She took her hand away and closed her eyes. He said, ‘Sit down for a minute.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine, just surprised, well no, not really surprised, just … I don’t know.’
Steve provided the word. ‘Upset.’
She said, ‘What did he die of?’
He shrugged. ‘She left her phone number. I think she’s hoping that you may be able to shed some light on the whole thing. I think she’s a bit confused.’
Melissa suddenly looked unwell. ‘I can’t phone her.’
He laughed, amazed, ‘Of course you must. He was your friend and now he’s dead.’
She turned on him. ‘Shut the fuck up, won’t you? You’re loving this. It’s not as though you understand what’s going on. You never even knew him. It’s hardly your problem, is it?’
He smiled grimly at her. ‘It’s not my problem, no. It’s his problem. He’s dead. Maybe it’s too much to expect you to phone his mother.’ He felt ridiculous, felt as though he sounded like a stiff-shirted actor in a stage melodrama. She sat down on the chair by the till and covered her face with her hands.
Eventually an arrangement was made. Steve telephoned and they agreed to all meet up at John’s house after work. Melissa said that she needed his moral support. He was her friend.
On the walk from the tube to John’s house Melissa professed to be feeling rather sick. On a couple of occasions she retched dryly, bent double, clutching her stomach, but no liquid came from her throat, only painful, deceptive air. Steve tried to calm her down. He thought that this malady was induced by her nerves and he was right, but that didn’t really help matters; it didn’t make the pain in her belly and her throat go away.
John’s mother answered the doorbell in a matter of seconds. She didn’t look as old as they had expected, her hair was not completely grey, although she must have been in her early sixties. She was smartly dressed in a dusky-coloured woollen suit. She smiled thinly at them in greeting and beckoned them in.
Once inside, Steve looked around with great interest. He had imagined the house from Melissa’s occasional descriptions and it was very much as he’d expected. John’s mother was saying, ‘When I got here the door was locked and no one answered my knocking, but I could hear the radio, and the curtains were open but the nets were still in place. I could just make out the shape of John on the floor inside. I got one of his next-door neighbours to climb in through the front window, which was open, and to unlock the front door to let me in. He took a while to get to the door – too busy checking the body, I suppose – and when he opened the door he said, “I think he’s dead.” He was dead. Afterwards I spoke to his GP and to another doctor that he had apparently been recommended to. He was ill, but in the end he died from something like exposure, a mixture of the cold and hunger and dehydration.’
She had explained all this as they walked to the kitchen where she switched on the kettle and rinsed out a teapot in the sink. Melissa asked, ‘You mean that he had some sort of disease initially?’
She nodded, ‘Something to do with …’ – she frowned, confused – ‘… immune deficiency, I think. He was very ill, but it needn’t have ended like it did. I thought that he may have told you.’
Melissa shook her head. ‘I didn’t know him well. I only came to see him here a few times, but on no occasion did he suggest that he might be unwell.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I was worried about him though. He lost a lot of weight over a fairly short period and he seemed to lose all interest in his appearance. He made out as though everything that was happening in his life was connected with his work.’
His mother shook her head. ‘He resigned from work in the sales department about five or six weeks ago. He’s been here alone since then.’
Melissa began to say something but Steve gave her a warning glance that quickly silenced her. He said, ‘We both work in a shop that John came into, that’s how we became acquainted.’
She didn’t respond so he added, ‘He bought some silver material from Melissa to use to line his …’ He paused. ‘… To line the coffin he was making.’
John’s mother nodded silently and carried on with what she was doing. She finished stirring the tea in the pot and got out some cups and saucers. Even though Melissa had spent a fair amount of time in John’s kitchen on her last visit, cleaning up and filling the dishwasher, she had failed to detect what a large and beautiful collection of crockery John had accumulated. It surprised her. She was also confused about the various things that had been said about him, but she didn’t want to say anything out of turn.
John’s mother asked them how they took their tea, followed their specifications and handed them their cups. She said, ‘I was hoping that you both might be able to explain that thing in the front room to me. I mentioned it to his old boss at the advertising agency but he didn’t know anything about it.’
They entered the living room one after the other. Melissa still half expected it to be full of chips of wood and dust, she still half expected to see John curled up on the sofa, asleep. But he was dead and gone. His mother said, ‘There was a post-mortem but apparently the body is still in a reasonable condition. Sometimes they have to cut away half the face, but they didn’t have to do that with John.’ She paused, for a second and then added, ‘Thank God.’
They had all unintentionally stood in a formal sort of semi-circle around the coffin, each holding their tea in front of them as if they were at the opening of an exhibition at an art gallery, perusing the works on show.
The coffin had been put back together and was on the woodwork table. It seemed enormous and fantastical in this small front room, like a space ship, something intergalactic. Steve smiled at it in wonder and couldn’t resist saying, ‘This is such a beautiful thing, absolutely incredible.’
John’s mother clattered her teaspoon around in her saucer. After a short pause she said, ‘Am I correct in assuming that this is a … that this is some kind of a coffin? I don’t know what else to think.’
Melissa nodded at her. ‘He’s been making it over the past few weeks. Every time I came to see him it was all he talked about, all he could think of.’
She stared at it again, nervously. After a short silence Steve said, ‘It’s a real work of art, a real show of craftsmanship. Every detail is spot on. He hasn’t quite finished the lettering, though.’ He noticed a small bit of the material that John had asked for peeping out of the corner of the coffin. ‘Is it lined yet? Did he manage that?’
Melissa turned on him. ‘Steve, John’s dead now. I don’t think his mother wants to talk about this thing. It doesn’t matter any more.’ She felt angry at Steve, but the sharpness in her voice, like the top note on a penny whistle, was derived chiefly from her disappointment at finding out that John had deceived her in order to try and make her take him seriously. She got a sort of black gratification from finding out that her initial impressions of him had been accurate. She stared at the coffin with hatred and wanted to destroy it. John’s mother was saying, ‘Well, that is actually part of what I don’t understand. I want to know what made John do this, it just doesn’t make sense.’
Melissa answered gently, ‘Maybe this project was just like a symptom of his illness. Maybe it was just a distraction.’
Suddenly her words were like weapons. She heard her voice speaking in this room, John’s room, and it was as though she was listening to someone else, and this person was destroying all the things that John had said before, covering up his ideas and aspirations, burying them. John was dead now and what he thought no longer had any bearing. It didn’t matter.
Steve turned to her, surprised. ‘I don’t think that’s very accurate or fair, Melissa. John was always perfectly coherent whenever we … you met him. He obviously wanted to do this thing, to create this coffin. It was like a parting gift, an avowal of intention. It was obviously very important to him, given that in the end he sacrificed everything for it.’
As he finished speaking he turned to lo
ok at John’s mother. Her face seemed puffy, as if she wanted to cry. She said, ‘I can’t pretend that I’m not bitter about this. There was a letter that I wrote him on the doormat when we got into the house, a whole pile of letters there that he never bothered opening. It’s like he knowingly denied telling me that he was dying, like he gave all that he had left into making this thing and forgot about me. It would be untrue to pretend that I don’t almost hate this coffin for that reason.’
Melissa nodded immediately. ‘I think that it was a destructive and ugly idea in the first place. It trivializes everything, it pretends to be frivolous, but look what it did to John, how it cut short what little life he had left to live.’
John’s mother was frowning as she listened to Melissa. She looked uncertain and worried. Steve saw this expression and felt compelled to interrupt. ‘I think Melissa’s wrong. John has created something very wonderful here, something that has lived on beyond him, that explains how he felt, that gave him purpose. I think that this coffin is almost like a gift to all those people that knew him and loved him in life …’ He knew that he was essentially talking rubbish, but felt that it was suddenly necessary. ‘That’s why he must be buried in it; it must be completed and used.’
Melissa turned on him, aghast. ‘You’ve got to be kidding! There’s no way that this thing can be used now. After everything that’s happened it would be obscene. This coffin is just a bundle of ideas, it shouldn’t really have been constructed, let alone completed at such a cost.’
John’s mother stood between them and stared at the coffin. She was unsure as to the relationship between the two of them. She wondered if they were a proper couple or if they were just friends. They were dressed in such strange clothes, in her eyes, that they seemed to slot into the same nightmare part of her consciousness as the coffin; somewhere modern and foreign and inexplicable. She wondered how much John had actually liked the girl. In the end she wanted only to do what was best for him.
Melissa was speaking again and she tried to listen to her. She said, ‘When we first met John he was buying the material to line this thing. Even then, in retrospect, he was obviously unwell. He wanted to pretend that he was fine, but he wasn’t. He said that he was building this coffin for someone else then, and I believed him. I think that was true.’
She knew now that this wasn’t true, but didn’t care.
Steve laughed. ‘Of course that’s not true! It’s bloody obvious that John was building this for himself. He knew that he was dying and he wanted to leave his mark. It’s perfectly laudable.’
Melissa frowned. ‘I don’t think that your artistic pretensions are appropriate here, Steve. This situation is more serious than that, more is at stake than a few silly ideas.’
Steve slammed his tea cup down on to the work-bench next to the coffin and a small portion of the tea spilled into the saucer and followed the base of the cup into a closed circle like a dyke. He saw this and thought, ‘Eventually my lips will be the drawbridge.’ Then he turned on Melissa. ‘I can’t believe that you’re being so stubborn and thoughtless and insensitive. All that matters is that we do what John would have wanted, that we do what would have made him happy. This coffin is what he wanted, it’s the thing that made him happy before he died.’
Melissa started to cry and shouted, ‘But John’s dead now, isn’t he? Nothing can make any difference to that. He’s done what he wanted and now it’s time for other people to do what they want.’
John’s mother looked at both of them and then said firmly, ‘For God’s sake stop arguing. I know what’s best for John. What’s best for John is that we remember him and respect what he’s made; maybe that we even make use of it. I don’t care if it’s embarrassing, I don’t care so long as it would have made him happy.’
Steve touched her arm gently and said, ‘I’ll finish the coffin for you if you like, and then you can make up your mind properly. I’ll start now.’
He unzipped his tracksuit top, slung it on to the sofa and said to Melissa, ‘Was he going to line the coffin on top and bottom using those silver tacks?’
The tacks were by the side of the coffin, glossy and ready for use. Melissa was still crying. She said, ‘How the hell should I know? I don’t want to stay here now, I want to go home.’
John’s mother handed her a tissue and watched as she wiped her eyes. Then she said to Steve, ‘Just do the best you can.’
Melissa was worried that her make-up had run, and went into the bathroom to blot her eyes. After a few minutes she returned and watched Steve in silence as he opened the coffin and unfolded the material to see how much there was. John’s mother sat on the sofa and was staring past Steve and out of the window where the light shone in through the nets and glimmered on the coffin’s lid.
Melissa thought, ‘I’m going to do so much more with my life than this.’ In her mind were a dozen plans. She debated setting up a clothes stall on Camden Market or going to work for Oxfam, ‘To do some real good,’ she thought.
After a few minutes she turned and left the room and then the house without saying anything else.
The silence in the room was interrupted only by the sounds of Steve working on the coffin, draping material and pushing in tacks. He debated how to mix the colours to complete John’s work on the label. Under his hands the coffin felt like a crystal or a diamond, cold and complete, infinitely beautiful. As he worked, he couldn’t stop smiling.
Country Matters
When Gerald walked out on her after seven years of marriage, Rosemary realized that she would have to acquaint herself with certain aspects of household management that hitherto had remained a complete mystery to her.
After three months she had conquered the damp above the tiles on the inside of the outside wall in the bathroom. She had also learned how to use the electronic meat knife. Her slices of chicken and beef were all perfectly proportioned and as thick as half of one of her fingernails, consistent in width, wonderful.
She had one friend, Emily, who worked as an estate agent in Finsbury Park. Often Emily worked evenings, showing potential clients around properties. Emily was also heavily involved with a pen-pal called Rolf who lived in Milton Keynes and sent her long, sweet letters, occasionally enclosing poems by Stevie Smith and Margaret Atwood. Rolf knew that Stevie Smith had lived in Palmers Green and that Emily lived in a nearby street. He imagined that Emily was a bit like Stevie Smith; creative, explosive, repressed. He liked the way she wrote her ’e’s. Each letter was full of pzazz.
Rosemary cooked a lot of meat, seasoned it, sliced it, but Emily was usually busy in the evenings so she would set the table for one and open a small bottle of wine. Invariably she left the rest of the meat on a plate in the back garden, hoping to lure a fox on to the premises, or a badger. It never occurred to her to cook less. Part of her was still hoping that one night Gerald might return home, open the door with his key and declare that he had finally abandoned his new life with Claire from Accounts.
The meat was eaten, but not by a fox. It was consumed nightly by a tom cat whose behavioural problems had made him un-house-trainable. This cat Rosemary later came to call Rasputin, because he was a complex mixture of evil and confusion.
Initially Rasputin had belonged to an old man who was dirty and who had mistreated him, kicked him when he passed by and fed him on a whim. When the old man had died, Rasputin had been cast out into the world; a world whose gentleness and kindness were absolute in comparison to what he had sadly come to understand to be ‘the norm’.
Rosemary had no particular attachment to the feline species. She liked animals in general but had never owned one because Gerald had suffered from a fur allergy which had been a perpetual cause of discomfort and asthma.
Rosemary had compensated for her lack by diverting all her affectionate energies into the large pool dedicated to keeping Gerald happy. Her favourite petting part of his body was the area of curly dark hair which descended from his belly button to his genital cluster. She padded this
area like a fussy mother cat, pulling out tangles and combing it with her fingertips, stroking the hair into a glorious chestnut shine.
Gerald didn’t mind. He always washed after sex with other women. He knew that his pubis smelled of lemon.
Four months after Gerald’s departure Rosemary started attending a cookery class. She began to diversify in the culinary field. One evening she prepared a passable spaghetti, the next she created a particularly successful vegetarian stir-fry. She began to understand the joys of Cookery-for-One. There were no leftovers.
Rasputin (as yet unnamed) sniffed around in her back garden and located only an empty plate. He pushed the plate around with his nose for several minutes and then, throwing caution to the wind, attacked Rosemary’s dustbin with the sort of savagery reserved in the feline species only for breeds of exotic large cat like the puma and the tiger. He became one hundred per cent primitive.
Rosemary was watching Bergerac when she heard a terrible combination of clattering and smashing, tearing and throaty howls from outside. She quickly made her way into her kitchen and switched on the strip light. It flashed several times as she walked to the window and then lit up fully and reflected its light on to her small back garden.
Her initial sighting of Rasputin by the bins was rather dramatic. The flashing of her strip light created the effect of a strobe at a disco, and Rasputin was the unfortunate epileptic stuck on the dancefloor in the throes of a fit. He had a large piece of tin foil snapped tight in his mouth – the foil had some smears of beef fat stuck to its silvery surface – and was rolling around on the concrete by the bins as though he was actually on the steep slope of a descending hill. He rolled (like a spinning top but sideways) from the bins to the far picket fence and then back from the fence to the bins. He was like a bubonic sausage, tumbling around in a frying pan, fizzing and crackling and ready to burst.
This display lasted for two or three minutes and then ended as suddenly as it had begun. Rasputin sat up straight, dropped the tin foil, licked his lips and then turned his head to peruse the scattered contents of the upturned dustbin.
Love Your Enemies Page 19