by Sarah Butler
He hesitates, just for a second, and then says, ‘That would be nice. Thanks. I’d like to raise a glass to him.’
I bite at a fingernail.
‘It’s good to see you, Alice.’
I hold it together until he’s almost at the road and then I turn towards the wall of the church. The sobs come from the very centre of my body, double me up. I feel a hand rub a line along my spine. It is not his hand. There are more people coming out of the church. I don’t care.
‘Alice. Come on, let’s go.’ Cee leans towards me. There’s a man I don’t know standing by the church door. He looks uncertain. He needs a shave, and a shower. I let Cee lead me. When I get back, I decide, I’ll go to bed. I’ll hide under the duvet. I’ll barricade the door.
But the house is filled with people and I am swept into the living room. Two trestle tables covered with white cloths stand in front of the bookshelves. I have no idea where they came from. One table holds rows of wine glasses, some already filled with red and white. On the left-hand side, short stubby glasses cluster in front of the remains of Dad’s whisky collection. The second table is heavy with food. It feels somehow disrespectful.
Kal stands by the fireplace; he has a glass half filled with honey-coloured whisky and is talking to an old man who must be in his eighties, his skin dry and wrinkled as a walnut casing, thin drifts of white hair across a freckled scalp. I realise I will never know what my father would have looked like as an eighty-year-old.
‘Sandwich, Alice?’ It’s Steve, clutching a plate of sandwiches with two slices of cake teetering on the edge. He’s taken off his jacket to reveal a pale-blue shirt with patches of sweat beneath each arm.
‘No, thanks.’
‘It’ll do you good. Grief’s tiring, you need to keep your strength up.’
‘Why do you think he painted this room red?’
Steve looks around, frowning. ‘It’s rather grand.’
‘Don’t you think it’s dark?’
‘Well, if you trimmed back the bay tree a bit.’ He nods towards the front window, biting into a prawn sandwich. A blob of mayonnaise falls onto his wrist and he licks it off. ‘How about a drink?’ he says.
‘Red, please.’
He smiles, scuttles away and returns with a glass full to the brim. Our fingers brush as I take it.
‘Thanks. I should mingle or something,’ I say, but before I can escape, Cee descends.
‘Can you believe that bastard isn’t even here?’ She brandishes a celery stick. ‘Why she doesn’t get rid of him, I do not know.’
Cee has never liked Toby, Tilly’s man. Who officially isn’t Tilly’s man on account of being married to someone else. He’s a nice guy, attractive, too, in a classic way I’ve never really gone for. But the fact remains that he is married, which makes him an undeniable bastard. I hadn’t even noticed his absence.
‘Apparently,’ Cee continues, ‘he said he’d be here and then something came up. What could possibly come up? She spends her entire life making excuses for that man. She pretends it doesn’t bother her, but I can see it in her eyes.’
And her hands. Tilly’s hands have always given her away. I picture them, tight white knots as she brushes off the latest disappointment.
I confronted her about it once.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ she asked. ‘I’ve made my choice and it’s him.’
‘Why doesn’t he leave her?’ I demanded.
She shook her head sadly. ‘We don’t live in a Hollywood film, Alice,’ she said.
In the end I concluded she liked it this way. She’s always the treat, the cherry on the top, the favourite chocolate from the box. She gets weekends away and illicit presents. There must always be an air of subterfuge. It’s not what you’d expect from Tilly, but I get it. Cee thinks the whole thing’s insane, but then her idea of a romantic night is a Chinese takeaway, a box of After Eights, and a rom-com DVD while the children are asleep upstairs.
‘You girls have got a big job on, then,’ Steve says. Cee glares at him.
‘What do you mean?’ I say.
‘It’s a big house,’ he says.
‘Been doing your sums?’
Steve frowns.
‘Alice, he’s just saying there’ll be a lot to sort out,’ Cee says.
She’s already started. I found her in Dad’s study yesterday, surrounded by piles of paper, half-filled black bin bags, cardboard files. Her face was flushed a deep pink, her shoulders hunched forwards and the tip of her tongue caught between her lips. She snapped her head up when I opened the door, then looked down to a blue box file by her feet. She shifted it closer to the chair, and hooked her leg over it. Her hands danced at the edges of the pile of paper in her lap. I imagine her and Steve discussing it over breakfast. What we’ll keep. What we’ll junk. How much we’ll sell it for.
‘I’d better go and talk to people,’ I say, and force a smile. I look up, and through the window I see the man from the church – with the stubble and the greasy hair – standing on the front doorstep. Someone else will let him in. I start to push my way towards the door. It’s like moving through glue. I keep my head down, don’t make eye contact.
But I am caught, just as I reach the hallway.
‘You must be Alice?’
The woman is tiny, even compared to me. Her eyes are fierce blue, her hair resolutely dyed. ‘Heavens, you’re like your mother.’ She looks me up and down. ‘Last time I saw you you were just a nipper, and it’s always hard to know if the resemblance will last. I’m Marina, pleased to see you again.’ Her handshake is firm. There’s a Highland lilt to her voice. I instinctively like her, but I don’t want to talk to her.
‘You’re wishing us all away to our own homes no doubt.’ She nods. ‘That’s fair enough, but it’s good to see you. They tell me your father always talked about you with real pride.’ She smiles, a little falsely, I think. ‘That’s nice to know, isn’t it?’
I stand and stare at the space just above her right shoulder. She’s about to turn away. ‘You knew him, how?’ I say, despite myself.
‘Oh.’ She coughs, cherry-painted nails pressed to narrow lips. ‘I knew your mother. We were close.’ She holds up two fingers, twisted around each other. Her eyes shift to one side. ‘I hadn’t seen your father for a long time.’ She pauses. ‘Your sister wrote to me about Malcolm. I was surprised to be on the list, to be honest, but I wanted to come and pay my respects, to all of you.’ She looks hard at me. ‘We didn’t always see eye to eye, but he was a good man, a decent man.’
‘You knew Mama?’
‘Since school.’ She touches my forearm. ‘I still miss her,’ she says, and sighs.
‘Do you know where she was going?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘That day. When she— In the car.’
Marina frowns.
‘She was supposed to pick me up from ballet,’ I say. ‘But when they found her, she was on the wrong road.’
She hesitates, just for a beat, and then she lets out a soft breath. ‘Heavens, she’d have just got some idea into her head.’ She looks at me, her head on one side like a bird. ‘She had whims, your mother,’ she says, and smiles. ‘She’d have been driving to get you and seen a sign to somewhere she’d always wanted to go, or a road that looked pretty, and she’d have just turned off and gone. She was like that. She’d have been daydreaming, driving too fast, not paying attention, and then—’ She stops herself and our eyes meet. ‘I’ve never known anyone else quite like your mother.’
A silence settles. I finish my wine and twirl the empty glass between my fingers.
‘I was wondering,’ Marina says. ‘Did you meet someone called Daniel this afternoon?’
She’s right, I want her to leave. I want all of them to leave. I shake my head and gesture as though I have somewhere important to go. She opens her mouth as if to say something else, but I turn and walk away from her. Tilly’s in the kitchen washing glasses. She looks up and takes my glass, but says nothin
g. Outside, I lean against the kitchen wall and close my eyes. The sun is warm on my face, but I still feel cold.
‘He was never much of a gardener, was he?’
Kal’s voice makes me jump. I push myself upright, feel my top catch against a brick. ‘He did a bit,’ I say. ‘He’d come out on the weekends, listen to the radio, do some weeding.’
‘Summer’s a bastard though, isn’t it?’
He’s right. Everything is overgrown. The grass needs cutting. The weeds are choking the flowers.
Kal and I met at a mutual friend’s fancy-dress party. We’d both cheated. I’d just got back from Nepal and wore a gold-trimmed sari I’d bought there. He was dressed in blue hospital scrubs, splattered with fake blood.
‘Ah, a Hindu goddess.’ I was terrified he was insulted. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he laughed. ‘You look gorgeous.’
‘And you – er—’
‘Look like a murderous surgeon? I had an axe, but I seem to have lost it.’
He was easy to talk to, interested in where I’d been and where I was going next. He didn’t ask what my job was, or what I was intending to do with my life. He was older than me by almost six years. At the end of the night, when the Roman soldiers and Lycra-clad superheroes were making a dash for the last Tube, I leant over and kissed him, and he kissed me back.
I reach one hand back towards the wall and push my palm against the bricks. He’s trimmed his beard, and had a haircut. I can smell his aftershave.
‘Are you home for a while?’ he says.
‘I have no idea.’
I want him to touch me. I want him to kiss me so I can forget about everything else. ‘Are you with someone else?’ I say.
‘Alice.’
‘That means yes. I bet you’re engaged, aren’t you? Cee always said—’
He sighs, and shoves his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘With all due respect, your sister knows nothing about me.’
‘Sorry.’
He shrugs and scuffs his right foot against the ground, stares down at it. ‘I tried to call. I even wrote you a letter,’ he says.
I know too much about him. I know how he presses his thumb into the centre of his chin when he’s thinking. I know he likes cooked tomatoes but not raw ones. I know what he looks like when he’s asleep.
‘I called your dad and asked for your address, but he said you’d gone away. There wasn’t anywhere I could send it to,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to email. It felt—’
‘Do you still have it?’
He looks at me then, and I see he’s tired. The skin around his eyes looks worn and soft.
‘The letter?’ I say.
He shakes his head and lowers his gaze, and I wonder if he ever wrote it. I want him to put his arms around me. I want to tell him that I wake up angry every morning, because Dad should still be here, because I never said I loved him, even when I knew he was dying. I want to tell him that the house freaks me out, that it’s darker than it should be; that I walk into an empty room and it’s like walking in on people who’ve just been talking about me. I want him to tell me I’m not going mad.
‘Can you leave now?’ I say.
‘I missed you.’
‘Please.’
‘I’m going. Alice.’ He puts his hand on my forearm and I feel desire, like liquid silver through my veins. I hold myself as still as I can. ‘Be nice to yourself, won’t you?’ he says. ‘It’s a big shock.’
I make a noise at the back of my throat. I listen to him walk towards the back door. Open it. Close it. I sense him pause, just inside, and then walk away.
My father is dead. The garden is out of control. The air smells of rain. I bend my legs and lower myself down, my back against the wall, until I am sitting with my legs angled up in front of me. I lean against the house; I let it hold me.
Ten jobs I’ve held down for more than a month
1) Shop assistant, in a baker’s in Preston. I was sixteen.
2) Newspaper round, Broughton. I learnt which houses had a dog waiting in the hallway pretty quickly.
3) Post office sorter, Mount Pleasant.
4) Labourer, south-east London.
5) Gallery invigilator at a place in Soho. I’ve never been happier.
6) Courier van driver, Leeds.
7) Artists’ model, Leeds.
8) Shelf stacker, Sainsbury’s, Kentish Town.
9) Office cleaner, White City, London. I remember all those photographs of children and wives and husbands, Blu-tacked to the edges of computer screens.
10) Cab driver, London.
I didn’t sleep last night. I should have slept; I can’t afford to faint, or end up in hospital, not today. I walked instead – it calms me down, once I’m in a rhythm. It’s more of a slow shuffle these days, but it does the job. I circled Hampstead until my legs ached. Every hour or so I’d stop underneath a lamp post, take the scrap of newspaper from my pocket and hold it up to the light: A family service at Highgate Cemetery, followed by a 1 p.m. service at the Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead. No flowers. Donations to Marie Curie Cancer Care.
Once the sun rose, it was as though my energy drained away with the darkness. I found a bench to sit on but I didn’t let myself close my eyes. It was too late for sleeping by then. An hour on I still felt as though my limbs were made out of bits of cotton – like some kind of rag doll. So I dragged myself to the supermarket on Heath Street and stood at the exit, trying to catch people’s eyes. Any spare change, I asked. I hate doing it, but I needed to eat. I watched people ignoring me. Eventually, a woman holding three white plastic bags stopped and handed over a croissant, still warm. She smiled at me. She was perhaps fifty, one of those women with comfortable bodies and comfortable faces, who you could imagine making you tea, patting your hand, asking questions.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘You’ve somewhere to go?’ she asked.
‘A funeral,’ I answered, and watched her face crease into sympathy.
‘Do I look OK?’ I asked.
She looked at me and then fumbled around in her bag. ‘Look, have some fruit.’ She gave me an apple. ‘I work for a charity,’ she said. ‘With the homeless, that is.’ I’ve never liked the term. I let her talk and I took her card.
‘I’m sorry, but I have to—’ I gestured to the watch I don’t own, and she nodded reluctantly.
I chose an office window – an estate agent’s with A4 sheets of photos and bullet-point lists in neat plastic frames – and did what I could with my hair. I ate the apple – all of it: the cool white flesh, the core, the black seeds – and then wiped my hands against my trousers. First impressions are the most important, my dad told me, more than once. It’s hard to undo a first impression.
* * *
When I duck through the arched gateway into the churchyard I can hear the strains of an organ. The church doors are open, and a tall, grey-haired man, dressed in white, stands with his hands clasped in front of his stomach, talking to a woman whose shoulders are hunched with age.
I am late. I have already, almost, missed you. No – I’m early, I’m sure of it.
The vicar looks up as I approach and smiles. I have often wished for religion, to be accepted without prejudice, or to at least have people pretend, but I slip past him without saying anything. The inside of the church doesn’t match its squat brick exterior. White arches, laced with gold, sweep up above me to where a narrow balcony runs along three walls. The pews are painted the same pale blue as your name. There are maybe twenty people, scattered throughout the church. Most of them are old. Few of them sit together. It is morning prayers. I am not late. I have not missed you. I sit at the back and pick up a prayer book from the shelf in front of me. The pages are like tissue, and smell of dust.
I’ve never been able to sing; the tune evades me and I find myself sliding about, searching for notes. Even so, I like the feel of it, letting my voice escape from my body without having to think about what I’m saying. And as I sing, I feel it, bu
bbling at the base of my chest: I have almost found you. My daughter. I am almost there.
I don’t speak to the vicar on the way out. I turn right into the graveyard which drops away towards an ivy-covered wall.
My mother’s gravestone was smaller than I’d wanted it to be, but money was an obstacle. She’d insisted she should be by Dad. There was a part of me wanted to put her as far away from him as I could, but she’d made me promise. They’re not next to each other, we’d have had to be ahead of the game to make that happen, but they’re near enough. You can stand by her stone and see over to his. I don’t break promises.
I try to go, once a year. I stay there for a day, sometimes more. I tidy up – pull out the weeds around her headstone and those nearby. I use my penknife to cut the grass as best I can. I collect up stones and twigs and arrange them in patterns. I sit and talk to her. I make sure I’m angled so I can’t see my father’s grave. I make sure I don’t look at him.
It’s best, I find, not to imagine what she’d think if she were here now, looking at me with my heart ready to pack in, the hems of my trousers frayed.
I remind myself it’s a Thursday: a bright, green day, lifting me up and out of the hollow of the week. It’s natural to feel nervous, I tell myself. I have never met you; there is so much to say. I find a bench beneath a tree and am grateful for the shade. I let myself take the picture out of my pocket and lay it across my right thigh. It is wrapped in a plastic carrier bag which rustles at my touch.
* * *
She laughed when I said I wanted to paint her. We were in the cafe at the National Portrait Gallery. It was the first time we had met by design. I’d thought she wasn’t going to come. My tea was already cold, and my heart had sunk down towards my ankles. And then she arrived – in a tumble of wet umbrella, sagging paper bags, wild curls, and a red coat that swirled out from a cinched-in waist.
‘You waited,’ she said.
She drank Earl Grey tea and ate a slice of chocolate cake, one tiny forkful after another. I half formed sentences in my mind, but once they reached my lips I saw their stupidity and kept my mouth closed.