by Jane Riley
As Andy handed out drinks and Lucy passed around blinis, Caroline sidled up to me and started chatting.
‘Are you divorced, too?’ she said. ‘I’m glad to be shot of mine but it’s a drag being single.’
‘No, not divorced,’ I said, and put a whole blini in my mouth to avoid disclosing any more detail.
‘You’re a funeral director, aren’t you?’
I nodded.
‘Intriguing,’ she said, touching my arm in a way that suggested she was either brushing off dog hair (heaven forbid) or smoothing out a crease (highly unlikely). ‘So what’s it like, really, to be around the dead all the time?’
‘It’s very quiet,’ I said, deadpan.
She laughed, louder than I was expecting. I didn’t feel the need to explain that most of my work was spent around the living. It would have ruined the moment. I waited for the next question. Because there’s always more than one.
‘You must get some strange requests. Do you? Go on, tell me. I’m not squeamish.’ She elbowed me in delight.
When I started working in the funeral industry, I thought it would be fun to make up answers to such questions, as if my work revolved around making B-grade horror movies, until I realised I didn’t have to fabricate. Humanity did it all for me.
‘Well, yes, I do,’ I said, reaching for another blini as Lucy passed.
‘And?’
‘Once, we had a woman who bequeathed her four gold teeth to her four grandchildren.’
‘Really? What an inheritance!’
‘Then there was the time a man requested the return of his wife’s breast implants. I didn’t like to ask if he had someone else in mind for them.’
I hadn’t noticed Caroline’s eyes during the long handshake but, now that they were popping out in shock, I noted how striking they were.
‘Is Oliver regaling you with tales from the dark side?’ Andy said, joining us.
We all laughed, even though I don’t think Caroline had believed anything I’d said, and the talk turned to Andy’s latest photographic gig and the difficulty of capturing the full beauty of a hamburger in one shot.
Over dinner, Caroline and I were seated next to each other, with Andy opposite me, Simon opposite Caroline and Sue opposite Lucy. I raised my glass to Andy as a personal thanks for the invite and the fine food. He winked at me in return, which I thought was a strange response to a toast, but I winked back nonetheless, which made him chuckle. I hadn’t intended to drink at speed yet found myself enjoying the evening so much that I was guzzling wine like a three-litre four-wheel drive going through petrol, which made me laugh more loudly at comments that were only mildly funny. Thankfully, Caroline didn’t mind and seemed more than happy to join in with me, which just added to the overall mood of conviviality. As I savoured the last mouthful of dessert, unwilling – unable – to contribute to the current conversation on everyone’s next holidays, I felt a hand on my knee.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ Caroline said.
‘Lucy is an excellent cook,’ I agreed. I kept my hands on the table, one gripping the spoon, the other the bowl, too scared to let them disappear under the table and acknowledge a stranger’s hand still on my knee. I couldn’t remember if a woman with whom I was not in a relationship had ever left a hand on my leg, as if it were a discarded sock that had been mislaid. On discovering a discarded sock, the normal course of proceedings would be to find its partner, ball them together and put them in their rightful place – ideally in colour-coordinated sections in your sock drawer. Yet if I so much as touched the hand, let alone tried to lead it to its partner, Caroline might get the wrong idea. If I left it there, I would appear compliant. If I flicked it off, it would be rudely dismissive. I looked at Caroline, who hadn’t stopped talking, and tried not to think of her hand as one half of a lost pair of socks.
‘My attempts at making desserts,’ she was saying, ‘are like metaphors for my marriage. They either collapse, are undercooked or don’t set.’ She let out a laugh and licked her spoon.
She seemed oblivious to where her hand was. We were both acting as if it was perfectly socially acceptable for her hand to have wandered and found my thigh, which was possibly, at this very minute, tensing unnaturally.
‘More dessert wine?’ Andy asked, and started pouring before I had time to answer.
The sticky liquid wrapped itself around my tongue and clung to my teeth. What I needed, rather than more wine, was the bathroom. When Caroline engaged in a conversation with Lucy about the benefits or otherwise of pet insurance – Caroline having a cat and Andy and Lucy having lost their dog a few months ago because of an inoperable tumour – I eased myself off the chair, letting her hand slide away. Blood rushed to my knees. I teetered, then lurched to the bathroom. After I had splashed my face with water and gulped a few mouthfuls to help sober me up, I checked myself out in the mirror, fixed my hair and re-rolled my shirtsleeves.
‘I think the night’s going well, don’t you, Marie?’ I said quietly to my dear friend. I was pleased with my choice of shirt, whose buttons hadn’t popped post-dessert, as well as my newly de-fuzzed chin and wine-boosted repartee, which seemed to have been well received. Yet, now that I was away from the table, I felt the draining effects of all the socialising and lashings of wine; suddenly I was overcome with tiredness. I hadn’t been out this late in a long time, middle-of-the-night call-outs notwithstanding. As I exited the bathroom, burbles of chatter and laughter tumbled down the hallway. Needing a minute or two longer by myself, I turned in the opposite direction and headed for the back door for a moment’s quiet reprieve.
I stood in the back porch, looking out at the dimly lit brick courtyard with its handmade vertical garden and terracotta pots. Moths fluttered frantically around the bare light overhead and invisible tree frogs croaked, as if something were lodged in their throats. The air was filled with a pungent plant perfume I couldn’t identify.
‘You don’t have a cigarette, do you?’ I hadn’t heard Caroline sidle up to me on the step.
Perhaps she needed a bit of fresh air, too.
‘Sorry, I don’t smoke,’ I said.
‘Me neither.’ She laughed. ‘I told myself I wouldn’t smoke at all this year but it didn’t last long. Resolutions never do. I’m not addicted or anything, but I do like a puff on a night like tonight. Particularly under the stars.’
If I shielded my eyes from the porch light I could make out a smattering of stars like luminescent pinpricks. They made me feel very small and completely insignificant.
‘I reckon,’ she said, eyeing me up, ‘that you could tell me what the stars are. You seem like a man who might own a telescope.’
Where did she get that idea from? ‘Sorry to disappoint but I don’t own a telescope. I don’t even own binoculars. I do have a magnifying glass somewhere but that’s only good for reading the ingredients on packets of food.’
She chuckled. ‘You’re a funny man, Oliver Clock.’
As I contemplated how funny I really was, she edged closer to me. I wondered if the bigness of the night made her feel small and insignificant as well. Her arm brushed mine. If we both turned our heads to face each other in a synchronised-swimming kind of a way, we would have been close enough to kiss, give or take a centimetre or two. I don’t know why I thought that. The only woman in recent years I had been this close to in order to kiss had been Marie and it was immensely disappointing that we hadn’t been able to. I had to take a step back to regain my personal space. But then it seemed as if Caroline was going move forward again, which would have meant me taking another step backwards and us inadvertently dancing the two-step. Thankfully, she didn’t, and two cats hissing in a neighbouring property snapped me out of my two-step-dancing thoughts.
‘We should be getting back,’ I said.
‘Yes, come on,’ Caroline agreed.
‘I was just telling Oliver,’ she said as we rejoined the guests, ‘how I’ve signed up for salsa dance lessons.’
I don’t kn
ow why she said that, when we hadn’t been discussing dancing at all. Had she read my thoughts on the two-step or was she wondering what the others thought we’d been doing together? Heaven forbid!
‘Have you?’ said Sue. ‘I never knew you wanted to learn to dance.’
‘That’s what happens when you divorce.’
‘Who are you doing it with?’
‘Oh, no one. You don’t have to bring a partner.’
‘Oliver will go, won’t you, Oliver?’
I swivelled my head in Andy’s direction.
‘Will you?’ Caroline said, turning to me.
In front of everyone, I was being committed to Latin American dancing lessons. My toes curled, my thighs tensed, the tiramisu cha-cha-ed in my belly. Help!
‘It sounds like fun,’ I said, as jovially as I could. ‘But it’s hard for me to commit to things like that in my line of work. A hazard of the job.’
‘It’s tough being on call most of the time, isn’t it?’ Lucy said.
For once, I was happy for the talk to return to the funeral industry. Dancing wasn’t mentioned again. I could go home, relieved that salsa moves had only been a light conversation starter.
The Day After
The following morning I shuffled around my flat like a slow-moving wombat with a headache. I couldn’t even bend down to pick up the clothes I’d stepped out of the night before. I was suffering from day-after regret: the chunks of Camembert and alcohol-laced tiramisu that were still wedged in my belly, Andy’s generous servings of wine lounging in my frontal lobe. I also woke up with a great big question mark over Caroline. For it suddenly occurred to me in the annoyingly bright light of the day that she may have been flirting with me. Had that lone hand on my thigh been put there on purpose? Had her closeness on the porch been predetermined? And if so, was it the one-off flirtation of a tipsy, single dinner-party guest to another tipsy, single dinner-party guest or was there an expectation of possible future encounters? Or did it mean nothing at all? It was an unexpected conundrum that made a sore head even sorer. But whatever the case, it didn’t really matter, for my heart was with Marie, and whether she was living or not was, at that time, irrelevant. So I told myself to relax about the whole thing and be happy that a very small section of the resolution box labelled ‘get a life’ had been ticked.
When my stomach had settled, I made a late breakfast of toast liberally spread with marmalade, and a mug of tea. I don’t know why, but I ate as if I weren’t still full from the night before; it was basically just an excuse to eat marmalade. Then all I could do was lie on the sofa and stare at the ceiling. A tiny spider crawled across the paintwork bubbling in one corner. My head throbbed, my mouth was furry. The spider scuttled back in the other direction. I detected a thin line of web. If I had been feeling more energetic, I would have got up and swiped it with a broom.
When the phone rang early that afternoon, I was still on the sofa. I must have fallen asleep. My eyes were heavy and my mouth was growing mould. The spider had gone. Another body was heading to the mortuary. I hauled myself up, changed into a suit, splashed my face with water and ran a hand through my hair. I took a moment to stroke my chin and appreciate its new-found silkiness and remember how good I had felt about myself last night compared with how guilt-ridden I now felt. My tripping the light fantastic had turned into a marvellous stumbling in the dark.
It was a slow drive to Clock & Son as rain sluiced the windscreen and shot water bullets at the car. Even at full speed the windscreen wipers did little to clear my vision. I met the transfer driver at the back entrance and was soon in the dry, preparing the mortuary room. Nursing-home bridge champion Juliet Brown had the figure of a ballet dancer and the pink hair of a 1980s Cyndi Lauper. Lightning lit up the metal table and surgical instruments. I groaned at the sight of them and another body to be preserved. Just because I could embalm didn’t mean I wanted to. But right then I had no other choice but to get on with the job. The only consolation was thinking of Marie and letting her beautiful voice suggesting suitable flowers for Mrs Brown be a pleasant distraction from the formaldehyde fumes. I reckon she would have picked something like hot-pink gerberas to coordinate with Mrs Brown’s hair. ‘Yes, Oliver,’ I could hear her say, ‘we must find a flower that’s exactly the same colour. It’s the attention to detail that matters.’
Then my phone vibrated against my leg. I paused with the suture and pulled it from my pocket. It was a text from Caroline. Had she been listening to me instead?
I really enjoyed last night. Are you still up for salsa dancing? I hope it wasn’t presumptuous of me but I’ve booked you in with me. It starts Tuesday evening.
What? I stepped back from Mrs Brown. I couldn’t have her suffer from a mediocre job because I was in shock. Surely this was a joke. Caroline didn’t even know me.
I assume salsa dancing is a euphemism for going for a drink? I typed, in the hope that a humorous response would get me out of it.
Funny, but I was being serious. I’ve signed up for beginner lessons. I know I said you didn’t have to bring a partner but I think it would be more fun if I did and you seemed keen.
Oh.
Plus, she continued, I want to get fit.
Ah.
‘What do you think, Juliet? Do I go out with this woman?’ I asked, in an effort to decide. ‘I mean, I’ve only just met her.’ But Juliet wasn’t giving anything away. Unless I did a superlative job on suturing her lips, she was only ever going to look sad for me. What would Marie have thought about it all? I wondered. She loved dancing and may well have encouraged me to get more instruction in case I ever needed to be a dance partner.
A torrent of rain waterfalled, thunder cracked. I put the phone on the table and recommenced on Juliet Brown, trying to remember Jean’s tips on teasing hair – the deceased’s family having specified that her coiffure resembled her favourite style: as if electrocuted. But the comb got stuck. I stepped away from my mess and reread the texts. I want to get fit too, I replied, but not sure if dancing is my thing. It was better to be honest.
Come on, it will be fun, I promise.
I admired my handiwork on Juliet Brown. How glamorous and content she now looked. As if her new appearance had given her the confidence to take on the next stage of her life with courage and spunk, and a whole lot of crimson lipstick. I read Caroline’s text again. What had I written about going out of my comfort zone and taking a risk? I may have regretted not asking Marie out but that didn’t mean my next encounter with the opposite sex had to end in missed opportunities and regret. What’s more, it was another great excuse to avoid spending an entire evening alone in my flat. When things had ended badly with Shelley, Marie had told me to keep my chin up; that things would only get better. Was this things getting better?
OK, I texted. But I’m no great shakes (pun intended).
I slid the phone back into my pocket and, as I did so, a peculiar sensation slithered through me. I had just been asked out on a date! A living woman was interested in me and offering solace from lonely singledom. ‘Yay,’ I said to Juliet Brown, who definitely looked happier for me now. After I said my goodbyes to Mrs Brown and tidied up, I retreated to the kitchenette. Shadows walked past the window; the rain had not let up. Then something crashed to the ground. A pedestrian squealed. I rushed outside to find the large Clock & Son sign that had swung under the awning for my entire life lying on the pavement, the wood cracked between the ‘S’ and the ‘o’. I looked around to see if anyone was hurt, but whoever had been close to its fall had hurried on. The sign was long and heavy, but I managed to half lift, half push it out of the way and lean it against the building. Water drizzled down its paintwork and on to the pavement. The pounding in my head worsened. The dregs of a hangover mixed with a dollop of panic and a serving of the doldrums. I went back inside, locked up and drove home, aware that resolution number four about reviving Clock & Son still lay inert and lifeless in my notebook.
Snooping
Whenever it rai
ned, I’d go outside and dance like Lily had, to see if I could go to the same place Lily had gone, but I was always rushed inside and the only place I ever went to was my bedroom. After Lily died, the world became a risky place to live in, a place in which many things were deemed ‘too dangerous’ and my mother’s language became sprinkled with ‘don’t’s, the way my father used salt. I found it easier to do as she said because I was that kind of a child: compliant, malleable. Then somehow my mother’s ‘don’t’s settled into my mental vernacular. No, they’d say. No, Oliver, don’t. Hold on. Hold back. And because of this fear I struggled to make decisions – well, not make them so much as enact them. I could make a decision in my head and even write it down in my notebook, but doing it was a different matter. I would think of all the things that could go wrong, the risks that might be involved, the possibility of failure. I feared the unknown as others are scared to eat food past its use-by date. The ‘don’t’s won over from the ‘do’s time and time again, until it seemed the natural way to be.
Whether my parents talked about Lily in hushed voices, alone together at night, I do not know, but they never spoke about her with me after she died or about her in my presence. It was as if she had never been born and the picture I had of her lying on the lawn wasn’t real or had been confused with an image I had of us both lying in the back garden looking at the summer sky, feeling the prickly grass beneath our limbs and giggling for no other reason than to laugh at things that weren’t funny.
I did try talking to Mum about Lily once. It was after Dad had died, and I’d not long been running Clock & Son. She was polishing the display coffins and I was heat-steaming the coffin linings. It came up because I’d just told her how Andy’s attempts at getting me to play golf had been thwarted that weekend by a thunderstorm. She wasn’t impressed – not because we weren’t able to play but because we had thought to go out at all when bad weather was forecast. A typical Doreen response.