The counselling unit arranged us in a circle and asked if we wanted to talk about dying. We could ask any question we liked, she said. There was only a soundscape of throat-clearing and raspy breath and stomach grumbles. We all got very busy, doing nothing. Steam rose from her wet hair and clothes.
‘I’d rather talk about sex, if you don’t mind,’ said Finty. ‘Anyone had it lately?’
The Pearly King laughed so much his arm fell off.
No, it did. He admitted that he hadn’t strapped it on to the stump, he’d just propped it inside his jacket sleeve. The straps make him sore. Barbara made a happy humming noise to cover a fart. The counselling unit opened her file and examined her notes.
Perhaps we should talk about music instead, she suggested. Did anyone want to make a request for their funeral? A lot of people die, she explained, without sharing their favourite songs or poems. ‘And it is your funeral,’ she said. ‘You must say what you would like. It can take enormous pressure off friends and family if they know your favourite songs.’
‘None of us has got any friends or family,’ said Mr Henderson.
‘Speak for yourself,’ said the Pearly King. ‘Last time I asked, I had twenty grandchildren.’
‘And I have my neighbour,’ added Barbara. ‘She is just too busy to visit.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Finty. ‘My life has been a right mess. Married at sixteen. Divorced at seventeen. And that was the best bit. No one’s gonna shed a tear for me. When I go, you can stick a match under me and turn on the radio.’
This time when the Pearly King laughed, he held on to his shoulder.
Mr Henderson rolled his eyes and stared at his watch. A patient with a tartan dressing gown – he arrived yesterday – had already closed his eyes.
I felt sorry for the counselling unit. I wrote something in my notebook for Sister Catherine to read out.
‘Queenie would like a song by Purcell called “O Solitude”. And also “Mighty Like a Rose”, sung by Paul Robeson.’ My heart was pounding.
‘That’s very lovely,’ said the counselling unit with such enthusiasm that the new patient was woken and cried out in alarm. ‘Would you like to tell us why?’
I wrote in my notebook that I used to listen to the Purcell on my record player in Kingsbridge. I’d borrowed the record from the public library. I wrote that it reminded me of a friend’s son, though I was careful not to name him.
The second song, I wrote, was one of my father’s favourites, and so it had become one of mine. He used to sing it from his workshop, and my mother would stop her housework and listen. Sometimes you can love something not because you instinctively connect with it but because another person does, and keeping their things in your heart takes you back to them. It took a while to get all this down in my notebook. No one complained, not even Mr Henderson. It was the first time I had written about my funeral.
I didn’t add that I still possess the Purcell record. I’ve never stolen anything in my life, apart from that. The record department of Kingsbridge library could buy a whole new classical section with my penalty fine.
If there is still a library in which to put the classical section, of course.
But I expressed none of this in the dayroom. ‘You’re a class act, Queenie,’ said Finty. ‘I’d be that gal on the Titanic. With her arms out and everything. What’s that song?’
‘Do you mean “My Heart Will Go On” by Céline Dion?’ asked the counselling unit. ‘That’s a popular choice for funerals.’
‘My third wife chose it for our wedding,’ said the Pearly King.
‘Also weddings,’ added the counselling unit.
‘My third wife’s heart didn’t go on for very long. She took off with the barman.’
‘Céline Dion has a new scent out,’ piped up Finty. ‘So does Jade Goody.’
‘Isn’t Jade Goody dead?’ asked Mr Henderson.
‘She still has a new scent out,’ said Finty.
‘Shall we get back to our funeral music?’ called the counselling unit.
Things livened up after that. Finty told us she’d like everyone to wear bright colours at her funeral and have a bop in the car park. She didn’t want us to hang about being sad in the Chapel of Rest. (‘No offence, Reverend Mother,’ she added. ‘But it gets nippy and a bit serious in there.’) Everyone laughed, including Sister Philomena, and Finty told the counselling unit she could wear her purple, if she liked. Then the counselling unit went very quiet, very still, as if she’d been touched inside her clothes, and said, ‘Do you mean you want me at your funeral, Finty?’
‘’Course I do. I need all the friends I can get. At the reception I want Cornish pasties and alcopops in all them colours. There can be lemonade for any AA geezers that turn up, and also the nuns.’
Others began to join in. The Pearly King said he hoped there would be no trouble at his funeral. His ex-wives had issues; his daughter’s wedding had cost a thousand pounds in damages. Then the new patient said he’d like to be buried in a willow box, and Mr Henderson asked, Willow? What’s wrong with the traditional wooden coffin, brass fittings, silk lining? The Pearly King growled, That’s fine if you can afford to bury cash, and the new patient said, Some of us have got families to think about, and Mr Henderson shouted, Do you think I like living alone?
As the noise rose, the counselling unit went pale. ‘One at a time! One at a time!’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Finty. ‘We’re having a nice time. This is living.’
Well, that did it. Everyone was howling, even the counselling unit. And Finty was right. We’ve spent so much time recently, all of us, being examined and cut open and having bits removed. We’ve spent so much time being the recipients of bad news. It doesn’t lend itself to jokes, all that. But here we were, rejects, you might say, or at least at the end of the line, and it was a relief, a blessed relief, to look at the end of the line and stop being so fearful and argue like anyone else. Even if the topic in question was our funeral plans.
‘What about you, Queenie?’ said the counselling unit. ‘What do you want?’
I thought a little and then I wrote, Please scatter my ashes on my sea garden.
Barbara began to sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’. She sat with her hands in her lap, and also her eye. (‘I swear that thing’s moving,’ said Mr Henderson.) Barbara’s voice was thin and pure, like a veil of sea mist when it swirls in with the tide and hangs above the branches of my garden. Then the Pearly King began a deep bass accompaniment, followed by Mr Henderson. The new patient managed a few bars, and Finty nodded at me and said, ‘Come on, Queenie. Hum along, gal.’
I’m not saying we were a choir. I’m not saying we got the same words or even a tune. But it felt a small gift, to open my mouth and no longer be one person.
Do you remember? ‘Mice blind three’? I remember. When I sang to you it was like showing you my feet without my shoes.
After the song, the counselling unit blew her nose and apologized. The Pearly King said, ‘You cry if you want. God bless you for coming. There’s a load of people that wouldn’t even cross the threshold. Would you like to take my arm?’ But I think by this point she feared he meant without the rest of him attached, so she said she was all right, really. It had just been a strange day, she said. Strange but wonderful.
‘That’s the bugger with funerals,’ said Finty. ‘All those nice people singing songs you like and saying stuff about how good you were and you’re not even there. I’d rather hear it now.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ murmured the Pearly King, ‘I think you are one in a million.’
Finty went the colour of boiled beetroot. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
‘I do, darlin’, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true.’ He gave a soft smile and kept his deep-brown eyes on Finty. He must have been very handsome once.
‘Aw, fuck no,’ she cackled. ‘Get off, will you.’ She couldn’t speak for smiling after that.
Over tea, Mr Henderson kept looking at
me. I thought it was because of the mess I had made down my linen serviette, but he was still doing it when the plates were gone and everyone had left the tables. He stood and limped towards me and stopped his walker at my side.
‘I like Purcell,’ he said.
‘So is it true?’ asks Sister Mary Inconnue once she has finished typing. She is reading through her pages, checking for mistakes. She pulls out her correction pen and amends an error.
I give her a questioning look.
‘Was today the first time you have thought about your funeral?’
I nod. Yes.
‘And was that OK?’
It was just there. The thought. That’s all. It wasn’t anything else.
Sister Mary Inconnue smiles. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘That’s good.’
Patience on a monument
HAROLD? I SAID.
It was your first week back at the brewery. Do you remember? I need you to think back, because it is very important that you understand.
You’d caught the sun while you were away. I tend to look sore when I tan, but your skin was honey-coloured. There were little gold flecks in your hair, and your eyes were even bluer than I remembered. It had clearly suited you, the good weather. I would have liked to throw my arms around you, just with relief. The relief of you being at work again, and Nibbs being gone, and the smell of your car, and your hands on the steering wheel. You in the driving seat, me at your side.
‘Something tickling you?’ you said.
I had to pretend I was thinking of a joke. It wasn’t a very good one. Two robbers and a pair of knickers. Oh, ha ha ha, you went. Laugh lines sprang all over your face. ‘That’s good,’ you said. ‘That’s good.’ And so even I began to see the funny side of it.
Later I asked how you’d enjoyed your holiday, and you said, ‘Yes, yes.’ Then you said, ‘Did you miss me?’ Only you said that too in a joke way, as if no one would miss you.
Make me a willow cabin at your gate and call upon my soul within the house. ‘I have a life, Harold,’ I said with a smile.
‘So what did you get up to?’
‘Oh, the usual.’ I couldn’t look at you. I thought of David jumping at the Royal, the bouncer flexing his shoulders. I thought of the concentration on David’s face as I taught him to foxtrot.
‘You all right there?’ you asked. And I told you I needed to stop. I needed to tell you something. Maybe it was the sun, you said. And I said maybe. I just needed air—
‘There’s something worrying me,’ I said.
You pulled the car over at a Little Chef café. Try to remember this, Harold. You found me a table out of the sun and went to the counter to order me a cup of tea. I watched you tugging your wallet from your back pocket and saying something or other – I couldn’t hear what it was – to make the till girl smile.
Harold? I began.
But you interrupted. Did I want sugar?
I tried again. Harold? I said.
What about more milk?
No. Thank you. No more milk. My tea is fine as it is. Harold—?
‘My wife worries too,’ you said. It came out of the blue.
‘Oh?’
‘She worries about our son.’
‘Why?’ I felt suffocated.
‘Oh, you know. He’s just growing up, I guess. She missed him while we were away. I don’t think it was her favourite holiday.’
It was my cue to tell you I’d met David. That we’d been dancing. But now you had told me about Maureen worrying, I couldn’t find the words. It seemed cruel. And in order to tell you about the dancing, there were so many other things to say too – that, like you, I knew how to dance. That sometimes I went to the Royal in order to pretend that a stranger was you. That I had rescued David once on the High Street. That he’d asked me not to tell you about the Royal. That, yes, Maureen could be right to worry. Your son was a handful.
All in all, this was a lot of things to say in a Little Chef.
Face to face with you across a laminated table, I felt the words dry up. I put my head in my hands.
‘Headache?’ you said.
‘I’ll be OK.’
I went to the bathroom to splash my face. Catching myself in the mirror, I was appalled to see how washed out and strained I looked.
We walked back to your car, and already your son had grown like a small dark crack between us.
I wish I had told you the truth that day.
The boy who was allergic to blue
IN THE NIGHT, I am woken by footsteps. Up and down the corridor.
‘Come to bed, Barbara,’ calls a nurse. ‘Let me help you.’
I try to rest, but sleep comes on and off. I am woken by three visions of David. Three separate memories. I make a note in my mind. Dancing. Smile. Gloves. I think the words over and over so that I will not forget.
The morning rituals are complicated. The duty nurse spends a long time examining my neck and jaw. ‘Do you feel any pain?’ she says, but I only point to my notebook. I want to tell you those memories, those snapshots, Harold, that came to me in the night. A father cannot see his son with the eyes of a stranger, and so he misses things. It is one of life’s small tragedies.
Come.
This first memory is taken three weeks after David first followed me to the Royal. I haven’t been back since then and I think it should be safe now. But David’s waiting for me at the bus stop.
‘What happened to you?’
I make a limp excuse. He gets on the bus with me. He doesn’t even ask. My heart sinks.
He wears his big coat. I wear my ball dress. I have my shoes. He’s swapped his Dr Martens boots for a pair of trainers. At the Royal, he follows me on to the dance floor and asks if we can do the foxtrot. Slow, slow, quick quick slow, slow. It astonishes me how fast he is to learn. He has only to watch and he can do it.
The usual bandleader is on holiday, and his replacement has a mischievous look. He speeds up the pace. I can’t tell whose idea it is to go with the music, mine or David’s, but we speed up too. It isn’t slow, slow, quick quick slow, slow any more. It’s quick quick run run quick quick. David and I are moving around the floor as if we don’t have feet. I wonder how it is there hasn’t been a collision, and this is when it occurs to me that everyone else has stopped dancing and cleared the floor for us. David swings me away from him. He pulls me back. He spins me hard and grips me in his arms and then he throws me out and catches my hand. I think, Where did you learn all this? But he hasn’t. He’s making it up as we go. My lungs hurt. My skin is dripping. I’ve never danced like this in my life. When the music comes to a stop, I am trembling.
David laughs all the way home. ‘They clapped, did you see?’
Yes, David. A few did.
‘They noticed.’
They certainly did.
‘There was this dance competition once. We were on holiday, me and the parents. I wanted to win. But I was a kid. I didn’t know how to dance. I just, you know, I threw my body all around. I thought people were laughing because it was good, but then I saw they weren’t. They were laughing because I was strange. I searched for the father and guess what? He was laughing too. And Mum. Well, she just had her head in her hands. Like she had no idea what to do. I look at them, Q. And it’s like I don’t belong.’
The story moves me. I feel for David. I know how bewildering it is as a teenager to watch your parents and find little trace of yourself. But I know too how much you love your son. I want to protect you. ‘Maybe your father was laughing at something else. A joke or something.’
‘He wasn’t,’ says David. ‘He doesn’t know how to deal with me.’
‘It gets easier as you grow older,’ I tell him.
He scoffs and turns away.
David gazes out of the window at the blackness. His blue thin face sails in the dark. He closes his eyes and falls asleep. I watch him with his forehead against the glass, and I see the two of you in one person. There is David who wants to be noticed, and there is you
who wants to disappear. You and your son are polar opposites of the same man, and here am I in the middle. Maybe I can be a bridge. Maybe I can join you and David back together.
There is no need, I tell myself, to mention that your son and I have been dancing. After all, I’m doing repair work here. I will tell you another time.
The next memory is taken on the bus to Totnes. David has turned up a third time, and I am happy to see him. I tell him about you. How you are respected at the brewery. How well you deal with the landlords. To be honest, I’m enjoying myself. I like talking about you – I don’t have anyone else to say it to.
‘Yeah, yeah, right,’ says David. He sticks his feet on the seat opposite.
‘Your father likes to give people pleasure.’
‘Pleasure?’ he repeats. He has a way of making very average words sound inadequate or, at least, in bad taste.
‘Yes. He likes to see them smile. He’s a good man.’
His face twists.
‘That’s better,’ I say. ‘You’re smiling too now.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he says.
David clearly keeps thinking about what I have said, though, because on the way home I catch him scowling into the dark window of the bus. He screws up his face, moving his mouth up and down, even nudging it into a half-moon shape with his fingertips. When he notices me watching he says, ‘It never looks right.’
‘What doesn’t look right?’
‘When I smile. It never looks like me.’
‘And how do you think you look?’
He pulls an odd face. It’s childish. He sticks out his tongue and pops his eyes at me, like some sort of ghoul, as if he wants to shock me, and then even as he does so, he laughs. I offer him a mint, and he says, ‘Give over with the sweets and crap. Say something real, Q. Do you have a boyfriend?’
The question unbalances me, but I don’t flinch. ‘I’m in love with a man who doesn’t love me.’
There is a small silence.
‘That’s too bad,’ he says softly. He pats my hand. I say nothing. ‘Who is he, Q?’