Ghost Wall(16)

Molly was right. The first car to pass slowed and two boys leant out and shouted at us, hey up love, bound for Sherwood forest are ya? Molly gave them two fingers, as if she didn’t care, as if there were no possible consequences for a girl making obscene gestures on the public highway. Fuckers, she said as they drove off, hope they drive into a bridge next time. Moll! I said, though I didn’t really think ill-wishing had power. What, she said, serve the bastards right. Look, there’s Spar, told you. I’m going to have an ice-cream, what about you? Dunno, I said, I’ll see what they’ve got. I’ll see what I can afford, I meant; even though I was in the sixth form and there was casual work going in town, Dad had forbidden me to get a Saturday job. No need for that, you’re fed and housed and there’s plenty wants doing at home if you’ve time on your hands, you get on with your school work and then you won’t have to spend your life in a shop like your mum. Either he wanted me to have a better life than his and Mum’s or he knew that money is power and didn’t want me to have any, or maybe – probably – both. Mum slipped me the odd couple of quid and didn’t always ask for the change when she sent me to the shops.

Sweat trickled under my arms and I wiped my upper lip on the back of my hand. The shop was on the horizon where the road went up hill, and behind it a mirage of the moor wavered and floated between tarmac and sky. High above, silently, a plane left no trail. We do have to do some foraging, I said, they’ll be wondering where we are. I do have to get something to eat, Molly said, something with some taste and energy in it, I reckon I’d rather live in the shadow of nuclear war with ice-cream and crisps and conditioner than in primitive purity with half-ground grains and rabbits’ guts. I decided not to say anything prissy about literacy, not to mention safe water and antibiotics, and anyway she was right. Do you think someone’s going to find a grassy mound in 2991, I said, and excavate it and conclude that we venerated drinking vessels and plastic packaging at the crossroads of our sacred ways? Well, she said, they’d be right, wouldn’t they.

I let Molly go in first. Hung back, would have waited outside except that I reckoned I’d look even more stupid hanging about out there on my own in tunic and moccasins than trailing Molly around three aisles of highly processed and over-packaged food. She held the door for me. Come on, she said, it’s fine, I’ve been here pretty much every day, they’re used to it. She took a basket and strode around, mirrored in the black and white CCTV over her head. A bag of apples, a multi-pack of Hula Hoops, a small sack of ‘fun sized’ Mars bars, though why it should be more fun to have smaller chocolate bars I have never understood. A pastel box of Fondant Fancies. Dan’s guilty secret, she said, his gran used to buy them and there’s something about watching a hairy six-foot bloke eating pink cakes that’s worth every penny.

The bell over the door rang and a woman came in, a woman wearing shapely grey linen and flat shoes like a version of our moccasins made by someone who knew how to make shoes. She looked me up and down. Good morning, she said. Red lipstick, bobbed hair with purposeful white streaks. Hi, I said. Er, good morning. Sorry. Why are you sorry, she said. I looked for Molly, who was leaning over the freezer by the till making a careful study of the ice-creams. I seemed to have forgotten how to behave in the presence of electric lights and painted walls. Don’t know, I said, sorry. You must be with the archaeologists, she said. Re-enactors, whatever they’re called. Yeah, I said, we’re living like Iron-Age Northumbrians, I mean, obviously they didn’t go to Spar and buy cake so we’re not, actually, but I mean that’s why we’re here, in these clothes. Right, she said, and how’s that going? Apart from the need for cake? Of course we heard about you, in the village, it sounds very interesting.

Erm, OK, I said, fine, we’re learning a lot, well, I’m not a student, I don’t have to, but I think they are. Anyway, my friend – I gestured towards Molly, who was studying a pack of Chorley cakes. I guessed they didn’t have Chorley cakes in the South.

Isn’t it much harder, the woman said, to find food now all the land is farmed, do you think it would have been easier for them with more wild plants and animals, greater what do you call it? Moll looked up. Biodiversity, she said. Yeah, probably. Plus they’d have known what they were doing and not been wandering round with some book with completely useless black-and-white photos to tell you which ones are poisonous. There are people in the village who’d know which ones are poisonous, said the woman, my Aunt Edith would have known, retired civil servant but she knew her plants, you could probably ask any farmer.

Molly left her basket on the freezer and came over, still holding the Chorley cakes. You mean if the Prof was into asking people who know rather than looking it all up in books, she said, yeah, I know, but it’s like asking for directions, it’s one thing for a bloke to admit he doesn’t know something but acknowledging that someone else does know is a step too far. Moll, I said, they’re not all the same, I’ve definitely had men ask me directions, you don’t like it when Dan talks about women like that. They ask you ’cos you’re not threatening, she said, and I bet there’s been a five-act drama in that car first. The woman laughed. Maybe they’re just socialized that way and can’t help it, poor dears, she said. Maybe the drama is because they hate being like that and wish they were allowed to admit uncertainty. I’m Trudi, she said, Trudi Kelley, I’m a midwife and I live in the village, the little house just above the farm. If you ever find you need anything while you’re here, advice about plants for example or a cup of tea or maybe just a hot shower, you know where I am. Enjoy your Iron-Age food.