Fat Tuesday isn’t really a phrase in English, is it?”

“Not yet,” said Rachel, in the same neutral voice she had used throughout. She hadn’t emphasised the words, not in the least. But then she hadn’t needed to.

By lunchtime Mardy simply was Fat Tuesday. It was the Bluecoat girls who took to it most enthusiastically. Rachel did not need to say anything. She had lit the touchpaper; now she could stand back and watch.

“Pass the ruler, Fat Tuesday!”

“Shouldn’t you be in the salad queue, Fat Tuesday?”

“Need some help squeezing through the fire doors, Mardi Gras?”

Mardy was glad to get to the end of the day. All the same, the prospect of visiting Alan was beginning to send a series of nervous shivers through her mind.

She dawdled, going home. As she reached the park she heard again the strange plucked instrument she had noticed on the way to school that morning. It was this, as much as a wish to drag out the time, that led her through the wrought-iron gates and up one of three forking paths, to a circle of flowerbeds and asphalt. The Undesirables were nowhere to be seen. In the middle of the circle stood a granite cross. Steps led up all around the cross, and on the side visible to Mardy a bunch of winter roses had been laid. Lest we forget. She began to read a dizzying list of names, each belonging to a dead soldier. Terence Appleby, William Aston, George Aston, Charles Ayling … Once she had begun, in fact, she found she had to carry on. The music, which was very close now – just on the far side of the cross – seemed to insist upon it. Lest we forget. She could not move further until she had dutifully read and remembered the name of each Burgess, Butterell, Chandler and Crisp; and so to the next side of the cross, and the next, until John Zipes had at last been laid to rest. And still there was no sign of where the music was coming from, or who was playing it.

Even now she could not move away. Mardy had heard that just before death a person’s life flashed past – all in a moment. What happened to her now was like that, but much slower. She was unwillingly engaged in a laborious act of memory, unwinding each moment of her past like thread from a bobbin. She felt as if she had to or be turned to stone herself.

Finally – finally – the many-stringed instrument (a harp, was it, or a mandolin?) began drawing its threads of sound together. The tangle of arpeggios became more dense and knotted. Harmonies and discords vied dangerously, and at last a vast, enmeshed chord threw a net of closely-woven sound over her head. It billowed out and settled, dissolved at its edges and tightened at its centre, and bound her hand and foot. For a few moments she was no more alive than a wax doll.

Then the music was not there any more.

Mardy gasped, as if she had just broken the surface after a long, lung-bursting swim. She was panting. About fifty yards away, at the far end of one of the paths, a dark figure carrying a black instrument case was leaving the park. The musician – if it was the musician – must have stopped playing some time ago, to have packed up and be leaving already. But that final, calamitous chord was still shaking Mardy, body and soul. It seemed only a few minutes since she had entered the park and seen the granite memorial. Since the music stopped it had been no time at all. Yet her watch told her that an hour had passed.

The hospital! Her mother had been expecting her home thirty minutes ago! Mardy ran up the path and the short streets to her own house. She was there in less than five minutes. Her mother’s car was still parked in the road and the door was on the latch.

“Mum?” gasped Mardy breathlessly to the empty hall.

Mrs Watt was sitting on the living room sofa. Her visiting bag was beside her. She didn’t look up. “Haven’t you changed yet?” she asked coldly.

Mardy was too flustered to notice the oddness of this question. She plunged on with the excuse she had hastily prepared. “Sorry, Mum, I got held up at school. Mr Lorimer wanted to talk about the rehearsals.” She added quickly: “Hadn’t we better get to the hospital?”

Mrs Watt stood up. She was a tall woman and she towered over Mardy now. “I don’t know what you’re babbling about, Mardy. Rehearsals? What are you sorry about?”

“About being late from school. A little bit late.”

Mrs Watt shook her head. “I worry about you, Mardy, I really do. It was a good half hour ago you clattered up to your room to change. My only question is why you’re still in your school uniform. Well, there’s no time now. You’ll have to go to the hospital as you are.”

“Half an hour ago?” repeated Mardy, dumbfounded.

“At least. Now please get in the car. I don’t like to keep Alan waiting. Do think about someone other than yourself for a change.” Mrs Watt reached for her keys and purse. “Mardy! What are you doing now?”

“Just a moment!” yelled Mardy as she ran upstairs. She flung her school bag down on the landing and then stopped. She still had not got her breath back after her dash from the park. But something her mother had said was alarming enough for her to need to go to her room at once, even if it meant a shouting match later.

She had not gone upstairs half an hour ago. So who had?

Mardy opened the door of her room. Perhaps her mother was simply mistaken. But her mother did not often make mistakes – and there was something odd about this day which had made her nervous. That final chord from the War Memorial was still quivering through her.

But – no. The room was empty, and as familiar as her own skin. She would have felt at once if an intruder had been hiding there. She knew every stuffed toy and CD box and pile of unwashed clothes in the place, and not a stitch of it had moved since she had left the house that morning.

On her desk lay her page-a-day diary. She kept it only occasionally. Daily life already seemed wearing enough: why fire herself out twice by writing it down? But sometimes she felt she would overflow if she couldn’t let out some of the things she couldn’t even tell Hal. Some of these were about Alan – especially just before Christmas when he seemed to have had a relapse and was terribly close to death again. That had been a long, dark festival. But in the last weeks most of the entries had been to do with Rachel. On the page that lay open was a single jagged sentence, obviously written in a hurry:

Rachel Fludd is a witch!

Mardy stared at it hard and wrinkled her nose.

“Mardy!” Mrs Watt was calling from the hall downstairs.

“Coming, Mum!”

Mardy gave one last glance round her room. Everything was as it should be. Everything was in its place … Except for that last sentence.

Rachel Fludd a witch? It was a suspicion she had often entertained, half seriously. It was certainly the kind of thing she might have put in her diary.

But, try as she might, Mardy could not remember writing it there.

2 LOVE POETRY

“WHY DON’T YOU tell me what’s wrong?” asked Hal at last. They were nearing the end of Bellevue Road and Hobson’s was just in view. Mardy was already fiddling unconsciously with her purse.

“Uh?”

“Mardy, wake up! Have you heard a word I’ve been saying?” Hal did a little war dance in front of her. What he had been saying was not important – a mixture of football, geography and soap opera – but Mardy usually made a better show of listening than this. “Is your brother worse again?” he finally asked outright.

“Alan? No, no. I saw him last night and he’s just the same. A bit better if anything.”

“I’m glad.”

“His skin – you know it had that awful waxy look? Like a Granny Smith when you’ve polished it? That’s gone. He doesn’t look like he’s wearing a mask any more.”

Mardy relapsed into silence.

“But?” prompted Hal. “Come on, you know I can tell when something’s bothering you.”

“Only my mother’s got this way of talking like he was a saint. And he isn’t.”

Alan wasn’t a saint. Mardy loved her brother, but however much she tried to be pure and charitable, globules of resentment kept bubbling up through her mind whenever she thought about him, like marsh gas through a swamp. Little things, mostly, like the way he insisted on calling her Spud when he knew she detested the name. Or his habit of careless elegance which meant that, even lying motionless in his hospital bed, Alan was always the centre of attention. While their mother read Alan stories from the local paper, Mardy lurked in the background, picking off the less-wrinkled grapes for the man in the next-door bed and feeling like an imposter. She wished she could be filled with noble feelings, feelings of self-sacrifice and pity; instead, she wanted nothing more than to run back down the sterile corridors to her home.