Have the Men Had Enough?

by Margaret Forster

  So we did not report back to Bridget. I did not see her yesterday. Today, she rushed in to borrow a step ladder: Karl was painting the sitting room which was now to be Grandma’s room. ‘Pink,’ Bridget said, ‘I thought a nice, cheerful, warm pink – what do you think?’ I said I thought pink would be lovely and Bridget beamed. I even said I would make some new curtains, that I had some pink and white flowered material rejected by Hannah and always intended for curtains. Bridget kissed me. She was so happy, so girlish in her delight. As usual, her delight made me miserable. I didn’t even tell her that I had visited Grandma only half an hour before. I didn’t tell her that Sister Grice had checked she had our night-time number. I didn’t prepare her at all.

  Sister Grice didn’t ring in the night. She rang in the morning just after Charlie had left for Munich on business. She told me Grandma had had a very bad night and that she was very ill indeed. I could not go on my own. It was very unfortunate that Charlie had gone, so unfair this had happened on one of his rare absences. I could not leave Bridget ignorant any longer. I could not deprive her either of the chance to see her mother before she died or of saving her. So I had to go along to Bridget’s flat and ring the bell at seven in the morning. She took hours to come to the door and when she did she was bleary-eyed and stupid with sleep. I hoped she would look at me and realise at once the significance of my coming unannounced at such an hour but she did not. Or if she did, she pretended not to and really pretence is not in Bridget’s line. She rubbed her eyes and yawned and said, ‘Oh Jenny, come in.’ But I stood still, determined to get it over with. I said, in a most false and rehearsed way, that I had just had a call from King’s Wood and that Grandma was very ill indeed and I was on my way there now. Bridget stared at me, clutching her dressing gown round her fiercely. ‘Ill?’ she echoed. ‘What the hell have they done to her now?’

  I drove her there. All the way Bridget cursed King’s Wood and everyone in it. She kept up a non-stop tirade against the institution and ranted and raved about the injustice of its existence. I said nothing. She did not once, thank God, ask me why I had not told her sooner. When we drew up outside the ward, she jumped out and ran as though catching a train. I mechanically locked the car doors and followed, dreading the scene I was about to witness. The thing for me to do was keep very, very calm. I took deep breaths, breaths of the awful corridor smell. Bridget had her finger down hard on the bell but nobody had yet answered. When the door finally opened she swept in like a whirlwind, with me following sedately in her wake. The patients were all at the trestle table having breakfast and her passage alarmed them. By now I knew Ida and Doreen and Leah and May and most of them and I saw how each reacted true to type, how each had her own individuality, after all, even if senility had blurred the edges.

  Grandma was still in the little room, next to the Sister’s office. It was six days since Bridget had seen her but, even in the twenty-four hours since I had visited, there had been a further dramatic change. Her breathing was harsh and labouring and around her nostrils was a blue shadow. Her mouth was wide open, a great, ugly, slobbering dull-pinkish cavern. Her eyes were closed. Bridget’s fight went out of her in a moment. She said nothing. She sat down on the left hand side of her mother and took her hand and leaned over her and said, ‘Mother! It’s me, Bridget.’ The eyelids trembled, the vaguest hint of white eyeball glimmered for a second then disappeared. The mouth tried to close and failed. But the hand gripped. I could see it did. I saw how startled and then how pleased Bridget was, how feverishly she applied herself to that living hand, how she stroked and squeezed and caressed it. I sat timidly on the other side, not knowing if Bridget would prefer me out of the way. I, too, took Grandma’s hand. We each sat with one hand in ours with this rasping, struggling carcase between us.

  Bridget talked at first. She told Grandma about painting her room pink and the new electric blanket she’d bought and how she’d washed all the other bedding and how she would be home soon. But she stopped after a while. Instead she patted Grandma’s hair and touched her face. There were no tears. After an hour, Bridget had to go out for a cigarette, right out into the corridor. She had not yet looked at me or spoken to me. But when she came back, the smell of cigarette smoke was suddenly welcome because it blocked out for a moment the rotting stench coming out of Grandma’s mouth. She said as she resumed her post, ‘Well, this is it, no doubt about that. In here, in this place after all.’ I felt that whatever I said was going to be wrong so I said nothing. ‘She doesn’t even know me, she doesn’t know I’m with her, she’s already dead, she’s died on her own.’ Then, it was easy to be swift with reassurance. I gestured with my hand to Grandma’s in my other one. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘feel – the grip. She knows she isn’t alone. She knows that you’re here, of course she does.’ ‘Too late,’ Bridget said, ‘kidding myself and knowing, knowing I did.’

  It was a long, long day. We were at least left in peace. Occasionally May and Doreen, ever patrolling, would shuffle in and stare and cluck and go away. A nurse came from time to time to offer tea. Bridget and I talked, mostly memories of Grandma. We even laughed at remembered jokes. And all the time, the horrible, heaving breathing like a creaky pair of antique bellows. Each time one breath was over we waited for the next to begin. It always did. The rattle in the throat increased hour by hour until breaths and rattles were competing with each other for mastery. Once, when Bridget went for a cigarette, I tried to close Grandma’s mouth. I could not. The resistance to my attempt was so determined, the jaw fighting to remain as it was. Dying was proving so hard. I thought of the natural childbirth exercises I had conscientiously done. Where are the natural death ones? Grandma did not know how to die and she did not want to die. There was no giving up, no surrender. She worked hard at staying alive all that long day, she laboured devotedly as she had done all her poor life, and nobody helped her, nobody even tried to help her. Nature had its evil way and was brutally cruel. Kind science never got a look in.

  At eight in the evening the nice relief Sister suggested we went home. She said Grandma’s pulse was still strong and invited Bridget to feel it – Bridget agreed, but said she would like to stay the night. Most people died in the night, Bridget said, and she wanted to be there. But we agreed we would go home for an hour and eat and wash and then return, fortified for the night ahead. We went and hardly were we inside the front door than the telephone rang and of course she had died. Grandma had died as we drove home. Only another half an hour and it would have been over, with Bridget there as she had so passionately wished to be. Thirty minutes, each one of them in Bridget’s eyes a betrayal. We went straight back, against all my inclinations. Even in death, the jaw had not yielded. The hole was still there. Sister Grice, back on duty, said she would put a strap round it.

  *

  Bridget rang Stuart. She insisted. She was very calm. There was neither rage nor bitterness in her voice nor any apparent devastating distress. On the telephone, she could even have been described as quite bright. She told the news in a matter-of-fact way, without evident emotion. There were no euphemisms – ‘Mum is dead,’ she said, straight out. There was no staying up. We were both exhausted and after Bridget had finished we both went to bed and we slept deeply, to our joint surprise.

  The next day, we were busy. Death made us very busy. We had the death to register, an affair of great time-consuming tedium. We had the undertaker to see. This at least was a livelier affair. We sat, Bridget and I, in a small sitting room at the undertaker’s premises, a room eerie in its brown tastelessness, and were lectured on prices and types of coffin, prices and varieties of funeral car, prices and differences in clergy and their services. It was all done with the greatest and the most sincere, and therefore the most ridiculous, consideration. And the undertaker need not have bothered; we did not need kid gloves and the constant anxious eye for tears. That part of it was not upsetting. We fixed the cremation for the following day and left.

  That morning, Charlie, whom I had failed
to contact the night before, rang at last. I told him his mother was dead. ‘You’re joking!’ he said, startled. What an extraordinary reaction – ‘you’re joking.’ No, I said, I was not. Then Charlie said, ‘I just never thought it would happen, I’d given up hoping.’ I said his hopes had been answered. He said he would come home straight away. I thought of saying there was little point but then decided he should be at his mother’s funeral, for Bridget’s sake if not his own. I made a good meal that night and Bridget ate heartily – why not? I was not so stupid as to take this as a sign she did not grieve. Who, after all, would have expected Bridget to cry or wail or collapse? Not anyone who knew her. What I had expected, and feared, was anger and thankfully it had not come. I had expected it to be turned against me. Instead, Bridget was particularly friendly towards me. I thought maybe she would like Karl to be with her, but she shook her head emphatically and said, ‘No, I just want my own family.’

  And of course that is us: we are Bridget’s family now. Husbandless, childless, Bridget, now motherless too. What would she have without us?

  Hannah

  MUM IS NOT religious, Dad is not religious, Stuart is certainly not religious and Bridget hates religion. Yet here we all are, in a church, at a funeral. It’s silly. I don’t understand what this is for. Mum says it’s for Bridget, Bridget says it’s for Grandma. But Grandma is dead so how can it be for her? Bridget says un-Bridget-like things, such as, ‘Grandma would be black-affronted not to have a funeral and a proper service.’ When I say Grandma is dead Bridget smiles in an odd way and says she knows but it feels right.

  It feels wrong to me. And absurd. We all sit in this awful waiting room at the crematorium. A large party of mourners has just left. We are not a large party. There are only seven of us, it’s pathetic. Only Stuart and Paula are dressed for a funeral. Stuart is wearing a dark grey suit and an almost offensively white shirt with a stiff collar and a black tie. His black leather shoes are very shiny and his hair well brushed. Paula has a black coat with a discreet silver-and-black scarf at the neck, and black boots, also well polished though not as gleaming as Stuart’s. Dad is quite funereal too but then his everyday work suits are all hideously drab. He has a dark blue suit on but his shirt is pale blue and his tie striped blue, white and gold. Mum is in grey, her grey skirt and jacket, with a spotted thing underneath. Bridget is in red. She says it was Grandma’s favourite colour. She is wearing a scarlet dress with a black jacket over it. The jacket has a red carnation pinned to it. Adrian and I let the side down. There were heated exchanges over what we should wear. Dad thought I should wear a skirt or dress but I only have one skirt, and he didn’t approve of it. I thought I should just be normal but normal means jeans and even Mum said no. So I’m wearing black trousers and a white sweater and since it’s cold and I only have one warm jacket they have had to let me wear my bomber jacket. Adrian hasn’t got a suit. He is wearing black trousers too and a white shirt but he adamantly refused to put on a tie. He has his horrible anorak jacket on top.

  I have all this time to look at our clothes. There’s nothing else to do. Bridget has just said she dreads this service being pathetic. How could it not be? With seven people present, only seven, who never go to church. Hours and hours have been spent on this wretched service. Bridget wanted rousing hymns. Rousing with seven singers? She says Grandma liked ‘Fight the Good Fight’. She and Mum dredge up all these hymns from the past. Bridget is shocked that I do not know the words to ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’. She keeps asking me, just like Grandma, if they teach me nothing at school. Then there is the music. Apparently, two pieces of music have to be chosen, one for the coffin coming in and one for the mourners leaving at the end. Bridget wanted ‘Charlie is My Darling’ for the first bit but the funeral director – funeral director – said it was ‘inappropriate’. Bridget said she didn’t care, that was what she wanted. The funeral director said the organist couldn’t play it. Bridget was sure he bloody well could but Mum suggested ‘The Skye Boat Song’ which the funeral director passed and the organist could manage and so Bridget gave way. Mum says the funeral director doesn’t like Bridget. It’s all to do with the coffin. Bridget queried the cost of the coffin. The funeral director said it was the cheapest wooden coffin available with brass handles and a polished finish. Bridget said forget the brass and polish and why can’t it be hardboard. The funeral director was obliged to reveal there was a plywood coffin with a cloth top but was sure Bridget would not want a cloth top. He was wrong. Bridget did. Bridget also wanted Dad, Stuart and Adrian to carry the coffin instead of the funeral director’s lackeys but Dad refused. He said his back wasn’t up to it and that he was paying and Bridget should stop fussing about cost. Bridget said she was doing it for Grandma’s sake.

  It is five to two. Our funeral is booked for two and there’s another at two-thirty. The funeral director, looking like someone straight out of Dickens, from central casting anyway, comes in to this waiting room with another man. It is the minister, a Scot called McKay like us. He is very old and grizzled and sour-looking but he has a lovely accent. He shakes our hands and says he is from the Western Isles. Bridget has spent ages on the telephone filling him in on Grandma so that he can talk about her. I heard her tell him three times, but then Bridget tells everyone everything three times, that she doesn’t want any fulsome speech about Grandma. That was the word she used: fulsome. Bridget said it would be embarrassing, ‘know what I mean?’ The minister must have said yes because she seemed reassured. Now that Minister McKay is standing in front of us I see he could never be fulsome. He hasn’t got it in him to be anything but taciturn and grudging. Apparently he only gets £25 and even that probably goes to his miserable church and he has come all the way from East Barnet to officiate.

  We troop out of the waiting room and across a yard into a small chapel. A large party is crossing to get to another chapel and we wait, in some confusion, to let them cross. They have right of way. There are many of them and most are weeping. The women are actually heavily veiled which fascinates me. Two are so grief-stricken they have to be helped along. White handkerchiefs, proper ones, not Kleenex, are held to red eyes. Then when they have gone, we continue, feeling hopelessly inadequate. The chapel is very small indeed, much smaller than our living room. Its maximum capacity is twenty-five so we’re not too lost in it. It’s really quite pretty. There is one stained glass window, circular, over the altar and the walls are dark wood. There are white chrysanthemums in a big urn thing (Mum’s doing). Charlie, Stuart and Bridget sit in the front row with Mum, Paula, me and Adrian behind. The minister takes his place. I can feel the cold air rush in so I know the doors are open behind us but I am not going to turn round to watch the coffin being brought in. But Bridget does. She swings right round, defiantly, and stares. Her face is tight. No tears. There have been no tears at all that anyone has seen. Her lips are twitching from side to side, first to the left, then to the right, as though they are winking. To avoid looking at Bridget’s face I decide to look at the coffin too, even if it means breaking my resolution.

  Four men have it on their shoulders at the door. It is such a surprise to see that it is draped in tartan. Bridget hadn’t told me. It has Grandma’s shawl, bright red and yellow and black, over the top and sitting on the shawl is a bunch of heather. I knew about that. It isn’t heather, Mum couldn’t find a florist who could get heather in December. Instead, it’s some purple heather-substitute. Bridget smiles and turns back. The minister starts to speak. What he says is predictable, that Grandma was a good wife and mother and had led a good life, but his accent is beautiful. All the ‘s’ sounds are long drawn out, his intonation rhythmic and hypnotising. Then we sing ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’, well, four verses. Bridget sings lustily and so does Stuart. Behind me I can hear the funeral director belting it out too. The prayers are just mumbo jumbo to me. Bridget gets restless during them but goes through the motions of head-bending and hand-clasping. We sing ‘Fight the Good Fight’. Surely it can’t go on much lo
nger? Then we have what I take to be a concluding homily. It seems to me to be a dig at us for not being religious, ending on a ‘how can anyone know’ note and a reminder that God works in a mysterious way which we should never try to judge. Then there is silence, a bit of creaking, and the coffin starts to move between some discreet little curtains. Now that does seem dramatic, for a moment. I can’t see Bridget’s face. She is directly in front of me. But I can see Dad’s left profile and Stuart’s right. I am amazed to see a tear trickling down Stuart’s cheek. Good God. Has Mum seen it? Dad isn’t crying though. But he does a nice thing. As the coffin disappears I see him take Bridget’s hand. That’s it, then.

  We have to go through a ritual outside. There is a place at the back of all the chapels, between the crematorium buildings and the gardens, where flowers are laid. There are dreadful little wooden markers in rows with the name of the chapel on. Some markers are nearly obliterated with flowers, mounds and mounds of them in every kind of shape. MUM is there in three foot pink flower letters and GRAN and there’s a whole motorbike done in red and white carnations. On our marker there is at the moment only our bunch of heather-substitute. We’re all proud of this except Stuart and Paula who cringe. They wanted to send a wreath but Bridget said Grandma would have been furious at the waste. Then there’s nothing left to do. We shake hands with the minister and the funeral director. We get into our two cars. We go home.