by Alan Jansen
‘Not to worry, Mom. Mr Smythe allows me very flexible terms, you know. I just told him I wouldn’t be in the office for a few days. I’m here now. Let’s make you comfy then. I’ll make you that cocoa you like so much, with creamy froth and marshmallows. Later on I’ll ask Bunter to fry us some cod for lunch. I’ll supervise the frying and see that it’s crispy and well done just like you like.’
‘Oh, my dear daughter! Whatever would I do without you? You’re so kind and nice, and it’s wonderful that old Smythe can spare you from the office. He really is a lovely man. You must introduce him to me one day. Here you are having worked for him for decades and never even once have you invited him over to my house for a spot of dinner. Do try and do something soon, Turtle. Smythe was an old friend of Cheroot, you say, and I must really meet up with him. I’m quite old, dear, so don’t leave it for too much longer.’
‘Old! Ha! You? You can never be old, Mom. Besides, ancient old Smythe seems always occupied now with all kinds of things, but I’ll speak to him and see if he could come over someday for a short visit.’
Reflecting on Mom’s views on Smythe, I must say here that I really didn’t know if the latter was a ‘lovely man’, as she put it, or not. He was amiable, yes, but then again I had always suspected, as I have said before, that the fat salary he paid me and his willingness to grant me leave at any time I wanted had something to do with Uncle Cheroot. My big salary was unusual for the type and volume of work I did. There were many weeks when I had absolutely nothing to do and would just read the daily newspapers. Smythe often passed by my office and must have undoubtedly noticed me reading the dailies and idling the time away, but he never did question me. Now and then when a big land deal was successfully negotiated and I had prepared the standard documents for signing, he would thank me for my small input in the process, but otherwise he pretty much left me alone to my own devices. He always went about as though he was much engaged in thought and that the fate of the world rested on his ageing shoulders …
Mom’s condition did not ring any alarm bells. Even I could see that it was just a severe cold, so I didn’t think too much about it, but on that same day, in the evening, she took a turn for the worse, shivering and developing a very high fever. Highly worried and concerned, I wasted no time in calling in Mom’s doctor – a reputed Harley Street man. After examining her thoroughly, he gave Mom a mild sedative and then took me into a corner, where he announced gravely, ‘It’s a bit alarming, Miss Southton. I’m afraid the cold has affected her lungs. We must get her into hospital at once. I’ll call for an ambulance. We can follow it in my car. I will arrange everything at the hospital and see that she is warded immediately.’
The hospital was one where the good doctor worked as a special consultant; he knew the staff and doctors there very well. Mom was easily admitted into a comfortable ward and bed in a matter of minutes. She was in the hospital the next two days, but after intensive treatment the doctors informed me that the end was near and that nothing further could be done. I telephoned the farm and dutifully informed Ben, hoping he would inform Belinda and Pop. I stayed beside Mom’s bed, watching her contorted breathing – chest heaving up and down laboriously. At intervals, rasping noises issued from her throat, sounding like a percolator in its last throes of making coffee. Mom was conscious all the time, despite heavy sleep-inducing drugs, and she knew she was sinking fast. As I held her hand, she looked up at me after a while, her eyes still bright and piercing as they always were despite her recent ordeal. She clutched my hand more tightly and looked at me in a most loving manner, actually managing a small twinkle in her eye. Releasing my hand, she took a handkerchief from the bedside table and, with a sudden movement despite her present weakened state, wiped off much of the ‘looking old’ make-up I had put on that morning (and every morning) to disguise my seemingly eternal youthful countenance. It wasn’t easy to wipe the paints and thick creams from my face, but she manged it with panache.
‘Ha! So much for your efforts in looking old, Daughter! I know, dear. I’ve known for many years, but I never wanted to discuss this with you,’ she said in a rasping voice, the words coming out with some difficulty. ‘Tell Cheroot when you meet up with him that I forgive him for leaving me. It would have been painful for my darling to see me age before his eyes. I know this now. … Tell him I always loved him and that I went to my rest still in love with him. I’m going now, dearest darling Turtle. I have watched over Jim and Ben from a distance, and I now charge you to do the same. They will be left a large portion of my estate, and so will you, my darling girl. Use the money wisely.’ She then took my hand once again and pressed it tight, a wonderful smile lighting up her lined but still beautiful face. She spoke again – a final time. ‘It’s so lovely, Turtle. There are green meadows and wonderful apple orchards, and I can see my darlings Inky and Gobble running to greet me. Inky looks so wonderfully well, and Gobble’s feathers are all black and shiny. Can you hear, Turtle dear? It’s Inky barking again. … He’s leaping into my arms. … Oh, darling Inky, stop licking my face, you great big bear! And Gobble, you naughty bird, stop tugging at my skirts!’
These were the last words Mom uttered. She had, it seems, known all along that Uncle Cheroot was alive, that he never aged, and that I had the same eternal gene too. I do believe that Mom really joined Inky and Gobble in some distant Shangri-La in the universe after she died. I also recollected Aislinn’s words about some special animals that are allowed into the paradise to which the ‘children of Adam’ go in the afterlife. These thoughts of mine were the one thing that comforted me at that sad moment when Mom passed away …
Pop was still alive of course, ancient and plebeian as ever, wonderfully looked after by Ben, who still adored him. Pop cried buckets at Mom’s funeral and wasn’t the same afterwards, dying just over a year later in his sleep of natural causes, as proclaimed by his doctor. I was bitter and sad that I couldn’t say a final goodbye to Pop, for at the time of his passing I had already set the wheels in motion for faking my death. They say there is no medical proof for death from a broken heart, but I know that if ever there was a human who had died of a broken heart, it was Pop. I may have painted Pop a bit negatively in this book, but Pop was the most unselfish, honest, and caring man I’d ever known in my life. That he allowed Uncle Cheroot to have intimate relations with my late mother was proof enough of this. Except for his general carefulness with money matters, he always wanted the very best for Mom. In his own way, Pop loved Mom more than anybody and anything on this earth. Although they were apart for many decades, the knowledge that she lived on was his greatest treasure – the one spark that kept him alive on the farm. True, Ben’s girls gave him much joy, but it was always Mom who gave him a reason to live on. Now with Mom gone, he just didn’t have anything as wonderful to live for.
We let Mom lie in wake inside the farmhouse for friends and relatives to bid farewell. Old Mrs Badger’s basket shop had long since vanished with the lady’s demise several years ago, but I found a respected undertaker in London who made a special wicker coffin for Mom. As she lay there inside her wicker resting place, I was struck by how beautiful she looked despite her eighty-odd years – a supremely happy expression on her face. The road by the farmhouse was absolutely jam-packed with cars that day, parked in long rows several yards up and down the narrow road. Towards the end there were so many cars that we had to open the farm gate and allow a few cars to park on our front lawn. Most of the cars belonged to various art dealers, auction house owners, art lovers, highbrow critics, and fans who knew Mom very well and had come to pay their last respects. Even Bunter had made the journey from London, crying buckets while sitting beside Mom’s wicker coffin. Mom’s obituary in the Times had drawn the press too, and there were many photographs taken and interviews conducted with the funeral guests. Ben had arranged for a caterer from Rothwell to supply a vast spread of food and drinks for our funeral guests. I found myself in the thick of things, talking to Mom
’s remaining friends who had grown old with her and many others who been involved in her life through the years. I didn’t really relish the role – it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea – but I went through the motions out of respect for my departed mother. Even Verity Hayward, whom Mom and even Uncle Cheroot didn’t exactly see eye to eye with, was present. Verity was nearly as old as Mom but had kept her looks very well. Heavily made up and wearing scarlet lipstick, she walked about the house in a grand mourning dress of black purposely cut somewhat low in the back for maximum effect. She mingled freely with the crowd as though she had been a frequent visitor to the farm and an old friend of the family, pausing now and then to speak to the various newspaper reporters present, obliging them with a few poses for photographs, and talking of Mom as though my late parent was a bosom friend. How I wished the old church ghost, or rather the elf Aislinn, would appear again and yank off her black dress and reveal her obviously heavily corseted body like what had happened at the church haunting so many years ago. I wanted to be rude to Verity – shaming or chastising her with some cutting acid remark or other – but I kept quiet, knowing Mom wouldn’t approve. Even when Verity finally said goodbye and left, I kept a low profile and didn’t say much.
Verity’s parting words to me were as follows: ‘It’s so nice to have seen you again, Turtle dear. I was told you were living in London. I suppose you were helping your famous mother in some way in the great city. I was so distressed to learn of your uncle Cheroot’s death in that awful plane crash. And now dear Julia’s gone too! How sad to lose these dear friends! Let me know how you are getting on, dear. Do phone me now and then, will you?’
I could see that Verity hadn’t changed an iota. She had been intimate with Uncle – yes – but they hadn’t parted as friends, and she never was a friend of Mom’s. She had just come to the wake to show herself off to the distinguished guests and the press, whom she clearly must have been told in advance would be at the wake. Still, I kept the peace and replied civilly. ‘Yes, it’s sad with Uncle, and now my mother, Verity.’ I couldn’t resist a caustic parting salvo, though. … ‘Mom was eighty at the time of her death, you know – a ripe old age, some would say. Aren’t you about her same age, Verity? I hope you are all right and have someone to take care of you, dear.’
Verity gave me a cold look and then gave out a dismissive high-handed snort before walking off to the lane to find her chauffer. I knew the dig about her age would get her goat …
By and by, all the funeral guests departed. Only the family and dear Bunter remained. It was quite stuffy in the old farmhouse, so I quietly slipped away into the garden and walked up to the folly lingering there a good half hour. While dandelions had begun to sprout all over the lawn and the winter-worn flower beds, I was astonished to see blood-red tulips in full bloom beside the walls of the folly. We never had tulips (Mom’s favourite flowers, and the subject of many of her still-life paintings) growing on the farm, so the plants sprouting out like they did was a conundrum. I could swear that they hadn’t been there on any of my previous visits to the farm!
I returned to the farmhouse after a while, still pondering the mysterious tulips. As it was quite late now, we made preparations for the night. Bunter was given Uncle Cheroot’s old room to sleep in. She insisted on staying on until Mom’s remains were interred inside the folly. The next morning, the funeral parlour people came along. We followed the hearse to the village crematorium in Pop’s old station wagon, driven by Ben. Returning from the crematorium, we placed Mom’s urn inside the folly beside the urns of Inky and Gobble. After a few moments of silence, and a short prayer by Bunter, we closed the heavy door of the vault behind us and returned to the farmhouse. I spoke of the tulips to Ben when I arrived back at the house.
‘Those tulip bulbs you put in by the side of the folly are just dandy, Ben. So fine and red the blooms are!’
‘What tulip bulbs, Turtle? What are you talking about? I haven’t gone and planted no tulips there! I only keep the area around the folly free of weeds and stuff like you told me to!’
‘Well, somebody must have sown those bulbs. Tulips don’t grow here naturally. They couldn’t have just sprouted by chance!’
‘Well, I didn’t plant ’em! That’s for sure. And I know Pop didn’t either.’
Obviously Ben had missed the tulips when we were at the folly earlier, so I took him back and showed them to him. He was as much puzzled about it as I, hardly believing his eyes. We looked at each other in wonder, saying nothing for a few seconds, each lost in our own thoughts. Ben broke the silence first.
‘This is unbelievable, Turtle. I just cleared the area around the folly only yesterday in anticipation of what we had to do there shortly, and I swear there was just bare earth all around the walls. Besides, even if someone planted bulbs recently, how could they have sprouted out in full bloom so quickly?’
I had no answer to Ben’s question. I had experienced so many strange events in my life that this latest one hardly made me react as a normal person would have.
Tulip bulbs sprouted out shoots in that spot every year after that spring, blossoming just once and then slowly withering until the next year. Some years later, however, when I was in France and had met with an eminent professor on occult matters for reasons I won’t disclose here in this chapter, I received a rather startling explanation for the appearance of the tulips from the professor’s lips.
‘Tulips are associated with many occult legends, mostly originating from Persia, Russia, and the Middle East, Madam Southton. The Persian poet Hafiz made them immortal in his songs, elevating them even above the rose, while the sultans of the Ottoman Empire had fields of them growing in their palace gardens and had special ceremonies involving the flower. In England there is the legend of the tulips in Dartmoor connecting the bloom to pixies – night beings often found and spoken of in your country. Pixies honoured a benevolent old woman who lived in Dartmoor – a woman who had always helped animals and birds to survive the harsh Dartmoor winters by placing out food for them daily. She knew of the pixies’ existence too, and put out special food for them as well. They say tulips mysteriously sprouted on the old woman’s grave every year after her death, and that when she lived pixies would come out at night and dance for her entertainment, holding tulips in their little hands.’
There was another strange happening during Mom’s funeral wake. Pop, Ben, Bunter, and I didn’t go to bed that night, keeping a silent vigil beside Mom’s wicker coffin. At one point, we clearly heard the bells of the village church ring out. Johns the vicar was close to ninety now, old and frail, and he had all these years kept his side of the bargain with Aislinn and didn’t sound the bells at the hour. Nor did he ring them for every small function the church held. Johns was allowed to stay on by the church’s governing body after his official retirement age and had an assistant now, a young acolyte priest whom the bishop’s office in Rothwell wanted trained as Johns’s successor. Johns had very clearly told his successor that on no account was he to ring the bells too often. He didn’t reveal the story of Aislinn’s church occupation, for he knew the young priest would just dismiss the ‘haunting’ as the fantasies and ramblings of an old man. Johns untruthfully told him instead that the bells had been examined by a London metal expert who had explicitly recommended that the bells be used very sparsely, as the old metal in them showed signs of metal fatigue and could crack or break altogether. The old vicar knew that the bishop’s office in Rothwell would never cover the costs of new church bells and that, as a result, his deal with Aislinn would probably last forever …
Anyway, to speak further about the ringing. … The church bells rang out loud and clear nearing midnight. Initially they sounded a bit like the special mourning bell-ringing that Johns used to ease out from the old bells for funerals in the past, but after a few chimes I could swear that the bells chimed out in tact to the opening of the fifth movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. I later on c
ame to know that both Johns and his assistant, awakened by the loud ringing, had rushed over to the church from their quarters to see who was ringing the bells. They swore later on that no visible being was actually pulling the ropes, but that they clearly saw the ropes going up and down as though an invisible entity were tugging at them. Johns’s assistant was frightened out of his wits – utterly flabbergasted by what he had seen. It took several weeks for the poor fellow to get over what he saw, or rather what he didn’t see. Old Johns, though, just smiled quietly to himself as he saw the ropes moving up and down and heard the bells ring out so distinctly … He knew who had rung out the funeral chimes, and perhaps even why. I knew too. … As with the Dartmoor legend that the French professor related to me, elves, just as with pixies, rarely forgot a good human deed. Although Aislinn detested the sound of the bells, the bell-ringing was definitely Aislinn’s work – no doubt about that at all. He couldn’t reveal himself to anybody at the wake for fear of frightening the funeral gathering, but in his own clever way he had shown his appreciation of Mom’s lifetime and deeds. He had not forgotten her generous gesture in allowing him and his kinfolk to pluck our delicious fruit year after year.
That night before going to bed, I showered in the upstairs bathroom, and carefully cleaned my face, removing the heavy make-up that I was forced to wear daily to disguise my vampire-like eternal good looks. I was on my way back to my room when I accidently met Ben on the landing. Ben was astonished to see me as I really looked. I saw the expression of disbelief and wonder in his eyes as he gazed upon my young face. He didn’t say anything, just opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish. I beat a hasty retreat before he could recover and say anything, mumbling an incoherent goodnight, hoping to high heaven Ben would put our meeting on the landing to a bad dream the next day when he woke up.
After my meeting with Ben on the landing sans my make-up, I made a groundbreaking split decision to break away from Pop, Ben and his family, and all my friends in London. I had to disappear officially and for good! Somehow I had to fake my death, and I was fast determined to do so. Mom was gone, Inky was gone, Gobble was gone, and Uncle had died nearly three decades prior. I could no longer live the charade-like existence I was living. With Mom’s death, my final important link with my family was severed for good. In any event, I was sick to the teeth of hiding my eternal youthful looks. I positively hated going through the routine of applying my ‘old age’ make-up every single damn morning after I awoke. As far as travel was concerned, at some point the British customs authorities would react if I needed to renew my passport once it was due to expire and wonder over my old age. I could of course continue to use make-up and disguise my face to look old, but at some point I would not be able to do that anymore. Officials at the customs would be flabbergasted to detect that I was one hundred and fifty years old, or two hundred, or three hundred, assuming I lived that long. … How would anyone react if they found out I was a hundred and fifty, or heaven forbid, two or three hundred years old?