After the Funeral

by Gillian Poucher

  ‘And what did Mum say?’ Julia was resting her hand on the carrier bag containing their mother’s diaries. It rustled as she withdrew it. She shivered suddenly. James’s reference to her father had rekindled the memory of William Prescott.

  ‘I don’t remember her exact words. She was commenting on your integrity, your sense of responsibility, of what was right.’ His thick lips curled. ‘It was last summer, soon after Greg left. She could see how it had thrown you. What was it she said? Something like, “Julia struggles to understand us mere mortals. It can be difficult living with someone with such high standards. I found that with her father.”’

  ‘Mother said that? It sounds as though she was excusing Greg!’

  ‘No, not at all.’ James’s tone was more gentle as he took in his sister’s stricken face. ‘It was more that she was trying to understand how poleaxed you were. That’s when she compared you to your father. She said that he was a very honourable man. It wasn’t intended as a criticism.’

  Julia’s chest tightened as she contemplated the conversation between Emily and James. She’d always assumed she had been her mother’s main confidant, not James. Even though she had sometimes resented her mother’s indulgence of her youngest child, she had thought her bond with her mother had been closer. There had been those years alone together before Emily met James’s father. And it pained her to hear that her attempts to find better treatment for their mother had been tolerated rather than welcomed by Emily. Her head felt as if it would burst with the revelations. She closed her eyes.

  ‘Jules? Are you OK?’

  Julia’s eyes snapped open. ‘Of course I’m not OK! You come round here in the middle of the night, tell me you’re having an affair, that Clare’s thrown you out, and somehow manage to steer the conversation to my inadequacies as a sister, a daughter and a partner. You even criticise my father.’

  James shook his head. ‘Now come on, Julia. That’s not what happened here. If you hadn’t been so judgemental, I wouldn’t have said some of these things. You know that.’

  ‘Can’t you hear how you’re trying to excuse yourself? Why is it you can never accept responsibility, never admit your guilt? Is it because,’ she paused, but couldn’t stop herself, ‘you were always Mother’s blue-eyed boy who could do no wrong?’

  Brother and sister stared at one another. Then James pursed his lips, spat out his retort. ‘Let me ask you a question too. How come you’re so bloody smug that you can never understand why the rest of us find it impossible to meet your standards?’ He paused, before going on with a slow deliberation which Julia knew was calculated to wound, ‘You are smug, and exacting, and that’s why you find yourself on your own at nearly fifty. Maybe it’s your father’s glorious upright naval genes coming out, who knows?’

  There was a long silence. Julia’s head was throbbing even more. She took a deep breath. ‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Get out of my house. And don’t you ever dare to speak about my father in that way again.’

  James got unsteadily to his feet, bumping his thigh against the table. He cursed before weaving across the kitchen. He didn’t look back.

  His half-sister remained rooted in her chair, hugging herself in the chilly kitchen. It was only when she heard the front door thud that she realised that she had been holding her breath.

  Suddenly dizzy, she placed a hand on the table and hauled herself up. She took the mugs and cafetière across to the sink, flicked the advance switch on the boiler. Every word, every gesture of the exchange was etched in technicolour in her mind, replayed as she washed up. Her mother’s words, according to James, gnawed at her like a toothache: ‘It can be difficult living with someone with such high standards. I found that with her father.’ The revelation of the gulf between herself and her mother, possibly between her parents, sat like a leaden weight in her chest. Finally overcome by exhaustion, she dragged herself back up to bed.

  –  CHAPTER 10  –

  It was midday when Julia woke with a sore throat and high temperature later that Sunday. The combination of physical and emotional fatigue had taken their toll. Sneezing, feverish and with no appetite on Monday morning, she phoned clients booked in for the next two days and cancelled their appointments. Back in bed she dozed fitfully, disturbed by dreams of Greg, her mother and, once, a baby screaming in a burning house. Surfacing into consciousness, she remembered the nightmare from the evening of her mother’s funeral.

  She shook her head to dispel the disturbing image. How strange that her nightmare had preceded Grace’s account of being rescued as a baby from a house fire, a fire started by her sick mother! Dismissing it as no more than coincidence – for what other explanation could there be? – Julia turned on her bedside light. It was nearly 7 p.m. She’d slept most of the day away. Still sneezing, but a little hungry, she hauled herself out of bed and reached for her fluffy white dressing-gown. It was the last birthday present her mother had given her.

  ‘Definitely not sexy,’ Greg had said when she unwrapped it.

  ‘Mother probably thinks we’re past all that after five years!’ Julia’s laugh died on her lips as Greg looked away, thick lips curled in a sneer.

  In the kitchen she switched on the TV. She hadn’t heard any news for forty-eight hours. The headlines were grim reminders of conflict and suffering. Photographs of prisoners captured in Afghanistan at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay. Suspicions that the recent foot-and-mouth epidemic had been caused by meat smuggled into the U.K. Footage of pyres of animal carcases the previous summer flashed through Julia’s mind, sparking the nightmare of the burning house yet again. Her hand was shaking as she put the last of a wholemeal loaf under the grill and sliced some Cheddar.

  She flicked off the TV and turned on the radio. The tinny theme tune for The Archers struck up. Lifting a corner of the blind, Julia saw the garden gleaming white in the light of the crescent moon. The temperature must have barely risen above zero since she came home on Saturday. She pulled her dressing-gown tightly around her and turned the toast, arranging the cheese on top.

  A phone rang faintly above the clatter of glasses and buzz of conversation in the Ambridge pub. It was only when she heard the muffled sound of her voice inviting callers to leave a message that she realised it was her own.

  Out in the hall she frowned to hear Pete’s voice. He’d never rung her at home before. ‘Hi, Julia. It’s me, Pete. Just wondering if you’re OK. Missed you at the office today. Thought I’d check you’ve not skidded into a wall anywhere.’ A pause. ‘Sorry. Not funny.’

  Julia grimaced as Pete continued, ‘And I’ve come across some premises that might be good, if you’ve thought any more about us being partners.’ An embarrassed laugh. ‘In business, of course. Anyway, ring me back if you like. You’ve got my number.’

  Julia picked up the phone, about to call back, if only to speak to someone after two days alone. But there had been something awkward between her and Pete on Saturday – she found herself steering away from acknowledging that momentary attraction to him – and she hadn’t decided whether she wanted to take him up on his offer of sharing business premises yet. Another major decision, another change which seemed too much to cope with alongside a house move caused by Greg defaulting on the mortgage. She replaced the receiver, cursing as the acrid smell of burning toast drew her back to the kitchen.

  The toast was too charred to eat. She sat nibbling at the remains of the packet of Cheddar, only half-listening to the reviews on Front Row. Thinking about what she was going to do regarding the house and relocating her counselling business made her head ache. The business itself wasn’t going well at present – she had turned down several potential clients in the late autumn to give herself more time to spend with Emily. Grace, due again on Wednesday, was the first new client she had taken in two months.

  It still shocked her to think of the speed of her mother’s decline. James had a point when he said she’d been in denial about Emily’s illness. Her mind veered away from the ugly row with her
half-brother. He had been the one person she thought she could count on. He’d been very supportive after her split from Greg, and she’d thought their shared grief over their mother had drawn them closer. What he had said, his accusation about her smugness, about her always trying to fix people, had hurt her deeply. And she’d been so shocked by his casual dismissal of his affair with a student, his treatment of Clare – ‘one of my women’! Julia ran her hands through her hair, her usually sleek bob mussed by two days in bed… James had certainly been right about one thing, her life was a mess. She’d certainly not expected to be sitting alone in a house about to be repossessed at forty-nine. Her milestone birthday in April was something else she pushed from her mind.

  Trying to distract herself from her problems, she went across to the sink. The wine glasses she and Pete had used on Saturday night lay unwashed in the bowl. The mugs and cafetière from James’s visit stood on the counter alongside the sink. No more rubbish would fit in the bin. Newspapers, magazines and junk mail for recycling were piled up behind the back door. By her standards, the kitchen was a tip.

  Among the clutter on the table lay the carrier bags containing her mother’s diaries. Setting about the washing up, Julia decided they would wait. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for in them anyway. The unease evoked by the memory of William Prescott’s long ago visit that snowy afternoon had receded. Running hot water into the bowl, registering from her ability to smell the pomegranate washing-up liquid that her cold was improving, she reasoned that her distress over the scene with Greg had caused her to be over-imaginative at her mother’s house.

  She remembered that she needed to contact Linda somehow to find out why she had returned to the cottage after Emily’s death. Maybe someone at the gallery where her exhibition had been held would have contact details? It was possible there was a simple explanation for her visit – perhaps she’d left something there? She was still surprised her mother had given the woman a key, and never mentioned her visits, but that didn’t mean there was anything mysterious about her. The most likely explanation was that Emily hadn’t thought it significant enough to trouble Julia about it when she was struggling to come to terms both with her separation from Greg and the news of her mother’s illness.

  Front Row had come to an end. The female radio announcer was introducing the book of the week in her neutral accent: ‘A deeply personal account of one woman’s reconciliation to childlessness after fertility treatment failed.’ Julia lunged across the sink to switch to Classic FM, soapy water dripping on to the chrome radio from her yellow rubber gloves. ‘I hope Clare isn’t listening,’ she said aloud as the pure flute music of Vaughan Williams’s ‘Lark Ascending’ filtered through the kitchen.

  That night she dreamed of Greg cradling a baby in a pink sleepsuit. She had never seen such tenderness and pride on his face. A surge of love rose in her for Greg and the little girl, their daughter… But no, not their daughter, because as the baby turned her head, her mouth open in a toothless smile, saying, ‘Mama, Mama,’ she was gazing at a young woman with long chestnut hair. The woman bent to take the baby from Greg, and Greg placed his hand round her waist, pulling her towards him…

  Jerking awake, Julia buried her head in her pillow and wept for a long time before sinking back into a deep slumber.

  She felt tired and drained when she woke mid-morning to the sound of the phone ringing. The caller didn’t leave a message. She dragged herself downstairs to make a pot of green tea. It was tempting to cancel Wednesday’s clients as well, but she desperately needed the income to pay the bills, let alone to have any hope of negotiating with the bank over the mortgage arrears. And it would be good for her to work. It would help to take her mind off her difficulties. Her fitness for counselling was a different question which she pushed aside. Her monthly appointment with her supervisor loomed in two weeks. Louise was a shrewd woman who would see through any attempt Julia might make to minimise her distress.

  Julia sighed as she watched the flower unfurl inside the glass teapot. How had her life become so complicated? She went across to the carrier bags containing her mother’s diaries, thinking how straightforward her mother’s life had been when she was Julia’s age. She had been married, with Julia grown up and James a teenager. At the time she had also been financially secure, thanks to money from the solicitors’ practice where Leonard had been partner, and a substantial inheritance from his parents who had both died when Julia was very small.

  Sipping her green tea, Julia realised that this was a superficial picture. Who knew what heartache she had endured following Leonard’s death, facing the prospect of raising Julia alone until she met James’s father, Nicholas? It was a grief Emily had kept hidden from her. She remembered once weeping for her father in the night. Emily had come into her bedroom and cradled her on the bed. ‘Shh, sweetheart,’ she had whispered as the sobs shook Julia’s thin body. ‘Shh.’ But when Julia had found it impossible to stop crying, she had said, almost sternly, ‘Hush, now. Daddy wouldn’t have wanted you to be so upset.’

  Julia had stopped crying almost instantly. Afterwards whenever grief threatened to overwhelm her, she suppressed it in her mother’s presence. It was something she had discussed with a therapist during her counselling training, recognising that her mother’s words had led her to believe that she would disappoint her father if she gave vent to her tears. To the eight-year-old Julia, her dead father was as omnipresent as God. It was the therapist who had pointed out that her mother had struggled to deal with her small daughter’s distress, and hadn’t given the little girl the permission to express her grief.

  It was all a long time ago. But memories of her childhood had been surfacing more frequently in the weeks since her mother’s death, a natural reaction to the loss of a parent. She wondered if her mother had kept diaries when she was younger, if she had expressed her grief at Leonard’s loss in them. Presumably they would turn up at the cottage if she had.

  She took the diaries she had found in the desk drawer out of the plastic bags and laid them on the table. In her haste to leave her mother’s cottage as the snow fell on Saturday, she hadn’t realised how many there were. She counted out twenty-four. She opened one dating back to 1990. The entries were more detailed, going beyond the bare facts of her mother’s days. There were records of news which friends and family had shared with Emily, and the odd acidic comment which made Julia smile. These typically related to her neighbour Edith and sister Ada. Julia had always known that each tried her mother’s patience, but had never appreciated how much. One more extended entry read,

  Edith knocked at the door barely five minutes after James left with his new girlfriend, asking if I would like her to fetch me today’s Evening Post from the shop. She knew perfectly well I had got one just before James arrived, as she was out in the garden when I came back. ‘Why Edith!’ I exclaimed, ‘I hope the heat isn’t troubling you too much. Surely you remember I’d just got one when I saw you earlier.’ She didn’t look in the least embarrassed. ‘It must be the heat addling my brain. How were your visitors?’ Her eyes glinted in the way they do when she scents gossip. ‘Wasn’t that a different young lady with your son? He must be getting quite a reputation for himself, mustn’t he?’ I wanted to tell her to mind her own business. One of these days perhaps I will. No, I know I won’t really. She’s a kind soul even if her inquisitiveness can irritate me beyond measure. And guarding my tongue has been second nature to me for so many years it would be hard to break the habit now.

  Julia paused over those words in the final sentence, ‘Guarding my tongue has been second nature to me for so many years…’ Her mother had been the soul of discretion. Was there a hint here of some secret, just as Linda had suggested? Or was she reading too much into the words?

  She flicked forward. The name ‘William Prescott’ leaped from an entry dated 12th of October.

  Ada phoned today. I had the usual sinking feeling when I heard her voice. ‘I know you don’t usually buy The Echo, do yo
u?’ she asked without any greeting, continuing without giving me chance to reply. ‘So I don’t suppose you’ll have seen the Family Announcements, will you?’ I told her I hadn’t.

  She waited a moment, and then said, ‘William Prescott died. I thought you would like to know.’

  ‘Oh.’ I said. My heart began to thud so hard I wondered foolishly if Ada could hear it down the phone.

  ‘Don’t you want to know when the funeral is? I was sure you would want to go.’

  ‘Really?’ I injected as much coldness into my voice as I could in response to her sly tone. ‘Why? I haven’t seen William Prescott for years.’ And my mind turned to the last time I saw him. Julia came in from playing in the snow. If it hadn’t been for her looking on, I would probably have struck the man.

  ‘But he was such a great friend of Leonard’s, wasn’t he?’ Ada pressed. ‘I thought you would want to pay your respects.’

  Some friend! If it hadn’t been for William Prescott interfering, Julia might have had her father for longer. I was well-aware of Leonard’s war injuries, that his life would be shortened because of them. But had it not been for that man, I’m certain he would have lived longer. William Prescott robbed Julia of some precious years with her father. Her grief made her grow up before her time. I have never forgiven him. And the memory of his hand creeping up my skirt that day still makes my skin crawl. Of course I never told Ada about him propositioning me a few weeks before Leonard died, but she guessed something. For once she turned up just at the right time, dropping in unexpectedly when he was there. He sprang back before I hit him, and left immediately. Left, as I found out afterwards, to go straight to Leonard’s office.

  ‘Emily?’ Ada’s voice interrupted my memories of the hypocrite.

  I heard her note of triumph. She knew she had rattled me. For once I retaliated. ‘Why don’t you go to the funeral, Ada?’ I asked. ‘After all, you were very fond of Leonard, weren’t you?’