Trials of the Monkey

by Matthew Chapman

  ‘Where is she then?’ I asked, genuinely surprised, thinking, Why burn an empty coffin? and only when it was explained did I realize he was talking about her ‘spirit.’

  Unfailingly polite, but probably somewhat condescending, we began to argue every detail of the service in a desperate attempt to keep religion to a minimum. We wanted my brother Francis’ father-in-law, also a vicar, but one who knew and liked my mother, to take charge of the whole thing; but the grasping and insensitive local would not relinquish power.

  ‘Of course I’m delighted that Reverend Shiress will be involved, but this is my service.’ On the subject of additional prayers (and there were we attempting subtraction), he said, ‘I like to personalize, so instead of saying, “Dearly beloved who has gone beyond,” I like to say, “Dearly beloved Clare who has gone beyond.” ’

  He was insufferable, immutable, dreary, relentless. Soon it became apparent he was on a fishing expedition, in search of a character to feed into his personalizing machine.

  ‘Who was this woman?’

  We should have said, ‘Fuck off,’ instead we merely shrugged. Who knew?

  ‘Was she a happy woman?’

  ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  ‘A good woman?’

  A laugh and then, ‘Well, yes and no.’

  We really couldn’t help him—she was a mystery to us, irreducible by cliché—nor were we inclined to yield to his authority as consoler. There were details to be organised, that was all. We wanted one thing, he another, and even in our sorrow we would not quite give in and, in spite of our sorrow, nor would he.

  There was an argument over who should play the organ. K, my parents’ oldest friend, the woman who had introduced them, had a son-in-law who was a professional pianist and organist. Along with two of her children, he was to play a piece of classical music. We suggested he should stay on the organ and play the music which would accompany us out of the church. No, he wouldn’t have that. One piece of music from outsiders, fine, but the official (the official!) organist should have the honor of the finale.

  My father, now thoroughly irritated, decided he would try and get ‘The Red Flag’ as the last piece of music in honour of my mother’s left-leaning politics. In its original form it’s called ‘Tannenbaum’ and is a traditional German song about fir trees. Referring to it as such, he slid it past the ignorant churchman, and finally we won the battle for the second half of the service.

  ‘The Church has swallowed whole nations and the question of indigestion has never arisen,’ says Mephistopheles in Faust. This was more like a ferret nibbling at a wounded rabbit cornered in a dark hole, this was the petty exercise of power by a small man, but underneath it lay the blind, resolute lust of the Church: Here were atheists in mourning, here was an opportunity. To hell with common decency or compassion, make the sale, bend the will. It was as tough a negotiation as I’ve ever seen in Hollywood.

  Atheist though I was, I would occasionally imagine my mother looking down on me. One time I went out to the garage. There was her tiny Mini Minor, versions of which she had driven since I was a child. To my amazement, I found myself patting the roof affectionately and speaking to her, ‘Oh, Mumma, I do miss you,’ then I stepped back, embarrassed at what the old cynic would think of me if indeed she was above.

  Sometimes after a night of drinking, my mother would shuffle off to bed, leaving her children behind, stunned by the cruelty of her despair. Often we would then discuss the conundrum of her alcoholism and get ferociously drunk.

  Now she had shuffled off into death and the tradition continued.

  My father went and got some old photographs. In every one of them my mother wore the same look of melancholy alienation. So sad did she look in one or two, you might think she was in mourning or deranged. A group photograph taken in St. Cast, the French town where we often spent our summer vacations, showed everyone sitting on the steps of the house, Clare on the top, separate from Cecil, right in the corner of the frame looking out as if meditating on some loss. What was she thinking? Was she thinking of her dead brother? Or of a lover?

  After a few hours of this, during which many amusing memories were spoken of—occasions when her mordant wit, her eccentricity, her gift for laying into pomposity and affectation were at their most extreme or endearing—we started to discuss the disposal of the ashes. By this time everyone had drunk a lot. Ludovic, who now owned his own computer-training company in Cambridge, and Sarah, employed in a semi-diplomatic position with the Franco-British Council, were eerily reasonable and diplomatic. My father moderated cheerfully, but you could tell his mind was elsewhere. Francis, meanwhile, my mother’s son by Peter, now a photographer with two children, was making bizarre faces and speaking in an odd voice. I understood his pain, his more than anyone’s, but I didn’t want to talk about my mother’s ashes with a drunk. I suggested we wait a year and bury them then. The idea was eagerly embraced by all, I suspect for the same reason, and then abandoned a short time later for reasons I cannot now remember.

  I thought my mother’s death would bring us closer. I thought, in a way, she was an impediment. Now, sitting in her house, I began to see how central she was to the whole scheme. She may have been an imploding sun, but she was the centre of our small universe. Our concern for her was the means by which we expressed our love for each other. Without her, there was no gravity.

  I went to bed depressed.

  The next day we burned her in a dismal crematorium. You would think that even if you set out to build the most hideous building on earth, somehow, by some accident, one brick, one tile, a doorknob … something, would retain some element of beauty. But no. Next to a motorway, the squat, degenerate building hugged the ground, governmental, sullen, resolute in its ugliness.

  The village vicar had the nerve to produce … an egg. He held it up between his unworked hands.

  ‘This is an egg, but it is not an egg. It looks like an egg, but in fact it is an egg shell. It’s hollow. So it is with Clare. Her body lies over there behind the curtains, but Clare, the Clare who we all knew’ [liar, he never knew her] ‘has gone to heaven …’

  Oh, you fucker! How dare you! Shut up before I strangle you! But no … on he went, the petty egomaniac pissing a torrent of banal clichés on the individuality of my mother, a one-size-fits-all, generic, unisex eulogy … on and on, taking up the rag of who she never was and twisting it until the last drips of meaning had been wrung from it and nothing was left but the municipal stink of false sanctity.

  The efficient whir of machinery, and she was ashes.

  Another day passed, a Sunday. The family was together, all the children, a rare thing this, and an almost festive air prevailed.

  On Monday morning, it was my job to go into town and collect the ashes and have them back before the memorial service at the church. She was not to be buried there, but up in an abandoned graveyard that lay on our land, and still we had not decided when to dig her in; best therefore to have her handy. Off I drove, through the countryside, past St. Anne’s Prep School, and up to a gaunt, dark reddish funeral home in a grim section of the town: run by the Co-op, some quasi-Socialist outfit, I believe, and appropriately utilitarian. I parked outside, went in. A gloomy, unprepossessing lobby indistinguishable from any other administrative gape—except for an overwhelming smell of shit … A Mr. Theobold, more flustered than funereal, produced the container, a cardboard box large enough to contain a bottle of port, but, when I took hold of it, heavier than port. On the box, a label:

  ‘Name of Deceased, Ruth, Clare Chapman; No. of Cremation 92760. Date of Cremation 8/5/92. Remarks: Cambs-Co-op.’

  Poetic.

  I needed to pee so badly I decided I had to brave the toilet even though it must, I figured, have recently exploded. Theobold ushered me through a flap in the counter and directed me toward the rear. Entering the toilet, I was surprised to note that it was not the source of the smell. In fact, it smelt better in here than anywhere else. Where then did this overwhelming s
tench come from? I would soon find out. When I came back into the lobby, I could see Mr. Theobold off to one side, furiously at work with an air-freshener, laying down a sickly scent on some previously unseen coffins, and only then did I realize that what I had smelt was the smell of death.

  It was Monday, first thing in the morning. A couple of dead ’uns had been lying up here over the weekend and the smell of their decaying flesh had, I supposed, been augmented by some last-meal leakage. Rotting fried eggs and baked beans on toast …

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea now, dear? Hello? I said would you like a …’

  Carrying the carton, I walked out to the car and headed for the trunk. But no! I could not put my mother in there. So I took her with me into the car. I thought of laying her on the floor in the back, but that too seemed somehow disrespectful, so I let her sit next to me, upright, all strapped in and safe in the passenger seat. How many times had she rescued me from prep school and driven me home, as helpless as this, to lie at home in bed pretending to be sick, listening to the buzz of flies circling the room and the distant hum of a vacuum cleaner?

  I was relieved to get her out of the funeral parlor; it felt, in fact, almost heroic: I was rescuing her from the bureaucratic aspects of death, the hospital, the crematorium, the funeral home, and was returning her to a place where, in spite of herself, she was loved. Every now and then I would reach across and pat the carton with my hand and say, ‘Okay, Mumma, okay … I’m taking you back to Barrington. That’s where you belong. You’re going home.’

  Back at the house, I took her upstairs to the spare bedroom. In the final year of her life she had moved in here, for medical and emotional reasons, and this was where I was now staying. Ludovic stormed in to get dressed for the memorial service. He looked around at the room and said, ‘This is kind of spooky, isn’t it?’

  ‘Spookier than you think,’ I said, and nodded at the carton reclining on the bed.

  The family walked up the lane together, hung over in the bright day, toward the village church. Many, many cars. A woman walking out the churchyard gate in tears, waved at us that she could not go in. Her husband, Alf, a friend of mine whom I’d worked with in my father’s factory (he taught me the song ‘Balls to your Auntie, arse against the wall!’ which we would sing loudly together when things got dull) had died only a few weeks ago and the memory of his funeral was too recent. Alf too?! I didn’t know.

  We walked in and I could recognize no one. It turned out that almost everyone from my father’s factory had come, and most whom I had known when I worked there were either dead or had moved away. We sat at the front, myself, Denise and Anna Bella, and Francis and his wife Gilly, daughter of the imported vicar. My father was nearby, completely in control and dignified. I thought I’d be able to handle myself with equal aplomb and I did for about three minutes, until the first hymn, ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’

  I read the words but could not sing. Tears stung my sinuses as I was thrown by memory, a sudden surge of nostalgia for my lost past, for Christmases at Mrs. Marshall’s school at Kingston Village, the Harvest Festival in autumn, my young mother, elegant and alive in her bright summer frocks. Next to me, Gilly sang with wonderful pure certainty, provoking further recollections of lost and squandered innocence.

  My uncle’s boyfriend of over forty years, as much an uncle to me as any other, gave his speech. My daughter began to wriggle and complain, death no damper to the incessant itch of childish energy, begging for cheese brought by Gilly, kicking her feet against the pew. I kept whispering in her ear, ‘I’m begging you, please, please, please be good. My mother has died and I’m very sad. Please, please be good.’ Who cared? Not her and rightly so: It was life that mattered—action, kicking, cheese.

  The trio played Bach’s poignant Double Violin Concerto in D Minor. More tears, more nose blowing into a handkerchief stolen from my father.

  The local vicar performed (at least no eggs this time) and our vicar followed, the latter so sure of the idea of renewal (life is like a dry seed, heaven is the flower) that it was almost comforting. The petty vicar smiled enviously and five will get you ten he used the seed/flower metaphor before he flowered himself—and finally, we were all singing ‘Jerusalem’ and only a blessing remained before we filed out to the subtle strains of ‘The Red Flag.’

  Outside, there were many people to speak to. An old employee of my father’s who built the garden wall and got so drunk one Christmas party that he could not ride his bike home. An architect who used to come for drinks on Sunday morning until such parties became impossible.

  Now, as we started home along the village green, I looked forward and saw my father walking beside Peter, his ex-business partner, my mother’s great love, father to my brother. Two distinguished, handsome men, my father, head held high, alert, polite, the other still with the upright, sprightly bearing of a runner.

  By the time we got home there were already fifty to sixty people in the house, half of whom I didn’t know, some I knew quite well, and a good ten or so I hadn’t seen for twenty years, including Mrs. Marshall, my primary school teacher, the only good teacher I ever had, aged almost eighty now, but as bright as ever. I wanted to sit beside her and recall my childhood, but somehow when I tried to talk to her, my attention skidded away and all that remained was a sense of unease.

  Whatever this occasion was, it didn’t have the vigour of a wake or the flamboyance of even more primitive ceremonies where there is wailing and tears. No songs, no drama, no ceremony. I was emotionally exhausted, unsatisfied. My mourning lay out in the future, waiting for me, waiting until we could all be alone together: me, my memories, and the infinite sadness of my mother’s final absence. My brothers drank heavily. Ludovic put on a hat and dark glasses so he looked like a gangster and shouted across the room. Once, as I crossed in front of him, he grabbed my chest and pinched me. ‘Don’t be so boring! Have a drink!’

  I had a drink. I remained boring. I had another. Nothing happened. No matter how much I drank, I remained sober. Or rather, as I drank, and drank a lot, I sidestepped the glow of intoxication and simply became fearfully hung over.

  Slowly the thing wound down. Anna Bella met a boy named Max and they sat on a wall, talking, then went over into the barn to play. Suddenly, there was a scream and Max came rushing across the yard:

  ‘Anna Bella! She’s dying! She’s dying!’

  From behind the barn I could hear her screaming. I imagined some accident involving the sewage disposal system or a fall from the thatched roof which I often used to climb up as a child. Soon, however, it became apparent she had simply fallen into some stinging nettles. We took her, howling, into the sitting room and covered her with calamine lotion. We spent most of the rest of the day in here, I feeding the fire, my wife caring for the kids, both of us avoiding the hilarity in the back of the house.

  When I was my daughter’s age or younger I discovered a place further down the river where girls went to swim in the summer. Climbing a tree, I hid myself on one of the branches and waited. When they finally came, I watched them change. Little pink bodies against the green grass and the slow brown river. Unfortunately, as one floated on her back, she saw me and they all came out of the water. I jumped out of the tree and started to run, but they brought me down like a pack of beagles. It was a hot day and I was wearing only shorts. Two of them held me while a third used a towel to pick some nettles. They then beat me with them.

  The itch—and I was used to itches—was comprehensive and extreme. I was encased in itch. I ran back to the house, shrieking with pain, and my mother plunged me into a calamine bath. She was at her best at times like this, crises rousing her from despair and giving her a sense of purpose. She despised illness, but dealt with it efficiently and, at least in my case, kindly. Hours passed before my body recovered and the blisters subsided. She sat by the bath and talked to me. The house was very quiet.

  Of all the ceremonies, the burying of the ashes was the one I cared about most. No vic
ars, no religion—her ashes, our land. I had thought of it (and, to be fair, not told anyone) as being just me, my father, and my brothers and sister. I wanted one thing where those of us who had had to tolerate her for thirty to fifty years (and love her) were alone with her, simply. We five knew her so much better than anyone else, gave so much more to her, took so much more from her, were hurt by her, formed and deformed by her … and yet, in the end, it was not to be. In drunken bonhomie, ex-wives, children, old friends, all were invited as if to the launching of a boat.

  I remonstrated with Ludovic, the most extroverted and inclusive of us all, and he became angry. He would invite who he wanted. I accused him of being insensitive, not just now but all day. (‘You’re so boring.’) He countered that I was being hypocritical. My jokes about my mother’s ashes were okay while his about my being boring weren’t. He was not entirely wrong. I tried to argue for a moment but he was so angry there was no point, I walked away.

  I went upstairs to the large bathroom where my mother had sat next to me as I recovered from my nettle-beating. I lay on the floor and put my fingers in my ears and tried to remember that quiet summer afternoon. Soon, however, it was time to bury her, and down I trudged to find everyone gathered outside the front door, ready to go. By now ex-wives were sloppily embracing new wives. Boredom and indifference had been subsumed by love. Promises were being made of eternal friendship. The meek had become bold and the bold maudlin.

  The alcoholic mother who died of lung cancer was to be buried by her drunk children between cigarettes. Evolution, bullshit. We all stumbled up to the abandoned graveyard, one with the carton, another with a trowel.

  In spite of everything leading up to this moment, there was something so sad about the little pile of ashes—my mother!—being poured out of the plastic inner container into the ground—that’s all that’s left of her!?—that when Francis started to cry, so did I. In went the ashes, into the little hole, and then a small plant—more plastic here around the roots—was put on top and the earth was tamped down. My uncle’s boyfriend, the most gentle and considerate of men, gave me a melancholy look and hugged me. I hugged my wife and Francis—and it was over. I cannot remember if Ludovic, who, as the youngest, had suffered most from her alcoholism, cried or not. My father did not cry, I remember that. He cannot cry, he says. It’s something to do with school or the war or being English at a certain time.