Saturday Night- Aunt Caroline and Uncle Anthony

The school fete was crowded, but Aunt Caroline moved through it in her own bubble, with the crowds parting as she came towards them.  Like she was a queen.  Like she was Queen Caroline who washed her nose in turpentine.

Aunt Caroline was the lady mayoress of Starling Moor.  (Once, one of Grandad’s friends had said that actually, these days, female mayors were just called “mayors,” but Gran had replied, “No, trust me- in Caroline’s case, it’s ‘lady mayoress.’  She’s a special case.”)  She’d had that job for five years, and she’d worked for the previous mayor for ten years before that (since way before Sandy had been born, in other words).  Before that, she’d been a policewoman, but she’d left after a few years.  Gran said that this was because Caroline preferred to boss people about without getting her hands dirty.

Caroline took small steps, her high heels clicking against the tarmac.  Beside her, in the middle of the bubble, were Sandy, Uncle Anthony, and two blokes she worked with, one holding a clipboard and the other doing his best to look imposing.  Sandy had her hair tied back neatly, and she was wearing a spotless white blouse and tartan skirt.  Caroline and Anthony had told her that she didn’t have to dress up, but when Caroline was around, you really did, otherwise you’d look like a street urchin in comparison.

Caroline turned to Sandy.  “I may need to leave in about an hour, but you and Anthony can stay.  I’ll meet you back at the house.”  Aunt Caroline was the only person Sandy knew who would have said “may” instead of “might” in that sentence.

Sandy looked around at the stalls and activities.  “No, that’s OK.  I’ll probably be ready to leave in an hour.”  Yes, bouncy castles and face-painting stalls were fun, but you got bored of them eventually.  Besides, it was already starting to get chilly, and by three-thirty it would be worse.

Aunt Caroline nodded.  “Well, just know that you can change your mind if you want to.”  She looked a lot like how Sandy imagined Titania from A Midsummer Night’s Dream-tall and thin, with blonde hair and spooky grey eyes.  Except that Titania probably wouldn’t wear a dark grey business suit, and her hair probably wouldn’t be so neatly brushed and styled that it looked as though it was made out of wood.

Earlier on, Caroline had given a speech.  For most of it, Sandy had just waited patiently and tried not to fidget, but there was one bit that had caught her attention.  Aunt Caroline had gestured to a man in the front row and said, “Reverend Miller once told me that it was a mistake to think of love as something you feel instead of something you do.  Love isn’t just having a warm, glowing feeling in your heart when you think of somebody.  It’s putting yourself in that person’s shoes.  It’s being there for them when times are difficult.  It’s making an effort to do what’s best for them.  Love is hard work.”

She’d been talking about how the fete was going to raise money for new wheelchair ramps, but it had actually made Sandy feel better about not having looked forward to half-term.  Because she hadn’t had a warm, glowing feeling in her heart at the thought of visiting her relatives.  In fact, the whole thing had seemed like kind of a hassle.  It wasn’t as if she’d had any plans to meet up with her friends this week- to be fair to Gran and Grandad, they’d have arranged things around that if she had.  Sandy had just wanted to be left alone to sleep in late, watch TV and raid the fridge as much as she wanted.  It was a relief to be told that this didn’t make her an emotionless robot who cared more about TV than people.

One of the blokes Caroline worked with- the one who’d been glaring at everyone who passed them- met Sandy’s eyes and pointed to their right, at one of those mechanical bull things.  “What do you think?” he asked her, cracking a smile for the first time since they’d got here, “Want to give it a try?”

“Jim!” said Uncle Anthony, in a burst of laughter, “That’s… that’s hardly age-appropriate.”  He had a point.  There was only a short queue for the mechanical bull, but none of the people in it were kids.  Barely any of them were women, even.  It was mostly twenty-year-old blokes who’d had too much beer.

“Ah, come on,” said Jim, “She looks like a tough cookie to me.”  He gave Sandy another smile.

Uncle Anthony sighed.  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Sandy,” he told her, not taking his eyes off Jim.

Sandy glanced at Aunt Caroline, to see if she had anything to say about it, but her eyes were fixed on the mechanical bull itself.  She was looking at it with interest, as if she was trying to work out how it was put together.  Sandy tried to imagine Caroline having a go on the bull, and couldn’t.  It was impossible to imagine her doing anything undignified.

Sandy looked back at Jim.  “I can’t.  I’m wearing a skirt.”  She said it with a bit of regret- she’d have liked to have found out whether she was as tough a cookie as Jim thought- but it was probably just as well that she couldn’t.  She didn’t like the idea of being flung halfway across the fete.

Jim nodded.  “OK.  Another time.”

They walked on a little further, and Caroline turned to Sandy as they went.  “I meant to ask.  Are you enjoying Year Eight?”

Sandy grimaced.  “I wouldn’t say ‘enjoying’…”

Caroline laughed.  It was a fluttery sound, like a bird taking off.  “Poor choice of words.  But the workload isn’t too hard?”

“No, it’s alright.”  Sometimes Sandy did get what seemed like an obscene and unreasonable amount of homework for one night, but that wasn’t any different from last year.  And if the worst came to the worst, you could always do some of it in registration, the morning it was due in.  “We get to do Drama this year.  That’s pretty cool.”

Caroline nodded.  “Your father always enjoyed Drama.”

“Really?”  Sandy’s dad had been Caroline’s little brother.  Sandy had never met him.

“Yes, he loved performing.  It was his idea for his Year Eleven class to put on Glengarry Glen Ross instead of something by Shakespeare.  He argued with his teacher for weeks, but eventually he persuaded him.”  Caroline smiled.  “He said he wanted to do something fresh and untried.  But privately, I think he also wanted an excuse to swear a lot.”

Sandy laughed.  She didn’t know what Glengarry Glen Ross was, but she could appreciate talking a teacher into letting you swear.

Aunt Caroline might have talked a bit more about Sandy’s dad and his acting, but just then, there was a shout from the beer tent.  A man in a grey sweatshirt had fixed his gaze on her.  “Oi!  You!”  He strode towards the bubble, wagging his finger at Caroline.  “I want a word with you!”

Jim stepped in between Caroline and the approaching man.  “You’re going to want to back off…”

Caroline raised a hand, and Jim stepped sideways, still glowering at him.  Caroline met the man’s eyes.  “Yes?”

The man stopped where he was, but didn’t get any quieter.  “If you love refugees so much, why don’t you fucking live with them?”  Around him, people were staring and whispering to each other.  A couple of them rushed off somewhere else.  Sandy didn’t know if they were going to get help or just trying to hide.

Caroline’s voice was still calm.  “I’m prepared to discuss this, but could you tone down the language?  There are children present.”  It was at that point that Sandy noticed Caroline had stepped in between her and the man, a bit like Jim had done a minute ago.  She wondered if the man was here with his own children, and, if so, where they were.

“Children?” bawled the man, “Why don’t you drive your children through their communities?  See their horrible living conditions?”  He put a shaky hand on his heart.  “I love my home.  It makes my heart break to see it turn into an over-run urban area.”

“With respect, sir, I’m not sure that the dozen or so refugees here could have had that great an effect on a town of three thousand people.”

“They commit a high percentage of crime.  These are facts.”  There were more people staring.   If Sandy hadn’t already been in the middle of it, she’d probably have been staring, too.  This guy was yelling his head off.  “You’ve ruined this town.  We now have one in five in poverty.  That’s your doing.  You fucking caused it.”

Caroline sighed, like a teacher dealing with a class that was acting up.  “Sir, that statistic simply isn’t accurate…”

“I used to love this town.  You’ve absolutely ruined it.”  The man took a few steps forward.

Quick as a wink, Jim was right in front of him.  “Hey, stay back.”

Later on, Sandy wasn’t sure what had made her put her hand to her throat.  She didn’t know why she’d been so sure that it would work, or if she’d even known what it would be.  It was a weird, momentary instinct that came from somewhere deep inside her, and she barely even had time to think about it before she did it.

“It just makes me angry when someone who’s entrusted with…”

Sandy looked the man in the eye, and put her thumb and ring finger on either side of her larynx.

The man’s mouth kept moving.  It took him a couple of seconds to realise that no sound was coming out.  He froze for a moment, then tried to talk again.  Still nothing.  A look of panic crossed his face.

“Sir?” asked Caroline, “Are you OK?”

Sandy took her hand away.

The man made a little noise, then let out a couple of heavy breaths.  He straightened up and pointed at Aunt Caroline again.  “You’re a joke.  You should never have been elected.  If you’d told the damn truth, you…”

Sandy put her hand back.

This time, she kept it there for long enough to watch him go red in the face with the effort of trying to speak, at which point Jim took advantage of the confusion and escorted him away to hand him over to the people in charge.  “What an odd man,” said Caroline, watching them go.  She still looked perfectly put together.  “I hope he isn’t ill.”

Anthony put a hand on Sandy’s shoulder.  “Are you alright, Sandy?”

“Yeah.”  She took her hand away from her throat, and looked at both him and Caroline.  “Do you get a lot of weirdos like him, yelling at you?”

Anthony laughed.  “That’s politics for you.”

“No need to be cynical, Anthony,” said Caroline primly.  And she led them on, cool as a cucumber, as if nothing had ever happened.