Lady in the Van

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 that 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 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 has been insured in heaven there has not been a scratch on the van. I point out that this