— CHAPTER 9 —
Andrew left the office in a daze, shaking off offers from Cameron and Peggy to accompany him home. He needed fresh air, to be on his own. It took all his strength to pick up the phone and call Carl. But Sally’s husband—Sally’s widower—wasn’t the one to answer. Instead, it was someone who introduced herself as “Rachel, Carl’s best friend”—a strange way for a grown adult to describe herself, especially given the circumstances.
“It’s Andrew. Sally’s brother,” he said.
“Of course. Andrew. How are you?” And then before Andrew could actually answer: “Carl says there’s no room for you at the house, unfortunately. So you’ll have to stay at the B & B down the road. It’s very near the church . . . for the funeral and everything.”
“Oh. Right. Has that all been arranged already?” Andrew said.
There was a pause.
“You know our Carl. He’s very organized. I’m sure he won’t want to worry you with all of the little details.”
Later, as the Newquay-bound train pulled away from London and copses replaced concrete, it wasn’t grief or even sadness that he felt. It was guilt. Guilt that he hadn’t cried yet. Guilt that he was dreading the funeral, that he’d actually considered the possibility of not going.
When the conductor appeared, Andrew couldn’t find his ticket. When he finally found it in his inside jacket pocket he apologized so profusely for wasting the conductor’s time that the man felt compelled to put his hand on Andrew’s shoulder and tell him not to worry.
* * *
—
He spent a week in a damp B & B, listening to angry seagulls keening outside, fighting the urge to leave and get straight back on a train to London. When the morning of the funeral arrived, he ate a breakfast of stale cereal alone in the B & B “restaurant,” the proprietor watching on throughout, standing in the corner with his arms folded, like a death row prison guard observing him eating his final meal.
Walking into the crematorium, the coffin resting on his shoulder, he was aware that he had no idea who the men were on the other side (it had seemed impolite to ask).
Carl—who had entered his fifties in disgustingly healthy and stylish fashion, all salt-and-pepper hair and wristwatch the value of a small market town—spent the service with his head raised stoically, tears spilling metronomically down his cheeks. Andrew stood awkwardly next to him, fists clenched at his sides. At the moment the coffin went through the curtains Carl let out a low, mournful howl, unburdened by the self-consciousness that consumed Andrew.
* * *
—
Afterward, at the wake, surrounded by people he had never seen, let alone met, before, he felt more alone than he had in years. They were in Carl’s house, in the room dedicated to his burgeoning yoga business, Cynergy. The room had been temporarily cleared of mats and exercise balls so there was space for trestle tables struggling to support the regulation wake spread. Andrew looked at the homemade sandwiches, pale and precisely cut, and was reminded of a rare occasion he’d seen his mother laughing, having recalled the Victoria Wood line about a typical British reaction to the news that someone had died: “Seventy-two baps, Connie. You slice, I’ll spread,” she’d said in a perfect imitation, tweaking Andrew’s ear and dispatching him to put the kettle on.
As he chewed on a damp sausage roll, he suddenly got the sense that he was being watched. Sure enough, Carl was looking at him from across the room. He had changed out of his suit into a loose white shirt and beige linen trousers, and was now barefoot. Andrew couldn’t help but notice he’d kept his expensive watch on. Andrew realized Carl was about to make his way over, so he quickly put down his paper plate and was up the stairs as fast as he could go and into the thankfully unoccupied bathroom. As he washed his hands his eye was drawn to a shaving brush on an ornate white dish on the windowsill. He picked it up and ran his finger across the top of the bristles, specks of powder flicking off into the air. He brought it to his nose and smelled the familiar rich, creamy scent. This had belonged to his father. His mother had kept it in the bathroom. He couldn’t remember talking to Sally about it. She must have formed an especially sentimental attachment to want to keep hold of it.
Just then someone tapped on the door, and Andrew quickly slipped the brush into his trouser pocket.
“Just a minute,” he said. He paused and forced an apologetic smile onto his face. When he emerged, Carl was standing outside with his arms crossed, biceps straining against his shirt. Up close, Andrew could see that Carl’s eyes were raw from crying. He caught the scent of Carl’s aftershave. It was rich and overpowering.
“Sorry,” Andrew said.
“No problem,” Carl said, though he didn’t move to let Andrew pass.
“I was thinking I might head off soon,” Andrew said. “It’s a long journey back,” he added, more defensively than he’d intended.
“Of course you were,” Carl said.
Andrew chose to ignore this comment. “See you then,” he said instead, stepping around Carl and heading for the stairs.
“After all,” Carl said, “this must be much easier for you now that Sally’s gone.”
Andrew stopped at the top of the stairs and turned. Carl was looking at him, unblinking.
“What,” Carl said, “you don’t agree? Come on, Andrew, it wasn’t as if you were ever really there for her, no matter how much that obviously hurt her.”
That’s not true, Andrew wanted to say. She was the one who abandoned me.
“Things were complicated.”
“Oh, I’ve heard all about it, believe me,” Carl said. “In fact, there wasn’t really a week that went by when Sally didn’t talk about it—going over it all again and again and again, trying to work out how to get through to you, how to make you care, or at least stop hating her.”
“Hating her? I didn’t hate her—that’s ridiculous.”
“Oh is it?” Renewed anger flashed in Carl’s eyes and he moved toward Andrew, who dropped down a couple of stairs. “So you didn’t hold such a grudge about her apparently ‘abandoning’ you for America that you basically refused to ever see her again?”
“Well no, that’s not—”
“And even when she spent weeks on end—months, actually—trying to reach out and help you sort your life out, you were so pathetically fucking stubborn that you wouldn’t let her in, even though you knew how much it was hurting her.” Carl pressed his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat.
Oh god, please don’t cry, Andrew thought.
“Carl, it . . . it was com—”
“Don’t you dare fucking say it was complicated again,” Carl said. “Because it’s actually very simple. Sally was never really happy, Andrew. Not really. Because of you.”
Andrew dropped down another step and nearly stumbled. He swiveled and used the momentum to keep on going. He needed to be as far away as possible from this. He’s got no idea what he’s talking about, Andrew thought as he slammed the front door behind him. But the doubt that had begun to nag at him as he left only intensified during the train journey home. Was there some truth to what Carl had said? Had Sally really been so cut up about their relationship that it had somehow contributed to her decline? It was a thought too painful to even consider.
* * *
—
With all the lights off, the brightness of the screen was harsh on Andrew’s eyes. TinkerAl’s forum avatar (a dancing, laughing tomato), usually a cheering sight, seemed malevolent tonight.
Andrew made himself look at the words he had typed and untyped so many times he’d lost count.
I buried my sister today
The cursor flashed back at him expectantly. He moved the mouse until it was over the “post” button, but took his hand away, reaching for his plastic tumbler of foamy beer instead. He’d been drinking in an attempt to re-create the comforting sense of warmth
he’d felt in the pub with Peggy, before Cameron’s awkwardly delivered bombshell, but it had just left him with a dull, repetitive throbbing behind his eyes. He sat up straight and felt the bristles of the shaving brush in his pocket poking into his leg. It was three a.m. Carl’s words were still swimming in his head—the confrontation still horribly vivid. What he’d have given now for loved ones around him. Gentle words. Mugs of tea. A moment when a family was more than the sum of its parts.
He looked again at the screen. If he were to refresh, there would be tens, maybe hundreds of messages now shared between BamBam, TinkerAl, and Jim. Something about spotting some limited-edition rolling stock or a platform footbridge for sale. They were the closest he had to friends, but he couldn’t bring himself to confide in them about this yet. It was just too hard.
He moved his finger to the delete key.
I buried my sister today
I buried my
I buried
I
— CHAPTER 10 —
Despite Cameron insisting he could take off as much time as he needed, Andrew went back to work two days after the funeral. He’d barely slept, but it had been bad enough spending one day sitting around with nothing to distract him—he’d much rather have dealt with dead people he’d never met. He braced himself for the onslaught of sympathy. The head tilting. The sad-eyed smiles. People not even being able to imagine how hard it was for him. He’d have to nod and say thanks, and all the while he’d be hating them for saying such things and hating himself because he didn’t deserve their sympathy. It was to his considerable confusion, then, that Peggy had spent the majority of the first hour that morning talking to him about moorhens.
“Very underrated birds, if you ask me. I saw a one-legged one once at Slimbridge Wetland Centre. It was in quite a small pond and it just seemed to be swimming in circles around the perimeter in a sort of sad victory lap. My daughter Maisie wanted me to rescue it so she could ‘invent it a new leg.’ Ambitious, eh?”
“Mmm,” Andrew said, batting a fly out of his face. Bearing in mind this was only Peggy’s second property inspection, she seemed to have acclimatized remarkably well, especially given that Jim Mitchell’s house was in an even worse state than Eric White’s.
Jim had died in bed, on his own, at the age of sixty. The flat’s kitchen, bedroom, and living room were all in one, with a separate shower room choked with mildew, its floor boasting an impressive range of stains whose origins Andrew tried not to think about.
“This is the sort of room my estate agent would describe as a ‘compact, chic washroom,’” Peggy said, sweeping a moldy curtain aside. “What the hell,” she yelped, stepping back. Andrew rushed over. The whole bathroom window was covered in little red bugs, like blood spatter from a gunshot wound. It was only when one of them flapped its little wings that Andrew realized they were ladybugs. They were the most colorful thing in the entire flat. Andrew decided that they’d leave the window open in the hope it would encourage an exodus.
They were dressed in the full protective suits this time. Peggy had specifically requested this outside so that she could pretend to be a lab assistant in a James Bond film, having watched You Only Live Twice the previous evening. “My Steve used to have a bit of Pierce Brosnan about him when we were first going out. That was before he discovered pork pies and procrastination.” She sized Andrew up. “I reckon you might pass for—who’s the baddie in GoldenEye?”
“Sean Bean?” Andrew said, moving over to the kitchenette.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Reckon you’ve got a touch of the Sean about you.”
As Andrew caught sight of his reflection in the filthy oven door—the receding hairline, patchy stubble, bags under his eyes—he suspected that Sean Bean might have been doing a lot of things at that moment in time, but he almost certainly wasn’t scrambling around on the kitchen floor of a South London bedsit with a Mr. Chicken! takeaway menu stuck to his knee.
After twenty minutes of searching they went outside to take a breather. Andrew was so tired he felt almost weightless. A police helicopter went past overhead and they both craned their necks to watch it as it banked and flew back in the direction it had come from.
“Phew, they weren’t after me then,” Peggy said.
“Mmm,” Andrew murmured.
“You know, I’ve never had to talk to the police before. I feel like I’m missing out, somehow, you know? I just want to report a minor misdemeanor, or be called on to make a statement—that’s the dream. Have you ever had to do anything like that?”
Andrew had zoned out.
“Sorry, what?”
“Ever had any encounters with the old bill? The rozzers. The . . . peelers, is that one right?”
Andrew was transported back to the record shop in Soho. The sudden awareness that the song playing over the speakers was “Blue Moon.” The blood draining from his face. Rushing to the exit and wrenching the door open. The strangled cry of the shop owner. “Fuck! Stop him, he’s nicked something!” Running straight into the man outside and bouncing off him onto the floor, lying winded. The man looming over him. “I’m an off-duty police officer.” The furious face of the shop owner coming into view. Being hauled to his feet. Arms held. “What have you taken?” The owner’s breath smelling of nicotine gum.
“Nothing, nothing,” he’d said. “Honestly, you can search me.”
“Why the hell’d you run then?”
What could he have said? That hearing that song crippled him with pain? That even as he lay winded on the pavement, the fading bars lodged in his head made him want to curl into the fetal position?
“Bloody hell,” Peggy laughed, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“Sorry,” Andrew said, but his voice cracked and only half the word came out.
“Don’t tell me—you got done for pinching chocolate from Woolworths?”
Andrew’s eyelid was twitching uncontrollably. He was desperately trying to stop the tune from coming into his head.
“Or some naughty parking ticket action?”
Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone.
“Oh, dear—it was littering, wasn’t it?”
She nudged him on the arm and Andrew felt the voice coming up from somewhere deep inside him, sharp and unstoppable. “Leave it, okay?” he snapped.
Peggy’s face fell as she realized he wasn’t joking.
Andrew felt a miserable wave of shame hit him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to snap like that. It’s just been a strange couple of weeks.”
They stood in silence for a long time, both of them clearly too embarrassed to speak first. Andrew could practically hear Peggy attempting to regroup, the cogs whirring as she decided to change the subject. This time he was going to be ready and attentive.
“My daughter’s invented this game, right?”
“A game?”
“Yeah. And I’m not sure if I should be worried about her or not, but it’s called the Apocalypse Game.”
“Right,” Andrew said.
“So, the scenario is this: a massive bomb has gone off and everyone’s been wiped off the face of the earth. It appears that you are the only person in the country to have survived. What do you do?”
“Not sure I understand,” Andrew said.
“Well, where do you go? What do you do? Do you find a car and go blasting up the M1 trying to look for people? Or do you just head straight to your local and drink the bar dry? How long before you try and make your way across the channel, or go to America, even? If nobody’s there could you break into the White House?”
“And that’s the game . . . ?” Andrew said.
“Pretty much,” Peggy said. Then, after a pause: “I tell you what I’d do to kick us off. I’d go to Silverstone and do a lap of the track in the Fiesta. Then, I’d either hit golf balls off the top of the Houses of Parliament or co
ok myself a fry-up in the Savoy. At some point I’d probably go across to Europe and see what’s what—though I slightly worry I’d end up having to be part of some sort of ‘resistance,’ smuggling people across the border and that sort of thing. And I’m not sure I’m a good enough person to get involved in that if there’s nobody left at home to see my Facebook status about it.”
“Understandable,” Andrew said. He tried to concentrate but his mind was blank.
“I don’t quite know what I’d do,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Ah well. It’s not for everyone,” Peggy said. “By the way, if you fancy heading off early I’m sure I can crack on by myself.”
“No, I’m all right,” Andrew said. “Quicker with two of us anyway.”
“Right you are. Oh, I nearly forgot to say, I brought a flask of coffee today. Let me know if you want a mug. And I attempted brownies too.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Andrew said.
“Well, let me know if you change your mind,” Peggy said, heading back into the house. Andrew followed her, a waft of fetid air hitting him before he’d even crossed the threshold. Luckily, before long, Peggy found something.
How Not to Die Alone Page 9