by Mavis Cheek
It was scant consolation for Flora to think to herself that once she popped her clogs and (she liked to think, though she was not a believer) ascended heavenwards – Hilary would suddenly realise what she missed and how careless she was of Flora’s kindness and affection. You are a long time dead, Flora would nod and say to herself. Hilary will find herself regretting so much once I have passed on. Fond thought . . . It got her through a great many of the worst of Hilary’s dismissals. Mary Dobson, Flora’s one soul-mate in the village, had a son who was equally critical. Mary and she sat and drank wine together and commiserated with each other and said one day, one day . . . Part of their shared life cycle of motherhood seemed to be One Day. It went with A Mother’s Place is in the Wrong.
Flora thought long and hard about her retirement before deciding that she would have to do something. Something big. ‘I’d like to find out the history of this village,’ she said to Edward. ‘Particularly this house.’ To which he said, ‘Good idea.’ And commenced to do so himself. She was so fed up that she refused to be amanuensis to the project but Edward, being Edward and adored by all, soon got a typing helpmeet in the shape of one of the leaders of the local Brownie Pack, little Miss Pauline Pike. And that was that. In future, she told herself, save your breath to cool your porridge and keep your good ideas to yourself.
At least The History took Edward away from painting which he executed less with the High Renaissance grandeur of Michelangelo and Tintoretto and more in the flaccid well-bred mode of Winston Churchill and Charles Windsor. He even tried to paint a portrait of his wife but, after many and bitter exchanges, he abandoned it saying she was impossible to transmit to canvas. To which Flora, with a dim memory of Rembrandt’s sketches, said that she thought artists rather liked grotesques. It fell on deaf ears. How little respect they ended up having for each other. When Edward once walked the land and knew and cared about the call of the kite, the silhouette of a deer, the shape of a moss, she felt differently. Now he was so immured in self-betterment and vainglory that she thought him an object of ridicule. She kept this to herself as wives should be loyal – and anyway no one would have believed her. She was the twerp, not he.
So she smiled, hid what she could of his daubings on the backs of doors, and lived with the results. She tried to have tender thoughts about him – she missed having tender thoughts about him – but the more crazy his ideas, the less she could think anything at all beyond frustration and sometimes downright fury. Whenever she read an article that said people who bottled up anger were prone to cancer she would sit for half a day sadly convinced that so it would be for her. But if she let it all out – well then it could be much worse – Krakatoa would be as nothing and the reverberations would continue for eternity.
Eventually boredom overcame resolution. Flora capitulated and offered to help with the History. Both the house and Hurcott Ducis were old and should hold enough secrets to keep the two of them occupied for the rest of their lives. But alas – Edward did not want a partner – he wanted a handmaid and in the person from the Brownie Pack it seemed he had found one. It wasn’t intentionally cruel but to Flora’s offer of help he waved a dismissive hand. ‘No thanks,’ he said, ‘you’d be too critical.’ He meant, of course, that she might correct him – and be proved right. You could do a lot of reading and learning on trains to and from London over the years, a lot.
Hilary, by now living in Cambridge and In Retail, never wavered in her support for Edward. This was wholly noble, Flora acknowledged, and unspeakably bloody irritating. When her father took up the piano it was at Hilary’s suggestion, thank you, Hilary. Flora just smiled and wore earplugs. When he decided that he was a poet,
Flora just smiled and wore earplugs. She found involvement where she could – reading aloud in the Home for the Elderly in the nearby market town, mending some of the old and rotting bits of embroidered stuff in the village church under the critical eye of Mrs Vicar, who could have shown God a thing or two in the art of acknowledging perfection – and occasionally giving a little extra French tuition. Nothing to shake the Universe – but then when had she ever done anything to even shake this little corner of it? Flora knew perfectly well that the people of the village, apart from Mary and one or two others, thought of her as quiet and dull and unadventurous. It was never far away, that unspoken question of How on earth did she get a man as exciting and handsome as Edward to marry her?
Gradually, as Flora settled into her comfortable rut she began to think that the next twenty or thirty years might be tolerable – her new role in life – her final job – the most skilful of all – Coping. She almost believed she had reached a plateau of calm with a comfortable emotional distance from Edward. Peace in her heart and mind at last. And then, Oh capricious perversity, he blooming well went and died. Initially she felt cross and cheated. He’d gone to glory and she was left holding thin, thin air. Only gradually, gradually, in the days between Edward’s death, and the funeral today, this new sensation had stolen over her – a wicked sense of possibility . . . She was smiling again. She must stop. But it was quite hard – despite the horror of it – to be woebegone when she remembered the manner of his going. How typical. You could not, as she said to herself, make it up.
Vainglorious in the manner of his living, vainglorious in the manner of his death, Edward was in futile pursuit of yet another Grand Skill. He set off to float around the skies above Hurcott Ducis in the style of Phineas Fogg and with a brain positively bursting with the topographical possibilities of Ptolemy and Mercato and the wide-hatted John Speed (bloody Encyclopaedia Britannica). He was caught up with the History and went off at a tangent. Having abandoned his own attempt at a picaresque novel some years previously he now resurrected the idea of combining it with his History to produce the perfect book. Which, obviously, initially required a practical bit of showmanship first. Hence the balloon. Map it, feel it, draw it and then write it. ‘The lie of the land will reveal much,’ he told Flora. And when she, quite reasonably, suggested getting a professional to do the ballooning he was outraged. He had taken lessons, he knew what to do. Up he went, up and away, higher and gloriously higher – and then, with a truly Renaissance swagger he pumped up the gas – and – hardly surprisingly – set fire to his balloon. Edward’s Inferno.
As if that were not enough – the charred basket landed smack in the middle of the River Hurst so that he not only plummeted to death, and burned to death, he managed to drown to death as well. The triple death. Quite horrible – yet also the death designated for the greatest heroes, suffered by the most mystically mythological of grandees, magicked by Merlin on to a would-be king. A fittingly spectacular ending, the stuff of legend, and worthy, at least, of a little corner of the Sistine chapel . . . Why, oh why couldn’t he simply drop down dead in the street if he was going to do it? There was not a great deal of him left at the end but Flora still had to identify what there was. Even in death he was demanding. It was, perhaps, the nastiest experience of her life.
The whole thing was filmed which made it even more bizarre. Pauline Pike, Grey Owl to the Brownies, the too-too sweet young woman who wore powder-pink lipstick and a quantity of Nuits d’Or by La Russe – which Flora now knew because whenever Pauline Pike brought something to the house for Edward the entire ground floor smelled of it. Pauline Pike, apart from being a serial scent wearer, was a dab little hand with the video camera and something of a camp follower of Edward’s exploits. Her little legs must have carried her over hill and down dale in pursuit of the grand journey for she and her machine apparently never lost sight of him. Flora was offered a viewing of her husband’s final moments but declined. Not yet, was what she said. Not ever, thank you, was what she thought. And let the world think of her as a coward. It was better than the world thinking of her as a hard-bitten fishwife for she was quite likely to put her foot through the television screen in her disgusted fury. She told little Miss Pike that on no account was she to make the same offer to Hilary. A dash of maternal protect
iveness for her distraught daughter who was fortunately so genuinely distraught that she seemed not to notice her mother’s somewhat cooler view of things. Miss Pauline Pike patted her on the arm and gave her a copy of the video to tuck away somewhere for the future. Flora tucked it in the back of a drawer, not quite able to throw it away, nowhere near able to watch the thing.
Flora was in London when The Event happened, which everyone seemed to think was a blessing. Unfathomable platitude. Flora had kept one or two connections up in town – a dentist, a hairdresser, a department store account, a couple of friendly ex-colleagues – which proved very sensible and meant she could do all sorts of other things like visit art exhibitions, browse in bookshops and even – occasionally – see the odd matinee. Good reasons to take the train and have a whole day to herself. Never before had Flora had any sympathy with Virginia Woolf’s wetly privileged Mrs Dalloway, the heroine who seemed to think that opening the French windows and going out to buy her own flowers was a huge lark – but now she could see her point. Stone walls may not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, but a domestic setting with a Renaissance Man can certainly make you want to run naked down the road screaming from time to time unless you can get on a train and go. So Flora was At The Dentist’s when all this was going on. Or actually somewhere between The Dentist’s and Selfridges, her favourite shop in all the world, where she intended to celebrate the fact that she needed no fillings by having at least two cakes with plenty of them. Probably she was just emerging from Marble Arch tube when it happened. Later the thought would not go away that at the hour of her husband’s death she was stepping forth from darkness into the light.
The Event, for so it was talked of in whispers, was referred to, in all seriousness, as Not a Pretty Sight. Giles had been with him at the time but wisely not in the basket, obviously, and Giles said it had been ‘grim’. Like Pauline, Giles followed the smoking descent o’er hill and dale and riverbank and saw it all. Still, apparently, holding the bottle of celebratory old claret which they were due to drink to mark the success of the venture. Real men, apparently, drank claret whenever they celebrated – Flora’s suggestion now and then of champagne was considered a deeply flimsy notion. The bottle, a Médoc 1996, was still there, with the cork thrust back into it, on the dresser in the kitchen. Providing Mrs Graves hadn’t added it to the funereal crab spread.
The messengers of death met her train at the station. No one had told daughter Hilary and no one knew Flora’s mobile number. This latter mattered not as Flora deliberately left the wretched thing behind when she went off on one of her jaunts. It was the only way to feel free. Thus, quite unprepared, and with a spring in her step from the double chocolate muffin and the substantial piece of carrot cake so recently consumed, she stepped down to be met like visiting, doomed royalty, by the official legation. And there, in the middle of a pair of startlingly bright Busy Lizzie beds (Hurcott Ducis went in for Prettiest Station in the South East – never won – sensitivity and imagination was not Wally Binder’s forte) she was told the dreadful news. Edward was dead. To which she said the first thing to come into her head because it had to be a joke, which was ‘If only –’. Which naturally enough did not go down very well with Giles (who, to be fair, had been through quite enough shocks and appeared very pale and close to passing out – as – it crossed Flora’s mind – she should look and did not). Pauline, Wallace and Roger Tucker (who was a lay reader from the next village and one of the Parish councillors and presumably brought along because he was the closest thing they could find to God, the Reverend Arthur and Mrs Vicar being absent) were equally shocked. They soon put Flora right.
Pauline was sobbing loudly into an enormous white handkerchief and looked as if she had been doing so for some considerable time and intended to continue for even longer. Giles was shaking and stuttering. Flora felt irritated. She was tired, she had been in London all day, she had eaten cakes and chosen a new foundation for ageing summer skin, and she just wanted a cup of tea, removal of shoes, and a sit-down at home. Instead she was faced with the last Great Mystery to deal with. Her response, Flora thought, had therefore been quite understandable. ‘If only . . .’ She had not meant it literally. It was just something to say to alleviate her exhaustion at the prospect of dealing with death while her shoes hurt. Please could she deal with it all in a day or two? Or even – hell – an hour or two?
No chance.
Edward was tiring alive, and he was tiring dead. And if they were looking for a beaten breast, a trickling tear or a vengeful wail then they went away empty for she was quite, quite numb when they told her and still was several hours later. She remembered thinking that it was thoughtful of Edward to require a funeral when the April weather was good – which was a weird but true thought – and that she still wanted to put her feet up on the sofa and snooze. But she was newly widowed and you were not expected to be able to do anything of a restful nature. So they had stayed with her, they had watched over her, they had poured her stiff gins – what they had not done was to give her time to herself. She was yawning what might have sounded – very bad form – contentedly, when they finally left. Again, this was unsurprising given the stiff gins, but it probably looked hard as granite. Pauline, as she guessed, had continued to weep spasmodically, when not saying what a wonderful, wonderful man Edward is. Even more irritated, at the third time of the statement being made, Flora could not stop herself from adding ‘Was, Pauline, was. He’s dead. Deceased.’ Which set Pauline off again and had Flora wondering if it wouldn’t be better just to give her one of the spareroom sheets rather than a handkerchief of Edward’s.
Flora spent the following days making cocoa for her daughter, who arrived crying and who stayed and wept and lay around on the sofa clutching a photograph of her father so that Flora continued to feel an inappropriate rising irritation. The guilt of the inappropriateness making her more irritated. ‘There, there Hil,’ she said, holding her close and rocking her.
Even more inappropriately she wished her daughter would pull herself together a bit. When Hilary’s tortoise died she wept on and off for a fortnight. How much longer would it take for a father? Mothers were required to go on being stoical for the rest of their days even when in pain themselves. Once, after Flora had two wisdom teeth removed and Hilary came to visit and Flora was in pain and said so, Hilary looked at the offending jaw, propped up on a pillow and said with thoughtful accusation, ‘Well – I expect I’ll follow in your footsteps at some point – you’ll have passed on the wisdom tooth gene to me . . .’ And Flora, weakened by suffering, forbore to point out that the likelihood of there being a tooth gene was fairly remote not to say bloody ridiculous. Those baleful stares over the years had stopped Flora’s courage where her daughter was concerned.
Hilary needed to grieve and she would do it with her customary gusto. Flora must grin and bear it, or rather, not grin and bear it, she must just do her best, keep her head; comforting phrases, these, smoothed and polished over the years like the beach stones of Brighton. ‘Mother is being very brave,’ she heard Hilary on the phone telling her live-in partner Robin. Flora had never heard herself referred to as Mother before. It made her feel very old. Hilary had a way of making her feel old and rather thick – like no other. Flora wondered if now that Father was dead this view of Mother might change, but she was not very optimistic.
They were choosing the music for the funeral when Robin rang and Hilary told him that she wanted some of her father’s favourite piano pieces. She said it as if Edward was Paderewski incarnate. Flora winced. Not least because Hilary used to go home quite a bit earlier when his playing was at its height – sometimes right in the middle of her father’s rendition of a Scott Joplin rag. Or was it Bach? Flora learned to look for small mercies and never forgot how her blood ran cold when Edward was found, on his knees, surrounded by the contents of the junk cupboard, desperately trying to find Hilary’s old recorder. Fortunately Flora had the hindsight to put the thing in the bottom of the dustbin when
Hilary finally finished junior school. It was unlikely, in her mother’s opinion, that even one so magically gifted as Apollo could make the recorder produce a bearable sound. When the note on a recorder goes wrong, it really goes wrong. And when it goes right it is extremely hard to tell.
How many times had she heard ‘Oh Mum – go with it. Dad’s fun.’ This meant that Flora was not fun. And this was probably true. One parent must remain sane, after all. It would have served both Hilary and Edward right if Flora had suddenly blossomed into a knife thrower or a writer of villanelles which she declaimed at midnight in the market square. The choir mistress, having conceived a grand passion for the organist and being driven mad by his rejection, had done that very thing. See where it gets you, though, Flora wanted to say today to the mournful graveside crowd and Hilary’s sobbing back view. See where the Fun gets you. Broken, burnt and blooming well drowned. But wisely she did not. Deaths in families pretty well always produced bad feeling. No sense in courting it. If Mother was being very brave, so be it. It was a lie. Mother was just being totally inadequate in the role of grieving widow. She missed Edward like she might miss a passed-on but glorious houseplant that took a great deal of effort to keep glorious. She found the analogy pleasing for if a glorious houseplant dies you can go out and get a replacement another variety . . . one that is no trouble, needs no leaf-polishing and is quite ordinary. A spider plant perhaps, or tradescantia. That, thought Flora, is the kind of man I should have married. A man who was happy to be very, very ordinary . . .