by Unknown
It has the curious effect of making Geordie untouchable, as he had not been the previous night, when his body, though cooling fast, had felt little different from his living body. ‘Oh, Grandad,’ Nick whispers aloud.
The movement of exhaled breath disturbs the dust motes that are sifting about in the shaft of sunlight that comes through the crack in the skimped curtains. The silence receives the whisper and deepens around it. Nobody here, Nick thinks, though he sits for a while longer, taking in the smells, all clean and cold, white sheets, soap, the musty smells of sickness banished, the smell of death mercifully not detectable yet. And then, as he stands up to go, there’s another smell: Antaeus. ‘Yon pansy stuff you put on your chin.’ But Nick’s not wearing any, and when he leans forward, putting his face close to his grandfather’s, he can detect no trace of aftershave lingering on the skin. There shouldn’t be – they washed his face last night. Yet the smell’s powerful – nothing vague or tentative about it. You’d think a whole bottle of the stuff had been spilled.
Nick remembers that he’s not yet told Helen about Geordie’s death and goes downstairs, intending to get it over with as fast as possible. She’s on her answering machine. ‘… and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’ Nick waits for the beep, knowing he won’t be able to leave this message on the machine. ‘Hello, Helen, this is Nick,’ he says, sounding self-conscious. ‘Could you give me a ring?’
The phone’s picked up before he’s finished. ‘Nick.’ Her voice sounds incredibly close and breathless.
‘Helen.’ Faced with her unexpected presence, he’s lost for words. ‘I’m afraid it’s over. Well, pleased it’s over, I suppose.’
He hears his voice objectively, as if this is a recorded message and he’s playing it back. He finds himself thinking, That man sounds desperate.
‘Peaceful?’ she asks, obviously detecting his uneasiness.
Nick hesitates. ‘Not exactly.’
‘I’ll be here all day.’
He was wanting her to say that. ‘Later this morning? About twelve?’
‘I’ll see you then.’
The doctor comes at half past nine. He stands by the bed looking down, a younger man than Nick, but used to death as Nick is not. Faced often enough with far worse deaths than this. ‘Well, he had a good innings,’ he says. Nick agrees. He goes on agreeing, because the neighbour says it too, and then the Vicar. A few old friends come in to see the body, and that’s good, because it’s the old way, and Frieda thinks Geordie would have liked it. But, at intervals, throughout the day, as startling as gas bubbles bursting on the surface of a pond, he hears Grandad’s voice: ‘I am in hell.’ Am. It’s the present tense that ambushes Nick now.
They’re going in later to choose the coffin. For now, the undertakers arrive with a body bag, and when he looks at this thing, this gleaming black plastic dustbin liner, Nick feels overwhelming anger. He’d imagined a coffin, labouring shoulders, jostling on the narrow stairs, that impressive mixture of extreme physical effort and silent respect, familiar from royal funerals. Instead there’s this zipper bag, drawn up across the face. Mind his nose, he wants to say as the zip closes. Stupid – even if they did catch the skin, he wouldn’t feel anything.
The body sags, between the men carrying it, into a shallow U. Even a deeply unconscious man would respond to being moved in a slightly different way. There’d be some residual muscle tone to differentiate him from this limp parcel of dead meat which can do nothing to help itself or its bearers. Nick doesn’t want to see them carry it downstairs. Instead, he stays in the room, staring at the creased and rumpled sheets which, despite all his precautions with the towel, are slightly stained. He listens to the rustle of plastic, as the shuffling steps recede, thinking that the rumpled bed looks more like the scene of recent love-making, than a place where somebody had died. Again, on the cool air, the scent of Antaeus. Once more, Nick smells the pillows, the counterpane, his own fingertips, but there’s nothing there.
After the undertakers have driven away, Nick walks slowly along to the bathroom, where he looks into Grandad’s steel shaving mirror. There’s a syndrome that consists of an inability to recognize one’s own face. Perhaps he’s just succumbed to it, for the face that stares back at him is nothing like his own.
It’s late afternoon when he stops the car outside Helen’s flat and looks up at her window above the trees. There’s nobody else he wants to talk to now, nobody else who knows Geordie as intimately as he does. He presses the intercom and announces his name.
A crackle of sound that he hardly manages to identify as her voice tells him to come in. On his way up the four flights of stairs he pauses, not wanting to arrive gasping for breath, and from then on is puzzled by the sound of talking. She has the radio on perhaps, but then one of the voices – a man’s voice – starts to sound familiar. It’s somebody he knows. He hopes she hasn’t got one of their mutual colleagues with her. If she has, he decides, he’ll stay the minimum length of time, then make some excuse and leave.
Standing outside the door, hand raised to knock, he recognizes the voice as Geordie’s, and feels his skin roughening like the sea when the wind blows over it. Geordie, not dead, not silenced. Geordie, preserved on Helen’s tapes for ever. He’s singing the song his wife used to sing, to calm him, in the early days of their marriage, when his nightmares soaked her in sweat and she’d wake to find the sheets drenched with his piss.
Keep yor feet still, Geordie hinny,
Let’s be happy for the neet,
For we may not be sae happy thro’ the day,
So give us that bit comfort,
Helen’s voice joins in.
Keep yor feet still, Geordie lad!
And dinnet drive me bonny dreams away.
It’s a good moment, and he wonders whether she intended it for him, this reminder that the truth of Geordie’s life did not consist of those traumatic memories that erupted to plague his final months, but in the continuity of loving that had filled all the years between.
He needs to know. He knocks, and the door swings open. It’s been open all the time.
They’re in the room together now, not speaking because the tape’s still playing. The song ends in a burst of shared laughter. Helen clicks stop. She’s holding herself, as she looks down at the recorder, her face slightly averted from Nick. When she finally turns and raises her face to his, he sees her eyes are full of tears, and, without thinking, opens his arms to her.
They cling together, Helen choking back tears. After a while she pushes herself off his chest and says, unsteadily, ‘Drink.’
‘I’m driving.’
‘You can walk from here. Anyway, one won’t hurt.’
Yes, that’s true, he thinks, I can walk from here. ‘All right.’
The chink of ice in the glass, she knows exactly how he likes it, they’ve been friends for so many years. Miranda was a baby when they first met. She comes back into the room and hands him the glass. He moves further along the sofa to make room, but, struggling with tears, she shakes her head and goes to stand near the window, a spare dark shape silhouetted against an intricate network of branches. She raises her glass and drinks. The sunlight, catching the cut-glass, dazzles him.
He says, ‘He was in love with you.’
A turn of the head. ‘Yes, I know.’ A moment’s silence. Then: ‘How was it?’
‘His last words were, “I am in hell.”’
She waits. Nick realizes he can’t – daren’t – go on. After a while, he manages to say, ‘I want you to tell me about Harry.’
‘Yes.’ A faint smile. ‘I thought you might.’
‘You didn’t destroy the tape, did you?’
‘No, but it wasn’t because I was hanging on to it as raw material or anything like that. I couldn’t destroy it because it had his voice on it. It’s just something you can’t do – like tearing up a photograph. It’s – you don’t do it if you love the person. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but he specifically asked
me not to tell any of the family. I felt I had to respect that.’
‘Do you think you can tell me now?’
‘I think he can tell you now.’
One tape removed, another inserted. A squeak and gibber of distorted voices, and then Geordie’s in the room, as strong and vigorous as he’d always been, until a few short months ago.
GEORDIE: No, well, you see the idea was you all joined up together – a big crowd of us lads from the factory all went along together, and yeah, I think the idea was it was a big adventure. Not even that really, bit of a laugh. Better than the factory.
A long silence filled with the tape’s asthmatic breath. He’s in no hurry to talk about this.
HELEN: So you and Harry were together from the start?
GEORDIE: We were in the same company. They didn’t do that so much, after the Somme, they learned the hard way. There were families, whole streets, where the lads were wiped out. After that they split brothers up.
HELEN: Too late for you and Harry.
GEORDIE: Yes.
HELEN: What was it like being together?
GEORDIE: Ah, well, now, what was it like? Well, you know, Helen, in my young days, men weren’t supposed to be frightened. If you were, you didn’t own up to it, it was something you were ashamed of. Now it’s all gone the other way. The idea now is: everybody’s frightened all the time. War, I’m talking about. Trouble is, that isn’t true either. Not everybody’s equally frightened all the time. There are some men who’re – I won’t say fearless. But as good as. Because fear to them’s like putting petrol in the engine. Harry was like that.
HELEN: Did you mind that?
GEORDIE: No, I was proud of him. In the run-up to the Somme there were these tremendous bombardments, they were supposed to be cutting the German wire to ribbons. And there was this officer in our company, he just didn’t believe it. He used to take parties out cutting the wire, he used to say, if I cut the bugger meself I know it’s been cut. This night – it was more like a raid than a patrol, they were waiting, their faces blacked up, helmets on, all you could see was the whites of their eyes and their teeth. I patted Harry on the back, and I says, Good luck, Harry. And they all bust out laughing, it was the wrong man. Well, no harm done, give ’em a laugh, but you know ever since – and I can’t get this out of me head – ever since there’s a part of me mind that thinks, If only I’d recognized him, if only I’d said, Good Luck to the right man, he wouldn’t have died.
Is that all? Nick thinks. One tiny incident magnified by a lifetime’s guilt at having survived. He opens his mouth to speak, but Helen raises her hand.
GEORDIE: Jerry twigged it. A flare goes up, all hell’s let loose. They all come crashing back into the trench, and I’m looking from one blacked-out face to another, trying to find Harry, and they’re worse now than they were when they set out. It’s just lumps of mud, walking. One of them’s bleeding. ‘Where’s Harry?’ And the officer counted them, one missing. And after the shells coming over died down a bit you can hear this scream, and it goes on and on and on. I know I’ve got to go out.
A long silence. When he starts to speak again it’s in a more reflective tone.
GEORDIE: One thing they drilled into you: you don’t stop for the wounded, never stop for them, doesn’t matter who it is, you don’t stop. You don’t go back for them, you don’t risk your life for them, you don’t risk anybody else’s life. And of course they’d got to drill it in, because the natural thing is to look after them. You’ve been living together, training together. But at this stage, you know, we were still innocent. In lots of ways, I think we were. And there was a feeling that with brothers, it was different. You were almost expected to do it. And so when I said I wanted to go out, nobody stopped me. I’m scooping up mud, it’s cold, I’m rubbing it on me face and the backs of me hands, and then I’m off. It’s like being naked. Out there, I mean. It’s like the trench walls are part of your body and when they’re not there any more you feel… skinned. Harry shouts – I’m virtually sure this is true – ‘Don’t come out.’ But of course I keep going. Just as I’m crawling the last few feet a flare goes up, he’s screaming, all I can see is the mouth, little blue slitty eyes, and his guts are hanging out. I touch his leg. He knows I’m there because he goes still. I suppose he might have thought I’d come to take him back. And then he starts screaming again and that’s easier because I know I’ve got to stop him making that noise. I’m crawling up his side, all I can see is the open mouth, and my fingers are digging into his chest, finding the right place and then I ram the knife in and the screaming stops.
Silence. Nick looks at Helen, and sees from her face now how she floundered and groped for words then.
HELEN: It must be terrible to kill somebody you love.
GEORDIE: Yes, it must be.
Helen was closer to the microphone than Geordie. Nick hears the intake of breath.
HELEN: You didn’t hate him.
GEORDIE: Didn’t I?
HELEN: You said yourself you were proud of him.
GEORDIE: I was proud of him when I was a kid, some of the time. The rest of the time I hated him.
HELEN: But that’s a child’s hatred, Geordie. Kids are always saying they hate people, they wish they were dead, but they don’t mean it. They don’t act on it.
GEORDIE: They don’t get the chance, do they, most of the time? But –
HELEN: Yes?
GEORDIE: It’s not that. You see, when I’m remembering all this, it’s like falling through a trapdoor into another room, and it’s still going on. I don’t remember the mud on my face, I feel it, it’s cold, gritty. And I see everything like that, until I get to Harry’s wounds. And then what I see in my mind’s eye is something like fatty meat coming out of a mincing machine. And you know I’ve seen lots of men disembowelled, and it’s not like that. It’s… I know that what I remember seeing is false. It can’t have been like that, and so the one thing I need to remember clearly, I can’t. Nothing vague about it, you understand. It’s as clear as this hand… only it’s wrong. So how do I know I couldn’t have got him back?
HELEN: How do you know it wasn’t murder?
GEORDIE: Yes, that’s it. Exactly that.
Helen presses stop and ejects the tape. Nick says, ‘ “I am in hell.”’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think that’s survivor’s guilt?’
‘No.’ She ignores the spurt of aggression. ‘I think it’s pretty much what happened.’
‘And he was alone with that. There was never anybody to say, “You did the right thing.”’
‘No, all he had to go on was his own memory. And it let him down.’
‘You know that bit about the mud, actually still feeling it? I think I finally understand something, because I don’t remember him saying: “I am in hell.” I hear him say it. Quite loud, almost shouting. I was pulling out at the top roundabout, and…’ He makes as if to hit himself in the eye. It’s easy to tell her about the voice. What he can’t tell her about is the scent of Antaeus, though it’s been in the room since he arrived, and it’s growing stronger by the minute.
She comes closer, and stands looking down at him, clinking the ice cubes round her glass, groping for something to say that will carry some comfort. ‘You can’t sum up a person’s life in their last words. I mean, think of all the people who must have said, “I need the bedpan.” Think of George V. “Bugger Bognor.”’
They manage a laugh. He looks up at her. Slowly, she puts the glass down. Nick feels a moment of self-doubt. He doesn’t know whether it’s the proximity of death that’s caused this overwhelming lust, or if that’s just an excuse. The scent’s overpowering now. She places her hands gently on either side of his head, muffling all sounds, all voices, even his own, and then, leaning forward, very gently, her legs between his spread thighs, she presses his head to her breasts.
TWENTY
Nick spends the last few hours before Geordie’s funeral tackling the house rose, cuttin
g branches and tearing away handfuls of dead twigs and leaves. It’s a wonderful, addictive job, like eating peanuts, and it’s not possible to think of anything else at all. He’s wrestling with a particularly intractable knot when: ‘Careful,’ Miranda says, steadying the ladder, and her concern brings him back to himself. ‘Fran says it’s time to get ready.’ ‘All right, love. Tell her I won’t be long.’
He goes upstairs, changes into his funeral suit, and then goes down to greet the relatives who’re coming in the cars to church. They’d decided to leave the coffin lid open, and now he’s glad of it, for most of the mourners are old enough to want to observe the custom of saying goodbye to the dead face to face. Nick’s reluctant to go into the room himself. He’s not sure he can bring himself to search for further changes of expression, but in the end he does. Miranda stands by the coffin stoically lifting the face cloth for each one as they come and go. ‘Doesn’t he look peaceful?’ they all say, because it’s what you do say, as conventional a response as wishing a bride happiness. Nick looks at Geordie’s face and hears his voice again: ‘I am in hell.’
It’s accompanied him throughout the five days since Geordie’s death, like a cerebral parasite. He wakes in the morning knowing he’s heard it in his sleep. He stands by the coffin, resting his hand on the polished wood, and prays for silence.
They all retreat into the kitchen while the undertakers’ men take the coffin out, then troop down the drive and into the cars. Driving with Frieda in the first car Nick fixes his eyes on the hearse in front with the pale wooden coffin and its white wreaths on top. Barbara’s sent flowers, which is good of her, she needn’t have bothered, and there are bouquets of spring flowers from the great-grandchildren.
