by James Runcie
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Headache.’
‘I’ve got a headache too.’
Anna poured out the cornflakes. Milk. Sugar. She sniffed loudly. Sidney decided not to ask where her handkerchief was.
‘Are you taking me?’
‘I will if you perk up a bit.’
‘It’s too early.’ She began to munch at her cornflakes.
Sidney had got to that stage with his daughter when he had to extract information by using as few words as possible. ‘Is it history today?’
‘Maths. Science. First thing. I hate them.’
‘But you like history. You do have it on a Monday, don’t you?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘Well,’ said Sidney, ‘I look forward to detailed discussions with you on the Dissolution of the Monasteries when you get home.’
‘You’ll be lucky.’
He left the kitchen and searched for the car keys on the hall table. ‘In fact, I just can’t wait,’ he muttered, thinking that if this was the onset of teenage angst he was not sure he could survive the next few years of it.
Were all adolescents like this? At times Anna could still be sweet to him but then, even if nothing particularly dramatic or upsetting had happened, she would change into a sullen, self-obsessive with whom it was impossible to live without argument. She was going to be thirteen in December but she never seemed to inhabit her biological age, preferring to veer between three-year extremes either side. Sometimes she behaved like a charming, ten-year-old Daddy’s little girl, but then there were moments when she could pass for an obviously chippy fifteen- or even sixteen-year-old. Sidney could never predict which daughter he was going to get.
They drove through the morning traffic out of Infirmary Lane and up Back Hill (why was it always impossible to turn right here during the rush hour?), passing the High Street, Market Square and Babie Care, the shop in which they had bought Anna’s first clothes. The first hint of light that had illuminated the Lady Chapel had now been obliterated by cloud. Spits of rain fell on the windscreen. Sidney knew that if he said anything it would only annoy his daughter and so he turned on the radio. A reporter from Rome was saying that a group of bagpipers had celebrated the canonisation of a new Scottish saint, the blessed John Ogilvie, who had been hanged at Glasgow Cross in 1615. The next item told of a thirty-two-year-old Cambridge man who had been killed at a stock-car destruction derby at the weekend and there were calls for the sport to be banned.
Anna leant forward and switched to Radio One. Noel Edmonds was playing ‘Disco Duck’ by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots. She turned it off. Was she going to be like her cousin Louis? Perhaps, one day, she would run away too.
‘Thought you enjoyed that kind of thing?’ Sidney asked as he pulled up some fifty yards from the school. He knew he was being provocative but thought a bit of teasing might encourage a response.
‘You must be out of your mind. Are you picking me up?’
‘Probably. One of us will. Have you got everything?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Please don’t expect me to come all the way back with anything you’ve forgotten. Your mother will blame me for not having checked properly.’
‘I won’t. Thanks, Dad.’ She hesitated before opening the car door. ‘I’m sorry. I’m in a mood.’
‘That’s all right, Anna. I still love you.’ She could be so disarming, but Sidney knew that he could not risk an attempt at an affectionate goodbye kiss. That would be embarrassing.
‘Good,’ she said.
‘I don’t always like you, but I still love you.’
‘Ditto.’
Anna almost smiled, opened the car door, got out, slammed it shut and walked away without a look back. She had already seen her friend Sophie.
Sidney waited as the lollipop lady escorted the juniors across the road. She gave him a wave and he tooted his horn. Other drivers took this to be a gesture of impatience and hooted back at him. Honestly, Sidney thought, I am just being friendly.
He drove slowly back through town, trying to remember if they had enough aspirin in the house and if he should alert the school to the fact that Hildegard might not be in today, but he didn’t want to speak for her (that never went down well). As he was held up by yet more traffic, he wondered if a staggered system of school and office opening times would ease the congestion. Someone in the council should think of that, he decided. Perhaps he might even come up with a proper suggestion himself? That would be something practical he could do for the community. Traffic calming. It was an unlikely additional career.
He arrived home just before nine and hoped that there might be time for a quick cup of coffee with Hildegard before he saw the dean and Chapter. He would just have to make sure that he didn’t complain about Anna as that generally descended into an argument about who might be most to blame for her pre-teen behaviour. I wonder where she gets it from.
He unlocked the front door and Byron padded towards him hoping for food, a walk, company. The house was as he had left it. There was no sign that Hildegard had done anything at all. He wondered if she was still resting. It was unlike her, but then she wasn’t often ill.
He walked up the stairs. Their bedroom was in darkness, but there was enough light to see through the gaps in the curtains. Hildegard was lying on her side, turned toward Sidney’s space in the bed, her left arm reaching over to where he would have been, her right against her hip. He sat down and touched her shoulder, careful not to wake her from sleep but concerned to know whether she was all right.
‘My darling . . .’ he asked.
There was no response.
He turned on the bedside light.
Her tea remained untouched.
He moved the light down to the floor lest it was too bright and disturbed Hildegard’s headache.
He touched his wife’s hair and her face and felt her cold hand.
Now he could tell that she was not breathing. But he could not admit the dread that rushed in to him. It was the gap between the firing of the bullet and its arrival, the sound wave travelling faster than the impact. This was what he had always feared and yet never quite imagined: the heart-stop before the silence; the completion of a concert before the applause; the recognition of an ending.
He felt for a pulse in her wrist and neck. There was none. He lay down in the darkness and held his wife in silence. That left arm. Had she been reaching out for him to find that he wasn’t there? Had she known that she was dying? Was her last moment of awareness one of finding him absent yet again? How much pain had she been in? At what point had she lost consciousness?
He remembered the times in their marriage that he had lain awake just like this, either unable to sleep or just before getting up, listening to Hildegard’s breathing, matching her rhythm, wanting to breathe in synchronicity. Sometimes he had found it too loud and he had even accused her of snoring, only to be informed that he was the one that made all the noise at night. Once he was told he sounded like an elephant and Sidney had asked his wife if she had ever actually heard an elephant snore.
He readjusted his position and looked at her still, pale face, the grey-blonde hair that curled behind her left ear, the hole where her earring should be. A word came to him. Limbo. Perhaps that was where she was, halfway between this world and the next. It was as if he could still see her, in the distance, at the far end of a field but could no longer be sure if it was her. If she could tell him one more thing, say one more sentence, give him one final thought to remember her by, he wondered what it would be. Would it be in English or German, profound or light, said with her serious face, which meant she could not be contradicted, or that loving expression which told Sidney that she already knew he wouldn’t take any notice of what she was saying?
Outside he heard traffic, birdsong – was that a blackbird? The cathedral clock struck the quarter-hour. They would have started their meeting at the Deanery. ‘Typical Sidney,’ one of them would be complain
ing, ‘always late.’ Another would blame it on ‘one of his intrigues’. Then they would laugh. There had been so many.
But none of those intrigues were what this was.
He should get help, he knew, but then if other people came he would have to admit the truth. Witnesses would only tell him that this was not a dream.
He needed water but was not sure he could walk. He did not want to get up; to get up would be to lose this moment. To get up would let the world in.
He did not know how long it took him to get to the telephone. He managed to ask for the doctor. Yes, it was urgent.
He couldn’t decide what to do while he waited; whether to walk or stand or sit. There didn’t seem to be much point in anything. Once he had left the bedroom he didn’t want to return. That would only prove to him what had happened, that he hadn’t dreamt it. There could be no miracle here, no empty room, no return to life. But he didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Nothing that he did now could make any meaningful difference to anything that was about to happen.
It was going to be their fifteenth wedding anniversary. Last year it had been ivory. He looked at the keys on the piano and wondered if it would ever be played in the same way again.
He thought about when and how he would tell Anna. He could hardly wait until he picked her up from school that afternoon. But how could he spare her the worst of this?
The telephone rang and he did not answer it. What could he say? It was probably the dean’s secretary wondering where he was. Perhaps it would have been easier to let her know straightaway. Then she could have told everyone for him.
He was just about to go back upstairs and see Hildegard once more (perhaps he had made a mistake, perhaps she was in a coma, perhaps he should have called an ambulance instead?) when the doorbell rang.
It was Michael Robinson. He said he was sorry. He asked Sidney if he was sure. He climbed the stairs. He entered the bedroom. He checked for vital signs of life.
There were none.
‘When do you think this happened?’
‘I was only out for half an hour.’
‘Was she awake when you left her?’
Sidney explained. He then asked if Hildegard had been worried about anything. Was there anything she hadn’t told him? Did the doctor know something he didn’t?
‘A migraine, you say? Was her sight all right?’
‘I don’t know. It was still dark in the room.’
‘She didn’t want any light?’
‘She said it was too bright. Should I have guessed? Should I have done something more? What do you think, Michael?’
‘It sounds like a stroke or an aneurysm. These things can come out of the blue.’
‘Had there been symptoms? She didn’t tell me anything.’
‘Your wife said that she had been finding things exhausting and quite stressful, but I put that down to her time of life. She wasn’t depressed. Her blood pressure was nothing to be alarmed about, but her thyroid was underactive and we organised some medication. You’ll know about that.’
Sidney did.
‘But these things happen and you can’t prepare for them. One cannot call it natural causes. Perhaps it is more like fate or bad luck. It’s random. Even if you had acted immediately, before Anna went to school, I’m not sure that we could have done very much. It was already too late. So please – and listen to me – don’t blame yourself. Don’t ever do that.’
‘I’ll try not to.’
‘Don’t. Does anyone else know?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Would you like my help?’
‘I don’t know what to do. I have to tell Anna first.’
‘I’ll sort out a medical certificate. You’ll need that for the registry office.’
‘Will there be a postmortem?’
‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Why do you ask?’
‘Don’t they have them in cases of sudden death?’
‘And in unusual or suspicious circumstances. But I am both glad and afraid to say that there is nothing unusual about this, Sidney. This is just life and death.’
They telephoned the undertaker and Nigel Martin promised to be there as soon as he could. He would be discreet. He had an unmarked ambulance.
The doctor asked if they should pray. Sidney was not sure he could do that. Michael said that he would speak the words for him. He always carried a pocket prayer book.
Go forth upon thy journey from this world, O Christian soul.
He waited with Sidney for the undertaker.
Nigel Martin had his wife with him. He thought that it was probably better if a woman made Hildegard ready for ‘the move’ unless Sidney wanted to do it himself.
Sidney did not think he could. He felt guilty but he was also unsure whether the person in the bedroom was that of his wife or merely an inanimate object, a vessel emptied of meaning. Even though her body remained there, implacably present, she had already left. The flesh and blood that he had loved and cherished was redefined as a corpse.
Mrs Martin found Hildegard’s Chinese silk nightdress, her best gift from Sidney, and her hairbrush on the dressing table. She asked about the underwear drawer, the bathroom and where she could find soap and flannels. Sidney was not to worry. She was used to this kind of thing. It was probably easier if he left the room and let her do what had to be done.
Nigel told him about the Chapel of Rest. That would be the best place for Anna to see her mother, he said. They would make it nice for her. There would be candles. He just needed a couple of hours and then Hildegard would be ready.
It was time to go to his daughter. As a priest Sidney knew how to break bad news; to sit a person down, speak calmly, trying to reassure them that this tragedy of a death, either random or expected, was not the destruction of hope and happiness, but part of the natural order. If the bereaved collapsed in grief, he would hold them, speak quietly and allow time for sorrow. Then he would pray with them, offer practical help and a prompt return, fulfilling his duty and his obligations. He would come, he promised, at any time.
But on all those previous occasions he had been playing a part. He had been ‘being a priest’. Now that it was his daughter, this was the real thing.
He got into the car once more. He remembered that this was a metaphor he sometimes used to explain to children the difference between the body and the soul. Imagine the body as a car, he would say, and the soul as the driver. When the driver no longer needs the car he gets out, leaving it empty, just as the soul leaves the body.
Anna was probably too old for the idea. It would just be one of Dad’s stories. He wondered if she had ever heard it before.
It had turned into one of those dank grey days that marked the grip of autumn; a concentrated swarm of clouds passed behind the stark trees, hurrying the light. The garden birch tree creaked in the wind, a white polythene bag tangled in its branches.
At the school Sidney tried to explain what had happened to the headmistress and, even though the words didn’t quite come out right, she seemed to understand everything he was saying. He imagined Michael Robinson had warned her.
‘Take my room,’ she said. ‘Have it for as long as you need. I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.’
Anna had to be removed from a history lesson. They were studying Henry VIII, the break with Rome and the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
‘Have I done something wrong?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then what are you doing here? Why have you come to see me?’
‘It’s your mother.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know how to tell you this, my darling.’
‘What’s happened, Dad?’
He took his daughter’s hand. ‘She’s died.’
The words were out of his mouth. Now it was true all over again.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I don’t believe it either. She didn’t wake up.’
‘She did. Yo
u said she had a headache.’
‘I know, but . . .’
‘Have you been lying to me? Did you know before I went to school? Is that why you took me?’
‘She said it was a headache.’
‘Is that all? How can people die of a headache?’
‘I’m not sure. The doctor said . . .’
Sidney was unable to maintain eye contact with his daughter. But then, every time he turned away, he couldn’t help but notice the incongruity of the office in which they sat. They were surrounded by images of academic success and sporting achievement, with smiles, trophies, handshakes and congratulation.
There, and alone, Sidney and Anna had been abandoned to confront this terrible setback, hardly knowing what to say, terrified of upsetting each other still further.
‘Why didn’t you come and get me first?’
‘I don’t know, Anna. I had to send for the doctor. I’m sorry.’
‘Can I see her? Can I come home now? Is that why you’re here?’
‘She’s . . . she’s . . .’
‘Where is she?’
‘I think she’s . . .’
‘Are you lying, Dad? Has someone killed her?’
‘No, not at all. Nothing like that.’
‘Then why has this happened?’
‘I don’t know.’
His daughter was almost a stranger, his own and yet not his own, growing away from him in her green school blazer and black skirt, her hair in need of a wash, the first breakout of spots on her chin, and with one of her shoelaces undone – her mother would have nagged her about that. What could he do to help her through the forthcoming adolescent world of anxiety and accusation?
‘Is it your fault?’ Anna asked.
‘It’s no one’s fault.’
‘Can we go now, Dad? Can we see her?’
‘I’m not sure they’ll be ready.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Please Dad, I want to go there now.’
They left the school and everyone else in lessons, some of the pupils staring out of the window as if they had already been told, and drove back home.
To think that this morning Sidney had seen himself as the new controller of traffic-calming in this town. He looked at the other drivers, cars, people on bicycles and mopeds getting in the way, young mothers with prams on the pavement, dogs who weren’t on proper leads drifting into the verges, and he was filled with intense fury. How could everyday life continue like this? Why were people still shopping, with their bags and trolleys, their impatient concerns and their pointless hurrying? Who were they all?