Take Nothing With You

by Patrick Gale

  Nervous of his grandfather when he was small because he was tall and military and never cracked jokes like his father, Eustace had grown fonder of him recently. He liked the quiet elegance of Grandpa’s barely varied jackets and ties and the way he kept his brogues so well polished and wore a Homburg in winter and a Panama when the sun shone. He rarely commented on how slovenly so many other men looked but Eustace could tell from the way he narrowed his eyes or emitted a kind of growl as they approached some man in T-shirt and shorts that he was appalled. On their last walk together he had paused at the end of the bird-feeding ritual, turned his watery blue eyes on Eustace with concern and, enunciating with care, asked, ‘You don’t ever intend to wear flip-flops, do you?’ and when Eustace, who was never allowed summer footwear less formal than his Clark’s Lysanders, said certainly not and that he always thought they looked most uncomfortable and likely to make one trip, Grandpa’s relief brought real kindness to his expression. ‘Good man,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s the ticket.’

  As it happened, he died while bending to lace the second of his brogues. He keeled over sideways off the end of his narrow single bed, making a thump loud enough to alarm people eating breakfast in the dining room below. It meant the undertaker needed only to tie the second shoelace before carrying him away already perfectly dressed for his coffin, although Eustace later discovered that his mother had substituted paperclips for his gold cufflinks, which Grandpa wanted Eustace to inherit, and removed his Jaeger-leCoultre wristwatch, which she took to wearing herself, saying it comforted her.

  Death was a regular caller at an old people’s home, of course, especially in the spring, when the turning-down of central heating and opening of windows seemed to make the residents’ birdlike grip on their perches less tenacious. Eustace had observed that, far from upsetting the survivors, death was as much a provoker of excitement as a visit from a minor royal or the winning of a premium-bond prize. A funeral was an excursion of sorts, with all the fuss and novelty that entailed, and there was always a tea party afterwards, at which his father served sherry, which went down very swiftly and made everyone a bit noisy and even less steady on their feet.

  But this was the first death of someone Eustace knew and loved and he cried a little, in his room, on his own. Not that he was sad at Grandpa going – he was glad for him. He wept, he realized, at the irrevocability of the change, the never-more it represented.

  ‘Be careful around your mother,’ his father told him, as they stood respectfully to attention in the hall while the undertaker and his apprentice carried Grandpa out in a temporary coffin. ‘She’ll take this to heart.’

  Eustace would never have predicted this. His mother’s talk had always been of Maman, of her beauty and artistry and how they’d been sacrificed to her father’s selfishly male requirements. He had never heard her breathe a word of praise or affection for her father, for his achievements in the army, which, an obituary in the Daily Telegraph informed them, were considerable. If she spoke of him at all, it was with a sighing tone, as people spoke of an elderly dog, and she left the care of him, the washing and the dressing to the staff. She said she did so to maintain his dignity and privacy. But Eustace could not remember any signs of tenderness between them beyond her occasionally running the hall clothes brush over his coat shoulders for him, as his arthritis made it hard for him to reach. She did always call him Daddy, however, behind his back and to his face, as though a part of her had remained, or wished to remain, his little girl.

  His death saw her take to her bed and stay there in the darkness for two whole days, leaving his father to liaise with doctor, undertaker and parson and to make short, awkward phone calls to the members of Grandpa’s dwindled family and acquaintance.

  ‘It’s only to be expected,’ Granny pronounced when Eustace visited her with the news. ‘She feels guilty that she never did enough for him. Daughters always feel guilty. It’s their lot.’

  Granny’s habitual gloom and tendency to harsh judgement came into full bloom with a death in the house. Unable or reluctant to leave her room now because her legs were ulcerated and she didn’t want to reveal herself in public as one of those ghastly old bats with bulgy bandages , she relied on Eustace to bring her every detail, along with cups of tea. She declared herself fond of Grandpa, although they had persisted in addressing one another formally with surnames, but shed no tears because, as she said, he was overdue. ‘No merciful release for me,’ she added. ‘The women on our side go on and on. It’s a curse.’

  When his mother emerged on the third day, just as Eustace was leaving for school, she was in a black polo neck, like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face, and big dark glasses. ‘You’ll play at the funeral, won’t you?’ she said. ‘That folk song you used to play. He liked that.’

  ‘Did he? The Green Bushes ?’

  ‘That’s the one. You can play that. Without a piano. It’ll be haunting. And then, at the end, The Swan , to honour Maman, as he loved her so. And I’ll get a bugler from his regiment to play the Last Post at the crematorium. And we’ll sing Crimond . He liked that tune. And maybe the organist can play Nimrod , but only if she’s up to it.’

  Eustace was bewildered. To his knowledge his grandfather had barely acknowledged the presence of his cello in the house, apart from those few indirect comments on their walks, and he had thought their rooms far apart enough for him not to be disturbed by Eustace’s practising. His mother’s words made him realize the old man must not only have been listening in but talking about it.

  ‘Of course,’ he told her. ‘I’ll run through them with Miss Gold in my lesson tomorrow,’ and he hurried off to school, guiltily aware of being excited that he was to perform. But then, as he thought about it, he became nervous. Music at a funeral had to be perfect without drawing attention to the performer.

  Carla understood his nerves perfectly. ‘They’re ideal pieces,’ she said, ‘as they both have a good singing line but don’t require agility of you. When you’re tense, the last thing you need is to be playing something with lots of hopping about.’

  The Green Bushes was a Howard Ferguson arrangement. Since it was to be unaccompanied, she suggested he play it as though singing the folk tune, taking the first statement of the sad little melody and repeating it twice, once more assertively, once with wistful softness. The Swan was more of a challenge. He had played it at a school concert a few months before with another boy – a show-off he didn’t like much – playing the piano part a bit too fast, and had retained the little pencil mark he had made on his fingerboard to help his third finger find a flawless top D without hesitating. The difficulty was that this time he’d be accompanied by the church’s lady organist.

  ‘The organ isn’t nearly as expressive as the piano,’ Carla said. ‘So you’ll just have to use that and heighten the expressiveness of your line.’ She made him think of Saint-Saëns’ phrases as literally phrases: statements, questions, replies and a summary, this one assertive, that one retreating, less here, more there. ‘See? Obviously it’s reductive to think of music like that, it’s music first and foremost, but it can really help with a piece like this that’s basically a wordless song. Were you fond of your grandfather?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well I’m very sorry he’s gone but when you’re playing, you mustn’t think about him. Think only of the music. You’ll find it’s a relief, especially if it’s your first funeral. You can think about him before and after, of course, but when the cello’s in your hand, think only of the cello and your relation to it.’

  He had just one rehearsal with Miss Duffy the organist, the evening before. She seemed very old, and wore disconcertingly thick glasses but she had a kind voice. She had an endearingly plain face, like a bulldog’s, and was evidently rather shy so he wondered if she had taken up the organ as a way of hiding herself away. The organ was off to one side, he saw to his relief, so he could be playing unobserved. She had him tune to the organ, as it was a little flat, then suggested he play The Gre
en Bushes first to get used to the acoustic. She walked off into the nave while he played, where she startled him by singing along with the third verse in a rich contralto. Stupidly he hadn’t thought of it as having words.

  ‘I’ll buy you fine beavers an’ a fine silken gown

  I’ll buy you fine petticoats with a flounce to the groun’

  If you will prove loyal and constant to me

  And forsake your own true love, I’ll be married to thee . . .’

  She walked back to the organ bench when he was done. ‘Lovely,’ she declared. ‘There won’t be a dry eye in the house. You can take more time, though. Enjoy yourself. Milk it a little. Now, let’s try The Swan .’

  She launched into The Swan ’s accompaniment, which did indeed sound a little pootling and comical on an organ but, unlike the show-off at school, she played it quite slowly and he had no trouble keeping up with her or finding his creamiest top G at the end.

  ‘Very nice,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘You’ll do him proud.’

  As he left the church so that she could practise other things, she launched into a blazing, flashy piece so at odds with her quiet appearance that he wondered whether she was simply softly spoken and not shy at all.

  On the day of the funeral, he wore his school uniform and polished his shoes extra well in Grandpa’s honour but it was a great relief, given how many people seemed to be crammed into the church, that he was not to follow his parents and the coffin into the body of the church to sit at the very front but was to hide away with Miss Duffy and turn pages for her at the beginning and end.

  It felt odd being off to one side, more spectator than participant. He couldn’t see the coffin or the priest or his parents wheeling in Granny. Miss Duffy had placed a service sheet on his music stand so he could follow proceedings but he felt self-conscious joining in the hymns when she was playing the organ beside him and he did not like to stand for them as that would have meant laying his cello on the floor and it was a comfort to have it to lean against. Instead he merely read the hymn words in his head as everyone sang them. There was a rather long address about Grandpa and who he was and what he had done, during which his attention drifted, then there were some prayers, including the Lord’s Prayer, which he dutifully spoke, though without kneeling, just as Miss Duffy spoke it under her breath at the keyboard. Then it was time. She had been solemnly decorous throughout the service and looked almost tearful as he played The Green Bushes , but as she began the accompaniment to the Saint-Saëns, she cast him a broad, toothy smile that stopped him feeling remotely nervous and let him pretend that the rest of the church was quite empty.

  The priest said some words of dismissal then Miss Duffy launched into Nimrod and the bearers carried Grandpa out and everyone followed them. When Miss Duffy finished, she locked the organ up while he shut his cello back in its case, then she surprised him by shaking his hand.

  ‘You’re really rather good, you know,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re taking this seriously.’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I’d like to.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Keep at it,’ and she melted away through the crowd chatting outside. Quite suddenly there were lots of strangers congratulating him or thanking him, and then they parted and there was his mother.

  She was in her best black suit and crisp white blouse and she had done something to her hair so that it was high and more regal than usual. She had on her sunglasses which had their usual effect of turning her face into a mask, but seeing him, she crumpled her lower lip and he worried she might be about to cry. But she only drew him to her and hugged him, which was not a thing she ever did, especially not in public.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘I wish Carla could have heard you. That was . . . special. Thank you.’

  His father was watching from nearby, tense, perhaps, because of all the old men in medals and because of the strain of not being able to crack his usual jokes. But even he shook Eustace’s hand, which was very odd indeed, and said,

  ‘I know we hear you practising at home all the time but, well, I had no idea.’

  Eustace was not expected to go with them to the crematorium but instead had to drop off his cello at home and make his way to school for the rest of the day. It was still quite early and he arrived in time for a maths lesson before lunch. They were doing calculations involving log tables, which he usually enjoyed, but he kept being distracted by the odd, not entirely pleasant fizzing sensation performing at the funeral had engendered.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Now that Eustace had turned twelve, St Chad’s began to exert new pressures on him. Until then he had thought of the hours he spent there, the weeks in uniform, the months of submitting to arbitrary regulations and exercises of authority as necessary evils. His father had once said as much.

  ‘The thing about school is that it seems to take for ever when you’re in it but it passes, and quicker than you realize at the time.’

  It had seemed to him that there was no choice involved; he had to go to school because it was the law, and he had to go to the school his parents had chosen for him. His mother regularly reminded him that it was a good little school and that he was lucky to be sent there and not to the less rarefied local equivalent, which was free but where he’d not learn Latin or Greek or play in a school orchestra. But now he began to be aware from things other boys were saying, that a great dividing of the ways would soon be upon them.

  Like the vast majority of his contemporaries, he was to sit Common Entrance in order to secure a place at a public school – possibly the terrifying sounding Millfield, possibly his father’s old one at Clifton – where he would have to board, a prospect that alternately thrilled and frightened him.

  A handful of boys, identified afresh now that they were suddenly corralled into a class of their own, had taken the eleven-plus exam already, as their parents were sending them to the local grammar school where they could still study Latin and Greek, wouldn’t have to board and would be spared the regular, embarrassing conversations between their parents about fees. Eustace envied these boys. It seemed to him they had the happiest year ahead of them and the easiest future. He had not been entered for the eleven-plus, however, as his mother said they wanted him to broaden his social sphere and that, in her experience, grammar-school boys were neither one thing nor the other and tended to be chippy .

  Another handful of boys, who were the cleverest in all or certain subjects, was shifted up into a class called A1, a sort of intellectual peak, where they were taught by Dr Figgis the headmaster himself and only the most senior teachers, and prepared for valuable scholarships at various more or less famous public schools around the country which would give them a free education if they won them and, one assumed, profound humiliation if they failed. Eustace knew a few of these boys but, once they were elevated to A1, found they no longer seemed to know him very well, withdrawing into their cleverness as though further contact with the commonplace pained them.

  Several boys had vanished from the school since the last holidays. None of them was a friend or an especial tormentor of Eustace’s so he didn’t notice their absence at first, merely assuming they had done better or less well than him and been moved to a different class. But gradually he came to understand that they had been removed to be enrolled in Broadelm Comprehensive, the mixed state school that had been a byword for terror ever since he began to attend St Chad’s.

  ‘But what will they do ?’ he asked his mother, after glimpsing a couple of these exiled boys at a bus stop with some older, noisy girls who were showing off their skills with bubble gum.

  She sighed, in the way she did when a topic bored or repelled her. ‘I suppose most will leave school at sixteen,’ she said, ‘and get jobs. You know. Apprenticeships and things. Some might join the army, of course, or the navy. And I believe there’s a sixth-form college now for the ones who think they have a chance at university. Not that university’s crucial; you can become an accountant or a so
licitor, I think, without getting a degree first.’

  And then there was Vernon. He had calmly revealed that he would be going to Broadelm next because, for all that they had enough money, his family had left-wing principles. ‘Well, my father does. Before she died, my mother made him promise I’d come here first, so I’d pick up Latin and things and make what she thought of as suitable friends .’

  ‘Like me.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Eustace was upset. He had come to rely on Vernon as a regular, phlegmatically supportive presence in his life and had vaguely assumed they’d be going on to the same public school next. ‘We can still see each other in the holidays, though?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes. But I doubt we will. You’ll have a whole raft of new friends and I’ll be too busy shagging le tout Weston.’

  Vernon was an early developer and had already begun wearing Tabac aftershave and trying to interest Eustace, with little success, in much-thumbed pages from Playboy passed down to him by the school’s under-groundsman. But he had yet to set aside his devotion to Trollope and his involvement with the opposite sex remained entirely imaginary. Eustace felt a pang at this casual dismissal of their friendship and hoped it was only bravado speaking. It was impossible to picture Vernon in the comprehensive; until now his interests had seemed far too rarefied, but perhaps well-thumbed naked ladies would provide a sort of entry visa.