Camomile Lawn

by Mary Wesley

  ‘How was Vichy?’ Iris welcoming.

  ‘Did you do anything about a wreath?’ David vaguely anxious.

  ‘Of course I did. Shush—’

  People came in a steady stream. The young musicians put up their music stands, one or two notes tentatively played on the organ, a scrape on a violin, a twang from a cello. Sophy, breathing in the damp smell of autumn flowers, dreamed of camomile, the dry aromatic smell of her youth. In the porch the pressmen stood aside to allow Helena, wafting into the church in an aura of whisky, to walk steadily up the aisle to the front pew, where she sat alone on the left hand side close to the coffin stools. The whispering in the church stopped; all eyes were on Helena, boring into her back. Swiftly behind her Calypso in white overcoat, black hat, gloves, stockings and shoes, her lovely face composed, Hamish beside her lightly holding her elbow. They sat immediately behind Helena. Hamish leant forward to put a cardboard box beside her. Helena nodded her thanks.

  The church was full, every pew filled except for the front pews, where Helena sat on the left, the right-hand pew empty, waiting for the chief mourner.

  Above the whispers of the congregation the wind bumped and buffeted the church, whining round the finials on the tower, growling over the lead roof. Helena took the flask from her bag, unscrewed the top, tipped a liberal swig into her mouth, swallowed. ‘Shall I ever be warm again—’

  The congregation stood. Slow steps on the gravel path grated.

  ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord—’

  The new parson’s bass voice, carrying through the gale, led the coffin up the path to the church. The newsmen drew aside as he stood for a moment in the porch, a giant wearing a black cloak billowing out in the wind to display its red lining.

  ‘We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out.’

  The words rolled out in splendid cadence.

  ‘You carry my love,’ Helena muttered mutinously, and Calypso drew in her breath while Hamish glanced quickly at her, wondering whether his mother prayed and what her prayers might be. She always looked particularly beautiful in church.

  ‘I mind, God how I mind.’ Helena watched them steady the coffin on to the stools. She did not hear the Rector’s sonorous voice, she did not listen to the service or the music played by Max’s pupils. Max’s spirit was not in the coffin, far too ornate, chosen by Pauli, Pauli who had followed the coffin into the church and now sat across the aisle alone in the right hand pew. How could he be Max’s son, how could he have been conceived by Monika, so lovely, so sweet, so good without being boring? Helena turned to stare at Pauli, who looked ahead. What business deal was he dreaming up, this financial wizard spawned by Max? ‘I bet you are never frivolous in bed,’ Helena muttered, for yes, it may have taken time, but she and Max had had many laughs. ‘What shall I do without his jokes?’ her old heart cried.

  The service rolled inexorably on. Automatically Helena stood, knelt, sat and behind her, her mind straying as it always did at Mass, Calypso thought of food and sex and of Hector. The texture of his skin, his nutty smell, his laughter, his passion, his rages. Max had made jokes too. Briefly she paid attention. Max would enjoy the sight of Helena and Polly, Sophy hiding at the back of the church and herself attending his funeral and goodness knows, thought Calypso, how many more of us in here lay with him. Hector always said Max would impregnate this corner of Cornwall with a shot of musical spunk. She wished she could in decency lean forward and ask Helena for a swig from that flask. She took Hamish’s hand and squeezed it, enjoying his quick smile, so like Hector’s.

  ‘Soon be over.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Helena was glaring at Pauli, Pauli risen from the dead to hate, make money, hate again, make more money. He had no love for Monika and Max, no understanding and, quite extraordinarily, no music. Max, unable to understand his lost son found again, had wept and Monika had nearly thrown herself over the cliffs, blaming herself for the accidents of fate.

  ‘Not again, mein Schatz, you cannot do it twice. For the guinea pig was enough.’

  Helena smiled broadly at the parson, remembering Max’s voice, the easing of tension, the laughter. Without being drunk I could not get through this, she thought.

  The parson, seeing her broad grin, hesitated in mid flow, missed a beat but carried on bravely, glad that his training enabled him to perform without much thought. He was glad too that he had put on warm socks. It would be cold by the grave.

  How Helena hates Pauli, thought Calypso. How could Sophy have slept with him? Wish she had married Hamish, being older wouldn’t have mattered. The trouble with Sophy was that she thought a bit of love was a cure-all. What was it Hector said? ‘She’s deliberately wasting her gifts.’ Oh Hector, my darling, you did not waste yours, the woods you planted spell my name in spring. I wonder whether Pauli has provided any food to soak up my champagne. I should have thought of it sooner, not in the middle of the service. Her reverent expression pleased the Rector, who looked past Helena, resting his eye on Calypso with approval. Wonder what he’s like in bed, thought Calypso from force of habit. Did parsons need a little boost, as Max had before rehearsal? How he laughed in the cinema. What had been the film? She frowned, trying to remember.

  ‘Was Max a Protestant?’ Hamish whispered as they knelt.

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ Calypso whispered behind clasped hands. ‘He must have been born something.’

  ‘If he was a Catholic this is all wrong.’

  ‘Too late now. Shut up.’

  ‘I’ll ask Helena. Helena,’ he leant forward, his head on a level with Helena’s as she sat in front of him, having found that kneeling hurt. ‘Aunt Helena, was Max a Protestant or a Catholic?’

  ‘Jew. Why do you ask?’ Helena’s voice rang clear.

  ‘This funeral service. Surely—’

  ‘Not practising. He didn’t practise religion, only the violin. Women too, of course.’

  ‘Hush,’ whispered Hamish.

  ‘You started it, hush yourself.’ Helena stood up as the choir prepared to sing.

  ‘O God our help in ages past.’

  She cleared her throat, recognizing the words. There would not be many more ages, she thought with satisfaction, as she picked up the cardboard box and prepared to follow the coffin to the grave. He never minded that I am tone deaf, she consoled herself, he thought it funny.

  Oliver, drenched from his long walk from the station, wished he had not come. First the shock of finding Penzance harbour, where water had always lapped in greeting by the train, filled in to form a car park. Now, arriving late, crushed in the crowd at the back of the church, having to endure the spectacle of Polly grown fat and stodgy, flanked by children who must be at least thirty. Calypso, squired by a younger version of Hector, looking so preserved. Preserved for what? He had heard she had had a stroke. She looked trim ‘tiré à quatre épingles’, the epitome of everything he disliked: classy bitch preserved in money. Well, that was what she had wanted, she had been honest about it. What a fool one was in youth. And there the twins, couldn’t be anyone else. Those godlike giants grown stout, bald, lame. Probably had piles, all pilots had piles he had heard. Couldn’t put that in his novel, not very well. Well, why not, anything goes these days. Stupid idea, though, to think he’d get copy from Max’s funeral. Funerals in books and plays were vieux jeux. That fearfully old woman, could it be Helena? Must be, must be about a hundred, mummified, what a survivor and glaring at that fellow in the other pew. Pauli, of course. Pauli risen from the heap. Well, I never, so that’s Pauli. Well! Oliver remembered Max telling him of his own and Monika’s dodgy escape from the Nazis and the dismal failure of Pauli’s expected follow-on. ‘We shall always feel guilty. We shall always feel we should have died with him.’ Well, he hadn’t died. That looked like a vicuna coat. Do people still wear vicuna coats? I must check, though none of my characters wears that sort of clobber. Oliver gingerly moved his legs in their damp cord trousers, hunched h
is shoulders in his heavy storm-proof parka, wished he’d put on another sweater. The woman in front of him wearing gumboots, with a shawl round her head sneezed. She wasn’t dressed like all these respectables. None of them wore gumboots. High-heeled leather boots, plastic boots towards the back here with zips. No, no good for the novel, thought Oliver, so I’ll sit back and enjoy the music when it comes. Those pupils of Max look ready to play their hearts out, not that one would hear very well with the bloody gale blowing.

  ‘What are they going to play?’ he asked a neighbour. ‘D’you know?’

  ‘Mozart, I believe, and Bach while they go to the grave. We could move up the church when the front pews empty.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Oliver realized he had not been attending to the service. A white haired man was finishing the reading:

  ‘—and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.’

  Oliver felt furious. Trumpets. How did they know? How outrageous! They are fooling us, how do they dare think of trumpets? There is earth. I saw it in Spain. I saw it in the desert, earth, earth, no bloody trumpets, just holes in the ground. I don’t write these illusions, I write about uncomfortable things, that’s what sells. Oliver felt a jet of pleasure douse his bitterness, glad that from callow boy he had evolved to successful writer.

  The church part of the service was ending, the splendid parson in his theatrical cloak preparing to lead Max out to his grave. It would soon be possible to move up closer to hear the music. Oliver, looking over his half-moon spectacles, watched the procession form, Pauli behind the coffin, broad, plump, Monika’s eyes, lardy cheeks, no trace of Max’s whippy body or humorous face. Helena shrunken, all her weight in the middle, carrying a cardboard box, her blue eyes vague, hair faded to dust colour. Calypso in vivid white coat, eyes shaded by black hat, Hamish a new version of Hector. The twins stoutly limping with sticks and their middle-aged children. Polly in spectacles, her hair a sort of quasi-henna. Elizabeth, surely that woman was the girl Elizabeth who had loved Walter and married Brian Portmadoc. Walter would laugh at this crew. And there Brian talking to Tony Wood, must be, couldn’t be anyone else, and all these people, who were they? Where did they come from? Oliver felt hysterical laughter rise in his chest as the procession passed him. Soon he would be soothed by violins and cellos. A man he recognized as probably the best music critic in the business laid his hand on Helena’s arm.

  ‘Dear Helena. Just to say I am so sorry that Max, that—so sorry about Max’s death.’

  ‘There’s a lot of it about.’ Helena focused old eyes on the man for an instant and walked steadily out into the porch. Calypso, Hamish and the twins closed round her. Forgetting the violins and cellos Oliver followed the little group, pushing his spectacles further up his nose, pulling his collar round his ears. The rain had stopped and shafts of afternoon sun struggled through the hasty black clouds.

  ‘There will be a rainbow.’ A boy’s voice broke through the sound of shuffling feet.

  ‘Mind where you put your feet, never mind the rainbow.’ An anxious mother snatched at her son as he trampled on to wreaths and sheaths of expensive flowers heaped near the path by undertakers’ minions, their beauty blinded by cellophane wrapping. ‘You clumsy lout.’

  The woman in gumboots sneezed despairingly, ‘Aaachoo, aaachoo.’

  ‘D’you need a handkerchief?’ Oliver offered.

  ‘Got one, thanks.’

  They were lowering Max into that bosom of green plastic.

  ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live.’

  Good Lord, thought Oliver, the sneezer is Sophy. What a surprise.

  ‘—of whom may we seek for succour but of—’

  When had he last seen Sophy? Years and years. He racked his brain. She sneezed again, pressing her handkerchief over her nose to drown the sound. The parson’s rich voice rolled on and from the church a burst of Mozart.

  ‘—I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me “Write”—’

  All very well, thought Oliver, saying ‘Write’ like that. Writing is damned hard work without voices from heaven interfering. And now the Lord’s Prayer. Oliver muttered with others, resenting as he always did the ‘Lead us not into temptation’ bit. If God were God, supposing he existed, he wouldn’t do anything so damn stupid.

  ‘The grace of—’

  Oliver looked across the grave at Helena. What was she up to? What was that box?

  ‘Be with us all evermore. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Calypso and Hamish, crossing themselves. Of course, he’d heard she’d gone over to Rome, old Hector was some sort of Papist.

  ‘Amen.’ Helena opened the cardboard box and with a hand bony and veiny with age, mottled with brown death marks, began dropping its contents into the grave: violets, their scent, as they fell down on to the coffin, filling the wet air.

  Hamish and the twins threw token clods of earth then followed Calypso and Polly, who walked slowly on either side of Helena to shake hands with the parson in his cloak, and wander towards the cars.

  Oliver came up behind Sophy, took hold of her elbow.

  ‘Can you give me a lift?’

  ‘Of course.’ Sophy looked at Oliver, startled, her oriental eyes taking him in, stooped, thinning hair, spectacles, very tall, very thin, wet, perfectly recognizable.

  ‘I walked from Penzance.’ He held her arm.

  ‘A long way.’ She moved away from him.

  ‘They’ve filled in the harbour,’ he said angrily.

  ‘Yes. A very long time ago.’

  Pauli standing by the gate. Impossible to avoid him.

  ‘Sophy. You will come back to the house, of course.’ A command.

  ‘Well—I—’ Sophy looked distressed.

  ‘You must come. Calypso has provided drinks, Polly food.’

  ‘This is Oliver Anstey.’

  ‘I have of course heard of you. You will come too. Helena will be there, I suppose—’ Pauli had authority, confidence.

  ‘Yes, we’ll come.’ Sophy walked quickly to her car, followed by Oliver.

  ‘He looks so pleased,’ she burst out.

  ‘What Uncle Richard would call a bounder.’

  ‘The camp didn’t do him good.’ Sophy burst into nervous giggles. ‘Oh my God, my feet are freezing. I must change my shoes.’ She pulled off her boots and sought shoes. ‘They’re on the back seat. Oh, thanks.’

  Oliver stared at her. ‘You haven’t changed. All the others—’

  ‘We’ve grown old.’ She was keeping her distance.

  ‘It’s not that, it’s—’

  ‘Aunt Helena is drunk, we’d better get to the house.’ She started the engine. ‘I think I’ve caught a cold.’

  ‘I noticed you sneeze.’

  ‘Inviting her to her own house—’

  ‘Is it still hers?’

  ‘She sold it to Max years ago but she was constantly here. She just happened to be in London when he died.’

  ‘So it’s not Pauli’s?’

  ‘Technically, but—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He doesn’t belong. Max was ours, not Pauli’s.’

  ‘You don’t like him?’

  ‘I don’t think he likes us.’ Sophy stalled the engine. ‘Damn.’

  ‘Listen.’ Oliver put a hand on her arm. ‘Roll down the window.’

  A lull in the storm, a burst of sound from the church as violins and cello reached their climax. Oliver put a finger to catch the tear rolling down Sophy’s cheek.

  He licked his finger. ‘How salt your tears are.’ She started the engine and drove following the procession of cars. ‘I suppose we have to go to this wake.’

  ‘I want to see that Aunt Helena is all right.’ Sophy was anxious.

  ‘Aunt Helena is made of sterner stuff than us, she’s tone deaf. D’you know,’ Oliver leant back in his seat, stretching his legs, ‘a friend of mine watched her read the whole of War and Peace during a performance of The Ring.’

  ‘Bully fo
r her. Where on earth shall I park? I’d no idea so many people would come. Look at all those cars.’ Sophy sounded desperate.

  ‘Leave it here. Let’s walk.’ Oliver was calm.

  They left the car by the side of the road and, climbing a stile, approached the house from the cliff path.

  ‘I haven’t been here since our last holidays before the war. Where was it we ran?’ Oliver peered over the edge.

  ‘The path was wired up during the war and became overgrown. This path is a new one.’

  ‘I had vertigo. I was terrified.’

  ‘I was frightened too. I ran to show off, to gain attention.’

  ‘Let me give you a hand.’ He helped her up the bank on to the lawn. ‘Does it still smell?’

  ‘Of course.’ Her voice was distant. She was looking towards the house. She let go of his hand and he watched her run across the lawn to the French windows, tapping on them for admittance, slipping in, a little dark shadow as James let her in, leaving him outside. Oliver felt a rush of emotion and wondered what it could be. Fear. Am I afraid? he questioned. In which case what am I afraid of? She ran off, she left me. Why the hell did she do that? He stood on the lawn while the wind rose again, lashed him, clouds covered the brief sun and the rain poured down aslant. Hamish opened the French windows and waved a champagne bottle.

  ‘You’ll get soaked. Come in, for heaven’s sake, come in and have a drink before it’s all gone.’ Hamish had had a few drinks and his careful nature was expanding.

  ‘Is Sophy married?’ Oliver peeled off his wet anorak.

  ‘Good Lord, no, of course not. Not for want of—’

  ‘I wondered. I’ve been abroad so long I’m out of touch. Oh, thanks.’ Oliver accepted a glass thrust into his hand by a stranger.

  ‘I’m a great admirer of yours. I’ve read all your books.’ Hamish beamed at Oliver, pinning him against the window. ‘I suppose you can’t come home because of tax—’

  ‘Tax?’

  ‘Income tax.’ Hamish still beamed.

  ‘I’m not that kind of a writer. Surprised you can read.’ Feeling suddenly hurt, Oliver wished to wound. ‘Are you Calypso’s son?’