by Neal Doran
A member of hospital staff showed him into the room. What kind of job was that, he wondered. Must be bloody miserable if you spend half your life unveiling dead relatives. Then he was alone in a quiet room with his dad. He could hear the sounds of the rest of the hospital in the distance, the ping of a lift, empty hospital trolleys rattling along, somebody singing. And here he was with his dad. His embarrassing, weird dad. He didn’t look all that different. Greyer, maybe.
James’s hand hovered at the side of the gurney Ben was laid on. He’d never been a tactile man, Ben. As a child James had never worked out how you could hug a dad lounging deep in a chair with a newspaper folded out across his lap. He hadn’t really known how to speak to a man who seemed only able to manage to listen to two sentences before taking a diversion into a world of his own full of puns and obscure facts he thought had meaning. As a very young boy James had never been able to find the thing that would make his dad hang out in his world for a while, despite days poring over animal encyclopaedias and books about ancient Rome trying to find an interesting fact his dad might not have known. Trying to be, as best an eight-year-old can, another version of him.
He felt like a kid again right then in the fluorescent-lit room. He wanted to hug his dad but he wasn’t sure he was allowed.
He put his hand on Ben’s chest and cried.
Chapter 34
The week after Ben’s death was one of the longest of Rebecca’s life. She was continually plagued by this feeling she should be doing something, at a time when there didn’t seem to be much for her to do. There were a lot of things to think about, at a time when she didn’t want to think about anything.
One thing she had decided. She wasn’t going to talk to James about what was going on when Ben had died. It wasn’t the time now, and she didn’t see when it would be the time in the future. He’d still be grieving by the time Bomp arrived, and she didn’t want to spoil that. And she didn’t want to know.
There could be an explanation.
It could be nothing.
It could’ve been a one-off.
In her head, he’d had his yellow card, next time he’d be off.
She wondered what the other women in her life would have done in the same circumstances. Sophie was a tricky one to gauge but she’d probably have taken it as par for the course, and found a way to work it to her advantage. Joan would’ve been confrontational. Her mother? That was the worst one.
She would have dealt with it exactly the same way as Rebecca.
While she was trying to figure out what to do with the mess in her life, Rebecca spent a lot of time with Maggie, helping her with preparations for the funeral. And she spent a lot of time with James, the most time they’d had together in ages. She took the week off, and was just doing a little bit of work from home, and he was completely off on compassionate grounds from his dole job.
Sometimes it was awful. They could almost feel like strangers. He’d stay up late watching his mindless horror movies, more often than not something with the undead coming back. He’d try to joke about all of them returning from the grave because they hadn’t been able to get six across before they died. Rebecca hated the jokes about Ben. She knew it was his way of coping, but it just said to her he couldn’t express how he really felt, and that couldn’t be good. She was aware of the irony in that observation.
Sometimes the time they spent together that week was wonderful, the closest they’d been in as long as she could remember – although her memory only went back about three months in her current condition. There’d been a day shopping – she didn’t have anything to wear to a funeral that would fit her these days – and it had been brilliant. They’d spent hours at Westfield and it was almost as good as a city mini-break. The crowds weren’t crazy because it was mid-week, they ordered too much food at a Jamie’s, James had a couple of beers with lunch, and Rebecca didn’t even mind that they’d had to ignore the nearby sushi place because she couldn’t eat anything from there. They’d toured the posh shops, trying to keep straight faces while they asked sales people, obviously trained to deal with this kind of smartarsery, about the price of jewellery and watches they could obviously never afford. They’d boggled at the price of designer label babygros that would fit for a week and were probably dry-clean only. But they got a little thrill shooting through them when they considered that they really would need tiny clothes like this soon, even if they would be from George at Asda rather than Donna Karan from New York.
The actual shopping part had been good too, despite what they were looking for, and despite the miserable choices for a pregnant woman wanting to look sombre. James spent probably too much time picking out the tightest tartiest things he could find from the wrong end of the shops as suggestions. Then, when she was battling into outfits in cubicles he’d find accessories to wear to go with the handbag she’d dumped with him. When she came out to show him another charcoal dress that was either a bit too clingy, or looked too much like a tent, he’d be wearing a cloche hat or holding out ridiculous heels and wondering if they’d have them in his size. He stopped, though, after putting on some clip-on earrings, a fascinator, and a brightly patterned scarf, then demanding ‘how do I look?’ to a woman coming out of the changing rooms who wasn’t Rebecca.
They’d carried on giddily all afternoon, stopping for tea and big ice-cream sundaes whenever Rebecca got a bit weary, and buying baby toys and paraphernalia whenever they saw it. There was a tiny T-shirt with the word Babble across the front in Scrabble letters that they picked up as the first piece of Bompalomp’s clothes that they’d bought together. It seemed a fitting tribute to Ben who loved the game. Eventually they’d stumbled home with fish and chips and a trashy comedy DVD.
It had been lovely until bedtime, and James had made a move for sex.
For the first time in the day, the doubts about where James had been the day his dad died returned, although putting it that way made him sound like a murder suspect. As his hand slid up and down the length of her thigh, and upwards underneath her pyjama top she stiffened. When was the last time he’d done that? In what circumstances, with who? There’d be no chance he was gay, was there? After all, look at her father, maybe on some subconscious level she was attracted to a type.
But she could be making the whole thing up in her head, being a crazy hormonal pregnant woman. He could have been on work drinks. But why lie about it? Maybe he’d had a job interview, or had been arranging a surprise for her. She knew she should have asked him about it, and that she still could.
But not now, after such a good day. And not tomorrow, because it’d be the day before his dad’s funeral and that’s not the time for a scene, neither would be the day after, then after that… She also knew that she was too scared to know the answer. So she’d turned around, and given him a cuddle, and a kiss looking into his hopeful and expectant eyes. The chaste nature of the kiss and hug had been enough for him to get the message ‘no’ and, despite a raised eyebrow attempting one last hopeful try at reversing the decision, his hands settled around her into more neutral positions. She’d said good night and spooned into him. He’d kissed the back of her head, and she shut her eyes and tried not to think.
The bugger of it was that after that, she’d started to feel really, really, horny.
Earlier in the week, she and James had gone to the funeral directors with Maggie, and that had been one of the not good days. There’d been a point where the three of them had been in what was effectively a coffin showroom, with a guy in his twenties, who was apparently their funeral liaison executive. He spent a few moments explaining the range of coffin options, while Rebecca wondered what he told girls he did for a living when he was chatting them up in clubs. Then Maggie had started on the wastefulness involved in the most extravagant of the boxes, the rare and expensive woods to be used once and destroyed, the level of cost people pay when others can’t even afford the price of a decent funeral.
James had quietly seethed at that until she made on
e comment too many to the increasingly anxious young undertaker about Scandinavian folk traditions of weaving shared community caskets. Then he snapped and told her it was recycling day on Thursday, and why not save all the bother and just see if the council would take him in the purple wheelie bin.
Everyone had gone quiet, until Maggie pointed out that the council had sold off the responsibilities for waste collection to a private company twenty years ago, despite the lack of accountability for best environmental practice and no effective paper trail of where reusable materials were treated. James had sighed dramatically and stormed out of the room at that point, leaving Rebecca unsure what to do next. She wanted to follow her husband, but didn’t want to abandon a grieving widow. That it would have been unfair on the poor undertaker, who, as the blood drained from his face was looking increasingly like one of his clients, tipped the balance in favour of her staying put.
‘What about this one, Maggie?’ she said, pretending nothing had happened.
Maggie went over to look at the casket Rebecca had identified. It was probably the cheapest in the room, but was made from recycled and reclaimed materials and an authentic oak veneer. It was MDF, basically, and looked like an eighties kitchen cabinet, but it looked the best way to get a decision.
‘So the wood’s recycled. And the other materials are ethically sourced and non-toxic?’
Standing behind Maggie, Rebecca caught the eye of the undertaker, who was playing with his cuffs compulsively. She nodded slowly to him, and he confirmed that yes, all toxins were ethnically sourced. He said they’d throw in a free set of handles and a special discount code at the local florist for anyone ordering flowers.
Maggie started to tell him that there’d be no bought flowers at the funeral, that the global airlifting of industrially produced flowers was killing the planet for cheap sentiment and petrol station-bought apologies. She said that Ben had not paid for a flower for thirty years, but that at this time of year he would be in their garden or allotment and would return home with bunches of what he called ‘beautiful weeds’.
She stopped at that point, unable to speak. The undertaker’s eyes flicked, on the edge of panic. Rebecca wasn’t sure what was going to happen next either. In the unexpected silence, the room felt like it was set for an explosion. Instead it looked like Maggie imploded. Her tall frame shrivelled, her head dropped. Covered by the mass of greying curls, her eyes and mouth were obscured but she was obviously on the verge of tears. Her hands shot up to cover her face with a sound like a slap, and she stood there with just the hint of a tremor. Rebecca moved towards her, but stopped, sensing it wasn’t what Maggie would want.
‘We’ll take the one we were talking about,’ Rebecca said turning to the undertaker. ‘We won’t need the discount, I’ll come and see you in a minute to sort out any other details.’
He nodded his head in relief, muttered something that ended in ‘madam’ in the direction of Maggie, and slid out the door.
‘We’d never really talked about it,’ said Maggie, her head still bowed. ‘We’ve been privileged to see departure ceremonies around the world, but we never talked about what would happen when one of us left.’
Maggie took an old rag that looked like it had been used for cleaning paintbrushes from her pocket.
‘This isn’t what he would have wanted. It isn’t what I want.’
‘We can make it how you’d like it,’ said Rebecca, ‘you can bring your own iPod these days.’
‘I don’t know what he’d want. I don’t know what to do. I’ve no one to ask. I always asked Ben and he always knew…’
Rebecca stood, stunned. She’d never seen her mother-in-law like this, and couldn’t quite believe she needed anyone. And it seemed weirder that anyone would depend on Ben. She told herself off for thinking that way about him. She’d been fond of him. At family gatherings she’d sought Ben out, she’d always thought it was mainly because she wasn’t scared or intimidated by him. They could stand awkwardly together until he got lost in one of his explanations of sustainable subsistence farming, or the changing role of the local newspaper, and she knew all she had to do was occasionally nod.
She realised that after so many years of proximity, she loved him. And Margaret too, if she thought about it. As the two women stood across from each other, surrounded by coffins, Rebecca didn’t know if she should hug her. She knew she didn’t want to, but felt she ought to. But she wasn’t at all convinced it was what Margaret wanted, and hated the idea of forcing physical contact on a widow.
She cursed her awkwardness. James was normally so huggy, but his family never were. She’d never been tactile herself, although her dad had always been one for cuddles and headlocks and pats on the bum. Weird how they’d gone the opposite way to their parents, but then both ended up eventually with someone who was like them. Rebecca wondered what Bomp would be like, she hoped she’d not have the same awkward response to holding her own child.
Then she wondered whether maybe in recent months she hadn’t been physically there enough for James, but stopped herself. This wasn’t the time for thinking of that stuff, and she wasn’t going to start blaming herself either. She wasn’t.
Chapter 35
It was the day of the funeral, and James was anxious for things to start, so that they could be over with sooner. He was standing at a North London crematorium with his mum, having driven them both there because Margaret wouldn’t condone an unnecessary additional journey in a gas-guzzling car just to follow a hearse. He looked over at her, in her multi-coloured dress, that was pulling a little around her stomach, and which screamed out against the backdrop of greys and blacks around them like the statement it was supposed to be. James understood his mother wanted to say something, to make a point about life and death and the way we choose to mark it, but it really did piss him off.
They’d arrived at the crematorium before Ben. The planned pallbearers – Margaret and James, James’s uncles, and a couple of Ben’s friends – had had to stand outside waiting for him. It was a nice enough day, a little overcast, but hardly a backdrop for tragedy. At first it felt to James like standing outside the pub with the smokers. People they knew had been filtering in the door, and after the hellos and sorry-for-your-losses they’d headed inside to get a seat, with James directing them to where they could find the others. Then it had felt more like waiting for a cab at the end of a night out as all the mourners got settled and the six of them waited outside. James, a generation younger than everyone else, didn’t know what to say to anybody. He’d asked his two uncles about work and the cousins he happily never saw, and that was it. For once he was out of small talk.
Finally, the hearse could be seen, coming down the private road of the crematorium, past the empty fields. Everybody stood a little straighter, the men surreptitiously loosening their shoulders for the weightlifting about to happen. James put his arm around his mother.
‘All right, Maggie?’ he asked.
‘They’re very late,’ she said.
‘I’ll take the delivery charge out of the driver’s tip,’ he muttered back.
The young undertaker they had met at the funeral parlour (why was it a parlour? That was an expression Ben would have known the origin of), came across to shake and hold Maggie’s hand for a little too long.
‘And are these gentlemen the pallbearers?’ he asked.
‘I think I can manage to help lift despite my feeble female frame,’ she replied, causing him to start fiddling with his cuffs again.
The undertaker lined up the lifters as evenly as possible by height. James was going to have to stoop a little, but he was at the front with his mother. After checking with the crematorium that they were ready for them, the undertaker had them lift the coffin.
When they’d hoisted it up the first time, Ben had almost gone flying.
The cheap chipboard and Ben’s light frame provided much less resistance than any of the pallbearers had imagined. There was a moment it had reached everyone’s shou
lders, then it kept rising a couple of inches, hung in the air for a split-second, then dropped down onto the pallbearers’ braced arms, bouncing slightly. There was a lot of feet shuffling and James was sure he heard a muffled ‘fucking hell!’ from someone, he wasn’t sure if it was his uncle or the undertaker. James thought it probably wasn’t the time to give his dad the bumps, and felt a smile and a tear on his face. The first time for both in days. Pull yourself together, Winfield, he said to himself as they slowly walked inside.
They had carried the coffin to the front of the room, that wasn’t quite a chapel, but wasn’t really not a chapel either. Because of the traffic hold-up, they were carrying Ben into a room full of mourners, who instinctively turned as the casket approached, in the same way they would for a bride. The music that was playing as they walked in was Billy Bragg, ‘Between the Wars’. It was a song that had haunted James’s childhood, and wound him up no end in his teenage years when he considered a bunch of decidedly middle-class artists and professionals claiming a bit too much solidarity with miners and dockers and people who actually had to do horrible difficult jobs. He’d had his first serious rows with his parents to a backdrop of songs like this, as he’d tried to work out who he was by identifying what he wasn’t. And what he wasn’t was like his mum and dad.
Then there had been eulogies. James had read an extract from Orwell. He’d told Rebecca it was the first time he’d picked up the book, the day they were going to the cremation. He could still remember his dad having given it to him when he was twelve. ‘I’d wanted a Nintendo, so took against Orwell from then on.’
He looked up at Rebecca as he spoke, the only person he could keep eye contact with without being worried about crying. Reading it out loud in front of everyone, he could kind of see what his dad must have been getting at. It was Down and Out in Paris and London, and he was reciting Ben’s favourite passage about the social standing of beggars.