What Becomes

  Jesus, they all of them had to adjust.

  Barry Westcott, much-loved entertainer, goes to work one evening and then doesn’t bring himself home. Vein burst in his head – vein, or an artery, his widow often cannot think of which – and out he goes. Found in his car. Key in the ignition, but he’d managed no further than that, which was a kind of miracle, or at the very least, a good thing – Lynne didn’t want to imagine what damage he might have done if he’d started driving.

  He’d made a remarkably natural-looking corpse. Natural for being dead. This meant he’d developed a bad colour – bluish-grey – mainly, though, he’d seemed puzzled and as if death had interrupted when he’d been just about to speak. The important thing was, there had been no injuries, or chains of subsequent accident and this could definitely be taken as having turned out for the best. Now people could think well of him, could let themselves enjoy unspoiled regret on his behalf, as they might like to. The press reports were kind and helpful, if rather small: ‘Creator and voice of Uncle Shaun dies at 42. Widow speaks of fresh horizons tragically closed.’

  This being how Lynne moved from Barry Westcott’s wife to Barry Westcott’s widow – not even the tiniest interval left between the two for independent life. And the transition accomplished entirely without her assistance. She never felt a thing.

  Angela – perhaps permanently Barry Westcott’s daughter – had, of course, been up and about the following morning with everything seeming usual and keeping quiet in case she woke her tired and grumpy actor dad and clearly supposing that she would see him when she came in again from school, oblivious to the phone calls and rushing and uniforms on the doorstep of the night before.

  Angela has usually slept deeply and well. She lost the trick of it a little in the months right after, but it’s back at the moment, she’s mending. She has also forgiven, or chooses not to mention, that Lynne let her leave the house on that first Barryless day and spend so many hours unknowing, ungrieving, before the sadness was explained to her after dinner, her loss. It had been on the local news by lunchtime – then a slight delay and more national attention. That delay, it wouldn’t have pleased Baz. Had he been still alive, ratty calls to the PR – Nina? Tina? – would have ensued: escalating complaints every twenty minutes until matters were resolved to his satisfaction. But, as Lynne had repeated to herself quite forcibly, this was the point of the coverage in the first place – Barry Westcott wasn’t still alive.

  It had struck her as peculiar that the announcement had seemed definitive when it was coming from a slightly tarty redhead in a studio and yet she hadn’t found herself remotely credible when she’d tried to lay things out for Angela. The available information had not seemed realistic and somewhere in Lynne there had been a distracting certainty that she was inappropriately uninvolved. To be frank, it had been the sensible, the loving, choice to let a regional broadcaster summarise the changes in their household with an appropriate solemnity and some nice archive clips: Barry at a children’s hospice, Barry standing in a line-up of dinner suits and shaking hands with Princess Michael, Barry in motion and then frozen as a permanently jovial and poignant close-up. Once she’d switched off the set, Lynne was surprised – not unpleasantly – by the start of her crying. The two remaining Westcotts had curled and snuggled with each other on the sofa for a while – Barry’s brave girls, united in heartbreak.

  Since their tragic and unexpected bereavement Angela and her mother – Lynne is also the mother of Barry Westcott’s child – have settled into living somewhere delicate and withdrawn. They do not watch their television, because Angela no longer wants to, they have a number of extremely firm routines, are considering a kitten or a pup and they receive visitors who are markedly undemonstrative.

  Primarily there has been one visitor who is called Richard. He is your mum’s pal. When Angela is awake he only – and fairly infrequently – kisses Lynne on the cheek, or maybe squeezes her hand for a moment or says her name, ‘Lynne,’ – no more than that – and then, having caught her attention, he will let his eyes smile. His eyes are extraordinarily, professionally eloquent: the whites very white, the depths very deep. Lynne and Richard work hard to give no indication that Angela’s mother – Barry’s widow – is loved again.

  Perhaps loved better than before.

  Undoubtedly.

  Undoubtedly loved better than at any other time before.

  She would admit this, if anybody asked, and she knows that eventually they may ask: the large and curious they which is waiting outside in its hungry limbo, waiting to tell people who she is, who Richard is: papers, radio, magazines, television – so much telling.

  At present, she and the girl are still insulated – just living as normal a life as possible – Lynne is proud of the neat protection she has built up for them both. And behind their little walls they do enjoy themselves. There have been trips when mother and daughter could share being puzzled by monstrous constructions in Lego bricks, or slightly unnerved by fancy-dress horsemen who plunged solemnly across the grounds of several castles and a stately home – each property filled with significant information and portraits of the neither recently nor disturbingly deceased. Or once there was that place where a man sold them honey and candles and furniture wax and showed off by spreading his face with a beard of bees. Angela and her mother have agreed that he was not educational, only mad. A lot of mad.

  Having provided, with Richard’s help, a number of increasingly successful excursions, Lynne has found herself looking forward to more, identifying a definite rise of excitement before packing up the car with drinks and Just William CDs and carrot sticks and hand wipes and setting the satnav to somewhere she has never been. When she giggles and runs across lawns holding Angela’s hand, or waits in ice-cream queues, she no longer hears an interior voice attempting to undermine her – this isn’t you, this is sad pretending, this is absurd.

  Sometimes – as is reasonable and could be expected – the pair of them have welcomed company, they have been Angela, Lynne and Richard, enjoying treats. Richard happened to be around for Angela’s particularly lavish eighth birthday party, the one intended to make up for the blank and hurt the year before. He played his guitar and sang for a while, performing with more authority than a normal, casual person should, but the kids all liked it because he was self-effacing, too, which was a difficult balance to strike, Lynne had thought. She had watched him and decided that. She had been impressed.

  Richard had also appeared some evenings to talk about work, about the series, and to maybe stay for dinner. Eventually, he started to provide the bedtime story, oversee tooth brushing, get a kiss on the cheek before he stood up from perching on Angela’s bed and turned out the light. He would never be there in the morning, though, would never give the impression he had spent his night mostly in Lynne’s bed – formerly Barry Westcott’s bed – running himself into hard hours, fierce and jerking hours, that pelted in after days of murmuring and politeness and knowing exactly, planning exactly, how they would end up. Not that they really kept to any plans – it was just ridiculously wonderful to make them, talk about them, consider possibilities.

  And then at breakfast there would be no observable suggestion of the way they would hunt each other down to the bone in a tight, wet, beautiful agreement, or of his mouth so very open above her. Lynne was perfectly satisfied that Angela could eat her cereal with the lovely sliced banana on top after a sound and innocent sleep – Lynne and Richard were careful not to bang about or shout – and the mother could stand and watch the daughter and silently feel remade with good little private bruises, with resurrected skin.

  ‘Is Richard coming today?’

  ‘I don’t know, love.’

  ‘I like it when he reads to me.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Does he read to you?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t read to me. That’s special for you.’

  ‘We’re at the part where the snow’s all melting and the witch can’t go to anyw
here because her sleigh gets stuck and she’s immensely irritated.’

  ‘Immensely irritated?’ Lynne unable to resist stroking Angela’s shoulder at this – another example – which she will talk about to Richard – of how her offspring grows every day slightly more into a remarkably fine person – this happening with no apparent help from anywhere, more a slow uncovering of inherent qualities than anything learned or dictated. ‘Is that right?’ Another kind of miracle. ‘Well, an immensely irritated witch would be a problem.’

  ‘Richard says he’s never read it before and I don’t want him to miss it. Could you phone him and ask? If he’ll come?’

  ‘I’ll phone in a while. I think he’ll be sleeping now.’

  ‘He’ll still be in bed?’

  ‘Yes. He’ll probably still be in bed.’

  ‘In his pyjamas?’

  These unpredictable moments when she loved her daughter to the point of pain, ‘That would be a silly place to have a bed – in his pyjamas . . . You’ll have to ask him yourself if he wears pyjamas. He might have a nightgown instead, or a suit of armour.’

  ‘But when you phone him you will order him to come here. If he’s not busy with other people.’

  Other people is pronounced with mild but unmistakable disapproval. It refers to everyone but Angela and Lynne. And Richard.

  ‘Order him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We can’t order him, he’s a friend.’

  ‘Oh –’

  ‘But I’ll ask. Now finish your cereal before it goes to mush.’

  ‘It’s mush now. I like mush.’

  Which was the first Lynne had heard of this. Maybe the preference was recent. People did change, after all – if they were lucky.

  Lynne had been lucky.

  Eventually.

  Recently.

  She had finally found her luck.

  In the beginning, Lynne and Richard were solely connected by business concerns. To be ruthlessly truthful, they never would have met without Barry – or rather, without Barry’s lack.

  Barry had died at an inconvenient time, professionally speaking. No one mentioned this in so many words, but it was there in the condolence calls from the various offices, which didn’t fade and leave her be, but simply changed over the weeks into small remarks about Uncle Shaun having suddenly made a breakthrough: the books were really selling and so were the tapes, listening figures were great for the radio version and it would be another tragic waste – a minute one, but significant nonetheless – if they didn’t somehow try to continue the brand’s momentum. There was still serious enthusiasm for a television pilot, they didn’t want to let that go: new series, new format, new medium – they were considering possibilities.

  Barry hadn’t wanted TV exposure, not as Uncle Shaun. In his opinion the audio versions were bad enough. By the end of Shaun’s first year, Baz had been loudly and repeatedly tired of doing kids’ stuff. But Uncle Shaun paid for the house, for Angela’s schooling, for the green vintage Aston Martin from which paramedics would ultimately lever his body, so Barry persevered. He also made repeated efforts to catch the right kind of famous – he’d been playing in The Caretaker when he died, reminding the public of his full capacity. Respectable reviews.

  This meant Barry would have found it amusing that without him there might be no more Uncle Shaun. However much he’d hated the character Barry had kept it close. He’d started writing the stories for Angela when she was three or four, maybe older – this was another set of details Lynne could not reliably recall. Barry had polished his versions and sent them out for publication when there’d been no money coming in, not even from voice-overs, not even from those bloody awful eye-drop ads. It was the first and only occasion when one of his bouts of creative despair bore fruit. The books were accepted and prospered. The audio versions had come along when they needed a replacement boiler and Barry had, despite himself, furnished a voice for the nation’s favourite uncle. He had, indeed, been every voice: Bill Badger, the Llamas, Mr Pearlyclaws, everyone. Another demonstration of capacity.

  But he wouldn’t do telly.

  With Barry, there was Shaun, but no telly.

  Without Barry – no Shaun, but telly not a problem.

  Being dispassionate, then: all that was needed would be another Shaun.

  No one absolutely said this out loud – it simply became apparent, rose to the surface of every Shaun-related conversation and floated. Lynne pictured it bobbing and drifting, maybe slightly like her daughter’s goldfish when it died.

  Pets are always a serious undertaking, prone to calam-ities which may precede the recapitulation of older griefs – that’s why the puppy and kitten options were still un-decided. Richard was in favour, Lynne was unsure.

  Lynne – dead Uncle Shaun’s widow – did not express an opinion on the search for some fresh, theoretical Shaun and she didn’t observe the auditions, because she’d assumed that would have been grotesque. She chose to be aware that they were taking place and to acknowledge that financial security was important, especially in unstable times. She was responsible for Angela’s future. Lynne had, naturally, been a performer herself in her twenties, but she had no illusions about her talents and even the finest actresses could find middle age a hurdle: not cute and young, not cute and old: you were grown up, that was all – and nobody wants that. Uncle Shaun would have to provide.

  The production company sent her Shaun hopefuls on cassettes, to which she didn’t listen. They also sent her DVDs, at which she didn’t look. And then, for a while, there were more calls and a few letters, which mentioned how irreplaceable Barry might perhaps turn out to be. Lynne felt she agreed with this, should almost tell them – yes, Barry was Barry and no one else. Barry with the fake face for parties, Barry who loved to flirt, Barry who was scared, who was utterly terrified, that having a child would mean he couldn’t leave Lynne if he wanted, couldn’t upgrade, couldn’t be comfortable with moving on. She’d understood this immediately in the hospital, in their first post-natal, post-paternal encounter. Barry Westcott, he was one of a kind.

  A kind she’d been supposed to like. If you could no longer love, she had reasoned, you should try to like. Curiously, liking had been much more difficult to achieve.

  Barry had offered her a child as a consolation for his inability to love her. (Liking was also beyond him.) In order to shore up something that couldn’t stand, they had made a person: a complete, living human being. Reckless addition, that – no idea what they’d both been thinking – if they had, in fact, been thinking.

  Although, Lynne had been thinking: otherwise, she wouldn’t have stared at her husband as he first picked up his daughter, hefted her tenderly, gracefully, feelingly – so the nurses could not help but remember the scene, believe it – and she had thought – Got you. She’d seen his eyes: the wide, unfamiliar chill that was settling in them and she had thought – Got you. Fuck you. Deal with that.

  It had surprised her – that she would allow someone else to exist simply to defeat her husband. Then she forgot about it. When you come across something this unusual, this far out of your character, you’re best to forget.

  Anyway, it was no longer true and therefore didn’t matter.

  And eventually Shaun might not matter, not to anyone but her – that’s how it had seemed. The messages of irreplaceability became more insistent, apologetic, and then dropped away entirely. Lynne had assumed that the multimedia hopes for her husband’s other creation were being laid aside. There would, no doubt, be efforts to exploit what material there was, but in the absence of further storylines, of the voice, of the man himself, then everyone’s options were severely limited.

  Until that final package had arrived.

  When she picked it up off the hall floor, honest to God, it weighed oddly, gave an impression of internal mobility, like holding on to something when it flinches, blinks. The usual company label was there on the usual type of padded envelope and the usual cheap plastic boxes were inside h
olding the discs – audio and video recordings.

  The slip enclosed read – We really think he’s it. Our Shaun. We would be so delighted if you agree.

  Richard was on the discs.

  Richard Norland.

  First time she’d seen the name.

  He’d done other work, but she’d missed it.

  She’d missed him.

  Her intention had been to do some ironing, dissipate the tension that had apparently started cluttering the edges of every room – and this would allow her to hear the thing without feeling too uncovered, too close.

  Except that didn’t work.

  Not remotely.

  Because she’d pressed play and heard her husband’s voices, his exact voices, reproduced – those silly, for-children voices, only they were better – there was somebody inside them, running about inside them and finding unexplored lights and fresh corners and a joy they’d never had, never delivered.

  Made her cry.

  Made her happy.

  Didn’t make her miss Barry.

  Sitting down – couldn’t remember dropping to a chair, but she must have done – sitting down and hearing a type of unnecessary beauty being threaded into something of her past – the iron, meanwhile, ignored and tinging, breathing steam – not a chance of her doing anything but listening until the talking stopped.

  That was ‘Uncle Shaun and the Living Fish Tree’, read by Richard Norland.

  His own words those, his personal sound, with the tone of a bedtime story, the idea of lips that were close, next to your ear. Soft as trust. Fearful as trust.

  Not that you’d trust some actor you don’t know who’s good at impersonating a total bastard.

  This a sensible time to grab up the iron and harry some pillowcases flat, move on to the sheets. She’d laughed at herself then, for being idiotic, trying to work up a crush based on the speech patterns of a ghost.