The Lady in the Van

  May 1976

  I have had some manure delivered for the garden and, since the manure heap is not far from the van, Miss S. is concerned that people passing might think the smell is coming from there. She wants me to put a notice on the gate to the effect that the smell is the manure, not her. I say no, without adding, as I could, that the manure actually smells much nicer.

  I am working in the garden when Miss B., the social worker, comes with a boxful of clothes. Miss S. is reluctant to open the van door, as she is listening to Any Answers, but eventually she slides on her bottom to the door of the van and examines the clothes. She is unimpressed.

  MISS S.: I only asked for one coat.

  MISS B.: Well, I brought three just in case you wanted a change.

  MISS S.: I haven’t got room for three. Besides, I was planning to wash this coat in the near future. That makes four.

  MISS B.: This is my old nursing mac.

  MISS S.: I have a mac. Besides, green doesn’t suit me. Have you got the stick?

  MISS B.: No. That’s being sent down. It had to be made specially.

  MISS S.: Will it be long enough?

  MISS B.: Yes. It’s a special stick.

  MISS S.: I don’t want a special stick. I want an ordinary stick. Only longer. Does it have a rubber thing on it?

  When Miss B. has gone, Miss S. sits at the door of the van slowly turning over the contents of the box like a chimpanzee, sniffing them and holding them up and muttering to herself.

  June 1976

  I am sitting on the steps mending my bike when Miss S. emerges for her evening stroll. ‘I went to Devon on Saturday,’ she said. ‘On this frisbee.’ I suppose she means freebie, a countrywide concession to pensioners that BR ran last weekend. ‘Dawlish I went to. People very nice. The man over the loudspeaker called us Ladies and Gentlemen, and so he should. There was one person shouted, only he wasn’t one of us—the son of somebody, I think.’ And almost for the first time ever she smiled, and said how they had all been bunched up trying to get into this one carriage, a great crowd, and how she had been hoisted up. ‘It would have made a film,’ she said. ‘I thought of you.’ And she stands there in her grimy raincoat, strands of lank grey hair escaping from under her headscarf. I am thankful people had been nice to her, and wonder what the carriage must have been like all that hot afternoon. She then tells me about a programme on Francis Thompson she’d heard on the wireless, how he had tried to become a priest but had felt he had failed in his vocation, and had become a tramp. Then, unusually, she told me a little of her own life, and how she tried to become a nun on two occasions, had undergone instruction as a novice, but was forced to give it up on account of ill-health, and that she had felt for many years that she had failed. But that this was wrong, and it was not a failure. ‘If I could have had more modern clothes, longer sleep and better air, possibly, I would have made it.’

  ‘A bit of a spree,’ she called her trip to Dawlish. ‘My spree.’

  June 1977

  On this the day of the Jubilee, Miss S. has stuck a paper Union Jack in the cracked back window of the van. It is the only one in the Crescent. Yesterday she was wearing a headscarf and pinned across the front of it a blue Spontex sponge fastened at each side with a large safety pin, the sponge meant to form some kind of peak against the (very watery) sun. It looked like a favour worn by a medieval knight, or a fillet to ward off evil spirits. Still, it was better than last week’s effort, an Afrika Korps cap from Lawrence Corner: Miss Shepherd—Desert Fox.

  September 1979

  Miss S. shows me a photograph she has taken of herself in a cubicle at Waterloo. She is very low in the frame, her mouth pulled down, the photo looking as if it has been taken after death. She is very pleased with it. ‘I don’t take a good photograph usually. That’s the only photograph I’ve seen looks anything like me.’ She wants two copies making of it. I say that it would be easier for her to go back to Waterloo and do two more. No—that would ‘take it out of her’. ‘I had one taken in France once when I was twenty-one or twenty-two. Had to go into the next village for it. I came out cross-eyed. I saw someone else’s photo on their bus-pass and she’d come out looking like a nigger. You don’t want to come out like a nigger if you can help it, do you?’

  June 1980

  Miss S. has gone into her summer rig: a raincoat turned inside out, with brown canvas panels and a large label declaring it the Emerald Weatherproof. This is topped off with a lavender chiffon scarf tied round a sun visor made from an old cornflakes packet. She asks me to do her some shopping. ‘I want a small packet of Eno’s, some milk and some jelly babies. The jelly babies aren’t urgent. Oh and, Mr Bennett, could you get me one of those little bottles of whisky? I believe Bell’s is very good. I don’t drink it—I just use it to rub on.’

  August 1980

  I am filming, and Miss S. sees me leaving early each morning and returning late. Tonight her scrawny hand comes out with a letter marked ‘Please consider carefully’:

  An easier way for Mr Bennett to earn could be possibly with my cooperative part. Two young men could follow me in a car, one with a camera to get a funny film like ‘Old Mother Riley Joins Up’ possibly. If the car stalls they could then push it. Or they could go on the buses with her at a distance. Comedy happens without trying sometimes, or at least an interesting film covering a Senior Citizen’s use of the buses can occur. One day to Hounslow, another to Reading or Heathrow. The bus people ought to be pleased, but it might need their permission. Then Mr Bennett could put his feet up more and rake it in, possibly.

  October 1980

  Miss S. has started hankering after a caravan trailer and has just missed one she saw in Exchange and Mart: ‘little net curtains all round, three bunks’. ‘I wouldn’t use them all, except’, she says ominously, ‘to put things on. Nice little windows—£275. They said it was sold, only they may have thought I was just an old tramp … I was thinking of offering to help Mrs Thatcher with the economy. I wouldn’t ask any money, as I’m on social security, so it would come cheap for her. I might ask her for some perks, though. Like a caravan. I would write to her but she’s away. I know what’s required. It’s perfectly simple: Justice.’

  * * *

  No political party quite catered to Miss S.’s views, though the National Front came close. She was passionately anti-Communist, and as long ago as 1945 had written a letter to Jesus ‘concerning the dreadful situation feared from the Yalta agreement’. The trouble was that her political opinions, while never moderate, were always tempered by her idiosyncratic view of the human physiognomy. Older was invariably wiser, which is fair if debatable, except that with Miss S. taller was wiser too. But height had its drawbacks, and it was perhaps because she was tall herself that she believed a person’s height added to their burdens, put them under some strain. Hence, though she was in sympathy with Mr Heath on everything except the Common Market, ‘I do think that Mr Wilson, personally, may have seen better in regard to Europe, being on the Opposition bench with less salary and being older, smaller and under less strain.’ She was vehemently opposed to the Common Market—the ‘common’ always underlined when she wrote about it on the pavement, as if it were the sheer vulgarity of the economic union she particularly objected to. Never very lucid in her leaflets, she got especially confused over the EEC. ‘Not long ago a soul wrote, or else was considering writing [she cannot recall as to which and it may have been something of either] that she disassociated from the Common Market entry and the injustices feared concerning it, or something like that.’ ‘Enoch’, as she invariably called Mr Powell, had got it right, and she wrote him several letters telling him so, but in the absence of a wholly congenial party she founded her own, the Fidelis Party. ‘It will be a party caring for Justice (and as such not needing opposition). Justice in the world today with its gigantic ignorant conduct requires the rule of a Good Dictator, possibly.’

  Miss S. never regarded herself as being at the bottom of the social heap. That pl
ace was occupied by ‘the desperate poor’—i.e. those with no roof over their heads. She herself was ‘a cut above those in dire need’, and one of her responsibilities in society she saw as interceding for them and for those whose plight she thought Mrs Thatcher had overlooked. Could it be brought to her attention (and she wrote Mrs T. several letters on the subject), alleviation would surely follow.

  Occasionally she would write letters to other public figures. In August 1978 it was to the College of Cardinals, then busy electing a Pope. ‘Your Eminences. I would like to suggest humbly that an older Pope might be admirable. Height can count towards knowledge too probably.’ However this older (and hopefully taller) Pope she was recommending might find the ceremony a bit of a trial, so, ever the expert on headgear, she suggests that ‘at the Coronation there could be a not so heavy crown, of light plastic possibly or cardboard for instance.’

  February 1981

  Miss S. has flu, so I am doing her shopping. I wait every morning by the side window of the van and, with the dark interior and her grimy hand holding back the tattered purple curtain, it is as if I am at the confessional. The chief items this morning are ginger nuts (‘very warming’) and grape juice. ‘I think this is what they must have been drinking at Cana,’ she says as I hand her the bottle. ‘Jesus wouldn’t have wanted them rolling about drunk, and this is non-alcoholic. It wouldn’t do for everyone, but in my opinion it’s better than champagne.’

  October 1981

  The curtain is drawn aside this morning and Miss S., still in what I take to be her nightclothes, talks of ‘the discernment of spirits’ that enabled her to sense an angelic presence near her when she was ill. At an earlier period, when she had her pitch outside the bank, she had sensed a similar angelic presence, and now, having seen his campaign leaflet, who should this turn out to be, ‘possibly’, but Our Conservative Candidate Mr Pasley-Tyler. She embarks on a long disquisition on her well-worn theme of age in politics. Mrs Thatcher is too young and travels too much. Not like President Reagan. ‘You wouldn’t catch him making all those U-turns round Australia.’

  January 1982

  ‘Do you see he’s been found, that American soldier?’ This is Colonel Dozo, kidnapped by the Red Brigade and found after a shoot-out in a flat in Padua. ‘Yes, he’s been found,’ she says triumphantly, ‘and I know who found him.’ Thinking it unlikely she has an acquaintance in the Italian version of the SAS, I ask whom she means. ‘St Anthony of course. The patron saint of lost things. St Anthony of Padua.’ ‘Well,’ I want to say, ‘he didn’t have far to look.’

  May 1982

  As I am leaving for Yorkshire, Miss S.’s hand comes out like the Ancient Mariner’s: do I know if there are any steps at Leeds Station? ‘Why?’ I ask warily, thinking she may be having thoughts of camping on my other doorstep. It turns out she just wants somewhere to go for a ride, so I suggest Bristol. ‘Yes, I’ve been to Bristol. On the way back I came through Bath. That looked nice. Some beautifully parked cars.’ She then recalls driving her reconditioned army vehicles and taking them up to Derbyshire. ‘I did it in the war,’ she says. ‘Actually I overdid it in the war,’ and somehow that is the thin end of the wedge that has landed her up here, yearning for travel on this May morning forty years later.

  ‘Land’ is a word Miss S. prefers to ‘country’. ‘This land…’ Used in this sense, it’s part of the rhetoric if not of madness at any rate of obsession. Jehovah’s Witnesses talk of ‘this land’, and the National Front. Land is country plus destiny—country in the sight of God. Mrs Thatcher talks of ‘this land’.

  February 1983

  A. telephones me in Yorkshire to say that the basement is under three inches of water, the boiler having burst. When told that the basement has been flooded, Miss S.’s only comment is ‘What a waste of water.’

  April 1983

  ‘I’ve been having bad nights,’ says Miss S., ‘but if I were elected I might have better nights.’ She wants me to get her nomination papers so that she can stand for Parliament in the coming election. She would be the Fidelis Party candidate. The party, never very numerous, is now considerably reduced. Once she could count on five votes but now there are only two, one of whom is me, and I don’t like to tell her I’m in the SDP. Still, I promise to write to the town hall for nomination papers. ‘There’s no kitty as yet,’ she says, ‘and I wouldn’t want to do any of the meeting people. I’d be no good at that. The secretaries can do that (you get expenses). But I’d be very good at voting—better than they are, probably.’

  May 1983

  Miss S. asks me to witness her signature on the nomination form. ‘I’m signing,’ she says: ‘are you witnessing?’ She has approached various nuns to be her nominees. ‘One sister I know would have signed but I haven’t seen her for some years and she’s got rather confused in the interim. I don’t know what I’ll do about leaflets. It would have to be an economy job—I couldn’t run to the expense. Maybe I’ll just write my manifesto on the pavement; that goes round like wildfire.’

  May 1983

  Miss S. has received her nomination papers. ‘What should I describe myself as?’ she asks through the window slit. ‘I thought Elderly Spinster, possibly. It also says Title. Well my title is’—and she laughs one of her rare laughs—‘Mrs Shepherd. That’s what some people call me out of politeness. And I don’t deny it. Mother Teresa always says she’s married to God. I could say I was married to the Good Shepherd, and that’s what it’s to do with, Parliament, looking after the flock. When I’m elected, do you think I shall have to live in Downing Street or could I run things from the van?’

  I speak to her later in the day and the nomination business is beginning to get her down. ‘Do you know anything about the Act of 1974? It refers to disqualifications under it. Anyway, it’s all giving me a headache. I think there may be another election soon after this one, so it’ll have been good preparation anyway.’

  June 1984

  Miss S. has been looking in Exchange and Mart again and has answered an advert for a white Morris Minor. ‘It’s the kind of car I’m used to—or I used to be used to. I feel the need to be mobile.’ I raise the matter of a licence and insurance, which she always treats as tiresome formalities. ‘What you don’t understand is that I am insured. I am insured in heaven.’ She claims that since she had been insured in heaven there has not been a scratch on the van. I point out that this is less to do with the celestial insurance than with the fact that the van is parked the whole time in my garden. She concedes that when she was on the road the van did used to get the occasional knock. ‘Somebody came up behind me once and scratched the van. I wanted him to pay something—half-a-crown I think it was. He wouldn’t.’

  October 1984

  Some new staircarpet fitted today. Spotting the old carpet being thrown out, Miss S. says it would be just the thing to put on the roof of the van to deaden the sound of rain. This exchange comes just as I am leaving for work, but I say that I do not want the van festooned with bits of old carpet—it looks bad enough as it is. When I come back in the evening I find half the carpet remnants slung over the roof. I ask Miss S. who has put them there, as she can’t have done it herself. ‘A friend,’ she says mysteriously. ‘A well-wisher.’ Enraged, I pull down a token piece but the majority of it stays put.

  April 1985

  Miss S. has written to Mrs Thatcher applying for a post in ‘the Ministry of Transport advisory, to do with drink and driving and that’. She also shows me the text of a letter she is proposing to send to the Argentinian Embassy on behalf of General Galtieri. ‘What he doesn’t understand is that Mrs Thatcher isn’t the Iron Lady. It’s me.’

  To Someone in Charge of Argentina. 19 April 1985

  Dear Sir,

  I am writing to help mercy towards the poor general who led your forces in the war actually as a person of true knowledge more than might be. I was concerned with Justice, Love and, in a manner of speaking, I was in the war, as it were, shaking hands with your then leader,
welcoming him in spirit (it may have been to do with love of Catholic education for Malvinas for instance) greatly meaning kindly negotiators etc.… but I fear that he may have thought it was Mrs Thatcher welcoming him in that way and it may hence have unduly influenced him.

  Therefore I beg you to have mercy on him indeed. Let him go, reinstate him, if feasible. You may read publicly this letter if you wish to explain mercy etc.

  I remain.

  Yours truly

  A Member of the Fidelis Party

  (Servants of Justice)

  P.S. Others may have contributed to undue influence also.

  P.P.S. Possibly without realizing it.

  Translate into Argentinian if you shd wish.

  Sometime in 1980 Miss S. acquired a car, but before she’d managed to have more than a jaunt or two in it (‘It’s a real goer!’) it was stolen and later found stripped and abandoned in the basement of the council flats in Maiden Lane. I went to collect what was left (‘though the police may require it for evidence, possibly’) and found that even in the short time she’d had the Mini she’d managed to stuff it with the usual quota of plastic bags, kitchen rolls and old blankets, all plentifully doused in talcum powder. When she got a Reliant Robin in 1984 it was much the same, a second wardrobe as much as a second car. Miss Shepherd could afford to splash out on these vehicles because being parked in the garden meant that she had a permanent address, and so qualified for full social security and its various allowances. Since her only outgoings were on food, she was able to put by something and had an account in the Halifax and quite a few savings certificates. Indeed I heard people passing say, ‘You know she’s a millionaire,’ the inference being no one in their right mind would let her live there if she weren’t.