An Untidy Death

by Simon Brett

  And I would have gone straight up to London but for a road crash, which didn’t, I’m glad to say, involve me and the Yeti. The only damage done was to my plans for the evening. I’d decided, foolishly, to go on the M25. Driven from Dorking to Leatherhead and got on to the motorway with no problem. I was just congratulating myself on how little traffic there was when everything ground to a halt. Absolutely solid.

  Walt Rainbird had suffered a delay at Polegate of a quarter of an hour. Mine, near Leatherhead, took rather longer.

  I checked the AA Traffic News on my phone and discovered there had been a ‘major incident’ on the M25 clockwise just before Junction 10. Never found out the details, whether anyone had been killed or injured. All I know is that I sat in the Yeti, unmoving, with the same car in front of me, the same one behind and the same ones either side, for over three hours.

  By the time the traffic started moving again, it was far too late for me proceed with the rather vague plans I’d made for the evening. I would have to stay somewhere in London and reschedule for the morning. But where?

  Then I remembered a flat in Herne Hill, for which I had paid the deposit. And the slightly ungracious invitation I’d had to stay there, if ever I was in London. I rang my daughter’s number.

  I hadn’t been to the flat much since Jools moved in. A lot the first few weekends, helping her shift stuff around, even doing a bit of decorating. But since then, rarely. As I said, the demands of SpaceWoman, Chichester friends – and Fleur, of course – meant that I was rarely in London.

  Also, to be honest, the place was too full of memories of Oliver for me to feel completely relaxed there. When we first got together, I moved into his houseboat on Regent’s Canal and we enjoyed London to the full. Pubs, restaurants, movies, theatre, the lot. As a cartoonist for daily newspapers, Oliver knew some wild friends from the world of journalism and we had a lot of fun, liberally marinated in alcohol. He was still at the stage where he thought alcohol helped allay the depression. Actually, coming to think of it, he never progressed from that stage.

  The arrival of Juliet curtailed our – well, certainly my – social life a bit, and when she started toddling around, living on a canal boat became impractical and dangerous.

  That was when, in the face of strong opposition and uncertainty from Oliver, we had moved down to the South Coast. First, we’d had a big house in Funtington, then the current one a few miles away in Chichester. The second move was, of course, without Oliver. I couldn’t face staying in the house in whose garage he had asphyxiated himself. When house-hunting in Chichester, I ruled out anywhere that had a garage.

  So, for me, London was a bit like the Funtington house, a place of happy memories, shadowed and soured by subsequent events.

  I was quite surprised when Jools said she wanted to buy a flat. Not surprised that she wanted to, but surprised that she reckoned she could afford to pay a mortgage. And, indeed, that in her early twenties she wanted to tie herself down with one.

  But I shouldn’t have worried. Shouldn’t have been surprised either, come to that. Juliet had always had a good financial brain. Even when she was tiny, she saved her pocket money for things she wanted and only bought them when she’d accumulated the full sum. Never turned to Oliver or me to help her out.

  Because of that history, she was embarrassed about asking me to help with the flat deposit. It was just a private arrangement, but she had worked out a repayment schedule and, so far, she’s paid what she owes each month. She knows I wouldn’t make a fuss if she didn’t, but my Jools takes financial matters seriously.

  Which is why I’m constantly amazed that she works in the fashion industry. Not the high-end, designer-label part of the business, but down the cheap end. The clothes she writes about, the ones she goes to product launches for, the ones she would like to promote as an influencer, are all cheapo garments, designed to be worn once or twice and then chucked away.

  I’m not fanatical about green issues but, doing what I do, I’ve become increasingly aware of the importance of recycling. Spending time with Dodge has reinforced that belief too. So, having a daughter working in an industry which encourages a ‘wear once and chuck into landfill’ attitude is … well, at the very least, strange.

  And, given the relationship that Jools and I have, I sometimes wonder whether she has chosen that sort of work just to annoy me.

  Mothers and daughters, eh? I qualify in both categories and I still can’t work it out.

  When I’d got through on the phone to Jools, I had been surprised that she sounded positively benign. I wouldn’t go as far as saying ‘welcoming’ but at least not downright adversarial. When I arrived at the flat, I discovered the explanation. She was pissed.

  Not aggressively pissed, benignly pissed. Thank God. She’d been to the launch of some new online fashion magazine and clearly had a good time. She’d met some of the editorial staff and thought there was a good chance of her getting some work for them.

  The fact that I have never read any of my daughter’s fashion journalism might be seen as yet another example of bad parenting. But I have asked on many occasions to see in print or be given an online link to her writing and always received the same rebuff. ‘No, Ellen, it’s not the kind of stuff that would interest you.’

  When I arrived at the flat, frazzled after my long traffic jam, I found Jools had been benign enough to have opened a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and already poured me a generous slug. I was so desperate after the hours that I’d spent in the car that the first thing I had to do was fly to the loo. But when I returned, I took a grateful slurp of the red.

  It was only then that I took in what my daughter was wearing. I’m not that old, but Jools’s choice of clothes sometimes makes me feel very, very old. Jurassic old, at least. I know in my youth I wore some fairly ridiculous ensembles, but I think back then we did have a concept of things going together. Well, that was out the window so far as Jools was concerned.

  That evening, for the event she’d just returned from, she had favoured leggings in a swirl of what would once have been called ‘psychedelic’ colours, a short shocking-pink lacy skirt and a blue PVC gilet over a yellow rugby shirt. Her feet were in silver trainers studded with purple sequins. Her make-up was a homage to the Addams Family. To complete the effect, her hair was gathered into two buns on top of her head, giving her the silhouette of Minnie Mouse.

  What was terrifying about it, for me, was that what she was wearing must actually have been fashionable. Jools wouldn’t be seen dead in anything less. God, I felt even older.

  I knew my duty as a mother, though, and made no comment on her appearance. To praise it would have been recognized as duplicity, and to criticize it would have just confirmed her view of me as a fashion basket-case. I was quite glad I was still in my SpaceWoman blue polo shirt and leggings. Wearing my work clothes offered no opportunities for adverse comment on my sartorial choices.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ Jools asked.

  ‘No.’ I couldn’t remember when any food had last passed my lips. Breakfast, maybe?

  ‘Well, I don’t cook,’ said my daughter, stabbing another knifepoint into a traditional mother’s heart, ‘and I haven’t got the energy to go out, so I’ll order a Just Eat.’

  ‘Fine.’ I was still slightly shaken by the information that she didn’t cook. I had taught her enough recipes during her teens to survive in a kitchen. Now apparently unnecessary. Another feature of her throwaway lifestyle.

  ‘I fancy Mexican,’ she said. ‘You all right with that?’

  ‘Sounds good.’ I couldn’t claim to have eaten much Mexican, but what I’d had I’d liked. ‘You order for me.’

  She did the business. For the first time, I took in the flat’s interior. Starkly minimal but well done. Furniture a bit bony for my taste but more comfortable than it looked.

  ‘Oh, incidentally, Jools, I wasn’t expecting to be in London, so I haven’t got any overnight stuff. Can you find me something to sleep in … and ma
ybe a pair of clean knickers for the morning?’

  ‘Sure, Ellen. No prob.’

  ‘And what – will I sleep in the spare room?’

  ‘No, you sleep in my room. I’ll be in here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. This thing we’re sitting on opens out. It’s a sofa bed.’

  ‘So, what about the spare room? What happens there? Have you got a lodger?’

  ‘No.’ And then my daughter added gnomically, ‘I don’t use the spare room as a spare room.’

  The food was good. Jools knew her way around a Mexican menu much better than I did. We were both so hungry that we hardly spoke till we’d finished the last refried bean. We’d finished the bottle of Cabinet Sauvignon, too, and Jools suggested moving on to gin. Pink gin with Fever-Tree tonic. As I said, I rarely drink spirits and felt that my daughter had probably had enough already that evening, but there was no way I was going to break the atmosphere between us by going into bossy mother mode.

  Mm. I’d forgotten just how nice a gin and tonic could be. I felt more relaxed with my daughter than I had … well, since her father died.

  Did I dare mention Oliver’s name, I wondered. I didn’t want to threaten this unprecedented moment of harmony, but I desperately needed to talk to Jools about him. And I think she needed to talk about him too.

  I had no desire to be devious, but I still approached the subject in a roundabout way. ‘At the weekend, Ben was talking about an animation project he’s doing as part of his course.’

  ‘Ah. Right.’ She didn’t sound particularly interested in her brother’s doings, but mellow and unguarded.

  ‘It’s based on “Riq and Raq”.’

  ‘Ah.’ No intonation at all.

  ‘You know, it’s a cartoon strip your father used to do.’ Well, that particular elephant in the room had been referred to. It was a step.

  ‘I’ve heard of the strip,’ said Jools. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever seen any of them.’

  ‘I’ve got quite a few of the originals in the attic at home. I think I might get some more of them framed … you know, like the “Major Cock-Ups” and “Teddy Blair” stuff that I’ve hung in the hall.’

  It had taken me a long time after Oliver’s death to reach the point where I could look at his work. Getting a couple of the cartoons framed and putting them on show in the hall had not been easy, but it had felt like an important step in my transition into widowhood.

  The only reaction Jools gave was an almost imperceptible shrug. Then suddenly she looked at me. ‘You’re not suggesting I should put some of his cartoons up here, are you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Good. Because they wouldn’t go with my stuff.’

  ‘I can see that.’ Enough of this circling round. I’d go for the direct approach. ‘You never talk about him.’

  ‘Nope.’ She finished her drink and poured more. Just gin this time.

  ‘I know it’s difficult.’

  ‘That’s an excellent choice of word, Ellen.’

  ‘I’ve found talking about Oliver makes it easier for me.’

  ‘Well, I’ve found,’ she snapped back, ‘that not talking about him makes it easier for me!’

  She was beside me on the sofa bed. I could see tears were pouring down her cheeks. Instinctively, I put my arms around her, as I had so often until she became a teenager. She didn’t resist.

  ‘You’ve shut in so much,’ I said.

  ‘I find that easier too,’ Jools said, through tears.

  ‘It’s natural. Something unpleasant happens – something unbelievably, cruelly unpleasant – and you try to shut it out. And why? Because the feelings are too powerful if you do think about it?’

  My daughter didn’t respond.

  ‘Juliet – sorry, Jools – after Oliver died, I went through every kind of emotion, some I didn’t want to acknowledge. Anger being a predominant one. I felt so furious with Oliver. Furious for his selfishness. Not for what he’d done to himself but for what he’d done to us. Oh yes, of course I knew that depression was a disease, that he couldn’t help it, he was ill, but that didn’t stop me blaming him. It wasn’t a worthy emotion, but it was a necessary one. Is that the kind of feeling you’re trying to shut out? Anger? Blind fury?’

  ‘No,’ said Jools through the sobs, so quietly I could hardly hear her. ‘It’s not anger. It’s guilt.’

  ‘Guilt? Why on earth should you feel guilt?’

  ‘I think I, kind of, shut Daddy out.’

  To an extent, I could see where she was coming from. Oliver had adored Juliet from the moment she was born. He’d loved playing with her. Often, when I thought he was up in his study drawing, I’d find him downstairs with her in a rubble of Lego. She was his beautiful little daughter, and he got an enormous charge from just having her around. They were amazingly cuddly with each other. Like many fathers who work from home, he got a real dose of Empty Nest Syndrome when Juliet started school.

  But that was as nothing to what Oliver felt when she hit her teens. Suddenly there was this complex, spotty young woman who had periods and shrugged off her father’s attempts to give her a hug. She was just behaving like any young girl of her age would, but for Oliver it felt like rejection.

  And that development coincided with a fall in demand for his work as a cartoonist. Like many freelances, Oliver had always been paranoid about the prospect of the work drying up. And back then, to his mind, that was what was happening. Some fifteen years older than me, he felt that his professional life was over. And so, yes, at one level, Juliet’s behaviour towards him had contributed to his depressive mood.

  I didn’t realize that she’d been aware of that. And the idea that she had been bottling up this guilt for more than a decade … it was a painful thought.

  ‘Daddy was ill,’ I said to her. ‘I’ve felt regret about things I could have done, the fact that I was out at the time he finally decided to do it, but I really haven’t felt guilt. I think I helped him. He would have done it earlier, if he hadn’t got the structure of a family around him, if he hadn’t got people who loved him and were still there when he emerged from the black moods. I think I gave him a bit of stability. Not enough, but a bit. And you did too.’

  ‘Did I?’ she asked, desperately clutching at any available comfort.

  ‘Yes, you did. He loved you. That didn’t change. It was just that the hatred for himself became stronger than the love he felt for us.’

  ‘Hm.’

  There was a moment of stasis, the two of us on the sofa bed, my arms around my daughter. One of the buns on top of her head felt strange pressing against my cheek.

  Then, abruptly, Jools moved away. ‘I’m not normally soppy like this,’ she said. ‘It’s the booze. And I’m pre-menstrual.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter why. I’m glad we’ve talked about it.’

  ‘Huh.’ The brittleness had returned to her tone. ‘I’ll get you some night things. There’s a new toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet.’

  I had a fleeting thought that she might keep such a thing for someone she brought back to the flat to stay over, but I didn’t pursue it. Like so many areas of her life, Jools’s relationship history was a closed book to me.

  ‘Incidentally,’ she asked, ‘will you tell Fleur we’ve had this talk?’

  ‘My instinct would be not to.’

  ‘Good. She’d just blather on and on about it and say how you shouldn’t have married Daddy in the first place.’

  That was a spot-on assessment of my mother’s likely behaviour, but I was surprised that Jools would voice it. I didn’t think I’d ever before heard her criticize Fleur.

  ‘She is very grateful for the relationship she has with you, Jools.’

  ‘Fleur? Oh, she’s easy. I just feed her vanity. It’s easier to be someone else with Fleur than it is to be me with anyone.’

  ‘Including me?’ I asked, foolishly fishing for something positive after our recent rapprochement.

  ‘Partic
ularly you. I always have to be someone else with you,’ said my daughter, instantly shutting the door to future intimacies. ‘Anyway, I must get to bed. Got an early meeting in the morning.’

  She moved brusquely round the room, clearly wanting me out of it so she could pull out the sofa bed.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got quite a day tomorrow,’ I said. Which was possibly an understatement.

  Jools didn’t ask what the day ahead held for me. She didn’t talk about anything other than practical details of where I’d find towels and so on. She seemed ashamed of having let her guard slip. Maybe she did know how much it had meant to me, but she made no further reference to her lapse.

  And there was no hug or kiss as we went to our separate bedrooms.

  It took me a long time to go to sleep. Partly perhaps the unfamiliar bed, Herne Hill’s different traffic noises from those of Chichester.

  Also, I kept thinking about the tiny glimmer of hope that had been opened up in my relationship with my daughter. I knew I mustn’t overinflate it – her reversion to the standoffish Jools at the end of the evening told me that – but at least, very briefly, it had been proved that we could communicate.

  But probably the biggest factor in my sleeplessness was the prospect of the next day’s confrontation.

  As is so often the annoying case with a bad night, I ended up oversleeping my usual waking time. When I got up, there was no sign of Jools. A note on the kitchen table reading: ‘See ya’. Just that.

  I didn’t feel hungry, so all I had by way of breakfast was a flat white, made in Jools’s very swish Italian coffee-maker. Again, I found myself wondering about her sources of income. She certainly seemed able to live in some style.

  I thought I’d better get out as soon as possible. The Yeti had ended up in a marked parking space the night before, but it might be in danger of an early morning ticket from some assiduous traffic warden.

  Before I left, though, I paused outside Jools’s spare-room door.