by Peter Hey
‘I’m sorry to hear that. That Mary’s dead, I mean. Obviously.’ Jane’s awkward response stemmed from surprise and genuine sorrow.
‘Will you be able to come to her funeral? There won’t be many there. I’m sure she would have really appreciated it.’ The South African accent had lifted in expectation.
‘Of course,’ said Jane, without thinking.
Contractor/client relationship
Jane had been trying to get in touch with Margaret Stothard for two days. There had been no response to Jane’s answer phone messages, and then she remembered a holiday being mentioned. Jane hoped the older woman had gone somewhere far; the weather in England had become what the TV forecasters liked to call ‘changeable’: frequent downpours interspersed with fleeting sunny spells just long enough to tease you out of doors prior to being caught in the next deluge.
Not knowing how long Margaret might be away, Jane emailed her son, Julian. She’d had no direct contact with him since they’d had lunch by the river in the beautiful tree-lined gorge at Matlock Bath. Whilst she welcomed the excuse, she found herself struggling with words like a 12-year-old schoolgirl trying to impress the best-looking boy in class. She wanted to appear friendly, available even, but without seeming desperate. After three or four rewrites, she told herself to grow up and settled for simple and businesslike. That was the truth of their relationship after all: she was a contractor reporting back to her client.
Julian
I trust you are well and hope Pittsburgh’s avoiding the rain we’re having over here.
I’m confident we’ve now got to the bottom of why your mother’s aunt was totally disowned by her family. I’ve interviewed the surviving members of that branch of the tree and we’ve also found supporting documentary evidence.
It’s quite an incredible story and I think it’s best relayed in person. I was hoping to arrange a meeting with your mother. Unfortunately, she’s not returning my calls and I think she’s away? If so, please could you tell me when she’ll be back.
If you prefer, I can obviously email you a report of what I’ve found and you can pass that on.
Please let me know how you would like to progress.
Regards
Jane
Hi Jane
Great to hear from you. Sorry I’ve taken a while to respond. I wanted to confirm some arrangements before coming back to you, and they took a little longer than I’d hoped.
You were right; my mother has been away. We’ve got a little place in Cape Cod and I flew Mum and her carer over for a break. I was intending to spend more time with mum myself, but something big happened to divert me and I only managed a few days. Still, she got to see the boys and the weather has been kind, so I’m sure she enjoyed herself. There’s an old world feel to that part of the Cape and the pace of life suits her.
My mother’s really excited that you’ve solved the family mystery and is happy to wait until you can talk us through it. She doesn’t want to get it second-hand from me. Thinks I’d get all the details wrong. She’s no doubt right.
I’d like to hear the story myself and I’ve sorted it so we can all catch the same flight back to the UK. We land at Heathrow in the morning of Thursday next week. Would you be able to get to my mother’s on Friday around lunchtime? That would give my mother a day to get over the jetlag. Perhaps we could go out for a meal afterwards?
I’m really impressed that you tracked everyone down and managed to speak to them. I knew I’d found the right woman as soon as we started chatting on that first video call. It’s always nice to have your instincts confirmed about these things.
I’m looking forward to seeing you again.
Many thanks
Julian
Artificial light
Jane found herself with time to kill. Inactivity made her restless, so she decided to decorate her bathroom. The tiles were white and innocuous, but her grandmother had decided to brighten the room by having the one exposed wall painted a strident shade of pink that somehow glowed orange under artificial light. Jane felt it had faded with time; nonetheless, it still made her wince every time she saw it. She knew taste was individual, and also generational, but she often thought age must have adjusted the colour setting on her grandmother's eyesight when she scanned through the paint charts and stopped there.
The weather was still flipping between wet and dry, but the rain dancers seemed to be praying harder than the sun worshippers, and Jane was happy to stay indoors for what she convinced herself was an afternoon’s job. It wasn’t. Two days, three coats and pink still ghosted through the layers of brilliant-white emulsion, particularly round the edges where the roller wouldn’t reach.
Feeling dejected, Jane sank down on the toilet seat. Her hands and arms had a misty rash of tiny paint spots, and some strands of her hair had stuck together after she’d accidentally leant her head against the wall. She’d forgotten how much she hated decorating. She hated the monotony, and she hated the fact that things always took much longer than you ever thought they could or should. She’d hated it when she and Dave had shared the load. It was worse now she was on her own. She also suspected she’d bought the wrong sort of paint. Why, she asked herself, did there have to be so much choice? Dave was always talking about not using matt on silk, or perhaps it was silk on matt, but she’d dismissed it as irrelevant boys’ talk like the number of cylinders in an engine or absolutely anything to do with cricket.
Jane looked at her watch and calculated there was time for one more quick coat after this one had dried. With any luck, the pink would finally surrender and she would be left with an inoffensive bathroom and a fading memory of temporary hardship. She wondered if she could be bothered getting clean enough to make herself something to eat and decided she wasn’t that hungry. Instead she listened to her grandmother’s old transistor radio, now flecked with white, and scanned the newspapers she’d scattered over the surfaces she wanted to protect.
On one page, pulled from inside a local weekly that had become 90% adverts, was a news story asking for help identifying the perpetrator of a supermarket break-in. A grainy black-and-white CCTV image showed a slightly blurry young man in a hoodie staring upwards into a camera. His pupils glowed like cats eyes in the road, as the retinas behind bounced back the infrared that shone unseen in the darkness. In her time as a policewoman, Jane had studied many such images. Sometimes a positive identification was possible. More often, it gave you only a rough idea of who you were looking for: their colouring, size, a suggestion of facial features. Someone might recognise this thief from the photograph, but more evidence would be required to avoid an innocent lookalike suffering wrongful conviction.
As Jane looked at the image and gently rubbed at the paint on the back of her hands trying to peel it away, she felt a sudden spark of illumination.
An end and a new beginning
Jane was standing in front of the full length mirror mounted inside the door of her bedroom wardrobe. Black blouse, black skirt, black scarf, black shoes, it was too much she realised. She wasn’t family. She wasn’t even a friend, just an acquaintance, and a very brief one at that. She wasn’t sure who, if anyone would care but thought she should tone down the outfit all the same. Looking through her hangers, she was struggling between tops in dark green and muted burgundy, when she heard her phone ring downstairs. Grateful for an excuse to delay the decision, she raced down the staircase and managed to catch the call just before it switched to voicemail.
‘Hello?’ she said, slightly short of breath.
‘Is that Miss Madden speaking?’ The voice was raised in the unwarranted assumption of a poor long-distance line and had an American accent. Jane knew it immediately.
‘Yes, this is Jane Madden.’
‘Miss Madden, this is Herb Jensen. I’m phoning you from the USA. I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time. If you’d rather I rang back, please say.’
‘No, now’s good. I’m going out in a while, but I can talk.’ Jane was aware of a
slight anxiety creeping into her speech and hoped it didn’t transmit across the Atlantic. ‘What can I do for you Mr Jensen? I assume the DNA sample has reached you by now. Have you been able to get it looked at already?’
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘I see,’ said Jane, cautiously.
‘It’s not right.’
‘Not right, Mr Jensen?’ Jane’s throat was becoming dry and she put her hand over the phone’s microphone so she could swallow quietly.
‘No, dear. It’s just not right.’
‘Mr Jensen, as I tried to explain in my letter—'
‘I spoke to our local pastor. He’s an old friend, a good friend, and he got me to see the truth of it.’
‘A pastor?’ Jane was struggling to see why a clergyman would advise on the scientific testing of DNA.
‘Yes. Reverend John Foster. I felt I had to tell him what you said, that my brother probably wasn’t a homosexual after all. Obviously, I’d never mentioned anything about it before. I told him I felt a great shame had been lifted from my family.’
‘I see,’ said Jane.
‘So I showed the pastor your letter, including the photograph you sent of Christopher and Jean Paul, and when he’d read it he looked at me like I was the personification of sin.’
‘Er... okay.’
Herb Jensen nodded unseen at the far end of the line. ‘“That’s what you’ve come to tell me?” the pastor said. “All you care about is a label that was put on your poor brother 70 years ago? What about the reaffirmation of his courage? What about the son of the daughter he loved so much, albeit for such a short time? What about this dear, innocent child?”’
Jane kept her silence. The old man clearly wanted to answer the questions he’d just revoiced.
‘The pastor’s wife was a free spirit when she was younger. It was the 1960s – you know how things were back then. She fell in with an irresponsible man, gave birth to his twin girls and he promptly left her to pursue his idea of love and peace with someone else. The pastor took her and the girls in, and he’s always loved those children like his own. They are his own. Because that’s what’s in his heart and that’s more important to him than cells and chemicals and genetic codes. My brother loved his baby daughter. He always knew, we always suspected, there was a question over her biological father. And yet I started demanding a DNA sample. I think we both realise why. Because I forgot about love, and charity, the cornerstones of my Christian faith.’
Herb Jensen stopped talking, allowing Jane to respond. ‘As I said in my letter, Mary Smith couldn’t be 100% sure who the biological father was, but there did seem a strong probability it wasn’t your brother. It’s your decision what to do with the sample. As I told you, there is another potential branch of the tree, through Mary’s second child, but if you’re looking for someone to carry forward your brother’s memory, I wouldn’t look there. I think you’d only find pain and irredeemable corruption.’
‘It’s in the trash,’ said Herb Jensen.
‘Sorry?’
‘I’ve thrown the DNA sample in the trash. Woody put his name on his daughter’s birth certificate. Who am I to start questioning that?’
‘So you’re going to get in touch with Chris Aimson?’ Jane’s optimism had been building and she felt a sudden rush of relief.
‘I’ve just had a long chat with him. Before I called you. You were right, he seems like a fine young man, with a good heart. I’ve never been to Europe. I thought my long-haul flying days were behind me, but I’m going to get on a plane and come over, while I can still get around on my own two feet. We’re going to visit Woody’s grave together. You know, Jane, when you reach my age you tend to get sentimental, but I’m very, very…’
The words had become faltering and then they stopped altogether. Jane could hear a faint sobbing down the line before Herb Jensen managed to gather himself.
‘...I’m very happy, Jane, and I wanted to thank so much for your help. I feel a purpose to however many days or years the good Lord chooses to allow me. And when the time comes and I see Woody again, me an old man and him a fresh-faced youngster in his prime, I’ll finally be able to look him in the eye.’
Laid to rest
In keeping with her wishes, Mary Smith’s mortal remains were to be cremated. Herb Jensen’s call having delayed her, Jane pushed her car over the motorway speed limit, exploiting the 10% + 2 mph margin she hoped the traffic cops still observed. She liked to know where she was going and usually found time to check a route in advance. Today she was blindly relying on the robotic voice of her mobile’s satnav. She’d never felt comfortable taking map reading directions from her ex-husband; somehow she begrudged the disembodied but all-knowing woman in her phone even more.
The crematorium was on the town’s northerly outskirts. With minutes to spare, Jane pulled into a wide gateway that finally broke a mile-long stretch of dry-stone perimeter wall. She found herself on a drive that curved though gently undulating folds of extensive wooded gardens and lawns, a backdrop of arable farmland creating an impression of rural isolation. Jane had once seen a film where the botanic gardens at Kew had convincingly stood in for heaven, and immediately felt a similar sense of serenity and peace, as her tension from being late ebbed away. Like at Kew, there seemed to be tree species of infinite variety. Hazel stood alongside Scots pine, sycamore and rhododendron. Several specimens of weeping birch and willow added their sorrow to the purple-red warmth of Japanese maple.
Across the lawns, concentric circles of rose bushes carried plaques of dedication to loved lives lost. The ashes of Mary’s husband James had found their way onto the rose gardens when, like the then-young trees, their rings were fewer, but no memorial bore his name; no-one had ever stood over his last resting place to pay their respects or confide their thoughts.
When Jane climbed the flight of stone steps from the main car park she found a crematorium building that could have been taken for a 1950s primary school, complete with a newly acquired roof of solar panels, were it not for the central chimney, a tall and angular bulk of bricks architecturally suggesting a church tower, albeit one devoid of ornament or aperture.
Jane entered the chapel quietly and slipped into one of the open wooden pews at the back. There were no more than ten mourners in front of her, all facing towards the altar with its simple brass cross flanked by two lit candles. The wall behind was pierced by a triptych of narrow rectangular windows coloured by the green of a tall oak, set back to fill the view without blocking the light. It had taken decades to fulfil its purpose but now spoke of the wonder of creation more eloquently than the finest stained glass.
Jane scanned the heads in the front pews and, on the left, recognised the hair colour and style of the South African care assistant who had shown her into Mary Smith’s room and later told her of Mary’s death. Only two people were sat on the right of the central aisle. They were both men, with similar close-cropped hair and narrow shoulders. They were hunched together and furtively giggling like naughty schoolboys sharing a dirty joke in assembly, their barely suppressed laughter frustrating the mood of the lilting organ music being softly piped through loudspeakers high on the walls either side of the altar.
Jane hadn’t been sure Dean would come to his grandmother’s funeral. In fact, she’d thought his indifference more likely. For herself, she considered that she’d made a commitment to attend. She was not minded to be intimidated, not by the presence or otherwise of Dean Smith. She’d forgotten another promise. She’d told Dave she would keep away from the man who had tried to assault her and nearly caused her to lapse into vengeful violence.
The coffin was plain and simple and was brought in on the shoulders of the undertaker and his assistants, looking suitably mournful in expression and attire. They laid the wooden box on a catafalque set in a bay to the left of the altar, then bowed and walked respectfully away. An elderly man who had been sitting unnoticed behind a lectern stood, placed his palms together as if
in prayer and looked around the room. The arrival of the coffin had not silenced Dean and Steve; the headmasterly glare of the retired cleric caused them to look sheepishly at their feet and their joking stopped.
The service was brief and only Reverend Carter spoke. Jane had identified no religious belief in her long conversations with Mary Smith. Indeed, the elderly woman had expressed her hope that death was final and the afterlife a myth. Nonetheless, she had no doubt prayed obediently as a child and her first marriage had been under the auspices of the Church of England. An Anglican funeral was an easy default, inoffensively meeting social expectations without the D-I-Y involvement of a humanist ceremony.
The first hymn on the order of service was All Things Bright and Beautiful. Jane judged this an appropriate choice as there had still been something childlike about Mary, despite her reaching her tenth decade of life. It was also something that everyone would know. The last wedding Jane attended had featured modern words and tunes. Whilst fitting in their themes of love and togetherness, their unfamiliarity had resulted in the non-churchgoing congregation whispering and mumbling in musicless embarrassment.
Any fears Jane might have had about awkwardness during the singing were quickly allayed. The South African care assistant proved to have a fine voice and her confidence and volume encouraged those around her. Surprisingly, Dean joined in with a gentle and pleasing baritone. Jane doubted he‘d ever been a choirboy but briefly wondered what sort of man he might have grown into had his background allowed it.
Reverend Carter read the eulogy with sincerity though Jane suspected he’d never met its subject. Mary was a loving wife to a man who reputedly had the looks of a Hollywood star. She was a caring and devoted mother and grandmother. Dean was singled out for mention as her only surviving descendant and our thoughts were with him in his time of loss. The Reverend focussed on Mary’s last years in the nursing home, her cheerfulness and popularity with the staff and other residents, because Jane realised, his words had been suggested by someone who had only known that final stage in Mary’s life. It was almost certainly for the best. Mary wanted to forget her earlier years and dreaded being reunited, in life or in death, with the family she’d felt she’d wronged. Lacking Herb Jensen’s faith, Jane sensed the lights had gone out as Mary had wished. The darkness inside the coffin was absolute and unending.