by Guy Johnson
We were all caught still in horror. Della with her hands to her face, pale, silent. Ian came right forward, hoping to rescue Mum, doing his flies up at the same time. Me, I just stared at her. Her legs were on the floor, a pair of wet jeans tangled around them, a python of denim that had tripped her up.
That wasn’t all: there was blood everywhere. Lots of blood, like a big red leak across the kitchen floor. Jam, ketchup, tomato juice, I tried to tell myself. Not blood. Not blood. Her body was draped across the open door of the dishwasher, on top of the bottom drawer that had been pulled out. Ian tried to move her, but something was pinning her to the spot, sticking her. We knew what it was instantly, but we never talked about it. He let go of her and we all seemed to stand there for so long, doing nothing. I cannot remember which one of us found their legs, found their voice and made their way to the telephone, but someone must have.
Because sirens filled my ears within minutes.
2.
A fragment that will become a story.
I can see it in my head and what I really want to do is go back there. Take the memory and snap it with a camera – Polaroid after Polaroid, capture it fully, frame by frame for my memory.
The house.
I remember the house clearly.
There was a white picket fence and gate, like a storybook garden.
Detached. The house stood by itself and the front door was in the middle, with a window either side, like a child’s perfect drawing.
A purple room – I remember a dark, purple room. And a staircase; a staircase in one corner. On the ceiling an ugly strip light – like a light sabre against the artex. Glaring.
And a bed. There was a camp bed, small, made up with white bedding and a grey blanket.
I have no Polaroids, so the memory is vague. Or even shattered.
But I remember the room.
The purple room, with the ugly strip light across the ceiling.
Glaring.
3.
I woke up early on the day Dad was calling ‘the day we say our goodbyes.’ Like she was going on holiday; like there was a chance she was coming back. Bought you a stick of rock, Scotty!
It was dead quiet in our house to start with.
Later, it would be lively. There would be a bit of drama at the funeral – tears, silly hats and an appearance by Tina Tankard that was funny and embarrassing. Disrespectful, someone said. And boozy singing at the house that ended suddenly when the police came knocking.
But at the start, it was soundless, still.
Heard a cough from Dad; the floor creaking in Della’s direction. Ian was perched on the edge of his bed, just staring ahead. Silent and staring; not himself at all.
I looked about, wondering, thinking, letting anything fill my head, to take the deathly quiet up a notch to just plain old silence.
I looked at the curtains. We hated them. They were green in colour, patterned with big brown circles in different shades, and polyester-thin, so they let in the light as soon as the sun sparked up. Bright lines of the new day streaking our grey carpet. We hated the carpet as well.
‘It doesn’t show the dirt,’ is what Mum says. Said. Mum. ‘And it goes nicely with your curtains.’
‘How come we’ve got grey carpet in all the rooms, then?’ Della quipped one time. ‘My curtains are orange.’
‘Grey is universal,’ Mum had answered, trying to sound intellectual, drawing out the last word – u-ni-ver-sal. ‘Goes with anything,’ she’d added, dumbing it down for us.
‘Goes with nothing,’ Ian had grumbled, a twinkle in his eye that meant he was joking, but Mum had missed that. The back of her hand hadn’t missed the back of his head, though.
‘Ow!’
‘Don’t you cheek me, sonny!’
Lighting up a fag after.
‘You alright, squirt?’
Ian’s voice had brought me into the present. I felt tears on my lips; I licked them off, liking the comfort of the salty taste. I pulled my brown parka around me a bit closer, finding comfort there too. It was even smaller by then – two inches of arm showing and spitting foam out at the armpits - but I felt fully protected. Nothing could touch me in it.
I nodded, yes.
A lie I had heard from nearly everyone since it had happened.
Yes, they were all saying. Yes, we are all fine. Like it hadn’t happened after all.
I was waiting for someone to say something about the coat, but they hadn’t. Not yet.
‘Things will have to change now,’ Dad had said, using a new sad voice I’d never heard before. ‘We’re all gonna have to change a bit.’
I’d wondered if that had been a reference to my over-tight parka, but he hadn’t tried to take it off me. Even Della and Ian had given up teasing me about it. Now that was change.
‘Your father will have something to say about that!’
Lighting up again.
Pursing her lips between a pink tissue after she’d run her lipstick over them.
Popping sweeteners into her tea from that small, blue, oblong container.
‘Turn that racket down!’
‘Ian?’
Back to the present again.
His head was in his hands; he twisted it towards me, still resting it in his palms.
‘Yeah?’
‘How we gonna live with what’s happened?’
He got up, got onto my bed and held me close, something he’d never done before; not that I could remember. And he cried. Hard, shaking violently as he sobbed, never letting go of his hold on me for a second.
The day is a blur in places, like set pieces. Whole episodes I remember, but not always in the right order and some of it is missing.
From Ian crying and hugging me, I suddenly found myself at breakfast.
Dad frying eggs, which meant you got no shell (plus) but they were brown, frazzled round the edges (minus.) Streaky bacon, too, and fried bread. Mistakes were made at breakfast, reminding us that she was gone.
She was how people started referring to Mum, like she didn’t have a name, like we had to fade her out a bit, and they said it in a certain way, in a whisper, or simply mouthed it silently. Making it easier on us, seemed to be the message. Making themselves look stupid was the reality.
Mistakes: Dad pouring me tea, which I hated; Dad cooking the eggs in the bacon fat, forgetting Della had been vegetarian for a month; Dad forgetting the fried bread altogether, leaving slices of fat-soaked bread on a chipped plate next to the cooker. Mistakes by Dad.
Dad, who people had started referring to as he, using that voice, and sometimes just mouthing it.
He’s taken it badly, hasn’t he?
He’s in shock, who wouldn’t be?
He’s gotta pull himself together, for those kids; they need him more than ever now.
He’s blaming himself, you know.
And the police are involved; they’ve been asking questions.
The last one mouthed by the woman from the Wavy Line shop, thinking I couldn’t lip-read, but I was learning fast.
‘I’ll do your eggs again, Del,’ Dad offered, covering his mistakes, his tracks, making me a squash, drinking the tea he’d poured me himself.
After breakfast, Dad put everything in the dishwasher, including the sharp knives with wooden handles that you were supposed to wash by hand, and set it going on a hot wash. Another mistake, you might think. No one said anything. We just left the room to get ready, salt on our lips from bacon and grief.
Ian helped me dress that day, took care of me, like we’d both aged in different directions – me younger, needier, him older, stronger. I wore the brown trousers I’d worn as a paige boy for Cousin Susan’s wedding (Dad’s cousin.) They were nylon, no-need-to-iron-them. Also a cream shirt with a frill down the front. It came with a bow tie and a cucumber (Cumberbund, Mum had corrected me, but I never once remembered.) I didn’t wear those bits to the funeral. Instead, Ian helped me with a new black tie – Dad went out and bought us all one. It was a b
it tricky – Ian getting it too tight or too fat on the first few goes – and I wanted to take it off, but Ian insisted I wore it.
‘We gotta look smart for her,’ he told me, and the gap in our years got bigger again.
So, I accepted the tie had to stay, even if it sat a bit bumpy over the fancy frill of the shirt.
Ian wore new black trousers – nylon – and a white school shirt. He gelled his hair flat and did mine too. And whilst I pulled on my socks at the last minute, he disappeared and returned with two pairs of shiny black lace ups. The curtains in our room were still closed, letting in just a slither of blinding sun, which caught on the toes of the shoes, making them sparkle. I thought of Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, but then remembered – her shoes were red.
Suddenly, the moment had come.
‘Let’s make her proud,’ Ian said, like she was gonna turn up. Like she was gonna catch a glimpse of us - how smart we looked - and change her mind: ‘Oh, you’ve done me proud, I think I’ll live after all. What was I thinking?’
‘Make Dad proud,’ he added and that made a little more sense.
Even Della was dressed up in black – a simple knee length dress with small white dots all over, long sleeves and buttons all down the front.
‘Car’s here,’ someone said, like Car was a person come to pick us up, not a vehicle at all. ‘Car’s here.’ ‘Is he?’ So all four of us – the new four, down from the-five-of-us – got in a big black car, with its own driver and were taken gently in silence to the place where ‘she is waiting for us’ – from Ian, he was the man of words that day.
Auntie Stella and Uncle Gary met us there – at the crematorium. She wore a pencil-thin skirt, with a slit up the back that gave a glimpse of suspenders, a big black hat like an Airfix model ship, and a pair of stilettos – white. Uncle Gary had dressed properly – black suit, tie and shoes; the jacket hung badly on his hanger-like frame, but he’d made the effort.
Everyone was a bit reserved with my dad, like they weren’t sure: what to say; how close to get.
‘Terrible business.’
‘Shocking what you’ve been through.’
‘How are you bearing up?’
‘And the kids? How they doing?’
All around, a dark carousel of words, of shock, pity, awkwardness.
Auntie Stella’s tarty black and white effort wasn’t the only shock appearance that day. There were more.
When the Tankards arrived, everyone turned and stared. You see, they’d brought Tina with them.
Tina Tankard.
‘Is Tina Justin’s cousin?’ Mum once asked, when she’d first heard talk of ‘this Tina’. Della had laughed. ‘Auntie, then?’ Mum continued, cooking breakfast one morning. She was a little bothered by Della’s smirking, but she pursued her inquiry all the same.
‘Doubt it,’ Della had interjected, still laughing, but Mum waved her off: it wasn’t that important to her and she’d lost interest, distracted by scrambled eggs turning rubbery in a pan. ‘Bugger.’
Cousin? Auntie? It wasn’t that simple.
‘She’s a member of the family,’ Justin’s dad had explained, when I found him underneath her, on the grass pitch that was to the right of their house. He’d been drinking.
Tina Tankard. Talk of the town, sort of.
‘What a sight,’ Auntie Stella scoffed, adjusting the brim on HMS Funeral and trying to pull her skirt down a bit, to reach her knees. ‘Let’s go in and say goodbye.’
Weird things.
Sorry for your loss. Like I’d misplaced something, like I couldn’t find her – but I knew where she was. In that wooden box. Dead, not lost. Gone forever.
It’s not the same without her. But everything was the same. Nothing had changed. Della was still a cow. Ian was still doing-what-he-shouldn’t. And Dad was still filling the house up with stuff, box after box from Dontask, dropped off by Uncle Gary and Adrian Tankard. No change with Uncle Gary either: It’s just between us, right? Not a word to anyone, Scotty. The house. Our stuff. Still the same; it was just that she wouldn’t be in it again. She. But nothing had changed – other than her, maybe.
At the crematorium, everyone filed in before us and we had to wait outside: the four-of-us, plus Auntie Stella, and Uncle Gary, too, but only after a bit of reluctance and a threat of tears from Auntie Stella.
‘Just get at the back, man. Stella, put a sock in it. Have some respect.’ Dad.
Outside, the building was made of beige bricks – new, not like your normal church, made from old flint. Not that it was a church.
‘A house of remembrance,’ Auntie Stella insisted a couple of times.
‘With a furnace,’ Ian had added once, smirking guiltily with Della.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked and their humour had dissolved, like I’d pulled the plug out of their faces, draining the colour in an instant.
‘Time for a chat,’ Ian had said, half at me, half at Della. For once, he actually gave a straight answer.
Did I have any questions? he asked me at the end of that.
Just one, I said in my head: What’s so fucking funny about that?
‘No, I get it,’ I said instead, stony, quiet.
The Tankards left Tina outside, waiting on the corner of the building – ‘Just like a prozzie,’ as Justin would have said. Ian and myself glanced her way at the same time, and then at each other.
‘Jesus,’ he laughed, which was totally the wrong thing to say at a funeral, but somehow it was ok in the moment. Somehow it fitted. ‘What would she think?’
Dad’s voice broke the moment with a command:
‘Right, time to go in.’
Inside, the building did look a bit like a church, but modern, a sort of church converted from a hall. Like a wedding reception, with pews and candles. The walls were cream and the ceiling high – but not like a church. Not soaring, not reaching up into space. God. Not reaching up to Him.
We sat down at the very front, on the right, where seats had been saved for us. At the back, people were standing up. A good turn out, I heard several times. Good of you to come, so lovely to see you.
She was at the front, in a white coffin. Tall purple candles in golden candlesticks stood on either side. Just behind her, there was a short red curtain, like a mini stage. Bit like Punch and Judy. A vicar-man stood before us all and told us about our dearly departed, right after telling us that he never knew her at all, which seemed a bit pointless.
‘Please all stand,’ came the command from the front, and we all got to our feet.
Suddenly, we were all singing: like in assembly; like it was Harvest Festival, but there were no dented tins of macaroni cheese up the front. Just a box and a man talking; a man who knew nothing whatsoever about the person inside it.
A blur of two hymns and a prayer later, and it happened. Just like Ian singing ‘The Twelfth of Never’ back in Cornwall, it was her magic moment. For one night only (or afternoon) she was up there in lights (candlelight) and it was all eyes on our star turn. In her white box. Are they gonna cut her in half? Will the audience gasp? Only, it was all backwards. The mini red curtains opened and she moved off the stage, on a kind of conveyor belt, like on the Generation Game – Didn’t she do well? – out to the back and the curtains closed again – Shut that door! – and she was gone. Not lost. Gone.
Just gone.
Later, Dad said he was gonna bring her home. Like she’d been in a nursing home or something. And, true to his word, he did bring her home. Where shall we put her? he said but it wasn’t her at all. It was just a big pot of ash, which he placed on top of the stereo in the front room. Ash. They had burned her.
‘Wonder who she’s in there with?’ Auntie Stella had whispered to Uncle Gary, an odd comment that I would remember years later and finally understand.
After the box had gone and the curtains had closed again, we began to file out of the building. As we moved, I overheard a conversation nearby.
‘So, do you reckon you-know-who will turn u
p?’
‘Not if they’ve got any sense.’
‘No, but that one never did.’
Jackie. They were talking about Jackie, I was certain.
I looked about me, at the group of ladies that were talking. One of them smiled weakly at me.
‘Time to go, Scotty,’ said Ian, eyeing the women briefly. I wanted to ask Ian about him - about Jackie. But I didn’t; Ian would only have got cross, or given me the silent treatment. Like they all did when it came to Jackie.
Once outside again, we saw the Tankards reunited with Tina. I couldn’t help but smile.
Ian smiled too, but his had a lot of sadness in it. ‘We’re gonna be alright, you know?’ he said, giving my shoulder a tap and then we were off.
It was a bit of a squeeze back at our house, which was where we had the celebration party, as Auntie Stella called it. Someone else said it was a wake; like we’d all been asleep and needed a pick-me-up. The front room was full of boxes from Dontask – big white boxes - so we were all packed into the back room and kitchen.
When we’d left, the house had smelled of soap and aftershave, as Dad had splashed a bit of Denim on us all. The last of Mum’s Charlie had mingled in there too – from Della. I also caught Ian sniffing the bottle, bringing her back home a bit, I guess. Later, it was different. Sweaty men. Beery breath. Sherry. Sardine and tomato paste, from the sandwiches. Warm cheese. Smoke, too, from cigarettes and cigars; a thick cloud building up. Like at the crematorium; all gone up in smoke! No one had said that, though – according to most our dearly departed was still just lost. Sorry for your loss.
Back at the crematorium, when we were supposed to be getting into the car, something happened to me. Something happened to my legs, like an impulse; a trigger had set them going. And, before I realised it, I was running. Scot! Scotty! Where are you going? Running without thinking, automatic pilot, running out of the car park. Somebody go after that boy! Ian, after him! Running, running, running, the world a blur, like the view of the countryside when you look out of a car window; a whirr of blue, green, grey and brown. Beyond the car park, there was the main road and across from that a derelict house that led to wasteland behind that. That’s where I headed, without a mind for the road or the traffic on it. Not hearing the beeps of cars, or Ian’s voice calling, or Ian’s voice fading, as he lost me.