by Nina Stibbe
And then because of that, directly because of that, him dying. In the Flying Pea. Her car. That she had taught him to drive in.
So we didn’t discuss any of it. We asked each other if we were OK and my mother went to visit Angelo and Miss Smith. But on the whole we talked about Faber & Faber and Danny’s development at Curious Minds–and how he was a marvellous reader already, and showing signs of becoming a great artist.
I lay in my old bed, in my clothes, under Andy’s autumn leaves duvet, surrounded by his things. His Mickey Mouse alarm clock, his copy of Down and Out in Paris and London, a page marked with a tattered yellow ribbon, the framed photograph of a man who looked like Pablo Picasso in high-waisted swimming trunks, lighting a woman’s cigarette with the end of his own, like a kiss–who I realized with a shock were his parents, the ones who’d ended up taking cyanide tablets to avoid hospital, or whatever actually happened.
The doorbell went and I heard voices. It was Reverend Woodward, of course. I fixed Ian Dury and went downstairs. I’d decided I might as well let Reverend Woodward dish out his vicar balm. It seemed unfair to keep avoiding him.
My mother brought us coffee and then left us alone. The coffee wasn’t frothy, which I thought a bit lazy–under the circumstances. I raised something with Reverend Woodward that had been troubling me for a while.
‘I’ve always found the name “Woodward” tricky to say.’
This was nothing new, and he shrugged. ‘The easiest thing is to just say Wood-wood–two woods!’ he said.
‘It’s annoying,’ I said, ‘don’t you think, having to say it a certain way and not being able to just say it as it looks?’
And he said, ‘Yes, it really bugs me too.’
It really bugged him.
He suddenly looked earnest and said, ‘I really am so sorry.’ And I realized he thought our discussion about his name was really about Andy. It was one of the most irritating things I’ve ever experienced.
‘I don’t know why you’re sorry–it’s not your fault,’ I said.
And then he started saying he didn’t know why we always told each other we were ‘sorry’ and that being sorry implied blame somehow and that that was due to subtle changes in language usage over time. Vicars, even nice ones, seem to think the rest of us are idiots.
‘If I’m supposed to just say “Wood-wood”, why is it spelt Wood-ward?’ I persisted.
He laughed nervously.
‘Well, I suppose I could start pronouncing it “Wood-Ward”,’ he said.
‘Or you could spell it “Woodwood”.’
‘Life is so darned difficult.’
My mother crept in at that point and asked if we’d like another drink. We didn’t. I think she wanted to join in, but I didn’t look at her so she went away again.
‘It’s not that I’m sad,’ I said. ‘I can live with the sadness. It’s the…’ I began, then paused, needing a little break, and Reverend Woodward waited. As he waited, my opinion of him soared.
‘It’s the mystery of it,’ I said. ‘Have you any thoughts on that?’
‘You can think of the fun you had together,’ he suggested. ‘Think of the times you really laughed.’
I paused and thought of Scamp, the terrier that Clarence Beale had run over in the forklift truck, which wasn’t funny at all but had made Andy fall about. And I remembered a video of a woman popping a ping-pong ball out of her vagina–and I snorted. This was what they must teach them in vicar school, I thought, I mean, the memories thing, not the ping-pong.
‘I wondered if you might call in on Tony Nicolello?’ he said. ‘I think it would mean a lot to him.’
I rolled this over in my mind, imagining the owl-scarer fighting tears, as I eulogized Andy. My mother had already been; she’d rushed over there with an apple tree sapling from Glebe Gardens to plant in the garden in his memory–knowing they wouldn’t want anything decorative–and had presumably told Tony what a great union leader Andy would have made and that, had he lived, he might successfully have campaigned for the release of political prisoners abroad. I could only imagine his brother’s bemused response.
‘My mother’s already been,’ I said. ‘She took them a tree.’
‘Yes, but I think he’d like to see you. You were Andy’s girlfriend, after all.’
‘I know,’ I said, although I didn’t.
‘I’m going over there tomorrow and thought I could take Andy’s things to Tony, if you agree–and you could come with me.’
I told him I’d think about it.
Reverend Woodward seemed happy to leave it there but I found myself asking, in a whisper, if he thought my mother was to blame for Andy’s death. I knew this was putting a lot on his plate, especially as she was just a room away and the walls in my mother’s house were paper thin–but it was his job after all, as he often said.
‘I can’t help thinking it,’ I whispered.
‘No. Your mother is not responsible in any way,’ he whispered back, emphatically.
‘Really?’
‘She’s there in your mind like a hat stand,’ he said, ‘or a coat hook.’
‘Yes, a coat hook, an already groaning coat hook,’ I said, and in my mind I pictured Andy as a flimsy cagoule with old things in the pockets, no longer waterproof, no longer useful, hanging mournfully, uselessly, on a lovely curled brass hook by a greasy little loop in its collar.
‘Do people blame her, do you think?’ I asked.
‘I think people sometimes let their imagination run away with them and arrive at a strange verdict, but it’s not good for anyone, and it’s deeply unkind.’
And with that, I reached into my mind, grabbed the back of the cagoule and pulled it sharply downwards, until the greasy little hoop in the collar broke away and it fell to the floor tiles. Reverend Woodward nodded, and my mother appeared with a tray of unrequested coffee.
Later that day my mother and I cleared Andy’s room. She emptied the drawers and cupboard, ‘in case there are things Andy wouldn’t want you to see’. Meaning copies of Razzle, presumably, or letters from other lovers. Apart from his clothes, all she found was his ancient wind-up musical teddy bear, which chimed ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic’ and rotated its head.
My mother wondered if I’d like to hang on to it. ‘Or would it be like being haunted?’ she said. I put it into a bag and its muffled chimes continued intermittently.
Soon we had everything neatly packed and boxed up and ready in the porch for Reverend Woodward to take to Tony Nicolello and I remember clapping my hands, as if to brush away dust.
Reverend Woodward turned up the following afternoon.
‘I’ve come for Andy’s things,’ he reminded me, ‘to take to Tony.’
I pointed to the boxes in the porch, and between us we loaded them into his car. ‘Bye then,’ I said, and scurried inside.
‘Hang on,’ he called. ‘Will you come with me? You were going to think about it, remember?’
My mother appeared. ‘We’d be glad to.’ She’d remembered and was ready and had put down a few glasses of wine. Her teeth and lips had a purplish tinge.
My mother told my brother Jack to look after Danny while we were gone, ran her fingers through her hair in the mirror, picked up her bag.
‘Ready?’ she said, but I hung back.
Reverend Woodward stretched out one arm, like Jesus on the shore.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said, and we all piled into Mrs Woodward’s car, the one I was learning in, and there, in the back, was my copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide that I’d lent her.
The Reverend’s terrible driving was comical–he twice hit the kerb so badly that I saw sparks fly up on the passenger side, and it broke the solemn mood. He never once looked in his mirror before manoeuvring, but just ploughed onwards, crunching gears, turning and braking suddenly with no consideration whatsoever for other road users. How ironic it would be, I thought, if we ended up dead and other vicars had to visit our grieving relatives.
My mother, an adv
anced driver, looked uncomfortable in the passenger seat. ‘Are you driving this badly for comedy purposes?’ she asked.
‘Oh, sorry,’ he said. ‘Am I driving badly?’
‘Yes, you’re going to get us killed. Pull over, let me drive.’
‘But you’ve been drinking,’ he said, pulling in to a bus stop.
I drove.
‘They seem like a very eccentric family,’ my mother said, turning to Reverend Woodward who was now crouched in the back seat. ‘The Nicolellos.’
‘Yes, they live a fairly alternative lifestyle,’ he said, ‘but a lot of what they believe makes sense… worry about the planet, you know, the ozone layer and “Plant a Tree in ’73” and all that, and the exploitation of the working man.’
‘Were you here for the parents’ suicide?’ she asked, making it sound like a community event.
‘Their deaths were almost immediately after we arrived.’
‘Bad luck,’ said my mother. ‘I hope you didn’t take it personally.’
‘It got the rumour mill going, and that can be tricky to deal with in a parish, very unsettling. The bishop worried it might lead to a spate, you know. But fortunately it didn’t.’
Tony Nicolello came out to the car and invited us in. The shack was surrounded by a privet hedge, my least favourite sort, and this one was a really bad specimen, being a patchwork of the usual flat, dead green and that awful lime-green variety, and the ground underneath hard, dry clay. This was the hedge Andy had grown from seed.
Things were slightly awkward to begin with. We stood around in a sort of kitchen area and then, after Tony’s wife appeared, we were ushered through to the living room–a lean-to containing three sets of double bus seats arranged around a walnut coffee table, which I recognized as my grandmother’s, and which had a cutting from the Leicester Mercury lying on it. I hadn’t yet seen Andy’s death written down and was momentarily taken aback, mostly by the words ‘man’ and ‘dead’.
Man Dead in Accident Black Spot
Andrew Nicolello (24) lost control of his vehicle on the corner of Melford Road, Leicester at approximately 11:00 p.m. on Monday night and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Tony asked my mother, ‘Which one of you was Andy’s girlfriend? We could never quite work it out.’
Neither my mother nor I responded but Reverend Woodward handled it.
‘Lizzie was Andy’s girlfriend,’ he said, flipping his hand in my direction, ‘and Mrs umm… Vogel, Lizzie’s mother, was just his landlady.’
My mother rambled about her relationship with Andy being meaningful but platonic–almost like mother and son, until Reverend Woodward piped up again to put a stop to it. He was delighted, he said, honoured, that they’d asked him to do the funeral, he said, and was there anything particular they’d like? Hymns, readings and so forth.
Andy’s brother was very quiet. ‘I’ll have a think about it,’ he said.
‘If there’s anything I can do to help, with the funeral or anything,’ my mother said, ‘just say.’
‘Actually, the funeral…’ said Tony. ‘If you could arrange it, plan it, or whatever, seeing as you’re so close to the vicar, that would be…’
And she said, ‘Of course.’
‘Would you or your family like to do a reading, or speak about Andy, at all?’ asked the Reverend.
‘It’s not really my sort of thing,’ said Tony, looking anxious.
‘Well, you don’t have to decide that now.’
‘No, really, I’d… we’d just prefer for you to arrange it, if you could just not delve into old history, you know.’
‘As you wish, Tony. That’s fine, but call me any time if something pops into your mind. Ring any time.’
Tony’s wife, whose name I forget, rather shyly showed us some photographs. Andy in school uniform, Andy getting into a little rowing boat–you could see the water in the bottom, among the ribs–a school portrait that made him look like Charlie Chaplin, and a lovely one in which he had an owl perching on his fist.
I heard myself say, ‘Oh, he loved owls.’
And Tony shot a look at me.
And then I remembered the London photograph. God, I thought, if ever a photograph was needed, it was that one–the one of us kissing.
And I suddenly knew, at that precise moment, there in Tony Nicolello’s shack, four days after Andy had died, that the photographer hadn’t lost his notebook. I laughed to myself–there was no photograph, there never had been. There’d been no film in his camera.
It was a huge and complex realization and I needed to ponder it.
I stopped listening to proceedings in the lean-to lounge. I sat back in the bus seat, closed my eyes and remembered it, all of it: arriving at Charing Cross station, walking to Trafalgar Square, the pigeons, the people, the photographer who looked like Frank Sinatra, the pose, click! The laugh, the kiss, click! I fantasized about going back there, tracking him down, asking where our photograph had got to and then opening his empty camera.
On the way home my mother said, ‘We need to get things sorted as soon as possible,’ and Reverend Woodward joined in.
‘You’re right,’ he said. He’d taken the passenger seat this time. ‘So, Lizzie, do let us know if there’s anything you’d like to include.’ And they started to plan the funeral right there in the car. ‘Funerals should be celebratory, if at all possible,’ said Reverend Woodward, ‘but of course it’s so hard.’
They admitted that Andy’s would probably be a strange affair. They’d do their best but in truth, no quantity of pop songs would turn it into a celebration of his life. There’d be no poignant tear-stained laughter about funny things Andy had done.
‘Our only hope is to get it off on the right note with a splendid sermon from you, vicar,’ my mother said, and then added that it was a tall order because he hadn’t really known Andy.
Various ideas for prayers, readings and music were chucked about. Reverend Woodward considered my suggestion for music–‘Bat Out of Hell’–potentially provocative. I said yes to Pam Ayres’s poem about teeth, and to ‘Blackbird’ by the Beatles, but no to ‘Bright Eyes’. I privately wondered whether we should bring Willie Bevan in on the planning but then thought not in case he tried anything with my mother.
‘I always feel sorry for the congregation when the funeral is bleak,’ said the Reverend.
‘Yes, and the poor choir! God, death is so gloomy,’ said my mother and then went on to describe her own funeral, which would include Nunc Dimittis (the Walmisley arrangement) and Psalm 67 because of its descant at the end. She couldn’t quite decide between ‘Rejoice in the Lord Alway’ by Purcell and ‘Thou Knowest Lord the Secrets of Our Hearts’, and the hymns would be ‘All People that on Earth Do Dwell’ (the Vaughan Williams Old Hundredth arrangement) and then ‘Angel Voices Ever Singing’–in a high key, to brighten things up a bit, and finally the organ playing Widor’s Toccata and Fugue to walk out to.
Reverend Woodward was ecstatic to hear this. ‘Gosh, how lovely,’ he said, humming one of the tunes in question.
My mother was very pleased with herself. ‘I planned it while I was waiting for my Fothergill repair,’ she said. ‘You know, in case something went wrong.’
‘Well, it’s going to be magnificent,’ said the Reverend. ‘I look forward to it immensely.’
‘Could we use it for Andy?’ I asked. ‘Seeing as you survived.’
‘No, we bloody well couldn’t,’ said my mother.
And we chatted like that until we got back home. Visiting Tony Nicolello had been a good thing to do, I had to admit it.
The next day, for the third day running, Reverend Woodward appeared. He was struggling with the funeral words, apparently.
‘I’d be very grateful if we could have a talk about Andy,’ he said. ‘I’m struggling rather.’
I agreed, though it occurred to me that he might not really need to talk about the funeral sermon at all, that he was trying to help me come to terms with everything. I told h
im interesting, sermon-worthy things about Andy–his eating my display fruit, his long baths, his love of electrical appliances, talcum powder, restaurants, the pride in his work, his fury at the dental profession, and the cleverly worded placards–while the Reverend pretended to take notes. I briefly imagined Andy there, in Mr Holt’s chair, listening, chuckling. And actually, hats off to the Reverend again–it was very nice to talk about Andy, cathartic and satisfying.
Then, all of a sudden, the funeral was happening. The church was crammed with elderly people from the village and it felt cold and a bit Christmassy. The organ played, and people sang ‘Morning Has Broken’ but incredibly slowly and with none of the beauty of Cat Stevens. And then Reverend Woodward spoke.
28. The Sermon
‘We are gathered here today to remember Andrew Julius Nicolello.’
Pause.
‘Andrew, or Andy as he was known to his friends and family, produced the best dentures in Leicester and, in so doing, he made people smile, literally. Andy Nicolello’s dentures fitted like gloves–gloves for the mouth. Better than gloves, actually. His work was exceptional.
‘All the dentists who use the services of Mercurial Laboratories–and I’ve spoken with a number of them–had started to request Andy particularly, and many asked what his secret was, and none would believe him when he told them it was simply the slight closing of the bite that made them so comfortable. Andy’s dentures, once fitted, needed no adjustment whatsoever. People left the surgery smiling, eating corn on the cob and apples, as they had in their pre-denture days–as my own wife can attest.
‘It wasn’t just dentures, either. Andy’s porcelain crowns fitted so well, they sometimes didn’t even need cement. His inlay work, too, was invisible even to the most sensitive of tongues.
‘Andy was a conscientious, hard-working lad whose high and exacting standards in his professional life were mirrored in his personal life. After a bath, for instance, Andy would dry his whole body thoroughly with a hairdryer so as not to leave damp towels lying around. He ate fruit willingly and was kind to animals. A keen birdwatcher and lover of the countryside.