Wake Up Happy Every Day

by Stephen May

  But this is not real life. It’s not real death. And it sure as hell ain’t Shakespeare.

  Sarah and I have planned a drab funeral of convenience. A consommé of a ceremony. Chill and thin and pointless. There are no Lady Annes and no King Richards here. Instead there’s just Psalm 23 and a poem which we choose because it is, according to Wikipedia, the most popular poem at the contemporary funeral, the undisputed number one in the funeral hit parade. A poem which ends with the line ‘Do not stand at my grave and cry/I am not there; I did not die’, which is a joke just for us. Oh, what cards we are. What merry pranksters.

  There are flowers. And not all of them are ones we’ve bought ourselves. Sarah gets quite a few from England to express sympathy for her loss. I’m touched to see a handsome wreath from my colleagues in the cultural services department, even though most of my closest colleagues were despatched in the last restructure. And I mean closest in its most literal sense. The people who sit near me. Those who take turns with me in getting the tea round at eleven and again at three. I don’t mean close as in shared confidences. Shared pain.

  And we have a song too. ‘There Is A Light Which Never Goes Out’. One of Russell’s favourites. The song he’d always said he’d have at his wedding.

  Morrissey begins his thing and Sarah composes her carefully made-up Dignified Widow face. She pauses to put her lips to my ear.

  ‘How does it feel to be dead?’

  I hear the bubbling smile in her voice and it annoys me somehow.

  ‘Oh, I’ve known how that feels for years.’

  ‘Well, that makes me feel just great.’ She turns back to face the front. And I feel crap. I’m such an idiot sometimes. What is wrong with me?

  Besides us there are just four people here. Two of them were found for us by the funeral home we employed on the recommendation of the coroner’s office. The office who had signed the death off as being premature but entirely natural, undeserving of further investigation by a hard-pressed public service.

  There’s the milky-faced minister. An Episcopalian of gentle manners, with all the charisma of a wet tissue, which suits us. There’s the man who presses the buttons to start the music and conveyor belt to the furnace. What would you call him? The AV technician maybe? He’s a cheerful, ruddy, tubby man who looks like he should be sitting on a barstool with other cheerful, ruddy, tubby men talking ball games – or taking his cheerful, ruddy, tubby children bowling. Or taking his cheerful, ruddy, tubby dogs to chase more slender girl dogs in the park.

  There’s an unattached old lady in an inappropriate pink jogging suit. All funeral audiences, however small, feature at least one unattached old lady. It is a law I think. And she must have been found by the funeral directors too, because she certainly doesn’t belong to us.

  There’s also a depressed-looking chap in a charcoal three-piece shiny with wear, and we are a bit concerned about him.

  Other people wanted to come of course, Sarah’s mum and sisters, some of her friends, they wanted to be here to lend supportive shoulders for weeping on. We put them off. No, no need. Sarah doesn’t want to see anyone at the moment. Can’t face it. She’d rather be alone with her memories for a while. And of course it would have been way too much for my dad.

  Russell’s body trundles on its final trip. If he looked like an anonymous package when he left the house with Soraya and Claudette, now he looks like a piece of baggage going through the scanner at a very provincial airport. There are faded grey curtains instead of those flappy rubber bits you get in baggage check, but it’s still the same bumpy journey along humming rollers. There’s no poetry in it. Not even the Purple Ronnie kind. Not even the number one on Wikipedia kind. No comfort. And for the first time since Russell’s death I get a spasm of grief. A real, gut-twisting physical pain deep in my guts.

  This parcel of meat and bones we’re gathered here today to dispose of was a little boy once. A boy I knew. A boy I played Subbuteo with. Went on bike rides with. Played tig in the playground with. Kicked endless balls around with. A boy who loved making Airfix models and doing jigsaws. And, later, this was a boy I had my first drinks with, went to my first gigs with. We even went to the same college, shared a terrible squalid house together. Argued about who ate the last can of baked beans, who stole the leftover sausage from the fridge. Even when I no longer liked him all that much, he’d been the natural choice for best man at my wedding.

  And now I have to stand and watch while the coffin moves towards the incinerator, and ‘There Is A Light’ plays. I have to stand and think about what a terrible person I am. And I think about The Smiths. We both rated them too. Saw them three times on their first big tour in 1983. Loughborough, Leicester, Luton. Hitch-hiked to all the places beginning with L, because it amused us. The L and Back tour. Except for London, we didn’t go there. We were scared of London. Yes, Russell as well as me, though he’d never admit it. London was too big, too wild. Too loud with a capital L.

  But the theme song should really be ‘This Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’.

  Next to me Sarah finds my hand and squeezes it, and I find I’m sniffling, then sobbing. And then weeping noisily, messily, my nose blocked and my eyes streaming, there’s a weird kind of lowing and it goes on for several seconds before I realise it’s me. I take a breath, try and get some control.

  And then it’s the end. The final curtains. The boxed-up Russell rumbles unsteadily up to the gateway to the fiery furnace, those final curtains fail to part properly and they stroke the lid of the coffin as it makes its way through. It seems to stick halfway for a second or two and I have to swallow hard, but then the material comes free, swinging gently. The milky vicar rises to do his soggy homily and I try and remember that yeah, Russell was my playmate that lifetime ago in Bedford, yes he was best man, but he could also be a bit of a cunt. Quite a lot of one actually. Even before he’d made any money. Even when he was very young.

  I find myself thinking about the day in 1974 when he’d got his cycling proficiency certificate. He’d been especially insufferable that day. A mark of what he would become. What he would allow to happen to him.

  To be honest, it hadn’t been passing the cycling test that had fired Russell up, as much as the fact that I had failed it. I’d been the only one in our year to stuff it up. Well, not quite. Tanya Lyons had failed too. But Tanya Lyons was widely recognised as a mong, a joey, and being lumped in with her just made things worse. It would have actually been better to have been the solitary failure. It would have looked willed. Could have been passed off as deliberate. Part of an insurgency against dull conformity. Impossible to do that when yoked together with Tanya fucking Lyons. Anyway, it was something Russell brought up occasionally, even right up to the end. I’m sure he mentioned it on our last night. In fact, I’m positive he did.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have been any different if I had passed and he had failed. In fact it would have been nice to have got the chance to find out how we’d both respond to my winning and him losing, but I never did. In sports Russell was in the football teams, while I was sub. And sometimes not even that. He got As and Bs in his exams and I got Bs and Cs. He got a 2:1 degree. I got what we called a Desmond – a 2:2. And he would win at all those board games – Risk, Monopoly, Buccaneer, Scrabble, whatever. And when we played tennis or badminton and later, pool, snooker, poker, he would scrap for everything. And cheat. And yet I know he wasn’t any cleverer than me, he just wanted it all much more than I did. And I guess I thought: oh, go on, Russell, if it means so much to you then just have the bloody point, have Mayfair, have that triple word score. Yes, you’re the winner – big deal.

  And that person who had that last can of beans? The leftover sausage. Him. It was always him.

  I come to. The preacher is finishing up – every man’s death diminishes us etc., which isn’t true, is it? Some people’s life diminishes us a whole lot more than their death. Pol Pot for example. Lived on for thirty years after the killing fields. That was quite diminishing for the
human race, I would say. Sarah squeezes my hand again. I squeeze hers back. I’m being forgiven for the crass been dead for years comment.

  I take another breath. Because I can. Russell can’t, but I can. So I’m the winner this time, aren’t I? When it really counts. In a way. And am I diminished? Maybe. Time will tell.

  After Psalm 23 we retire to a meeting room next to the chapel to drink warm white wine and to eat some beige food. We’ve tried not to over-order but there’s still too much, though the unattached old lady makes impressive inroads into the sandwiches and the Doritos. I speak to the man in the three-piece. It turns out he is Mr Jones, the man from the British government.

  ‘I come to the funerals of as many UK citizens as possible.’

  ‘That’s your actual job?’ I say. ‘Being the Queen’s representative at funerals?’

  ‘Well, no. I’m also a businessman. Import. Export. You know. Fruit. Computer chips. Things like that. But I do also provide a number of small services to Her Majesty’s government from time to time.’

  ‘A sort of consul.’

  ‘Well, an unofficial one, yes.’

  ‘You’re a spy.’

  ‘Good heavens, no. I’m more of a consultant.’

  ‘Ah,’ I say. ‘More proof the world’s going down the toilet. We used to call our spies honorary consuls, now they’re honorary consultants. Just four added letters but a whole world of difference, my friend.’

  I’m a little drunk by this time but it’s understandable. It’s my funeral after all.

  The honorary consultant flushes. ‘Well, nice to meet you, Mr Knox. I wish it could have been under better circumstances but, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting.’

  ‘About fruit? Computer chips? Things like that?’

  Mr Jones smiles wearily. ‘Things like that,’ he says. And he presents his card, shakes hands and is gone.

  ‘Why the fuck have we got spies in California?’ I say to Sarah.

  ‘I don’t know, Nigel.’

  ‘Will you stop calling me Nigel? Please? Someone might hear.’

  Sarah has been calling me Nigel ever since we left Russell’s daughter and her mate outside the Russian Hill house. It tickles her. She thinks it’s funny. Me? Well, not so much.

  I look around. I’m going to talk ball games with the tubby AV man. And then I’m going to find out what the deal is with the old lady. As I look about me I notice the honorary consultant taking a couple of vol-au-vents on the way out. That clinches it for me. He’s definitely MI6. I imagine the British secret service is pretty tight when it comes to the old expenses these days. Not wanting to be pilloried in the tabloids and all that. No purple procurement cards for the spooks in austerity Britain, so free vol-au-vents are not to be sniffed at.

  They were mushroom vol-au-vents. I’d insisted on those, despite them being hard to find in the Bay Area.

  ‘It’s what I would have wanted,’ I’d said. ‘And if Russell can organise black pudding then someone out here does frigging vol-au-vents.’

  And after it’s over, after we pay the milky-faced Episcopalian minister and pour the brazen Dorito-scavenger into her taxi, we go back to Hyde Street where Mary from the agency has been looking after Scarlett.

  On the way, Sarah says, ‘Did you notice that the businessman and that old biddy seemed very friendly at the end there?’

  And I had noticed. There was a definite frisson between the consultant and the jogging suit. So it would seem even a dreary little fake wake like ours can stir up the hormones just a little.

  ‘Sarah?’ I say. ‘Sorry, for being a git earlier. You know when I said—’

  ‘You know what it’s like to be dead? Forget it. You’re stressed. High cortisol levels can turn people a bit weird. You’re all right. Really.’ She gives my arm a squeeze. For some reason I fill up again, but I don’t think anyone sees.

  We get home. Scarlett greets us like a cheerful terrier. Panting, slobbering, jumping up at us. I always think she’s half small child, half small dog, half excitable Shetland pony. And yes I know that’s three halves. Who’s counting? There’s something of the giddy pet about her definitely. Though you couldn’t ever say her bark was worse than her bite. It’s so great to see her.

  ‘She been OK?’ Sarah asks.

  ‘She’s been an angel,’ says Mary, her wide smile showing all the complicated Meccano of her braces. Braces and she must be in her twenties. Americans and their orthodontistry, honestly, you’d think the right to a brilliant smile was enshrined in the constitution. Now Mary’s pigtails swing, her dimples seem to bob on her skin as she grins, pebbles being skimmed across placid water. Her pert nose twitches and wrinkles prettily. She is a right little Anne of Green Gables.

  ‘It’s nice to have a quiet one sometimes.’

  Is it? Because actually we find it quite a strain. Quite a worry. I think this but I don’t say it, and Sarah surprises me by laughing. Maybe she’s a bit drunk too.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it must be,’ she says.

  ‘I’m praying for her,’ Mary says.

  Well, that’s all right then. Because we’d never thought of that, had we? Praying. But I try and keep the irritation out of my voice as I ask Mary if she needs a ride home, and she smiles shyly and says no, it’s OK her boyfriend is coming to get her.

  ‘Your boyfriend?’

  ‘You know, Jesus,’ she says.

  Jesus and Mary.

  Sarah looks concerned. ‘Jesus? The limo guy? Well, you go careful, yeah?’

  Mary looks a bit puzzled. ‘Well, gee, yes . . . I will, I guess. But you have to be careful with all guys, don’t you?’

  Maybe she’s not Anne of Green Gables, maybe just one of the flirtier Waltons. Wholesome anyway, raised on Nancy Drew, peanut butter and the Bible. Sarah laughs again.

  ‘That is so true. Beware of all blokes always and forever.’

  Jesus isn’t driving the limo today. Rather he’s in an old but immaculate Subaru.

  ‘Is my own car. So of course I look after her. She is like my home.’ He’s friendly but, I feel, a little distant given that we have, in the recent past, spent the whole night carousing together.

  When they drive away, Scarlett starts crying and won’t be comforted. It’s like the time we left Spot the Dog in a thrift shop last year. Scarlett may not be able to talk, but boy can she tear the arse out of crying. The operatic sobbing went on for an entire miserable week then until Argos got a new batch of Spots in. I bought them all. I wasn’t going through that again. Ten Spots at £6.99 each. A sound investment. Only seventy notes, I’d have paid twice that.

  If you knew how Scarlett could tantrum. The whole thrashing, low-budget horror flick violence of it. Tantruming is definitely her thing. Like something from a gorier remake of The Exorcist. The body going rigid, the uncontrolled hitting, clawing, kicking. The wet mouth attempting to saw through your wrist. The face so purple it’s nearly black. The breath-holding. The nuclear rage of it all. It’s a sinister, unnatural thing. I can’t bear the thought of it, and neither can Sarah, and we find ourselves promising that Mary will be back real, real soon.

  Fourteen

  POLLY

  ‘Hello, doll, I’ve been waiting for you. Let’s celebrate.’

  Daniel meets Polly before she even gets to the entrance of Sunny Bank. He’s there on the gravel practically hopping from foot to foot in his excitement. And when she asks what’s the occasion, he grins all over his face and whips something out of his pocket and holds it up with a flourish. A bit like a referee sending someone off in a big match. He looks puffed up with pride. Honestly, when he’s happy Daniel could pass for a teenager. And because he’s happy, Polly feels happy too.

  She still can’t work out what he’s got in his hand though.

  ‘This, Polly my love, this is freedom.’

  ‘Is it?’ She says as he waves it about in her face. ‘It looks like a piece of plastic to me.’

  ‘And that is how freedom comes these days!’ he yells. He’s g
ot the volume turned up to eleven again. But it’s early and they’re outside and it’s chilly, so Irina and the rest aren’t around to shush him. Sometimes you’d think shushing the residents is what they were actually paid to do. Whereas Polly, she’s at Sunny Bank to unshush them, kind of.

  ‘It’s a key,’ Daniel says finally. ‘It’s a car key.’

  Five minutes later they’re off out in Daniel’s new Alfa Romeo Giulietta. It’s bright red and Polly’s trying to remember if she’s ever been in a brand-new car, and she doesn’t think she has. Her dad always had old Land Rovers because of the horses, and the boys she’s been out with have only ever had bangers.

  It’s exciting, or it would be if she wasn’t so terrified. Daniel is an old man! He has a hole in his head!

  What Daniel actually has is vascular dementia. This means that every so often he has a little stroke and the veins in his brain leak a bit. It’s like there’s some bad weather in there which damages the vein wall and then there are some days of confusion, of getting things wrong. Things like his own name.

  Daniel says it is funny that he should be suffering because of badly put together pipework – ironic. You know, given what his job used to be. Polly doesn’t think it’s funny.

  The progression with vascular dementia is stepwise, rather than the steady slippage downhill like it is with Alzheimer’s. With vascular dementia after a stroke the hole widens some more, the patient steps down to the next level and then there’s a plateau for a few days, weeks, months, until the next bit of proper turbulence in the pipework of the brain.

  What’s amazing is that sometimes Daniel can step back up a level. It’s like the brain finds new ways around this hole in his head. The temporary traffic lights go up, those yellow diversion signs are put in place and all the pulses and messages and memories find clever new ways to work. Smart new rat runs to get to where they need to go. It can’t last though. Some day there’ll be a massive brain hurricane and he’ll be dead or as cabbage-like as the worst of them in Sunny Bank, but for now he’s got enough marbles to get by.