“I’m sorry for your loss,” the undertaker says.
The undertaker wears a dark grey three-piece suit in an ugly old-fashioned cut, his face clean-shaven, his hair clipped short and neat. His outfit forms an uneasy disguise for the man beneath it, who is slim and muscly, younger than me, and rather good-looking. He can’t possibly have chosen that suit himself. It must be a requirement of the job. What does he look like in private life? I try to picture him dressed casually for a night out, considering how that haircut would go with black skinny jeans and a hipster t-shirt. Perhaps he’s forced to adopt the preppy look, button-down shirts and thick-rimmed glasses. If Daniel was here he’d be watching me for signs that I like the look of this young man, irrationally anxious in case I decide a quick fling with a pretty boy outweighs the profound comfort of a long marriage. He’d be the first to admit that he’s prone to jealousy.
Since Daniel’s not here, I can look all I want and no one will know. If Lily was here, she’d approve. She liked to encourage me in acts of mild transgression. Rule-breaking satisfied her. I don’t like being here, sitting on Lily’s sofa, thinking these thoughts while a near-stranger tells me with apparent sincerity that he’s sorry for my loss. I wish I’d said we’d meet at his offices instead. I wish there was someone else I could palm this task off to. I wish I wasn’t here.
“No need to be sorry.” Beside me on the sofa, Marianne sits quietly, her hands in her lap, watching how it’s done. “She was very old, she had a good run.”
He smiles at Marianne. “And you’re her great-granddaughter?”
Marianne nods cautiously.
“Wasn’t she lucky to see her family continue into the next generation?”
Marianne hesitates and looks at me for guidance. He realises he’s misjudged things somehow, and looks shyly down at his hands. He looks about as old as the graduate trainees we recruit every year.
“We weren’t really in touch very much,” I say, and then stop, because surely it shouldn’t be me trying to make him feel comfortable? He’s the professional here, he must be used to dealing with awkward situations. Including those where the person arranging the funeral resents every moment she has to spend here, and only wants to go back home to her real life. Daniel and the undertaker, and downstairs the rude and mysterious James Moon, three little boys tugging at my skirts. Meanwhile Lily, voiceless but demanding the most from me of all, lies silent and enigmatic, in the cool dark. I don’t want to be here, I’d give anything not to be here. My rage must present as upset; Mr Corrigan nudges his box of tissues a little closer, and Marianne strokes my arm comfortingly.
“Sometimes it’s difficult over long distances,” he says.
And sometimes it’s difficult when one of you’s a monster. I didn’t know I still had it in me to be this angry, but this place, this room, its faded glamour briefly reawakened by sunshine and the deep clean, has opened the wound again. I take Marianne’s hand and hold it like a talisman. I have to behave for her. She doesn’t need to see her mother rage and storm for events that were over before she was born.
“That’s true,” I say, and make myself smile. “But yes, I suppose she was lucky really.”
“Indeed. So, um, I know we’ve talked by email but I wanted to go through it in person, so everything’s how you want it.” He catches himself in an eager smile, and I wonder if he’s new to his trade. The surname on the crisp cream business card, Corrigan, matches the name of the business. How odd to grow up among the paraphernalia of the dead, to be raised by parents who put food on the table by laying other people’s loved ones to rest. Of course, any upbringing can seem normal from the inside; and besides, it doesn’t seem to have done him any harm.
He takes out a very neat black notebook and an old-fashioned fountain pen, working his way down a bullet-pointed list that’s beautifully handwritten in blue ink. Lily, who never owned a typewriter and who could be quite appallingly rude about people whose handwriting failed to meet her high standards, would have grudgingly approved.
“We’ll call for you here at ten o’clock on the morning of the service. We’ll have two cars, one for Mrs Pascoe, and one for yourself and, and…” He glances at Marianne, sitting wide-eyed and enthralled beside me on the sofa, and I see the flush in the sensitive skin above the crisp white shirt collar, because he’s forgotten her first name. “And Miss Webb.” Marianne blinks at this formality, and glances at me. I give her a tiny wink. “Am I right that there won’t be anyone else travelling with you?”
I think about James Moon, who knew Lily well enough to recognise her nightgown. A decent person would bury the hatchet with him and invite him to join us in the cortege. A less-than-decent person might do the same thing. Heaping coals of fire on their head is the phrase Lily used to use, which sounds much more poetic than passive aggression. I, however, am an entirely different kind of bad person. There will be no room in the limousine for James Moon.
His face when he walked in and saw us, as if we were the intruders and he was the one in danger. I thought he might die of fright when he saw me coming out of the kitchen. What was he doing? He talked about her rings, about me stealing them, and I can believe they’re valuable enough to be worth stealing, but that doesn’t feel right. Marianne pats my arm.
“What about Mr Moon from downstairs?” she asks.
“What about him?”
“He knew her. And he might find it hard to get to the church. He’s quite old and he might not have a car.”
I suppress a smile. James Moon is undeniably old, but he has the look of wiry endurance that comes with a lifetime of sea air, daily walks and frequent yomps up and down the beach. I can imagine him in his swimming trunks, strong muscles beneath slack skin, joining the elderly mad people who swim all the year round, immune to the icy waters.
“Why would we offer him a lift?”
“Because it’s a nice thing to do.”
“And does he seem like a nice person to you?” A bad question. Of course he seems like a nice person to her. “We don’t know him well enough.”
Mr Corrigan is carefully not watching, although I can see he wants to. He turns the page in his notebook, makes a mark that’s meant to look like a word but that I can see is only a squiggle, then turns the page back again and makes a fat blue dot in the top corner.
“But he’s a neighbour,” says Marianne. “We ought to try and be friendly.”
“He’s not our neighbour. We don’t live here, remember?”
“He was Lily’s neighbour, though.” I can see how strange she still finds it to speak of Lily in the fractional hesitation before she says her name. “They were friends. Maybe she would have liked us to take her friend to her funeral so he could be part of it too?”
I will not lose my temper. I absolutely will not. I will not be ashamed that my daughter is behaving better than I am.
“It wouldn’t be appropriate,” I tell her instead, firm but kind, so she knows I’m not cross. I’m the chief mourner, so whatever I say goes. I’m not going to invite James Moon to share space with us on the way to Lily’s funeral. If he can break into her house he can certainly get himself to the church. He can make his own way there, in his own car or by bus or taxi or perhaps via a lift from a friend, or else not get there at all, I don’t care. If Lily felt that strongly about him being there, she should have told me. Although I’d probably have ignored her anyway.
“But—”
“Shush.” I look over at Mr Corrigan to let him know that he can join us again, and see that he’s given in to temptation and is openly gazing at us with the fascination so many people have when they see me talking to my daughter, and my daughter answering. When I catch his eye, he looks embarrassed.
“I didn’t mean to stare,” he says. “But it’s so beautiful to watch. It’s like a dance or something. I’m sorry, you must hear that such a lot.” I leave a pause so he can reconsider what he’s said. “Oh… I’m sorry… I mean… I didn’t mean…”
“It’s
just me talking to my daughter,” I say, then see the look of misery on his face and instantly feel mean. It’s the millionth time I’ve heard that it’s-so-beautiful line, but it’s probably the first time he’s said it. These days, people like me are an endangered species. “Forget it, it’s fine.”
“I really do apologise.”
“Really, it’s fine. We were talking about who’s going in the car.”
“We were. So, um, will there be anyone else joining you?”
“No,” I say firmly. “There won’t be anyone else.”
Young Master Corrigan makes another small note. The top of the page is headed, Mrs Lily Pascoe. No mention of a funeral, simply Lily’s name, as if she’s still present and he’s planning a party on her behalf. Which I suppose he is.
“And after the service, you’d like the mourners directed to the Memorial Hall for refreshments?” I nod. “Excellent. Just so you know, the caterers will come in and set up during the service. We’ve worked with them before, they’re extremely discreet and professional. There won’t be any disruption.”
I wonder what sort of disruption he thinks I might worry about. What’s the worst they could do? Subject us all to the sight of food being brought in? Would that be so terrible? We’re all still alive. We have to eat and drink, carry on with the business of life until it’s our turn to leave the party.
“About Mrs Pascoe’s outfit. I wondered if you’ve chosen the clothes you’d like her to wear?”
Oh God, her clothes. I was supposed to go through her clothes. It was one of the jobs on my list, the list I made while trying to calculate exactly how few days of my life I could devote to the last fragments of Lily’s existence. The list I talked Daniel through so he’d know how long I was going to be. The list I’m already falling behind with.
“Yes, I remembered,” I lie. “I have something ready. Wait a minute and I’ll get it.”
I’m reluctant to leave the room but I make myself do it. I hope Marianne will be all right with Mr Corrigan. Sometimes she handles situations like this with aplomb. Sometimes she reverts to shy little-girl behaviours, hiding in her hair and refusing to answer questions.
Here I am in front of Lily’s wardrobe. Should I choose something pretty, or something she wouldn’t mind seeing go up in smoke? Would she rather see her best dress donated to charity, or burned? And how can I possibly know which of her clothes she loved the most?
I plunge desperately into the folds of fabric, hoping for inspiration. Dresses and dresses and more dresses. I never once saw Lily in trousers, even though she was born in the time of Coco Chanel. Jeans she regarded as a form of tribal dress – fine for the people who belonged in them (including me), but ridiculous for someone of her class and generation. As I flail hopelessly among the clothes, my wedding ring catches on a frail white muslin bag hanging from the rail. I pull impatiently at it, tearing the fabric. Crumbs of ancient lavender rain down on me. They feel like tiny insects landing on my hair. I have to force myself not to flail at my head in a panic.
I pull a dress at random from a hanger, and take it to look at in the mirror. It’s a silky delicate shirtwaister with long sleeves and mother-of-pearl buttons and a print of blue and purple pansies. The kind of dress worn by chatelaines of large country houses, on the days when they’re not storming briskly round the garden in Hunter wellies and a Barbour jacket. It would be too small for me. Lily had that whippety thinness that came from living through a war and learning the hard way how to moderate her appetite. It would have looked beautiful with the golden white of her hair. But then, all of Lily’s clothes looked beautiful, in their way.
Will this do? It’ll have to. I won’t waste my time on choosing an outfit for a corpse. I can feel tears gathering in my chest, ready to catch me unawares. I take a deep breath and return to the sitting room.
Marianne seems surprisingly at home in the company of Death’s attendant. She’s taken a huge heavy book from the bookcase and she’s showing it to him, turning the pages slowly. He’s left the winged armchair and joined her on the sofa, moving slowly and cautiously as if he’s afraid of frightening her away. She’s telling him something about the book, although what this could be I can’t imagine, but he’s looking at her. When she smiles at him, I see a ghost.
Lily could enchant anyone when she chose, especially but not exclusively men. It was a seduction I watched her practise on many others, but that I never recognised when used on me. Like the lighting of a lamp, her charm would draw everyone around her, creeping closer to the warmth and the glow until finally they tumbled at her feet, dazzled and lost.
And what does the undertaker see when he looks at Marianne? Does he see the charming child she still occasionally resembles, or the subtly enchanting young woman she’s about to become? When he turns towards me I’m relieved to see his face is innocent of furtive pleasure. Instead he looks as if he’s been, quite literally, away with the fairies. I move closer, then feel my skin shiver and tingle with memory.
“Marianne was showing me some of your family photographs,” he tells me, his smile sweet and foolish.
I could dispute the your family claim, but I’m too entranced by what Marianne’s found to speak. It’s not a book, it’s a photograph album. The photograph album. The one Lily kept all her life. I’d forgotten all about it. How could that have even happened?
“Where did you find this?” I take the album from her hands.
“It was on the bookshelf. I found it while I was cleaning. Do you mind me looking? Is it private?”
Everything else in Lily’s house has faded, but the leaves and flowers that frame the photographs are as fresh as when they were picked and pressed. Accompanying each picture, a few handwritten lines, the letters so sharp and crisp it hurts my heart. Some photographs are accompanied by odd little souvenirs: a button, a railway ticket, a fragment of shell.
Here I am aged six, wearing a red swimming costume with a white frill around the bottom. My feet are planted firmly in the sand and my right arm is outstretched, the palm facing out towards the sea. The wave breaks at my feet, seemingly in obedience to the fierce will written on my face. The photograph is framed with a frond of red seaweed and a spray of ash leaves, dotted with a single whorl of periwinkle. Underneath, Lily has written a few words like an incantation:
My darling Jen, indomitable
Ash is for protection; I remember that. She gave me a frond of pressed ash in an envelope at the end of every summer, telling me to keep it at the bottom of my school bag. I don’t know what the seaweed means, but its frail red feathers spread across the page like blood vessels. For a healthy heart, perhaps, like the hawthorn she used to secrete in my father’s belongings, or perhaps just a memento. That was the first summer after we all knew I’d never hear again, and the first time my father brought me to stay by myself. I wonder what my mother did without me. I suspect it involved a lot of crying.
I turn back several pages and find a photograph of my parents’ wedding. My father looks harried, my mother blissful. A tiny button covered in cream silk nestles in a corner. The blue flowers that twine around the photograph are easy enough to identify, but Lily has added a note anyway:
Convolvulus
A twining plant with trumpet-shaped flowers,
sometimes considered an invasive weed
Marianne and the undertaker are looking at me. I try to make my face neutral.
“It’s all right,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to hurry you.”
“Sorry.” I snap the album shut and lay it down on the table.
“There’s no rush. Take your time.”
I don’t like the compassion in his eyes. I told him Lily and I weren’t close. Why is he looking like that? “It’s all right, really. I’m done.” The dress has slithered to my feet in a silky mound. It’s cold and frail against my feet, like a shed skin. Trying not to shudder, I hand it to the undertaker, realising I should have brought a carrier bag; but he’s prepared for this, taking a black canvas ba
g from an inside pocket and folding Lily’s dress into a neat careful square. His attention to detail is commendable.
Such a pretty dress. How will they get her into it? She’ll be cold and stiff, hard to move and manipulate. Will they lift her up like a doll? Probably they’ll leave her lying there, cut the back open with shears so they can fit it onto her. Is she naked right now? Do the dead still wear shrouds? Is she wrapped tightly like a mummy, or merely covered in a sheet to keep the chill from scorching her flesh? How cool and gentle her hands were when she tucked me in beneath a single layer of crisp white linen, on the nights when the sun stayed up until nearly ten o’clock and every room was hot and airless.
“I know you’ve requested no flowers apart from your own,” Mr Corrigan says, oblivious to the terrible images flitting through my brain, “but we sometimes find people don’t realise and send them anyway. Quite often families send them to the hospital where their loved one died. We can sort that out for you, if you like?”
“They can go with the coffin to the crematorium, it’s fine.”
Another little blue-ink notation.
“And is there anything you’d like to send with Mrs Pascoe?” he asks. “We don’t recommend jewellery for a cremation, but if there are any other personal items, photographs or favourite books, for example?”
Imagine sending her belongings with her to burn, as if they’ll follow her to the afterlife. I smiled at Marianne’s burning boat, but how Viking-like we are after all, we sensible twenty-first-century human beings. I think of her diaries, her photographs, the copy of The Great Gatsby that she left, part-finished, beside her bed. Her camera, which I can’t find. The album I’ve been looking at, her oblique and pithy commentaries on those she loved or didn’t love, like a faded book of spells. Would she want these things to be burned?
The cremation process reduces a whole human body to a few handfuls of fine grey ash. It’s the most complete disposal I can imagine. All the memories, the truths and the lies, the pretences and the realities locked in her brain, burned away. The thought is both sad and comforting. If I could, there are a few black moments of memory I’d like to drop into the coffin alongside her.
Lily's House Page 8
