David Nobbs - The Second Life of Sally Mottram

The curtains were drawn in the Rose and Crown. People said that would be the next pub to go. She didn’t care if it did. Why should anybody be happy, with her Barry dead?

She crossed the street again, and turned into Cadwallader Road. The street lights were dim, and one of them was out. In her heightened state she could feel only hostility from the low stone terraces. Their very regularity, the total absence of decorative features, admired by purists, seemed comfortless now. Why on earth was she visiting number 6? Wasn’t it absurd to call on Ellie Fazackerly at this hour?

She had to speak to somebody. She didn’t know Jill Buss quite well enough to call so late. She couldn’t go back to the Sparlings. There was nobody else.

Ellie would be glad to see her. Ellie would be glad to see anybody.

She rang the bell. The moment she had rung it she wished that she hadn’t. Ellie would be watching her favourite television programme, her one way of escaping the prison she had built for herself.

You can’t de-ring a bell.

Perhaps they wouldn’t answer.

She heard footsteps. The door opened. It was Ali. She was the least obese of the three Fazackerly sisters. She was nineteen stone five.

‘Is it …? I just thought I’d call and see Ellie. Is this a bad time?’

‘Nooo! She’s always pleased to see you, Mrs Mottram.’

It was no use trying to get any of the sisters to call her Sally. She was Mrs Mottram, a do-gooder who lived on a higher plane. She had first met the Fazackerly sisters when Ali had fallen in the street; she had rushed to help, and she had escorted her home. She’d known of Ellie’s existence, and a few days later she had called round, to see if Ali was all right but partly also out of sheer curiosity, and she had stood at the doorstep for so long that in the end Ali had felt obliged to ask her in. She was still slightly ashamed of the origins of her concern for Ellie.

Ali led her along the corridor, her shoes squeaking on the lino – they were in a time warp – and took her into the tiny kitchen. Oli was seated at the table, watching television. She tried to get up, not easy. Ali and Oli had lived in the kitchen, in the tiny claustrophobic house, ever since the moment had come when Ellie could no longer go upstairs.

‘No, no, Oli, it’s all right. I’ve just come to have a word with Ellie. You keep watching. How are you?’

‘Very well, thank you, Mrs Mottram.’

Oli was twenty-one stone three. It didn’t help that she worked in the cake factory. Ali was a cleaner at the hospital, where cleaners moved slowly. They both worked antisocial hours, so arranged that one of them was always at home to care for Ellie. They were adamant that they didn’t want any help from anyone else. They were proud people. Only Sally was welcome, and she felt now that she was almost on the verge of being considered a friend rather than a voluntary social worker.

‘I’ll tell her you’re here,’ said Ali.

Ali went through into the front room, which had once been the lounge when Ellie could still get upstairs. A thought occurred to Sally now, a thought that astonishingly had never struck her before. What would happen when first Oli and finally Ali could also not get upstairs? How would they sleep?

Sally heard the television set go off in the front room. Ellie had been watching something. She shouldn’t have come.

There was always a very faint smell of festering humanity in the house, a sense that not enough windows were opened often enough, a feeling that rather too much air was being used up and not replaced fast enough. On the whole, though, it was clear that their standards of cleanliness were amazingly high, considering the circumstances. Sally never felt an overwhelming urge to leave, and now, sitting and waiting, she felt less traumatized than she had been all evening.

Ali came back in.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘She’s ready for you.’

Sally’s heart sank slightly at Ali’s words. She was still Ellie’s voluntary social worker, calling not out of love but out of the goodness of her heart. Maybe there was further to go than she had hoped, before she became a friend.

She entered Ellie’s room.

‘Hello, Ellie,’ she said.

‘Hello, Mrs Mottram.’

Ellie’s face was now so fat that it was hard to tell if she was smiling. Her huge body was hidden beneath the vast, specially made duvet. It stretched over the mounds of her fat like dunes in the desert. She hadn’t been able to get out of bed for more than two years now. She was thirty-three years old. It didn’t do to think about her weight. She was fat because she couldn’t help it, not because she wanted to be in the Guinness Book of Records .

It also didn’t do to think about the toilet and bed-linen arrangements. Ali and Oli looked after her brilliantly, did everything necessary with never a complaint. Easy to make fun of Ali, Oli and Ellie but beneath all the blubber there beat hearts of gold, and how many of those are there in this stony world of ours?

In fact it didn’t do to think about Ellie’s life at all, and Sally realized why she had needed to call here rather than anywhere else on this terrible night. She wasn’t proud of her motive. She had needed to feel sorry for someone else, because she couldn’t stand how sorry she felt for herself.

‘I hope you weren’t watching something,’ she said.

‘It were rubbish.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘It’s all rubbish.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘I only watch it cos there’s nowt else.’

‘Oh, Ellie.’

‘You’d think they’d put good things on, wouldn’t you, for folk like me?’

‘You certainly would.’

‘They haven’t a clue, have they?’

‘They haven’t. They haven’t a clue.’

‘None of them have. Politicians, clergy, doctors. None of them have a clue.’

‘You tell them, Ellie.’

‘I would, but they wouldn’t listen.’

‘So, how are you, Ellie?’

‘Mustn’t grumble, Mrs Mottram. Sit yourself down.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Make yourself comfortable.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And how are you , Mrs Mottram?’

‘Well, I suppose I too shouldn’t grumble, Ellie. I … um … something’s happened, Ellie. Something terrible.’

‘Oh, Mrs Mottram.’

‘Yes. Terrible. I …’ She swallowed. ‘Barry’s killed himself.’

‘Oh, Mrs Mottram.’

‘I know.’

She told Ellie the whole story of how she found him, of the police, of the Sparlings and Kenneth. Ellie was too upset even to laugh at the story about Kenneth.

Oli came in with plates of cake.

‘Not just now, Oli,’ said Ellie.

Oli looked at her sister in astonishment.

‘Not just now?’ she said.

‘Not just now.’

‘But it’s cake.’

‘Later, Oli. Oli, Mrs Mottram’s husband has committed suicide.’

Sally still hadn’t been able to use that word, and on Ellie’s lips it came like a gunshot.

‘Oh, Mrs Mottram. I’m so sorry,’ said Oli. ‘And so’s Ali. Well, she will be. Can I tell her?’

‘Please do.’

‘Thank you. Um … was it …? How did he …? I mean …’

‘Can I tell her, Mrs Mottram?’ asked Ellie.

‘Of course.’

‘She found him hanged at the top of the stairs, Oli.’

‘Oh my God. Oh my God, Mrs Mottram.’

‘I know.’

Oli left the room.

‘Thank you,’ said Sally. ‘It was nice of you to send the cake away.’

‘Not appropriate, Mrs Mottram. Not appropriate at all.’

‘I just couldn’t stay in the house any longer on my own, Ellie.’

‘No wonder.’ Sally could sense that deep inside her big head Ellie was struggling with an immense thought. ‘If you don’t want to go back,’ she said at last, ‘you could stay here. There’s my bed upstairs. Ali could go in with Oli. Gladly.’