by Stef Penney
It’s been horrible and weird waking up every day and suddenly remembering that he isn’t here anymore, but his trailer still is, empty and kind of spooky. As soon as we could, we got someone to come and take the burned remains of Ivo’s trailer away, thank God. It was terrible seeing that. Even now, there is a big black burned patch on the ground where it stood.
When the police eventually released the body, it was nearly two weeks later. Mum and Gran went in and hung sheets on the walls of his trailer, ready for the coffin. I couldn’t help wondering what was actually in the coffin when it came from the undertaker’s. That’s an awful thing to think, but I couldn’t help it. You’re supposed to dress the dead in their best clothes, inside out—but who was going to do that? The closed coffin was put in his trailer, and the next day all sorts of people—loads from the site on the edge of town, as well as others—came by to pay their respects. Mum and Gran had to make tea all day. Granddad and I lit two fires in the clearing—one for men and one for women—and people came and sat around and chatted. I think Granddad enjoyed it; it’s the most sociable we’ve been since we moved here. Lulu was here most of the time. Once the fight over Great-uncle’s trailer was over, she helped out, fetching takeaways and making tea and things. I began to wonder what had kept her away for so long.
But in the middle of all this, something nice happened: a few days before the laying out, Stella came to see me. She got her mum to give her a lift. Somehow, everybody knows about the fire and that Great-uncle is dead, even people at school. I was so surprised to see her I didn’t know what to say at first. Gran thought we should send her away, that it wasn’t right for her to be here at such a time. And I was terribly aware that there was this great black patch of ground right there, where it had happened. Stella kept looking at it, even though Ivo’s trailer was gone by then. Luckily, Lulu was there, too, and she gave me ten pounds and told us to get out of there and go into town. So Stella’s mum drove us and dropped us at the shopping center, and we went to see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Afterward we sat in the café opposite the cinema, drinking Coke floats and holding hands. I don’t know quite how the holding hands started, but it was during the film sometime, and once it had started, it didn’t stop. That sounds callous, only a week after Great-uncle died, I know. It wasn’t as though I completely forgot about him. Even during the funny bits in the film, I sometimes thought about him, and I could tell Stella was thinking about him, too, even though she’d met him only once and it was embarrassing. I think that’s why she held my hand.
I told her about Christo, and about having to move to a house and that I would have to go to a different school. Stella took her hand back and stared into her scummy glass.
“I’ll write to you—if you want,” I say.
She sighed. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong.
“Stella?”
“You know, when you . . . went to Katie’s?”
“Yeah.”
I had been dreading this question, really, ever since that moment when she saw me in the stable and looked so angry.
“Were you . . . you know, going out?”
“Um, no. We weren’t going out. I went to her house once—she took me back to her house for tea, when it was raining. She showed me her horse; that’s how I knew where to go. I just couldn’t think of anywhere else.”
Stella raised her eyebrows in a way that made it look like she didn’t really believe me.
“And . . . ?”
“And, um, we kissed. Once. And that’s it. You know what she’s like at school. She never even talked to me afterward.”
“So you fancy her.”
I wanted to say no, but I thought she would know that was a lie.
“I kind of liked her, yeah . . . but it was just that once. And we’ve never been friends. You know . . . I’ve always liked you more than anyone. I just thought there wasn’t any, you know . . . hope.”
“Oh.”
Stella looked out the window and sucked on her straw. Her glass was nearly empty, and it made a gurgling noise. I sucked on my straw, which made a louder gurgling noise. Then she started laughing, so it was okay for me to laugh, too.
Looking into her glass, she said, “There’s always hope.”
For the funeral I’m wearing a new black suit, white shirt, and black tie, which feels very odd. But then everyone is dressed up in black and looks smart—all my family, and dozens of other people I either barely know or don’t know at all, who have come to the church to pay their respects. They all shake hands with Gran and Aunt Lulu, who are the chief mourners. Great-uncle’s other sister, Sibby, hasn’t come over from Ireland because of her arthritis, but she and her husband sent a wreath in the shape of a chair, made out of red and white flowers. There are quite a few wreaths. There’s even a wheelchair wreath. I’m surprised. It never seemed like Great-uncle had that many friends, but these people must have liked him a bit. It’s not like one of those funerals you hear about, where they have to stop the traffic for hours because of all the hundreds of people following, but there are quite a few.
Some of them shake hands with me as well, and murmur things about what a shame it is, or that it’s a blessing and he’s at peace now. Several refer to the bad luck he’s had. None of them know that he killed himself. Some of the older people say that I look like him. One elderly woman grabs my hair in both her hands—I’m not kidding; I don’t even know who she is—and calls me the very spit. I complain to Mum after, and she says of course I am not the very spit; I just have the same coloring. She says it is just the sort of thing people say—and if I had more cousins, they would probably all get it, but I am the only one. Christo is not here, as he is still in hospital—and even if he wasn’t, we probably wouldn’t have brought him. It really brings it home to me: for a Gypsy funeral, there are not many young people or children. Normally, there are loads of kids running around, masses of cousins and stuff. Not in our family. Now it’s me who is like the Last of the Mohicans. Me and Christo.
I am wondering—I suppose we all are—if Ivo will come, in disguise or otherwise, and I keep turning around in the procession, and staring hard at people I don’t know, just in case. But I don’t see him, or anyone who could be him, not remotely.
I wonder if he even knows his father is dead.
57.
Ray
In the end, it is the prospect of seeing Lulu that decides me. She did, after all, telephone to let me know the time and place of Tene’s funeral. When she told me the manner of his death, we were both silent. I couldn’t tell how upset she was. I wondered if she had seen him again before he died but didn’t want to ask.
I drive down to Andover and find the red-brick Catholic church in the middle of a postwar housing estate. I am wearing an old dark blue suit that I last wore for Eddie’s funeral. I found, when I put it on, that I have lost weight since then. This very slightly cheers me. I am glad, on the whole, that he isn’t here to see the cock-up I have made of things.
I wait in my car until almost everyone has gone into the church, and then creep in to stand at the back. I can see the family up at the front, Lulu among them. She doesn’t turn around. The back is a rather crowded place, and I find myself in a gaggle of men wearing rusty black, all of whom seem to prefer standing than taking one of the empty seats. More than one sneak out for a smoke and a chat during the short service. Several don’t bother to go inside at all.
Afterward, I wait on the fringes until the Jankos are done with the followers. But as I am loitering, trying not to look conspicuous, JJ appears beside me, looking stiff in a black suit, his hair pulled back into a ponytail. It makes him look different—more grown-up.
“Hello, Mr. Lovell.”
“Hello, JJ.”
I shake his hand.
“Thanks for coming.”
He sounds like he means it.
“Thanks. You look very smart. I’m really sorry about your uncle.” “My . . . Oh, you mean Great-uncle. Thanks.”
He looks all right—more confident than before. Maybe he is taller, or perhaps it is just the suit and the hair; you can see the man he is becoming. He tells me that they are about to move into a house with Christo. That he is making good progress.
“You’re not going right away, are you?” he says. “Auntie Lulu will want to talk to you.”
The blood thuds in my ears when he says this.
She has spoken about me to them. What has she said? He leaves me standing in the churchyard as the crowd starts to drift off and break apart, climbing into cars and vans, heading off to a pub.
I stand, feeling self-conscious and worried that she is going to walk off without seeing me, or worse: after seeing me. But at last she breaks away from the knot by the church door and comes toward me. She doesn’t smile, but I smile at her; I can’t help myself.
“Let’s walk down here,” she says, and steers me to an avenue between rows of gravestones.
“How are you?”
“I’m all right. Thanks for coming.”
“Thank you for inviting me. I’m so sorry about your brother. It’s a terrible tragedy.”
A trailer fire. It happens. I’ve heard of it now and again. And worse— my grandmother’s young cousin was playing beside the fire when her dress caught alight, and she died of her burns. But the timing of Tene’s death—so soon after hearing the news about Ivo and Rose—is it really coincidence? Again, this is not something I can ask. Not here.
Lulu takes her cigarettes out of her bag—a black leather bag, in keeping with the occasion, but still almost as vast as her other one—and, after some rummaging, finds her lighter.
“He couldn’t have gone on much longer living like that. Maybe this is better, even if it was . . .”
She shrugs and sucks on the cigarette with relief.
Some people make smoking look good. Lulu is one of them. Today she wears black, chunky-heeled shoes. A black skirt suit with a vaguely forties air. Her lipstick looks fresh, and her hair seems different, maybe lighter, perhaps a new color, with strands of bronze lifting the black.
She looks unattainable, perfect, beautiful.
“I’ve always wondered, what do you keep in that bag?”
She glances at me.
“You know. Stuff. Just in case.”
“Ready for emergencies?” (What on earth am I talking about?)
“That sort of thing.”
Her shoes tap-scrape on the concrete path. I could listen to that sound forever.
“I should apologize to you properly.”
She speaks while looking over the gravestones.
“No . . . Why?”
She throws the spent butt behind a gravestone—Ann Mendoza, d. 1923—and digs another cigarette out of her bag.
“I’ve been feeling so awful. About telling Ivo—you know. It was stupid of me. I wanted to . . . I can’t believe he’d do such a thing. Well, I can now—I can believe anything. But that he’d hurt you like that . . .”
“I was the one who behaved awfully. You have nothing to feel bad about. I told him anyway, so it didn’t make any difference.”
Sometimes, it is better to lie.
“I was so worried. I thought you were going to die.”
I close my eyes to savor it. The sweetest sentence I have ever heard. The tapping stops. When I open my eyes, she is looking at me.
“Well, I didn’t die.”
She sighs, the small frown lodged between her brows.
“No.”
“Lulu!”
The sound of footsteps hurrying nearer.
It’s Sandra, cruelly walking toward us in her tight black suit, her eyes red with crying. She stops about twenty yards away and keeps her eyes averted from my face.
“Hello, Mr. Lovell. Mum’s on at me, Lu. Are you coming with us or what? Everyone’s gone.”
“Yeah. I’m coming.”
She turns to me, at the same time backing away. I feel I’ve taken the wrong step yet again, the distance between us increasing.
She smiles, a bland, public smile.
“Bye. Thanks for coming.”
“Yeah . . . Good to see you.”
I start to follow her back toward the main gate until I realize from her nervous pace that she wants to appear before her family alone.
“I’ll ring . . . Shall I?”
I don’t say it very loud, more to myself than anything. I don’t know if she hears. Her head dips; I hope it’s a nod, but I’m not sure, and in another second she has turned a corner and disappeared. I come to a desultory halt among the gravestones. The laconic chatter of the mourners has died away. I am the only living person left.
58.
JJ
Now everyone has gone. We are all packed up, ready to pull out. Gran and Granddad are going to a site in Kent, where some of his relatives live. For the time being, anyway. Mum and I are going to camp at Auntie Lulu’s until our house is ready—it’s going to be only a couple weeks. Mum has found a buyer for the trailer. Christo is going to stay in the hospital until then. Next week I go to my new school, up in London. I can’t imagine what my life is going to be like from now on.
We cleared out Great-uncle’s trailer. The Crown Derby and a few things, like the fancy silver photograph frames, went to an antiques shop. I helped Granddad load some of the other stuff into his lorry— everyday crockery, the metal cans, knives and forks, all the heavy things, stuff that won’t burn, all that . . . and late that night we drove to a bridge over the Itchen, and threw the stuff in. No one was around. You just throw it in and it sinks, and then it’s gone.
There’s only one thing left to do here, and we’ve left it till the last minute, because the farmer who owns the site can’t know about it.
Everything left that belonged to Great-uncle—his clothes, records, radio, bedding, all those things . . . even photographs, although Mum picked out a few to keep in a drawer—everything else of his is in the trailer, just as when he was there. Granddad goes inside and pours petrol over everything. Then he comes out and shuts the door. I can hardly breathe, in case something goes wrong. I think I’m going to be sick.
He gets in the lorry and pulls out, pulling their number-one trailer. Gran drives the Land Rover pulling number two. And Mum and me are in her van with our trailer hooked up. The first time it’s moved for months. We drive slowly down the lane, and there’s no sign of anything. My heart’s racing like a mad thing. I wonder if I’m going to have a heart attack.
When we’re a mile down the road, Granddad slows to a halt. It’s dark, so you can’t see much, but I gradually notice that there is smoke rising above the trees—thin and pale against the dark blue sky at first but growing thicker and blacker. Like the last time.
With a roar, Granddad drives off. We follow.
59.
Ray
She said, “Shhh.”
She said nothing else.
I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t see. Because she covered my eyes, to be sure.
But I could smell; I could taste.
Smoke in my nostrils.
Ash in my mouth.
She must have kissed me.
Ridiculous, helpless desire swirled through me. Euphoric blurring; scopolamine fireworks—I assume that’s what they were. But I know she was real. It is a memory, not a delusion. She elicited my stuttering confession. But this is where it falls apart, this memory: in fog and fear. A sudden picture in my head, and the sound of Tene Janko’s voice: the ninth child, Poreskoro, dog and cat, male and female, neither one thing nor the other. And that is not a memory, of course, because how could it be?
So this is all I have left. Like a stupid, loyal dog, I persist in this one thing: I go to the children’s hospital every week, when Christo has his physiotherapy. Sometimes I sit in my car, if I can park opposite the entrance, or I go inside, sit in reception where I can keep an eye on the door, and wonder whether the birds in the mural opposite are meant to be parrots or swallows. Fortunately, there
is only the one public entrance: double doors with reinforced glass, they glide open automatically, to make it easier for wheelchairs to enter. Sometimes I chat to parents. All the time keeping an eye on the one door that he’d have to come in by. Only patience will do it, because there’s no one else left to ask.
I will do this every week for as long as it takes. The next ten years, if I have to, because of what he has taken from his family. From all of us, including me. For assaulting me and leaving me in the dark. For my right arm, still suffering pins and needles, which occasionally, still, altogether fails to function. As long as it takes, Ivo.
Today, Sandra sees me as she brings Christo in. She nods to me. Normally, that is all the interaction we have—she disappears into the physiotherapy unit and I don’t see either of them again until it’s time to leave. But today, to my surprise, she comes back into the main reception area and sits down beside me.
“You really think he’s going to come back?”
“Sometime. Yes.”
“You’re very, um . . .”
“Stubborn?”
“You could say that.”
“How is Christo getting on?”
“They think they know what’s wrong with him now.”
“Oh?”
“It’s called Barth syndrome.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s very rare. They don’t know much about it.”
“Can they do anything?”
“They can’t cure it. Not yet. But they can make him healthier. They said, on the whole, it’s good news.”
“Well, that’s the first step. So . . . that’s what’s been affecting your family?”