‘I’m not sure.’
‘I went to a Methodist wedding once,’ said Reg, curling his nose, ‘we had to toast the bride with raspberryade. Luckily I’d taken my hip flask.’ He turned again to Aldous, ‘I suppose old habits of abstemiousness die hard. Go on, have some of this . . .’ he looked at the label of the bottle he was holding to remind himself, ‘Gooseberry Sherry 1971. A very good year, wasn’t it Les? A bloody good year for gooseberries . . .’ He reached out to fill Aldous’s almost empty glass of orange juice, Aldous quickly pulled his glass out of reach.
‘Come on,’ said Reg, irritably, ‘it’s a funeral, for Christ’s sake . . .’
Aldous, who’d never had much of a stomach for either alcohol or Reg, placed a hand over his glass.
‘I can’t drink in the afternoon,’ he said, ‘and anyway, I’m driving.’
‘So am I,’ said Reg, ‘all the more reason. It’s a well known fact that alcohol improves one’s driving abilities. I drive much better when I’m drunk. I do everything better. It’s what drink’s for. Do you know there is not one society in the whole history of humankind that has not discovered some form of alcohol? It doesn’t matter if they’re running around with bones through their noses, they make sure they invent booze before they invent anything else. We do it instinctively, like spiders with their webs. Drunkenness is our natural state, sobriety is a modern invention.’
Just then a burst of jangling piano music filled the room. Colette had come in from the garden and had made straight for the upright piano, followed by Janus Brian.
‘Colonel Bogey’, ‘Kitten on the Keys’, ‘Tico Tico’. The atmosphere of the gathering was lifted, there was even some dancing. When, with a lap full of ash from the cigarette that had burned away in her mouth, Colette finished her playing, she heard a warm, buzzing sort of voice close to her ear.
‘I don’t think that was the appropriate music for an occasion like this, do you? Are you specializing in ruining funerals now as well as weddings?’
Colette turned to see Madeleine walking away. It was almost as if she’d heard the words telepathically, since there seemed no evidence that Madeleine had actually spoken to her. Colette left the piano and spoke to Aldous who had left Reg and the others to join her.
‘Did you hear what that cow said to me?’ she said to Aldous.
‘No.’
‘The bitch. I’m going to tell her what I think of her. I’m going to give her a punch . . .’
‘I’m going to punch Reg before too long, if he keeps going on about drink. Perhaps we should leave.’
Madeleine, she saw, was now trying to revive her daughter Christine, who, having consumed many sherries, had quietly and gently passed out and was lying flat on the sofa. Her John Lennon husband was fanning her with a magazine.
Colette giggled to herself.
‘Yes. I feel like going now. I’m just going to get my bag.’
Her bag was in the kitchen, which was now empty, many of the mourners having drifted away. There was another handbag in the kitchen, resting on a small chair that was placed with its back to the wall, out of the way behind the door. Colette recognised it as Madeleine’s. She quickly opened it to double check. It opened with the smooth turning of a gold catch, and gave a smell from its interior of new leather. She rummaged quickly among lipsticks and compacts, tweezers, nail-scissors, hairspray, hairbrush, headscarf, purse, until she found some corroboration. A pension book in the name of M. Waugh. Colette stifled another giggle. Madeleine was a pensioner. How funny. How wickedly funny. Now she needed quickly to think of something to do with this handbag, and her eye fell upon the jar of home made blackberry jam that she had left on the kitchen work top on coming in from the garden. Quickly she took it, opened it with some difficulty, straining at the lid with white knuckles until there was a pleasing snap and the lid came off. Then she took a dessert spoon from the drawer, spooned the entire contents of the jar into Madeleine’s handbag, closed it, taking care that the jam didn’t ooze through the gaps, and, noticing how much fuller and heavier it seemed, replaced it as she had found it, on the chair. Then she quickly binned the jar, washed up the spoon, and returned to the living room. Madeleine was still with Christine, who was moaning quietly on the couch.
‘Coffee,’ she heard Madeleine saying, ‘I’ll pop into the kitchen and make some coffee.’
‘Let’s go now,’ Colette said to Aldous.
On the doorstep, which was at the top of a flight of steep stone steps, Colette became weepy. She cried on Janus Brian’s shoulder.
‘I’ll always remember Mary,’ she said.
‘It is best to forget,’ said Janus Brian, though he didn’t sound certain.
‘You’re going to say she was a dream, is that it? Mary was just a dream?’
Janus seemed to consider this as if it hadn’t occurred to him before. He was turning over the possibility.
‘No, I don’t think so. Mary was real.’
‘And everything else?’
Janus Brian shrugged and smiled, and Aldous ended the conversation by calling to Colette from the car in the street below.
Janus accompanied his sister down the steep steps and saw her into the car, silently. The Hillman Superminx (maroon body and grey roof) was the longest lived of the wrecks Aldous had bought since the Morris Oxford had gone.
Just as Colette was closing her door Janus said quietly ‘Remember Dismal Desmond?’
Colette had shut the door. Aldous had started up and was pulling away so that she had no time to reply other than to nod and wave as the Superminx rolled down the gentle, curving slope of Leicester Avenue.
‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’
‘He said “Remember Dismal Desmond”.’
Aldous didn’t understand.
They drove left along The Limes, under the bridge that carried the Piccadilly Line above ground, then through a curious district of narrow, winding avenues lined with prosperous semis, where the pavements were given shrubberies for verges and where ornamental cherries and maples adorned the corners.
‘Dismal Desmond,’ Colette went on, ‘I’ve told you about him. He was this toy dog we used to have, on wheels. You could sit on him and wheel yourself about. I used to sit on him and Janus would push me. Quite fast, racing round the garden. But he was old even when we got him. I think he was probably Agatha’s first. He was in a real state – both eyes gone, leaky stuffing, filthy pelt. That’s why we called him Dismal Desmond, he looked so sad.’
Colette seemed elated as she talked. It was the first time for many years Janus had said anything about the past. She paused for a moment before adding, more cautiously, ‘So he didn’t mean it, did he, when he said the past was a dream?’
‘I suppose not’, said Aldous. ‘He just didn’t want to think about it, or talk about it.’
‘And now by mentioning Dismal Desmond he’s saying he wants to talk about it? Do you think?’
‘Maybe.’
2
‘Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour, so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour.’
The Sunday after Mary’s funeral, Aldous sat in St Nicola’s church listening to Father Gerhart reading from Ecclesiastes.
‘. . . the lips of a fool will swallow up himself. The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is mischievous madness.’
A reading Aldous had presumed was inspired by the current political follies, though he couldn’t tell if it was directed particularly at Edward Heath or Joe Gormley, leader of the miners’ union, whose dispute had led to power cuts last winter and the collapse of the Heath government. It was very difficult to tell which way Father Gerhart leaned politically.
‘The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to go to the city.’
The candlelit winter evenings had been fun at first. The shops had quickly sold out of jigsaws and playin
g cards. People were rediscovering the old amusements now that the telly was off. One night the telly had even born witness to its own temporary execution – broadcasting live pictures of the power station employee pulling the lever that cut off the supply to Windhover Hill, and as the lever was pulled, so the house went dark, the telly giving a little electrical whimper as it died. People were saying it was a blessing in disguise, that the long lost art of conversation was being revived. Someone on TV was even saying they should do this all the time, strikes or no strikes, for one or two days a week. Might be a good idea, but Aldous remembered how odd the front room had seemed without television – no one sat in it – there was no reason . . .
‘By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through.’
Now there was a minority Labour Government. Mr Wilson had won the election in February with fewer votes than Heath. There was likely to be another election in October. Heath had campaigned with the slogan Who Governs Britain? A question the election hadn’t satisfactorily answered. A shame teachers hadn’t been put on the three-day week. There were ration books in petrol stations. People were being urged to scrimp and save, like during the war. SOS had been used as a reminder to ‘Switch off Something’, though Janus had said it stood for Silly Old Sods.
‘A feast is made for laughter and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.’
That had to be the object of Father Gerhart’s sermon. Aldous had never really got to know Father Gerhart. Their old priest, Father Webb, a cultured, gregarious Irishman who had become a family friend after burying Nana, had moved to another parish somewhere in the North. Father Gerhart was older, grey-haired and bulky in both body and face, with loose, pulpy lips that added a slur to his strong German accent. Though Aldous dutifully shook hands with him at the door every Sunday on leaving the church, they had exchanged very few words.
Aldous rather liked Father Gerhart, however. He found those whispered vowels and slushy consonants very soothing. He liked the way he performed the ritual of the sacrament, so slowly and ponderously, like a nodding dog, almost tripping over his own vestments, murmuring his Latin over the crumbled host, bathing his hands in the dish held by those nervous altar boys – Lavabo inter innocentes. Aldous found the whole experience of Mass very relaxing – except, that is, for the recent innovation of shaking hands with the strangers sitting next to you. It had come as rather a shock the first time it happened. Let us now exchange the sign of peace, Father Gerhart had said, then Aldous found that the ancient creature to his right, a hunchbacked great grandmother wearing a coat of scarlet wool with a turquoise turban on her tiny head, was offering her shrivelled little hand for him to shake. It had been cold and scratchy, and despite the gay smile of the nonagenarian, Aldous had had doubts about going to church the next Sunday. On that occasion however, the old crone had transformed into a petite teenage girl with braces on her teeth and butterfly-shaped barrettes in her hair. The two experiences cancelled each other out, and Aldous now even enjoyed that brief moment of hand-to-hand intimacy with a stranger, young or old.
Today was Palm Sunday. At the door, palms were being distributed, long, delicately tapering leaves coming to a needle-sharp point, dried to a crisp yellow. Aldous took a handful, then shook hands with Father Gerhart.
‘I think you were at the funeral service on Thursday,’ the priest said.
‘Oh. Yes,’ Aldous had almost forgotten.
‘A dear relative? A kind friend?’
‘No, not really. She . . .’ Aldous had to pause to consider how he was related to Mary. Had she been his sister-in-law? Surely that only applied to the wives of one’s own brothers. What was the wife of one’s brother-in-law? ‘She was my wife’s sister-in-law.’
‘Ah, well. Your wife will be welcome with open arms here, Mr Jones . . .’
‘Oh, she’s very busy, what with everything. That’s not really an excuse, I know. She’s here in her heart, I can assure you. By the way,’ Aldous felt a need to change the subject, ‘I thoroughly enjoyed the reading today, very well chosen. Foolishness – very apt for our current political climate . . .’
Father Gerhart looked a little surprised, as though the thought hadn’t struck him.
‘I was thinking always that Easter is a time we remember the foolishness of those who took the life of our saviour – but you are right to see a more contemporary interpretation, that is always how the Bible should be read.’
And with that, Father Gerhart averted his eyes, seeming suddenly very shy as he prepared himself to greet the next member of his flock.
After lighting a candle in Mary’s memory, Aldous passed through the door into the sunlight, and strolled along Dorset Street, with that peculiar sense of freedom he always experienced on coming out of church, feeling as though he had all the time in the world to get where he wanted, to do what he liked. In such moods he could have happily spent a day enjoying the compact and orderly spectacle of each little suburban house he passed, with their brave little front gardens, their bushes of speckled laurel (a universe contained in each leaf), and soon-to-flower rose bushes. He admired the cars, many of which had been cleaned that morning, as the soapy gutters testified, plucky little things as well, with their sparkling chrome and glass, their armour of glossily painted steel. Aldous felt he had all the time in the world to admire these brightly coloured Sunday morning sights, though in reality if he wasn’t home within half an hour Colette, by now happy in a kitchen full of steam and bubbling saucepans, would start to worry. And as he meandered along Hoopers Lane, past The Goat and Compasses with its flock of nineteenth-century workmen’s cottages, he felt the sense of doom that always gathered about him when he thought about returning home after a spell away, however brief.
He heard whistling behind him, and laughter, and chirpy calling, but ignored it. At this point the slight bend in Hoopers Lane meant the houses on the left were foreshortened by perspective into nothing more than a series of contrastingly coloured bands, a sight which always afforded Aldous a little private delight – that the inhabitants of Hoopers Lane should have unconsciously built a rainbow together. He paused to admire it, which allowed the whistlers behind him to catch up.
‘Been to church have you?’ It was his daughter and her husband walking side by side. They had come up from the bus stop by the church, having taken a detour so that Juliette could indulge her passion for sherbet lemons at Sweet Inspiration (Formerly Dorset Street Sweet Shop) on the way to Fernlight Avenue. Bill had a sketchbook tucked under his arm.
It had become something of a tradition for his daughter and son-in-law to come over to Fernlight Avenue for Sunday lunch (usually a roast chicken, sometimes, if Colette was feeling daring enough, a spaghetti bolognese). They were usually there by the time Aldous had got back from church, having dutifully trundled up Green Lanes on a 123 or a W4. They must have been running late.
‘What are you holding?’ said Juliette.
‘Palms,’ said Aldous, brandishing them before his daughter’s face, ‘it’s Palm Sunday today. They were giving these out at the door . . .’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Bill, ‘how you can sit there with all those hypocrites who are pretending to be so good, when tomorrow they’ll go into a factory and make bombs to drop on Vietnam.’
Aldous searched without success for a telling answer, not wanting to get into a theological discussion with Bill, whose energy for arguments seemed limitless.
Aldous was fond of his son-in-law, though he had been angry with Juliette when she decided to drop out of school before her O Levels to marry him. He believed she had a good brain, and was wasting it. She could have been and done anything she’d put her mind to, but she’d thrown it all away for the sake of a bearded Marxist butcher and a life in a poky flat in Polperro Gardens.
Juliette seemed happy working at Eve St John’s on Green Lanes – an odd little establishment, comprised of two shops side by side, one selling electrical goods
and ladies’ hosiery (a rather alarming combination Aldous always felt), the other toys. Aldous had begun to wonder if Janus had set a pattern that the rest of his children would follow, throwing away academic brilliance for a career in menial employment. Janus had been a gasman, a telephonist, and now worked in a builders’ merchants, bagging and weighing nails for the carpenters of North London. James had at least gone to university after two years of drifting from one dead-end job to another.
Bill, too, had decided not to make use of his lively and intelligent mind, opting instead for the undemanding world of semiskilled labour. He had been a steeplejack when he’d first wooed Juliette, impressing her by knocking back salt-laden cocktails in the public bar of The Carpenters Arms, a rough, noisy pub in Wood Green where Juliette, who, at fifteen, had grown from a tousled tomboy into a considerable beauty, drank illegally with other underage friends. She had fallen, so Aldous understood, for his public bar sophistication, his oratory, the glamour of his political radicalism, his skill as an artist, his wit. Juliette had told her father how different Bill was from other men she knew. He looked much older than his years, being lushly bearded in the manner of a sage of the revolution – he wore corduroy jackets decorated with small enamelled badges of the trade unions to which he didn’t belong – and Communist icons (a clenched fist, Lenin in profile). A pipe smoker, he always wore ties, which in these times of shabby informality made him seem quaintly anachronistic. He had an untutored but genuine artistic talent which found its most fruitful outlet in the reproductions he would make, in oils on blocks of wood, of Russian religious icons. In the long arguments between Juliette and her parents that presaged her wedding, Aldous began to understand how impressive Bill must have seemed to a girl whose previous boyfriends had been drippy sixth formers and pimply students. Here was a man who by day scaled the few industrial chimneys there were left in north London, who had raised the steel flue that carried away the fumes of incinerated limbs at the East Edmonton Hospital (a story he always liked to tell), while by evening with callused, chapped fingers he painted the delicate, mantis-like hands of Russian Orthodox iconography.
I’ll Go To Bed At Noon Page 4