A Family Man

by Amanda Brookfield

  When Louise tugged on his arm, he let a second or two pass before daring to look at her, the knowledge that she would applaud a display of manly emotion making him less rather than more inclined to exhibit it. She was pointing across to the open side entrance to the church, where six pall- bearers had appeared, staggering a little under the weight of the coffin balanced on their shoulders, the tails of their black coats flapping like raven wings against the arch of indigo sky. Ahead of them walked the priest, a rotund female with steely cropped hair and spectacles that twinkled in the light. She walked with an air of studied reverence, her head bowed towards the floor, her hands crossed over the swell of her robe. Gillian was in the cluster of mourners following behind, one arm supported by a balding, less robust version of Lionel and the other looped through the elbow of an elegant female with a silky French bun of white-blond hair. Both women were wearing hats, Gillian’s wide-brimmed, while her companion’s was a more chic, saucer-shaped creation, tipped at a somewhat roguish angle towards the front of her head. Clouds of dotted veil hung from the front brim of each, masking their features and expressions, though there was a sufficient view of the younger woman’s neck, a swan-like Audrey Hepburn- style attribute, to reveal that she was in possession of an impressive suntan.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ gasped Louise, so loudly that several heads tilted round in offended surprise. ‘It’s her. It’s Kath.’

  Matt stared again at the procession, craning his neck to see over and round the body of the congregation, catching only glimpses at a time. He knew at once, without needing to check the line of Louise’s gaze, to whom she was referring. In his heart he too had known, from the moment the woman stepped inside the church, poised on her high heels, the small square black handbag hanging from one hand, the smart, expensive cut of her dress clinging flatteringly to the slim curves of her body. Then there was the familiar swan elegance of the neck, the slight roll of the hips as she walked. Kath, but not Kath. The same but different, more sharply outlined, like a catwalk version of the woman he had known.

  The priest spoke but he heard no words. The organ started but he could not sing.

  Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,

  The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.

  Matt opened and closed his mouth, staring through the bobbing hats and heads towards his wife, standing next to her mother in the front row, her profile a black cloud of speckled gauze, her shoulders rising and falling slightly as she pitted her voice against the reedy swell of music.

  32

  There was a frozen split-second vacuum of a moment when Matt thought he wanted her back, before shock and anger rushed in, filling his face with blood and his body with so much adrenalin that he could feel his limbs shaking from the pressure of it. He swayed forward, at such an angle that he had to press all ten toes into the soles of his shoes to keep himself upright.

  An arm slid across his back and he heard Louise whispering, her voice dislocated, as if belonging to no part of the world to which he had any physical connection or relevance.

  ‘Matt, are you all right?’

  He nodded, steadying the service sheet in front of his face, while his eyes sought out the black-veiled profile and stayed there, drilling into it, willing it to turn round.

  ‘Do you want to go?’

  He shook his head. The trembling in his legs was easing. He could make out the words of the hymn. For the last verse he even managed to produce a noise from his vocal cords, more of a rumble than a tune, but somehow calming none the less. As they sat down Louise nudged him. ‘She must know we’re here. Gillian will have told her.’

  ‘What? Oh yes, she must.’ Matt looked back towards Kath, knowing suddenly that she felt his eyes on her neck, that she was resisting turning round.

  As the service progressed, Matt felt at an increasing distance from it.

  The brother, his voice cracking, read a short poem about the deceased slipping into another room. After they had stood for ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ there was another reading, something from the Bible this time. Then the lady vicar, in a low, surprisingly attractive sonorous voice, delivered the customary eulogy on the deceased, referring to many things Matt had never known: a love of ornithology, an early passion for ballroom dancing, prize-winning capabilities in the garden, with roses in particular.

  Throughout it all Matt only had eyes for the half-profile in the front pew, while the hurt and curiosity, suppressed and sidelined for so many months, raged like a furnace in his heart.

  The procession trooped out of the church, and still she looked neither to right nor left. By the time Matt and Louise got outside, screwing up their eyes in the glare of the sun, the convoy of hearses and limousines had already started on the short journey to the crematorium, shown on a small map printed on the back of the service sheet. Louise, as if anxious Matt might charge down the road after them, squeezed her hand round his arm and kept it there while they found their way back to her car.

  ‘How did she find out, that’s what I want to know,’ she muttered, pulling out of her parking space and joining the line of cars edging down the narrow lane from the church. ‘And why the hell didn’t Gillian warn us?’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t know. Perhaps she only turned up at the last minute.’ Matt wound down his window, seeking real air as opposed to the icy blast hissing out of the vents in the dashboard. He was breathing heavily, he noticed, as if he had been running. He could feel cold tickles of sweat snaking down from his armpits.

  ‘Let’s just go back to London, Matt, we don’t need to do this.’ She had come to a halt at a T-junction where a large blue sign was giving them the option of returning to the motorway.

  ‘I do,’ he interrupted quietly. ‘I need to do this very badly. I need to hear what she has to say, what she plans to do. Who the fuck she’s with.’ He almost choked over the words. ‘And if she thinks she’s getting Joshua …’

  ‘Oh, Matt, I’m sure she … that it’s just the funeral that’s brought her back. I mean … oh God, I’m not sure I can bear this … for you, I mean …’

  Glancing at her face, Matt was touched to see that she was on the verge of tears, literally chewing her bottom lip in a bid to maintain self- control.

  ‘Ignore me … sorry …’

  ‘Don’t cry.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘You’ve been fantastic, about everything, right from the start. And I am very grateful even if I haven’t been very good at communicating it.’

  ‘You’ve been fantastic too,’ she said in a small voice, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

  A moment later they were pulling into the carpark of the crematorium, a large concrete box of a building that made Matt vow silently to have his own corpse consigned to a hole in the ground. Leaving their floral tributes in a hallway already lined with wreaths, their group was ushered into a large square room decorated in various shades of green.

  Several rows of chairs had been set out, facing the coffin and the small curtained stage from which it was to be whisked away for incineration. Gillian, Kath and their cohorts were already seated in the front row, their heads averted, their veils still protecting their expressions. From two speakers set on either side of the stage, ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’ was seeping into the room, sounding so tinny that instead of elevating the occasion it reminded Matt of mood music in cheap hotels.

  Although the service only lasted for ten minutes, it seemed an interminable length of time before the curtains at last swished the coffin from view. Seeing both women lift their veils after the final prayer, Matt braced himself, fearful yet eager to meet Kath’s gaze at last. This was the moment he had been waiting for, he realised, the chance, after five long months, for a proper showdown; the chance for truth. Instead of turning round, however, his wife pitched forward, sinking dramatically first to her knees and then to her stomach, with her arms flung out like those of a diver. The next instant Gillian was crouching at her side, tugging, for some reason Matt could not quite fath
om, at the saucer hat, scattering hatpins across the thin green carpet.

  ‘She’s fainted,’ she shrieked. ‘Oh God, she’s fainted.’

  Louise, along with almost every other member of the congregation, rushed forward to offer assistance. A few minutes later a sturdy young man, sweating visibly but looking somehow triumphant, emerged from the mêlée with Kath in his arms and Gillian trotting alongside, waving a handkerchief and calling for water and air. Matt, taking in the scene, found himself entertaining the uncharitable suspicion that the display had somehow been deliberate, out of a subconscious bid for the limelight maybe, or – more likely – as a way to avoid him. Though she was limp in the arms of her rescuer, he had a strong impression that the mascara-lashed eyelids opened fractionally as she was carried past, that she too was watching him and had been all along.

  ‘The strain, I suppose,’ commented Louise, as they trooped back to the car for the short drive to Gillian’s home. Waitresses sporting frilly aprons and solemn faces were waiting to greet them in the hallway with trays of canapés and drinks.

  It was a good half-hour before Kath appeared downstairs, looking drawn but immaculate, her ruby-red lips twitching in, strained appreciation of all the well-wishing meted out by the waiting guests. She had removed her jacket, revealing more both of her tanned skin and the elegance of her dress, which had narrow shoulder straps and a low-cut back, showing off to excellent effect her trim waistline and long legs. And the hair was remarkable, mused Matt, eyeing her from the farthest corner of the room – not one hint of a dark root, and swept so becomingly back off her face that it was hard to conjure up any image of the trim dark fringe that had gone before. After so long a wait, he was aware suddenly of a wonderful feeling of calm. She could come to him, he decided, returning his attention to an elderly gentleman who was saying something about leylandii bushes and heavy rain.

  ‘Six foot in as many months.’

  Even feeling the tap of her hand on his shoulder, he did not turn at once, but lingered, smiling at the old man, before excusing himself from their conversation.

  ‘It was good of you to come.’

  Her voice sounded different, lower and more controlled.

  ‘And you,’ he replied dryly, eyeing her over the rim of his glass. ‘And I’m sorry about your dad, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously,’ she echoed, blinking slowly. ‘How did you hear?’

  She felt for her bun with her fingers, pressing invisible pins back into place. ‘Newspapers. It was a shock. I felt I had to come, even though …’

  ‘Don’t think this protects you,’ Matt burst out, the anger suddenly a hard ball in his throat, impossible to contain, ‘from what you did. Jesus.’ He squeezed the glass in his hand. ‘Jesus, Kath, you … Is he here?’ He gestured at the room. ‘Your new —’

  ‘Of course not,’ she interjected coolly, adding, ‘Shall we go outside?’ She turned and led the way through the throng of guests to the French windows on the far side of the room. ‘I can’t think why everybody is in here anyway. It’s so bloody hot.’

  Matt glanced back to see Louise staring after them. She was standing twiddling an empty wineglass between her fingers, looking pink-faced and uncomfortable, wedged between Kath’s mother and the young man who had come to the rescue after the fainting fit.

  They walked in silence across the lawn towards some curvy metal garden chairs set on a circle of flagstones next to an ornamental pond.

  ‘Let’s make this as easy as possible on each other —’ she said, performing a little self-conscious flutter with her hands as she sat down. She turned to him, looking up from under the curl of her lashes, as if they were no more than a pair of acquaintances at a cocktail party. As if they had nothing more contentious to discuss than the weather.

  ‘Easy? For fuck’s —’

  She held up her hand. Matt gripped the cold metal arms of the chair, silenced not so much by the gesture of command as the hand itself. Not the hand he had known, but a new, smooth, manicured one, with long varnished nails and perfect moon-crescent cuticles. ‘Who is he?’ he said, the question snapping out of him in precisely the tortured, unguarded way he had privately vowed to avoid.

  ‘You don’t know him,’ she replied evenly, turning to look across the lawn to where some other guests had ventured out of the house.

  ‘Oh, well that’s all right, then,’ he sneered. ‘That makes it all absolutely bloody fine.’

  ‘Don’t shout.’

  ‘I am not shouting,’ he retorted, raising his voice still further, ‘although I think perhaps a little shouting might be called for, don’t you? In the circumstances. Being abandoned with my four-year-old son was not exactly how I had envisaged spending the dawn of the new millennium —’ ‘How is he?’

  Matt opened his mouth to shout about what Joshua – what both of them – had been through, to berate her for her selfishness, to crack the veneer of her composure with details of the slow, difficult fight back to normality. But something clenched inside, something which he recognised at once as fear. The last thing he wanted was to arouse her compassion or say something that might fuel any notion she had of taking Joshua away. ‘He’s doing fine.’

  ‘Not a day goes by when I don’t think of him.’ Matt stared at the pond. A bulbous-nosed gnome, complete with red spotted hat and fishing rod and basket, was perched on a jutting stone at the near edge, surrounded by tumescent lily buds and a floating carpet of fat green pads. ‘Happily, I am no longer sure if he returns the compliment. It was hard at first but he is doing okay.’

  She sat back in her chair, pressing her hand to her mouth as if to stifle a cry; but when she spoke her voice was tight and firm. ‘I loved – love – him, but he ate me up, sucked me dry till I felt there was nothing left. Nothing of the real me.’ She tapped her chest. ‘Inside, I was empty. I couldn’t carry on.’

  Matt, marvelling at this audacity in seeking his understanding, said nothing.

  She clipped open her handbag and pulled out a slim white envelope. ‘The least I can do is this. Here is money for him. My … I have money now. I want you to take this for Joshua.’ She placed the envelope on Matt’s knee.

  * * *

  ‘I don’t want your fucking money,’ he growled, jiggling his leg until the envelope fell on to the grass.

  She bent down and picked it up with a heavy sigh. ‘Oh, Matt, what do you want?’

  ‘An explanation,’ he said darkly, folding his arms and glowering at his elderly gentleman friend, who had dared to stray to the far side of the pond.

  * * *

  Kath ran one finger round the edge of the envelope. ‘If you insist.’ She spoke slowly, pausing for breath between each word. ‘We should never have got married. I didn’t have the heart, or the guts, to pull out. And I kept thinking, as one does, that things would change, get better, or that you would see that whatever we had at the beginning was well and truly over.

  Then’ – her voice tightened – ‘I got pregnant, which was like this rollercoaster thing, strapped into this terrifying process, hurtling towards something for which I knew I wasn’t ready, but all the time having to be brave and then, Christ, as if that wasn’t bad enough, we get a baby who doesn’t sleep, who appears to take no pleasure in life at all. And you’re just getting on with your life all the time while mine is turned upside down, inside out, bled empty until …’ She looked at him, her eyes glittering. ‘And suddenly there I was, living an existence I had never envisaged or wanted. Housewife. Mother. And no good at either because I resented every day, every hour, every … And then …’ She tapped the envelope against one palm of her hand. ‘Well, I think you know the rest.’

  ‘A knight in shining armour carries you away,’ he jeered. ‘Something like that,’ she murmured.

  ‘Might I perhaps know how you met? Was it across the vegetable counter in Tesco’s, eyes engaging over a mountain of carrots? Or a pick-up in the park, maybe, holding hands behind trees, snatched teas in seedy cafés while the baby slee
ps? Or was he a photographer, a snapping shark with a phallic lens —’

  ‘For God’s sake —’

  ‘I found the photos, under your drawer lining.’

  She let out a scornful laugh. ‘Those? They were nothing – I had them done on a whim, on a day when I thought getting back into acting might make life more bearable —’

  Matt slapped his thighs with both hands. ‘Then it’s the milkman. It has to be. We’ve had a new one since you left, much older, with a chipped front tooth and acne scars. Which can only mean —’

  ‘Matt, cut it out – this won’t do any good —’

  ‘Well, when, then? At least tell me that. How long did Sir Galahad sit on his prancing charger, waiting to whisk you away? A few months?

  Years?’

  She mumbled something, for the first time looking ill at ease. ‘Speak up, I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Years,’ she said steadily, meeting his gaze. ‘Two years, to be exact.’ She got up from the seat, brushing out the tiny creases that had appeared in the lap of her dress. ‘I’m sorry, but you did ask. And now I must talk to Louise. It’s probably going to be a very long time before I see her again.’ She dropped the envelope back into his lap. ‘You’d be a fool not to take this. It’s fifty thousand pounds.’

  ‘So you fell in love with money, did you?’ he pressed, his voice reedy from shock, not at the sum she was offering but the fact that in a few sentences she had rewritten six years of his life. ‘Jesus … you lying bitch.

  Who is he? Tell me his name. I have a right to know that at least.’

  ‘No you don’t.’ She tossed her head at him. ‘You have no rights over me at all. I have a new life, one that I really want. You have … our son.’ She made as if to walk away, before half turning back to him, her fists clenched. ‘And don’t you ever dare think this has been easy for me. Don’t you dare. At least I’ve faced up to our failure – to my failure. At least I had the courage —’ She broke off, tight-lipped from the effort of regaining her composure. ‘I have lawyers drawing up divorce papers. It’ll just be paperwork. I don’t want anything.’