Now was the time for the coffin to slip forward to its destruction. A waste of good wood, Bessie might have remarked: Bessie had often declared that she would be happy to be buried in a bin bag. But she hadn’t been allowed that choice. Her dispatch had proved quite expensive. Joe and Bessie Barron had been cremated in Surrey, and both had slid away, like liners down the last runway into the ocean of fire. Joe had escaped first, for he had died in his early seventies, after some years of ill health and a few months of painful illness. Until the onset of that last illness, and for a few weeks after its onset, he took Bessie an early-morning cup of tea in bed. She never said thank you. She lay there like a white worm and took it from him. When he was too ill to perform this ministration, she complained to Chrissie that he was faking. Shortly after this he died. Bessie had survived some years of widowhood, during which she had complained bitterly about the size of her pension. Then she too had departed, in a surprising, mysterious and wholly uncharacteristic manner. We shall return to that story.
Nick Gaulden, whose boxed remains were even now gliding smoothly down the polished track, had not, in his early years, given much thought to pensions. Had he left anything at all to anyone? He had been a long time dying, and had had plenty of time to think of these things. Had he died as he had lived, in debt? Had he made a will? Chrissie had no cause to worry for herself, for her days of want were over, but she could see the possibility of feuds and factions, heirs and claimants, amongst the other Gaulden branches. He ought to have left at least some token for Faro, his firstborn. Who had owned the house in Kentish Town, where he had shacked up with young Jessica?
The curtains parted, electronically, and the coffin slid out of sight. There was a fair amount of stifled and not-so-stifled sobbing and sniffling, and Chrissie, glancing covertly sideways, could see tears pouring down Faro’s cheeks. Poor girl, what a father, what a history. Chrissie’s own eyes felt dried up at the source. He should have died earlier, had he wished her to weep for him. There had been a time when had he died, she would have followed him. But now the time for tears was over. So the woman who had been Chrissie Gaulden told herself, as she stood erect, to attention, like royalty.
And now Nick Gaulden was bursting into incandescence, and rising in smoke through the crematorium chimney, and drifting into the upper reaches of the thickly peopled autumn air. The skies above this place were dense with the souls of the departed. Conveyor-belt cremation, five in a day, and the other four today all Asian, if one could judge by the names on the wreaths and cards and markers. The old European diaspora was dying out, and members of the new diaspora were already leaving their subcontinental signatures on the walls of memory:‘Love Always Dad’, exhorted Shanti Ramesh Patel, claimed by the new wave of death. The generation of traumas and death-camp tattoos, of Finchley Road accents, of chicken soup and Viennese pastries and pickled cucumber, would soon be completely extinguished, leaving a heritage of semi-assimilated survivor guilt. The old tearooms and cafés had been converted into Thai restaurants, pizzerias, Chinese takeaways and sushi bars. The Jewish landmark of Bloom’s with its chopped fish still survived, outliving its more famous East End ancestor—but for how long, she wondered. These children of the Holocaust, these friends of yesterday, these second-generation settlers—Eric Mendelsson, Anna Hayman, Michael Rudetski, Rachel Rosenthal, Edith Woolfson, Dieter Kahn, Hannah Roditi—why, they were all old now, and their hair was grey. We are all old, thought Chrissie with astonishment, as she wandered out with the crowd to the cloisters, to the ‘designated dispersal areas’, to the green lawns where delicate clumps of pale mauve-pink autumn crocus reared their softly tissued little horns and trumpets in pretty clusters. It seems like yesterday, but we are all old.
Such unexpected, such pretty little flowers, so hidden for so long, and then so startling, appearing from nowhere, from the cropped smooth flattened grass, putting up their tender heads like snails from their shells, unfolding like the fronds of the anemones of the sea. Brave little flowers, to risk the trampling of the booted foot. For, unlike anemones and snails, they could not retract. They could not shrink back to safety. If you trod on them, they would bruise and bleed and die.
Tears for the poor crocus rose in Chrissie’s eyes. She wept for them.
It was a mild and pleasant day, a global-warming, fin de siecle, autumnal day, a gracious day for a funeral, a better day than Nick Gaulden had deserved. But why invoke desert when the ash was yet hot? The sun shone down upon the nondenominational red arches, upon the ranks of standard rose with their votive tags, upon the rectangular pond where goldfish rose to bask and warm their plump backs, upon the sundial, upon the plaques and tablets of stone and ceramic, upon the guests and mourners, and upon Jenny Pargiter, to whom Chrissie now found herself being introduced by Stella Wakefield.
‘Jenny,’ said Stella, pulling by the elbow towards Chrissie an immensely tall, red-faced, stoutish woman in her midforties, clad, like Chrissie herself, in widow’s black. She towered over Stella like a pillar, and Stella was not small. Jenny Pargiter’s hair was a frazzled brownish grey, the veins in her cheeks and nose were broken, her face was unpowdered, and her eyes were Saxon-blue. She did not seem at all eager to be introduced to Chrissie. She stood in her own orbit, unmoved.
‘Jenny,’ said Stella, with what, from her, was almost a plea. ‘Jenny, let me introduce you to Chrissie. Chrissie Sinclair, I should say. Chrissie, this is Jenny Pargiter.’
Chrissie looked round for Faro, for moral support, but Faro had deserted her, had gone off to suck up to her halfsisters Arethusa and Iona, and to pet their babies: so Chrissie had to stare Jenny Pargiter out on her own. She went through the defensive routine that life with Nick Gaulden had taught her: straighten the shoulders, rear the head, pull in the chin, raise the back of the neck, square the body, tuck in the elbows, stare, confront.
‘Hello,’ said Chrissie Gaulden, now Lady Sinclair, to Jenny Pargiter.
‘Hello,’ said Jenny Pargiter, with massive indifference. ‘Nice to meet you. At last.’
Chrissie did not think that it was at all nice to meet Jenny Pargiter, and could not think why her friend and ally Stella had been so malicious as to force this awkward and unnecessary introduction. Jenny was not at all what she had expected. She bore no resemblance to any of Nick’s other women. She was far, far too big. Serafina was big, but not in this ungainly English way. The sight of Jenny filled Chrissie with a panic which she could not at first analyse. Perhaps it was the sheer unexpectedness of this bulk? No, it cannot have been that. It was what the bulk implied. Jenny had clearly not attached Nick Gaulden to her through her appearance, so she must have had some other more dangerous, invisible attraction which had kept him in her thrall for four long years. Perhaps, like a gross Wagnerian soprano, she hid within herself a voice of superlative purity and power? The voice of sex itself? What siren songs had Jenny sung to deceive poor Nicolas and to lure him to her bed? Jenny Pargiter was a heavyweight rival, a mattress crusher, and now Nick was dead, and neither of them, none of them, could ever win him back.
Nevertheless, ‘Nice to meet you," responded Chrissie, that gracious Lady. ‘A nice service, didn’t you think?’
And niceties they had exchanged, for a few minutes, until the drift towards the cars seemed to be about to begin. There was to be a wake, at Fiona’s in Frognal. Fiona had volunteered. Money had spoken. All were invited. Chrissie and Faro had not yet decided whether they would attend.
Faro had been keeping half an eye on her mother, during the drifting introductions and greetings and formings of little groups and clutches of Gauldens and honorary Gauldens, of old schoolmates and fellow drinkers from the Three Horseshoes, the Freemason’s Arms, the Wells, the Magdala. A thick, incestuous congregation, in which Faro knew far too many familiar faces, though she did not recognize that very tall person to whom Chrissie and Stella were now speaking: was she some kind of interloper, or some skeleton from a hitherto locked cupboard? Faro was not sure how much more of this scene s
he could take.
She had managed, so far, to avoid a conversation with Eric Mendelsson, whose very existence seemed to reproach her, and she had survived her ritual exchange with Iona and Arethusa—a mixture of affection, effrontery, attitude and regret. She had waved at Paul Noble, been embraced by Dieter Kahn, sidestepped her uncle Rudi, kissed her grandmother Eva, and been lobbied by Joachim Barker, who always wanted her to get him a job. Even at her father’s funeral he tried it on. Who did he think she was? She was lucky to have a job herself. Nobody had a job these days. His reproachful eyes followed her as she advanced upon the diminutive Tiger Wakefield (surely he was very undersized for his age, whatever his age was?), who had been beckoning at her eagerly for some time. Joachim was all washed up. Like her father, like Eric, he had been a man of promise, but all he did now was to walk the Heath in all weathers, like a tramp. He wanted to write an article for her mag, but she was sure he couldn’t put two words together anymore, poor old sod.
Tiger Wakefield wanted to point out to Faro that the top of the sundial was missing. Its brass plate, its roman numerals and its gnomon had been removed. Tiger thought this was a disgrace. ‘In a cemetery, of all places,’ he said, as he patted the empty round flat surface, cratered like a pancake, pitted like the moon. An absence, where time should have been.
‘Do you think it’s been vandalized? Do you think it was stolen? Should we report it? Do you think they know?’
‘You’re a very busy little chap,’ sighed Faro, in response to this barrage. ‘What does it matter? Let it be.’
‘And is that Nick’s smoke?’ he wanted to know next, as he pointed to the thick black billows ascending, straight and undispersed, into the still air.
‘I don’t know,’ said Faro. ‘I don’t know how it works. I don’t know if they do them straightaway, or if they stockpile them. Do them in batches.’
‘I wonder who’s going to get the ashes,’ said Tiger, scanning the gathering knowingly. ‘A lot of claimants, aren’t there?’
‘Don’t,’ said Faro.
‘Sorry,’ said Tiger.
‘That’s all right,’ said Faro, as she blew her nose.
That word ‘stockpile’ had been unfortunate. But Tiger shouldn’t have encouraged her. He had led her on into treachery. Unlike her, he had hardly known his father. He owed him little. But Faro owed Nick much. She should not have made a joke at his expense.
Nick Gaulden had dreamed of harmony and had created discord. He had wished to gather his family into his ark and to protect it. He had failed.
Yet, had he looked down from that column of smoke, from those black dispersing particles, he might have felt some pleasure and some pride. For they were all there, his women and his children and his grandchildren, a good-looking, striking, disparate brood, chatting quietly and civilly in small groups in the mild autumn air, making their way towards the cars in the parking bays, towards the cars strung bumper to bumper for him along Hoop Lane. From a height, all was peace, fruition, forgiveness, ripeness. Forgotten the quarrels both trivial and tragic, the rows over borrowed books and stolen matches, over bank balances and babies, over precedences and priorities, over infidelities and betrayals: forgotten the violence, the screams, the tears and the bruises, the shaming revelations, the recriminations. All shall be saved, all shall be transfigured.
The warm air was static, breezeless. A winged seed detached itself effortlessly from a tree and spiralled slowly, slowly downwards, so slowly that it seemed to hover and suspend itself as it pondered, arrested, and languidly readopted its downward course. High over Finchley a bird-plane caught the sinking afternoon light and it too seemed to remain stationary, motionless, suspended above the mourners, before curving round and gliding smoothly to the south. An acorn, audibly, fell to the pavement, accentuating the quiet and the hush. Struggle was struck into stillness. So may it be.
Chrissie and Faro decided they would go to the wake after all. ‘Come on, Mum,’ urged Faro, as she fastened her seat belt and switched on the engine of her speedy dark blue Toyota, ‘we might as well give it a whirl. We may never see some of this crowd again.’
‘Just as well,’ said Chrissie, shortly but indecisively.
‘Oh, come on, Christine,’ persisted Faro. ‘They’re not so bad, some of them. And I want to see what Fiona’s house is like, don’t you?’
As Chrissie now owned half of a very handsome house in Oxfordshire, she conceded that she might take the risk. She had already wasted too many years of her life resenting the house in Frognal and the woman in the house in Frognal. All that was over now. She had almost forgotten what it was like: to feel, as she had felt, that she was being flayed alive in public, her skin peeled away, inch by inch, before a mocking crowd. She had survived those humiliating torments of jealousy, and she knew that now she looked not only presentable but also impregnable. She could never attract pity now. She looked like what she was: a semi-retired, well-to-do, happily married professional woman, with an income of her own and a husband with a life of his own. The red of her hair was a deeper shade than nature had given her, her complexion was maintained and skilfully tinted, her hat was well judged, and her expensive well-cut Italian dress was becoming. She had nothing to be ashamed of here. The female Barrons did not age well, but she had at least looked after herself, and, unlike her mother, she had not grown obese. She had never been a beauty, like Serafina, like Stella, but at least she did not look as uncompromisingly strange as Jenny Pargiter or as aged as Fiona McKnight. Whatever had happened to Fiona? Could it be that she too had, simply, grown old?
Chrissie, during the course of the afternoon’s events, had adjusted her first defensive, hostile dismissal of Fiona: Fiona did not look shabby, she merely gave the impression of looking shabby. Fiona looked as though she did not care. Unlike Chrissie, she had let herself go. This was, in itself, interesting, and Chrissie found herself sharing Faro’s curiosity about the house in Frognal that she had never entered. Once, on one dark night, she had stood on the pavement outside, at midnight, weeping noisily and uncontrollably and drunkenly, and gazing upwards at the lighted windows behind which the faithless Nick and the thief Fiona sat. She had nourished fantasies of committing a vengeful suicide on Fiona McKnight’s front steps. She had dreamed of swallowing spirits of salts, right there, and expiring in public agony. Her twisted corpse would have met them in the morning when they came out for the milk. She might have made the local headlines. FIRST WIFE OF ‘FACE OF THE SIXTIES’ NICOLAS GAULDEN, FOUND DEAD ON DOORSTEP OF SECOND WIFE’S FIFTY-THOUSAND-POUND HAMPSTEAD HOUSE.
Chrissie remembered, dimly, these embarrassing daydreams. What would the house be worth now? Well over a million, no doubt. Yes, Faro was right, it was time to abandon these indulgent revenge fancies, and to go in. She might as well inspect Fiona’s soft furnishings, while the offer was open. She would never have to invite her back.
‘I can’t stay late,’ said Chrissie to Faro, hoping her daughter had not been able to follow this undignified sequence of memory flashes. ‘I told Don I’d be back tonight. He’ll worry if I’m late.’
‘Don won’t mind,’ said Faro, as she rather too pushily negotiated the traffic round the White Stone Pond. Faro was not sure that she approved of her mother’s second marriage, and of her submissive postures in the company of Donald Sinclair. Was it for this that the battle had been fought, those long lonely nights been endured, those risks been taken? For a convenient, conventional second marriage to a rich, clever, institutional old bore?
Actually, Faro liked Donald Sinclair. But she liked to toy with the idea that she didn’t. She didn’t have to, did she? She was free to dissent.
‘No, Don won’t mind,’ said Chrissie. ‘He never minds anything. He’s very good at getting his own supper.’
The banality of this response made Faro yelp with contempt. ‘I should bloody well think he is! If he can’t get his own supper by now it’s a pity.’
‘Well, you know, that generation...’ said Chrissie vaguely. S
he had left a packet of mushroom tortellini in the fridge, and a carton of microwaveable Gorgonzola and walnut and Parmesan sauce. Don was fond of pasta.
‘After all,’ continued Faro remorselessly, ‘it’s not as though you bury your first husband every day of the week. And he was my father,:’
‘Yes, darling, I know,’ said Chrissie meekly. She knew she must not repeat the mistake Bessie had made, of forbidding Chrissie to mourn her father. So overcome with self-pity and anger had Bessie been, on Joe’s inconveniently sudden departure, that neither Robert nor Chrissie had been allowed in her presence to show any sorrow for his loss. Bessie had continued to revile him dead, as she had reviled him alive. It had been intolerable.
And yet Chrissie knew she was at times in danger of forgetting that Nick had been Faro’s father. He hadn’t been an ideal father, but nevertheless, Chrissie had said bad things about him, things that should never have been said. A child ought to be allowed to respect its parent, even if, like Nick, he was not respectable. And sometimes she forgot that she herself was Faro’s mother. Faro seemed such a triumphant, confident, careless creature. As though she had come from nowhere.
Bessie, reflected Chrissie, as she and Faro sat in a traffic jam in Heath Street outside the shop window of yet another expensive new boutique, Bessie had been a real bloodsucker as well as a shrew. Women weren’t supposed to think this kind of thing about other women these days, Chrissie knew. Everything had changed since she was a girl. Women good, men bad. That’s how the bleating went nowadays. And in the case of Nick Gaulden you could see there was something in it. He had been a bit of a traitor. On the other hand, none of his women could say they hadn’t been free to choose to say no to Nick. He hadn’t forced anybody. They’d been free to choose, and they’d all chosen him, one after another. Some of them had thrown themselves at him. They’d all wanted a bit of the action. They’d all wanted a slice of pinup boy Nick. They couldn’t take out a retrospective claim for damages, could they? And anyway, they wouldn’t have got anything out of him if they’d tried. You can’t get blood out of a rolling stone. You don’t sue a man in debt. Or if you do, you deserve the nothing that you get.
The Peppered Moth Page 23