by Tim Parks
I also needed the bathroom. My children had come to me, all four of them. Tears call for comfort. We embraced. It was fine to have them here. But I didn’t want to be crying now. I wanted to pee. Meantime, people were making for the Church Hall. Since the cremation couldn’t take place till four-thirty, there was now to be a reception in the Church Hall. To kill the ninety minutes’ wait. I asked an elderly lady where the bathrooms were, then read my messages, leaning on the wall behind the bowl.
‘Had a bad dream, Tom. Could you call?’
‘I’d be grateful if you could come and comfort my mother. No doubt you knew all along I had given my father no more than he deserved.’
‘Tom, which room shall I make up for you? Looking forward to seeing you. The boys are thrilled you’re coming. Hugs.’
‘Tom, old mate, St Pete just rattled his keys at me and sent me back to mayhem. Any chance you could get over here and give me skin?’
I peed and washed my face in cold water. Someone turned the handle to get in. For the second time. A long church service can push the oldies to the limit. Just the crematorium now, I thought, just the flames.
The hall was a buzz of voices. There were long tables and food. The Lord has laid out so many rich foods. Salmon sandwiches, vols-au-vent, fruit salad. Had Mother chosen these too? It seemed terribly unlike Elsa to ask me to phone because of a bad dream. A man shook my hand and began to tell me he had known my father, who had helped him greatly. My parents were saints, he said. He appeared to be in his late sixties. They were sitting at God’s right hand. I reached for a piece of quiche and found I had no appetite. ‘You will get quite a welcome yourself when you join them,’ he laughed. ‘You are a lucky man to have had such a mother and father.’ I listened with a piece of quiche in my hand and no desire to eat it, as previously I had held a hymn sheet with no desire to sing. The important thing is to do what you want to do, the shrink will say. But what possible advice can a shrink offer someone who has lost all desire? Someone who isn’t anyone at all – or two someones cancelling each other out. Thomas, whose nickname was Twin. The quiche in my hand seemed to be cancelling out anything I might have said to this man who was trying to be kind to me. My father had helped him to make important choices at a crucial moment in his life, he was explaining, a moment when he could easily have taken a wrong turn. He spoke with a full plate in his hand. I noticed a roast-beef sandwich. The woman nodding vigorously beside him must be his wife. Not wanting to, I took a bite of quiche, if only to have some excuse for not responding. A more elderly woman joined the conversation, leaning on a stick. ‘The Lord will wipe away your tears,’ she said. ‘Your grief will pass.’ ‘England will wipe out the Scots,’ a voice behind was saying emphatically. My daughter’s boyfriend. ‘Want to bet?’ My phone was ringing. My mouth was full of quiche. My knees felt weak. Then somebody pushed a book into my hand. Prayers that Rout Demons by John Eckhardt. He had borrowed it from Martha, but she had died before he could return it. Taking the book, I put down the quiche and pulled the phone from my pocket. It was the shrink’s number. I rejected the call. I am beyond advice. But what was I supposed to do with John Eckhardt, I wondered? Take him to the cremation? Then across the room a voice shouted. ‘Piss Christ! It’s the “Piss Christ”!’
XXI
The voice was my brother’s and it broke the spell. He shouted the words at the top of his voice. ‘Piss Christ!’ There was something of a kerfuffle, if not exactly mayhem. Only later would I appreciate how it began. My brother and sister had come over to the church hall together, surrounded by a murmur of condolences. In the hall, while I was in the bathroom trying to pee and reading my texts, the Reverend Pat, Bible in hand and still in full liturgical regalia, had come to say a word to my sister, who had introduced him to my brother who, typically, had passed some remark about not understanding why no one had arranged for a firework display, to give our thanksgiving a bit of a crackle. ‘Not a bad idea!’ the Reverend had indulgently replied and had begun to say to my sister, as if she were the only interested party, that the church grounds did seem to him the obvious and appropriate home for my mother’s ashes, when my brother spotted the photograph that the Reverend Pip had pasted, or taped, to the back cover of his Bible. It showed a yellowish crucifix looming in a strangely smeared, intensely orange atmosphere, as though in a murky flame-lit smoke.
Then, while my sister was saying she couldn’t honestly recall my mother having said anything as to where her ashes were to be scattered – it was the one thing she didn’t appear to have thought of – my brother asked the Reverend Pete if he was aware that this was a photo by the controversial American photographer, Andres Serrano. The Reverend said he did know, but said it in such a distracted fashion, still evidently focused on the question of whether my mother’s ashes should be dug into the roses climbing the east wall or simply dispersed on the lawn, that my brother was convinced he did not know. Was he aware what the photo was called, my brother pressed the Reverend, who didn’t reply, as my sister was saying it would be a month at least before the crematorium handed over the ashes, though heaven only knew what they did with them all that time. How could it take so long? Did he realise why the image had that strangely lemony-orange colour, my brother insisted, still holding the Reverend’s Bible – and it was quite a large Bible, a handsome, priestly Bible – in his hand, staring at the image of a traditionally crucified Christ apparently suspended in this murky cellophane orange. ‘I find it very beautiful,’ the Reverend Pete confided, entirely failing to catch the dangerous edge in my brother’s voice. He liked to surround himself, the Reverend Pat or Pip said, with images of Our Lord’s passion. ‘By the way, it was good to hear you in such fine voice,’ he added appreciatively to my brother. ‘You have a fine singing voice.
That was what did it, my brother later told me.
‘The orange is the photographer’s urine,’ he said.
The Reverend said it was always heartening when relatives of the deceased found solace in the hymns and prayers. Not to mention the sermon, he laughed. He really was a cretin, my brother later observed. And in the same loud, plummy, hymn-singing voice that the clergyman had just been congratulating, he, my brother, announced, ‘This photo is called the “Piss Christ”. It is a blasphemous image.’
The Reverend was finally lost for words.
‘Bro,’ my sister said.
Three or four people had gathered round, whether to pay their respects to the mourners or to share the glow of the clergyman’s charisma wasn’t clear. Devotional imagery had always been important to him, the Reverend began to say.
‘It’s the “Piss Christ”,’ my brother suddenly shouted, as if inviting the whole room into the conversation, the hungry Christian soldiers with their vols-au-vent. The Reverend made to take the Bible from my brother’s hand, but he raised his arm above his head to show it to the crowd. ‘It’s the “Piss Christ”. Ecce Homo.’
I hurried across the room to him with my copy of Prayers that Rout Demons. Others had stepped in, asking my brother to please keep his voice down. To please not blaspheme. ‘This cretin is complimenting me on my fine voice,’ my brother told me loudly. Again he spoke in plummy tones. ‘He can’t distinguish between devotion and taking the piss. He has Christ crucified in piss on his Bible. He can’t tell a Christ from a Piss Christ. I hate singing hymns,’ my brother shouted at the Reverend Pip. ‘Hymns are cretinous.’
As I joined the group, I felt a message arrive in my pocket. The Reverend was mouthing something inaudible. His face had lost its rosiness.
‘Clergymen are cretins,’ my brother was saying, ‘when they’re not criminals.’
‘Please, Bro,’ my sister begged.
‘Mr Sanders,’ one of the elders put in. ‘Out of respect for your mother …’
‘Dad was a clergyman,’ I said.
‘So I know the territory,’ my brother laughed. ‘At least my mother could tell a Christ from a Piss Christ,’ he rounded on the elder.
Mak
ing a huge attempt to get control of the situation, speaking in a far louder voice than was necessary, my sister said to me, ‘Tom, the Reverend was just saying that the east wall of the church with the little rose garden would be the perfect place for Mum’s ashes. Shall we go and take a look?’
‘Quite a few of the senior church folk have been scattered there,’ the Reverend said, recovering his voice.
My brother was shaking his head savagely.
I said, ‘No. That’s not going to happen.’
My sister’s eyes pleaded solidarity.
‘Mother said I was to scatter her ashes.’
Only as I spoke these words did I finally realise the nature of Mother’s concession. Out of love for me, pity for me, Mother had granted me this one filial duty, to be performed when she was already beyond contamination. I could scatter her ashes.
‘There was nothing in the will.’ My brother-in-law had arrived on the scene.
‘It would still be a suitable place,’ the Reverend said, ‘whoever does the scattering. It would be good to keep Martha here at the St Peter and St Paul.’
‘Piss Christ,’ my brother muttered.
‘Mother told me four years ago,’ I said, ‘that it would be my duty to scatter the ashes.’ I spoke with sudden firmness. ‘And I have not yet decided where I will put them,’ I told the Reverend. There was a moment’s quiet. My sister had understood. My brother was shaking his head. Five minutes later, climbing into the car to the crematorium, I read the message, ‘Que haya un amor, Señor Sanders.’
I don’t know at what point I discovered that the coffin would not actually be committed to the flames during the brief ceremony at the crematorium. Perhaps I mentioned in the car what a profound effect it had had on me years ago when the curtains parted and Father’s coffin had slid into the furnace. Perhaps, saying this, I was actually seeking to dampen down the flames as my brother went on muttering, ‘Cretin, Piss Christ’, and my brother-in-law, who was travelling with us now, rather peremptorily asked could he refrain please from blaspheming, and my brother replied that it wasn’t his fault if the cretinous clergyman had an image of Jesus drowned in piss on his Bible. He was deeply shocked, my brother said in his plummiest voice.
‘What struck me more than anything,’ I said, ‘was when the coffin slid away and you could distantly hear the flames roar and you knew your father’s face had gone for ever.’
‘Tommy!’ my brother said quietly, and my sister said, ‘Don’t worry, Bro, they don’t do that any more.’
‘Don’t do what?’
I hadn’t grasped what she meant.
They had realised, my sister explained, that the knowledge the coffin was actually going into the flames, then the sight of the smoke when you left the crematorium, was upsetting; it was more than some people could bear, my sister said. So these days they burned the body sometime later – at night, usually.
There was a silence in the car as we took this in. Not only had Mother been embalmed, sanitised for public viewing, in such a way that had made viewing impossible, but now she wasn’t actually to be burned while we were present. We were not to be close to her at that final moment. Her body would slide into the flames late at night, as we drank beer perhaps, or took a shower, or simply slept.
‘So why,’ my brother enquired, ‘are we going to the crematorium?’
There was silence.
‘To recover the expensive roses?’
‘It’s a ceremony,’ my sister said patiently.
All our childhood my brother had teased my sister, and invariably my sister would lose her temper. Not now. Now my sister would not cry and she would not lose her temper. She had grown up.
‘Ah,’ my brother said, ‘a ceremony. Prayers? Hymns? Magic spells?’
‘They read out the Committal,’ my brother-in-law said.
‘Dust to dust?’
‘Right.’
‘That’s something to look forward to then.’
‘Bro!’ my sister protested. ‘You’re amazing.’
Que haya un amor, I was thinking. The shrink’s only advice was my own weird plea of that first meeting so long ago. That a love should be. Closing my eyes in the funeral car as we followed Mother’s hearse along Mortlake Road, I imagined the words stretching out into the empty future, a slender bridge reaching through flames and mayhem. Que haya un amor.
Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God, began the Reverend Pete, to take unto Himself the soul of our dear sister here departed – there were only a dozen of us in the crematorium chapel – we therefore commit her body – again I was sandwiched between my brother and sister, as if this were the only order possible for us – to be consumed by fire. Again the children were on the other side of the aisle. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I looked up and saw the Reverend Pete sprinkling holy water on the coffin as he spoke, something my low-church mother would never have wanted. But Mother was dead, she couldn’t react. In sure and certain hope, the Reverend droned on, of – ‘Piss Christ,’ my brother muttered – resurrection to eternal life – Did the holy water prevent the flames from consuming the soul? Did ‘sure’ shore up ‘certain’ and ‘certain’ bolster ‘sure’ – through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that it may be like to His glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.
The Reverend Pete clearly enjoyed intoning these solemn prayers. As had my father, in his time. The crucifix in urine was the divinity in the vile body, I thought. Incarnation. The Reverend Pip was right that the photo had a certain beauty. It was not an ugly thing. And what was wrong with pee, in the end? Perhaps that’s what the photographer meant. The body isn’t vile. Pee is beautiful. Absurdly, I imagined myself peeing on Mother’s coffin, but not in disrespect. In the intimacy of shared mortality, the intimacy of those difficult nights four years ago when we didn’t flush.
O Merciful God, the Reverend proceeded.
The pee in the outhouse was a gift of intimacy, I thought. It’s curious how the past – one’s own past, at least – is never past. I imagined a crucifix in that jar Malcolm and I had peed into. It was a gift Mother returned, when she breathed her last and her family leaned in close to breathe it with her. Only mortals can be intimate, I told myself in Mortlake Crematorium as the Reverend Pete shook his holy-water sprinkler again. We are not vile at all. That a love should be. ‘Piss Christ,’ my brother muttered. In whom whosoever believeth shall live, though he die, the Reverend Pat read. Elsa’s body, in particular, was not vile. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Him, the Reverend pursued this monstrous paradox, shall not die, eternally.
I’m going.
We were half sitting, half kneeling, but now I stood up.
‘Let’s go,’ I whispered to my brother. I took his hand.
‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ I muttered to my sister. She didn’t object. She sat back to let me pass. My brother followed, his hand still in mine. ‘Piss Christ,’ he said. Audibly. We walked out. Two cab drivers were chatting under umbrellas at the crematorium gate. During the ride my brother kept his eyes closed. We had walked out of Mother’s committal. I had left the twins behind. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have come,’ my brother finally said. ‘I shouldn’t have come, Tommy.’ ‘I’ll pick up the tab for the taxi,’ I told him. ‘That a love should be,’ I texted David. ‘Figure it out for yourself.’
‘I’m at Heathrow,’ I told Elsa later. ‘What was the dream?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ She sounded tired.
‘I’ve got a flight at seven-thirty.’
There was a brief silence.
‘It must have been something.’
She half laughed.
‘It frightened me. It was so vivid.’
I waited. My brother was bringing pints of Bombardier from the bar.
‘I was at the beach with my family. We were at the water’s edge, but nobody wanted to swim because the surf was so high. The waves were enormous.’
She pause
d.
‘We were all laughing, and my sister had her baby in her arms. It was already born.’
My brother put the pints on the table.
‘Then I saw there was someone way out in the sea, on the waves, floating, not even swimming.’
She stopped.
‘Me.’
‘Yes. I knew it was you at once. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to go to you, but the others pulled me back. They were shouting, He’s already dead. Can’t you see, he’s already dead?’
‘Just a dream,’ I told her. ‘We should be landing at ten-fifty. Bubbly in the freezer for midnight.’
‘To vile bodies,’ my brother raised his glass.
EPILOGUE
In early June of the following year, on our first trip to London, Elsa and I met my sister at Vauxhall railway station. It was a weekday. After hurried introductions, we all took the train to Richmond, where Elsa got off to do some shopping, while my sister and I stayed on a stop further to St Margaret’s, whence we walked to Marble Hill Park, crossed the broad grass lawns to the river and ordered ourselves cappuccinos in the cafeteria. As soon as we were settled, my sister opened the zip of the large shopping bag she was carrying and pulled out a tall black cardboard cylinder, perhaps twice the size good whisky comes in. The weather was bright and we were sitting outside with young mothers and their children, pensioners, amorous couples. There was a general hum of contentment. My sister placed the cylinder on the table between us and sipped her coffee as I fiddled with the lid. It was difficult to see how it opened. My sister explained something the lady in the crematorium had said to her: that you had to be careful with your nails because the seal was tight. In fact I had already torn a nail.