‘Mrs Hargreave sends sincere apologies, but she’s still hammering away at the Duke of Edinburgh, I’m afraid.’
I blinked, taken aback. Gracious. Mrs Hargreaves and Prince Philip? ‘Oh?’
‘The Fourths are taking their award this term. Need to brush up on their sheepshanks. So – will I do?’ She twinkled across the desk at me.
‘Of course. Um, is Lily …?’
‘So excited, dear girl. Because you know,’ she leaned forward and winked, ‘they do love a day off.’
‘Oh. Yes.’
‘Saturday week, isn’t it?’
‘Um, no. Next Thursday, probably.’
‘Thursday? Really?’ She sat back and looked surprised. ‘Unusual day. Tell me,’ she leaned forward eagerly again and clasped her hands, ‘what’s she going to wear?’ She hissed excitedly.
‘Um, w-well,’ I faltered, ‘I’m not sure. Haven’t really thought. Not black, I don’t think.’
‘Oh no, no!’ She threw up her hands in mock horror. ‘That wouldn’t do at all. Mind you, these young girls,’ she twinkled at me conspiratorially, ‘wouldn’t put it past them. They do love their grunge. Their,’ she posted quotation marks in the air, ‘Goth! So – where’s it to be?’
‘Oh, er, a little chapel in North London.’ My palms felt a bit sweaty on my skirt.
‘Lovely! A low-key affair?’
‘Well, yes. I think so.’
‘Super! And a party afterwards?’
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. ‘A glass of sherry and a sandwich perhaps. At my mother’s.’
‘Splendid.’ She beamed. ‘Your mother must be very excited, I imagine?’
I stared. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your mother – seeing her first granddaughter married?’ she prompted.
I stared some more. Miss Whitehorn’s head tilted to one side. ‘Lily’s older sister?’ she said encouragingly, widening her eyes as if perhaps I were educationally subnormal. ‘Getting married?’
I licked my lips. ‘Lily doesn’t have a sister. I’m here because her grandfather’s died.’
She gazed at me across the desk, her eyes uncomprehending. Then she straightened up and looked down at her notes. Shuffled through them.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured at length. ‘That’s another girl – Amelia Wade-Walker. Her mother’s coming to see me, wanting to take her out for a …yes. Yes, I do see now.’ She peered nervously at her notes. ‘Got in a bit of a muddle. I’m so sorry. Yes, Lily.’ She removed her glasses. Folded her hands and lowered her head decorously. ‘Sincere condolences, Mrs Levin.’
By the time Lily was eventually found and ushered into the room I was feeling faintly giggly and having to breathe hard through my teeth. Miss Whitehorn muttered her apologies and exited swiftly, gown flying.
‘Why are you smiling, Mummy?’ cried Lily, launching herself into my arms. ‘It’s so sad. Poor Grandpa!’
‘I know, poor Grandpa,’ I agreed, hugging her close and kissing the top of her head fiercely. ‘I’m sorry, Lily, I think I’m getting faintly hysterical. Grief and hysteria appear to be very closely linked.’
Lily had a good cry which made me cry too, but then she cheered up enormously when I said Miss Whitehorn had given me permission to take her out to tea. Miss White-horn would have let me take her to the moon, if I’d wanted.
‘With Rosie?’ she asked, wiping her face and turning wet, appealing eyes on me. ‘Can Rosie come too?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
And off she ran, sniffing, to inform her best friend.
Tea was a great success. Rosie, whose family were staunch Roman Catholics with their own private chapel at their pile in Ireland, went into ghoulish detail over the chocolate cake about her own grandfather’s funeral, and how Lily had to be prepared to see him laid out at the altar with the lid off.
‘Will I?’ Lily asked later, eyes wide with fear as I hugged her goodbye in the drive. ‘Will I really have to do that?’
‘Of course not, darling. The lid will be firmly on, and you don’t have to come at all if you don’t want to.’
She gave this some thought. ‘Is Angus coming?’
‘He is, but he’s two years older than you.’
She paused. ‘No, I do want to come. I definitely want to.’
I smiled, gave her another hug, and then got in the car. She knocked on the window and I buzzed it down.
‘Daddy will be coming, won’t he?’ she asked anxiously.
My heart stopped for a moment. ‘Of course. Why d’you say that?’
She shrugged. Lowered her eyes and scuffed her toe in the gravel. ‘Dunno. It’s just …you came on your own today.’
‘Because Daddy’s working,’ I said quickly.
She glanced up. Nodded, then grinned. ‘Yeah, OK. Bye then, Mum. See you next week.’
I let the hand-brake out and purred slowly off down the drive. As I watched her wave me off in the rearview mirror, standing alone in the middle of the drive in her maroon school uniform, my stomach lurched with fear. How young she looked. How small. How vulnerable.
Chapter Twenty
In the event, the funeral happened sooner than expected. Six days later, in fact, due to a cancellation.
‘A cancellation?’ I said to Benji when he rang and told me. ‘What – someone’s decided better of it? Decided to live after all? This isn’t the hairdresser’s, Benj, you can’t just cancel your appointment with St Peter.’
He laughed. ‘No, they’ve gone to a different venue. Decided the chapel at Golders Green wasn’t big enough. And if we don’t take this slot, Henny, we won’t get another one until Friday week.’
I blanched at the vocabulary, but wasn’t too shaken. Having worked alongside Mum and Benji these past few days and chosen coffins and brass handles and silk linings, I knew the spade-calling nature of the funeral world. And perhaps it was as well that another moral dilemma had been taken out of our hands. That along with deciding what was an appropriate amount of money to spend on our loved one and whether to go for pine or oak, we didn’t also have to decide whether an appropriate amount of time had lapsed and we were ready for burial. Perhaps it was as well one ‘muscled into one’s slot’.
The chapel was indeed small though, I thought nervously, as I walked down the aisle with Angus on Wednesday morning and sat next to him in the front pew. Tiny. I couldn’t help wondering where the other family had gone that was more spacious? More superior? And had they chosen better handles than ours? Still, it suited our needs, I decided firmly, crossing my legs and smoothing down my skirt. We were a small family.
I glanced about and smiled politely at the few relatives whom I’d already greeted outside: a couple of aged aunts, Great-uncle Matthew, Cousin Alfred and his wife Valerie, and their unmarried son with that funny nervous tic. Presumably he was my second cousin, but I could never remember his name. Mum was in the front pew on the other side of the aisle with Benji and Francis, and I was keeping the space beside me for Marcus and the children. There was no sign of Marcus, but then he was collecting Lily from school and the M25 could be bloody. When the door opened behind me, I glanced around, nervous about seeing him after so long, but it was just a clutch of old family friends, neighbours from the Finchley Road. As they came in, windswept and huddled in overcoats, I smiled gratefully. In the past, one or two had tried to visit Dad in the Home, but he hadn’t remembered any of them. He’d been openly rude, in fact, so gradually they’d drifted away. These few then had come for Mum: the Spiras, the Carters from upstairs, and I recognized Howard Greenburg too, who lived in the flat below. I gave him an especially grateful smile. Good. I’d hoped he’d come, for Mum’s sake. Moral support. Other than that, the chapel was empty: aside from the vicar, busying himself with the order of service sheets, and, of course, my father, in front of the altar. In his middle-of-the-range oak coffin, with its middleof-the-range brass handles. I took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Soon be over.
A blast of cold air s
ent the hymnsheets flying and I turned, relieved to see Marcus and Lily bustling down the aisle; Lily in her school uniform, Marcus in his dark overcoat. He’d performed that particular school run, whilst I’d met Angus off a train from Northampton. I smiled warmly at Lily and looked across at Marcus, wondering what sort of expression to have on my face. He came right down the aisle before his eyes cut to mine and he gave me a curt nod. I nodded back. I see, I thought grimly, facing front. That sort of expression. I gripped my hymnbook hard.
‘All right?’ I whispered to Lily as she sat down beside me. I gave her a kiss.
‘Yes.’
She looked a bit pale though, and I slipped an arm round her shoulders. Marcus slid in next to Angus. I wondered if he’d been quizzed by Lily on the way down as to why he was picking her up alone. I hoped so. Stupid, stupid man, I thought angrily. Perhaps being here together in church would concentrate his mind, make him realize what he was throwing away?
At that moment the organ struck a decisive chord and we got to our feet. I caught Benji’s eye and we glanced at Mum, but she was staring straight ahead, looking stoical and elegant in her navy Jaeger coat, her chin high and eyes dry, having done all her crying, she’d assured me as I’d hugged her outside, these past few days.
I’d done mine, too. Mostly in the evenings, when I was tired. Sometimes I’d pick up the phone and chat to Benji; mostly, though, I’d been grateful for the quiet of the flat. Needed it. I hadn’t been entirely alone, either. I’d also spent time with Rupert.
Naturally, our love affair had had to be put on hold – we were both tacitly aware that this was not the time to rekindle it – but we were also aware that the world has a curious way of turning, irrespective of personal tragedy, and that in time, rekindle it we would. Meanwhile, however, we’d met in my lunch-hour. Despite Laurie’s assurances that I needn’t, I’d gone straight back to work, preferring the routine and discipline of the office to the solitude of the flat. Rupert met me in the Piazza, and we’d walk across to St James’s Park, kicking up the leaves, getting hot dogs from a stand and eating them on cold, damp benches, much as we’d done years ago. I’d occasionally talk about Dad, and Rupert would listen, sometimes chipping in, and sometimes coming up with some memories of his own.
When we’d parted yesterday at the park gates, he to go back to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall and I to Covent Garden, he’d taken my face in his hands and kissed my lips gently, the first time he’d kissed me since that night outside his flat. I’d felt the heat wash over me.
‘I have to go away for a bit,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be back.’
My stomach rocked. ‘For a bit? Really? How long?’
‘Only a few days.’
‘Where?’
He made a face and looked away.
‘You can’t say?’
‘I’m not supposed to.’
I nodded, knowing better than to press it, and wondered fleetingly what his real life was like: where he was flown to, which battle arenas he was dropped into, and then a few days later, suddenly spirited away from again. I knew I’d never find out. Knew that although some individuals, as he’d wryly commented, not only told but wrote lucrative accounts, he never would. For him, the Official Secrets Act remained just that – secret. I’d watched as he’d walked away from me, and wondered just how dangerous it was. I knew from quizzing Laurie that the SAS didn’t just work in war zones one read about in the papers, but in places we weren’t even aware had troubles concerning us.
‘What business is it of ours what happens in Nigeria?’ I’d asked Laurie casually, putting a cup of coffee in front of him and re-starting a conversation we’d had earlier. Laurie had shrugged noncommittally.
‘Governments sometimes ask for our help, and depending on the circumstances, we go in.’
‘Like mercenaries?’
‘In a way, but in a slightly different capacity. For the government, rather than personal gain.’ He looked round from his screen. ‘Why, Henny? Why d’you want to know?’
‘No reason,’ I’d blushed, going back to my room.
He knew though, I was sure of it. Recently, Rupert had walked me back to the office, and when I’d instinctively glanced up at the second-floor window, I’d seen Laurie’s face looking down. He hadn’t said anything as I’d come in, but his expression was troubled. I remembered Rupert’s scathing condemnation of him. Was my boss wondering if I was learning too much about him, perhaps?
As Rupert had disappeared down towards Whitehall yesterday, a tall, thin figure in a Covert coat, his blond head melting into the crowd, I wondered how I would feel if he never came back. My stomach lurched with such velocity, I had to turn around quickly and walk away, astonished at the force of my feelings.
Standing here now, in this tiny North London chapel, all that seemed a world away. Like a different life. Someone else’s, not mine. That woman in the blue cashmere coat, meeting her lover in parks, feeling the wind in her hair, the years dropping off her as she laughed and kicked up leaves – it was like a clip from a film. For here I was, the real me, a middle-aged woman with my estranged husband and my two teenaged children, my hair in need of highlights, burying my father.
The vicar cleared his throat and lifted his heels from the floor. ‘May I start by requesting that all hymnsheets remain in the pews after the service. Time and again they disappear, and replacing them is so irksome. A collection for the new organ will be taken on your way out.’
‘And good morning to you too,’ muttered Angus beside me.
‘Let us stand and sing together hymn number 245.’
As the organ vibrated noisily in the limited space, our little congregation made a valiant stab at ‘Jerusalem’. We’d just embarked on the second verse when the church door opened again, this time with something of a clatter. We all turned, still singing thinly, to see the door being propped open by Barbara, the Jamaican nurse, whilst behind her, a motley collection of geriatrics from the Home piled out of a mini-bus. With the help of Grace, the other nurse, they negotiated the steps and shuffled in, talking loudly.
Some had dressed soberly for the occasion in back-to-front hats and wrongly buttoned overcoats, but one, I noticed, still had her slippers on. Another had deemed an angora bedjacket and Wellingtons more appropriate. They shuffled flakily through the door, gazing around with mouths open, like children. Two particularly vocal old women wanted to know why it was so bloody cold? They were shushed by Barbara as they shuffled into the back pew, quarrelling over where to sit and snatching hymn-books from each other. I saw one pinch the other hard on the arm. One old boy came in ramrod straight with a chest full of medals, and another, bent double in a dusty old smoking jacket and tartan trousers, smiled vacantly, waving a cigar.
As they squashed noisily into the back pews, elbowing each other and staring around, the vicar eyed my mother in alarm. She gave a resigned shrug and carried on singing. Benji caught my eye and winked delightedly; I smiled back. Benji always liked a party, and actually, he was right. Of course these people should be here. They’d been Dad’s life for the last six years, for heaven’s sake.
As one old dear with a very hunched back took a feather boa from a carrier bag and whipped it defiantly around her horizontal neck, I was reminded of that poem ‘When I Am An Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple’. Mum’s constant refrain was that Dad had lost all dignity in the Home, but it seemed to me that these people possessed, if not dignity, then some sort of superiority. It was as if they’d unzipped themselves and stepped out of their skins onto a higher, giddier plane, where no one could touch them. They were flouting convention, dressing and behaving as they liked, making up for lost time, for the sobriety of their younger days – and too bad if no one else saw it like that.
Their singing was robust but erratic, and one or two even had a stab at the descant which wasn’t terribly relaxing. It was a bit of a relief when the dark Satanic mills faded into the background and we all sat down again. The vicar then began his address, attem
pting to sum up the life of one Gordon Arthur Tate. He talked about Dad’s early life, his time at Oxford, his period of National Service, and then his career as a structural engineer. As he listed the projects Dad had worked on, I saw Lily stifle a yawn. I smiled. Mum hadn’t wanted a family member to make this address for fear of it being too emotional. Well, there was certainly no danger of that. The vicar talked on and on, and when he got to Dad’s passion for history, I heard a commotion behind me. Glancing round, I saw that the back two rows of the congregation had got to their feet and begun to shuffle out. The old boy in medals was sliding open the mini-bus door and shepherding the Twilight inmates efficiently aboard. Benji shot me a frown. I shrugged, bewildered, and after a moment, Benji slipped out too. A few minutes later, while the vicar was still talking, the Twilight Home inmates shuffled back in again and resumed their seats.
‘They thought they were at the wrong funeral,’ whispered Benji in my ear before he sat down. ‘Dad had told them he was a trapeze artist in a circus, not an engineer. Apparently his stage name was Renaldo.’
‘Oh!’ I blinked.
Afterwards, we trooped outside, squinting in the low sunlight and walking in huddled clutches to the cemetery at the back. As we sheepishly assembled around a gaping hole in the ground, I held Lily’s hand tightly. Angus, who was over six foot now, had taken Mum’s arm, which made my eyes fill up. It took a few minutes for the Nursing Home inmates to join us, speed not being their forte, but sure enough, they were soon pushing their way to the front, jostling and arguing.
‘Awfully crowded,’ commented Barbara, sidling up beside me. I moved, hastily.
‘Oh, sorry. Lily, move along, darling.’
‘No, no.’ Barbara put a hand on my arm. ‘The accommodation.’
‘Oh.’ I gulped and stared at the hole. It certainly was a bit hugger-mugger. Dad was apparently being squeezed between two parallel graves, with another right at his head, and one at his feet.
‘Yes, well, I suppose space is limited,’ I said nervously, wondering if polite graveside chat was the norm.
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