A Town Unlike Alice
BONFIRE AFTERMATH
Cathy: “You suffer in the flesh and through the flesh, don't you, and some ideas are very horrible, almost too horrible to think through, in the flesh as we are.”
Cathy pauses, remembering the little Dread figure for which she has made sketches, and facing the madness she feared in herself, which experience gave rise to the idea for the Dread. Alice, still in tears, is going through that or worse.
Cathy: “And I'm sorry I went on about that patient dying. It's upset you, oh dear – me and my big mouth! I don't know when to stop, you'll have to tell me to shut up because when I go on it's too much for you, isn't it?”
Alice has been trying to blank Cathy's high insistent voice out, she is overloaded already, Cathy is making bad worse by behaving like the Voices and refusing to shut up. Something catches Alice's eye, she exclaims quickly, impatiently, seizing on the diversion:
“I don't believe my eyes! Bolt's just thrown lighter fluid on the bonfire and he and Lemon Pip are laughing in its light! I thought I was to be reproved, to be curbed, for stoking the fire too much, and look at them!”
Cathy has the sense to accept this change of subject, much as she would have liked to pursue her own thoughts and utter them aloud, she suddenly sees she's going on and on yet again and it is indeed too much for Alice. She turns her head to see. The children have been taken inside leaving the group of men to encourage the blaze. They are throwing lighter fuel followed by damp boxes onto the flaming updraughts, the shed windows dance luridly, reflecting flames, echoing shouts and showing glimpses of grinning sweaty faces and busy male hands.
Cathy: “What's fine for them isn't fine for a woman. It's like swearing, if they're angry they'll eff and blind but if I'm angry and come out with a mouthful of foul language they look askance. Anyway, what is or isn't common sense is only the consensus of the moment.”
Cathy falls silent, Alice still stares at the men enjoying themselves by the blaze. She is a long way away with her tear wet eyes and tumultuous, chaotic feelings reacting to the impact of what has gone on and the unfairness. Then she blinks, and sees Cathy again, a quiet Cathy this time.
Alice: “You mean if they all consent to what they're doing it's okay? Whatever they're doing?”
Cathy: “The Jacobeans assented to the execution of Guy Fawkes, and very nastily too – I won't go into that. It seemed like common sense to be firm, to them, to keep King James firmly seated on the throne as a Protestant.
Alice feels the force of this logic. She recalls Cathy's vehemence about her patient:
“I'm sorry your patient died so suddenly, too, you must have worked hard with him.”
Cathy: “Yes, he was physically handicapped but I'd just found out if I glued bits of foam rubber to a paintbrush handle he could manage to hold it and paint, and he loved being able to paint.”
Alice's eyes brim afresh and Cathy sees with a start she is still very ill. Cathy decides to make amends for her contribution and take charge, offering to drive Alice home seems the best way to help and protect her. They don't need to make their adieux, the men are happily occupied, Martha and her friends aren't speaking to Cathy because she brought Alice to the party. They leave through the garden gate and get into Cathy's car, Cathy runs through the checks then pulls out, and the two are alone together in the windowed metal box. Housefronts furred with yellow headlights slide past, dark patched tarmac unrolls beneath and in front of them.
Alice: “It doesn't matter, us leaving the party early, because the consensus had written us both off as persona non grata. Only you care about cripples in hospitals, Cathy, and lunatics at large. Lemon Pip and Bolt don't.”
Cathy smiles because she has succeeded in getting Alice away, and Alice seems calmer, soothed by the motion of the vehicle and Cathy's total control of it as driver. Cathy has got this right, Alice needs to go home quietly, Cathy is enabling her so to do.
Cathy: “My fags are in my bag. Have a fag, and light one up for me. In the zip pocket with my lighter, got them? Ta. Well you're persona grata for me. What's that silly sod doing? Turning left, well indicate in future! Sorry. I think Lemon Pip and Bolt are frightened by your illness. You acted alone when you built up the fire, and as if you weren't paying any attention to them, so they couldn't understand you, even when they did exactly the same thing themselves from the same motives. They were scared and that's why they had their silly little colloquy with Martha, and it was infectious fear that made Martha hide the rest of the cardboard boxes away from you under that wet shrub.”
Alice: “Did she really hide them? Stupid fucking bitch!”
Tears course down Alice's face, she turns her head to hide them and sucks on her cigarette. Cathy keeps quiet but thinks to herself Alice's confusion of herself with Guy Fawkes was paranoia, which the behaviour of Bolt and Martha has confirmed as real. Alice is very frightened and their exclusion of her, their consensus that she is mad therefore Other and to be treated to busy behind-the-back interference and confidential adverse judgements, make her paranoia into an entirely normal and understandable reaction! Mad Alice may be, her feelings are just as powerful as anyone's normal feelings under that sort of treatment, Alice is quite justified in being apprehensive and afraid of other people. Her eyes on the road, Cathy stretches her left hand to clasp Alice's hand briefly, and her warm squeeze is returned.
Cathy: “Nearly there now, and I've saved you a cold walk.”
Alice: “Thanks for the lift, I'd have been too distraught to organise a cab, thanks ever so much Cathy.”
Alice gets out of the car and disappears through a front door. Cathy drives of with her mind on the road ahead.