What Was Promised

by Tobias Hill

  ‘As you were, gents,’ he says, his voice carrying awkwardly, and then Iris is there, with the young priest at her side.

  ‘Dad,’ she says, and takes his arm, kisses him. ‘You look tired,’ she whispers, and he is, for he almost growls at her What do you expect? or What else would I be? – but in the nick of time he stops himself. Under her makeup, his youngest looks as worn as Michael feels himself. I should have called you, Michael thinks. You would have been there, sitting up, and Cyril and his missus could have had their beauty sleep while we kept vigil.

  The priest is hovering, but Michael’s gaze wanders past them both, searching for Floss. There she is, with her fellow, Jem. She’s fifty this year, Michael’s eldest, though her looks knock off a decade even on a day like this. There is a boy, too, fifteen years old, though Michael has never met him, neither Floss nor Mary having had the stomach for such a meeting. Iris says he’s growing tall, like all the Malcolm men. Their eyes meet his: in Jem’s, but not in hers, he sees what might be compassion.

  ‘Well,’ says the priest, ‘shall we?’ – as if inviting them to dance – and Michael and Iris follow him, her hand still on his arm, with all the rest behind them.

  Inside the chapel feels too small, and dark after the sunlight. Iris leads him to his place. There is a rustling around him, the unnatural sound of many people moving, voiceless, to the places that fit them. There is a bier, still coffinless. Michael fixes his eyes ahead. Somewhere out of sight – he could swear he feels it, his hairs rising – Mary is coming.

  Abruptly the organ begins. They sing – Michael hardly knows what – and then the priest’s voice fills the hall, modulated, not unfeeling, though neither eager nor sepulchral. Michael watches his face: he isn’t so gone with grief that he can’t appreciate skilled work. It’s a point Mary was firm on: her celebrant would be Catholic, and properly ordained, and Scottish. You’ll be lucky to land a Cockney altar boy, Michael told her – neither of them ever having been much in the way of churchgoers – but she wasn’t having that. Don’t mock me, Michael. Luck won’t come into it, because I’ve you to look out for me. I want the right man for it. I’ll have the proper words said.

  The crowd behind him stirs. Mary comes in, transformed. For so long she was sick, on and off the chemical and radiation therapy, in and out of hospital as the tumours came and went. Michael thinks, I should be glad she’s freed, glad to be freed of that myself, but all he can do is look at the strangeness of the box, the inhuman mass of it, as the priest cleanses it with water and incense.

  ‘We commend our sister Mary to you, Lord. Now that she has passed from this life, may she live on in your presence. In your mercy and love, forgive whatever sins she may have committed through human weakness . . .’

  Michael shuts his eyes, rests them. He has done right so far, today. Out of nothing he thinks of their first car, bought to surprise Mary. It’s too much! Mary is saying, in the street of flowers. It’s what we deserve, he answers. And so it was, or so he thought – though no good came of it, that car. And still he thinks the same thing now: nothing is more than we deserve.

  ‘You have prepared a banquet for me in the sight of my foes. My head you have anointed with oil; my cup is overflowing.’

  Behind them someone coughs, coughs, snorts down a third slapstick spasm. There is the sound of hurried rising, the fit running its course outside. Michael thinks, our own bodies betray us, and our minds too. There’s no end to what they feel they deserve. Nothing is promised us, but our hearts don’t know it or don’t care. We are our own worst enemies.

  Not that he supposes there’s any malice in the cougher’s indignity. Michael has no foes here. Mary and he are amongst friends . . . or at least friends and family. By no means are they the same thing.

  ‘You love truth in the heart. Then in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom. Oh purify me, then I shall be clean. Oh wash me, I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear rejoicing and gladness, that the bones you have crushed may thrill. From my sins turn away your face, and blot out all my guilt.’

  Over knuckles clenched in prayer, Michael frowns in puzzlement. It isn’t right for Mary, this talk of guilt and sin. What did she have, to be guilty of? The sin of waiting for him? If there’s guilt to be felt for the harm done them, or for the harm that led to it, that’s Michael’s business. Mary needed him and stood by him. He trusts that he was worth it.

  Unforgivingness. Is that a sin? He thinks, I’ll ask the Father, after. If so, then that was Mary’s. She blamed Floss for her faithlessness, and Alan, too, until the end, for putting Michael in harm’s way – as if he himself had no choice in the matter. She never forgave the Malcolms, not Clarence or Bernadette, nor their children, nor the grandchild they have come to share. What would she forgive them for – for what could she withhold forgiveness? Michael has never understood it. Still, that was how it was for Mary, for forty years, and he never begrudged her it. Her unforgivingness was laid at his feet, a gift of faith to the man she loved. All those touched by the woman’s death were complicit, except him.

  When he looks up again Mary is gone. The coffin has been spirited away without his noticing. Around him the Lord’s Prayer is being said. Forgive us our trespasses, and all those who trespass against us. The sibilences seem to echo on after the voices fall silent. The priest says more, but it is soon done: they are all leaving, and Michael and Iris rise and go along with them.

  Outside the crowd is louder now, voices unbuttoned, the speakers happy to have the sun back on their faces, and with the sense, too, of obligations met, the dead put in their place and a drink just around the corner. ‘I should go ahead,’ Iris says, ‘to see it’s all set up at yours. My lot will go with you, Dad, is that alright? The driver who brought you – where is he? He’s meant to be looking out for you . . .’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me,’ he says, and she manages an anxious smile as she kisses him goodbye. The crowd closes in on him, full of handshakes and thoughts that are with him. Michael edges through their wellwishings. He can see Floss, checking her watch. She looks harsh in the light: still beautiful as ever, but with nothing spare on her, no softness, no give, any more than there is on him.

  ‘You came,’ he says, and she glances up.

  ‘I’m here,’ she says. ‘Where else would I be?’

  Michael nods and averts his eyes. The priest is doing the rounds, a smallish, florid man, circulating platitudes. Michael is disappointed by him. There seems less to him now the prayers are ended, the power gone out of him.

  ‘You look well,’ he lies. ‘How are you?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ she says. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I don’t complain.’

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘you don’t.’ It could almost be a compliment. It’s how she is, after all, taking life as it comes. ‘You’ve been drinking, I can smell it on you.’

  ‘Can you? The boys saw to it. A send-off.’

  ‘You never used to.’

  ‘I don’t now. I haven’t the head for it. They’ll have me out again tonight, no doubt.’

  ‘Poor Dad,’ Floss says – and he is braced for it, but still he flinches at the curl of her voice, the temper of her. She is his daughter, his of the two, the one who took after him. It is that likeness that has turned against him. She is her own person, he knows, but her stubbornness, and her bitterness . . . always, when they meet, it feels to Michael as if he has turned against himself.

  Whatever I did, it was for you. That’s what he wants to say, but there is never the right time or place for it. Nor is it honest, and he recoils, now, from the thought of angering her.

  ‘I was wondering if we could meet up. I had in mind it might be all of us, Iris and hers, you and Jem and the boy,’ he says, and she smiles with false mirth.

  ‘The boy. Do you even know his name?’

  He does – Iris has told him it – but it escapes him, now, when he needs it most. ‘You know how it’ll be,’ Floss is saying. ‘It doesn’t all go right a
gain, just because Mum’s dead.’

  ‘It was just a thought.’

  ‘Have it your way, it’s your own funeral,’ she says, and then her man is there, none too soon, a giant with grey in his hair, looming up between them.

  ‘Mr Lockhart,’ Jem says. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

  Michael takes the proffered hand. ‘I was just saying to your wife,’ he says, the words sounding oddly, ‘We could see more of one another.’

  ‘Sure,’ Jem says, carefully, ‘we could do that.’

  ‘Will you be coming on?’ Michael asks, though he might have saved his breath, he knows their answer.

  ‘We’re late,’ Floss says. ‘Not for you. Can we go now, Jem, actually? I’ve had enough of this.’

  ‘Another time,’ Jem says, and Michael echoes that – its promise or apology – as they move away.

  Others are departing, too, making for the reception. Harry comes up. ‘Mr Lockhart,’ he says, and sneezes like a dog barking, all teeth. Faintly, Michael recognises the voice of the cougher. He has never warmed to Harry, has never seen the point of the man or liked what marriage to him has done to Iris, over the years, but there it is, here Harry is, still, and it isn’t any of his business.

  ‘Sorry,’ Harry says. ‘It’s the trees that do me. Ready for the off?’

  The hearse awaits. Megan and Beth are already inside, with their men and Megan’s girl, Alice – his daughter’s daughter’s daughter – who can’t be more than six. To Michael’s way of thinking it’s no place for a child, this, but the thought might be old-fashioned. He winks for her as the men budge up, and Alice smiles, lily-white in the shadows.

  They start through the cemetery, still stately but no longer solemn, the Daimler being crammed with people, all knees and foggy breath and voices. ‘You alright there?’ Harry asks him, and he says he couldn’t be better, though the truth is he feels out of it, out of place amongst them all, as if he should be somewhere else, with someone else: with Mary, of course. His gaze is drawn away, across mourners leaving afoot, the graveyard gates, the world beyond still going about its business in terraced maisonettes and shops: his gaze lets it all slide, then locks.

  It’s his daughter he sees first. Floss and Jem, hand in hand, walking south towards the station. He catches sight of them just as she does the same, though it isn’t him she sees. A smile of recognition is brightening her face, her unclasped hand is rising, waving to someone up ahead. Michael’s eyes follow hers.

  By a café, by the station, sit and stand a knot of people. Gathered together as they are he would know them anywhere. Waving back at Michael’s daughter is Dora Lazarus. It has been thirty years since he has seen her. She was bonny then and still is now, as full of joy as she ever was in his company. By her stands the orphan boy, done up tight in his duffle-coat, slight and pale, with his hand in hers. At his side, at the café table, sits the watchmaker. He has a chessboard in front of him, but his glare is on Michael: I know your kind, it says. And there, facing Solomon, is a second man, older still to look at, with his trilby in his hands, his hair snowy against grey skin, and his eyes drifting from the board, away on their own weary path, until they catch Michael’s, and hold.

  Smoothly the hearse picks up speed. Michael shoulders himself some space, peers back, but Clarence Malcolm’s regard and Dora’s brightness are already lost to him: the knot is out of sight. He thinks, I might have made them up, the lot of them, like bloody ghosts. But ghosts are lonely things, aren’t they? And no one in that gathering looked in need of company. It’s Michael who sits apart from those who prattle on around him, closer to the dead than to his kin, while those who are left in his wake go on together, living, loving.

  3. Dusk

  All afternoon the mourners linger, the old men on their best behaviour, the gossips eking out their news of turns for the worst elsewhere, the kids still frocked or jacketed and playing French cricket in the garden, or exploring upstairs rooms which smell to them of dead people, while nieces Michael hardly knows offer help he has no wish for, and in-laws he couldn’t name answer his door and telephone, and ask him what the house is worth (guessing at it themselves, as if it were a jar of coins), and cadge fags on the patio, or loiter at the cold collation, helping themselves to a last glass, to drink to old acquaintance.

  At one point, seeking respite, he comes on Alice in the hall, arranging flowers in a Tupperware. ‘What’s that you’ve there?’ he asks, and she peers up at him gravely. ‘Misteria,’ she says, ‘they’re for you,’ and gives him the bowl before wandering away. The flowers are heaped up like grapes, bruised by the child’s ministrations.

  Wisteria: Mary’s favourite, loved for their dusty elegance and air of property, of old growth and suntrap walls. He remembers her excitement, long ago, the January day they were shown the house. Oh, Michael, you won’t believe – it’s got its own wisteria! Bashed about as they are, he isn’t sorry to have the flowers. He never would have thought to have noticed them himself.

  Afterwards, the last guests gone, he drags a kitchen chair outside, wrestles off his tie and sits. Late light cuts across the lawn. Iris, Harry and the boys are clearing up inside. One of them – Jack, no doubt – is experimenting with the hi-fi, finding something to work to. Oscar comes out with tea.

  ‘Nothing stronger?’ Michael asks, and Oscar shrugs, as if to say it isn’t his idea, nor would it be his preference. He walks out onto the grass and rolls a cigarette, neat about it, quietly offering Michael his quiet company. People have dogs, Michael thinks, when what they need is Oscars. Any other day it would put him at his ease.

  ‘Oscar,’ he asks, ‘my daughter, Floss. She’s a son I’ve forgot the name of.’

  ‘Grant,’ Oscar says, letting the lapse pass without comment, and Michael nods, relieved. Grant Malcolm: it’s one thing off his mind. ‘Mr Noakes was asking where we will go tonight.’

  ‘Cyril,’ Michael says. ‘You can call him Cyril, speaking of names. You’ve been with us long enough, you’re hardly fresh off the boat. You don’t have to doff your cap.’

  If he’s too harsh, Oscar doesn’t waver. He nods at the tea. ‘I can find you stronger.’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Later, where?’

  ‘You can work it out, can’t you? Somewhere quiet, members only. I’ve had enough chat for one day.’

  ‘Crockford’s,’ Oscar suggests, and Michael thinks it over.

  ‘Call them, see if they can fit us in. That room upstairs again.’

  Oscar studies him. ‘Afterwards, maybe girls,’ he says, ‘Raymond’s, the second show.’

  ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Or fighting.’

  ‘Fighting?’

  ‘York Hall.’

  Boxing, he means. York Hall is Bethnal Green, their old parish. ‘Too far east,’ Michael says, ‘we’ll want brighter lights than that.’ But Oscar has him bang to rights. All afternoon his thoughts have circled the gathering by the station. Clarence Malcolm, Dora Lazarus and his Floss, the whole sorry lot of them. Why were they there? To celebrate? To gloat? To go on where together, and raise a glass to what? And him the outsider outside his own wife’s funeral, not at the centre but the margin, watching the world move on without him . . . Yes, a fight would do him good. He wouldn’t say no to one himself. He’d like to hit and to be hit, to be jarred free of all this thought: to feel nothing for awhile but the black, viscous pleasure of violence.

  It’s past eight before they’re ready for the off. ‘Coming, Harry?’ Cyril asks, but Harry has done his bit, he should be getting home with Iris, so that it’s just the boys – Cyril, Oscar, Jack and him – who head on into town.

  Michael drives, being sober. The light is going around them just as the promised rain begins. The precipitation is so fine as to be almost imperceptible, the pavements darkening, oily, as if London is sweating out its inexhaustible pollution.

  ‘Well,’ says Cyril, ‘that’s that. I never much liked funerals, but I thought it went off alright.’

>   He glances Michael’s way, and Michael nods, though it’s just for form. They were all there, is what he thinks, all those from the old days. You never saw them, Cyril, but they were, and there was no goodwill in them.

  ‘What’s the verdict, then, Oscar? Dinner first, drinking later?’

  Oscar shifts in the back. Michael can feel his eyes on him.

  ‘Dinner,’ Michael answers for him. ‘After that we’ll take it as it comes.’

  They come down into Mayfair. It’s Friday night, and parking’s scarce, so that they walk the last leg to Crockford’s. The manager welcomes them back, shows them up to their room, opens the doors onto the terrace.

  Michael orders red meat, rare, and eats it hard and fast. Abruptly he is ravenous, as if, with Mary put to rest, he has a void to fill. There’s a waitress there to pour the wine, and Jack strikes up some banter with her, a flirt to cheer them all. ‘Jack,’ Cyril says, ‘ain’t you got a girl these days?’ And off Jack goes, cock of the walk, full of his own woes and wonders, with the rest of them half listening, like workers by a wireless.

  ‘So, what’s the occasion?’ the waitress asks, showing willing. ‘It must be something special for you all to be let out tonight,’ and Jack gulps on his spiel and falters.

  ‘It’s a sending off,’ Cyril says, and the waitress screws up her face.

  ‘What, like in football?’

  Not exactly, dear, he tells her, and they share a laugh about it, insomuch as it can be laughable: the waitress does her best.

  ‘You should have seen her,’ Cyril says to Jack, ‘when she was your age. Mary. My God but she was something. Best luck Mickey ever had, wasn’t she, Mickey?’

  ‘She was,’ he says, and then, ‘I didn’t always know it.’

  ‘Mickey,’ Cyril says, but the warning is halfhearted: it isn’t the night for them.

  ‘I always wanted more for us. You,’ Michael says, to Cyril, ‘you were happy with what you had. I never used to trust that. I thought you were complacent. I didn’t see it for contentment.’