The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

by Ruth Hogan

  Today I’m meeting Edward for lunch, but I have some visits to make first. Most people are uncomfortable about being in a cemetery if they’re not there to attend a funeral or visit the grave of a loved one, but he is happy to meet me here. Unlike the Victorians who built this place, people nowadays seem to think that cemeteries are morbid places and to visit them for recreational purposes is at best creepy and at worst, tempting fate. But perhaps it is the confrontation of their own mortality that really unsettles them. After all, it is the only certainty that we all share. However fit, fabulous, rich, double-jointed, brilliant, brave, funny or fastidious about cleaning our teeth we are, we are all going to die. It may not seem fair, but there it is. As Thomas Gray reminds us, ‘The paths of glory lead but to the grave’.

  Or perhaps it is fear of the dead themselves. When I was a little girl we used to go out on Sunday afternoon drives in the country with my grandparents. Whenever we passed a cemetery or churchyard, my granddad used to wind down the window and shout, ‘Any complaints?’

  He never received a reply and said this was a fair indication that the dead were a pretty contented lot, and when his time came he died peacefully in his own bed with little pain and with no fear.

  I am here to visit more members of my Family on the Other Side. The sun is high and bright and the trees scatter dappled shade across the path. The gravestones cast crisp shadows, chequerboarding the grass, and high in the cloudless sky swallows pitch and swoop. Haizum is loping lazily in front of me, panting heavily with his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. The first on my rounds are Charity and Edwin Guntrip, who are buried together halfway up the hill next to a beautifully scented rose bush that today fills the warm air with its voluptuous perfume. Its branches are bowed with velvet blooms and I can’t resist stealing one for a friend. Charity and Edwin won’t mind. The couple were devoted to one another and the inscription on their simple grey headstone tells me that they died within six months of each other in 1953, aged 69 and 71 respectively. They grew flowers and fruit in their garden; soft, deep pink raspberries climbing up rows of soldier-straight canes; rich purple blackcurrants, tart little redcurrants and fat bristly green gooseberries. At their allotment they grew cabbages, onions, carrots, runner beans and a few new potatoes. Charity would boil the kettle on a little camping stove in their shed and make a pot of tea, whilst Edwin picked any of the vegetables that were ready, and after their tea they would wheel them home in a wheelbarrow. Edwin laughed when Charity had made curtains for the shed window out of some scraps of blue flowery material, but she said they made the place look homely, and secretly Edwin agreed. They had a budgerigar called Churchill. Their grave was completely neglected when I first came upon it, but it is now in perfect order and planted with some cheerful marigolds and fluttery petunias that I hope meet with Charity’s and Edwin’s approval. I sometimes have a little chat with them about my garden. I tell them what Haizum has been digging up, whether or not the russet apple tree is bearing any fruit (it’s rather temperamental – sometimes it will, other years not a single apple) and ask for their advice about the black spots on the roses. And no, they never give any, but I like to make them feel involved. Today I report that my gooseberry bush has sawfly, and leave them to ponder on it.

  Next I visit Ezra Maltravers because I don’t think anyone else would – even if anyone who knew him were still alive. Ezra was a con artist, an inveterate gambler and an incorrigible ladies’ man. He had a rakish moustache, and wore a trilby that was just a little too shiny for my liking. His eyes were too narrow to be those of a gentleman, and his lips were too wet. Lady T provides a list of behaviours under the heading ‘Conduct which is incorrect’, and included on this list is ‘to indulge in any unpleasant personal tricks’. Ezra almost certainly did. He died penniless and alone. I visit him because he may have repented on his deathbed, but no one was there to hear it. I visit him because none of us is perfect and because he has a great name. I really hope he doesn’t turn out to have been a travelling salesman with a grey comb-over, a Pac-a-Mac and a thermos flask. You may wonder how I know all these details about my Family on the Other Side, and the simple truth is that I don’t. So what I don’t know I make up, although I’m not sure if that would be allowed if I ever get to be a proper cemetery guide.

  My last call today is Rose. Today is Rose’s birthday, and so I have brought her a small glass paperweight that contains a perfect pale pink rosebud. The rose in the paperweight is the Rose Hannah I imagine her to have been, never having had the chance to bloom. Maybe she has found little Marie and they are trampolining together with the angels. Rose Hannah Shakespeare, ‘Doll’, died in 1899, aged 4 – ‘Tragically drowned’.

  Is there any other way? In many countries, even today, drowning is one of the leading causes of infant death. It only takes a few centimetres of water. Children can drown in baths, buckets and even toilets.

  Rose’s headstone was thickly shrouded in ivy and home to more than thirty snails when I found it. Ten minutes of stripping and snail relocation revealed a beautiful white marble gravestone inlaid with lead strips, forming panels decorated with carvings of doves and roses and inscribed with the words ‘Our precious daughter “Doll” – cruelly missed but fondly remembered’.

  Edward and I have a favourite seat for our lunches. It is at the top of the slope on which the cemetery is built, and has magnificent views of the park, the town and the countryside beyond. The graves here are widely spaced and some of the oldest in the cemetery. The inscriptions on many of the headstones are now impossible to read, and some of the stones list forwards, backwards or sideways rather drunkenly and so we affectionately call this area the ‘Field of Inebriation’. I sometimes wonder whether its inhabitants are lying at similarly precarious angles and are now clinging to the edge of their coffins – for grim death or dear life, I can never decide which.

  Edward is already seated and basking in the sunshine as we walk across the grass to meet him. He is looking very smart in a raspberry waistcoat and an immaculate panama. Haizum is delighted to see Lord Byron, and almost pulls me over in his enthusiasm to greet him. Edward smiles at me and briefly takes my hand as I sit down next to him, and I hand him the rose that I have stolen. He has prepared egg mayonnaise sandwiches for us, and cold roast chicken (organic, free-range and raised in an environment approved by the RSPCA and the chicken) for Haizum and Lord Byron. I pass him a napkin; a proper starched white linen napkin, ever mindful of the standards set by Lady T, who would most certainly not approve of paper serviettes.

  ‘I have two favours to ask you.’

  Edward looks unusually serious, and I feel a chill as though the sun has gone behind a cloud. But the flash of mischief quickly returns to his cool green eyes and I am reassured.

  ‘Well, come on then, out with it. But I warn you now that I don’t sleep with gay men, and I’m not lending you any of my frocks.’

  Edward raises one eyebrow disdainfully as he takes another bite of his sandwich, and shakes his head ever so slightly. I so wish I could do the disdainful eyebrow as proficiently as he does. I have practised in the mirror, but he’s still miles better at it than me.

  ‘You flatter yourself on both counts.’

  I attempt disdainful eyebrow but achieve only a fit of the giggles with a mouth full of egg sandwich. Not elegant, and not recommended by Lady T.

  ‘I should like you to accompany me to an astoundingly appalling production of The Mikado.’

  ‘Why? I mean, one, why are you going if it’s astoundingly appalling? And two, why do you wish to inflict it on me?’

  ‘I am going to support a good friend who is playing the role of the Lord High Executioner. He says it’s the worst production ever, and that rotten eggs and fruit are sure to be thrown. He is desperate to see a friendly face in the audience. In turn, I need a good friend to support me through what is destined to be a torturous experience and, if necessary, resuscitate me at the end of it.’

  ‘I should be deligh
ted.’

  I am tempted to ask who the friend is, but I know Edward better than that. If he doesn’t volunteer information, there is usually a good reason. In any case I shall find out soon enough.

  ‘Shall I wear my best kimono?’

  I may not be able to ask him about his friend, but I can’t resist a little gentle teasing. Edward does the eyebrow again, but can’t keep the hint of a smile from his suntanned face.

  Chapter 24

  ART

  The soaring notes of Mozart’s ‘Lacrimosa’ are a rather curious greeting as I push open the front door of the clinic and walk Haizum straight through to my room. I have no clients this morning and Haizum’s sorrowful stares have persuaded me to let him keep me company whilst I catch up on some tedious but essential paperwork.

  I leave Haizum reorganising the cushions on the sofa, and return to the waiting room to see Helen. I already know from her choice of music that she will not be alone. An unpleasant woman called Mrs Sweetie is sitting in the waiting room. She is anything but. Barely civil to ‘the receptionist’, she always sits bolt upright, looking as though she can smell a fish-guts-scented fart. She has an unfortunate face, unimproved by cold eyes and thin lips that are constantly pursed in preparation to criticise someone or something. She is one of Fennel’s patients, and Fennel is welcome to her. The reason for ‘Lacrimosa’ is Mrs Sweetie’s fur hat. Real dead-murdered-animal fur. She wears it all year round. In autumn and winter she teams it with a camel-coloured long wool coat with a fur collar. In spring and summer she wears it with beautifully cut glazed cotton dresses that she somehow contrives to make look ill-fitting and ugly. I expect she even wears it with her bathing suit when lounging on the terrace of her newly purchased villa in the south of France. She told a suitably deferential Fennel all about it, who in turn told us. We were not anything like as impressed as we were supposed to be.

  Helen believes that the penalty for those wearing real fur should include being caged, scalped and forced to eat a smorgasbord of assorted excrement. However, in the absence of appropriate punitive legislation, we subject Mrs Sweetie to musical torture, although I suspect the irony of this specific piece will be lost on her. Helen turns up the volume. Fennel follows me into the waiting room and ushers Mrs Sweetie away like an anxious collie herding a wayward sheep. Helen changes the music.

  ‘She was twenty minutes early today, so I just kept pressing the repeat button on the CD player. Do you think she noticed?’

  ‘Hard to tell. She didn’t look very chirpy, but then she always looks like she’s been sucking a wasp to me.’

  I tell Helen about my lunch with Edward, and our forthcoming theatre date.

  ‘So who is this mysterious friend?’

  Before I can answer, the phone rings and Helen spends the next ten minutes trying to book an appointment for a new patient. The longer it takes to settle on an appropriate day and time, the more clipped Helen’s tone becomes. After eight minutes her jaw is clenched and she has broken the lead in two pencils. Finally, she delivers her coup de grâce.

  ‘Perhaps we might make better progress if you were to ask your husband to contact us himself. That way we stand a fighting chance of booking an appointment that he will be able to attend. Presumably he has mastered the rudiments of operating a telephone unassisted, and has at least one fully functioning digit?’

  Helen cuts the caller off after the first sentence, but I wonder if one day her mental or manual dexterity will fail her and some unsuspecting patient will experience the unexpurgated wrath of her tongue. She looks at me expectantly and raises her eyebrows.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I really don’t know. And you know what Edward’s like. He had that “don’t ask” look on his face. But I definitely got the impression that this is more important to him than he’s letting on. Frankly I’m intrigued and I can’t wait for the big night.’

  Helen is sharpening the pencils she broke.

  ‘Well, I shall want to hear all about it.’

  Georgina strides into the waiting room and picks up the pile of patient notes that Helen has prepared for her. She flicks through them, her expression changing as she registers each one and what she is treating them for.

  ‘Not too bad today. Only one really smelly one, and one poor old boy whose meat and two veg always drop out of the side of his boxer shorts on the treatment couch. Good grief, he’s in his eighties and really ought to be in long johns by now.’

  At the sound of Georgina’s voice Haizum slinks into the waiting room to greet her. He is fully aware that the waiting room is out of bounds to him, but he is quite unable to resist the temptation of a woman who always has bits of broken biscuit in her pockets and is therefore utterly adorable. The biscuits are for Moriarty, but Haizum usually manages to scrounge a few by turning the full beam of his soulful eyes onto Georgina, and wagging his tail in a feeble but thoroughly winsome manner.

  ‘Good morning, you magnificent creature.’

  Georgina bends down and gives him an affectionate bear hug (or should that be dog hug?) and rewards his efforts with several large pieces of digestive biscuit.

  ‘By the bye, Marion’s made a run for it again, so keep an eye out. And,’ turning to Haizum, ‘if you find her, don’t eat her. She won’t be nice.’

  I’m not brilliant with spiders any bigger than a raisin, and retreat to my room with Haizum leaving Helen to search for hairy Marion, the escapee, armed with a dustpan and brush.

  Chapter 25

  ART

  The sound of Haizum’s snoring is loud enough to wake the dead and I am suddenly aware that my room is very quiet. I have been pretending to deal with essential paperwork for the last hour, but actually reading a glorious little book about the history of cemeteries in Britain, and occasionally pausing to create a mental guest list for my fantasy weekend party at a stately home in the country. This is a new fantasy, still in its very early stages and I’m just debating the inclusion of Jeremy Paxman – frisky intellect but a bit smug – when I register the silence. Haizum’s guttural gymnastics have been the soundtrack to my musings all morning, and now there is a definite lull. And I have a horrible feeling that it could be the lull.

  It is.

  One ear-splitting shriek from Helen followed by muffled barking and the demented skittering of claws across the tiled floor in the corridor outside confirm it beyond doubt. I join Helen in pursuit of a wildly excited Haizum who is racing circuits, amain (word of the day – at full speed), round the entire ground floor with something grey and furry in his mouth.

  ‘I think the great daft bugger has caught a squirrel!’ Helen gasps. ‘It must have fallen down the chimney.’

  I’m not convinced by Helen’s Santa-Claus-impersonating squirrel theory. We corner Haizum in the waiting room. His jaws are firmly clamped around his furry trophy and his eyes are full excitement. He is contemplating his next move.

  ‘Haizum! Drop, leave and sit the bloody hell down!’

  I could have been a regimental sergeant major. I swear Helen nearly sat as well. Haizum, recognising the tone of my voice as being the one I use to tell cold-calling, personal protection insurance claims negotiators to ‘bugger off’, does as he is told. Unfortunately, his antics interrupted Helen just as she was feeding the fish. The lid is still off the aquarium and Haizum drops Mrs Sweetie’s hat into the water. Within thirty seconds Haizum has, in Helen’s estimation, transformed from zero to hero – from ruthless squirrel murderer to anti-fur protester. Helen and I are as pathetic with laughter as a pair of teenage girls poring over an Instagram they have posted of their dad wearing only his pants. Mrs Sweetie’s hat is now floating in the aquarium like some sort of hideous, mutant sea anemone, and Haizum is sitting beside it looking as smug as Jeremy Paxman.

  ‘Come on, Helen, get a grip! We need to get it out before it upsets the fish.’

  More helpless, hysterical laughter follows. The kind that dislocates all your limbs, stops you breathing and makes you cry until every part
of your body hurts. After several false starts we manage to compose ourselves sufficiently to hook the hat out of the water with Helen’s ruler. The hat now looks like a drowned rat.

  ‘Right, we’ve got twenty minutes before her treatment ends. Does Georgina have a hairdryer?’

  Helen looks at me disbelievingly.

  ‘Does the Queen have a balcony bra? Don’t be ridiculous. Does Georgina’s hair ever, ever look like she owns a brush, let alone a hairdryer?’

  ‘Well, the Queen definitely has a balcony . . . but fair enough.’

  I send Helen to the house next door to try to borrow a hairdryer, and set about removing the excess water from the hat by alternately wringing it out in the sink and swinging it round and round my head. Much like drying lettuce in a tea towel if you haven’t got one of those plastic twirly salad spinner thingies. Helen arrives back with a rather ancient-looking pink hairdryer – the colour of children’s National Health glasses frames in the 1960s – courtesy of our octogenarian neighbour. It sends out a shower of sparks from the socket when plugged in and the jet of air it produces is no more powerful than the last gasp of a dying man, and smells just as bad. But eventually the drowned rat is reconstituted into a slightly damp fur hat, and we replace it on the coat stand in the hall with only seconds to spare. There is a rather distinctive aroma wafting around the whole ground floor that is a curious blend of wet fur, fish and burning, but we have no time to do anything about it other than to pretend it isn’t there.

  ‘There’s rather an odd smell in here.’

  Mrs Sweetie marches into the waiting room to be greeted for once (and I suspect it will only ever be this once) by a beaming smile from Helen, who takes her money and books her next appointment with eerie politeness. Helen and I peer through the open door of the waiting room to see Mrs Sweetie collecting her hat from the stand and adjusting it on her head in front of the mirror. She keeps sniffing the air, puzzling over the strange smell that seems to be stronger in the hall, but other than this she appears to be none the wiser. We exchange a conspiratorial expression of triumph, stifle a giggle and head off to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Just as I switch on the kettle, there is a glass-shattering scream from the hallway.