High Exposure

published by Writers’ Forum

“What you need is planned activities.”

Most of Marjorie’s sentences start with “What you need is…”

We had met when we both worked for the local council and, although I was senior to Marjorie, that hadn’t stopped her ambushing me with advice whenever the section head was within ear shot.  After I’d retired, she would call at the house every few weeks for what she called “a catch up”, when she would drink our good coffee and tell me about how she’d triumphed yet again over the town’s traffic warden, or of her plans to redecorate her bungalow, or her views on dealing with conifers and youth unemployment, which turned out to be remarkably similar. And all bestowed on me with appalling bad breath.

At first I endured Marjorie’s onslaughts quite well with Stan’s patient support and his prediction she would soon find someone else to call on. But instead she took to visiting more often, her diktats shifting from the general to the personal: I should refit my kitchen, colour my hair, join her line dancing class. A fear grew that I had unknowingly passed some test of Marjorie’s devising and was now receiving special treatment, but special treatment in preparation for what? Was I being upgraded to a better rank of friend, even perhaps to best friend?

I checked off the possible horrors that Marjorie might inflict if this were the case, eventually distilling my dread into one terrible prospect:

“Stan, what if she wants me to go on a cruise?”

Of course even Marjorie had to stop coming round when Stan went into hospital and I was no longer at home for her entertainment. But three weeks after the funeral she reappeared at the backdoor with a tin of unappetizing, homemade biscuits and a ravenous concern for my loss.

“Didn’t you see it on that daytime programme? You know. Trixie? Trinny? What you need to do if you’re (bereaved)...”

She had put the word in brackets by mouthing it silently, making it as noticeable as if she’d shouted it.

“…What you need is to make sure you get out with other people, and the best way is through planned activities or outings. So you can’t back out and just stay at home.”

Backing out and staying at home was just what I wanted. I needed to sleep and to heal. I needed comfort, to wrap myself in an old cardigan of my memories and think what we’d been together, Stan and I. And slowly perhaps to become the woman I was going to be without him. But I knew whatever I said or did, short of leaving the country, I was in for Marjorie’s planned activities instead.

Our first trip was to York with the Mother’s Union. Marjorie, you see, is a member; Marjorie is a member of almost everything. She would probably join the Mafia if they held more coffee mornings.

Then we did Edinburgh in the rain. We shopped at the Trafford Centre in Manchester for things we didn’t want. We attended fashion shows and floristry classes and cookery demonstrations, all with afternoon tea included, in assorted country houses. We were lectured by dieticians, beauticians and personal stylists. But still the weariness and the ache for an end to my grief, for a reason to carry on alone, persisted and even grew, as the unopened souvenirs and free samples overwhelmed the bureau in my hall.

 One afternoon, whilst I was testing how flimsy my remaining battery of excuses might be against Marjorie in full cry, complete with home baking and halitosis, I suddenly remembered Stan laughing. I sat and gathered myself together for a while. Then I rang Marjorie. 

“I’m going to Long Meg on Saturday afternoon.”

Marjorie, for once, was speechless.

“It’s absolutely unique, of course, nowhere like it. Stan and I used to love it.”

“What you need is to come with me to the Metro Centre and do a bit of shopping.”

“No, Marjorie. I’m going to Long Meg, the stone circle, on Saturday about four. If you want to come you’re very welcome.”

And I put the receiver down on Marjorie’s disbelief.

Stan and I used to visit Long Meg and her Daughters every now and again. There was rarely anyone else there. On bitter afternoons we would jog trot around the circle to disprove the legend that you could never count the same number of stones twice. I suppose it must be true as I can’t remember whether we ever managed it or not.

One summer evening, we took a picnic and sat amongst the tussocky grass and the sorrel and nettles, between the cow pats and the midges, and watched the sun set. And I fed the crumbs from my scone to a beady, brown field mouse living beneath one of the granite daughters.

And on every visit we’d make the old joke, the one worn smooth by being passed between us over and over:

“Come on. Let’s dance naked round Long Meg.”

“I dare you to go first.”

“No, you first and I’ll dig that pond in the garden you’ve always wanted.”

“No you won’t.”

“I might. Depends how good you are.”

And we’d cavort, turning and leaping, still fully dressed of course, around the elegant obelisk of sandstone, red and dark. Meg, now tattooed with lichen and graffiti-ed by one W J Scott, appeared to bend and strain, petrified perhaps in the act of leading her reluctant, pale, lumpen offspring towards salvation.

And it was at her foot that tokens were left: the last page of a love letter written in pencil, a London Marathon medal, a piece of crochet work, a dog’s collar. And I wondered what had led each person to leave that particular offering, what desperate bargain they might have struck with Meg.

But it was the dancing that was important. Only when you spun through three hundred and sixty degrees could you appreciate the strength of the place. The Pennines curving to North and South to meet the ramparts of the Lakeland fells reaching from the West, setting Meg and her clan in the middle of a basin of hills, a circle within a circle, that  drew the power of the mountains into its centre. And still the stones waited, ready, even though the world had long forgotten their purpose.

And so I drove the five miles from town, up the single track lane again and parked under the sycamore trees next to the sign, now so completely rusted over it conveyed only the message that all things inevitably decay. There were no other cars. I couldn’t see Marjorie’s new silver BMW parked anywhere. Perhaps she was safely the other side of the Pennines, shopping.

I had chosen my outfit carefully for once. My greying hair, untouched by a hairdresser since Stan’s illness, was loose, whipping around my face, into my eyes and mouth in the Helm Wind that eternally prowled around Meg. I had on a pair of Stan’s old wellingtons, too good to throw out and only a size too big for me, as defence against the maze of cowpats in various stages of solidifying. And a heavy grey wool cloak complete with hood that I’d bought from a charity shop especially for the occasion.

And I’d brought my offerings too.

As I walked the circle, I noticed that the daughter stones grew in height and bulk the closer they were to Meg with the smaller, less significant stones pushed furthest away. There were sixty seven altogether by my reckoning.  Funnily enough, I’ll be sixty seven on my next birthday. Perhaps that was the trick; you counted the number that meant something to you.

I bent down when I reached Meg and laid my gifts amongst the others already lying before her on the bare earth. I’d brought the Autumn Hints Eye Shadow set I’d got free from the make-up demonstration and the recipe cards from the cordon bleu cookery class. But I asked for nothing from Meg in return. Now Stan was gone there was nothing to bargain for.      

And then I threw down the cloak and danced.

The first slap of the wind on my naked body almost toppled me to the ground. But regaining my balance, I began a sort of polka, the sides of the wellies smacking together with each closing step. Then I attempted a clumsy pirouette, the outline of the mountains dancing around me, as I in turn circled Meg, again and again. I let the wind fill my mind and I stopped bothering to pull my hair out of my eyes. I didn’t need to see where I was going. I could feel it. Meg would keep me right.

I never heard the car or saw Marjorie until she was standing twenty feet from me, almost in the centre of the circle. And I’d been spinning so quickly that even when I tried to stop, the hills and the stones kept on turning.

“Linda. It is you. What the hell are you doing?”

“Dancing.”

“But you’re naked.”

“No, Marjorie. I’m wearing wellingtons.”

Marjorie stared down at my boots.

“What you need is...”

She began but the sentence was never finished. Marjorie turned and stumbled out of the stone circle to the safety of her car. 

And of course I realised then that she had been right all along. What I’d needed was a planned activity to get me out of the house.

This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, events and incidents of the work are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.