There was uproar. Miss Avery came hurrying forward and stepped up onto the rostrum. I told the little Asian girl that I felt very grateful and very honoured but she persisted in keeping her face concealed from everybody’s view. Her body proclaimed her to be giggling.
“Well class I’m sure we found that talk most interesting. Didn’t we? I hope you’re all going to say a big thank-you to Mr Casement for shedding such light on the subject of the Seven”—she paused and smiled at me and the smile turned into a chuckle—“of the Seven Eight or Nine, that is, Very Serious Sins.” There was a renewed scraping of chairs and shuffling of feet; the children again stood up and during the ensuing stillness obediently responded, though in an almost risibly drawn-out fashion:
“Thank you Mr Casement.”
“Perhaps Mr Casement will come back sometime to tell us about the Eleven or Twelve Commandments.”
I hoped she wasn’t muddling them; but reckoned she would probably return to sort the whole thing out immediately after the break.
“I think on the whole,” I said shaking Miss Avery’s hand, “it might be rather better if I didn’t.”
“Oh I don’t know,” she answered cheerfully. “I feel it all depends on whether you believe more in the spirit or the letter.”
Conveniently Heartbreaker and my self-offered bride—who was now peeping sparkling-eyed through her fingers—were standing at adjoining desks. As I went out I gave a general smile and a wave but was able to smile at those two in particular. Which pleased me.
16
Home!
The front door’s open.
Conversation, laughter, teacups. And probably more people than at any two parties we had ever given.
Our funeral reception. Yours and mine Brad yours and mine. In that case is it possible, could it just be possible…? In the doorway to the sitting-room I stand on tiptoe and crane my neck—as though without doing that we wouldn’t have been tall enough, not you nor I, either to see or be seen. People appear to come and go right through me; at first it’s disconcerting, soon I scarcely notice. From sitting room to dining room. To kitchen. Then into garden. Still more people with plates and teacups—amongst them one of my brothers talking to a mutual friend from school—I walk straight through them (no mainly I still go in between). Inside again, upstairs, into each of the three bedrooms, well two bedrooms and the one we’d made into your study; even push open the door to the bathroom. But by then of course I’m losing hope. You aren’t here, you just aren’t here. I suppose I hadn’t really been expecting it—not after what Richard and Isabella had told me of your necessary departure from the inn—yet I’d been thinking there could conceivably be a big surprise awaiting me, you always liked to give surprises, been thinking that you’d charmed the others into becoming your collaborators. (A thought which had even helped me through that dismayingly muffed teaching practice.) Oh well. I tell myself it’s stupid to feel so disappointed. I go back downstairs, now make a beeline for my mother. Naturally I love my dad as well but it’s to my mum that I return for comfort.
She’s speaking to the three old ladies—sisters—who’d been our closest neighbours, yours and mine; and I soon discover it’s they who’ve made the sandwiches, cakes, scones and savoury tartlets. I don’t know whether perhaps they’ve organized this whole reception but certainly they’ve always had a spare key to our cottage just as we had always had a spare key to theirs. Then I hear it’s your parents who—although feeling too unwell to be able to get here this afternoon—have supplied the champagne (hey, champagne? champagne?) and hired the glasses. My own parents have provided the flowers—tremendous flowers as now I notice—which decorate the two main rooms.
But Brad. Even if your mum and dad haven’t felt quite strong enough to face it several others in your family have. Two of your cousins have driven from Torquay; an uncle has come all the way from Scotland. So where are you my love … where in heaven’s name are you? Surely you’ve got to be here somewhere? Invisible like me of course; invisible even to me? Then is it, for some reason, that we’re just not allowed to see one another? Not allowed to communicate—not even through something as simple as a smile? But if that’s the case it’s cruel. That is so cruel. It makes me want to kick at something, slam my fist against the wall. Makes me want to say I’ve had enough of all this, what the bloody hell is going on? Eh God? What the bloody hell is going on?
(I seem to have forgotten that until I got here I wasn’t absolutely relying on your presence. So am I just being inconsistent? Or does my anger arise more from standing in our home but knowing that ‘home’ has turned into a completely meaningless word now that I don’t find you in it? Anger? Anguish, more like. I feel like a widow or a widower or anyone who’s inconsolably bereft; and I seem really to experience, for the first time since Sunday morning—no, what do I mean?—for the first time ever, how it feels to be bereft.)
So, bemused, unhappy, I go and say hello to my father—symbolically. But hardly have I reached him than he breaks away from the small group he’s been a part of and begins to round up everybody from the hall, dining room, kitchen and garden and shepherd them back to where he wants them. Meanwhile my two sisters are pouring the champagne and one of my brothers-in-law is circulating with a tray of it. Eventually, after the room has got so full that there’s again a large overspill into the hall, my father, standing back against the fireplace in which there’s now another magnificent arrangement in a borrowed vase, speaks slowly and clearly into that polite expectant hush.
“I know we’ve all been having a good time which I feel sure is exactly what Brad and Danny would have wanted—and I’m sorry if it looks as if I’m breaking up the party though I promise you I’m not—but perhaps the moment has arrived when we should all get together and share some thoughts or reminiscences about these two people whom we loved. And after that we’ll all raise a glass and wish them bon voyage—in fact not simply a good journey but the very best it’s possible for anyone ever to embark on. And let’s hope and pray that in this they may have had a real headstart. Brutal though the time and manner of their setting out at least they did set out together. That in some hard way has to be a comfort not only to themselves but to the rest of us.”
And my father begins to cry—my old dad actually begins to cry. He blows his nose and briefly wipes his eyes and I notice that by this time many others, both men and women, are similarly affected. Indeed (could you ever beat this for foolishness?) I myself am.
And yet, I think, we didn’t set out together. Not quite; my dad is only trying to be tactful. And I mightn’t be standing here now feeling anything like so desolate if we had.
But why am I feeling desolate? I think I really do believe you must be here as well, yes somewhere you must be here as well, at this very moment you could be standing right beside me … and yet … why can’t I draw any solace out of such a thought, be given (once more) some reassuring sign? Logical conviction of closeness accompanied by total absence of communication seems almost like the very hardest thing. If only I could feel the faintest impression of a handclasp.
Logical? Well I suppose I can’t be sure if it’s that logical.
And something else: how true is it that in reality we were two people whom everybody here loved? Had my father himself, my father and mother themselves, actually loved you? No more I thought than your own parents had actually loved me. In both parental homes there had existed a conscious attempt at broadmindedness and goodwill but it wasn’t just the fact of our being gay which had worried them, there was that big discrepancy in our ages. And I hadn’t looked forward to our infrequent joint visits to your family any more than you’d looked forward to our infrequent joint visits to mine—we had unfailingly on every such occasion needed to gird our loins, it had become one of our silly little jokes, “Loins girded?”—and telephone inquiries from both sides as to the health of our respective partners had always seemed duty-driven and speedily disposed of. (I remember once saying to you, “When yo
ur mother asks ‘And how is Danny?’ you could easily say ‘Dead’ and she would answer, ‘That’s good and has anything of interest happened since we last spoke?’”) And yet now, your parents, they must have had delivered I don’t know how many cases of champagne; and—well despite these sentimental tears I’ve just had running down my cheeks and the genuine love or gratitude I’m feeling towards everybody gathered here I could still be tempted to call out, “But why didn’t you love us quite so much whilst we were actually around?” I could call it out of course; I’m forgetting that nobody would hear.
My father’s asking: “Is there anybody who’d like to add anything to that?” And immediately a host of hands go up. It reminds me of my experience a little earlier on. “Yes Sarah?”
Sarah’s the younger of my sisters; only a year or two older than myself.
“I just want to say that I miss him … I miss Danny. He was as good a brother as you could possibly get. And Brad was like a really nice brother-in-law; someone we were truly glad to welcome into our family and someone whom we’d hoped to know better and better as the years went by.”
Well that’s all right: none of my siblings had shown themselves to have even the smallest difficulty about accepting you and whenever we had spent time with any of them, particularly in the absence of my parents, the atmosphere had been totally relaxed. Sometimes gay issues had been fleetingly discussed and sometimes amongst other jokes being told there’d been a gay one at which we’d all either laughed or groaned according to its quality; but mainly everyone’s sexual preferences—although in such surroundings you and I had never felt too inhibited about showing each other our affection—had appeared to be taken wholly for granted, either forgotten about or regarded as irrelevant.
But.
He was as good a brother as you could possibly get. I tried to remember just one instance of my having deserved a plaudit such as that, as though even one instance would have rendered the statement fully valid, siphoned off all its extravagance. The most I could come up with was that I’d generally been cheerful and out of my five siblings had been the biggest clown, the one who’d oftenest made the others laugh: i.e. had possessed a natural ability to play the fool which had given me quite as much entertainment as anybody and at the same time had pandered to my vanity. But apart from that—what? Had I ever really put myself out? Ever mended anyone’s puncture (unless I were getting paid for it) or taken over anyone’s paper round (unless I were getting paid for it) or ever tried to entertain a brother or sister who was ill in bed (unless for some reason I too was feeling bored or had been begged by one or other of my parents please to do so)? And on the occasion that Simon had wrecked his own Lambretta had I then let him borrow mine although the speedy loan of it might well have prevented that subsequent failure of nerve; a failure of nerve from which he hadn’t yet recovered even after five years?
Or had I often spent more than I felt I could get away with on their Christmas and birthday presents although frequently I had done pretty damn well in return? But then, naturally, I was the youngest wasn’t I, I was the baby of the family? And even as an adult … when wedding presents also had to be included and then the snowballing presents of a rather surprisingly chuffed uncle … well actually in all fairness I suppose I might have been growing a little more generous even before I’d cast in my lot with you Brad but that didn’t exactly turn me into a John D. Rockefeller.
So no. Plenty of practical jokes, in retrospect mostly unfunny and even unkind … yet, apart from being the resident family buffoon and sometimes, at table, drawing off my parents’ anger from whoever might have been temporarily out of favour, I couldn’t recall one single really brotherly thing which I had ever done.
“As good a brother as you could possibly get.” She even has to repeat it.
And yet … And yet it could have been so easy. I wasn’t ill-natured. I wasn’t (particularly) slothful. So what then had stopped me? I wished to God I had been brotherly. At that minute it seemed the most important failure of my entire life.
But even yet Sarah hasn’t finished. “I know I speak for both my sister and my brothers when I say how privileged we feel to have had you with us Danny. Even for such a relatively short time.”
“Hear hear!” calls out Rachel.
“Hear hear!” cries Barnaby.
“And maybe it’s true what that old cliché says.” Simon; Lambretta-balked Simon. “Though I’ve never understood why it should be—and have to add still don’t. But here’s another very strong piece of evidence to support it. So perhaps …” His voice breaks in the same way that Sarah’s had. “Perhaps the good do die young.”
Oh Christ.
What’s more, people on every side are murmuring their assent.
I seriously think have I descended into hell. Almost seriously think it. He goes on to make a big deal out of some bit of really ancient history when he and I had been playing in the woods and come across a smeary trail of blood which we’d decided we had no option but to follow. It led us not to a human body but to that of a pitifully trembling and rolling-eyed fox who’d plainly been run down whilst crossing Bounds Road then painfully dragged itself over this instinct-driven short distance in order to die. Tearfully we’d hunted for some sufficiently stout stick. But in the end Simon couldn’t bring himself to use it; we’d been terrified we were either going to botch the first blow—or blows?—or hear the skull crack and see the brains spill out. Afterwards in spite of none of these fears being quite realized we’d both been very sick together, really pretty violently sick, Simon just as much as me—“a real example of fraternal bonding,” he now terms it, “fairly basic I’d say.” This raises a slightly shaky laugh somewhat comparable to our own on that long-ago day when we’d thought we might be tracking murderers and stumbling towards a possibly headless and otherwise dismembered corpse. All the emotion being generated—expressly to mock and punish me it seems—again makes me wonder if the devil himself doesn’t have a hand in it.
“And my darling I’d like to second everything that Sarah and Simon have just said.”
My mother—well of course my mother; Satan would scarcely have neglected the opportunities afforded by a grieving mother. Not only is her son aware he doesn’t deserve such eulogies; what’s worse he also knows it really wouldn’t have taken that much effort to begin at least partly to deserve them. I wouldn’t have needed to be a saint to have still come a lot closer to this astonishing guy everyone’s inventing. And it isn’t as though I’m stupid. Maybe not wonderfully educated but certainly possessing an average share of native wit. And added to that—at any rate theoretically—a Christian. Why hadn’t I seen? Just answer me that please. Why on earth had I not seen?
She goes on.
“We do indeed feel privileged to have had you with us my darling. And yes the good really do seem to be taken from us young. What more can I say? Your life was an example. And anyone who knew you, even briefly, realized you were special. We all loved you—very very much.” Satan has obviously advised her that if she wants to produce the fullest emotional impact she should follow Sarah’s lead and speak to me directly; and oh sure you have to admire the guy—how does he work it that she isn’t instead producing the deepest and most cringe-making embarrassment? People appear to be sincerely moved, don’t keep their eyes fixed firmly on the floor nor look as though they’re likely to congratulate themselves afterwards: “My God only suppose that we’d begun to giggle…!” And all of this for me. “I can tell you darling there won’t be a single day of my life when I don’t remember you with all the love I feel for you right now.”
Oh bullshit Mum. I love you too, dearly, but just listen to yourself. Please. This is me, this is Danny. Why are you talking in this way? My life was an example all right—no question. But of what may one ask? Of unremitting blinkeredness? Of waywardness and wasted opportunities?
And just hang on a moment! Hang on! What about Brad? Since Sarah nobody has mentioned Brad. Fuck it his parents supp
lied all that champagne which you all have in your hands—and a lot more with which to give you refills. Yet anyone who didn’t know would suppose that I was the luminary around here and Brad was just my acolyte.
Because it’s me who’s still being celebrated: currently it’s Sebastian and Sally and Laura from the hotel who are all having their little word. (And bless them they’re sweet; in other circumstances I’m sure it would have been fun and gratifying to hear them and I know that later I’ll appreciate their good intentions and their obvious affection. But—once again but.) These three are followed by Martin Frobisher from school—we’ve met perhaps a dozen times over the past eight years—what does he know about the way I lived my life? Then there are the kind Miss Cottons who’ve supplied the tea. You’d think that I’d popped in to see them regularly to mend fuses, replace washers, unblock drains; to read aloud A Christmas Carol while they sat with their embroidery before the fire. In fact I had done each of those things once (the book admittedly spread over several evenings); this was the only way in which I could ever have been thought to eclipse you, my love, no matter how faintly—somehow I had always had a gift for getting on with old people, particularly old ladies, which despite the origins of A Hundred Years Hence you didn’t altogether share. Then there’s the vicar Mr Kenworthy putting in his own few words—Mr Kenilworth who so far as I can remember never even met you. But where are all the people on your side—yes I know I’m making this thing sound too much like a wedding—where are all your longtime London friends? Where are our host and hostess from the party on the night on which you died and at least six or seven of our fellow guests? Where are all those people you felt close to in the theatre and where are all the down-and-outs from across the length and breadth of the land who never once held out their hand to you in vain—and who at one time might even have had business cards left in their palms as well as money? And where is Hélène? And where Suzanne?
On Chasing Brad Through Purgatory Page 12
