Mind Games and Ministers Read online

  Mind Games & Ministers

  Text copyright © 2018 Chris L. Longden

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission of the author except for brief permissions in relation to promotional material. This is a work of fiction; all names, characters, places or incidents are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, organisations, locales or events is entirely coincidental.

  First Printed Edition, Chris L. Longden, 2014

  Second Printed Edition, Chris L. Longden 2018

  Chris L. Longden

  Mind Games & Ministers

  IN MEMORY OF EMMA PRIEST:

  24 Oct 1972 – 9 Dec 2013

  Best friend, wife, sister, Godmother. Expert on drinking tea, on doing good by stealth. On laughing. And on loving life.

  Acknowledgements:

  Ian, Ruby and Gregory Agnew

  Holmfirth Writers Group

  Editor: Laura Ripper

  Editorial Support: Leonora Rustamova

  ( Note to reader: a key to explaining the chapter titles can be found at the end of the book)

  About The Author

  Chris Longden was born, and grew up, in Tameside, Greater Manchester, UK. Her career has focussed on social housing and community and international development. She lived in Namibia, southern Africa for several years, where she gave birth to her first child whilst working with the Kalahari ‘San’ bushmen and where she wrote and edited two books on the lives of the San.

  Chris now lives with her family in west Yorkshire. She occasionally writes at her ‘funnylass’ blog and always welcomes followers.

  www.funnylass.com

  Facebook: Chris L Longden

  Prologue 1

  FRIGG IN HELL: ONE YEAR AGO – IN SEPTEMBER

  It took approximately five seconds for me to lose the children from my line of sight. Just ten of my longest strides, swinging round the corner, and then they were gone. Twenty yards away, over the road, the number 308 bus to Huddersfield was shuddering out carbon monoxide as a random collection of passengers waited to board.

  Could I make it across the road without looking over my shoulder? Could I concentrate on scrabbling together the correct bus fare? If so, yours truly would be at London King’s Cross by 3 p.m. On the Eurostar by 5 p.m. France by 8 p.m. My passport happened to be in my handbag too. Funny, that.

  Even now though, even in the midst of this fantastical act, my mind was a whirl of timing and computations. But calculating the logistics of international escape, the perusal of timetables and the possibilities of self-catering apartments in Brittany would at least prove to be exotic, more tantalising preoccupations than the usual drudgery. The never-ending conveyor belt. A ceaseless procession of bags, books, shoes, dinner money, nursery fees, medicines, nappies and crappy plastic toys that Grandma always insists on buying.

  The burden of domestic dross is bad enough when two of you have to share it. But on your own? It’s frigging hell.

  I glared at the never-ending stream of the A616 traffic. The ‘Car is King’ world. Self-obsessed drivers, oblivious to pedestrians teetering on the kerb. Not a road for the dyspraxic sorts, this one. And I smiled wryly. Now wouldn’t that be fortuitous? To end up getting squished by a car right here, right now. Our local headlines would proclaim “Mother of Two Tragically Killed in Tourist Town – Leaves Orphans”. The word “Mother”. It could be so powerful; so evocative. So suffocating.

  But in the end, I didn’t cross the road. It wasn’t, however, the thought of little Matthew, clad in a thin fleece and shivering in his pushchair, that that burst the bubble. No. The hasty retreat was effected by less obvious maternal manipulations.

  Now imagine this, Rachael.

  A forty-eight-inch TV screen. A crappy day time chat show For Real People and Their Problems.

  Cut to an excited looking audience. Cut to my daughter, Lydia. Of how she might end up looking, at the age of sixteen. Slouched on a studio chair, clad in black with a smearing of purple-noir eye make-up. Wearing a sullen and slack-jawed expression. The sleazy chat show host now rolling up his verbal sleeves for the inevitable sparring.

  “So, Lydia. When you were five years old, your mother, Rachael here, abandoned you and your little brother Matthew. Leaving you outside a cafe. That must have been devastating!”

  Cut to appalled facial expressions of the audience. Lydia responds:

  “Totally. An’ it were that café from that Last Of The Summer Wine TV programme. An’ she left us next to that life-sized Compo the Tramp dummy. Me and our Matt have had, like, this phobia of wellies ever since.”

  Cut to me. Having gained some sixty pounds. Having lost two front teeth. Three inches of black roots showing. Rachael burned-out blondeness. About to launch a whining defence of how difficult it had been, trying to bring up two kids on your own…

  I plummeted back down to reality. No. Day-dreaming over, Rachael.

  I stepped back from the kerb. I would not be embarking upon the Eurotunnel escape route. Mummy might well be a God-awful mummy, but at least she will be there to fight her corner when the children hit their even-arsier teenage years and no doubt decide to accuse her of physical, mental and emotional neglect.

  I shrugged off the tantalising trance and turned around, scuttling back to the little buggers. They couldn’t have been on their own for more than a couple of minutes. I had left them behind the queue for The Last Of The Summer Wine tour bus just next to the bacon-butty cafe. Before they entered my field of vision, I heard a Lydia-lamentation:

  “Mummy!”

  I stopped at the corner of the charity shop, my cheek hovering millimetres from the chilly brickwork. The voyeuristic curiosity continuing. I wanted to see how they might feel about my sudden absence. Lydia was flapping those perpetually mitten-clad hands. A perfect picture of despair. Matthew was clenching the sides of his pushchair and leaning forward. Copying his sister’s exhortations, but with a lusty bellow and a twist of the west Yorkshire accent:

  “MUUUH-MEH!”

  Toddler version of the haka. An overwhelming waft of scorched bacon and eggs wasn’t helping to dampen the testosterone overdrive. Matthew was not thinking “Mummy’s buggered off somewhere and I’m well naffed off about the prospect of orphanhood!”

  Nah. Matthew wanted a bacon butty.

  Similarly, Lydia wasn’t really distressed. She had conjured up her best am-dram posturing and was about to yell again when an older couple - a pair of walkers - adorned in matching yellow Gore-Tex, stopped.

  “Have you lost your mummy, lovey?”

  Lydia ignored the woman, wiping snail-trails from her nose onto her coat sleeves and commenced this time with the “MUH-MEEEH!” version of my name. Matthew, distracted by the man’s Nordic walking pole, grabbed it and attempted to bite it. The man resisted and yanked the stick back. Matthew yelled incomprehensible insults at him. One of the customers seated at the outside cafe tables winced at a waitress.

  “Bluh-deee ’ell! ’Ee’s got a set of lungs on ’im!”

  Unluckily for them, Matthew had inherited his father’s booming intonations.

  Yellow-clad lady tried again.

  “Is your mummy in the cafe? Shall we go and look for her?” She tried to take Lydia’s hand, but Lydia yanked it away, as if the woman’s touch had burned her. Small brown curls shook out a furious declaration.

  “If you get lost you must always stand in one place and shout for your mummy! You don’t ever go anywhere with a stranger!” Liddy raised her voice up another notch. “Because strangers might look nice on the outside. But they’re all evil on the inside! And you’re one of those evil strangers. And
you want to steal me!”

  The pleasant chatter from the cafe tables and the Summer Wine tour bus queue ceased. Customers were staring at the drama. My offspring were certainly giving the usual brass band or Morris dancers you got appearing in Holmfirth market square a damned good run for their money.

  I finally managed to snap out of it, making a beeline towards the children. Gore-Tex lady was looking a tad upset. Obviously not used to being outed as one of Satan’s minions in a very public place. Attempting to reassure Lydia that, no, she was actually a nice person. But Matthew was grabbing at the woman’s walking pole. He won his prize this time, swinging it above his head in triumph. But managing to whack his sister in the face in the process.

  It took five minutes to stop Lydia’s nose from bleeding and to soothe the trauma with a packet of Smarties. I put on my ‘smiley, bubbly, coping with life’s little foibles’ face and tried to exit with some grace. Adopting a hollow claim that I had “just nipped around the corner to look for my little boy’s fluffy bunny – he must have dropped it somewhere”, I attempted to usher the children ahead of me. But my cleverly constructed image floundered. Countered by Lydia.

  “What fluffy bunny, Mummy? Matthew doesn’t have a fluffy bunny! He doesn’t have a bunny that’s fluffy. He’s got a green panda. But that’s in his pushchair with him. And a panda isn’t a bunny, is it? Which bunny do you mean?”

  The cappuccino crew could now see beyond the veil. Me. Potential child-abandoning harridan, after all. Yeah. Cheers for that, Lydia.

  “Sssh!” I hissed at her. “Come on!” Yanking her by the collar of her jacket. Perhaps I tugged too hard. But months of sleep-deprivation ladled with lashings of shame are not the best ingredients for parental patience and all things apple pie. The collar-dragging only gave her licence to burst into choking tears again.

  “But Mummy. Don’t be mean! I thought you’d gone and left us. Just like Daddy did!”

  I stopped pulling her. A scramble, a jumble of fear must have been brewing in that little head of hers. Despite my assumptions that she hadn’t missed me for the two minutes that I had fled from them. I softened my voice.

  “Oh, Liddy. Come here. You daft thing.” Folding my arms about her. She oozed Smartie-streaked snot and tears into my hair, her little body racked with sobs. Matthew though, didn’t want to be left out of the drama. He took the opportunity to herald a word that I had never heard from this child before.

  “Da-deee! Da-deee!” I did my best to ignore that latest little development.

  “Lydia, sweetie – Liddy!” I crouched down to face her. Holding her at arm’s length.

  “Liddy – listen. I’m not going anywhere. And your daddy didn’t leave us, you know!” The latte-lovers were still staring nonchalantly at their afternoon’s entertainment. At this clapped-out thirty-eight-year-old mother of two. Whose husband must have just recently deserted her. Probably for a classier, more tanned and toned younger model, despite her public denials to the contrary.

  “Lydia – your daddy still loves you. He always will. We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?” Lydia’s sobbing escalated into a high-pitched, wolfish howl. She gnawed at those red woolly mittens, telling me:

  “I know, I know that really. But he’s still gone ’n’ left us. Hasn’t he? And I don't know what to do now!” She buried her soggy face into my neck.

  The people at the cafe averted their gazes. Carried on with previous conversations. Embarrassed. Or bored. Perhaps hoping that a random accordion player or an itinerant folk dancer might turn up, for a much-needed change of scene. Ignoring the audience, I engaged my brain in some serious mental pummelling. I should have known. Should have bloody well known. Lydia was a little girl with an uncanny ability to read between the lines. She had seen me rip open the oh-so-casual-looking white envelope that had popped through our letterbox those few weeks ago. She must have witnessed the look of horror on my face. And even when I thought that she was safely tucked up in bed and away from the adult world, it turned out that she had overheard those telephone conversations. “Who were you shouting at last night? About them getting married and you not knowing about it, Mummy?”

  Yes. Lydia would have been able to sense just how desperate I had been feeling recently. She would have soaked up the escalating depression after the initial, overriding horror. My girl would have known that my mind was doing more than its usual overtime on the possibilities of scarpering. Doing One. So my hug for her was forceful. Transmission via osmosis. No ‘child-appropriate’ language for this little situation.

  Please believe me, Liddy. My maternal shortcomings may be all too apparent these days. But I’m going nowhere. You can trust me on that one.

  (Still, lady. Don’t you ever – and I mean ever – make me do that shitty daytime TV chat show thing. Because then, I really will sod off and disown the pair of you.)

  Prologue 2

  KERES ON THE ROOF: 20 MONTHS AGO – IN JANUARY

  The wind is whipping, whooping about the building. Perhaps this strange howling is coming from an unwanted mythical being, curling itself around the spire of the chapel. And maybe I’m beginning to believe in the luck of the gods.

  Meaning that there’ll be a group of vengeful creatures up there. Having a field day of it all. Icing themselves to the slates. Waiting for the inevitable fall of snow some hours later. Then leaping off and landing upon the next poor, unfortunate sod to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

  Lydia is clinging to my dad. He has carried her from our house to cortege car, then from Daimler to departure point. No one can prise her away from Grandad today. But Grandad isn’t as hard-wearing as he used to be. He’ll be in agony with his bad back by this afternoon. I feel bad about this. I should have been the one to clutch her wee five-year-old flesh ‘n’ bones to my own vastly receding bosom, throughout this day. But I’m not too steady on my feet right now. Bit lightheaded. Tablets from the doc.

  “We can’t rely on our Rachael to get it all done properly. She’s a bit off her head at the moment, Terry ... she’s talking a right load of tosh,” I heard my mother saying to my dad the week before. And Dad replying, “Well. She always talked a load of tosh, love. And right now, I reckon that she can probably be forgiven for talking even more crap than she normally does.”

  And it’s funny, because today I’ve been thinking a lot about clothes. Most unlike me. Tripping along behind the coffin, I wonder if I should have rifled through our loft. Resurrected my bike leathers. Hardly funeral wear, of course. But definitely warmer. And somehow more appropriate. Adam would have taken one glance at me shivering in the pew here, at me in my daft dark blouse, skirt and opaque tights and would have said:

  “Ha! Rach. You look like Miss Prudeypants of Prudesville in that get-up.”

  He would have preferred the smell of linseed and leather, as opposed to Lily of the Sodding Valley, which mother insisted on squirting onto me earlier. Cheers for that, Mum.

  Something is missing. My eyes flick from left to right. Where is meladdo? Oh, yes. I remember now. Matthew is at the childminder’s. Too cold for a toddler to be to-ing and fro-ing in these kind of temperatures. And Matthew wouldn’t be able to remember this day, anyway. We all said that when we were talking about The Children.

  Lydia is unbearably quiet. She chews at the new red mittens that Adam’s mum bought her yesterday. Her tiny globe-eyes peering through sodden wool at the rows of people behind her. Scanning them all, politely perched on their clenched buttocks. And those who are lurking, standing up at the back of the congregation. She has probably never seen so many grown-ups in one place.

  I only glance around once, but I can instantly pick out Shaun’s towering form. Head and shoulders above all the others. Although, of course, I knew that he was there anyway, before I could see him. I can always tell. My legs feel the adrenaline before my eyes can clock the sight.

  And then I hear Big Jim, over in the next aisle. Out of hospital now. Managed to get him here in time. Jim is
on crutches. Is sobbing. Must be a bugger trying to blow your nose when you can barely move your legs or arms properly.

  The minister ends his sermon. But I’m not really listening. He’s been wittering on about Adam’s love for bikes, rock music, his family and his gadgets. And all that’s fine. The minister is a good chap. Your ultra-liberal sort. Warm heart, big smile. Lots of wriggle room for a slightly different approach. To life. And to death.

  So we’re having a quickie-funeral at the crem itself. I didn’t want any unnecessary fannying around from church to crem and back home again. I can’t be doing with all those stupid, twatty up-yourself cars. It might be a rite of passage for some – but for Adam it would have been a “bloody great big waste of money”.

  So, yeah. Everything has gone the way that I – that Adam – would have wanted it to go. The wishes of the dearly departed and all that. Not that we ever seriously discussed this kind of thing with each other. Dying was something that Adam didn’t waste a minute thinking about.

  Dying was an irrelevance.

  And now comes the irreverence. A very personal, discreet oh-so-sinful grinful. My mother has no idea about this. She is going to be appalled. “Not appropriate, Terry,” she’ll say to my dad afterwards. I might have been operating in la-la land over the last couple of weeks, but I had managed to instruct the funeral director about certain requirements. That the wooden box containing the body of my husband should move along to the music. In style. Our style.

  As the minister gives the signal, the velvet curtains twitch. And the conveyor belt – that dark, flat tongue starts-up and beckons my beloved to another form of existence.

  A gentle mechanical humming can be heard. Ready now. And the sound system kicks in. The coffin judders forward.