by Gillian Best
As it was, it took all my energy to find what I hoped was a recently used mug and fill it with water. Getting to the tap was nearly impossible but I managed. I pushed four tablets – double the dose – out of the packet and swallowed them greedily.
I leaned against the counter and caught a glimpse of myself in the window. An old, haggard woman stared back at me and I didn’t recognise myself. My skin hung off my face, the jowls drooped, the skin underneath my chin and on my neck was paper thin and really did look like a turkey neck. My complexion was so pale as to be ghastly and ghostly, and my freckles had been washed away. I looked skeletal. I knew I was dying, but I had never seen up close what that looked like. Now I knew.
I surveyed the damage in the kitchen as I waited for the tablets to get to work. On the kitchen table, amidst the detritus of John’s disordered mind was a glass full of water with a small brown twig in it. I thought he must really have been losing his mind if he was using sticks as table decoration, but when I looked closer I saw the buds and recognised it instantly. And in that moment, as I reached out for it, I felt the ground give way, and my head spin, and I knew that a part of him still remembered that he loved me. As my head hit the table I thought that there was hope yet for us.
‘Martha!’ John shouted.
His voice sounded far away, as if it were underwater. I felt as though I were floating away from him and tried to claw my way back.
‘Martha,’ he said, softer, and I felt his breath on my cheek.
I struggled to open my eyes, which felt like they were glued together from sleep and when I prised them apart, he was there. He put his arms around me and cradled me to his chest. He didn’t ask what had happened.
‘John,’ I said. ‘The bath. I’m drying up.’
He helped me into the bathroom and sat me against the wall as he turned the taps on and when I heard the running water I felt as though I had just breached the surface and could breathe again.
‘Not too warm,’ I said.
He lifted me up. I had forgotten that I wasn’t the only one with strength in our house. My husband helped me to undress and it reminded me of a night early on in our marriage when he had tugged at the sash of my dress.
The tub was full and he lowered me into it gently. I had lost so much muscle, so much weight, that it felt like my bones were scraping against the bottom of the porcelain tub, but the water felt good.
John sat on the floor and put his hand in the water.
‘It’s a bit warmer than you’re used to.’
‘It’s okay.’
I reached out for him, cupping his chin in my hand.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘For what?’
‘All of it.’
‘Ten pebbles,’ he said.
‘Ten pebbles, two children, fifty years.’
He kissed my hand. ‘It was my pleasure.’
I smiled. ‘Mine, too.’
He put my hand to his cheek and held it there. I didn’t know when his moments of lucidity would arrive or how long they might last, but I was glad he was with me.
‘Salt, John. Can you get the salt?’
He didn’t question it, didn’t even flinch. He went into the kitchen and returned with the box.
‘Maldon seat salt,’ he said.
‘I’ll make do.’
He sprinkled it over me and it looked like snow. When the box was empty he sat down again and I took a deep breath, sliding under the water. When it poured into my ears and I was fully immersed I exhaled slowly.
I had thought I could fall asleep and I had wanted to stay in for as long as I could, to fall asleep in the water and stay forever.
I must have started to drift off because I heard the sound of the bathwater going down the plughole.
‘You’re getting cold,’ he said.
‘I don’t care.’
‘I do,’ he said.
He took a towel from the rack and wrapped me in it, and somehow he managed to get me upstairs and into bed. He opened the dresser looking for pyjamas but I told him to stop.
‘Come here,’ I said.
He got into bed with me and I rested my head on his chest.
‘I’m sorry it wasn’t the sea,’ he said.
Soul Mass
‘She wanted to be cremated,’ I said to the man at the funeral parlour.
‘Yes,’ he said, his suit as plain and quiet as the room itself.
‘A pine casket will be fine,’ Iain said.
‘Very good,’ he replied.
‘I don’t know what I pictured,’ I said to my brother.
‘I imagined she’d go back into the sea,’ he said.
‘Like a mermaid?’
Iain’s ears reddened and he stared at his shoes. ‘Sort of.’
The phone had rung at breakfast while I had been eating yogurt. Iris had been in the shower and Myrtle at practice. It was a Tuesday. The phone’s piercing tone had startled me and I remember scowling at it, thinking it was probably a telesales call. It had rung and I had eaten another spoonful of yogurt, right from the container. The phone wouldn’t stop so I gave in.
‘What?’ I demanded.
‘This is Henry.’
‘I don’t want whatever you’re selling.’
‘Your parents’ neighbour, Henry.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
It was early and my mind had been halfway between the night before and the day ahead.
Casually, I asked, ‘Is everything alright?’
The moment I said it, it had dawned on me that the answer was obvious. Henry had never phoned before.
I heard him take a breath.
‘She’s passed, your Mum.’
She’s passed. Your Mum. My Mum. Mum.
It had been coming, but there had been no way of predicting when, and no opportunity to gather around her during her last days as a family. It could’ve been sooner or later that Henry would have had to pick up the phone and give me the news. I had thought about it obsessively after she’d invited us up to the house – all of us – to tell us that her health had taken an irrevocable turn for the worst.
‘When?’ I said.
‘Last night.’
I didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? She was dead and gone.
‘John’s not coping too badly, considering.’
My father. His unravelling mind. What must it have been like? Had he known or understood?
‘I’ll keep an eye on him until you can get here,’ Henry said.
‘Yes, good, thank you,’ I said.
‘How did you find out?’
‘I went over in the morning. For tea and to check. He was in the kitchen with his tomato soup. I went upstairs and there she was. In their bed.’
I put the phone to my chest, pressed it against my ribs and tried to push it through me to distract myself from the image of my father, unravelling, next to my mother’s body in bed.
‘I’ve called emergency services. And the funeral home. They’ll need to speak with you.’
‘She’s still there?’
‘They’re coming. Within an hour or so.’
My father was in the kitchen eating soup first thing in the morning because for him it was dinnertime. My mother’s body was upstairs, getting colder and stiffer. The scene in my mind was grotesque. But what else could be done? The living keep on living and the dead stay dead.
‘Harriet?’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry.’
My brother and I sat on the other side of the dark wood desk, surrounded by dark wood panelling on the walls and plush red carpets. If the mood had been slightly cheerier it could’ve been a pub in a tiny village, but instead of a barman there was the funeral director and he handed us a catalogue of urns.
Iain flipped through the pages and I thought about the person who had had to write the copy for the brochure, to quietly and sombrely extol the virtues of a gold-plated urn over a simple and understated china white ur
n. The final resting place for your loved one, but something that would still look nice on the mantle, in the lounge on the sideboard next to the good whisky and crystal cut glasses. It was absurd.
‘What about this one?’ Iain said, as he pointed to a blue cloisonné urn with gold trim.
I leaned over and whispered, ‘We’re scattering her ashes in the sea.’
‘I think the blue is nice, like the sea.’
‘Not her sea.’
He turned to me, there were black circles under his eyes and he was pale. There hadn’t been time for him to get over the jetlag. Our parents’ house was chaotic, full of well-intentioned neighbours who had overlooked our father’s constantly changing mental state, bringing casseroles in lieu of apologies.
Such is the way of small towns: word gets around and no one wants to be seen as having been unsympathetic, even if they had shunned my mother and father before she passed, so people I had never met came to the door with pies and stews. It was kind of them to stop by and I tried to be appreciative but it was hard because the constant flow of people was having an adverse effect on Dad, who needed constant reminding that Mum had died, which led to frequent shouting and the slamming of doors and Dad hiding out over at Henry’s.
‘The blue one?’ I said.
Iain nodded.
‘Fine.’
Everyone was struggling: Iain spent the evenings listlessly staring at the television next to Dad and I wondered how on earth we were ever going to get through any of this.
I had dropped the phone and run into the bathroom, grateful that we had agreed at the outset not to lock any doors in our home. I had flung back the shower curtain and Iris had jumped from shock.
She had stared at me, hand on her chest, shampoo in her hair, soap on her legs.
‘What?’ she’d said. ‘What’s happened?’
I burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably and she pulled me close and I pressed my face into her body as we stood there, half in and half out of the shower, the room filling with steam. Iris smoothed my hair down as I wept for myself, my loss and my Mum.
An hour later and I was in the car driving to Dover. Iris hadn’t wanted me to drive in my state but the train schedule was uncompromising and made no exceptions for the fact that I needed to be there immediately. She would join me later after picking Myrtle up from school.
Then there was the problem of getting Iain home. It would take the better part of three days and I would have to manage things on my own until then. I phoned to wake him up and almost instantly he was on his way to the airport.
But at first, it was just me driving, going home alone and I didn’t know what to expect and what would be expected of me. It was the first death I’d had to manage. There would be the details to sort out, the funeral, burial, and a reception of some kind, but who would be invited and where would we have it? More importantly, what would we do about Dad?
I had enjoyed the luxury of putting his needs out of my mind, on the premise that I would deal with them later when they become more pressing because I could count on Mum to take care of him, but now that she was gone…
I pulled into the drive and was surprised to see no outward reflection of what was happening on the inside. I wanted it to show the loss inside by somehow looking as though it was in mourning too, but of course it didn’t. It was just a house. Just four walls and a roof. The sky though, the sky was grey and looked like the winter sea: cold and ugly.
I went inside and called hello, which felt too cheery and I realised I had no idea how to act in these circumstances. It was the first time I had had to bury someone. My father was sitting on the sofa, staring at the wall and Henry was at the table, staring at his tea.
Everything was about how I had expected it to be except for the extent of the mess. I was not prepared for all the pots and pans piled high in the sink and the overwhelming smell of rotting tomato soup.
I should have known more about her deterioration. We had promised to visit on weekends, and we had promised phone calls and we had slowly failed. The daily phone calls turned into weekly ones and then when there hadn’t been much to report beyond that things were the same, when the conversations were just repetitions of the same three words: sick, horrible and not yet, we had stopped. The intention was strong and so was the guilt.
‘Hi Dad,’ I said. He was listless and made no reply.
Henry and I hugged awkwardly before I took a seat next to him.
‘How long has he been like that?’
‘That’s where he was when I came round this morning,’ Henry said.
‘He hasn’t moved?’
Henry shook his head.
I lowered my voice. ‘He knows, though, doesn’t he?’
‘Somewhere in there he does.’
‘How has he been recently?’ I asked.
Henry looked at the mess in the kitchen and I understood.
‘But he’ll surprise you when you’re least expecting it.’
My father seemed far away, as though the couch he was on were in a different world and a different time.
‘Nights are better,’ Henry said. ‘Mornings are the worst. Time’s backwards.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For everything. I… we…’ I turned away from him, tears rolling down my cheeks.
‘Right,’ he said awkwardly. ‘The funeral home will be in touch.’
‘Yes, good.’
‘I’m going to go.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I’m only just there,’ he said, pointing toward his house.
The day before her body was to be cremated I went into their bedroom and stood in front of the wardrobe. It seemed unnecessary and impractical to pick out her favourite dress only to have it incinerated because no one would know. Why make the effort? Why go through the agony of trying to figure out which one she would have preferred when I couldn’t picture her in any of them?
I put all the dresses she had on the bed: navy, red, and green. They were old and out of fashion, the fabric frayed around the hems. I stared at them hoping that an image of her wearing one of them might come to mind when Dad came into the room, taking a seat next to me. He admired the dresses, ran his fingers over the thin wool as if he had a clear picture in his mind of her in one of them.
‘This one,’ he said slowly.
‘She wore this on the ferry.’ He picked up the navy dress and laid it across his lap. ‘On the ferry.’
I was silent, having learned that it was best to let him speak uninterrupted in these moments. He turned the dress over and ran his fingers along the shoulder seams, smiling. He held it up to me, pointing at a faint mark.
‘A bird,’ he said. His lips fumbled as though by making a chewing motion, he could help himself remember the right word. ‘A… by the shore. Terrible things. White…’ His mouth searched for the proper word and then he shouted, ‘A gull!’
I looked closer, but didn’t quite follow.
‘For good luck,’ he said.
And then I understood: a bird had messed on the shoulder of her dress.
Fully dressed, he lay down and I helped him off with his slippers. He rolled onto his side, crushing the dress, and stretched out his arm, but he couldn’t settle. His arm hunted for the right position as I watched, tempted to offer help but knowing it was better to let him work whatever it was out on his own. With his eyes closed, he drew my mother’s pillow near his face and inhaled deeply and then his face contorted into an angry scowl. He felt for the dresses and pulled the green one over the pillow, inhaling again until his face relaxed.
‘Will you be holding the service here?’ the man asked. ‘We can make all the necessary arrangements. Many people find it’s easier.’
I nodded.
‘I can show you to the room where the service will be held, if you like. There’s an adjoining room for a reception afterwards.’
We followed him through to another room with dark wood panelling, and everything was so hushed and proper that it fel
t rude to speak in anything above a whisper.
‘Iain, we can’t say goodbye to her in here.’
He nodded. ‘She would’ve hated it.’
‘Decadent,’ I said.
‘What will people think?’
‘I can’t breathe in here.’
‘What about the church?’ he suggested.
We had left the funeral home and had driven to the church, and the priest that Mum had worked for when we were children had either moved on or retired. The priest who had taken up his place wasn’t much older than Iain and I and even though he didn’t know us, he welcomed us into his office.
‘My deepest sympathies,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ I replied.
‘We’ll remember her in the service this Sunday.’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Iain said.
‘And how is your father coping with the news?’
‘As well as can be expected,’ I said.
‘It’s a pity, a real shame.’ The priest nodded solemnly.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure he’ll take real comfort in coming here more than ever now.’
His expression changed suddenly and he shifted awkwardly in his seat. ‘Will he be joining us again?’
‘I expect so, yes.’
‘Did your mother not mention this?’
‘Mention what?’ I said, looking at Iain who shrugged in reply.
‘Ah,’ the priest said, putting his fingertips together. ‘It’s terribly unfortunate what’s happened to your father.’
‘Happening,’ I corrected.
‘Yes, happening.’
‘He has always drawn strength from the services here,’ I said.
‘It’s been a while now, since he’s been able to attend.’
‘With my mother,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It had been a while, though, before that.’
‘I’m sure his attendance will improve in the near future.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the priest said. ‘There’s no delicate way to put this, but we’d prefer he didn’t attend. Anymore.’