by Diana Evans
come let us go to the land of love
where the love light shines so bright above
we will be so happy and free
all your pains will let you be
Georgia liked this song. It was tall and jolly, it had wings. She leaned forward and stared into it like Ham on his hind legs to “No Doubt About It.” A sudden streak of sunshine bounced off the motorway and turned the road to glitter. She opened her face. They raced through glitter. Me and Kemy and Bessi with wings in the sun. It turns, how it turns, so easily and suddenly it turns!
Kemy hugged Georgia good-bye and dug her fingers into her back.
(Georgia leaves the records now. She has decided it will be silent. Night birds, outside, that’s all. Except the phone is ringing. Bessi?)
And they drove back from the airport together singing all the way. Bessi said, You’re back, I thought you’d gone, I was so scared. They stopped in at Georgia’s to get more clothes, white clothes, because she was pure again. How it turns. “These are my clothes!” She laughed. She threw a T-shirt at Bessi and it landed on her head. She laughed harder and Bessi threw a pillow. Tops and skirts and flying hats danced backward and forward and afterward, they lay down, and Bessi whispered, Remember, sweet, how it turns.
(No. Bessi is out at the concert with Darel. It’s Valentine’s Day.
“Hello?”
“Oh, Georgie, thank God, it’s Bel. Are you all right, love?”
“Yes. I am well.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely yes, it’s a lovely night. Isn’t it a ravishing night, Bel?”)
The thing was, she couldn’t sleep. She spent nights at Bessi’s and Bel’s and days with Ida and wherever she went the devil found her. One night she told Bel that she was lost. Bel led her to the mirror in her bedroom. They stood in front of it, stared into the glass.
Look at yourself. There you are, see?
No, I can’t see her, said Georgia. She’s not there.
Behind the doors they said, What shall we do about Georgia, oh, what shall we do about Georgia!
On a Wednesday afternoon, three weeks ago, she was sitting in Bel’s leather armchair. She didn’t move for a long time. Her eyes were miles and miles away. Jay, who was ten now, came and stood next to her. He said, “Auntie Georgia, do you want some chocolate? It’s a treat.” She turned to Jay and smiled for him a mechanical smile. “No thank you. It’s too sweet.” She had developed a strong aversion to sugar. Sugar was like amusement parks and love, music with words and lipstick with lip gloss, it was sudden motorway glitter and carnival hot pants, flapjack empires that weren’t famous, wild fields and Hendrix in the forest, walking the clouds with Bessi, watching the sea with Toby, all of that, all of that outside. Sugar was alive. Sugar was an accusation.
Jay looked helpless. Not a quicker breath. Not a real smile. Auntie Georgia kissed him on the cheek as if it hurt and went to lie down in Bel’s room inside joss sticks.
It was safe to lie down, because it was day. Georgia in the lake reached out her arm. She was holding a daffodil. She said, Ah it’s so peaceful here, while Georgia, the untrue Georgia, the skeleton one, lay tossing into the evening, rubbing her chest with her knuckles—because there was something in there, something worse than everything before.
After work Bessi went to Bel’s. She was very tired. Leopard’s second album was about to be released and he was refusing to do an interview with Melody Maker because they had decided not to put him on the cover. Bessi had lunch with him, and as Leopard spouted on through his fourth Glenfiddich and she tried to get a word in about the success of his album being sort of dependent on the press, she had seen Georgia walking across the restaurant in her nightgown with her hands over her ears crying Not this, not mad.
Bel had lit candles. Silhouettes flared across the ceiling. When Bessi saw Georgia tossing like that, rubbing at her chest, her legs began to shake.
They stood over the bed. She was using her whole fist now, rubbing hard, into the bone.
What is it, Georgie, what’s in there?
Half-awake, half-asleep, she said this: I see it, here, my gravestone in my chest! I can’t get it out!
Bessi and Bel leaned forward and covered their mouths.
Nor did Carol and the others have any handy tips for what to do about gravestones sitting in the heart.
So, two weeks ago, in her notebook, Georgia wrote a letter to Bessi. The words of the letter came onto the page naturally. There was triumph in the ink. When she had finished, she smiled a real smile. It’s good, eve.
She paid the overdue electricity bill of £44.12 with money borrowed from Aubrey. “You look well,” he said. She looked the brightest she had ever been. Her hair was glossy at the ends and her cheeks were shiny. In her face was the glowing extremity of life on the edge of itself. Behind the doors they said, Thank God, she’s back.
(She returns to the kitchen now, to the bench, and sits down. To the edge, to the edge, let me sail. She puts down the pen. Outside someone is whistling. She smokes a cigarette and picks a bit of tobacco off her lip. Ready now, she says, all ready. She rises up from the bench. She is fizzy inside.)
All that remained was to ask Bessi. It was ten days ago. They’d slept head to toe in Bessi’s bed. Bessi was exhausted.
Georgia got up at dawn and went barefoot into the living room. By now the way she walked had changed. The outward feet had a daze, and tapped about, as if they were no longer interested in what was in front. Bessi found her standing by the window. Smile for me, Georgia, she thought.
Georgia turned. She rubbed her hands down the sides of her nightdress. It was a matter of permission.
My Bess, she said, I want you to let me go.
Her arms lifted away from her sides as if contemplating flying. Stillness was gathering, the inside lights retreating.
Go where? said Bessi, but she knew where.
Georgia mumbled. I’ve lost my flower, I—have to find Georgia, have to—
No. Bessi turned in a circle on her feet, her hands out, fingers spread. In a high voice she said, No, Georgia, you can’t ask me that.
Please. Georgia’s eyes were tattered now. They hung in their sockets like mildew on clothes.
No, Georgia. My God, no.
(We danced together last week, didn’t we. I can still feel the heat and the bass and the storm beneath our feet. And I am sorry, darling, but I must go, for I do not fit. And you will understand, soon, that I must. Can you hear the birds?
She walks out onto the landing. She looks up at the light there. She touches her neck.)
This morning, Georgia watched Bessi not quite sleeping. The eyelashes trembling. One arm slung above her head. That pale mouth, closed.
I’m going now, said Georgia.
Where? whispered Bessi.
Home.
Georgia paused. She was afraid.
Can I come back tonight?
I won’t be in tonight. I’m going out with Darel. Come back on Monday, then you can stay for a while.
Bessi’s voice trailed off. Georgia didn’t move. She breathed in, breathed out.
See you Monday, then, she said.
Bessi opened her eyes and saw Georgia in the doorway in her dark anorak. Their eyes did not touch.
Bye, said Bessi, see you Monday.
And Georgia went home.
It is eleven o’clock. The house is dark. Just before dusk, a rainbow happened. Did you see it? I am going to find the gold. Another shock, another scale, it all is history. She is on the water, holding out her little hand, and I can almost touch it. The wind picks up, the mist begins to fall.
Georgia climbs the stairs. She throws her head back and shivers and reaches her arm up to the light. The hand is outstretched, the fingers wide apart. Sweep me from my feet. Jump. Jump. Jump away. Like a wizard you spin.
And Bessi feels her face throb. Once.
The Best Bit
14
The Best Bit
1
It’s Wednesday afternoon. Aubrey, Bel and Bessi stand outside in the rain looking at the sign initialed in the bottom right-hand corner, JP Funeral Directors. They are being watched by two blackbirds sitting on the branches of the sycamore tree in the center of the grass-topped roundabout opposite the parlor. There are red roses on the grass left over from Valentine’s Day.
Bel lifts her head. “Let’s do this,” she says, and while Aubrey fiddles with his keys and Bessi rubs her ribs, she steps forward in her scarlet stilettos and knocks on the door. Bessi draws back—it’s cold in there, it’s cold and dark and full of coffins and corpses. Though standing before them now is a man with pink cheeks and whiskers, in a tweed suit and silk bow tie. He has a morsel of cornflake trapped in his mustache.
He says, “Good morning, Mr. Hunter. Jonathan Pole.” Aubrey and Jonathan Pole shake hands and beam pinkly. In the last few days Aubrey has developed this beam for introductions that take place in establishments involved in the administration of death. He steps into the gloom with his wet feet and Bel follows, pulling Bessi in after her by the hand.
The stillness inside is unearthly. Bessi imagines the echoes of bodies being unloaded into the basement before funerals, of relatives knocking at the door weeping, of the coffins and memorial stones groaning inside JP’s catalogs over many many years. A strange laughter begins to well up in her throat. She pushes the laughter back down toward her ribs.
“Won’t you come through?” says JP, and he strides down the hall past a closed door on the left and a flight of soft gray stairs on the right. It’s warmer in his office. There is a gas heater with three molten bars in the corner and Aubrey and Bel sit down in great gleaming mahogany chairs bound in dark olive leather. Bessi chooses a stuffed Victorian throne with descending arms. It’s a rare piece, JP tells them, from an American antiques dealer in Seattle, the only one of its kind, which means of course that Bessi’s chair is best.
JP lifts a bowl of candy off his desk. “Murray Mint, anyone?”
Although she is not quite in the mood for sugar, Bessi’s hand moves toward the bowl. Her hand is not wholly connected to what she wants and she doesn’t want; it is, for now, a homeless hand. Bel and Aubrey take one each to be polite and Murray Mints are unwrapped. The sound explodes in the stillness like sudden fizz inside water.
When JP speaks, the cornflake in his whiskers moves with him.
“You’ve been to the mortuary, then?”
“Yes,” says Bel, “we just came from there.”
“I see.” He leans toward them over the desk and brings his hands together. “So,” he says. “I think it helps to be as frank as possible…Are we thinking of cremation or burial?”
Aubrey and Bel both turn to Bessi, who is staring at a photograph above JP’s head of Neasden Lane in 1902. They have discussed this already. Ida does not believe in burning bodies. Despite Bessi telling them that she knows for sure Georgia would prefer her bones to be ashes and tossed all over the South Downs and drift, and disappear, and become all of it—but Ida was adamant. There should be a stone and soil, a place to go, and maybe a bench nearby.
“Burial,” says Bessi. She whispers it, and immediately afterward she thinks she hears a thump in the next room.
JP strokes his tweed cuff. He tells them that most of his clients use the main cemetery near Harlesden, which happens to be the cluster of trees and stones that Bessi can see from her kitchen window. Bel looks worried. “Isn’t there anywhere else?”
“No, Bel, it’s perfect!” says Bessi quickly. She feels another flutter in her ribs. There is something happening to them.
Bel studies Bessi for a moment, she is panting slightly, while JP flicks his eyes around at his guests, judging for tact and timing. “And would you prefer a single-or double-depth plot?”
“How’s that?” says Aubrey.
“What is it?” says Bessi.
A secret smile pushes past JP’s lips and he glances at Bessi. “As it sounds, my dear. A double-depth grave allows family members, spouses, what have you, to lie together, one on top of the other. Bunk beds, you could say. In this case it might be suitable, perhaps…”
Aubrey beams. Bel nudges Bessi. But Bessi is confused. Does this mean, she is wondering, that both people have to be buried together, and if so, how does—
“But how does—?”
JP is used to this. In his substantial experience of catering for all aspects of dying he promptly explains: the first person is buried, a space left blank on the nameplate for the second; years or months or what have you pass and the time comes; grave is opened; second person buried; grave closed for good; nameplate filled in; a bunk bed.
“Ah,” says Bessi.
A double-decker grave. A double-decker sleep.
“Yes, please,” says her voice.
She is thinking of her flesh and bones joining the same soil as Georgia’s, her body suspended within the thick wet earth and Georgia’s belated body her foundation. It’s good, eve, it fits us perfectly, thank you, JP.
“Now,” he says. “Coffins.”
He opens a drawer and gathers from it some loose sheets of card, which he spreads out on the desk. Photographs of coffins suspended on white backgrounds, beneath each one a blurb describing the model’s credentials of wood, decor and value. “There’s quite a collection to choose from, coffins and caskets in oak, walnut, pine, mahogany…” He points at one of the photographs. “The African olive is exquisite, they’ll whip it over from Germany in a jiffy, and then there’s a variety of linings and finishes. Please, take your time.”
Bel and Aubrey frown at the cards. Bessi hears footsteps. There is a knock at the door.
“Pardon me,” says JP. “Come, come!” he shouts.
A woman walks in, with wiglike hair and long arms. Her arms reach almost to her knees and she is wearing a long black skirt down to the floor that makes her arms look longer. Her voice is a drone at the bottom of her face.
“Would anyone like a cup of tea and a coconut macaroon?” she says.
Bessi’s mouth laughs and then stops. She puts her homeless hand over her mouth. Aubrey seems bewildered but cannot refuse because he is a longtime fan of the coconut macaroon.
“Are there macaroons, Dora? Excellent!”
Dora lifts an arm, which takes a long time. She stares at JP and puts a finger above her lip where her mustache would be if she had one. She narrows her eyes. JP opens his mouth in recognition and wipes his mustache with the back of his hand. The cornflake bit falls and lands above a coffin.
Dora leaves the room.
Aubrey, Bel and Bessi huddle around the cards. They are not sure what to look for when it comes to choosing a box in which to store a lost one in the ground.
“Perhaps while Dora’s getting the macaroons we can go upstairs to the showroom?” offers JP.
“Showroom?” says Bel.
“The caskets.”
“Here?”
“Upstairs.”
“Oh.”
JP beams and rises and chants, “Follow me,” with a new bass in his voice. He throws open the door and swings out into the hall. “We’ll be along, Dora!”
The showroom is at the top of the stairs. As they climb, the sensation in Bessi’s ribs becomes stronger. It’s an odd whistling feeling, quick and spectral, like the inside of a flute. She follows Bel up the soft gray stairs and the flute is singing beneath her skin and she thinks that it might be more than grief, this feeling, as it grows, that perhaps she is becoming ill and she is going to die too, which would not be a bad thing now with the double-decker sleep and the promise of Georgia waiting, and she feels that she can almost hear her voice. It says, Find me, follow me, and I will wait for you.
The showroom is small and extremely cold. There are mammoth shelves of assorted coffins on either side of the room and an aisle in the middle for shopping, like Tesco. The hush of the empty caskets gives way to the
sound of twigs trembling at the icy window.
JP minus cornflake opens his arms and backs toward the window. He shoves his hand into the smooth white lining of a glorious sand-hued six-footer on the middle shelf. “The veneered oak is our most popular brand, very traditional. Nickel-finished handles, this one, and we’ll throw in the engraving on the nameplate for free.” He gestures toward another model near the bottom. “This one’s a darker oak, very similar except for the paneling on the sides here.”
Then there’s the brass-finished walnut. The woven willow with the raised lid that Bel quite likes. And a show-model-only of the African olive, which, frankly, is nothing to shout about.
Aubrey takes off his glasses and pretends they need cleaning. He bows his head and wipes his eyes with his handkerchief.
JP moves proudly on to a crimson, velvet-covered casket on the top shelf. He caresses it with his fingertips. “And here, the Garratt Casket. Solid fir. Just look at that velvet! This one’s called the “ripe cherry” but we have other colors, of course—purple, gold, emerald green and what have you…”
It’s grotesque. A monster of a thing and she’s not going anywhere in that, thinks Bessi.
“…and the lining’s taffeta, nice if you’re wanting an open casket?”
Bessi’s ribs whistle. The feeling begins to climb, bone by bone, and carries on. “Yes,” her voice says, “an open casket.” This is melodrama. This is masquerade. The shell that held her will be lovely as she meets the earth to rest, spruced up, the eyelashes stroked along to the tops of her cheeks and the plaits splayed out on a white cotton pillow, as they lay the body down in the five-foot-five, feather-cushioned willow, that one, that one there with the varnished curlicues along the side…
“She wants this one,” says Bessi, touching one of the curlicues. “She—”
Bel spins round toward Bessi. She sees a flicker of something in her face. Bessi is breathing fast and rubbing her ribs and looking baffled and thinking, Is it? Could it? Could she? What is it?