by Bel Mooney
‘Oh, I do know. Really.’
Her voice was quiet, ‘Well, we should talk about it. People, they might ask you. For one thing, there has to be a post mortem, I’m afraid.’
Must know, people might ask … the forms, the ceremonies, he thought, wanting to hit her, his mother. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, why do they have to do that to him? Can’t they just tell it’s a heart attack without all that?’
‘No, Paul, they can’t.’ Her voice was expressionless. ‘Of course, we all know that it was a coronary, because there’s nothing else it can be; all the signs are there, the policeman told me. But they have to do it. It’s the law. Once the Coroner gives the verdict it will be all over.’
‘Coroner! Anyone would think he’d been murdered or something.’
Eleanor sighed patiently. It did not occur to her to be angry with him for adding to the burden; she accepted it as her role always to explain to people what was right, what had to be done. ‘Look, Paul, it’s just what happens. Normal procedure. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we just have to accept it. Look dear, I won’t drag you into it at all. You needn’t come to the inquest, even. It’ll be too upsetting for you.’
Subtly, her voice had changed, soft and cajoling, yet firm – the way a mother speaks to a child. And Paul was a child again, fixed within the room, the house, the village, knowing he would always fail to do what people wanted, and aware at the same time that she did not really mind, because it was what she expected. Round and round, handing it on, writing out the lines for the memory, and never mind, dear, pick yourself up, don’t cry now, boys don’t cry, be strong like your daddy, run along … putting you back inside the pram, swathed, bound, dumb, forever. Paul wanted to wail like a baby, to do what she needed, and yet he did not; he knew that were he to break, to ask her for help, she would withdraw as a sea anemone pulls itself inwards, away from the threat. So English, so bloody buttoned-up we are, he thought savagely, especially her.
‘Something has been puzzling me, dear.’ He glanced up, and muttered, with an irony she heard but ignored, ‘Oh, surely not.’
‘Yes, this business of why he went there. Why would he do that?’
‘I can think of very good reasons to want to get away.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, forget it, Mum.’
‘You aren’t being very helpful, Paul.’
‘What do you expect me to do? I don’t know why. I don’t know anything.’
They sat in silence. At last Paul said, ‘He probably wanted some fresh air,’ and as soon as the words were out he saw them, as it were, suspended before his eyes, weak and meaningless.
But Eleanor reached out and took them, hearing what she wanted. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right. He’d been working hard …’
‘He always worked hard.’
‘… and he probably whizzed off on impulse. And then the height, a walk, he didn’t take enough exercise he was always saying, so the strain … Yes.’
She sounded sad; the shift made Paul stronger. ‘There are always explanations, Mum, that’s what that policewoman said. And … well, it’s better now that we know, isn’t it?’ She nodded, and said, ‘Thank you, Paul.’
Formal, graceful, yet still his mother: the sudden pathos of her gratitude made Paul’s stomach leap. He rose, ‘Come on, Mum, let’s go down. I’ll make you some tea, just for a change.’ Her face lightened; she patted him on the arm as she passed.
And as they went down the stairs together, not touching, sensing simultaneously the emptiness of the house yet not speaking, something was happening to David Anderson. Police Constable Jennings was a witness to the violation. He later blamed that misfortune on WPC Dix who suggested it was high time he got used to the nastier aspects of the job. Nudging him flirtatiously, she had smiled, ‘It’s all part of growing up, Steve, make a man of you, it will.’
The Coroner’s Officer, a burly constable in his forties who had done the job for twelve years now, looked serious; ‘Never seen a post mortem, laddie? Well, it’s not so bad when you get used to it. Might as well get it over with, she’s right. Come on now, Dixey, leave him alone. The first one’s a bit off-putting, but the second in’t so bad, and in the end they’re all the same.’
So Steve Jennings found himself in the back of the car with Colin Jackson, who wore plain clothes, of course, as befitting the interesting status of his job. In a spirit of education he regaled Steve with tales of murder and mutilation until the movement of the car, and PC Jackson’s cigarette, began to disturb PC Jennings profoundly. He had had no breakfast, despite his mother’s protestations.
‘Don’t you get fed up with it?’ he asked at last. ‘I mean, we all get used to things in the end, but it can’t be a very nice way to earn your living.’
‘It’s the pathologist you should ask that. Far worse for him. But he’d say he’s used to it, and I am too, by now. It’s either that, or give up. I’ll tell you one thing though,’ he stubbed out his cigarette and turned to Steve with an expression of complete seriousness, ‘this job, it makes you very … what’s the word for it? … philosophical, I suppose, about being alive and dying. You see them lying there, you see their relatives come in and break down, and then you see the pathologist slit them right down here (he made a neck-to-groin movement with his forefinger) and that’s it. We’re all the same inside, y’know. Everybody’s blood and guts look the same, and it sort of puts you in your place. You don’t think that life is so special – not when it ends like that.’
Steve swallowed. ‘But one thing. I’ve always wondered … what about afterwards? How do they make it look, for the family?’
The older man understood exactly what he was asking. ‘Oh, they do a good job. Stitch it all back up again, even though all the innards have gone. They’ve sawed the top of the skull off – just round here – but it goes back, even though there’s nothing in there any more. Then the undertakers do a good job too, and it all looks all right. Quite normal.’
‘Ah.’ They both nodded wisely, as if agreeing a shared plan.
So now, arriving at Newtonstowe General, slamming the car doors, following Colin Jackson, seeing people in white coats for the first time as a threat, Steve Jennings walked down the green corridor as if he were programmed, not conscious of the movement of his legs. Afterwards he could not remember anything at all of the pathologist’s appearance, only the mercilessness of the light in that high, echoing room, and the man’s first words as he pulled back the covering from what used to be David Anderson: ‘So this is the Winterstoke GP – sorry, was. Pale, isn’t he? Perhaps he’s sickening for something.’
PC Jennings looked. There he was, arms loosely by his sides, grey hair curling on the yellow chest, and sprouting foolishly between his legs, where the genitals lay like squashed fruit; this was the man at whose desk he had sat, whose letters he had read, whose wife he had talked to and whose coffee he had drunk. The face bore no resemblance to the photographs he had studied, sunken and sad now, its lines more deeply engraved. ‘I always thought dead people were supposed to look peaceful,’ he thought, awed and appalled by the bleakness of the room and its fluorescent lights, as well as the bareness of the corpse, exposed to the pathologist’s words and hands. Receptacles stood ready beside the tray of shining instruments, and Steve had the uncomfortable sense of being present at a forbidden ritual, something evil. The room stank, the smell growing worse each second. Jackson had warned him about that; ‘You never get used to the smell. Sticks in your nose for hours afterwards,’ he had grimaced, ‘And don’t get upset if we all make jokes, laddie. It’s just a way of getting on with it. It helps.’
‘All right?’ Jackson was saying. He nodded. ‘First time?’ the pathologist asked in a muffled voice, winking at Jackson. Steve swallowed, and fixed his eyes on the grey chest hair, with the dead, steely look of wire. He folded his arms tightly across the front of his uniform, as if for protection. ‘OK …Chest incision.’
It was the wrong plac
e to look. The cut was clean, from sternum to genitals. The greyish-pink flesh, under the parchment skin, folded back like fabric, to reveal the scarlets, purples and creamy-whites of David Anderson. Steve stared at the glistening, the seeping, as if he would drown there within the cavities of the dead man, until at last the increasing pressure of his arms across his own chest was not enough. PC Jennings felt the acid pour into his mouth, breathed slowly, but could not control the movements inside his body, like protestations of life. At last he felt the retch rise in his throat, and mumbling an apology, lurched from the room.
This case was my father’s. It is like a badge of office, and seeing me carry it through their doors, people become respectful before the witchdoctor, the bringer of magic or miracles. Valium or Librium or even just Vitamin C granules they could buy at the chemist…‘Something to pick me up, Doctor, I’ve been feeling poorly lately, sort of depressed, everything’s been getting on top of me, and now I’ve got this awful pain, just here, in my chest. It isn’t something, you know, really bad, is it? It isn’t that is it, Doctor?’ No, I tell them, but sometimes it is, and then there is no escaping what I have to say and do. Each night, every chair in the surgery waiting room filled, and Sheila marshalling them like children, whilst I sit in my room waiting for each face to swim up before me, sometimes mute with pain.‘I’ve been feeling really low, Doctor Anderson, it must be the weather or the time of year, but, I don’t know, every time I watch the news on telly and see all the awful things going on in the world, there doesn’t seem any point. No point in going on, really. Maybe you could give me something, a tonic or something, to set me right again? I’m getting on the family’s nerves, I know that for sure.’ And, ‘It’s just my back, Doctor, I keep getting these twinges, just here. I’m sorry to trouble you, but nothing’s been the same since I stopped working. It seems to have gone to my nerves. Last night I could hardly move.’ Write the prescription, ask about the children’s progress at school, make a joke for a half second’s smile, and everything is all right again for a short time, until the bombs and the boredom and the worry over unpaid bills close in again, and affect the nose, or throat, or feet.
Jack told me he knew what it meant now, to stick out like a sore thumb, holding that digit out before him for a fresh dressing. How many days ago, now? Was it two or three? He laughed at his own joke, but I could not laugh, staring instead at his blackened nail and the swelling, knowing that the splinter buried there would be forced to the surface inevitably. It was the process of health, that expulsion, the body rejecting what is alien for its own survival. In that second I thought how much that should be true for our spiritual selves as well. Expulsion: a driving out, but by force, that is important. Jack looked at me strangely and I had to apologise, and ask after Margaret, though I had seen her that morning.
Margaret and Jack … the kindest people in Winterstoke, with a strength about them both, coupled with an acceptance, that I have never known. People feel sorry for them still, but at the time they whispered, women nudging each other in the supermarket (Eleanor said) and shaking their heads. ‘She didn’t ought to have had it,’ Sheila dared to say to me, and for the first and only time I raised my voice to her. ‘Him, Sheila, it is HIM. A Boy. Todd Ainslie he is called. Him!’ They said she’d been careless, because she was too old; and then they all agreed that he should be put away. That’s the way people talk, behind the golden façades of the cottages; it’s a lesson for anyone sentimental about the countryside.
But Todd … I couldn’t explain to anyone at all how I always like to think of him. I switch my mind across quite deliberately, just as you push the buttons on a car radio, and for the discordant jangle of each day I substitute the delicate babble, the little muffled singing noises, and the bird-like coos he would make as he explored my face with his fingers, smiling all the time. Strange little pushed-in face, and the slanting eyes so grave and grey sometimes, and the blond hair wispy about his head like a halo. That cottage, which once seemed so dark, with its tiny rooms and yellow ceilings, was full of light; the playpen in the living room, coloured bricks and teddy bears littering window-sills, and little dishes of pulped food left to cool, with the blue plastic spoon sticking out. There was such delight spilling everywhere, something in that messy carelessness of love, that seemed to contradict the Margaret who cleaned our house so well, putting everything away. But then in our home, when Paul was little, chaos never came; his toys were stacked in cardboard boxes with labels on them, and his room was the space to play. The child, my child, was contained, but this little damaged child was everywhere, overflowing on all sides with the brightness of his affection. So generous.
And I gave back … I gave them my brutal knowledge. I had to tell them, it was me who delivered him and me who held her hand, and me who visited and watched him growing, and me who finally got the verdict. They all knew what they thought; ‘It’s a blessing really, though it’s a terrible thing. I mean, how would she have coped when he grew up? It’d have been terrible for them in old age, really terrible.’ They said it all around me, and came to the church to watch. That night I said to Eleanor, ‘I can’t bear it,’ but she shook her head kindly and said that I would get over it in time, for even Jack and Margaret would, and after all, it was their child. It.
I was wrong anyway. Anything can be borne if enough of patience, tolerance and hope are left to the bearer. But what if they go too? In any case, Eleanor, it was already too late, in a sense, though neither of us could have known it. It was not the passive sadness and confusion on the faces of Jack and Margaret which settled on me like a huge black bird, perching on my shoulder, casting a shadow over everything I did. It was the joy in that little house when Todd was there which astounded me because I had never known it, and from which I was expelled forever. Sticking out like a sore thumb. So I told Jack to come back in two days’ time and I would look at his thumb again, and afterwards I sat at my desk, unable to press the buzzer for the next patient, thinking that perhaps it is right, sometimes, to treat illness drastically instead of waiting for nature to right itself.
Part Three
Eleanor held her list firmly. She had put great care into the structure of the Memorial Service, brushing aside offers of help from the dumbfounded rector. He approached the house as a child woos a twitching cat, gingerly and wanting to be accepted, yet afraid of the consequences. Now he sat on the edge of his chair, fingering his white collar. ‘I want two of the readings to be from David’s favourite books. I thought we’d get away from the Bible, if you don’t mind.’ She smoothed the pleats of her black skirt with one hand.
‘But Mrs Anderson … er … Eleanor, don’t you think perhaps that in church …?
‘No, Andrew, I don’t. The funeral service is quite separate, and I assume, by the way, that you’ll use the Book of Common Prayer, not the dreadful ASB.’
‘Of course, of course,’ he murmured, deferentially, casting his eyes about the room.
‘You see, this service is a celebration of David’s life. My husband was a happy and a well-loved man, Andrew, and I want the service to be a reflection of his life. I know you didn’t know him very well, but people who’ve lived in Winterstoke as long as we have agree with me that it wouldn’t be like him to have a solely religious service. David sometimes said to me that he was a humanist rather than a Christian, though I must add – to you – that I think he was joking.’ He nodded, slightly shocked. The Reverend Andrew Dunn belied his meek appearance; he was a passionate believer in the efficacy of faith, as well as the duty of God to smite his enemies. If it was true, as indeed it was, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, then it must follow that whosoever harbours doubts cannot find redemption. The Doctor rarely came to Matins; already the rector consigned him to the empty wastes of a purgatory he lacked the courage to define.
Eleanor was looking down at her list. He waited, wondering where his duty lay, but she did not notice the frown. Her smile was brief, passing like a shaft across her face.
‘It’s hard to make such an occasion one of joy, exactly, but at least we can make it one of thanksgiving for David’s life, and for all he did for everybody in Winterstoke. For instance, I’ve decided to read something myself. Listen to it, will you? I found it marked in the margin, and copied out in a notebook, so he must have loved it.’
She reached for the book that lay beside her, and her voice rang out with confident modulations:
‘Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts today
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which once was so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.’
‘There! Don’t you think that’s beautiful – as well as being appropriate?’
‘Very nice, yes.’ He looked at his feet, embarrassed by references to glory which did not pertain to heaven. ‘And the hymns?’
‘I’ll give you a list, I thought we’d have the school choir singing “Greensleeves” as well. They’re doing it for the Concert and it was one of his favourite tunes. And I want to play a gramophone record as people come in, something from Rossini, perhaps. Don’t worry about all that. Paul will set up a tape recorder and speakers; he’s very good at that sort of thing.’
