The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

by Ruth Hogan

  I climb out of the pool just as the pedalo is getting in. She smiles at me as she lowers herself into the water and inexplicably I actually smile back. One small muscle movement for her, one giant social interaction for me. I never smile at people I don’t know. As I peel off my wet costume in the changing room and rub myself dry, I catch sight of Masha in the mirror. I look as though I have shed a skin. I stare at my reflection in genuine amazement. My eyes sparkle and my cheeks are rosy. My once skinny arms and legs are toned and strong. I am growing stronger. Swimming is making me stronger. I am a very different woman now from the spectre I saw in Epiphany’s bathroom mirror just a few months ago.

  In the café, much to Flo’s astonishment, I order a flat white and a full vegetarian breakfast.

  ‘Stone the crows!’ she exclaims as she takes my money. ‘What’s got into you?’

  I smile (again!). ‘I’ve just swum forty lengths and I’m bloody starving.’

  After a busy day at work with three new clients (including a coulrophobic – coincidentally, word of the day, meaning someone with an unreasonable fear of clowns) I am looking forward to a stroll with Haizum followed by a fish and chip supper and a chilled glass of wine, but as I search for my key at the front door I can hear the phone ringing. Once inside, I dump my bag and fight my way past an excited Haizum to snatch the receiver.

  ‘Your father’s been arrested.’

  It’s Mum. This is startling news, but she doesn’t seem unduly alarmed.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Something to do with attacking someone in the park. Anyway, he wants you to go and pick him up from the police station.’

  Mum doesn’t drive, but I gather from her dissociative description of him as ‘your father’ rather than ‘George’ or even ‘Dad’, that she would be reluctant to fetch him even if she did. After years of marriage she is resigned to his resolutely confrontational approach to everything, but on occasion his bloody-mindedness wearies her. His angry letters to local councillors about the state of the roads and the pavements; his campaign for the reinstatement of corporal punishment in schools; his petition against the closure of the local library; his numerous visits to the local MP’s surgery to complain about anti-social behaviour and to offer suggestions for improvements to local community services have all but driven Mum to an isolated cottage on the edge of Dartmoor. I may not always agree with his methods, but I admire his intentions and his enthusiasm. He is incapable of apathy, a trait that is as rare nowadays as it is laudable. He is essentially an honourable if rather old-fashioned man, which sometimes renders him a little naive and therefore vulnerable in a society where watching your own back is more common than looking out for your neighbours.

  My dad can also be an awkward, cantankerous, bigoted and foul-mouthed old bugger, so it is with some trepidation that I pick up my car keys from the dresser in the hall. Haizum is not at all impressed. Having only just arrived home, the fact that I am clearly going out again without him is, in his eyes, indefensible. He heaves a heavy sigh of disgust, and returns to the sofa.

  On the way to the squat, concrete 1960s block that serves as our local cop shop, I run through a few placatory niceties in my head that I feel sure I shall have to trot out to the pissed-off young police constable who will be babysitting my enraged father until a responsible adult arrives to pick him up. Having eventually found a parking space, I push through the grimy glass doors into the crowded reception area of the police station. Places like this make me want to run away. There is some sort of bizarre ticket system in operation, rather like the ones used on supermarket delicatessen counters. A pick and mix assortment of citizens sit clutching their pink scraps of paper, waiting for their numbers to be called. They include a drunk man propped in the corner shouting and trying to take his shoes off ‘because they’re full of fucking maggots’ (judging from the smell in here, it could be true), a couple of skinny youths wearing gold chains that look heavier than their combined body weight, whispering to each other and texting on their mobile phones, and an anxious, middle-aged woman trying desperately to ignore the rantings of the man in the corner and clutching her handbag as though it might attempt to leap from her lap at any moment.

  I am not going to queue for my father as though he is a ready-roasted chicken. I go straight to the desk, which is screened by protective glass, causing tuts and mutterings from those already waiting, and tell the duty officer that I am here to collect my wayward parent. A few minutes later a young and unexpectedly cheerful-looking police officer comes to collect me. On the way to the room where Dad is waiting he explains that Dad has been charged with assault on a minor. He doesn’t go into details, but implies that they were reluctant to charge him but had no choice.

  ‘I hope he hasn’t been too difficult.’

  ‘He was a bit upset when he came in, but he’s calmed down since then.’

  ‘You mean he was shouting and swearing and threatening you with his MP, but he’s had a cup of tea and a chance to tell you his side of the story.’

  ‘He’s a lively old chap for his age, your dad, I’ll say that much.’

  The police officer smiles ruefully at me as he opens the door to the room where Dad is sitting. As soon as I see him, any irritation I might have felt vanishes. He looks physically smaller and frailer than the man I think of as my father, and just a little too relieved to see me. Once out of the building, however, he quickly regains his customary vigour and indignation, and gives a detailed account of his ‘offence’ in his usual colourful language accompanied by energetic arm-waving and head-shaking, so peculiarly European in such a British man.

  Dad belongs to a community gardening group that looks after some small flower beds and a herb garden in the park, and he had volunteered to donate a few bedding plants and do a bit of weeding (which was rather a shock to Mum as he has staunchly shown a complete aversion to any activity in their own garden other than lying in the hammock). He was keen to go after it had rained, as he said the wet soil made it easier to pull up the weeds. As he arrived, he saw a young boy of about fourteen take the life belt from its wooden housing next to the lake and chuck it into the water. The boy then defaced the empty wooden case with a can of spray paint – a single word followed by a smiley face. ‘Drown!’ Even when he saw Dad approaching, the boy didn’t stop. Dad yelled at him and was told to ‘Fuck off! You stupid old wanker!’ and hit on the forehead by the can of spray paint that was thrown at him. Dad tried to grab him but the boy jumped on his bike and, in exasperation, Dad threw the hand trowel he was holding at the boy. It missed him but caught in the spokes of his front wheel and he was thrown over the handlebars. Apparently, Dad was intending to make a citizen’s arrest but ‘the little shit’ ran off before he had the chance. Dad washed the cut on his head in the public toilets and started doing the weeding. He was, he says, going to report it to the police when he got home, but events rather overtook him. About twenty minutes later the little shit reappeared with daddy shit, and two police officers who promptly arrested Dad for assault.

  ‘But why didn’t you tell them that he threw the can at you first?’

  ‘I’m not an imbecile, my girl. I did. And showed them the cut. But that lying little toe-rag claims that the can flew out of his hand as he fell off the bike, and it hit me by accident.’

  ‘What about the life belt and the graffiti?’

  ‘He denied it. No one else saw him do it, so it’s his word against mine.’

  ‘But what about the can of paint?’

  ‘Circumstantial, my dear Watson.’

  The boy also claimed that Dad had stolen his bike and threatened to kill him.

  ‘I didn’t steal his bike, but I did threaten to kill the cheeky little bastard. They should bring back the rod if you ask m—’

  ‘You may not want to share that view too widely when the police interview you again.’

  I drive him home and stop beside his neatly mown grass verge. He doesn’t look at me, but places his hand over mine.
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  ‘My grandson would never have behaved like that.’

  And so it is that all roads lead us back to this same place. Gabriel’s grave. And it is my fault. My grief has been the magnet that pulls everyone back.

  It has to stop.

  He kisses my cheek and gets out of the car.

  ‘Make sure you put some antiseptic on that cut, and tell Mum I’ll ring her later.’

  ‘I wish I’d been holding the hoe. I might have actually hit the little sod then.’

  Chapter 33

  ART

  Here comes the bride.

  All dressed in . . . brown bombazine

  Not exactly every girl’s romantic dream. But for a Victorian bride who had the misfortune to find herself mourning a close relative inconsiderate enough to die close to her wedding day, a frock horror reality. This is going to be the fashion feature in my cemetery tour commentary. Pongee, bombazine, crape and barathea may sound like the names of canine characters in The Hundred and One Dalmatians, but they were actually fabrics unattractive enough to be appropriate for the fashioning of ladies’ mourning outfits in the nineteenth century. Mourning was a complicated, expensive and miserable business, especially for women. In fact, it was a pile of crape. An astonishing variety of crape was available, to suit every style of mourning. Norwich crape was hard and very crimped; Canton crape was softer; Crape Anglaise was embossed, and bombazine was a cheaper crape substitute, coarse and scratchy. Women had to demonstrate their mourning proficiency by wearing dull black frocks trimmed with yards of crepitating (word of the day – making a crackling sound) crape, rough, black undergarments and matt black accessories, whilst staying at home and weaving miniature works of art using the hair from the deceased (head hair, I’m hoping), to be framed, or inserted into pieces of memorial jewellery.

  Historical commentators have tried to argue that this enforced fashion moratorium was beneficial to women because mourning clothes identified the wearer as recently bereaved, and therefore attracted support and sympathy. I used to think that they were once again talking crape. Given the choice between a new frock, a pair of red shoes with killer heels and the chance to dance in them until you have blisters, and staying at home trussed up in a scratchy, black, ugly dress plaiting dead man’s hair trinkets and embroidering black-edged, mourning antimacassars, I’m reasonably confident that most women would choose the former to lift their spirits, if only temporarily. But then it didn’t work for me, did it – my freestyle mourning? Perhaps if I’d had a set of rules to follow I’d have done my time and got on with living my life years ago.

  I haven’t spotted bombazine blouses or crape coats on any members of the funeral party today. It is bright and sunny but very windy, and the trees in the cemetery are swishing and swaying against the bright blue sky. Haizum’s tail is also swishing and swaying with excitement. The wind always makes him skittish. I keep my distance from the group that is now gathered around the freshly dug grave, and take the path up towards the chapel. Parked outside are the shiny black hearse and two more slinky black limousines. The drivers in their frock coats, top hats and gloves are chatting and laughing quietly, and enjoying a crafty cigarette between them in the sunshine. One of them seems vaguely familiar. They nod at us in friendly acknowledgement as we pass and one of them smiles and says, ‘Good Afternoon.’ It’s Elvis.

  Men, of course, were not expected to spend too much of their valuable time and effort mourning. After a few weeks wearing dark suits and abstaining from any big nights out, they were good to go. Indeed, a widower could even remarry as soon as he liked, if he could find a woman desperate enough to have him. And desperate she would have to be, for although her new husband could swan about in canary yellow waistcoats, or peacock blue gloves if he so wished, she would be expected to take up mourning for her predecessor, which wasn’t much of an inducement to marry.

  I climb further up the hill, past the chapel towards the dwarves’ graveyard, and cut across the grass to a wooden bench where I sit down and survey the scene before me. From here I can see the mourners returning to the cars, and none of them is wearing black. There is green and brown and blue, and even red. But no black. It was probably stipulated in the funeral notice – ‘No black’. No bombazine. It seems to be more usual nowadays for bright colours to be worn to ‘celebrate the life of the deceased’. Lady T must be turning in her grave. Her advice on this matter is unequivocal: ‘Vivid colours, either on a man or a woman, show a disregard for the feeling of the mourners, a lack of respect for oneself, and a distinct ignorance of the laws of good conduct.’

  She would undoubtedly feel that brightly dressed funeral guests were not taking the matter seriously, but I should prefer people at my funeral to be seriously stylish in scarlet, rather than bleak and boring in black.

  The doors of the limousines are closed with a soft clunk by the undertakers; serious and dignified now in their tall hats. The cars snake slowly down the hill, under the arch of the lodge building and out of the iron gates. As the cortège disappears back into the land of the living, I wonder if the grieving family cocooned inside the long black cars are looking out at the bustling streets where daily life continues, callously regardless of their loss. I wonder if any of them is thinking, as I have done, ‘How can the rest of the world be so completely unaffected by this death? How can everything else be so normal?’ But death is normal. We just can’t admit it any more.

  There was no funeral for Gabriel. His body was never found. No body, no funeral; that’s the rule. And so there was a memorial service with music by Puccini and Postman Pat, readings from A. A. Milne and Dr. Seuss and white roses everywhere. It was beautiful. And it was the worst day of my life. But the rest of the world just carried on as normal.

  I know what you’re thinking. If a body was never found, then how did I know that Gabriel was dead? The police assured me that there was no other possibility. And besides, what good would hope have done? It would simply have been the exchange of one sort of pain for another; the pain of loss and guilt for the pain of fear and uncertainty. Where is he? Who is he with and what are they doing to him? At least the first kind of pain is constant and predictable, rather like an unexciting but dependable lover. The second flashes and fades, and then flares again like the fickle attentions of a cruel libertine, but still leaves you desolate, wasted and alone.

  I am curious about the new arrival in the cemetery. I suspect Lady T would consider it rather bad form to nosey round a new grave so soon after it has been occupied, but there is nobody about, and I could just take a look in passing.

  Instead of following the path we wander across the grass, skirting the dwarves’ graveyard and passing the honey pots. The honey pots contain the ashes of those who did not wish to be buried underground. The structure is made up of hexagonal plaques that are screwed on to the front of individual compartments in which the urns are stored, creating a collection of honeycomb cupboards that I have christened ‘the honey pots’. They are home to Bert and Effie Perkins who were ballroom-dancing enthusiasts, and amateur champions. They spent most weekends travelling the country taking part in competitions, and at least three evenings a week practising. Every Friday at 4.30 p.m., Effie would leave the optician’s where she worked as a receptionist, and visit her local hairdressing salon to have her platinum-blonde locks teased and twisted into a spectacular high-rise coiffure robust enough to withstand a gale-force wind on the pier at Blackpool and emerge unscathed, which was just as well as it often had to. The Tower Ballroom at Blackpool was one of their favourite places to dance. Bert was the assistant manager in a hardware store, and all his hair needed was a fortnightly trim at the barber’s and a generous slick of Brylcreem. At the age of sixty-eight, Bert’s gout got the better of him, and his twinkle toes were unable to tango any more. The couple continued to follow their hobby as enthusiastic spectators until Bert died six years later. Effie lived on for another ten years, eight of them cruelly confused by Alzheimer’s. She would dance around the ward of
the mental hospital that was her last home, with her head high and one hand holding out the long skirt of her imaginary dress, until someone gave her another one of the pills that switched off the music that played in her head.

  As we approach the Field of Inebriation I release Haizum from his lead with strict instructions not to cock his leg against anything he shouldn’t. One of the few headstones here with a still-legible inscription is that of Raphael Chevalier, surgeon and doctor of medicine, who died in 1886 aged eighty-two, which was a jolly good innings for a man of his times. He never married, but was a beloved uncle to his sister’s seven children, and lived alone in a large house facing the park, cared for by his irascible but devoted housekeeper, Mrs Bray. He was clearly a fine advertisement for his own profession by living such a long and healthy life (or perhaps a fine advertisement for not marrying, having no children, and paying someone else to do the cleaning). I’m always slightly worried that Raphael’s grave is within sight of the bench where Edward and I have lunch, when lunch is accompanied by wine. I worry that Raphael may be totting up the units of alcohol consumed and raising his eyebrows in quiet disapproval.

  Haizum is loping through the long grass, pausing now and then to enjoy a particularly pungent smell, or cock his leg up a tree to create one for fellow canines to appreciate. As I weave my way through the higgledy-piggledy headstones, I can hear snatches of a conversation carried by the wind. I look down the hill, and on the path below I can see Kitty Muriel – in a bright red dress and peep-toe, patent mules – walking arm in arm with Sally. Sally sees me and calls out. At the sound of her voice, Haizum gallops down to meet her. He associates her with food, which takes precedence over just about everything else, and he greets her with rambunctious enthusiasm. Sally bends down to hug him, but his participation in this display of affection is merely a ruse to allow him to shove his nose into her pocket and search for anything edible.