Death in the Family

by Jill McGown

  Kayleigh had more money in the bank than he had ever had, and Lesley’s policy was to allow her to spend it as she chose: shopping trips to London, where everything was charged to Lesley’s accounts at various expensive establishments, were a regular thing, and shopping on the Internet, using Lesley’s charge card, was positively encouraged. Kayleigh’s desire to dress like Andrea had at least curbed the spending, which Ian thought was no bad thing.

  “Going to Australia isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “It’ll get her away from Andrea.”

  “But you said she would tire of her anyway. And that’s just this immediate problem.” Ian shook his head. “If it is a problem. She’ll still be the same person—if she’s given to doing this, then she’ll just find someone or something to get involved with there. She’ll be chaining herself to kangaroos or something.” It was an attempt at a joke, at putting the whole thing into perspective, but it didn’t work. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Lesley. I’m no expert, but kids that age feel things very intensely.”

  “I know. And I’m sure she will grow out of it. But . . . it’s different this time.”

  “How?”

  There was a moment before she spoke. “Because,” she said slowly, “I know this is going to sound silly, but . . . I think it’s reciprocated. I think there’s something—I don’t know, something unhealthy about it.”

  “Unhealthy?” Ian pushed his half-eaten egg away. It was giving him indigestion trying to eat and argue at the same time, and the egg was cold now, anyway. “How do you mean, unhealthy? Do you think this girl’s a lesbian or something?”

  Lesley made an impatient noise. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  If Ian thought he had grasped anything about this sudden about-turn over Australia, it was that Lesley was worried that Andrea might have designs on Kayleigh, but apparently he’d got that wrong, too. “Then what are you talking about?”

  “I just don’t like it. I think it could become destructive, and I believe we have to split them up.”

  “By going to Australia?”

  “By going as far away as possible, and that is Australia, if you don’t fancy the South Pole.”

  That was her attempt at a joke; Ian smiled. “There are places I’d rather go. America, maybe.”

  “I know. But I’d rather Kayleigh didn’t know we’re moving because of Andrea, and since you were offered the job before she’d even met her, Australia seems the perfect solution.”

  “It’s a bit drastic.”

  She smiled, caught his hand. “It isn’t a two-month journey by steerage. We’d just be a long-haul flight away from Britain. And it’s not as if we’re using our life savings to get there—we can come back for visits, or bring people over to see us. If we hate it, we can just come home again.”

  True. The world was really quite a small place, especially if you had the money to make it so, and Lesley had. And she wouldn’t think twice about paying for anyone at all to come and visit, about funding as many visits home as anyone wanted. Which would be fine, if they all liked living there. But it wouldn’t be just as simple as she made out if the reverse were to be the case; if she hated it, they would come home, and if Kayleigh hated it, they might come home, but if he hated it . . . he would come home on his own.

  “So will you ring Jerry? Please?”

  Oh, yes. He would ring Jerry. Of course he would ring Jerry. What choice did he have? And Jerry was, of course, delighted that he had changed his mind, even if it was at the very last moment. Ian had made the call at breakfast time, and by lunchtime a date in July had been set for the job to start and Lesley was ringing estate agents.

  The fine rain that had fallen all morning, that had quietly drenched those gathered at the graveside, still misted the windows of the bungalow where John Russell’s friends, family, and colleagues had gathered after the funeral, custom and practice having won out over the wishes of the deceased that his passing should be marked with nothing more than the bare necessities.

  Five days ago, with no warning of any sort, a heart attack had killed him; Judy and her mother, the two people who had loved him most, poured drinks and handed round food, trying to behave as if nothing of any great moment had happened, trying to accede to his wishes with the same sort of determination that Judy had shown when she was having the baby, and it was breaking Lloyd’s heart to watch them.

  The Russells had indeed come to see the baby, which was a blessing; Lloyd didn’t think Judy could have borne it if her father had died before he’d had a chance to see his only granddaughter. John had gone back after a couple of days; despite his retirement, he was still working part-time as a lecturer and was standing in for an absent colleague. Judy’s mother had stayed on, as promised, and had made Judy’s transition to motherhood as painless as possible. When Judy felt able to fly solo, her mother had gone back to London, and until the moment it had happened there had been no indication that anything was wrong.

  The service had been spare and severe. No music, no flowers, by order of the deceased. No eulogy. Just prayers for his soul. Lloyd had had many a boozy philosophical discussion with John and had tried to find out what made this intelligent, thoughtful man believe in the concept of soul, of an afterlife, of God. He hadn’t been conspicuously religious, hadn’t even been a churchgoer, but he had believed, something Lloyd had never found possible.

  And, contrary as John Russell could be, he had also thought that once people were dead, there was no point in making a song and dance about it. And no point in grieving; if he was right and the deceased had gone to a better place, then the grief was misplaced; if Lloyd was right and life simply ceased, then of necessity this could not be something that bothered the dead, so whom would the mourners be grieving for? Funerals, as far as John was concerned, had two purposes. One was to provide a dignified exit from the world, and the other was to commend the soul of the deceased to God. And that, he had said—in written instructions—was all that his funeral was to do.

  But he had missed the point. Lloyd looked at the groups of stiffly uncomfortable people who sipped their drinks and nibbled at the food that Judy and her mother had spent all morning preparing, and shook his head slightly. He had been to a number of Russell gatherings, both here and in the university flat they had lived in before John’s retirement, and they had without exception been warm, inviting, friendly affairs, where no one felt out of place or in the way. Now, everyone did. It wasn’t right. It certainly wasn’t how John Russell would have wanted it to be.

  Linda and her boyfriend were there; she smiled sympathetically at him as he caught her eye. The last time he had seen her had been when she had come to see her new half sister, and neither of them could have imagined that this would be the setting for their next meeting. She had lodged with the Russells when she had first come to London and had been as fond of Judy’s father as Lloyd had been, but, like everyone else, she was, Lloyd knew, sneaking looks at the time, wondering how long etiquette demanded that you stay.

  And damn it, Lloyd thought, it just wasn’t good enough. He stood up. “Would it be all right if . . . if I said few words?” he asked, employing what Judy called his pithead Welsh accent.

  John Russell’s academic colleagues, his fishermen friends, his students, his neighbors, his family, all looked at Lloyd, their faces apprehensive, fearing that a bad day was about to get worse.

  “I know that most of you would be a lot better at this than me. You’re used to giving talks and . . . and . . . that sort of thing. And . . . well, I know that John didn’t want anyone making speeches about him or anything.” He paused and took a breath. “But it seems to me there’s something needs said, so here goes.”

  His audience shifted slightly. Linda gave him a conspiratorial nod of encouragement, but he didn’t dare look at Judy or her mother.

  “When I met Judy’s dad, he told me his name was John Russell and not to call him Jack. I wouldn’t even tell him my
first name, so we had something in common from the start.”

  Some polite smiles.

  “And . . . and we found we had a lot in common, really. But we argued about everything, all the same—from whether soccer was a better game than rugby to whether or not there was a God. He was the rugby man, as it happens, not me.”

  More dutiful smiles.

  “And he was the God man.” Lloyd paused for a moment. “Well, he knows now which of us was right about God. And . . . well, it seems to me that if he was right, and he’s looking down on us right now, then he knows that he was wrong about funerals, because they’re not just for the person in the coffin. So . . .” He licked his lips slightly, took another breath. “So I’ve still got a bone to pick with him, wherever he is. And . . .” Now he warmed to his theme, growing bolder. “Well, all right, he didn’t want hymns, but maybe we did. Maybe a hymn or two would have . . . I don’t know . . . made it all a bit easier on us. Singing, music, all that . . . well, it’s a release, isn’t it?”

  Some real alarm on the faces now, as he had expected, when they realized they were listening to a Welshman talking about the therapeutic effects of singing; they were, Lloyd knew, all entertaining the horrifying thought that a son of the Land of Song was going to lead them in impromptu, unaccompanied hymn singing, which was exactly what he wanted them to think. He had no idea how this was going down with Judy and her mother, and he didn’t dare find out.

  “And,” he went on, earnestly, diffidently, “one time, when we were arguing the toss about heaven and all that, we got round to funerals, and John told me that he would really like jazz played at his.” For the first time, he looked at Judy’s mother. “But he didn’t put that in the instructions, so no one knew but me. Still . . . there’s no reason why we can’t have some now, is there?”

  Judy’s mother shook her head, smiling a little.

  Lloyd walked to the CD player. “John didn’t want anyone to come to his funeral.” He selected a CD from the rack, sliding it in. “But everyone came, all the same.” He turned back to face them. “And . . . well . . . I think that’s because we all wanted to let Judy and her mother know what we felt about him.” He looked down at his feet, then up again. “We’ll all miss him, whether he wanted us to or not,” he concluded as the softly defiant notes of jazz piano, satisfactorily on cue, filled the room. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “Hear, hear,” someone said.

  “I certainly will,” said someone else. “I remember when I came to the university . . .”

  Lloyd sat down amid the buzz of conversation that his words and the ice-breaking music had released and got a tiny wink from Linda. But he still hadn’t checked out Judy’s reaction; now he took a genuinely nervous deep breath and looked at her. She was giving him the Look, but she was smiling.

  A result, as Tom Finch would say.

  Phil Roddam looked round his furnished flat and tried to address himself to his immediate problem, which was to get a job. What was left of his money wouldn’t last forever, and someone, somewhere, must want a chartered accountant. He didn’t much care where he went; now that he was back in Britain, he had automatically headed for London, since that was where he had theoretically lived at the last count, but he had no reason now to live here, and he was very used to changing employers, thanks to the nomadic Lesley.

  When he’d left Lesley with her shattered windows, he had gone back to his friend’s house and during a sleepless night had decided to do what he had been going to do when he left the university but hadn’t, what he had been going to do before he got married but hadn’t, what he had been going to do when he got divorced but hadn’t, because then he had met Lesley, and once again it had been shelved. He was going to see the world.

  Why not? Lesley had made it clear that any arrangements with Kayleigh would have to wait until the Easter break, and he had no reason not to spend his money how he pleased, no ties, no family to think of, unless you counted his Aunt Jean in Worthing, and she wouldn’t mind what he did with his money, having plenty of her own.

  When he was twenty, he would have taken off with no more than the economy-class plane fare to his first destination, but now he wanted to do it comfortably, so he was going to sell everything he owned, cash in insurance policies and premium bonds; the money raised, plus his savings, would finance his travels.

  It had taken him just ten days to rid himself of his job, his car, his memberships in expensive clubs, anything and everything that cost him money or was worth money, and take off with his credit card and a healthy bank balance. He had been away for four weeks; he had seen a lot of the world in some style, and he had enjoyed it, though maybe not as much as he would have done when he was twenty, not as much as he would have done if Lesley and Kayleigh had been with him, and not as much as he had hoped. It hadn’t taken his mind off his troubles.

  And when he had come back, a week ago, it was to find that Lesley had moved away and the neighbors, if they knew where she had gone, weren’t about to tell the mad window breaker. It was the same story at the charity where she had worked; they had no idea where she’d moved to, according to the young woman he spoke to. He’d tried everything he could think of; Waring had been self-employed, so there was no one Phil knew to ask about him. He was a computer man, but if he had a Web site, Phil hadn’t been able to find it.

  He hoped Kayleigh was happy and for all he knew she was, but that was the problem. He didn’t know. Poor little Kayleigh had had too much disruption in her life, and all he wanted was to know where they were, so he could write to her, telephone her now and then, have her with him for weekends. It occurred to him then that he might look at seaside towns for jobs; she’d like that. He could surprise his Aunt Jean and set up home in Worthing, like she had. A bit chilly, though, in the winter. Devon or Cornwall, maybe, or even the Channel Islands. You didn’t have to be a millionaire; you could work for one. Millionaires needed accountants.

  Kayleigh’s school wouldn’t tell him anything at all; they didn’t give out personal information, they said. They did finally tell him that Kayleigh was no longer a pupil, so Lesley had probably made good her intention of having her at home; she was unlikely to have changed schools for any other reason. But home, of course, had Waring in it now, and Kayleigh might be having trouble adjusting.

  He frowned and couldn’t believe that it hadn’t occurred to him before now. Lesley had commandeered someone else’s man. He knew nothing about Mrs. Waring beyond the fact of her existence and that she and Waring had lived in Stansfield; Lesley had mentioned her first name, but he couldn’t remember it now. He didn’t know if there were children, but if there were, presumably Waring was paying his wife some sort of maintenance. If so, she would know where he was now.

  He almost ran all the way to the library, breathlessly demanding to know where the phone books were as soon as he got inside the doors. The Bartonshire phone book had not been overlooked, vandalized, or stolen, and in it he found I. J. Waring. Of course, Mrs. Waring might have moved away, or it might be a different Waring. His Waring might not even be in the phone book. Back out on the street, he rang the number, and it was answered by a machine.

  “Hi—sorry I can’t come to the phone, but if you leave a message, I’ll ring you back.”

  “Oh,” said Phil, after the tone. “Yes. Er . . . my name is Phil Roddam,” he began, and then realized he hadn’t the faintest idea what he was going to say. He’d imagined some feedback, and now he was having to make a speech. He should have thought it out before he rang, but he hadn’t, so he just had to get on with it.

  “Look—I hope I’ve got the right number. If not, just ignore this. But if you’re Mrs. Ian Waring, and your husband—well, that is . . .” He ran a hand round his collar and then just took a run at it. “If your husband left for pastures new in January to set up home with someone called Lesley Newton, could you please ring me?” He gave her his mobile number. “It’s important, or I wouldn’t—well . . .” His voice trailed off as
he ran out of words to explain the situation. “It’s important,” he concluded. “Thank you.”

  Right, he thought. Of course she’ll ring you. She always rings inarticulate raving lunatics who leave messages on her answering machine.

  They were in the burger bar at the leisure center. They had it to themselves; they often did at this time in the afternoon. The staff were mopping the floor, cleaning the tables, getting ready for the keep-fit fanatics who would drive straight from work to pump iron or swim or run on a treadmill, then wolf down hamburgers and chips before getting back into their cars to go home. It seemed to Kayleigh that if they cycled to work and skipped the hamburgers, they would keep just as fit, save a great deal of money, and do the planet a favor while they were at it.

  She pushed away her half-eaten burger and pierced the paper carton of orange juice with a straw. Andrea was doing more justice to her burger, and Kayleigh thought she’d better wait until she’d finished eating before she told her.

  She and Andrea had met in the junior section of the leisure center gym; Kayleigh was trying to build up her weight, and Andrea just liked keeping fit. It was Kayleigh’s doctor—or, rather, her mum’s doctor, a Harley Street man, of course—who thought she needed to put on weight. Personally, she thought it was nonsense; she could throw the javelin farther than anyone else at the school and do more sit-ups. She was a lot stronger than she looked. But she liked coming to the gym and she liked weight training, so she used her doctor’s concern as an excuse to come here rather than get on with her homework.

  It had been Andrea who had started up the initial conversation. She had been hired as a mother’s helper and was so excited and pleased about it that she had had to talk to someone.

  “It’s the first time I’ve had just the one to look after—there were five after me at home. And then I worked in a nursery for a bit on Saturday mornings. I looked after them all, from babies to toddlers. But I loved my babies best.”