‘He might,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but if they’re purely on the dinner-dance circuit it’s unlikely.’
‘Of course, of course.’ My mother waved aside her own foolishness. ‘ He has bigger fish to fry.’
‘Did I tell you Becca was going out with one of his clients?’
‘You didn’t – how exciting. Is it anyone I’d know?’
‘I don’t suppose you will have done, but he’s in the process of becoming quite famous. He’s the lead singer with a band called Human Condition.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said my mother. ‘We saw Griggs on one of those chat-shows the other evening. I remember because we used to know someone called Griggs when Peter was in Basingtstoke and we wondered whether he might be a son or something. He wasn’t, no,’ she added in response to my unspoken query, ‘but your father and I rather liked him. He kept his end up awfully well, we thought, with that smart-alec lady presenter – most people look like complete idiots.’
‘Yes, he’s bright,’ I said. ‘And don’t say I told you, but I think Becca’s in love with him.’
‘That is such good news.’ My mother sat back as her plate was removed, and enslaved the waiter with a winning smile of gratitude. ‘She needs a strong man, and I can imagine that chap being able to give as good as he got.’
‘Did Anthea say anything about Jasper?’ I asked.
‘She said he’d got some new job or other working for a charity. She wasn’t happy about it, but then she never is. She cannot resign herself to his not being a national hunt jockey or a tea planter or something.’ The disparity in these two sample occupations was a striking indication of how well my mother understood her daughter-in-law.
‘She didn’t mention a new girlfriend?’ I asked.
‘Heavens, no. I don’t know about new girlfriend, any girlfriend would cheer them up. Of course you know what their greatest fear is, don’t you? And it matters to them dreadfully, far more than it should in this day and age …’
‘They shouldn’t worry,’ I said. ‘He’s going out with Verity.’
‘No! How lovely!’ My mother was a wonderful audience, her response to this titbit was wide-screen and technicolour. ‘That is a turn-up for the books – I wonder if first cousins are legal?’
We moved on to cover the holiday with David and Anthea in Madeira. It wasn’t till coffee – accompanied in my mother’s case by a Tia Maria – that I ventured the smallest hint of censure.
‘I gather you spoke to Josh recently.’
‘I did, yes. I rang to ask you about coming up today and you weren’t there so I had a chinwag with him.’
‘Then you know he wants to work instead of coming to the wedding.’
‘He said, and I must say I’m absolutely on his side.’
‘Well, I’m not. I think he ought to make the effort and turn up. It’s not as if he’s asked to do anything very much, ever. He suits himself virtually the whole time …’ I continued for a couple of minutes in the same vein, the parent from hell. My mother listened, wearing a deeply sympathetic expression. It was clear she was going to disagree with me. When I’d finished, she said, ‘It’s a difficult one, isn’t it? But I don’t suppose Steph cares a fig either way, and it is work, after all. I mean he’s not just refusing to come because it would bore him to tears. Which it probably would. But he’s not doing that, he’s being frightfully conscientious.’
‘Come on. Mum, he wants the money! He goes back to college the following week and he wants to squeeze every last buck out of this fat cat he’s working for.’
My mother laughed merrily. ‘But that’s what it’s like at seventeen, Laura! Independence is everything, and money provides it. You remember. I remember! It does seem incredible, but at his age I was a chorus girl, working in Paris, being eyed by men old enough to be my father, some of them card-carrying Nazis. I’m hardly in a position to preach to younger generations. As a matter of fact I think your children are wonderful, the way they go along with all these family events. They were so sweet at your anniversary party. At their age I was never at home, and my own parents didn’t know the half of it! I admire all the straight talking that goes on these days, even if it does make life more complicated.’
She took her last sip of Tia Maria. Her eyes sparkled with mischievous joie de vivre. It was hopeless.
After lunch she suggested a show, hut I pointed out that it was already quarter to four.
‘Oh well,’ she sighed, ‘ I’d better hightail it back to Dullsville.’
I watched her stalk along the station platform with her carrier bags, with only a trace of a limp, attracting glances as she went. I wondered where on earth she picked up her vocabulary – but wherever Diana was could never be Dullsville.
Notes seemed to be the order of the day in my life at that moment. I got back soon after five-thirty to find that Glyn had been in and gone out again. He had left a sheet of A4, secured by a trainer, in the centre of the hall carpet so that I couldn’t miss it.
‘Simon was in touch – Richard died, huge stroke. Gone over to see what can be done. XX – Glyn.’
I was quite dazed for a moment. I took the note through into the kitchen and dropped it on the table. There was some post there – last chance to buy cheap coal, a plumber’s bill, and a postcard from Verity who was due back next day. She said that she and Shona were having a wonderful time and she felt completely regenerated. Then I went back into Glyn’s office and checked the answering-machine. There was one from Cy, back in London, for Glyn. And there was another from Jasper for Verity, under the impression that she was already home.
I went back into the kitchen and picked up the note again. There it was – ‘Richard died’. Plain and simple and shocking. I thought of Richard as I’d last seen him, walking beside the mere, a thoroughly contented man.
The phone rang. I ran into the hall to pick it up and Glyn’s recorded voice began to speak over mine because the machine was still on. It was a confusing world.
‘Hang on,’ I shouted, and went into the office and switched Glyn off, only to hear the real thing.
‘Hallo, it’s me. Did you get my message?’
‘Yes – awful.’
‘Not as awful as it might have been. He went out like a light apparently, after a day at the TV studio – died with his boots on. Simon’s absolutely brilliant.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m on my way back, on the Mutchfield road, I’ve just left Simon. His housekeeper’s there and a couple of other friends turned up a few minutes ago.’
‘Is there anything I could do?’
‘I tell you what – you could track down Susan and tell her. Simon thinks she’d want to know.’
‘She’s in Crete,’ I said stupidly.
‘I know, but if anyone can contact her you can. And Simon’s running out of steam.’
‘Okay, I’ll try.’
‘Funeral’s the day after tomorrow.’
‘That’s so quick!’
‘Well … to put it brutally, not so many people die in the summer and Simon wants to get back to normal quickly.’
I sat down in Glyn’s chair. The nodding flower on the desk still trembled slightly from the sound of my voice a moment ago. On the wall facing me was the photo-collage, a silent hubbub of smiling faces – groups, individuals, places, seasons and settings jumbled together in bewildering profusion. Glyn carrying Becca as a baby, in Queen’s Park, his sideburns down to below his earlobes; me with all three children in the parents’ garden; Verity and Becca as Laurel and Hardy; Josh as one of the Three Kings; Amos, newborn, wrapped like a chrysalis in his perspex hospital cot; and with his first birthday cake – had I really constructed it to look like Thomas the Tank Engine?; Roberto hanging out from the side of the climbing frame like a star; Liam and Sinead drawing at the kitchen table; Josh doing his James Dean impression on the bonnet of the car; Christmas at my parents’ house … Christmas here … our silver wedding …
I got u
p and went to look more closely at these, taken by Verity. I hadn’t even been aware that anyone was taking pictures. There were several of the grandchildren, and my parents, and one of Cy with my mother. Then there was one of us being given our present by Becca and Josh, holding the album between us, our faces creased up with delight and surprise. And there was one of us together, not smiling, but dreaming – listening to Henry play his fiddle. Glyn had his arm round me, and my hand covered his hand. We stood together, but not looking at one another: joined, but lost in our separate reflections.
The front door banged and Josh appeared in the hall, fresh from the workface, hot and grubby and pleased with himself.
‘Howdy.’
‘Hallo.’
‘Looking out the life insurance policy?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Never mind.’
He disappeared in the direction of the kitchen and I heard the poop and blare of the radio being retuned to the local independent station. To my surprise he reappeared in the doorway of the office.
‘Still here – want some tea? You okay?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘You look funny. But then you always do.’
I came out into the hall. ‘ Richard Fawcett died,’ I explained. Josh looked blank. ‘He’s an actor – was. He used to be a rather big film star at one time, and he just landed a part in a television comedy, which makes it even sadder. He was such a nice man.’
‘Bummer,’ said Josh.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It is.’
That evening I didn’t do well on tracking down Susan. Her message on the answering-machine had been wiped, and it was too soon to have received a postcard, so there were no clues. Glyn had to ring Cy as soon as he got in, and this call spawned about half a dozen others which peppered the evening and rendered him no help at all and the phone largely out of commission. In the end I reconciled myself to contacting her next day.
‘Try the travel agent,’ said Glyn. ‘In fact any travel agent. I mean, how many hotels can there be on Crete?’
‘Thousands,’ I said gloomily. ’
‘I mean that Susan would stay in?’
‘You’re right, that cuts it down.’
Next morning I remembered her ‘old and elegant’ comment, and mentioned it when I called Worldwise Travel.
‘Oh yes,’ said Michelle, having asked in what way she could help me. ‘That has to be the Porphyrie. It’s much more of a Heritage package.’
I filed this description away to tell Susan. ‘I don’t suppose you could give me the phone number.’
‘No problem, no problem at all,’ chimed Michelle.
They spoke English at the Porphyrie, and in response to my insistence that it was urgent, said that although Ms Upchurch was not in her room they would ensure that she called me back as soon as possible.
In fact it was lunchtime before she did so. She spent the first five minutes describing a visit to a riveting Minoan palace with the smuttiest wall mosaics she had ever seen. It did not appear to cross her mind that I wanted to do anything but hear about her holiday.
I was left with no option but to interrupt and break the news far more brutally than I would like to have done.
‘Susan!’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m so sorry – Richard’s dead.’
‘Oh God.’ The change in her voice was quite shocking. ‘ Poor Simon.’
‘I am sorry. You knew him much better than we did. But Glyn went over—’
‘Glyn did?’?
‘Yes—’
‘Why Glyn?’ she asked sharply.
‘I think Simon called, and I was in London, so he thought he’d see if he could help. Anyway, he particularly wanted to let you know as soon as possible – Susan, does it matter?’
‘Not really.’ I was left in no doubt that it did. It occurred to me that she was jealous. ‘Poor Simon,’ she repeated, as though the digression had never happened. ‘When’s the funeral?’
‘Tomorrow, I’m afraid. It was in the paper today.’
‘That looks like almost indecent haste. Still, the luvvies will doubtless turn up in their droves – what else have they got to do all day? I’ll have a word with Simon.’
She sounded so abrasive that I had to resist the temptation to remind her that Simon had just lost his partner of nearly thirty years. Fortunately for us both, I kept my mouth shut.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this when you’re on a well-deserved holiday,’ I said.
‘Holiday, schmoliday,’ she replied. ‘Who needs ’ em?’
Richard’s funeral at the parish church in Mutchfield was simple and unfussy. It was, as Susan had predicted, well attended, but the congregation was pensive and restrained. There was little if any ‘mwah-mwah’ or luvviedom of any kind. Faces were grim and voices lowered. Simon, and even Glyn, looked austere and dignified in dark suits.
The weather was fine, but that Friday was the first day of September and there was an edge in the air, as though a collective awareness of impending autumn had wrought a change in the temperature which suited people’s funeral clothes, dug out from the back of wardrobes.
Glyn and I sat discreetly at the back, conscious of the delicate hierarchy of grief. Simon was unbelievably composed, greeting and seating people, including a whole row of plain, solid, elderly relatives – Richard’s family, probably – with a couple of miserably embarrassed youngsters.
We sang ‘Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us’ and ‘Praise my soul the King of Heaven’, and Simon delivered the eulogy with dry eyes and a ringing voice. He said it was just like Richard to go when there were two thousand bulbs to be planted. He mentioned Richard’s love of the mere, and the birds that lived there, and finished on an elegiac note: ‘‘… And after many a summer dies the swan.’’’
The rector, hard-pressed shepherd of a flock dispersed over five parishes, was reduced to the role of master of ceremonies, and had the good sense to accept it. All he said, outside the beautiful, sonorous phrases of the service, was that Gracewell was the best monument Richard could have, and that anyone who wished to go back there was welcome.
We weren’t sure whether to or not. We weren’t close friends, and there were obviously a lot of people there who’d travelled miles. The thought of partaking hospitality, no matter how freely and generously given, where we’d availed ourselves of it in happier circumstances only a few weeks earlier, made us uncomfortable.
‘Let’s just go and leave this for Simon,’ I said, ‘and come away.’
I’d bought a magnolia tree for him to plant. It was Susan’s rose for Isobel that had given me the idea, and I half-expected to see Susan herself standing tall, black-clad and dramatic among the graves when we emerged for the burial, but there was no sign of her. Glyn must have caught my glance around because he inclined his head to mine.
‘She hasn’t made it, then.’
‘No …’
‘Sad.’
‘Yes.’
Suddenly I was, terribly sad. Sad for all of us, with our confusion and uncertainty and lack of character. Richard’s coffin, being lowered waveringly into its narrow, green baize-lined resting place, seemed to carry with it the last traces of dignity, order and discretion in a world half-crazed with the desire for self-fulfilment, whatever that might mean. Glyn tucked my arm through his and chafed my hand between both of his as though it were cold.
‘Tell you what,’ he said quietly, not looking at my quivering, melting face. ‘Old Richard’s happy.’
We took our time leaving the churchyard, and ours was the last car to pull away in the lane outside. Looking over my shoulder, I could see the bright scar of the newly dug grave, the pile of earth, the flash of snooker-table green. I told myself sternly that Richard wasn’t lonely, because he was dead. He wasn’t there in that carefully husbanded and measured slot – he was with Our Lord.
‘I could do with Verity right now,’ I said. ‘To say the properly uplifting thing.’
�
��She’s good at that,’ agreed Glyn.
‘I suppose those were all relations sitting at the front.’
‘They looked suitably out of place,’ Glyn smiled, ‘ so they must have been.’
When we got to Gracewell Glyn opted to stay in the car, and I got out, rather selfconsciously carrying the magnolia in its gift-wrapped tub. There was a short queue at the front door – Simon was obviously welcoming people in the hall. I decided to go and leave our present somewhere on the terrace overlooking the garden.
As I walked round, with the warm mossy bricks of the house on one side and the daisied lawn stretching down to the mere on the other, I heard music. I stopped at the foot of the steps. Henry was standing near the stone balustrade, wearing the same drab clothes he had worn in the spring, playing his violin. His eyes were closed, he leaned slightly with the instrument like a thin tree trained by a prevailing wind. The tune he was playing was ‘Someone to watch over me’.
I put the magnolia on the top step and stood to listen. ‘ Won’t you tell him please to put on some speed, follow my lead, oh how I need, someone …’
I listened for a moment, dizzy with confused melancholy and the sweetness of the tune. It was as I turned back towards the front of the house that I noticed a figure sitting on the seat by the edge of the mere, near the boathouse where Richard and I had walked. The figure was very still and upright. Even at this distance I sensed her unhappiness, and knew that it was Susan.
‘Are you sure it was her?’ asked Glyn as we rejoined the main road.
‘Positive.’
‘Didn’t you want to stay and talk to her? There was no hurry.’
‘No – it’s all right.’
It was difficult to explain that just as I knew it was Susan, I knew she was too broken up to approach. She was like one of those unbelievers who vaunt their atheism but want other people, in the face of their scorn, to attend church and do the spiritual spadework on their behalf. The mere thought of marriage made her lip curl and her eyes glitter, but she needed to have happy marriages about her to show that it could be done, and that her single state was one of choice and not self-preservation or cowardice. And Richard’s and Simon’s was arguably the most successful marriage to touch her life.
Life After Lunch Page 27
