Growing Up for Beginners

by Claire Calman

‘Come on, son. Come and sit with us for a bit.’

  Andrew stifled a sigh and drew back the covers.

  ‘All right then. I’ll be down in a min.’

  ‘There you are, Andrew, love.’ His mother gave him what he realised was meant to be an encouraging smile as if he had just managed his first few steps after a period of paralysis. ‘There’s fresh tea in the pot.’

  A tray of tea-things, with a plate of biscuits and three paper napkins, each folded twice into a perfect little triangle, was on the largest of the coffee tables, its smaller sidekicks still nested beneath it. He chose two custard creams and a Viennese shortcake while his mother presided over the teapot. He took a bite of his biscuit.

  ‘Crumbs, love. Take a serviette.’

  ‘Thanks. Sorry, Mum.’

  He took the proffered cup of tea and settled back on the sofa. Directed his gaze towards the television, losing himself in the flickering screen, letting it distract him from other, unwelcome thoughts. What was the point in fretting about life, after all? You couldn’t control it anyway. You thought you could – people were always rattling on about being the architect of your own destiny and being proactive – but it was all a load of crap, wasn’t it? You could dash about, captaining the ship and attempting to steer a course between the rocks and the whirlpools, but in the end you were only a chunk of flotsam that would get shoved this way and that by the current, and you might as well give in and go with it. The sooner you stopped resisting and followed the flow, the easier life would be, surely?

  He picked up another custard cream and dunked it into his cup of tea and counted slowly to three.

  40

  The Death of Marcia

  Conrad sits beside the bed, staring into space. Eleanor is holding her mother’s hand. They are blank and drained, having spent the last couple of days and nights scrunched awkwardly in uncomfortable chairs, taking it in turns to doze and keep watch. Marcia floats through the hours in a haze of morphine and music: Schubert, Brahms, Bach. Then, in a moment unnoticed by either of her sentinels, it is over.

  The nurse says, very softly, for she has delivered this statement many times before, ‘She is gone now.’

  Conrad remains seated. He shakes his head.

  His first thought is something that, even now, more than five years later, still chills him when he thinks of it. He has never told anyone, can barely recall it himself without shame and self-loathing, but still he knows he felt it absolutely keenly, fiercely. It was the truth: Damn you – why couldn’t you have died back then?

  He weeps. Eleanor, who has only ever seen her father cry once before, long ago, looks at him with such tenderness that he cannot bear it, her pity and affection are so undeserved. She loops her arms round him and simply holds him – Eleanor, who, like him, has little time for displays of emotion. She does not speak, does not attempt to frame these raw, jagged feelings into neat words, just holds him while his tears turn to sobs, proper sobs. And he could not say, ‘No, no – do not comfort me, I do not deserve it. Give me nothing, nothing.’ For he does not weep for the loss of his wife and he knows it. He is undone by the thought of the life he might have had, wishes he’d had with his love – if he had been given the chance, if he had seized the chance. But it is all too late now, years too late. And though he has told himself a thousand times that it no longer matters, that he did the right thing, that in all probability it would not have worked between them anyway, still he weeps for the love that he had so longed for… and it is hard to bear.

  Marcia’s will states that she would like a church service followed by cremation rather than burial, ‘so that no one would feel obliged to visit my grave once a week’. It is a characteristically Marcia-ish statement. She had a way of making a sidelong criticism of something you had failed to do when the opportunity had not yet even arisen for you to fail to do it, leaving one feeling at once resentful of her assumptions and ashamed of one’s own shortcomings. Marcia had a gift for anticipating the numerous ways in which you might fall short and about which she might graciously appear not to mind, bearing it all with admirable stoicism.

  Naturally, Eleanor has made all the arrangements, assuming her father would be too distraught to handle them. She asked if there were any particular readings or pieces of music he would like to hear, but he said ‘no, no, you decide, I’ll leave it to you.’

  Benedict travels in the principal mourners’ car with them, so clearly Eleanor has been at her most persuasive or possibly even bribed him; usually, the boy could barely stand to be in the same building as his father, never mind the same vehicle. She sits between them on the wide back seat, a UN Peacekeeper set between warring factions, ready, no doubt, to dispense soothing words or a sharp tap on the wrist to either side if need be. The journey is brief, thank the Lord, as both father and son sit there without saying a word. Eleanor punctuates the cold silence with thoughtful observations about who might attend and the timing – whether cousin Julia might come down from Edinburgh, how long has been allowed for music, readings, the eulogy and so on. Roger is taking Daniel and Hannah separately in his car.

  When they enter the church, Benedict hangs back a moment and waits for his family to choose a pew, then makes a distinct show of going to sit on the other side of the aisle from them. Eleanor leans in to her father and quietly suggests they cross to join Benedict, but Conrad refuses to move. Why should they? Roger, who has elected to sit in the pew behind with the children, is in agreement with his father-in-law, for once. They should stand firm. Head bowed, but whether out of deference to the occasion or embarrassment it is unclear, Eleanor quickly crosses the aisle and slips in to the opposite pew alongside her brother. Conrad watches her out of the corner of his eye, wondering what she would say and why she bothers. Benedict is quintessentially Benedict, a law unto himself. Is she appealing to his better nature? Does he even have one? For crying out loud, Conrad thinks, can’t you just pretend to be a decent, civilised human being for an hour, sit with your family rather than trying to humiliate us? Conrad watches for a minute more, as if observing an intriguing experiment with detachment.

  He sees Eleanor’s shoulders slump then, and knows that even her considerable diplomatic skills are of no use here. Then there is a… hesitation perhaps? Eleanor shrinks from any kind of drama or public display. She does not willingly poke her head above the parapet. But she is always sensible of doing what is right, what is fair and just. Her sense of honour is deeply entrenched. Surely she would not leave her father sitting here alone? Would that outweigh her presumed reluctance to return across the aisle, unquestionably drawing attention both to herself and to the fact that her brother and father are sitting on opposite sides? Silently, she rises to her feet once more, and with a gentle parting hand on Benedict’s shoulder, she moves with small steps back to the pew where Conrad sits, her face flushed with mortification at having made such a show of herself as if she has tap-danced clickety-click-click across the hard tiles, singing and waving, rather than flickering across like a candle flame. She slides along the pew and, without speaking, simply lays her hand over her father’s. There is no need to explain: Benedict is Benedict; one might as well try to shift the church itself as to move him.

  During the service, Conrad spends some time looking round, both at the church interior and at the gathering of mourners, rather more in number than he had expected, perhaps forty or fifty, certainly a respectable amount. He notes the extremely fine stained-glass window high above the altar and the considerably less fine paintings of the Stations of the Cross that progress around the walls. Conrad considers churches to be interesting from a historical perspective and, of course, many have distinct architectural merit or interesting interiors, but he finds many of the rituals of religion – while perhaps useful in providing cultural and social insights – as essentially baffling and embarrassing. Why on earth would fully grown adults imagine they were engaged in some form of meaningful communication with an entity they could neither hear nor see? Nor, for t
hat matter, establish a single piece of irrefutable proof of His/Her/Its existence? To his mind, there is not a whisper of difference between that and a five-year-old’s writing a letter to Father Christmas or putting a tooth under the pillow for the Tooth Fairy. Harmless, possibly even mildly charming, in a child, but extraordinary in anyone over the age of ten.

  It is a very English funeral: no wailing or sobbing, no rending of garments. Dry eyes or a few polite tears for the most part, the sort that could be dabbed away with the corner of a handkerchief rather than streaming down one’s face, a river of grief. Marcia was not a regular church-goer but, unlike her husband, she attended services several times a year at key points in the Christian calendar. Conrad accompanied her once a year only: to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, saying he was interested to observe the English in the act of affecting a degree of spirituality when, as must surely be clear to even the simplest fool, the true religion of England was nothing to do with God; it was Sport. He drew analogies between the two, warming to his theme as his wife tutted and turned away – football being Low Church, of course, cricket clearly High Church; rugby, with its passion, gusto, and acceptance of physical violence as part of its creed, well, that must be Catholicism, surely? In sport, the congregants’ intense devotion and interest were unequivocal and entirely sincere. At church, by contrast, Conrad judged that there were perhaps no more than a handful of people deriving any kind of spiritual succour from the experience. The rest were divided between those endeavouring to adopt a pious expression, while stifling their yawns and glancing surreptitiously at their watches, and those who were simply there for the singing or the company or whatever other reason might compel an otherwise sound-minded individual to quest forth on a cold, dark night to go and freeze in a damp church for the privilege of singing about a baby born over two millennia ago to a teenage mother who claimed to have been made pregnant by an angel.

  Conrad was only there as an observer, of course, and to accompany his wife so that she would not have to come home alone at one o’clock in the morning. And yet… and yet… there were two or three carols which, when he sang them in his deep, velvety baritone voice – ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, ‘Adeste Fideles’ , ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear’ – gave him an unfamiliar feeling inside, a strange swelling of the heart that he attributes to the resonance of the organ in the great vaulted space, but for which, truly, he cannot account.

  Now, Marcia’s oldest friend reads a passage from the Bible:

  Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.

  The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.

  She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life…

  Conrad bows his head, his face a mask. Then Eleanor gets up to read a poem. She had asked him if there was anything in particular he would like, or to read himself, but he had said no, no, you choose. He cannot do it – for all sorts of reasons – and after all these years his daughter knows better than to try to draw him out if he chooses not to be drawn.

  ‘I apologise if people find this poem too familiar,’ Eleanor says, her voice clear and steady, ‘It is often chosen for funerals, but none the worse for that, I think. I find it very beautiful and very sad. It’s by Christina Rossetti.’

  At her words, Conrad closes his eyes and sinks back into the pew. For once, he lets the words come into him, rather than assessing them with cool detachment as he usually would when confronted by poetry.

  Remember me when I am gone away,

  Gone far away into the silent land;

  When you can no more hold me by the hand,

  Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

  Remember me when no more day by day

  You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

  Only remember me; you understand

  It will be late to counsel then or pray.

  Yet if you should forget me for a while

  And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

  For if the darkness and corruption leave

  A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

  Better by far you should forget and smile

  Than that you should remember and be sad.

  Her voice cracks towards the end, but this serves only to make it more poignant. Conrad covers his eyes with one hand for a moment, then glances up to meet his daughter’s gaze. He wonders if she is thinking that it is not especially apt for Marcia, but still a very moving poem, and offers comfort to those left behind. The intriguing volte-face, turning from ‘Remember me…’ in its opening to the tender resignation of ‘Better by far you should forget…’ is a fit for Eleanor’s taste, and for her father’s. Marcia, by contrast, would not have wanted anything other than for her mourners to think of her morning, noon, and night, whether waking or in dreams. And if the words conjure up memories of another whom he had lost – and now he fumbles in his pocket for a handkerchief and blows his nose, suddenly loud and shocking, almost comical in that solemn space – who is to say he is not so very moved by thoughts of his dear wife?

  After the service, they drive in slow, stately convoy to the crematorium. Some well-meaning idiot at the funeral director’s – where do they find these people? – has glued a grotesque ‘gold’ plastic cross onto the coffin and it is all Conrad can do not to wrench it off with his bare hands. Marcia would have been horrified by its tackiness. Some Bach is played, chosen once more by Eleanor. Benedict has refused to be involved in any of the arrangements, Eleanor reported, other than to say, ‘Don’t get lilies, El. You know how peeved she used to get when the pollen dropped on the carpet.’

  Here, the proceedings are very simple and brief. Marcia’s brother says a few words, then the music strikes up, some Schubert, one of Marcia’s favourite pieces. Yes, that is fitting. The coffin sits on the catafalque and, as the curtains draw themselves, as if pulled by an unseen hand, the coffin starts to glide towards the gap as if exiting a stage.

  Suddenly, there is an awful, high-pitched, keening sound. For a moment or two, Conrad wonders if it is the machinery of the conveyor, desperately in need of oiling, and he turns to scowl at the officiant who had pressed the button. But Eleanor swiftly crosses the aisle to where her brother was sitting, once again apart. Conrad cannot see him at all. Eleanor is hunkering down now. Her father cranes forward a little way to try to see, suddenly understands, faces front again, straight and stiff as a pillar. Benedict is on the floor, curled up tight in a ball, emitting this extraordinary, unbearable noise. The other mourners near him shift and turn and whisper, looking from Benedict to Conrad and back again. Eleanor kneels and wraps her brother tightly in her arms as if he is a small child and is speaking to him in a low voice, though her father cannot imagine for a moment what she might say, what on earth do you say to someone who is… behaving like that?

  He observes them, then looks away again, knowing that it should be he who is taking care of his son, offering comfort and understanding. If he does, Benedict would no doubt tell him to fuck off, shout it unashamed in front of everyone, tell them all what a fucking hopeless apology for a father he really is. And no matter how easy it is to dismiss Benedict’s rants, his rage, his abusiveness – to tell himself that Benedict is a wastrel, a loafer, a drunkard good-for-nothing – the keen, rational part of Conrad’s mind, which so rarely takes a moment off from sitting in judgement, especially on himself, knows that the accusation would not be without a horrible grain of truth.

  41

  The Visitor

  There was a loud knocking at the front door. The hoovering stopped and Andrew could hear the front door being opened. A deep voice then – authoritative, oddly familiar yet hard to place. He couldn’t quite hear what was being said, only the alternating different patterns of sound: his mother’s flustered chirrupings, then the confident tones of someone born to command, slightly military, Andrew thought, as if giving orders. Good God. Conrad. Here. He looked round his room, at the green fringed lamps
hade above him on the ceiling, at the mean little wood-effect wardrobe, the busily floral curtains, the candlewick bedspread. He imagined what Conrad would make of such a room, thinking he would judge it the same way Andrew himself did, disparagingly, snobbishly, thinking honestly, who had rooms like this any more?

  Conrad took the stairs two at a time, Andrew could tell by the rhythm. God, the man must be fit, nearly ten years older than his father but he’d never heard his dad climb the stairs with anything other than a shuffle and a sigh. Why the rush?

  A sharp knock. Andrew tried to sit up a bit, then thought it might be better to look ill. He slunk back down and said to come in.

  ‘Andrew.’ Conrad surveyed his prostrate form with a small nod. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine, thank you. I mean, not fine, obviously. Not well. I – I’m –’ He paused. ‘It’s hard to say. It’s a surprise to see you here.’ He thought that perhaps it sounded rather inhospitable. ‘A nice surprise,’ he added.

  ‘Well… I wanted to check that you were all right, making a speedy recovery and so on. You’ve been off for three days.’

  Three days? No, it was only this morning that Conrad had escorted him to a taxi outside the museum, wasn’t it? And even pressed some notes into his hand to pay for it. Andrew tried to think back but his head was muzzy. It might have been yesterday.

  ‘May I sit down?’ Conrad gestured to the chair and set a brown paper bag of – presumably – some sort of fruit on the bedside cabinet without comment.

  ‘Please do. But it’s very uncomfortable, I should warn you.’

  ‘No matter. I wanted to come and see you.’

  Andrew steeled himself for a telling-off. He was a shirking, good-for-nothing layabout, loafing about in bed and eating custard creams while his colleagues were having to manage his work as well as their own. Maybe Conrad had been sent to fire him? His department head was too nice, too sympathetic; perhaps Conrad had even volunteered for the task? In his heyday, he’d probably fired tons of people. He looked as if he would manage it with equanimity, possibly even while sharpening his pencil at the same time. Oh, well. Andrew didn’t care any more. He would quite like to be fired really; then he wouldn’t have to keep getting up and getting dressed and going out in the cold.