Gill looks as though she might be sick. I turn back to Heather.
‘Tissue?’ I ask.
‘It may be necessary for them to take small amounts of tissue, for further analysis. If this happens, then after any testing is finished, you can choose whether you would like these to be returned to you, or cremated, or donated to science.’
‘Donated to science,’ I say. ‘I think so, right?’ I look to Gill, but she’s looking down at her hands, her fists clenched tight as if clutching an invisible rope.
‘You don’t need to decide immediately,’ Heather says. ‘You can decide closer to the post-mortem itself, which should be in a matter of days. You’ll get the preliminary results almost immediately, though toxicology results might take a bit longer.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m afraid processing these things takes time—’
‘No, that wasn’t what I meant. I don’t mind about it taking time. But why do they need toxicology? It was a caving accident, early in the morning. He was hardly going to be drunk.’
‘We always need to get the full picture, Mr Jordan. And remember, it’s about understanding what happened, rather than allocating blame. Any alcohol or drugs that might have impacted his reactions—’
Is that what this is all about? Are they looking for a way to blame Dougie for what happened to him? If it turns out he smoked some weed the night before, will they claim that this is his fault?
A few times during Dougie’s final year of school, Gill and I smelled the unmistakable waft of marijuana from his bedroom, when he had friends over.
‘It smells like bolognese,’ Gill had said. ‘Really good bolognese.’ She took a slow, deep inhalation. ‘Should we say something? Stop them?’
I liked those parts of parenting. The not-knowing, when Gill and I were together in not having a clue. It made me feel young again – sitting there with her, giggling through our whispers, while the weed smell grew stronger.
‘He’s not injecting crack into his eyeballs,’ I said. ‘He’s just having a joint. We did the same thing when we were young.’
‘Not that young. He’s seventeen. And they’ve got exams.’
‘It might relax them,’ I say. ‘We should be grateful it’s just weed.’
Maybe we were too easy on him. We were so thankful to have a kid doing normal kid things, instead of starving themselves to death in a hospital. Between the smell of burning fat on Sylvie’s breath, and the smell of Dougie’s weed drifting through the dark air, we would choose the weed every time.
Here, in the coroner’s office, I blink several times, and try to focus on Heather, who’s still talking about the post-mortem.
I interrupt. ‘Can I be there?’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘At the post-mortem itself?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have the right to request that a representative be there, on your behalf. A doctor of your own choosing, though I believe it would have to be at your own expense.’
‘He doesn’t need a doctor,’ I say. ‘He’s dead.’
Gill flinches, shifting away from me. I don’t know if she’s embarrassed by my rudeness to Heather, or whether it’s the starkness of those two syllables: He’s dead.
‘He needs his father,’ I continue, ‘not a doctor. Why can’t I be there?’
‘A post-mortem is still a medical procedure. No onlookers are allowed, except for doctors.’ She pauses. ‘This is for your benefit, Mr Jordan. It would be distressing, for you to witness this.’
‘Heaven forbid that I should be distressed.’
‘Naturally you’re distressed.’ She nods, and keeps nodding, like one of those nodding cat ornaments that you see on the counters of Chinese restaurants. ‘Of course you are. But why make it worse for yourself?’
I almost laugh at the concept of my distress as something that could be worsened, any more than it could be improved. It’s absolute – when your child dies, there are no sliding scales of distress.
‘My being there can’t hurt him. He’s dead. What harm can come to him now?’
‘Gabe,’ cautions Gill.
‘I mean, if he wasn’t dead already, we wouldn’t be here. So tell me why I can’t be at the post-mortem?’
‘It’s not permitted,’ Heather says, shuffling papers.
I have no energy left to argue. And I feel sorry for Heather – she’s only young, probably no more than thirty, and her job can’t be easy. At the edge of her top lip, some of her lipstick has smeared. It makes her look like a child dressed as a grown-up.
‘As I said,’ she continues, ‘the body will be released immediately after the procedure. If you want to repatriate Douglas, for burial, then he will have to be embalmed.’
‘And what’s the other option?’ I hope there is another option. Embalmed sounds only one step removed from taxidermy. My grandfather used to have a stuffed fox in a glass case in his dining room. I remember all those childhood afternoons at his house, trying to avoid the gaze of that fox, which looked too alive to be dead, and too dead to be alive.
‘Cremation,’ Heather says. ‘That can be organised through a funeral parlour. We’re not permitted to recommend any firm in particular, but the Australian High Commission can give you a list of reputable local companies. Once you’ve chosen one, they can collect the body and advise on the logistics – cremation or repatriation, whichever you choose.’
I look at Gill. ‘Love?’ I ask. ‘What do you think?’
When I was young I used to want to be buried. In recent decades, cremation’s started to make more sense. Maybe it has something do with being older – the body becomes fallible, and you become less attached to the idea of it. But is it different for Dougie? He’s nineteen years old, his body still perfect. Invincible, except for being dead. It seems like a waste, somehow, cremating him. But I don’t want to embalm him and haul him all the way back to Tasmania.
‘I can’t,’ Gill says. ‘I don’t know. You decide.’
‘This is important. We should decide together.’
‘You don’t need to decide right now,’ says Heather. ‘Take your time.’
‘No,’ Gill and I say at once.
‘We should decide today,’ I go on. ‘I don’t want him waiting in a morgue any longer than he has to.’
‘Yes,’ Gill nods. ‘I don’t know. Cremated? Do you think that’s what he would have wanted?’
Then I catch myself laughing, and Gill gives a kind of snort, and for a moment we’re both laughing, because the question is so absurd. Dougie wouldn’t have wanted any of this. He was nineteen, and alive, aggressively alive, always too hungry and too noisy and still growing. Not once have we spoken with him about his plans for death.
Our laughter stops as soon as it starts. The room is so quiet that I can hear the buzz of the fluorescent lamps in the ceiling, and a printer going in the next office.
‘I think it’s best,’ I say. ‘Cremation. Then – later – we can take his ashes home. Choose where to scatter them.’
‘Or keep them,’ Heather offers helpfully. ‘Many people do.’
What might seem normal for the death of a parent or grandparent seems incongruous for Dougie. Do many people keep their teenage sons on the mantelpiece? Is that really a thing?
This whole situation feels so bizarre that I half-believe that it might be an elaborate prank. None of this can possibly be real. I look around the room, expecting some American TV host with suspiciously white teeth to burst out from behind the door and shout a catchphrase, followed by Dougie, grinning.
‘You don’t need to make any decisions right now,’ Heather says again. ‘Take the paperwork, look it over when you’ve had a chance to rest.’
We thank her, take the papers that she gives us, and leave. Halfway down the corridor, I stop.
‘Where are you going?’ Gill asks, but I’m already on my way back.
Heather is startled when I come barging back into the room without knocking.‘What about his organs
? Can they be donated?’ I ask.
Gill has caught up with me. Behind me, in the doorway, I hear her intake of breath.
Heather gives a grave smile. ‘It’s very generous of you to be thinking of that. But I’m afraid that’s not an option. The circumstances of your son’s death—’ There’s a long silence. ‘The delay in finding the body, and the immersion in the water, meant that the doctors wouldn’t have been able to harvest any usable organs.’
I wince at the word ‘harvest’ – it’s so utilitarian. So agricultural.
Heather’s come out from behind her desk now and is walking towards the door, so we have to move with her. ‘And even if they’d been able to, I’m afraid the inquest and the post-mortem rule out organ donation.’
‘Gabe,’ Gill says, her hand pulling gently at mine. ‘Love. We should go.’
We call the number that Heather gave us, and a policeman called Richard introduces himself as a Family Liaison Officer, and offers to come to the flat.
‘How did this happen?’ I ask him, when the three of us are sitting in the living room.
‘There was an accident on the field trip,’ he says. He speaks very clearly, a little slowly. He’s probably used to dealing with people like us – people who are seeing everything as though from a distance. Hearing things as though underwater.
‘We won’t be able to confirm the exact sequence of events until the coroner’s findings,’ he says. ‘But this is what we do know. There were eight children in the group, all aged twelve or thirteen. Two staff members, including your son.’
‘Who was the other one?’
‘Rosa Campbell.’
I nod. Rosa. Dougie’s girlfriend. He’d mentioned her a few times – a bit cagey, but enough to make it clear that they were seeing each other. They’d travelled to Prague together at Easter.
‘And two expedition guides, from a company called Intrepid South-West. One guide in charge, and an assistant. They drove to the caves – a cave network called the Smith–Jackson System. The group entered the caves shortly after ten am, after a safety briefing in the car park. By about ten forty-five, there was a sudden rise in water levels.’
‘How was that allowed to happen? How could they be taken underground if it was raining?’
‘It wasn’t raining at the time,’ he says. ‘Though it seems there were brief but heavy rains overnight, raising water levels in the reservoir upstream. One of the theories is that the reservoir walls were breached, and that it took a long time for the water to soak through to the cave system.’
‘One of the theories?’ I ask. ‘How many theories are there?’
‘Again, we don’t yet know every possibility. There’s a chance that the water was rising earlier, but that somehow the guides failed to realise it. There’s a chance that an internal wall in the cave system gave way, releasing a surge of water. And there are probably other options that we’re not even aware of yet.’
So many options. But the result is always the same: Dougie, dead.
‘So the water’s rising,’ I say.
‘Yes. Rapidly, by this stage. The group had all reached Cavern 2, which took some time – it’s down a narrow, fairly steep tunnel. One of the guides then led Douglas, Miss Campbell, and two of the kids down to another cavern – Cavern 3. This was a big descent, on ropes. And by this point it became clear that there was a problem. The guide said that the water there was already deep – above knee height, and rising. He escorted the children back to the central cave.’
‘Leaving Rosa and Dougie?’
‘But he came back for them. At some personal risk, by all accounts. The water was cutting off the cavern entirely by this point. The guide went down again, swam back to the cavern, and was able to rescue Miss Campbell.’
‘But not Dougie,’ I say. It’s a statement, not a question.
‘No. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly. The guide claims that he was barely able to get the young woman out safely, and was concerned that it would be futile to go back again, and that if he himself was lost, the other guide mightn’t be able to safely lead the remaining children out of the caves.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Who?’ Richard asks.
‘The head guide. The one who left Dougie in the cave. What was he called?’
He checks his notes. ‘There was an assistant guide, Terence Wan. But the guy in charge was Phillip Murphy. Goes by Phil. He owns the guiding company, too.’
I don’t want to write the name down, not now while the policeman is staring at me, but I repeat it in my head, committing it to memory.
‘Mr Jordan, I’ve got to advise you not to attempt to make any contact with Mr Murphy. Our own enquiries are under way, and I can assure you that they’re going to be extremely thorough.’
‘But you’re saying that he was responsible?’
‘It’s the coroner’s job to find out exactly what happened. All I’ve said is that Murphy was leading the group. If you try to contact him, you’ll only muddy the waters.’ An awkward pause, for his awkward metaphor. ‘It could even jeopardise the investigation.’
‘I’m not looking for any trouble,’ I say. What am I looking for?
‘The main group was able to exit the cave system shortly after eleven,’ the policeman says. ‘They raised the alarm immediately. Local police attended, and volunteers from the local potholing club came too. The guides were also helping, once they’d been checked over by paramedics. But because of the water levels, the rescue teams weren’t cleared to re-enter the cave system until after seven that night. Douglas’s body was located after midnight, in a cavern slightly downstream from where he had last been seen.’ He checks his notes again. ‘Cavern 4. It took several hours to safely remove the body.’
The body. When did that happen – when did he cease to be Dougie and become the body? I feel a wave of relief that we haven’t told Sylvie. This would destroy her utterly.
‘Do you have any questions?’ he asks.
And I shake my head, my mouth flooded with questions that I cannot ask:
What was the last thing my son saw before he died?
Can you tell me why my daughter won’t eat?
Can you tell me if Dougie was afraid?
Gill
PC Holden says, right at the start, ‘Please, call me Richard,’ and I think, Richard Holden, Christ, school can’t have been easy for little Dick Holden. Then I think Shit, concentrate, concentrate. My mind keeps darting off in different directions. I try to focus on what the policeman is saying, but my mind skitters from his words like cumin seeds in hot oil, fizzing and skidding.
There was a field trip, Richard said – we knew about that already. An outdoor adventure day for some of the school’s boarders, who were bussed off to different activities: rock-climbing; horse-riding; orienteering.
‘On Friday morning, one group was taken potholing,’ Richard says.
The police at home already told us this. They’d used the Australian term: caving. Not potholing – that sounds too innocent, too safe. Nothing deeper than a pothole on a country road. Potholing evokes kids in yellow gumboots, splashing in puddles. The word contains nothing about underground canyons, or narrow passageways. I think of Teddy’s question: Was it dark?
It isn’t just that potholing sounds deceptive – it sounds silly. Trivial. It has none of the seriousness or gravity of a proper pursuit like rock-climbing.
Because I haven’t answered, PC Holden seems to think I haven’t understood. He tries again. ‘Spelunking? That’s what they call it in America. I don’t know about Australia. But you know what I mean: exploring caves, underground, sometimes with underground rivers too.’
Spelunking. That’s even worse than potholing. The jaunty, unbearable onomatopoeia of that word. Spelunk – the sound of a rock tossed in a puddle. Not the sound of a body winched up from the blackness.
I can’t bear those names. They seem grossly inappropriate. He keeps talking, but each time he mentions potholing I wince,
hearing in my head that embarrassingly sprightly sound. Spelunk. Spelunk. Gabe keeps interrupting him, asking all kinds of questions, but I can’t seem to make myself follow the conversation, or join it. What can I say? I don’t have any idea about the technical aspects of the expedition, or the flood, or the attempted rescue. But I have some complaints about the vocabulary.
So I stay quiet, and drink my sweet tea, even though I can’t taste anything. People keep offering us sweet tea. Those first police officers at home; Sue; the flight attendant. Now this policeman, who made tea for us in our own flat, dropping sugar cubes in one after another (Spelunk. Spelunk). ‘Sweet tea – good for shock,’ he said. How does everybody seem to know this except for me? Where did they learn it?
‘Phillip Murphy,’ the policeman – poor Dick Holden – is saying to Gabe. ‘Goes by Phil.’
I don’t know who he’s talking about. I don’t want to know. I’m thinking about Dougie – everything else is just a distraction.
I loved cooking for Dougie because he was hungry in the way that only teenage boys can be. He was hungry with his whole body. Is there more of this? he was always asking. He’d eye up anything left on my plate. ‘Are you going to finish that?’ he’d ask, already reaching out. I worried about him, always so ravenous. ‘You must have worms,’ I used to say. ‘You sure you don’t have an itchy bum?’
‘Of course not,’ he’d protest. ‘Jesus, Mum, you’re so embarrassing.’
Sometimes, if we had visitors for a meal, Gabe or I would have to issue a whispered command of ‘F.H.B.’ to the kids. It stands for Family Hold Back: no seconds, and no firsts until the guests had served themselves. It was mainly Dougie that we’d have to tell, because otherwise there was no stopping him, or the guileless hunger of his growing body. In the corridor, out of hearing of the guests, I’d have to grab Dougie’s arm. ‘F.H.B. on the pudding, Dougie. I mean it. It came out smaller than I thought.’
‘You’re starving me,’ he’d groan.
I thought about that later, when Sylvie stopped eating. Dougie must have remembered it too, because he made a joke about it.
The Cookbook of Common Prayer Page 6