by Simon Mawer
Now for the first time he glanced through the pages with adult eyes. The date of publication was, in Faber’s rather pretentious style, mcmlvi. Inscribed in ink on the inside of the cover – the same hand as the letter – there was this epigram:
Priceless is the measure of your glance
But worthless is my gaze.
Treasure are the words you spoke
But paltry is my praise.
Shelley? Byron? To Dee, with great affection, Geoffrey, it said beneath. The poems themselves were very different in style, free verse, full of allusions to things Levantine and sexual and classical, the kind of stuff that Lawrence Durrell might have written. He read over a few of them, and then returned the book to the shelf.
‘Mother?’ he said out loud.
The silence in the house was complete. She wasn’t there. There was no one there, not even Thomas. He was merely a watcher, standing out of time, while in his memory his mother and his father flickered between what they had been when he was three and thirteen and twenty-three; and all the time they were ageless. He held their hands and swung, three years old, across the lawn outside the block of flats where they once lived in Oxford. He refused her hand and walked, thirteen and solitary beside her, down a street in Gütersloh in West Germany. He sat across a squalid student room and argued with her about politics or morals or music, and was twenty-three. And then, abruptly, memory released her and she aged, rapidly, fearfully – and became grey and thin, wasted by the disease, lying in her hospital bed, about to be pulled out of time and into eternity.
‘Mother?’
No answer.
He got up from the desk and wandered into her bedroom. In the wardrobes her dresses and suits hung like flayed skins in the shadows, scented with the perfume that she wore for as long as he could remember, always the same perfume. Scent. ‘Women wear perfume, ladies wear scent,’ she always used to say.
Paula would have to go through the clothes. She’d have to get out of her bloody deadlines and commitments and things. She’d have to do her bit.
The phone rang just as he returned to the study; almost as though his thoughts had conjured her up, it was Paula: ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going through her stuff. Someone has to do it.’
‘Can’t we deal with it after the funeral?’
‘There are letters to write, people to contact. Can I send you a list of people to call? I can’t do it all myself. And someone has to go through the papers—’
‘Just make a bonfire and burn them.’
‘Share certificates and all? And the deeds to the house? There’s the solicitor and the will and things like that. You don’t seem to understand. There’s her clothes, but you’ll have to do them. I’m not going through her knickers and petticoats.’
‘I told you – after the funeral. Incidentally, I’ll have to bring the children. Will Phil be there?’
‘Probably.’
‘Good. Send me that list. Can you fax it?’
‘I suppose so.’ He put the phone down. As he turned back to the task in hand the doorbell rang. The sound startled him, as though he had been caught doing something illicit.
He went down to open the front door and found a woman standing outside. ‘Yes?’
She looked as though she might just have stepped off a boat: unkempt hair, a shapeless sweater and trousers that were too short; boat shoes on her feet, those canvas things with leather thongs for laces (although ‘thong’ meant something else nowadays). Ought he to know her? Her face was vaguely familiar, lined and tanned even though it was spring and the weather lousy. Fiftyish. Lean, almost masculine. ‘You’re Thomas,’ she said, holding out her hand. She blinked as she spoke, as though things were flying in her face.
He took the proffered hand. ‘I’m afraid …’
‘I have you at a disadvantage? That’s what they say, isn’t it? I’m afraid I have you at a disadvantage. I’ve seen pictures, you see. I’m Janet. Janet Burford. Maybe Dee mentioned me? How is she? That’s what I called to ask. I know how ill she is and I was just passing by and I saw that someone was here, and …’ She shrugged, looking over his shoulder into the hall. Perhaps she was checking to see if he was up to anything suspicious. Perhaps she wasn’t sure that he was Thomas after all. Maybe she had just guessed. Maybe she was the local Neighbourhood Watch.
‘I’m afraid she’s not here,’ he said. ‘She died.’
She put her hand to her mouth, blinking again. ‘Oh God.’
‘Yesterday afternoon …’
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes, well, there you are …’ What a stupid thing to say. As though remarking on the fact that this woman, Janet Whatever-she-called-herself, was indeed there, and not, like his mother, no longer there. Or anywhere else, come to that. He cast around for something to say. The word ‘say’ rang in his mind. He lived by saying, talking, standing there in front of dozens of bored students, pontificating, mouthing, declaiming, a whole thesaurus of utterance. Why do people always have to say things? Why couldn’t they just keep silent? ‘Look, I …’
‘No, I …’ The woman hesitated, shifting her feet on the doorstep, blinking. ‘I used to come round and have, you know, coffee with her. We chatted. I’m so sorry. I’d better go. I’m sorry, awfully sorry. I …’ And she turned and went, hurrying across the road to the far side where there was a pub called the Fisherman’s Catch. She walked quickly past the pub windows, leaning slightly forward. Not bad-looking; but that bloody blinking.
There were two manifestations of Thomas at the funeral. One was focused only on the misery, on the vastness of loss and the exquisite lack of hope; the other watched the sorry procession of coffin and bearers, the heaped flowers, the hieratic gestures of the priest, with something like satisfaction at the sight of ancient ritual being enacted under the dead elms of the country graveyard. That aspect of him regarded the mourners dispassionately. There were about a hundred of them, emerging from all corners of the British Isles. Cousins and aunts and uncles, of course, but also others, distant friends coming forward out of childhood memory, as though characters in a play had suddenly stepped down off the stage and mingled with the audience, where they were now revealed without the make-up that had made them seem so young during the performance.
‘We never realized she was so ill …’
‘We’re so awfully sorry …’
‘She was so wonderful a friend. And your father as well …’
‘What a shame we lost touch …’
After everything, after the coffin had been lowered into its pit and a handful of earth scattered on top, and the undertaker’s men had got down to work like navvies, they all went back to the house, crowding into the sitting room and the kitchen, spilling out into the narrow garden at the back, commenting on the lovely flowers dear Dee had planted, and look, how clever the way she’s done that trellis and put in those climbing roses – the present tense stumbling awkwardly back into the past.
Janet Burford came and embraced him and gave him a hesitant kiss. She was red-eyed. Was it so peculiar to be red-eyed at a funeral? And why had he even remembered the woman and her name?
‘Who’s she?’ Paula asked later.
‘A friend.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘My God, she’s years older than you. I thought you went for the younger ones.’
‘Not mine, you ass. Mother’s.’ They laughed at the misunderstanding. ‘She’s called Janet. She came round the day after Mother’s death. She rang the bell and stood there blinking like a bloody lighthouse. “You must be Thomas,” she said. Don’t know how she knew.’
Janet was frowning at them from across the room.
Paula said, ‘I hope she can’t lip-read’, and their laughter threatened to run out of control, like giggling in church. They used to be like that as children, united in giggles against the solemnities of the adult world.
As they struggled with self-control, a woman emerged from the crush of mourners and a
dvanced on the two of them. ‘Tom, dear! And Paula. Oh, how sad it all is.’
Thomas smiled distractedly, not knowing who the woman was, but knowing that he ought to know. ‘It’s Binty,’ she said. ‘Binty Paxton.’
‘Of course. How kind of you to come.’
Binty was small and rotund. He remembered the rotundity but not the smallness, nor the hints of chocolate-box prettiness that lay there beneath the slack flesh and blemished features. Her husband loomed behind her, as disproportionately tall as she was short. ‘Shame it has to be under such sad circumstances,’ he said, reaching out a gaunt hand.
His wife was talking over him as she had done for decades: ‘Dee was such a wonderful person. She was such fun, and so natural. She came into our lives like a breath of fresh air. So long ago, those days. A different world.’ Exactly which days was she referring to? ‘And you two? Both married, aren’t you? Dee always wrote a little note with her Christmas cards. Handwritten, not one of those dreadful circular things. Kept us up to date.’
‘Actually, I’m divorced. But Paula has managed to stick it out.’
‘Oh dear. How sad.’
‘No, quite happy. Happily divorced.’
And then suddenly, like crows moving off a carcass and leaving only debris behind, the people had gone, leaving Thomas and Paula, and the children and her husband in solemn alliance, to clear things away. With the help of Janet Burford.
‘I was awfully fond of her,’ Janet explained, as though to justify her presence. ‘We … we spent a lot of time together. We talked,’ she added, with emphasis, as though there might be some dispute about what precisely went on.
‘I think she’s after you,’ Paula whispered. The giggling resumed. Children again, without the controlling influence of a parent to admonish them.
For dinner that evening they took a large table in the restaurant of the Ship Hotel, across the road from the house. The room was called The Bo’sun’s Cabin and had the look of a maritime museum, cluttered with sextants and quadrants, compasses, chronometers and binnacles. Brass glinted in the shadows. The ceiling was low and beamed, the windows were portholes and the bar was fashioned out of a capstan. Mine Host, sporting a yachting cap, presented diners with menus that resembled, approximately, a ship’s logbook. ‘As long as we don’t get leg of Long John Silver we’ll be all right,’ Paula’s husband Graham remarked.
‘Dead man’s leg,’ said Paula’s son. He was thirteen and at boarding school, and knew suet pudding.
‘Dead parrot,’ was Thomas’ own suggestion. The giggling began, edged with hysteria. The fact of being able to laugh at a moment like this seemed imbued with blame. You should be mourning; you were mourning, and it shouldn’t manifest itself like this, not with silly laughter.
‘Chicken cutlass,’ said Paula. ‘Sprinkled …’ she added, spluttering with laughter, ‘… sprinkled with … with …’
‘Go on,’ her children cried, nudging each other. ‘Go on, spit it out.’
‘Sprinkled with …’ Paula was red in the face, her laughter smothering everything. Mine Host watched, trying to use a smile to hide the suspicion that he was the butt of the joke. Even Philip laughed at the sight of his aunt in distress. ‘Go on, Aunt Paula. Spit it out!’ His voice was raised as high as the others’. A pleasing sign, this. Ever since the divorce he had been a sullen child. Thomas felt that rare emotion: paternal warmth. ‘What, Aunt Paula? Sprinkled with what?’
Finally Paula managed it: ‘With old salt!’
When the laughter had subsided Mine Host approached the table to take their orders. ‘Sorry to hear about your bereavement,’ he said.
After dinner Phil and Thomas walked back to the house. ‘Why are we staying at Grandma’s?’ the boy asked. ‘Why can’t we stay in the hotel like Aunt Paula and everyone?’
‘Why throw money away?’
‘They’re throwing money away, so why shouldn’t we?’
‘Because it’s my money.’ It was intended as a joke, but it fell flat in the way that most of Thomas’ jokes did fall flat with Philip. It seemed that his son had never forgiven him for letting Gilda walk out. The evidence of Thomas’ culpability was plain enough in the boy’s eyes: Phil and his mother now lived happily with her second husband, while Thomas remained alone with, occasionally, an unsuitable young woman to share his bed and his breakfast. Only once, a few years before, had the two of them ever tried to discuss these things. ‘I want you and I want Mummy,’ was all Philip said on that occasion. ‘Both together.’ As soon as Thomas attempted any kind of explanation, that had been Philip’s reply. He had repeated the words over and over: ‘I want you and I want Mummy, both together. I want you and I want Mummy, both together. I want you and I want Mummy, both together.’ The mantra of a disturbed child. That evening had ended with convulsive tears until eventually sleep overcame him.
Thomas had rung Gilda to confide in her. ‘I think Phil’s got problems.’
‘I should think he has, when he sees his father fucking girls who are young enough to be his sister.’
‘I think maybe we should get help for him.’
‘What do you mean, “help”?’
‘A shrink perhaps.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake grow up. All Phil needs is the comforts of a father – something that you seem unable to provide. If you can’t handle it just send him home early. Norman understands him, Norman’s just like a father to him. Norman’ll deal with him.’
They reached the front door of the house. ‘Sad about Grandma, isn’t it?’ Philip said as Thomas turned the key in the lock.
Father put his hand on son’s shoulder. ‘It happens, Phil, it happens. Lots of things happen in life, not all of them good.’ Brave, male words.
‘Too right,’ Philip said, making his way upstairs to the spare room.
Next morning they saw the children off to the seaside with Graham. ‘Frinton,’ Paula had insisted. ‘Not Clacton. You’ll hate Clacton.’ There was a feeling of relief to see the Volvo draw away. There were things to do that only she and Thomas could manage – organization, certainly; expiation, perhaps. She stepped across the threshold into the hallway. ‘God, isn’t it strange?’
‘What?’
‘Her not being here.’
‘I’ve got used to it. I’ve been here much of the last ten days.’
‘Stop trying to score points.’
‘I’m not.’
Always rivals, rivals and friends at the same time, an exquisite kind of relationship that is perhaps reserved for siblings; they could say cruel things to each other that didn’t seem to hurt. Maybe that was the way they showed their affection. He watched her looking round the place, picking things up to examine them, then replacing them carefully where they were, as though she was in an antique shop or something. ‘Working out how we’re going to split the booty?’
‘Oh, shut up.’
‘Well, we’ve got to decide. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’ve dumped poor old Graham with the kids. It’s what you do. In circumstances like this.’
She had picked up a porcelain piece, a shepherd and a shepherdess that may have been – their mother had never had the piece valued, preferring fantasy over dull fact – early Meissen, and when she looked round at him her eyes were bright with tears. ‘I’d rather have her back.’
‘Of course.’
‘I find myself talking to her, d’you know that? Sounds silly and sentimental, doesn’t it? But I do nevertheless. I was doing an interview two days ago and I found myself thinking, That’s a good question, isn’t it, Mummy? And when I was writing it up: “Hey, read this,” I said to her. “Isn’t that good?” I almost expected her to reply.’
‘But she didn’t.’
‘Of course she bloody didn’t.’
‘The question is, which her do you talk to? Her as she was when she was ill, or her when she was healthy, or when she was young, or what?’
‘It’s just her. Like it always was.’
He shook hi
s head. ‘No it’s not. It’s not at all like it always was. When she was alive, then there was just her. But now she’s dead you’ve got a choice. Which memory do you choose? Which version of her, at what age?’
‘What is this, a history lesson or something?’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘There’s no choice involved. It’s just her.’
He smiled, that aggravating expression he used with students when they said something stupid that he wasn’t going to grace with further discussion. ‘Let me show you what I’ve found.’
‘What is it?’
‘Just wait.’
He ran upstairs to the study and returned with three plastic slide boxes. Paula watched while he fiddled around with a projector in a corner of the sitting room. ‘What’s this? Holiday snaps? You know what the two most boring things in the world are? Other people’s holiday snaps and other people’s dreams.’
‘These are your holiday snaps. Maybe your dreams as well. I found them last night when I was poking around after Phil had gone to sleep.’
He moved a corner table aside, took pictures down. Then he drew the curtains and plunged the room into a sudden, untimely darkness. A white shaft of light snapped through the shadows, spotlighting the far wall. Paula had turned in her armchair, putting her legs up and over one of the arms in a manner that her mother would never have allowed.
‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.’
He pressed the button on the remote control. A second’s blackness, a whirr and click from the slide tray, and then, abruptly, there she was, projected almost life-size on the far side of the room, blanketed by shadows and framed by light, leaning against the wing of a car.
Paula gave a small gasp of surprise.
Dee was wearing shorts. The detail is important. She was wearing something like a T-shirt – did they have T-shirts in those days? – and a pair of shorts. The shorts were high-waisted but strikingly brief for the times. And the legs were strong and suntanned. A tennis player’s legs. And you could see the rise of her breasts beneath her T-shirt, and the shadow of her nipples where, Thomas realized with the force of revelation, he had once sucked.