‘Yes, I understand,’ Victoria says, her voice completely devoid of intonation.
‘And Marge, I’m sure you realise, she wouldn’t have wanted it all being dragged up again. Not at her funeral. Not now.’
‘No,’ Victoria says. ‘No, you’re absolutely right. Mum wouldn’t have wanted anyone to talk about any of it ever again.’
At these words, Cecil visibly relaxes. But Penny, who knows her sister so much better than Cecil, who can decode the tiniest subtleties of her sister’s voice, the smallest shifts in her body language, instead tenses up.
‘So, do you want to know what I think?’ Victoria asks, her voice now sugary sweet with mock compassion.
To Penny’s dismay, Cecil falls for it hook, line and sinker. ‘Yes?’ he asks, nodding enthusiastically.
‘You really want to know?’ Victoria asks again, and Penny sees the first shadow of doubt cross Cecil’s brow, even as he nods again.
‘This,’ Victoria says. ‘This is what I think.’
As she begins to work her mouth strangely, Penny thinks she understands what is about to happen. But no, she tells herself. She can’t. She can’t possibly do that. Not at Mum’s funeral. She just can’t.
But then she does do that. And it’s exactly what Penny feared.
Victoria pulls in her cheeks and then spits, generously, at point-blank range, directly into their uncle’s eye.
‘You’re a disgusting, dirty bastard,’ Victoria says as Cecil covers his face with his hands. ‘That’s what I think.’
Time stretches and a few seconds seem to last for minutes. Cecil wipes his eye with the back of one hand and glares hatefully at Victoria while Penny looks from one to the other and then back again, her mouth agape. Around them, people are turning to look, their conversations fizzling out; some are covering their mouths in shock.
And then the moment is over and Cecil is striding away, the hard soles of his shoes pounding the courtyard as he leaves.
Penny watches him go and then turns to ask her sister what just happened, but she, too, has vanished.
She looks around and, deducing that Victoria can only have returned inside, she starts to follow her but is retained momentarily by Martin, who has had to run in order to intercept her. ‘What was that?’ he asks, grabbing at her arm.
‘I don’t know, Martin,’ she says.
‘But she did just . . . ?’
‘She spat in his eye. Yes.’
‘I should go to her,’ Martin says.
‘No,’ Penny tells him forcefully. ‘No, it has to be me. Trust me.’
She finds Victoria in the corner of the chapel. Her cheeks are wet with tears and she’s fumbling madly in her handbag. As Penny reaches her, she pulls her cigarettes from the bag.
‘You can’t smoke here,’ Penny tells her, grabbing the shaking hand holding the lighter.
‘I don’t care,’ Victoria says.
‘Here,’ Penny instructs. ‘Out here.’ She gently pulls her towards a fire exit, where she pushes the bar to release the door. As they step over the threshold, Victoria lights the cigarette.
‘What just happened there?’ Penny asks her sister.
Victoria leans against the wall of the building and drags deeply on the cigarette. ‘He proved me right,’ she says, incomprehensibly.
‘I don’t understand. About what?’
‘I hate him,’ Victoria breathes.
‘Yes, I got that,’ Penny says. ‘But why?’
‘He . . . Oh God, I can’t tell you, Penny. You’re so much better off not knowing. You’ve been so lucky not knowing. But he’s a bad person. He’s a terrible person. You shouldn’t have invited him. Did you? Did you actually invite that . . . that man?’
‘Yes. Well, Sander did,’ Penny says. ‘But if you won’t tell us anything . . . I mean, why wouldn’t we? He’s Mum’s brother, for God’s sake. Other than us, he’s her only relative. Here, give me one of those, would you?’ Penny nods towards Victoria’s handbag, which she opens and offers so that Penny can reach inside. ‘You know,’ Penny continues, once her own cigarette is lit, ‘I think I need to know what’s going on. I think it’s time.’
‘Not today,’ Victoria says, dabbing at her eyes. ‘Not at her funeral.’
‘That just happened at her funeral,’ Penny says. ‘So tell me, will you?’
‘I can’t, Penny. Really, I can’t. But stay away from that . . . stay away from him. And keep him away from your kids. I thought he was dead. I hoped he was dead.’
‘Did he . . . ? He didn’t . . . abuse someone, did he?’ Penny says. ‘Because that’s what it sounded like.’
Victoria nods almost imperceptibly.
‘It wasn’t . . . Oh God,’ Penny says, closing her eyes and feeling sick. ‘It wasn’t Ed, was it?’
It was the morning of Christmas Eve and Vicky had woken up early. She was too excited about Christmas to stay in bed.
Fun times were few and far between in the Thompson household. Since their father had died, just two years after Penny was born, things had been pretty awful, really.
Marge had taken a job at the local Tesco supermarket, but there still wasn’t enough money for coal, or sometimes even for electricity.
The girls would come home to a cold, draughty house and an empty refrigerator. They would sit together in the kitchen (the least cold room, thanks to the afternoon sun) and wait for Marge to return with something for dinner, usually whatever she found in the bargain basket of her workplace. The bargain basket made for some unusual dinner combinations.
But Christmas was different. Christmas was the exception.
Uncle Cecil always came to stay at Christmas and, with him, he brought money for coal and food, and gifts for them all. He worked as a salesman and things were going well for him. He wore elegant suits and he smoked cigarettes from a gold cigarette tin with a clasp that Vicky liked to play with.
Marge, so glum since Dad died, changed when Cecil arrived, too. She dressed prettily and wore make-up and perfume. Even her accent changed slightly when Cecil was around.
Vicky was the first person downstairs. The clock on the mantlepiece said six thirty, which meant that Marge wouldn’t be up for at least an hour. She liked her lie-ins on her days off and would punish anyone who interrupted them.
Vicky sat next to the Christmas tree and, memorising the gifts so that she could put them all back in the exact same spot, she gently lifted them one by one until she came to hers. It was a biggish package, just about the right size and weight for a cassette player, the thing she had asked for, the thing she had dreamed of.
She lifted the package to her ear as if she might hear the music within and imagined herself dancing around to The Three Degrees, or ABBA, or the Bay City Rollers.
Then, thinking she heard movement above, she carefully replaced the packages.
Checking one last time that the pile looked undisturbed, she returned to the hallway and looked up the stairs. But the house remained silent.
In the kitchen, she opened the usually empty refrigerator and stared at the contents.
There were bottles of Babycham and Cecil’s Pale Ale. There were Ski fruit yoghurts and sliced ham and cheese and a half-made trifle. One of the bottles of milk had been opened, so she raised it to her lips and sipped at the cream floating on the top.
Back in the hallway, she hesitated about what to do next. But then she remembered her book – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She was excited to read what would happen next. She began to climb the stairs.
When she reached the landing she heard movement coming from Ed’s room on the top floor. He had been bragging, the previous evening, about having squeezed the packages. He knew, he said, what was in them. Only she did now, as well. She would tell him. He would be impressed at her nerve.
As she opened his door, strange noises met her ears and she wondered if Ed was doing his exercises. He had decided recently to be a professional footballer and had started doing sit-ups and press-ups. Footballer
s have to be incredibly fit, he had told her.
But when she peeped around the door, she found not Ed doing press-ups but Cecil. At first she didn’t understand what she was seeing. Why would Cecil be doing exercises in Ed’s room? But then she realised that Ed was beneath Cecil. Cecil was doing his press-ups on Ed.
Ed looked up at her just then. He had tears in his eyes. He didn’t look happy.
She jerked back out of the door as if she had accidentally burned her hand in a flame. And then she had gone to her room and cried about whatever it was she had seen. Because she really wasn’t sure what that was.
The sisters have slumped to the ground. They are sitting, side by side, their backs against the wall.
‘I feel sick,’ Penny says, once Victoria has finished.
‘Welcome to the club,’ Victoria says. ‘I’ve been feeling sick for forty years.’
‘So, did you tell Mum?’ Penny asks.
‘Please don’t make me go through the rest of it,’ Victoria replies. ‘I just can’t, Penny. I can’t.’
‘OK,’ Penny says. ‘But just tell me that you told Mum. And that’s why she sent Cecil away?’
‘I told her.’
‘Did she report it to anyone? Or did she just banish him?’
‘Penny,’ Victoria says. ‘That’s enough.’
Penny sighs deeply and slides one arm around her sister’s shoulders. ‘OK,’ she says again. ‘Have you even told any of this to a professional?’
Victoria silently shakes her head.
‘I think you need to.’
‘Of course you think that.’
‘Because I’m a psychologist?’
Victoria shrugs.
‘Maybe that’s true,’ Penny says. ‘But I still think that you should talk to someone. I think you need to work through it all. Did you talk to your Austrian guy about this?’
‘Dr Müller?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. I can’t. I can’t talk to anyone about this.’
‘I understand that,’ Penny says. ‘It’s a huge childhood trauma. But maybe you could, now. I mean, you’ve just told me.’
‘I suppose,’ Victoria says vaguely.
‘There isn’t more, is there?’ Penny asks, suddenly frowning.
Victoria looks away.
‘Cecil . . . He didn’t . . . ?’
‘Me?’ Victoria asks, turning back. ‘No! Of course not! I wouldn’t have let him near me. I would have cut his dick off.’
‘Kids sometimes don’t feel they have the choice,’ Penny says. ‘I’m sure Ed didn’t.’
‘Well, he didn’t,’ Victoria says. ‘And that’s it. That’s the whole story. Honestly.’
‘Good,’ Penny says. ‘Well, thank God for that.’ But even as she is saying it, she is realising that she doesn’t really believe what her sister is saying.
The ambiance in Chequers is workaday. The place is busy, filled with men in suits eating burgers and secretaries picking at salads, and the mourners have to elbow their way through the lunchtime drinkers to order at the bar. With only seven of them present from the funeral, their little meeting feels more like a work lunch than a wake. But neither Penny nor Victoria is in any state to care.
Victoria is feeling as angry as she has ever felt and is alternating between hoping Cecil will come so that she can punch him (her spitting gesture, she now feels, was insufficient) and praying that she’ll never see him again.
As for Penny, her sister’s revelations are washing over her in foul, nauseating waves. Images of Cecil and Ed keep swamping her mind, and there’s nothing she can do to stop them. It feels like she’s bobbing around in a sea of sewage, trying desperately to keep her mouth above the waterline in order to breathe.
She’s unexpectedly angry with the people around her as well. ‘Stop laughing!’ she wants to shout. ‘My mother is dead. My brother, whose life was cut obscenely short, was sexually abused! In God’s name, stop laughing, will you?’ It’s just too much to think about, too much to take in, especially today, which was supposed to be about remembrance, which was supposed to be about celebrating Marge’s life, after all. It’s as if her mother’s funeral has been sullied by these revelations, and, as she had said to Martin, there’s only one chance to get this day right – there are no replays. Will her mother’s funeral be associated for evermore with a paedophile uncle and an abused brother?
She’s angry with herself for inviting Cecil and angry, too, that she repeatedly asked Victoria to explain it all to her. She’s even angry with Victoria for replying, for telling her; and, not knowing what to do with any of this anger, it’s spilling over, making her hate everyone around them as well. And Cecil! Above all, Cecil! For how could he possibly imagine anyone would ever forgive and forget something like that? Has the man no sense of remorse? Has he no shame?
She’s standing in a small group with Sander, Martin and the old chap from the sheltered-housing complex whose name she has forgotten, and she notices now that Sander is staring at her strangely. He has, she deduces, been speaking to her.
‘Um?’ she asks, sipping at her gin and tonic.
‘I said, are you sure you’re all right?’ Sander asks.
‘Yes, I’m fabulous, darling,’ she says sourly.
‘You don’t seem fabulous.’
‘No? It’s a funeral, Sander. What do you expect?’
Sander pulls a face and glances at Martin beside him, who sighs and asks, ‘Any idea where my wife and son went?’
Penny shrugs. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No, I don’t, Martin. Blackpool, perhaps?’
Martin now pulls a face as well and, using the search for Victoria and Bertie as an excuse, vanishes into the crowd.
Sander seizes Penny’s free arm and, telling the old guy, ‘Excuse me one second,’ he pulls her to one side. ‘OK, tell me what’s going on, Pen,’ he says, ‘because you’re being really strange now.’
‘Am I?’ Penny says.
‘Yes. You’re bitching at everyone.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Penny says. ‘It’s just . . . this is hard.’
‘But something’s wrong, isn’t it?’ Sander asks. ‘Something else? Why won’t you tell me what happened with Posh?’
‘Another day,’ Penny says. ‘I told you in the car, I’ll tell you another day! Are you even listening to me, Sander?’ she asks, rapping her knuckles on his forehead.
‘Ugh . . .’ Sander groans.
‘Well, you keep just asking me the same thing, over and over. Why won’t you just listen to me?’
‘Excuse me for trying to help,’ Sander says, releasing her arm and turning back to the old chap.
Penny gasps in exasperation and, spilling a man’s pint as she does so, she barges her way through the crowd to the door and steps out into the sunlight. All the tables in the beer garden are taken. It’s unsurprising, really; it’s a beautiful day.
On the other side of the road, beyond the railings, she can see identical empty benches and tables belonging to Middlesex University, so, still holding her gin and tonic, she walks to the end of the road, passes through the university gates, and, ignoring the stares of the students, crosses the green and takes a seat. She’s aware that these benches have not been provided for overflow from Chequers, but she needs to be alone and, today, seating etiquette is just not something she has any capacity to care about. In fact, if someone were to challenge her, she’d probably enjoy it. She feels like she might be in need of a good, lively brawl. But she’s disappointed – her anger must be radiating from her skin. Everyone steers clear of the glaring woman with the gin and tonic.
The solitude plus the drink and a tweeting magpie in the tree above her combine to calm Penny’s nerves and, by the time her glass is empty, she is feeling more centred and, above all, guilty about playing truant from her mother’s wake. She downs the final drips of gin and tonic from her glass, crunches the remains of an ice cube and heads back.
On reaching the pub, she spots Bertie at the rear of the car park, si
tting on a wall drinking a Coke, so she crosses the beer garden to join him. ‘Hello,’ she says softly, on arrival. ‘Are you OK over here on your lonesome?’
Bertie shrugs.
‘Funerals are hard,’ Penny says. ‘We go through all kinds of different emotions. And that’s all fine.’
‘Right,’ Bertie says, looking away.
‘Have you seen Max and Chloe?’ Penny asks, glancing around.
‘Nope.’
‘Do you want me to leave you alone?’ Penny asks. ‘Is that it?’
By way of reply, Bertie shrugs and nods at the same time.
‘OK,’ Penny says, reaching out to stroke her nephew’s shoulder but then abandoning the gesture when he flinches from her touch. ‘I understand that,’ she adds. ‘I had to have a bit of time out myself just now.’
When she steps back indoors, she sees the crowd is thinning out a little. On the far side of the pub, Martin and Sander are talking, presumably about the football on the Sky Sports screen in the corner. Max and Chloe are present, half-heartedly playing pinball, and Penny thinks that she’ll give Bertie ten more minutes and then she’ll send Max out to fetch him. She crosses to the bar, where Victoria is chatting to Old Guy and, as they come into earshot, she hears him say, ‘She was lovely, though. A heart of gold, your mother had.’
Victoria groans. ‘It’s not like you even really knew her, is it?’
Penny swoops in and leads her sister away. Over her shoulder she tells her mother’s admirer, ‘I’m so sorry – emotions are all over the shop today.’ She feels vaguely reassured by her sister’s outburst. At least she’s not the only person suffering from randomly directed anger today.
‘What?’ Victoria asks as she’s led away. ‘What did I do now?’
‘You can’t say that, that’s all.’
‘Why not? It’s true. He didn’t know her. You know, he told me he only arrived there six weeks ago, right?’
‘I know, but . . .’
‘It’s just so hypocritical. Whenever someone dies, no one’s allowed to say what they really think. I can’t stand it.’
The Bottle of Tears Page 23
