by Louise Dean
‘Nice to get out. Your health.’ He raises his glass again. ‘’Ere, Audrey, how do you fancy being wined and dined tonight? I’ll take you to The Italian Way, if you like. Buy you a meal out.’
Audrey flashes a look at Roger. He’s standing there as if the music’s stopped, clasping his shandy tight to his chest, eyes high and distant, looking sufficiently embarrassed for all three of them.
Driving back, with Ken in the passenger seat of the hearse, leaning in towards her, she is reminded of a holiday she took to Mexico as a young girl, and how, late at night, after dancing at a bar on a beach until the early hours and losing sight of her mates, she’d taken a taxi back to the hostel and it had seemed to her that the driver was going the long way, or the wrong way, with his eyes betwixt her pedal pushers. So she took him through the details of the embalming process. He’d dropped her off smartish.
‘Penny for ’em,’ says Ken.
‘I was just wondering, Ken, whether you’ve finished your research, so to speak?’
‘How do you mean? Ree-search?’
‘Into the matter of death?’
‘Well, you see, the big question’s still not answered.’ He clears his throat, eyes on the road (the back of a truck looms with its finger-written plea in the dust of the rear window: ‘Wash me, you tosser’), and goes on, ‘Careful, love!’ He feels a nervous tic break out under his right eye. ‘See, I had a mate whose last words were “I’m not pegging out yet”.’ So, what I’m wondering is, how do you know you’re going and what does it feel like and what ’appens?’
‘Oh, don’t ask me.’
‘Well, who else can I ask? I ask June and she just starts laughing. Nobody will tell ya straight.’
‘Because they don’t know for sure.’
‘Yes but you know, don’t you?’
‘I haven’t passed on yet, Ken!’
‘I know, I know,’ he says. ‘I know that, Audrey, but of anyone you must have an idea.’
‘I wouldn’t like to say.’
‘Well, let me put it like this. I take it you believe in Jesus Christ, and what I’m asking is, is it Him that comes for you, direct like, or does He send someone else, like someone from your family, and does He take their body, does He look like them when He comes so as not to scare you, or does He stand behind them, or what? Because this fellow I knew, we was in the TA together, he said to me when he had a heart attack that he’d seen Jesus sitting on a tree stump, just sitting there, and he said to me, Don’t you worry, Ken, about dying; it’s beautiful. I don’t know what he meant, but he was very certain of it. See, will He be there or will it be a disciple, or something? Will I know who it is? Which one, I mean.’
‘Well, I don’t know, Ken, like I said. As it happens, I’m not conventionally religious.’
She slams on the brakes as the car in front stops unexpectedly at an amber light. Ken slams his right foot down harder. They come up right behind the car in front, nose to tail with not an inch between them.
‘Cor dear. I say. Puts it into perspective, don’t it? Whew.’ He loosens his tie. ‘Not conventionally religious? How’s that then?’
She keeps her face on the windscreen, her eyes blank.
‘You’re not one of them atheist lot, are you?’
‘No. I believe in Him all right . . .’
Ken nods and looks past her out of her side window, then looks again. He claps a hand on the side of his neck. Standing in the bus shelter, is his June. Transparent rain hat on, tied under her chin, she’s got a suitcase on wheels with her that he’s never seen before. Coat’s all done up, but not as buttoned up as her face. Lips are tight, eyes narrowed, and she’s waiting for a bus.
‘I believe he’s a bit of a creep, to be honest. Ken. Sending floods, and pandemics and all that. If he can make a paradise, why make us put up with this? Because we’re bad? Where’s the sense? He made us and he made the world. Either unmake us or put things right. Right?’
Ken looks back over his shoulder and watches the figure of June grow smaller. Soon a bus swoops down on her and she’s first in the queue – he knows that, but he can’t see any more as they go round the corner towards the next lights. He nods and nods as they move forwards through Silverhill.
Two elderly nuns cross in front of them, all toothy chat and grins, each with a carrier bag, cross-swinging.
Audrey’s passion grows. ‘Look, this God of ours in the Bible, either he’s not the big “I am” or there’s been a right royal fuck-up. ’Scuse my French. Look at the weather! So many people die miserable and broken and alone. When you see what people’s dreams are reduced to . . .’
He nods. June’s left him. She’s gone and left him! That ain’t no shopping trip, unless she’s gone and bought the suitcase in Lidl on special. She bought some waders in there once. What the bleeding hell for? he asked her. They was four ninety-nine. We could go into the sea with them on. What the bleeding hell for? She probably paid a small fortune for that case.
‘I don’t get into talking about it often, Ken. It’s very personal, isn’t it? Religion.’
‘Oh yes.’ He gives her an avuncular smile.
They always have a fish supper on a Friday.
She’s lost her marbles, daft cow. Going off with a suitcase on a Friday evening.
‘When you see what we see every day, you count your blessings. It’s not like it’s one thing in particular which makes me think this God fellow’s no wiser than you or me; it’s the day-to-day suffering. How little people have, how little they want, how little they give. Like I said, if that’s God’s image then I’m not interested. No. Look at us!’ She gestured to the next batch of shoppers at the crossing, zipped up and browbeaten, giving the green man wary looks. ‘Grubbing about for a quid here and there, and then we die.’
Christ Almighty! The carrier bag under the mattress with the forty grand in it! Christ! He’s got to get home, get in that bedroom and get it!
‘Lights have changed, dear,’ he says to her, grinding his teeth.
‘Go on, you’ll get through the next one if you step on it. Take the outside lane,’ he says to her hoarsely. He’s clutching his chest, head slammed back against the headrest, mouth open, spittle stretched like a spider’s web.
She glances at him. ‘See, that’s why it’s not good to talk about it,’ she says. ‘Now I’ve gone and upset you.’
Chapter 28
Spring came suddenly mid-April; a sudden florescence of the hedgerow was followed by a hurrah of blossom on the apple and cherry trees. On Nick’s drive to work through villages and fields, up hill and down dale, he revelled in the renewal and the signs of an enduring way of life: a blackbird on a white weatherboard roof, handwritten signs for fresh eggs, the new lambs and old windmills. These persuaded him that all would be well, notwithstanding the bad budget, the corrupt parliament and news of a pandemic.
One would have thought that staying together was a matter of survival, but it wasn’t so at all. If people had homes with good central heating, they ought to count themselves lucky, he’d joked with her the night before, in the draughty old kitchen where even in April the fan heater was on full blast. He stood by it, scalding one trouser leg. The dog dipped its nose to it too, blow-drying its russet locks, casting upward glances. With property prices slumping, tempers were fraught. That week Nick had a man disinstruct him. When Nick pointed out to him that his wife could claim some of his business, and certainly sell some of its assets, he went berserk. The divorce petitions – whose grounds always ranged from the mild-mannered ‘We had different tastes’ or ‘He did not share my interest in gardening’ to the crude ‘Our sexual relations were non-existent’ and vulgar ‘He was mean with money’ or ‘She’s a drunk’ – went from one to two clauses to upwards of eight or more. This was a sign of the times.
‘Your father called again.’ This was the substance of many of Kitty Ho’s intercom calls up to Nick’s office since she’d been instructed to take messages only from Ken Goodyew. But this morning
when she buzzed up, she said, ‘Your father’s here.’
When he came down, the old man was standing in reception, giving the framed prints and striped wallpaper a cold shoulder, standing to attention, ready for a fight where there wasn’t one to be had.
‘Don’t tell me, you’ve come about a divorce.’
Seeing Nick appear in the far doorway, Kitty Ho on the front desk bit her lip and hung her head. She had her bag on her lap and was going through the make-up purse, making a noise like a hamster on a wheel. When the phone rang, she mumbled into her mouthpiece, ‘Alcock, Maycock and Goodyew . . .’ as if it were a catechism, and sat up with fresh lip gloss.
Nick showed him through the sprung door. They went up two flights of stairs. In the corner of each stairwell, back against each of his partners’ offices in turn, he waited for the old man to haul himself up using the banister rail, then he led him into his own and closed the door.
On the top floor, in his attic office with its blistered sash windows and low ceilings, there were strings of dust suspended like molecular models, drifting, only occasionally disturbed by human tantrums. The far wall was lined with lever-arch files and legal tomes bound in magenta or black and gold, and in the spaces between there was random fluff. The only sign the cleaner left was a discoloured stripe across the carpet from the swipe that went against the grain. He used tissues to freshen his desk and computer screen and wondered if Ben Maycock and Stuart Alcock did the same. It was not something he’d asked on one of their weekly pints – the ‘Monday moan’ up at the pub on the way out of town.
He’d driven in, full of optimism, although his cheer had begun to fade along the high street on seeing another two shops closed, the colonnades dropping a tooth from their smile here and there. And now, to cap it all, in his office, as if the last wind of winter had blown him in, was the old man.
Ken had a great raindrop on the tip of his nose.
Perched on the side of the desk, elevated, Nick reached for the box of Mansize and chucked it towards his father, who sat in the clients’ chair below him.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Help yourself. Everyone else does. What’s she done? Got shell in your egg?’
His father blew into the tissue and poked it into each nostril in turn. ‘Ooo?’
‘June.’ Nick accepted the returned tissue and threw it in the bin under his desk.
Ken shrugged and looked broadly peeved as he took in the room. ‘She’s half-inched the money, ’a’n’ she? Gone and run off with the lot.’
‘Really? A lot, was it?’
‘For’y thousand or more.’
‘Christ.’
‘It was under the mattress. Can’t trust the banks, Kenneth, she said. Can’t trust ’er, more like! Thieving Welsh! Conniving and cheating. You can’t trust no man Jack of ’em.’
Nick put fingertips to brow and donned the pained expression that he wore so often, sitting there. ‘So. Have you spoken to her?’ And in the word ‘spoken’ was all the consensus of his age, chock full of condescension.
‘Course I have. I’ve called her all the names under the sun!’
‘Have you discussed things? I mean, have you asked her what her intentions are?’
‘Wake up! She’s run off with for’y grand in ’undred paand notes! I thought you was trained in this sort of thing! I want the money back, dunn’ I?’
‘Well, I’m afraid I don’t think the law can help you.’
‘Oh, I know that all right. When was we the sort of people that went to the law? Christ Almighty, my poor sister nearly messed ’erself when I told her you was a lawyer. Naargh, we’re going to go and get it back from her – you, me and Davie. The three of us.’ He brightened. ‘’Ere, remember this one? “Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief.” You know that one, don’t you? Laugh! We used to sing that one, didn’t we? You and I, when we went round the building site. And it used to make that arsehole – what was his name, Owen Bendover or something? – it used to make him go red in the face, didn’t it? Welsh twit. There’s a lot of truth in them old rhymes. That Owen, he drove home on the dumper one night and we never saw him again. Down the bleeding motorway to Wales on it, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Nick hid a smile by dipping his head. He did remember the man. He adjusted his cufflinks. ‘To be honest, I doubt you’ll have much success getting it back that way either. She’ll just say no.’
‘I’ll give her a good crack round the side of the ’ead that’ll shape her up quick.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘She ain’t a big woman.’
‘We’re not going to Wales to give her a hiding. You’ll have to start divorce proceedings and include that sum of money in your statements. I doubt you’ll get it back. You might even end up giving her more.’
‘More?’ He cried out. ‘More? See, that’s what I mean about this lot in government these days. In my day, someone stole something they got banged up, now they get a sodding golden handshake! I want it back. I earned it!’
‘I’ve heard this a thousand times before from people sitting right where you’re sitting. June is your wife, not some stranger. You shared a life together.’ He sat in his chair. ‘Let me do you a favour. Take some advice: forget about it. Forget about the money. Do you love her or not?’
‘Love her?’ Ken snorted. ‘I could wring her neck for what she’s done.’
‘I’ll tell you what I ought to tell my clients. You, as a bloke, you’re shafted. Just accept it. But let me tell you something else.’ Warming to his theme, he could hear Kitty Ho coming upstairs with the coffees clinking on the tray. When she wedged the door open, the girls in the next office could hear him. ‘I had a client in here today, a woman. She has breast cancer and her husband is divorcing her. She instructed me to agree his terms, whatever they are. She wasn’t interested in the money. She said, Let him have it – I don’t want to waste whatever life I have fighting him for money.
‘No, ta,’ said Ken, adjusting his lapels and flinching away from
Kitty Ho when she held out the cup to him.
‘Do you see my point? You’re not a young man yourself. You are seventy-nine. In a way, you’re in the same boat as that woman.’
‘I’m eighty. November the twenty-fifth. Same day every year. Anyway. He drives like a flaming maniac, your brother. We’ll be under a bleeding lorry if he does the driving. On and off the brakes, he is, all the time, jumpin’ on ’em. I say to him, Don’t you use the gears?’
Kitty Ho slipped out of the room.
Nick stood up and walked to the window. ‘You didn’t hear a word I said, did you? Do you know, I have to ask myself if anyone does? They get in that chair, they have a quick blub and they don’t listen to a word I say. They just want their money.’
‘Well, that’s what you’re there for! That’s your job!’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ He went dejectedly, hands in trouser pockets, back to his chair. ‘That’s right.’
Ken banged the table with his hands. ‘And he don’t listen to a person talkin’, Dave don’t! He nods and that, but he ain’t really with ya. Sometimes I don’t know if he’s the full shilling.’
‘Don’t you ever think that to put up with you –’
‘I’ll pay your petrol money!’
Nick laughed. He looked at Ken; he shook his head, and his smile spread to his eyes.
‘What? What you laughing for? What’s got into you? You daft git. Give over. It ain’t funny. Pack it in. Blimey, I hope you don’t treat all your customers this way. You ought to take it more serious. It might be funny to you . . .’
Nick shook his head and laughed and laughed. And in the next office the two women exchanged looks over their partition, and the older one with the spiky gelled hair said to the younger one with the pageboy haircut, ‘You don’t hear that sound much round here.’
‘Do you know what?’ said Nick, pointing his pen at his father,
‘I’m going to do it. I’m going to drive you to Wales. Becaus
e you, right, you will never learn. You’re too old, you’re no good to anyone, you’re selfish and you won’t change.’
‘Thank you,’ said the old man, relaxing at long last.
Chapter 29
In the morning sunlight, Nick drove past the picture-book castle at Bodiam, then took the humpback bridge his mother used to floor the car to fly over, and crossed the steam-railway track with the sound of their boyish cheering still ringing in his ears. On through Cripps Corner and Sedlescombe the car followed the lanes, dipped and ducked, rollercoastering up and down the rise and falls of the Kent and East Sussex border, plunging into shadow from light. On rainy days these roads ran like rivers; they were valleys cut into the land, prayed over by chestnut trees. Their steep banks were root-clad and their rich soil fed the springtime show of primroses. He left the countryside behind at the archway of the Ridge where a sign salutes one’s arrival in Hastings, the birthplace of television.
From that point it was all downhill, in staggering semis, until the sea washed in and washed out again. He drove along a grim line of disused retirement homes, bungalows and pylons towards Rye, to pick up Dave in Fairlight first.
His brother was ready for his day out, standing outside the door with a carrier bag in one hand. He was dressed like a teenager, wearing a hoody and sweatpants, and was all giddy anxiety, wheezing and sniffing. Once in the passenger seat, he talked ninety to the dozen, going between Marina’s foreboding and the old man’s bull-headed determination to recoup his money, which caused him excitable disbelief.
Dave worked a dissent the way a sheepdog worked a flock. He was saying of both June and Ken, ‘Course you can see it from her point of view,’ or, ‘You can’t blame him, right?’ And before they’d even got to Bulverhythe, Nick had noticed how his brother finished every sentence with ‘right?’ or ‘eh?’ in his ruthless pursuit of consensus.
