Old Lady Marlow

Her other name remains a mystery. Old lady Marlow, with thin white hair and a face like a very pale prune. She has a small cottage three doors down with a still attractive though slightly going to seed cottage garden hopeful with snowdrops and a few budding tete-a-tete daffodils. She has, as I have observed, at least three pairs of sensible tie-up shoes and a series of hand-knitted cardigans. Always a cardigan, even in summer. And although I cannot observe this, she must also have a name. A proper name I mean, not the ‘old lady’ sobriquet leant her by Father Time, or the ‘Marlow’ given her by the late Mr Marlow when he married her long ago. There must have been a name he loved better than any other, a name he wanted to carve in the bark of a tree, something he whispered…. OK. Don’t go there. The intimate life of your near neighbour is never a good thing to let yourself imagine. And musty old pillow talk is perhaps better left undusted. Besides which I can’t quite imagine how it would have been. This is a woman whose main occupation seems to be curtain twitching, and the keeping of newspaper cuttings.
OK. Her snowdrops are a benefit to the village. I grant you that. At least they are a benefit to me. But on the way to school (almost late) with one child too far ahead on her scooter and the other one recalcitrant in the pushchair I could do without being accosted as I was this morning.
“That young chappie …” Leaning on her fence she sticks out her cane, actually sticks it out in front of you so you have to stop. How rude is that? At this moment I don’t care about the goings on in the property across the road. (What else can you call the round remains of a windmill, the poured foundations of an extension and an unsightly caravan? an opportunity?). In my tiny world of school bells and hastily packed lunches he is a total irrelevance.
“…he’s got another one you know.”
“Umhumm” I murmur, one eye on the child ahead who is growing more distant by the second, my hand gripping the pushchair hard.
“A disgrace.”
“Yes,” I say, “Um, my daughter?” I point to the speck on a scooter.
Old Lady Marlow is clearly from a generation when it was acceptable to let your only just turned eight year-old vanish out of sight.
“She’ll be needing this” I pat the blue canvas book bag that is hanging on the handles of the pushchair at the same time swiftly manoevring the front wheels of the pushchair into take-off position. “I’m so sorry but I really need to go”.
She lowers the stick. Slightly. Enough so that my departure doesn’t unbalance her.
I rush off feeling guilty.
Cross.
Guilty.
The two year-old thinks it is fun to run along the pavement. “fahter fahter” she shouts, not very good with ‘s’s’ yet.
One or two early mothers who have already dropped their children are coming back out now the other way. “Morning,” I call through clenched teeth, knowing that no matter what morning resolutions I make I will never be an early mother.
I could avoid the Marlow house, I reflect in the cool light of evening. But it never seems convenient getting both girls across the street and crossing back again just at the peak traffic time when all the outsiders come in from the market town to drop their children at the village school. Their parade of cars, large and little, transforming us, for about a quarter of an hour, into a spectacle of pulling out and parking arrangements that boggle the beholder. I am flattered, of course, to think that our little village school is the preferred option amongst non fee-paying parents for miles around. But is it really worth jostling for the absolutely nearest parking space?
When the two year-old wakes from her nap we set off down Black Bank towards the village nature reserve. There is a restored barn there with an old wagon in it and an educational display with a map of the reserve behind Perspex. She loves climbing on the wagon, which is high enough to be risky and solid enough, I reckon, to be safe, and fascinatingly full of angles, curves and edges. Much more interesting than the small paint-peeling village playground. I like to look at the map, read about the wildlife and plants I may expect to see. I am trying to learn the names of wildflowers. I feel slightly embarrassed about this. First of all, I feel as if I should already know them. Secondly, having to learn them reminds me that though I have been living here for years, there are still parts of me that don’t know the country like the back of my hand. Third, it seems such a small pursuit in the face of all the world’s urgencies. Is there anyone out there but me who considers this a worthwhile pastime? Why does it matter? A wood anemone will blush whether you call it by name or not. What’s in a name after all? The secret of things, maybe, I wonder. Although she is so old that no one in the village dare use hers, I hope one day I will find out old lady Marlow’s.