by Maynard Sims
Grace mouthed the words without actually singing. At some point in the hymn she glanced around at the pews behind her. Some people caught her eye, enigmatic expressions on their faces, others immediately looked away, avoiding any emotional link at all.
At the very back was a man Grace had never seen before. When her glance flickered over his face, the man stared directly at her. He didn’t smile; in fact, he didn’t acknowledge her at all. If anything, he looked angry. There was something familiar about his features. The hymn ended before Grace could think about him any further.
Martin walked to the front and pulled a sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket. It was time for his eulogy. Susan was sobbing even before he began to speak. He looked at Susan, but didn’t seek Grace’s eye.
He spoke in a well-modulated and firm voice. Soon, Grace thought, soon his voice will crack and everyone will feel an outpouring of empathy for him.
'That’s not my brother in there.' He turned and pointed at the oak coffin.
Molly gasped, and leaned into Grace. 'What does he mean? Is Daddy not dead?'
Grace wrapped her arms around her daughter’s slim shoulders. 'He is, darling. I’m so sorry.'
'But if he’s not in there, where is he?'
Grace placed one hand on Molly’s chest, above her budding breasts. 'He’s in there, Molly. In our hearts, and he always will be.'
Martin continued. 'It might be his body in there, but that isn’t the brother I knew. The brother I knew was the one who used to tease me with worms, a newt once, I recall, and on one horrific occasion, with a huge spider.' There was polite laughter from the congregation. 'I still hate spiders, even now.'
Grace watched her precious daughter as her uncle delivered his warm, and at times funny, memories. Molly was going to miss out on so much by not having a father there for her. Who would walk her down the aisle? Who was going to help mend her broken heart? That’ll be me, Grace realised. She pulled Molly close to her as Martin finished.
'I’ll look after you,' Grace said.
Molly dissolved into tears, and buried her face in her mother’s chest.
When the service concluded, the vicar invited Grace and the others to walk with him to the graveside. They followed the coffin back down the aisle, and Grace touched the hands of several people who held them out by way of physical sympathy.
When she got to the back of the church, near the door, she noticed that the man she had seen wasn’t there.
Outside, amongst the headstones and grass verges, the sunlight bore down on them with a righteous vigour. There were few white clouds in a pure sky, a morning of warmth and splendour.
They all converged around the large, open hole in the ground, a pile of earth discreetly waiting. The vicar spoke keenly of ashes returning to ashes, of earth becoming earth once more. Susan wept and was comforted by a cousin – one Grace had, on occasion, found to be a little too quick to place a solicitous arm around her mother.
Grace took Molly’s hand and they each threw a red rose into the grave, which landed and lay limply on the top of the coffin.
When they were back in position, Molly said, 'Who’s that man?'
Grace looked and saw, some distance away, all but masked by some trees, the same man she had spied in the church.
'He’s waving,' Molly said.
'I don’t think so.' Grace could not understand the feeling of dread that overcame her. There was something about that man that scared her.
'I’m going to see what he wants,' Molly said.
'No.' Grace tried to stop her, but as many mothers will testify, a daughter on the cusp of becoming a teenager can be a headstrong beast.
Molly manoeuvred through the gravestones, and Grace watched as she approached the man. For his part, he made no effort to move away. It was as if he was waiting for her.
'Where’s Molly going?' Susan wanted to know.
'We’ll soon find out.' Molly was already headed back.
When she joined them, it was Susan who asked, 'Who is that man?'
Molly looked confused, afraid.
'Mum, he said he was my dad.'
***
The wake, as Susan insisted it be called, was held at the house Grace jointly owned with Simon. It would soon be her house, once the deeds were transferred into her sole name. There would be a lot of that to be done: the removal of Simon Bliss from the joint affairs of S and G Bliss. No longer a married couple. No longer a couple at all. She was now a widow.
Simon had provided well for his family. The haulage company he had started, expanded, and run with Martin, had been very successful, was still very successful. There would be adjustments to be made there, of course, and whether it would continue to give such a good income yield as previously remained to be seen. As a director, albeit a sleeping partner, Grace had access to the accounts and some decisions, but it would be Martin who took up the reins, for better or for worse.
The house was large, not too grand, but set in several acres of countryside. The reception rooms were spacious and high-ceilinged. Even though there were close to one hundred people who came back after the church, the house never felt crowded. To Grace it felt empty, and she suspected it always would do, at least for a long time to come.
She found herself standing by a side window, overlooking the tennis courts, when a polite cough told her she was not alone.
‘Lovely service.’ Henry Vickers was the family solicitor. He acted for them in their personal matters as well as for the business. His was a typical small-town country practice; he knew everyone, but discretion and integrity were his byword.
Grace thanked him. ‘I suppose I will need to come in and see you at some point,’ she said. ‘Sort out the paperwork, the will.’
Henry avoided her gaze, and pretended to find something outside of great interest. He sipped his drink.
‘Henry?’ She noticed an auburn hair on his collar, and stopped herself removing it.
‘Nothing to worry about, I’m sure. It will all sort itself out.’
‘What will? Come on, we’ve known each other long enough; you acted for my parents, for God’s sake. What is it?’
There was no mistaking the discomfort in his posture. He clearly regretted having come over, but duty had won out over his own needs.
‘It’s just, in these circumstances, what with Simon having… having…’
‘Killed himself.’
‘Many insurance companies, on the life side, have a suicide clause. Exemption.’
Grace had selfishly reassured herself that at the very least her, and Molly’s, financial future was in safe hands. She was worried now.
‘You mean they may not pay out?’
Henry tried to bluster his way out of the predicament he had placed himself in, but there was no escape. ‘These are early days. I’ll have to speak with them directly. My assistant has made the preliminary inquiries; it will take a few days.’
Grace looked over Henry’s head to see if there was any sign of Molly. There wasn’t. ‘I don’t think I can keep this place on if there isn’t any money.’
‘This isn’t the time or the place. I’m sorry I mentioned it all, do forgive me. I’ll make arrangements to see you a little later.’
Grace swallowed her drink in one gulp. The spirit bit at the back of her throat. ‘No, you’re right, I’m being indelicate. Anyway, there are other assets, the business. How long will it take for the will to move through probate?’
Henry went a very pale shade of near-white. If he could have hunched his shoulders any higher, his head would have disappeared. ‘Ah, yes, well, that is another matter entirely. I really don’t think this is the time.’
‘We drew up our wills together, you know that. Everything comes to me.’
The noise Henry made from deep within his chest may have resembled a wounded animal when it realises it has nowhere left to hide. ‘There may be a problem with that.’
Grace fe
lt a shiver of fear slither along her back. ‘What problem?’
Suddenly, Henry cried out, as if he was terrified. ‘Who is that man?’ He pointed out through the window.
Grace turned and saw the man who had upset Molly at the cemetery, the man from the church. ‘I don’t know, but I’m going to find out this time.’
By the time she made her way out of the house, managing to extricate herself from well-wishers and the well-intended, the man had gone.
What remained was a scent. A strong smell of cologne: the same brand that Simon habitually wore.
***
The female police constable who had come to the house on the day of the death seemed shy to Grace. The woman hesitated before she removed her hat, and then seemed unsure what to do with it, opting eventually to hold it uncertainly between the fingers of one hand.
‘I’m PC Henderson.’
She asked if Grace was alone, and didn’t seem to know what to do with the positive response.
‘Is there a neighbour, or relative, you could call?’ Henderson asked.
‘Why would I need someone here?’ Grace was alarmed. ‘What’s happened? Is it Molly?’
‘Your daughter is fine. She’s at school.’
Grace wondered how the police knew that, or why they had gone to the bother of finding it out, but she was concerned now about why this police officer was being so polite, so hesitant.
‘It’s Simon. Has he had an accident?’
Once they were both seated in the sitting room, Henderson placed her hat on the floor. A stray strand of black hair continually fell away from her ear, and Grace wanted so much to push it back into place.
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
It was worse than bad, the news, it was catastrophic. It changed Grace’s whole world, and made her daughter vulnerable, both of them now so alone.
Simon, her husband, best friend and lover, had killed himself. He had been found hanging from a rafter of the stock room at work.
No, he showed no sign of depression. No, she hadn’t noticed any change in him recently. No, yes, they were happy.
‘Can you think of any reason why he would be clutching a rosary in his hand?’
Simon wasn’t religious at all. They had married in church, that was true, but he did that for her sake. And she did it for her mother’s sake. Everyone trying so hard to please one another.
A rosary made no sense at all. ‘Isn’t that the Catholics?’
As Henderson left, Grace reached up, and with one hand she brushed the irritating piece of hair behind the ear.
***
The mortuary was chilled, and as impersonal as she thought it would be. The young man who took her from the outer offices, and through to the refrigerated area, was casual, almost to the point of disinterest.
When he pulled back the sheet from the body, revealing just the head and upper shoulders, Grace thought she might faint, or cry out. She did neither. Instead she felt a sense of shame that the man she had loved, the man she had thought she knew so well, had committed suicide, and she had no idea why.
She confirmed it was Simon, and when she was asked if she wanted a few moments alone, she declined.
Later, at the funeral parlour, they asked her a similar question – did she want time alone with him? She said no to them as well. She didn’t want to be alone with a man she had spent more than half of her life with. She couldn’t articulate why.
When her father had died, she hadn’t wanted to see him in his coffin, either. She wanted to remember him as he was, alive and vibrant. Her memory would be of the man she knew, not the lifeless body dressed up and laid out to rest.
It was for similar reasons she didn’t want to see her husband after death. Yet there were differences. She would remember him, of course she would. She would fondly recall most of their life together. But would she be recalling the man she knew?
Would the man she knew kill himself? Had she really known him?
Did anyone really know another?
***
Henry echoed those thoughts when she went to see him a few days after the funeral.
‘Do we really know people? What goes on inside their heads? Even those we are close to: how much do we really know about them? About what they think and feel?’
‘Thanks for the psychology, Henry; I know this isn’t easy for you. It’s hard for me, too. I have Molly off school – my mother is with her. I need to get things sorted out.’
Henry seemed less insecure seated behind his wide and rather ostentatious mahogany desk. He was in his personal kingdom.
That morning Grace had done some washing. Life’s little routines had to carry on, even in the face of close death. As she pulled the clothes from the washer, she found two of Simon’s shirts entangled. As she struggled to pull them apart, she found they were bound together with several strands of hair. The hair was long, and it was auburn in colour.
‘As I alluded to before,’ Henry was saying, ‘I am still waiting for responses from some of the insurance companies, but the picture may not be as bleak as I possibly suggested.
‘Generally a life insurance policy doesn’t pay out if the policyholder commits suicide in the first twelve months of the policy. Most, though, do pay out after that. In some cases, suicide claims can be turned down because there has been non-disclosure about the mental health of the insured, in this case Simon, and if there has been any medical or psychiatric treatment.’
Grace made a sound of annoyance. ‘There was nothing like that. He was as fit as you or me. Full of common sense. You know that.’
Henry looked down at the papers on his desk, which suddenly he seemed to find fascinating. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Although he did hang himself.’
Grace slumped in her chair. She had no answer for that.
She had dreamed the night before that she had walked into the work stock room and found him cheerfully fixing a rope to the rafters. A rope with a sinister knot tied into it. She asked him what he was doing, and he smiled and said he was caught on the horns of a dilemma, but at least he had found a way out.
Do you love me? she had asked him, in her dream. Of course I did, he said, fiddling with the thick rope. Did? she said, quietly, and the look in his eyes as he shook his head was painful. I know you, Simon, she told him. Nothing is as bad as you think it is. It never has been.
She woke before she heard his reply, although she sensed it was something like, ‘you don’t know that half of it.’
Her bedroom had the strangest smell, as well. She had to open all the windows to get rid of it. If she had been asked to say what the smell was, she would have said it was incense from a religious mass.
Henry was looking strangely at her. ‘Grace, did you hear me?’
Grace shook her head, telling him no, but also trying to clear her head.
‘I was saying,’ Henry said, sadly, ‘that I do need to tell you about the will.’
‘Please tell me there isn’t a problem with that. We’ve had mirror wills, so if his is wrong…’
‘It’s not that. A few days ago, not long before… he came to see me. He wanted to change his will.’
Grace sat back in her seat. Her heart was racing. ‘Change it?’
Henry shook his head dolefully. ‘I tried to talk him out of it but my hands are tied. The provisions for Molly are intact, he was adamant about that. It’s the initial beneficiary that he wanted to amend.’
‘He left everything to me, as I do to him.’
Henry shook his head with more force. ‘He did. There is a new beneficiary.’
‘Who?’
‘I really can’t reveal that. Client confidentiality and all that.’
‘Henry, he’s left me all on my own. You’re telling me he tried to leave me without any money as well? Tell me. Who did he leave it to?’
‘It was odd. That’s why I queried it when I saw him at the house.’
‘Who?�
�
‘That man in the garden. He was with Simon when he arranged the will amendments. Both of them, here in the office. Didn’t say much; in fact, now I think about it, he didn’t speak at all. Simon seemed comfortable enough with him. Who is he?’
‘I don’t know. Is he the beneficiary?’
‘I really can’t say.’
But before Grace left his offices, he did tell her who benefited from her husband’s will.
***
‘So, who is Charlotte Sanders?’ her mother said, when she told her what had happened.
‘I have no idea.’
They were seated in the garden, on a bright summer’s day. A pot of tea sat on the wrought iron table in front of them, and a plate of biscuits, uneaten. The garden stretched down to a paddock, where Molly was seated on a three-year-old gelding, being put through her paces by her riding tutor.
‘Was he having an affair?’
‘Would that be my fault?’
Susan sipped her tea. ‘You can be very cruel sometimes with your remarks.’
Where do I get that from? was a thought that Grace sensibly kept unspoken. ‘I don’t think he was unfaithful. I’d have known. Wouldn’t I?’
Susan looked at her daughter with something approaching pity. She could be so naïve at times.
‘Probably, but to be honest, we don’t really know everything about anyone else, do we? I mean, to be frank, did you ever contemplate that he would… you know?’
Why did everyone have such a problem with the word?
Grace raised her hand in acknowledgement of Molly, who was seeking approval for a well-executed jump.
‘An affair is one thing, but leaving her everything? The house, the money. What am I going to do?’
‘Contest it, of course. I’ve told Henry to find out all he can about this woman and build a case to get the new will thrown out. Sound mind, whatever it takes.’
It was typical of her mother to take action without consultation, but for once Grace was grateful.
‘I meant to ask?’ Susan said. ‘What is that smell in the house? It’s like incense or something.’