Nothing much, by which I mean even less than usual, happens for a couple of weeks. I find a copy of “All Kinds of Everything” in a junk shop near the flat, and buy it for fifteen pence, and give it to Johnny next time I see him, on the proviso that he fuck off and leave us alone forever. He comes in the next day complaining that it’s scratched and demanding his money back. Barrytown make a triumphant debut at the Harry Lauder, and rock the place off its foundations, and the buzz is incredible, and there are loads of people there who look like A&R men, and they go absolutely mental, and honestly Rob, you should have been there (Marie just laughs, when I ask her about it, and says that everyone has to start somewhere). Dick tries to get me to make up a foursome with him, Anna, and a friend of Anna’s who’s twenty-one, but I don’t go; we see Marie play at a folk club in Farringdon, and I think about Laura a lot more than I think about Marie during the sad songs, even though Marie dedicates a song to “the guys at Championship Vinyl” I go for a drink with Liz and she bitches about Ray the whole evening, which is great; and then Laura’s dad dies, and everything changes.
TWENTY-FIVE
I HEAR about it on the same morning she does. I ring her number from the shop, intending just to leave a message on her machine; it’s easier that way, and I only wanted to tell her about some ex-colleague who left a message for her on our machine. My machine. Her machine, actually, if we’re talking legal ownership. Anyway. I wasn’t expecting Laura to pick up the phone, but she does, and she sounds as though she’s speaking from the bottom of the sea. Her voice is muffled, and low, and flat, and coated from first syllable to last in snot.
“Cor dear oh dear, that’s a cold and a half. I hope you’re in bed with a hot book and a good water bottle. It’s Rob, by the way.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Laura? It’s Rob.”
Still nothing.
“Are you all right?”
And then a terrible moment.
“Pigsty,” she says, although the first syllable’s just a noise, really, so “pig” is an educated guess.
“Don’t worry about that,” I say. “Just get into bed and forget about it. Worry about it when you’re better.”
“Pig’s died,” she says.
“Who the fuck’s Pig?”
This time I can hear her. “My dad’s died,” she sobs. “My dad, my dad.”
And then she hangs up.
I think about people dying all the time, but they’re always people connected with me. I’ve thought about how I would feel if Laura died, and how Laura would feel if I died, and how I’d feel if my mum or dad died, but I never thought about Laura’s mum or dad dying. I wouldn’t, would I? And even though he was ill for the entire duration of my relationship with Laura, it never really bothered me: it was more like, my dad’s got a beard, Laura’s dad’s got angina. I never thought it would actually lead to anything. Now he’s gone, of course, I wish…what? What do I wish? That I’d been nicer to him? I was perfectly nice to him, the few times we met. That we’d been closer? He was my common-law father-in-law, and we were very different, and he was sick, and…we were as close as we needed to be. You’re supposed to wish things when people die, to fill yourself full of regrets, to give yourself a hard time for all your mistakes and omissions, and I’m doing all that as best I can. It’s just that I can’t find any mistakes and omissions. He was my ex-girlfriend’s dad, you know? What am I supposed to feel?
“You all right?” says Barry, when he sees me staring into space. “Who were you talking to?”
“Laura. Her dad’s died.”
“Oh, right. Bad one.” And then he wanders off to the post office with a pile of mail orders under his arm. See? From Laura, to me, to Barry: from grief, to confusion, to a fleeting, mild interest. If you want to find a way to extract death’s sting, then Barry’s your man. For a moment it feels strange that these two people, one who is so maddened by pain that she can hardly speak, the other who can hardly find the curiosity to shrug, should know each other; strange that I’m the link between them, strange that they live in the same place at the same time, even. But Ken was Barry’s boss’s ex-girlfriend’s dad. What is he supposed to feel?
Laura calls back an hour or so later. I wasn’t expecting her to.
“I’m sorry,” she says. It’s still hard to make out what she’s saying, what with the snot and the tears and the tone and the volume.
“No, no.”
Then she cries for a while. I don’t say anything until she’s a bit quieter.
“When are you going home?”
“In a minute. When I get it together.”
“Can I do anything?”
“No.” And then, after a sob, “No” again, as if she’s realized properly that there’s nothing anybody can do for her, and maybe this is the first time she’s ever found herself in that situation. I know I never have. Everything that’s ever gone wrong for me could have been rescued by the wave of a bank manager’s wand, or by a girlfriend’s sudden change of mind, or by some quality—determination, self-awareness, resilience—that I might have found within myself, if I’d looked hard enough. I don’t want to have to cope with the sort of unhappiness Laura’s feeling, not ever. If people have to die, I don’t want them dying near me. My mum and dad won’t die near me, I’ve made bloody sure of that. When they go, I’ll hardly feel a thing.
The next day she calls again.
“Mum wants you to come to the funeral.”
“Me?”
“My dad liked you. Apparently. And Mum never told him we’d split, because he wasn’t up to it and…oh, I don’t know. I don’t really understand it, and I can’t be bothered to argue. I think she thinks he’ll be able to see what’s going on. It’s like…” She makes a strange noise which I realize is a manic giggle. “Her attitude is that he’s been through so much, what with dying and everything, that she doesn’t want to upset him any more than she has to.”
I knew that Ken liked me, but I could never really work out why, apart from once he was looking for the original London cast recording of My Fair Lady, and I saw a copy at a record fair, and sent it to him. See where random acts of kindness get you? To fucking funerals, that’s where.
“Do you want me there?”
“I don’t care. As long as you don’t expect me to hold your hand.”
“Is Ray going?”
“No, Ray’s not going.”
“Why not?”
“Because he hasn’t been invited, OK?”
“I don’t mind, you know, if that’s what you want.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet of you, Rob. It’s your day, after all.”
Jesus.
“Look, are you coming or not?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Liz’ll give you a lift. She knows where to go and everything.”
“Fine. How are you?”
“I haven’t got time to chat, Rob. I’ve got too much to do.”
“Sure. I’ll see you Friday.” I put the phone down before she can say anything, to let her know I’m hurt, and then I want to phone her back and apologize, but I know I mustn’t. It’s like you can never do the right thing by someone if you’ve stopped sleeping with them. You can’t see a way back, or through, or round, however hard you try.
There aren’t really any pop songs about death—not good ones, anyway. Maybe that’s why I like pop music, and why I find classical music a bit creepy. There was that Elton John instrumental, “Song for Guy,” but, you know, it was just a plinky-plonky piano thing that would serve you just as well at the airport as at your funeral.
“OK, guys, best five pop songs about death.”
“Magic,” says Barry. “A Laura’s Dad Tribute List. OK, OK. ‘Leader of the Pack,’ The bloke dies on his motorbike, doesn’t he? And then there’s ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ by Jan and Dean, and ‘Terry,’ by Twinkle. Ummm…that Bobby Goldsboro one, you know, ‘And Honey, I Miss You…’” He sings it off-key, even more so than he would have don
e normally, and Dick laughs. “And what about ‘Tell Laura I Love Her.’ That’d bring the house down.” I’m glad that Laura isn’t here to see how much amusement her father’s death has afforded us.
“I was trying to think of serious songs. You know, something that shows a bit of respect.”
“What, you’re doing the DJ-ing at the funeral, are you? Ouch. Bad job. Still, the Bobby Goldsboro could be one of the smoochers. You know, when people need a breather. Laura’s mum could sing it.” He sings the same line, off-key again, but this time in a falsetto voice to show that the singer is a woman.
“Fuck off, Barry.”
“I’ve already worked out what I’m having at mine. ‘One Step Beyond,’ by Madness. ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’”
“Just ’cause it’s in The Big Chill.”
“I haven’t seen The Big Chill, have I?”
“You lying bastard. You saw it in a Lawrence Kasdan double bill with Body Heat.”
“Oh, yeah. But I’d forgotten about that, honestly. I wasn’t just nicking the idea.”
“Not much.”
And so on.
I try again later.
“‘Abraham, Martin, and John,’” says Dick. “That’s quite a nice one.”
“What was Laura’s dad’s name?”
“Ken.”
“‘Abraham, Martin, John, and Ken.’ Nah, I can’t see it.”
“Fuck off.”
“Black Sabbath? Nirvana? They’re all into death.”
Thus is Ken’s passing mourned at Championship Vinyl.
I have thought about the stuff I want played at my funeral, although I could never list it to anyone, because they’d die laughing. “One Love” by Bob Marley; “Many Rivers to Cross” by Jimmy Cliff; “Angel” by Aretha Franklin. And I’ve always had this fantasy that someone beautiful and tearful will insist on “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” by Gladys Knight, but I can’t imagine who that beautiful, tearful person will be. But that’s my funeral, as they say, and I can afford to be generous and sentimental about it. It doesn’t alter the point that Barry made, even if he didn’t know he was making it: we have about seven squil-lion hours’ worth of recorded music in here, and there’s hardly a minute of it that describes the way Laura’s feeling now.
I’ve got one suit, dark gray, last worn at a wedding three years ago. It doesn’t fit too well now, in all the obvious places, but it’ll have to do. I iron my white shirt and find a tie that isn’t made of leather and doesn’t have saxophones all over it, and wait for Liz to come and pick me up. I haven’t got anything to take with me—the cards in the newsagent’s were all vile. They looked like the sort of thing the Addams Family would send to each other on their birthdays. I wish I’d been to a funeral before. One of my grandfathers died before I was born, and the other when I was very little; both my grandmothers are still alive, if you can call it that, but I never see them. One lives in a home, the other lives with Aunty Eileen, my dad’s sister. And when they do die it will hardly be the end of the world. Just, you know, wow, stop press, extremely ancient person dies. And though I’ve got friends who have friends who’ve died—a gay guy that Laura was at college with got AIDS, a mate of my mate Paul was killed in a motorbike crash, and loads of them have lost parents—it’s something I’ve always managed to put off. Now I can see that it’s something I’ll be doing for the rest of my life. Two grans, Mum and Dad, aunts and uncles, and, unless I’m the first person in my immediate circle to go, loads of people my age, eventually—maybe even sooner than eventually, given that one or two of them are bound to cop it before they’re supposed to. Once I start to think about it, it seems terribly oppressive, as though I’ll be going to three or four a week for the next forty years, and I won’t have the time or the inclination to do anything else. How do people cope? Do you have to go? What happens if you refuse on the grounds of it being just too fucking grim? (“I’m sorry for you and everything, Laura, but it’s not really my scene, you know?”) I don’t think I can bear to get any older than I already am, and I begin to develop a grudging admiration for my parents, just because they’ve been to scores of funerals and have never really moaned about it, not to me, anyway. Perhaps they just don’t have the imagination to see that funerals are actually even more depressing than they look.
If I’m honest, I’m only going because it might do me some good in the long run. Can you get off with your ex-girlfriend at her father’s funeral? I wouldn’t have thought so. But you never know.
“So the vicar says nice things, and then, what, we all troop outside and they bury him?”
Liz is talking me through it.
“It’s at a crematorium.”
“You’re having me on.”
“Of course I’m not having you on, you fool.”
“A crematorium? Jesus.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Well, none, but…Jesus.” I wasn’t prepared for this.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know, but…bloody hell.”
She sighs. “Do you want me to drop you off at a tube station?”
“No, of course not.”
“Shut up, then.”
“I just don’t want to pass out, that’s all. If I pass out because of lack of preparation, it’ll be your fault.”
“What a pathetic specimen you are. You know that nobody actively enjoys these things, don’t you? You know that we’re all going to find this morning terribly upsetting? It’s not just you. I’ve been to one cremation in my life and I hated it. And even if I’d been to a hundred it wouldn’t be any easier. Stop being such a baby.”
“Why isn’t Ray going, do you think?”
“Wasn’t invited. Nobody in the family knows him. Ken was fond of you, and Jo thinks you’re great.” Jo is Laura’s sister, and I think she’s great. She’s like Laura to look at, but she hasn’t got the sharp suits, or the sharp tongue, or any of the “A” levels and degrees.
“Nothing more than that?”
“Ken didn’t die for your benefit, you know. It’s like everyone’s a supporting actor in the film of your life story.”
Of course. Isn’t that how it works for everybody?
“Your dad died, didn’t he?”
“Yes. A long time ago. When I was eighteen.”
“Did it affect you?” Terrible. Stupid. “For ages?” Saved. Just.
“It still does.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I still miss him, and think about him. Talk to him, sometimes.”
“What do you say?”
“That’s between me and him.” But she says it gently, with a little smile. “He knows more about me now that he’s dead than he ever did when he was alive.”
“And whose fault’s that?”
“His. He was Stereotype Dad, you know, too busy, too tired. I used to feel bad about it, after he’d gone, but in the end I realized that I was just a little girl, and quite a good little girl, too. It was up to him, not me.”
This is great. I’m going to cultivate friendships with people who have dead parents, or dead friends, or dead partners. They’re the most interesting people in the world. And they’re accessible, too! They’re all around us! Even if astronauts or former Beatles or shipwreck survivors did have more to offer—which I doubt—you never get to meet them anyway. People who know dead people, as Barbra Streisand might have sung but didn’t, are the luckiest people in the world.
“Was he cremated?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I dunno. Just interested. Because you said you’d been to one cremation, and I was wondering, you know…”
“I’d give Laura a couple of days before you start pumping her with questions like this. It’s not the kind of life experience that lends itself to idle chatter.”
“That’s your way of telling me to shut up, right?”
“Right.”
Fair enough.
The cremat
orium is in the middle of nowhere, and we leave the car in a huge, almost empty car park and walk over to the buildings, which are new and horrible, too bright, not serious enough. You can’t imagine that they’re going to burn people in here; you can imagine, however, some iffy happy-clappy new religious group meeting for a sing-song once a week. I wouldn’t have my old man buried here. I reckon I’d need some help from the atmosphere to get a really good head of grief going, and I wouldn’t get it from all this exposed brickwork and stripped pine.
It’s a three-chapel multiplex. There is even a sign on the wall telling you what’s on in each, and at what time:
CHAPEL 1.
11:30
MR. E. BARKER
CHAPEL 2.
12:00
MR. K. LYDON
CHAPEL 3.
12:00
—
Good news in Chapel 3, at least. Cremation canceled. Reports of death exaggerated, ha ha. We sit down in the reception area and wait while the place starts to fill up. Liz nods to a couple of people, but I don’t know them; I try to think of men’s names beginning with “E.” I’m hoping that an old person is getting the treatment in Chapel 1, because if and when we see the mourners come out, I don’t want them to be too distressed. Eric. Ernie. Ebenezer. Ethelred. Ezra. We’re all right. We’re laughing. Well, not laughing, exactly, but whoever it is is at least four hundred years old, and no one will be grieving too much in those circumstances, will they? Ewan. Edmund. Edward. Bollocks. Could be any age.