by Patrick Gale
The music, something for string quartet, came to an end and a priest appeared in front of Marcus’s coffin. He had a boyish face, although he must have been in his forties, and black hair so well-combed it looked almost false. He was not in robes, but he had a dark suit on and a shiny dog collar. Silence fell at once and they all stood.
‘Erm,’ said the priest, ‘hello. We are here to mark the passing of our friend Marcus Carling. I confess I met Marcus only once, when his assistant Miss Birch asked if I would visit him in hospital. He was charming but business-like. He wanted my assurance that I would be prepared to be here in my legal capacity as priest rather than my spiritual one as Christian and I gave it him willingly. He struck me as a man of profound belief, if only in the importance of living fully and with grace. I can see from the wonderful number of you who have turned up this morning that he was popular and will be missed. I’m sure Marcus would not mind if I said that I trust, from the number of you here, that he will live on in your hearts. As requested, I shall refrain from blessing his departed soul but I see no reason for not saying bless you, all of you, for coming.’ He smiled in benediction. ‘Please sit,’ he said. Everyone sat and he walked to one side and sat too.
A nurse now climbed into the pulpit. She was pretty but looked hot and rather cross at having to be there.
‘Hello,’ she said quietly.
‘Speak up,’ some woman called in a thick accent.
‘Sorry,’ muttered the nurse then continued more loudly. ‘Hello. I’m staff nurse Rosie Walsh. I nursed Marcus on and off throughout his long illness and was nursing him for his last three weeks. I can’t say he was an easy patient, there’s no reason why anyone that ill should make life easy for anyone, but we got on. He teased me, I teased him and he used to finish my crossword for me.’
‘Ses mots croisées,’ a man behind Andrea explained firmly to his neighbour.
‘Towards the end he made me confirm that this time it was nearly over – there had been a lot of false alarms, you see – and then he made me promise that, when he died, I’d come along here and stand up and read you all a letter from him. I’ve not read it yet myself, I’ve only just been handed it, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t read it very well.’
‘Ah, c’est chouette comme idée!’ exclaimed the Frenchman’s female neighbour and was silenced.
The nurse tore open an envelope and drew out a single sheet of paper. She looked up at the congregation, then down again.
‘“Greetings from beyond the grave!”’ she read and coughed. ‘“Thank you, whoever and however many you are, for bothering to come to what, after all, is a fairly spiritless occasion. Doubtless you would have been indignant had I summoned you all to a hired ‘function room’ in some stuffy hotel and the English climate scarcely allows us to forgather in a field or park. I would have preferred the latter, for its lack of ambiguity, but this church will have to do. Blake came here, and his views were fairly unorthodox, so the precedent is honourable.
“I am, as you will have gathered, dead. This had been a bastard of a disease and any release from it, however undignified, will have been merciful. I have no hopes of a heaven and no fears of a hell so please don’t insult my intelligence and waste your energies wishing me in either. If it’s any comfort to you, however, I do have a profound sense that all is not over. When alive I was far too aware of the fact for it all just to stop at the flick of a switch. I shall continue as influence, as spirit, as memory, or something. This is not just the fear of death speaking. Death has become as companionable to me in the last few years as a plump fireside cat and no more awe-inspiring. If nothing else, I shall live on as my hard cash.”’ (Here several people chuckled.)
‘“I would willingly leave my body to science, but what’s left of it would be precious little use to anyone. Tombstones are a hypocritical expense and a burden to those who come after. I have accordingly arranged to be cremated in privacy. No friends, no family; just the priest the law in its infinite wisdom requires. You shan’t have to climb any hills to watch the scattering of my ashes since I have no great love for any particular piece of England and every hope of finding my way anonymously onto some municipal flower-bed.
“Just before you leave, you will be read a poem. I don’t hold with all the theology behind it, and I don’t believe its author did either, but I do believe in its defiance. John Donne would no more have been an easy patient than I was. Yours sincerely, Marcus Carling”.’
The nurse looked up for these last words then folded the paper away somewhere and left the pulpit. She walked away down the aisle, her sensible shoes making muffled thumps all the way to the swing door by which she left. Someone was crying. Someone up in the gallery. Faber blew his nose heavily but otherwise seemed fine. His composure did not last, however. The next mystery item was a rather breathy performance of Britten’s setting of Yeats’s Salley Gardens by a small boy in school uniform. The melody and bittersweet words were touching enough even without the poignant contrast between the boy’s youth and the poem’s world-weariness. Faber pulled out a handkerchief and had to blow rather more. His tears were infectious, even though Andrea had never even met Marcus, and she had to breath deeply to keep herself under control.
‘Stage-fright,’ she reminded herself. ‘Bank balances. Haemorrhoids. Evening classes.’
The song finished, causing a few people to clap. Peter tapped her arm to show it was time to stand up, which she already knew. She lost her nerve at the last moment and took the typed sheet of poetry with her. Faber stood with a sniff to let her out. She passed within inches of the coffin and climbed into the pulpit. Suddenly the sun was full in her eyes and she knew she had the poem by heart. Without bothering to glance down she rested her hands on the rail before her and faced the crowd of expectant strangers.
‘“Death be not proud,”’ she told them and paused to muster a smile of triumph.
Thirty-Three
The children were going home.
‘Lots of egg-boxes? Wonderful!’ said Andrea, taking an armful of cardboard from a collecting mother. ‘Oh, and a squeezy bottle too! What fun.’ She tossed the useful offerings into the domestic junk-heap corner known as the Quarry. ‘I’m afraid they’ll be back with you in another form in no time. Tabitha’s getting so creative. Ah, hello Mrs Tang.’ She looked round wildly for the little Chinese girl who had only started that week. ‘Louise? Anyone see Louise? Ah. There you are, dear. Your mum’s here.’ She turned back to Mrs Tang and whispered, ‘She’s so bright!’ with a smile.
The weather had suddenly changed gear. Autumn had stopped being golden and had turned wet. From now until the Spring there would be small Wellington boots to be retrieved and duffle-coats to be found. Something about bright winter clothes brought out envy in children, Andrea found, and much grabbing and weeping at going-home time.
‘Josie, don’t cry dear. This is your mac. This pretty pink one. Very pretty. Much nicer really. Give Rupert back his Barbour.’ She grinned at Josie’s mother who was taking far too long getting her out of the room. Peter came running in from seeing the twins to their car.
‘Robert’s panda,’ he muttered. ‘Have you seen it?’
‘In the kitchen,’ she told him. ‘Drying over the stove. He got soup all over it. Ah. There we are, Tony. See? Daddy’s come for you today. Hang on. Don’t forget your lovely spaceship you made. There we are. Careful, the glue’s not quite dry. Oh dear. Well, leave it here and I’ll fix it for you to take home tomorrow. All right? Bye bye.’
Peter ran out of the room again, clutching a still wet panda. She heard him explaining the mishap to the twins’ mother and realised that the last child had gone. Bliss. She yawned, stretching, then set about pushing chairs and tables to the wall ready for the Señoritas Fernandez to do their mopping in the morning. Lentil soup seemed to have got everywhere, as had the hundreds-and-thousands Flora Cairns had been using to make a glue picture. She had set the children to making a new alphabet this morning, one letter ea
ch with a picture of something that began with it. She took down the old one from over the blackboard and began to pin the new one up in its place. She had reached F with its carnivorous-looking bluebottle when Peter came back in.
‘Have you seen Jasper, darling?’ he asked.
‘He went home with that Australian nanny of theirs, didn’t he?’ she said, pinning up Flora’s G for girl and Jasper’s subversive H for Halo.
‘Er. No. I don’t think he can have done.’ He coughed. She turned round on her stool and saw that Candida was with him.
‘Hello,’ said Candida, who for Candida looked awful.
‘Candida, what a lovely surprise. I didn’t see you were there.’ Andrea climbed down. ‘Samantha not well?’
‘She’s fine but she had to go home to Melbourne suddenly,’ said Candida, ‘and the agency still haven’t found anyone.’
‘What a bore for you,’ said Peter airily. ‘I’ll go and look for him outside. He must be on the swing or something.’
The two women waited tensely for him to walk into the playground.
‘Candida, I’m so sorry about what happened the other day.’
‘Don’t be. Honestly.’ Candida’s words were relaxed enough but her manner was distinctly off-balance. ‘It was right of you to tell me. I was glad. Is Robin here?’
‘I don’t think so. He’s usually round at Faber’s nowadays. I think it’s only a matter of time before he moves in officially and we have to buy them things from a list at Peter Jones.’ Andrea looked at the gaudy alphabet pictures in her hand then set them on a table. ‘I can’t think where Jasper can be hiding if he’s not out there. I’m so sorry. This is rather awful, isn’t it?’ None of her charges had disappeared like this before. They enjoyed themselves too much to run away and she never entrusted them to strangers without a warning phone call or letter from the parents.
‘Can I go and see?’
‘Well, Peter doesn’t seem to be having much luck. I doubt whether …’
‘No. Robin.’
‘Oh. But I said he’s not here.’
‘You’re not sure, though?’
‘No.’
‘I haven’t seen his room for such ages.’
‘All right.’
Bemused, Andrea followed this tired, elegant creature through her own house. Candida hadn’t set foot in the upstairs area since coming to arrange for Jasper to start at the kindergarten and, before then, since Robin’s twenty-first.
‘I like your new colours,’ she said, peering into rooms as they went. ‘And the white on the stairs is much better. It makes it all feel sunnier.’
She doesn’t realise that we’re on the verge of a panic about her son, thought Andrea. God help us when she does.
Candida quickened her pace as they reached the next flight of stairs and was almost running up them by the time they approached Robin’s door. Andrea couldn’t keep up. Candida knocked on the door then tried the handle. Andrea was about to tell her that he always locked it nowadays when the door opened. She walked in close behind the younger woman; after weeks of exclusion, her curiosity was almost as strong.
‘Oh,’ Candida exclaimed. ‘Something’s changed. What have you done?’
‘I got rid of that dreadful old yellow paint. “Tolstoy Sunflower” it was called, or “Van Gogh” or something. The two of you chose it together, don’t you remember? It was the last word then.’
‘Oh yes.’ Candida laughed. ‘And that mirror’s new. But it’s nice. And he’s still got all the same old books.’ Candida ran a finger along the spines. ‘Tales of Ancient Greece, Our Island Story …’
‘His grandmother gave him those.’
‘The pictures used to make him laugh. So camp, especially Perseus. And there’s that funny medal he won.’
‘For essay writing.’
‘I used to spend hours up here with him.’ Candida flopped down on the old ottoman beneath the window. ‘He’d lie on the bed and I’d curl up here and we’d talk ourselves hoarse.’
‘What did you talk about?’ Andrea asked, standing at the end of the bed, tense.
‘Everything. God. Politics. My parents’ divorce and why you two were still happy and together. Exams. Books. It all seemed terribly important at the time. And when it was hot we’d run down to the kitchen, grab something to eat and climb up to the treehouse. Is it still there?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Let’s see.’ Candida twisted as she sat, searched the view for a moment then leapt up. ‘Jasper!’ she shouted and ran downstairs. Andrea went to the window just long enough to see that Jasper was up in the old, now rather rotten treehouse and that Peter was looking up at him waving his arms then she too hurried panting down.
‘No. Don’t try to climb down,’ Peter shouted up. ‘Don’t move. Stay and talk to your mum while I get a ladder.’
‘We haven’t got a ladder long enough,’ Andrea said.
‘Yes, we have,’ said Peter.
‘The Thurstons borrowed it to take to Sussex to fix their gutters. Jane said sorry they’d forgotten it but they’d bring it back next time.’
‘Get him down,’ said Candida. ‘He should never have been allowed up there in the first place.’
‘You were that age when you first went up,’ Andrea reminded her. ‘Nearly.’
‘I’m sure I wasn’t.’
‘Yes, you were.’
‘Well, that was then. It was different.’
‘Peter, no!’ Andrea’s hand went to her mouth. Peter had thrown off his cardigan, rolled up his sleeves and was shinning up the tree. ‘I’ll find a ladder somewhere. We can call the firemen.’
‘Don’t move, Jasper,’ Candida shouted. ‘Peter’s coming. Stay in the corner.’
‘It’s OK,’ Peter puffed. ‘Not that hard, actually.’
Andrea and Candida and several people in neighbouring windows froze to watch him climb. The magnificent jays that nested a few yards away swooped close by him in a flash of blue and grey. Andrea pictured him tumbling through snapping branches and cracking his skull on the brick path beneath. She had never felt this fear when Robin used to clamber up there. Children were so much more flexible; foolishly, one always felt they would bounce. With his shock of white hair Peter looked suddenly like someone’s mad grandfather who had taken to the woods. As he reached the treehouse and began to disappear up through the trapdoor in its floor Jasper suddenly clambered out of the window and onto the roof. The whole structure seemed to sway, or perhaps it was just the wind in the trees. Candida bit a knuckle. Someone in the garden next door gave a little shriek.
‘No, Jasper. Go back!’ Andrea shouted, furious. The brat was trying to kill her husband. Peter’s hand appeared in the window reaching for Jasper’s hand. Jasper was visibly weeping and retreating. Peter started to climb out of the window after him. ‘Peter don’t!’ called Andrea. Suddenly two firemen, black and silver in full uniform, ran into the garden from the side of the house. They were carrying a ladder. Not stopping to ask which sensible neighbour had thought to call them, she only said, ‘Quick. Please, quick.’
Both Peter and Jasper saw the firemen and stopped whatever they were doing. Jasper relaxed at the sight of their uniform (a milkman or nurse would have had the same effect), and allowed himself to be slung over a shoulder and carried down. Peter waited until they were at the bottom then clambered down unassisted.
Candida held out her arms to her son but, free of the firemen’s charm, he began whimpering and ran past her to cling to Andrea’s legs.
‘What’s all this?’ joked Andrea gently. She prised off his hands and handed him bodily over to his mother who put him firmly on the ground and made him hold her hand.
‘Thank the firemen and Peter,’ she told him stiffly, but Jasper broke loose and sprinted round the side of the house. Helpless, Candida followed. One of the firemen had just recognised her.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘Wasn’t that ..?’
‘Yes,’ said Andrea, dropping Peter’s hand which,
unconsciously, she had seized as soon as he was down and safe. ‘Her nanny’s just gone back to Melbourne.’
‘Will you have a cup of tea or something?’ Peter offered.
‘Can’t stop,’ said the other. ‘They’ve got cat trouble over at number 51.’
‘Well, thanks so much,’ Andrea said and she stood with Peter to watch them go. ‘What happened?’ she asked him when they were alone. ‘Jasper was being so strange.’
‘He wouldn’t come down,’ he said. ‘He only ran up there when he saw her arrive and then she came out and he wouldn’t come down.’
‘I love you so much, Peter.’
‘I love you back.’
‘Really?’
Thirty-Four
‘Jake, hi. Come on in.’
‘Hello, Faber.’
Normally dressed so sloppily, Faber was all in Sunday-best black. Jake reflected that drop-dead chic was strangely indistinguishable from mourning.
‘Come in. Come in.’ Faber waved Jake past him. ‘I’m afraid we’re in chaos but you didn’t come to buy the house.’
‘No.’ Jake laughed. ‘You on your own?’
‘Yes. Peace and quiet. Robin’s taken Iras straight from school to a concert somewhere. Can I get you a drink? I’m afraid we’ve drunk all the wine but there’s lots of beer. Here. Give me your wet coat.’