by Rick Gekoski
Maybe I simply wasn’t ready to drive again? I knew better than to drive to Suzy’s funeral. Could hardly have got there, much less back home again. The car’s been in the garage ever since. The battery will be dead, the bodywork filthy. Mice chewing the wiring. I could hardly imagine using it again, however much I love it: it is rusted with memory.
I once loved Paddington station, that lovely edifice of Victorian optimism and creative genius. Like all of the supposed great ages of English history, though, the nineteenth century was marked – defined, really – by the most appalling callousness. I have maintained this to George for decades, but he will not learn. Like Mrs Thatcher – whom he resembles in a variety of ways – he thinks Victorian values were both admirable and transferable.
But if you consult the great writers and artists of the Victorian period, what they have in common is a profound distaste for the culture in which they found themselves – its cruelty, philistinism and swollen self-regard, its Herculean capacity for turning a blind eye, and for blaming the victims of its own neglect. Its profound hypocrisy. This made it a great period in which to be a novelist, for the immortal Dickens and the slightly less agreeable George Eliot and Trollope and Thackeray to have something to get their teeth into. Novelists should feel ill at ease in their culture. Better yet, they ought to oppose it.
I was aware, squashed and harried and irritable underneath Brunel’s beautiful arches, that I was thinking these turgid and unoriginal thoughts about the Victorians because I didn’t want to think others, to remember where I was going, and why. To my dear one’s graveside, to lower her in, to throw sod upon her dear dead body. Ironically, when I was young I used Brunel prophylactically while making love to Suzy. Nothing like the reiterated phrase, Isambard-Kingdom-and-the-power-and-the-glory-Brunel to delay an orgasm. Say it often enough, and you won’t have one at all.
I was unaware, as I waited for the train to Oxford, that it was to be a catalysing moment for my retreat from the world. I was, of course, in a state of heightened susceptibility, exacerbated by having to employ public transport. Not being used to train stations, I was unprepared for the ways in which my fellow travellers would impinge on me. I don’t mean the rush or the noise, the smells or the congestion, frightful though all of them were. No, what had happened, without anyone informing me, was that human beings had morphed into something loathsomely atomistic, unaware of and indifferent to others.
A young woman with pancake make-up so liberally and ineptly applied that she might have been a Virgin Airlines stewardess, hurried across the concourse, talking loudly into the air, some sort of mobile device in front of her face. She bumped into me abruptly, without missing a step, and when I shouted at her she did not hear, because she had some other device sticking in her ear, more aware of her ethereal interlocutor than someone two feet in front of her. I stumbled, righted myself, but soon tripped over a suitcase that was being tugged along behind some Oriental tourist, like the caboose of a train.
Taking refuge in W.H. Smith, I bought a copy of the Daily Telegraph – you got a free bottle of water with it, otherwise no one would buy it – so that I could do the crossword on the train, and was just queuing to pay when I was bashed by a large backpack attached to a young man who had turned abruptly to look at a checkout tray containing chocolates. I reeled backwards. He didn’t notice.
I made my way back to the concourse as gingerly as a soldier in a field of land mines. The train boarded ten minutes later, crowded as all Oxford trains apparently are. I found a first-class carriage with a designated quiet zone, which wasn’t. When I upbraided a florid gentleman who insisted on talking on his mobile, pointing to the clear symbol on the window forbidding such practice, he told me to fuck off. I had an impulse to explain to him that I was on my way to my wife’s funeral – my attire may well have suggested some such sombre occasion – but it would have been humiliating, not for him, but for me. Casting the pearls that were her eyes before the swine that he was.
Of the events at the church, and afterwards at the interment, there is nothing that I can say or write. Nothing comes of nothingness.
Worried by my state, and unconvinced that I could manage to get home on my own, Lucy insisted on accompanying me on my return journey.
‘That’s kind, love,’ I said. ‘I will be OK.’
‘You won’t, Daddy. You’re pale as a sheet. I’m sure you’re having your palpitations – did you bring your pills?’
‘No, I – ’
‘You never look after yourself!’
On the train we sat in silence. She held my hand, until finally I wrested it free. There was too little worth saying, and too much unsaid.
She accompanied me to the taxi rank at Paddington, and as I stooped to enter the cab, she pulled me to her and gave me a fierce hug. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we got through it. Let’s let a couple of days go by, then we need to have a long talk.’
‘I’m sorry, darling, I’m not up to that.’
‘I understand.’
‘I’m not sure that you do. Not that I do either, but I need to be alone for a time . . .’
‘Of course you do. I’ll keep in good touch.’
‘Wait for me to call you. Please. I will, when I am up to it.’
I entered the cab and closed the black door firmly, without looking back or out.
That would buy me some time, but not a lot. Lucy needed to talk as much as I dreaded it, and she was unlikely to understand just how serious I was about needing to be left alone. And how much time I had in mind before I relented. If I was lucky, she might wait a week, and then the phone would ring, if I still had a phone. And when that didn’t work, and the email bounced, she would get alarmed, and then angry, and storm the gates. It gave me just about enough time to construct my defences.
I made it just in time, thanks to the estimable Cooper. But my battlements couldn’t stop Lucy’s correspondence, or her entreaties, or her fury, though they could deflect them into George’s wastebasket.
I’d thought I could count on him, and he had betrayed me. Our reckoning, following his impertinent email, was likely to be quick and fierce. In short, I allowed him in. In the spirit of the Light Brigade, he had threatened to break down my door, though I doubt that he would have tried, it was mere Tennysonian posturing. But it was preferable to yield, if only to counter-attack. He had announced that he would arrive on the 11th, which was (studiedly, I thought) the six-month anniversary (can that be the right term?) of Suzy’s death. Knowing how sentimental he is, he will have reckoned that this would drive an arrow through my emotional armour and into my heart. Which is an odd metaphor for reawakening feeling.
At 10 a.m. the doorbell gave its single plaintive chime, and I answered it immediately. I’d been waiting in the hallway. George is never late. Or early. He looked anxious, and had an old-fashioned thick leather briefcase dangling from his hand like some vestigial appendage on a possum.
‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ I said.
‘Thank you.’
‘Can we get this over with quickly? Neither of us can be enjoying it, I must say. I will explain, and then perhaps you can go.’
Normally the soul of politeness, deferential to man and schoolboy alike, courtly to women of all sizes, kindly to small furry creatures except when killing or eating them, George none the less bristled. ‘I do not wish to hear what you have to say! You have behaved in a dishonourable and cruel manner.’
‘Oh, do shut up, George.’
He recoiled as if I had struck him, and made his way shakily into the drawing room, which I’d hardly entered since Suzy died. It hadn’t been cleaned since Bronya left, was fusty and begloomed, bereft of the bright morning sun. George looked about him curiously. He rarely noticed his surroundings, which had been supplied for him by schools and colleges for his entire life, but even he was aware of something more than usually insalubrious in the air.
He opened the shabby briefcase, which had wide brass buckles which made a clanking
sound when released, and brought out a parcel of letters, held together – a typical touch – with a black ribbon, as Queen Victoria might have done with Albert’s epistles.
‘I could not throw these away. It would have been sinful. They are yours.’ He handed them across to me. ‘You must promise me something . . .’
‘Yes, yes, I know.’
‘. . . that you will not destroy them without reading them. I beg you not to do that.’
‘All right, George,’ I said, to his obvious surprise. ‘You have my word.’
I rose from the sofa, the parcel of letters in my hand. ‘And now I would be grateful if you would leave. Thank you for coming, I know you mean well.’
He didn’t get up from his chair. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I cannot do that. You are my dearest friend.’ He reached into a small pocket on the side of his waistcoat, and removed a paisley silk handkerchief, which he folded gently and began to apply to his streaming eyes.
‘For pity’s sake, George, please don’t. I beg of you!’
I had forgotten how tearful Victorians are, how they wallow like happy hippos in displays of grief – Dickens. His audience. George loved a good weep, it was a traditional sign of refined sensibility. He leaked, he honked, he began to sob, he mopped his beard.
‘If you have an ounce of love left in you . . . read Lucy’s letters . . . whatever they say. They will bring you back into life, and remind you of who you really are.’
‘Used to be!’
He rose from the chair and approached me. I cowered back into the sofa, fearful that he was going to embrace me, baptise me in those salt, estranging tears. ‘No! Don’t! Pull yourself together!’
Making the kind of effort he would have associated with one of Tennyson’s heroes, he stopped, wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and deposited the besodden handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘Sorry, sorry. My dear, you have no idea how this upsets me.’
‘I’ll make tea. Calm yourself. Strong Darjeeling, no milk or sugar?’
‘Of course, thank you . . . And there is something else . . . some other things.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, first of all, I have another little contribution. Some more “Indignations”. I’ve typed them out for you.’ He rummaged in a side compartment of his briefcase and handed me two folded sheets of paper. ‘There’s rather a lot – some new ones. But the most wonderful is from a letter to Miss Coutts, which has the phrase “perpetual scald and boil”. Isn’t that wonderful? And so perfect for you!’
‘It is rather good, it describes exactly how I feel. Like an out-of-control kettle. I’m glad to know about it.’
‘It’s not about you, you silly old bugger. It’s for your title! I never quite warmed to the working one.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘It’s bland, and academic. It’s basically a sub-title. Titles are to pique interest, sub-titles to focus it. And so what about this?Scald and Boil: Charles Dickens and the Rhetoric of Indignation. What is so peachy about it is that they could be characters in Bleak House. Scald and Boil, Attorneys at Law.’
‘Brilliant, you’re right. It is now my title. All I need now is some text . . .’
‘It’ll come, it’ll come. Are you still referring to it as a monograph?’
‘Goodness me, yes. I could never write a book on Dickens, I’d be too intimidated by the proper scholars. Monograph sounds modest and studious.’
‘Perhaps this is a good period to be getting on with it?’
‘Bury my grief in work? How Dickensian. He loved death, he found it animating. He always wrote best when somebody was dying, either in real life or in fiction.’
But in truth, though I had a surfeit of grief, there was almost none of work. I’d been musing on Dickens’s ‘Indignation’ on and off for years, in a desultory public schoolmasterish manner, and had little to show for it. The idea seemed plausible, initially. I admired how angry he was, and the ways in which he expressed it. ‘Charles Dickens and the Rhetoric of Indignation’? Or perhaps Outrage? Maybe Disgust? I am in favour of all of the above.
Who gives a damn? I’d really abandoned the project years ago, like a PhD that had gone sour. I did not tell poor George this. He thought me, foolish chap, a fellow Victorian, and had encouraged me accordingly. If I could have done so decently, I would have handed the project on to him, but he was a Tennysonian through and through. Dickens was too sloppy, too fascinated by filth, too worldly for George. He was happier in Lotos-land, soothed by sonorous melodies.
‘So. Thanks for that. Most helpful. But did you say there was something else?’
‘Yes, well, after Suzy died there were floods of letters of condolence. I presume that’s what they are. I kept them too.’ He started to rummage in the briefcase.
‘No! Please, no.’
‘But surely James, you need to acknowledge them?’
‘Do I? I suppose I could have a card printed, and send it to all those who have written.’
‘It’s a bit impersonal, but better than nothing. I’d be happy to look after that. What wording do you want?
I pretended to think for a moment. ‘I think the following would be appropriate, don’t you? Thank you for your recent communication, expressing sorrow about the death of Suzy Moulton. I’m sorry about it too.’
‘Honestly, James!’
‘Indeed. All most of them are doing is being polite, following form, making sure they feel they have behaved properly. Hardly an ounce of true feeling in most of them. I’ve written such rubbish myself.’
‘Let’s leave it then.’
A few minutes later I saw him to the door, and pulled him to my chest, briefly.
‘Thank you, my very dear old friend.’
His eyes misted again, and he turned to go. ‘Of course.’
I’d left the letters on the kitchen table. Pouring myself another cup of tea – I hate it lukewarm, but this was not the time for a fresh pot, better a stewed one, makes a better metaphor – I opened the first letter, which George had placed at the top. It was written a few days after the funeral, in her bold, dear hand – she’d taught herself some sort of ersatz italic script when at school, and used a fountain pen with a midsized nib and dark blue ink. I wondered if black would have been more appropriate.
Dear Daddy,
What a day! I guess we got through it, but when I got home I went to bed and howled enough to bring Sam running with a glass of red, and frightened poor little Rudy. He wanted to know about the funeral, and was sad and cross that he wasn’t allowed to come. He says he misses Granny, though in ten minutes he will be watching TV happily enough. Lucky him, I won’t. I think I will never feel normal again, or do simple things with simple pleasure. An anchor is tugging at my chest, and I feel if I don’t resist I will be pulled under, and my heart will drown.
I am desolate that there was nothing I could do to console you, save to hold you up and get on the train with you.
I understand you need some time. Perhaps you might go away? There’s that lovely hotel in the New Forest you used to go to? Couldn’t you get a room there, stay inside, have yummy treats from room service, maybe a swim once you’re feeling better?
Just a thought.
I do love you so. I feel as if – my own dear family notwithstanding – it’s just you and me now. We can look after each other, can’t we? We owe that to Mummy, bless her. I’ll come down to see you in a week or two – perhaps a week on Saturday? Just by myself. It’ll be good to have a talk.
Your loving daughter,
Lucy xxxxxxx
The second letter was slim, just a single sheet, hardly bulging the envelope, which looked like it might be empty, and bore (like the others) the stamped Post Office instruction to redirect it to George.
Dear Daddy,
What’s going on? I don’t understand. It is a week now since I wrote to you, and no answer. I get that, perhaps it is too hard for you, just now? (It’s hard for me too!)
But I rang you,
and the voice said the number had been disconnected. Your mobile number doesn’t work. Emails to you get bounced.
Perhaps you have gone away, as I suggested? That would be a relief. I rang that hotel in the New Forest, but they said they had no record of any reservation in your name.
I feel frantic with worry, it’s as if you had disappeared into thin air! Please, please, I beg you to be in touch!
Your worried Lucy, who loves you so much! Xxxxxx P.S. Rudy says he SO misses Gampy! He does dote on you, you know. And you on him! Don’t leave us like this! Don’t leave us!
Well, what did I expect? What else would she say? Had the letter arrived on its proper schedule, it would have been intolerable to even see it, and I could not have opened it had I wished to do so. I can now, and I remember why I couldn’t. I wish I hadn’t.
I do wish Lucy had learned to write properly. I spent years trying to teach her the rules of grammar and punctuation, but she is still addicted to those exclamation marks. It’s awful. If the Spartan boy didn’t use them when the fox was chewing on his vitals, I don’t see what right anyone else has to. At least her letter is handwritten, and she cannot use those typographical figures – they have a name – that make smiling faces. Or frowning ones. Thank heaven for that.
I loathe being called Gampy. I’d settle for Grandfather, it’s a biological fact and hence a requirement, I suppose, though I have no sense of being such a person. I have begged them to give me this minimal gravitas, to which I think myself entitled, but Gampy has got stuck in Rudy’s little brain. It’s not that he thinks it’s cute. He thinks it’s my name. I gather Sam called his grandfathers similarly, so he is – once again – responsible for a risible bit of idiocy. My son-in-law, the social worker.
Anyway Rudy, poor little tyke, won’t remember any of this, he’s too young and it’s too painful. Children are wonderfully self-preserving. They filter memory, cleanse and sanitise it, unless it’s too awful to renounce. And this isn’t.
