The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock

by Jane Riley

‘Goodness me, Oliver, this is all too much for one meeting,’ Mum said. ‘We should have had separate meetings for each point. There’s a lot to think about.’

  ‘There is, and I didn’t mean to overwhelm you but, well, lately . . . Let’s just say I want to enter my forties differently to how I did my thirties.’

  ‘Next you’ll be telling me you’re buying a red sports car.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Good, because I can’t see you in a convertible.’

  Jean stifled a chuckle. Mum looked about to get up.

  ‘Hang on, there’s one more thing,’ I said. My last announcement ready to go.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m giving you both permission to retire.’

  Mum gasped.

  ‘I’m not asking you to, as you have both been immensely valuable to the business. I’m giving you the chance to do so, if you wish.’

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ Mum exclaimed. ‘I’ve never thought about retiring.’ She glanced at her lap and the wrinkled hands that lay in it.

  ‘You’re seventy-seven,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve never liked bowls or bridge. I like being here. You’re my family.’

  I went over to her and squeezed her shoulder. She didn’t shrug me off. ‘And this is still your family,’ I told her. ‘You can still come here. You could be chairperson and sit on monthly board meetings, or I could buy you out and, with the extra cash, you could go travelling. Visit France, practise your French, or try something new. Haven’t you always wanted to learn Japanese flower arranging?’

  ‘Ikebana,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘What better time than now, while you’re fit and healthy?’

  She chewed her lip but didn’t looked displeased.

  ‘Look, I’m not making either of you retire. I want you to know that I can run the business on my own, make my own decisions about its future and that it will all be fine. I will be fine.’

  ‘Thank you, Oliver.’ Jean smiled cheekily, as if she had just been let loose in the brooch section of a jewellery store.

  ‘Have a think about it,’ I added, even though I could tell they were both thinking already. The air brewed with the contemplation of a new world bubbling within reach.

  ‘Right, well, if that’s it, then, I’m going to put the kettle on,’ Mum said.

  I couldn’t have asked for a better start to my new resolutions. And yet it did get better. Later that day I overheard Jean telling Mum about a cruise she was thinking of going on with her husband.

  ‘It’s a boutique cruise around the South Pacific,’ Jean said over the rumblings of the kettle. ‘Maximum seventy-two passengers. I’m not a fan of too many people but Bill has no qualms whatsoever. He’ll probably organise everyone into groups for some on-board sporting competition, even if it is only bingo. I like the thought of having everything done for me. What luxury!’

  Mum said it sounded marvellous and asked whether she could join them, with a burst of laughter unlike the sound she normally made. I liked hearing them talk with joy in their voices about something other than the funeral business and it made me wonder whether I needed to start looking for a new administrative assistant as well.

  Then, as Mum started fussing over a new bunch of flowers – cerise-coloured Asian lilies – trimming the stalks, angling the blooms, rearranging them so they sat just so, it occurred to me. I don’t know how many bouquets of lilies I had seen in Clock & Son over the years – hundreds, if not thousands – and yet I had never realised. How had I not thought of it before? I rushed back to my office to text Edie.

  Cold-Calling

  There’s something about making the right decisions that is very good for your posture. I’m sure my slouch lessened over the next few days and it made me wonder when I next saw Edie whether I was a few centimetres taller than her than I’d first thought. We met a couple of days later at Andy’s studio after work to photograph the candles. Edie brought one of the extra candles we had made for Fran that was unlit and in pristine condition for Andy to photograph. I was glad Andy could meet Edie and see that the creator of candles that smell like the dead had neither a wart on her chin nor wielded a weapon. In fact, Edie looked quite delightful in a teal dress that swished to reveal the tops of her knees every so often. We didn’t really have to do very much. In fact, we could easily have left Andy to it, as expert as he was at product shots against a white background and flattering lighting. Still, we hovered and took turns taking the candle lid off and angling it in a different manner so we had options to choose from. At one point Edie and I leaned in at the same time and I got a whiff of a perfume or cream I couldn’t initially decipher. Ripe nectarines? Lanolin? Meringue? Or was it just the scent of her, the sort of scent she would put in a candle if she were creating one for herself? Then Andy told us to stop fiddling and get out of the shot and the moment of deciphering was lost.

  Within an hour, Andy was done. He said he would do some digital tweaking and email us the best shots the next day. As I had already primed Clock & Son’s leaflet printer for the job and sent him Edie’s copy and design layout, we would be able to get the brochures in a couple of days.

  Afterwards, Andy and I went down to the pub. We had not done this for a while and I wanted to shout him a beer for helping us with the photo shoot. The seven o’clock news bounced off the big screen near our table, as if trying to talk over the top of us. We could have changed seats but we had been sitting in this spot for as long as I could remember and I saw no reason to change. I bought Andy’s favourite beer and two packets of salt-and-vinegar crisps. As Andy ripped open the first bag, the weather presenter forecasted an impending storm, angry winds and record rainfall over a twenty-four-hour period. As we enjoyed the crisps and beer, Andy updated me on Lucy, who was ‘still feeling rotten’, and how they’d had a scan and seen the baby put a finger up its nose.

  ‘Do you want to see?’ he asked, pulling out a photo from his wallet.

  We spent a few silent seconds admiring an unborn child picking its nose, then I announced that I, too, had news and told him how I had returned the diary to Henry and we’d reconciled on the porch.

  ‘Well done, mate,’ Andy said. He clinked his beer bottle on mine. ‘I’m proud of you, getting out of your comfort zone and all that.’

  I delighted in the realisation that I had gone out of my comfort zone and hadn’t even experienced vertigo. I had returned the diary and, so far, everything was going just fine. I hadn’t fallen off a precipice and nothing bad had happened. In fact, it was quite the reverse.

  ‘Edie’s nice, too,’ Andy continued. ‘The candles seem less weird now that I know more about them. It’s like you’re on a roll, all these changes you’re making. Can you possibly jam in anything more?’

  I laughed and asked if he wanted another beer. Rain drummed the roof above us and, through the window near the bar, lightning thrashed the sky as if giving it a flogging and I didn’t even flinch.

  When the brochures were ready it was time to go cold-calling. We had a list of the top ten retirement villages, nursing homes and florists’ we wanted to target and our plan was to visit them all to see how much interest we could garner. If cold-calling proved successful, we would draw up another list for another day, and so on, to spread the word. I didn’t like to tell Edie I had already earmarked a rather snazzy tie I was considering purchasing for our stint on morning television – a light blue linen number with an assortment of brightly coloured flowers – and wondered if she had a floral dress to complement it. I would ask when the moment was right, when she no longer thought my public relations fantasy was ‘jumping the gun’.

  I drove to pick up Edie with the box of brochures in the back seat and made a last-minute decision to buy her a bunch of yellow tulips.

  ‘I thought they matched your front door,’ I said, when I got to her house.

  She laughed. ‘Dulux Dandelion Yellow, to be specific,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you how many sample pots of yellow paint I tried until I fo
und the one I wanted. The flowers are lovely, thank you.’

  ‘Think of them as an added extra thank you,’ I said, which didn’t really make much sense, but I had no good reason for why I’d bought them for her, apart from an uncontrollable urge that wouldn’t go away.

  ‘We’ve only sold the candles to two people, you know,’ she said. ‘We shouldn’t get too carried away.’

  ‘I’m not getting carried away,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I find giving someone something for no reason is the best gift of all.’

  Her dress had ridden up her femur and I pretended not to look, even though I was finding it hard not to gaze at the whole of Edie and not just her legs. I gave her a brochure instead.

  ‘Fabulous,’ she said. ‘They look like we mean business, so let’s go and get some.’

  The first florist we approached turned us away immediately, on the basis they had too many candles already. She wouldn’t even let us explain. The second made encouraging noises and kept a brochure and so it went, little by little, making a bit of progress here, not a lot there. Clareville Retirement Village gave us the best reception of all. A gaggle of intrigued nurses gathered around to learn more and each took a brochure as I handed them around.

  ‘It’s a crazy idea, but we love crazy around here,’ the manager said.

  ‘I’d like to make one of old Dulcie,’ said another.

  ‘She was a character, and didn’t she used to smell the greatest? What was that perfume she always used to wear?’

  ‘Poison.’

  They all laughed. We laughed with them and they promised to tell everyone about them.

  By lunch time we had ticked off six destinations and given away a decent chunk of the brochures. Although we received mixed reviews, we got enough positive comments to want to keep going.

  ‘It’s all about the publicity, isn’t it, getting them out there?’ Edie said. ‘Word of mouth is going to be our best bet. We need to get people talking.’

  I agreed. As far as I was concerned, Edie could keep talking as long as she wanted.

  And I went home that day wondering if you could have such a thing as a retrospective resolution. As soon as I walked in the door, I got the notebook from the bedside table and opened it to the last page. Why not? I thought, and began to write: Thou shalt embark on a new and unexpected venture that will help boost business, in which you must bottle smells of deceased clients and sell them as candles. It sounded absurd and yet I was doing it and it seemed to be working. I gave it two ticks and a star. I then wondered about what Mum had said a few days earlier about what I’d like to do for my birthday. For the first time, I actually felt ready to consider the proposition and even to celebrate – but not merely with a few supermarket candles stuck on a store-bought cake I shared with Mum. It didn’t have to be something extravagant, just something worthy of the man I hoped I was turning into. A proper celebration for having survived a tumultuous year and coming out of it not just alive but rejuvenated.

  Immediately, I wanted to do something out of character, like unballing all my socks and matching one half with a different one altogether. Or reordering my pantry items so that they weren’t in alphabetical order. Messing up my bed so that it was unmade when I got in it. Ha! I would do them now, I thought, there would be no turning back. How wonderfully carefree it made me feel! It was as if I had gained a sense of freedom I had never felt before. The freedom to be someone new.

  The Gift

  It was exactly five weeks until my fortieth birthday – Friday at five o’clock – and Mum was to meet Edie. I asked Jean to stay back as well. I didn’t say why. I wanted it to be a surprise. I was so full of anticipation that I reordered the items in my stationery drawer for the third time that day.

  Jean stayed at her desk, looking up at the door every now and again, and Mum did her end-of-the-day decor tweaks – adjusting paintings that were on a lean, plumping cushions, adding water to the flowers, decreasing crumpled sofa arm covers, fluffing tissues. She did a good job, as always. You’d never have known there had been people in the place at all. An air of expectation hovered like low-hanging fog.

  Finally, Edie arrived at a quarter past six, her hair tied in a loose chignon and wearing tiny earrings in the shape of macaroons.

  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘I’d like to introduce you to Edie.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Clock,’ Edie said, putting out a hand to shake. ‘I’m so glad we could finally meet.’

  ‘Hello, dear,’ Mum replied. ‘Yes, I’ve heard about you and your candles of the dead.’ She sounded embarrassingly disparaging.

  ‘Well, I’d love to tell you more about them,’ Edie said, ignoring Mum’s dubiousness. She then did something most daren’t do: she took Mum’s hand and led her to the sofa. I knew I could trust Edie to soften Mum’s scepticism and bring her round. ‘You see, Mrs Clock, they’re not meant to be macabre. They’re meant to be memory prompts. You’re in the business of helping people grieve and so you know how important it is to encourage them to find the joy in remembering their loved ones. My candles are designed to do just that, to bring comfort, solace and happiness. For what else have we got left in the end but memories?’

  I remembered Edie telling me that the first time I met her. I hadn’t appreciated the sentiment at the time and thought I must add it to Dad’s Folder. What’s more, we could have a whole new section dedicated to the candles.

  ‘Before I show you some samples, Oliver and I have something to give you.’

  Mum looked at me querulously. ‘Really, Oliver, you know I don’t like surprises and, lately, you keep giving them to me.’

  ‘This is meant to be a nice one,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

  ‘I hope you like it, Mrs Clock.’ Edie pulled a candle out of her bag and presented it to her.

  ‘Oh, Doreen!’ Jean exclaimed.

  ‘I hope this isn’t what I think it is. I can’t imagine what I might smell like. It doesn’t bear contemplating.’ Mum glared at me. ‘I’m not even dead yet.’

  ‘It’s not a candle of you, Mrs Clock,’ Edie explained. ‘But it is of someone whose memory you may not wish to forget.’

  Mum stared at the candle as if it were going to start ticking. We all watched and waited. Hoping. With slow deliberation, she placed her handbag on a sofa arm, re-crinkling the cover, and found her reading glasses.

  ‘You won’t need those, Mum,’ I said. ‘It’s all about the smell.’

  ‘Actually, it’s better if you close your eyes,’ Edie suggested. ‘All you have to do is sniff. Or, even better, let the scent come to you. When you’re ready, I’ll waft it under your nose.’

  ‘Waft? Isn’t it usually bad smells that waft?’ Mum looked at me, to Jean and back to Edie again. When no one reacted, she sighed, ‘Well, alright then, I’m ready.’ She closed her eyes. Edie lifted the lid and circled the candle. Mum’s nose twitched.

  ‘Waft again,’ she said, her eyes still shut, mouth twitching in concentration. ‘And again.’

  Edie glanced at me. I shrugged. I couldn’t tell if Mum’s repeated smelling was a good sign or not. Three more times Edie perambulated the candle in front of my mother’s nostrils. We all held our breaths. If you could hear air moving, I heard it, loudly amidst the silence.

  Then Mum spoke.

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ she said, sitting upright. Her eyes opened. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’ Mum’s gaze drifted out the door and down the street. For a minute, we lost her. No one dared speak in case she never came back. It was like watching her thoughts tripping and skipping to a new land, away from us. Far, far away. Finally, she returned. She looked at me, then not at me, at somewhere else entirely.

  ‘When I found her,’ she said, ‘she was like a puppet lying flat and all that was needed was string to pull her up and get her moving again.’ She looked dreamy, as if the thought of Lily as a puppet were a reassuring one. ‘I tried to resuscitate her, but nothing happened. She was floppy and heavy in my arms. I never wanted to
let her go.’ Mum’s voice faded to an almost inaudible whisper. ‘The day it happened, your grandmother gave me a bouquet of lilies. I can still smell the rain around us and the lilies in the living room.’ She wiped an eye. ‘Dear me . . .’

  I sat down next to her and put a hand on hers. ‘We didn’t want to upset you, Mum.’

  ‘I’m not upset. I’ve been transported back in time.’

  ‘I thought we needed to bring Lily back,’ I said. ‘To have her in our lives again.’

  ‘You know, Oliver, I’ve wanted to do that for years. But your father . . . He didn’t want to talk about it. Or maybe he couldn’t. So I didn’t either. We corked our emotions as if they were model ships in a glass bottle.’

  Edie picked up the box of tissues and handed it around like a church collection box. We all took one and blew. A chorus of noses to lighten the mood and make us giggle. Then Mum said, ‘Can I keep it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Edie said. ‘It’s a gift.’

  I gave Mum a sideways hug. She leaned into my armpit. It was as good a hug as we’d ever had. In that moment, it was like no one else was there. It was just Mum and me, reconnecting, like we should have done long ago.

  ‘Alright, that’s enough,’ she said, resuming her non-sideways hug position. ‘I’d like to read the label now.’ She put on her glasses. ‘La Lumière de Lily,’ she said. ‘Anything in French sounds nice, doesn’t it?’ Then she looked up, peered over her spectacles. ‘I don’t suppose you have time to make one of your father?’

  We watched Mum trundle back to her car, carrying the candle as if it were a crown on a velvet cushion. She was a round shadow in a dimly lit street. A wind whipped itself into a frenzy then eased, as if being sucked away by a vacuum cleaner. Jean patted me on the back and congratulated us.

  ‘You’ve won over a tricky customer,’ she said. ‘I think Doreen will be most supportive of your business idea now.’

  We watched Jean leave, too, her handbag resting on the crook of an elbow and the fabric belt of her dress waving us goodbye. I shut the door and swung the sign to ‘Closed’ as reception succumbed to a navy dusk. We breathed in the serenity of a few seconds of silence, contemplating the success of Mum’s candle, until Edie spoke.