by Ruth Hogan
“Who’d have thought it?” he whispered, peering at his surroundings. “So that’s why he always carried his bag.”
The frail October sunlight struggled to permeate the trellis of flowers and leaves on the lace panels and the room was dark and stained with shadows. He drew back the lace, shooting a meteorite shower of shimmering dust motes spinning across the room.
“Let’s throw a bit of light over things, shall we?”
Sunshine showed him round, like a curator proudly sharing a collection of fine art. She showed him buttons and rings, gloves, teddy bears, a glass eye, items of jewelry, a jigsaw puzzle piece, keys, coins, plastic toys, tweezers, four sets of dentures, and a doll’s head. And these were the contents of only one drawer. The cream cup and saucer painted with violets was still on the table. Sunshine picked it up and handed it to Freddy.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it? The lady doesn’t want it back to her, so Laura’s going to keep it for the lovely cup of tea.”
Laura was about to contradict her, but Sunshine’s face was set with such absolute certainty that the words died in Laura’s mouth.
“That’ll be yours, then.”
As Laura took the cup and saucer from him, his fingers brushed against her hand, and he held her gaze for just a moment before turning away and sitting down in Anthony’s chair.
“And you’re to try and get all the rest of this,” he said, sweeping his arms around the room, “back to wherever it is that it belongs?” His equable tone gave no quarter to the enormity of the task.
“That’s the idea,” Laura replied.
Sunshine was distracted by an object that had fallen out of the drawer she had opened. She picked it up from the floor, but immediately dropped it again howling, in pain.
LADY’S GLOVE, NAVY-BLUE LEATHER, LEFT HAND—
Found, grass verge at the foot of Cow Bridge 23rd December . . .
It was bitter. Too cold for snow. Rose looked up at the black sky pierced with a tracery of stars and a sharp sickle moon. She had been walking briskly for twenty minutes but her feet were numb and her fingers frozen. Too sad for tears. She was almost there now. Thankfully, there had been no passing cars; no one to distract or intervene. Too late to think. Here now. This was the place. Over the bridge and then just a shallow, grassy bank. She took off one glove and pulled the photograph from her pocket. She kissed the face of the little girl who smiled back at her. Too dark to see, but she knew she was there. “Mummy loves you.” Down the grassy slope her gloveless hand clutched at razor-frozen grass. At the bottom, shale underfoot. “Mummy loves you,” she whispered as the distant lights pricked the darkness and the rails began to hum. Too hard to live.
“Too hard to live. The lady died.”
Sunshine was shaking as she tried to explain. Freddy pulled her close and squeezed her tight.
“I think that what you need is the lovely cup of tea.”
He made it, under Sunshine’s strict supervision. Two cups of tea and a jammy dodger later, she tried to tell them a little more.
“She loved her little girl, but the lady was very sad” was the best that she could do.
Laura was strangely unsettled.
“Sunshine, maybe it would be better if you didn’t go into the study anymore . . .”
“Why?”
Laura hesitated. Part of her didn’t want Sunshine becoming too involved. She knew it was selfish, but she was desperate to find a way to make Anthony and maybe even her parents proud of her. Posthumously, of course. It was her chance to finally do something right and she didn’t want any distractions.
“In case there are other things in there that might upset you.”
Sunshine shook her head determinedly.
“I’m okay now.”
Laura looked unconvinced, but Sunshine had a point to make.
“If you never get sadness, how do you know what happy is like?” she asked.
“And by the way, everybody dies.”
“I think she has you in checkmate there,” Freddy murmured.
Laura conceded defeat with a reluctant smile.
“But,” continued Freddy, “I may have the very thing to cheer you up. I have a plan.”
CHAPTER 21
Sunshine stood waiting by the sundial, a solemn figure in a pink duffle coat and silver sequined baseball boots. The dank October afternoon was already seeping away; the edges of an empty sky tinged with the rhubarb flush of a looming sunset. On Sunshine’s signal Freddy started the music and took his place next to Laura to walk down the “aisle” of flickering tea lights to where Sunshine was waiting to start the ceremony. Freddy was carrying Anthony’s ashes in a plain wooden urn, and Laura, a fancy cardboard box full of real rose-petal confetti and the photograph of Therese from the garden room. Laura fought the urge to giggle as she walked as slowly as she could to the inevitable Al Bowlly. Sunshine had planned everything down to the last detail. The gramophone had been conveniently positioned so that Freddy could reach it by leaning in the window, and the confetti and rose-scented candles for the tea lights had been ordered especially. Sunshine had originally wanted to wait until the roses were in bloom again, but Laura couldn’t bear the thought of Anthony’s ashes languishing on a shelf for the next nine months. She couldn’t keep him from Therese any longer. The rose-scented candles and confetti had been a hard-won compromise. Freddy and Laura reached Sunshine just as Mr. Bowlly was beginning the final verse and Laura listened, really listened, to the words for perhaps the first time. It could have been written for Anthony and Therese. Sunshine left a pause just long enough for it to be dramatic before consulting the piece of paper she was clutching.
“Dreary beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and in the fate of this complication, to join together this man, St. Anthony”—she tapped the top of his urn—“and this woman, the Lady of the Flowers”—gesturing toward the photograph with an upturned palm—“in holy macaroni, which is the honorable estate. St. Anthony takes the Lady of the Flowers to be the lawful wedding wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, richer or poorer, to love and to perish with death now you start. And it still rhymes,” she added proudly to herself.
She paused again, long enough this time for it to be almost uncomfortable, but no doubt intended to underscore the sanctity of the occasion.
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, funk to punky. We know Major Tom’s a monkey. We can be heroes just for today.”
She leaned forward and addressed Freddy and Laura in a stage whisper.
“Now you throw the ashes, and you throw the confetti,” and then, as an afterthought, “Follow me!”
They made an odd little procession filing round the rose garden, Sunshine leading them in and out of the desolate-looking bushes whose summer finery had been reduced to a ragbag of sodden, yellowing leaves stubbornly clinging on. Freddy followed Sunshine, emptying the urn as delicately as he could, with Laura behind him, trying to avoid any backdraft as she scattered confetti on the wispy gray trail of Anthony’s remains. The “scattering of ashes” had always sounded like such an ethereal act to Laura, but in reality, she reflected, it was more akin to emptying a vacuum-cleaner bag. When the urn was finally empty, Sunshine consulted her piece of paper once again.
He was her North, her South, her East, her West,
Her working week and Sunday vest,
She was his moon and stars and favorite song,
They thought that love would last forever: they weren’t wrong.
Freddy winked at her, smiling broadly. “And it still rhymes,” he mouthed.
Sunshine wasn’t to be distracted.
“I now announce you husband and wife. Those whom God, and Sunshine, have joined together, let no man steal their thunder.”
She nodded at Freddy, who scampered off in the direction of the gramophone.
“And now it’s time for the bride and groom’s first dance.”
As the dying sun stained the ice-blue sky crimson and a blac
kbird’s call echoed through the gathering dusk, warning of a prowling tabby, Etta James proclaimed “At Last.”
As the last note smoldered into the chilly air, Laura looked across at Freddy. He was looking straight at her, and when her eyes met his, he smiled. Laura went to gather the tea lights. But Sunshine wasn’t quite finished. She rattled her piece of paper and cleared her throat.
“I am the resurrection and the light, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And it’s good night from me and it’s good night from him.”
When Laura went up to bed that night, the room felt different somehow. Perhaps it was warmer. Or maybe that was just the wine she had shared with Freddy and Sunshine to celebrate Therese and Anthony’s reunion. The things on the dressing table were all in order and the little blue clock had stopped at 11:55 as usual. She wound it up so that it could stop at the same time again tomorrow, drew the curtains, and turned to get in bed.
There were petals of rose confetti on the bedcovers.
CHAPTER 22
Eunice
1987
Bette trotted along just ahead of them surveying the park for undesirables. Every now and then she would turn to check that they were following her obediently; her velveteen face crumpled into a comical frown. She was named after the film star to whom she bore an unnerving resemblance, but they had taken to calling her Baby Jane after one of her namesake’s most memorable characters.
Bomber had been freeze-framed by Douglas’s death. He had held the little dog in his arms until long after his final breath had sighed “the end,” and his soft fur had grown cold and strange. Eunice had howled an eruption of pain, but Bomber sat rigid and dry-eyed as an ash cloud of grief settled over him and choked his tears. The Douglas-shaped space in the office hurt every day. They were a man down and a donut too many, but Eunice kept going; automatic pilot at first, but onward nevertheless. Bomber crashed and burned. He drank away his pain and then he slept away the drink.
In the end only one man could reach him. It was difficult to say who had fallen for Tom Cruise the hardest, Bomber or Eunice, as he swaggered from bike to bar to plane in his Ray-Bans. They had seen Top Gun three nights in a row when it opened at the Odeon last year. Three weeks after Douglas died, Eunice stormed Bomber’s flat with her spare key and kicked his grieving arse out of bed. As he sat at the kitchen table, tears finally released and dripping down his face and into the mug of black coffee Eunice had made, she took his hand.
“God, he loved flying with you, Bomber. But he’d have flown anyway . . . without you. He’d have hated it, but he would’ve done it.”
The following day, Bomber came into the office sober, and the following week Baby Jane arrived from Battersea Dogs’ Home; a bossy bundle of black and blond velvet. Baby Jane didn’t like donuts. The first time she was offered one, she sniffed at it disdainfully and turned away. It might as well have been a turd tartlet. Baby Jane liked Viennese whirls. For a stray, she had expensive tastes.
As the diminutive pug nosed an empty crisp packet on the grass, Eunice looked up at Bomber and almost recognized him again. His grief was still smudged under his eyes and pinched into his cheeks, but his smile was limbering up and his shoulders unfurling from their disconsolate stoop. She was never going to be a replacement, but she was already a distraction, and if Baby Jane had her way, which she usually did, Eunice had no doubt whatsoever that she would eventually prove to be a superstar in her own right.
Back in the office, Eunice put the kettle on while Bomber went through the post. Baby Jane settled herself onto her cushion and rested her head on her front paws, gathering herself for the arduous task of eating her cake. When Eunice came through with the tea, Bomber was waving a slim volume of short stories in the air that had just arrived from a rival publisher.
“Lost and Found by Anthony Peardew. Hmm, I’ve heard of this. It’s doing rather well. I wonder why old Bruce has sent it to me.”
Eunice picked up the accompanying compliments slip and read it.
“To gloat,” she answered.
“‘Bomber,” she read, “please accept a copy of this hugely successful collection with my compliments. You had your chance, old chap, and you blew it!’”
Bomber shook his head.
“No idea what he’s talking about. If this Peardew fellow had sent it to us first, we’d have snapped it up. It’s an excess of hair spray. It’s addled his brains.”
Eunice picked up the book and flicked through the pages. The author’s name and title together, like two flints, sparked a vague memory; a manuscript? Eunice racked her brain for the answer but it was like bobbing for apples; just when she thought she’d got it by the skin of her teeth, it slipped away. Baby Jane sighed theatrically. Her cake was “en retard” and she was weak with hunger. Eunice laughed and ruffled the soft rolls of velvet on her head.
“You’re such a diva, young lady! You’ll get fat and then no more cakes for you. Just jogging round the park and the occasional stick of celery. If you’re lucky.”
Baby Jane stared up at Eunice dolefully, her black button eyes framed by long dark lashes. It worked every time. She got her cake. At last.
Just as she was licking her lips in an optimistic search for remaining flecks of cream, the phone rang. Each pair of rings was followed by an imperious bark. Since her arrival, Baby Jane had quickly assumed a managerial position and she ran a very tight kennel. Bomber answered.
“Ma.”
He listened for a moment. Eunice watched his face and knew immediately that this was not good news. Bomber was on his feet.
“Do you want me to come over? I’ll come now if you like. Don’t be daft, Ma, of course it’s no trouble.”
It would be about Godfrey. The lovely, kind, funny, gentlemanly Godfrey, whose dementia was casting him adrift. A once majestic galleon whose sails had worn thin and tattered, no longer able to steer its own course but left to the mercy of every squall and storm. Last month he had managed to flood the house and set fire to it at the same time. He had started to run a bath and then forgot about it, going downstairs to dry his shirt, which he left on the hot plate of the AGA before setting off for the village to buy a paper. By the time Grace had come in from the greenhouse, the water leaking through the kitchen ceiling had put out the fire started by the shirt. She hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. But she refused to accept that she needed help. He was her husband and she loved him. She had promised “in sickness and in health.” Till death do us part. She couldn’t bear to think of him in a home where the interior design included armchairs with in-built commodes. And yet . . . This time he had run away. Well, wandered off, more like. After an hour of frantically searching the village, Grace had come home to telephone the police. She was met at the gate by the local vicar, who, on his way to visit a parishioner, had found Godfrey walking in the middle of the road, with a broom held up against his shoulder like a rifle and Grace’s red beret stretched onto his head. He told the Reverend Addlestrop that he was returning to his regiment after a weekend pass.
Bomber dropped the phone back into its cradle with a resigned sigh.
“Do you want me to come with you, or stay here and hold the fort with Baby Jane?”
Before he could answer, the buzzer went.
Portia received the news of her father’s latest escapade with horrible tranquillity. She refused to join Bomber and go and see her parents, let alone offer any kind of help or support. Bomber tried in vain to crack the surface of her callous composure.
“This is serious, sis. Ma can’t be expected to watch over him every minute of the day and night, and he’s a danger to himself. And before long, God forbid, he may be to her as well.”
Portia inspected her scarlet fingernails. She’d just had them done and she was quite pleased. She’d even tipped the girl a pound.
“Well? What do you expect me to do about it? He belongs in a home.”
“He is in a home,” Eunice hissed. “His home.”
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“Oh, shut up, Eunuch. It’s none of your business.”
“Well, at least she gives a damn!” snapped Bomber.
Stung by Bomber’s painful reprimand and secretly terrified by her father’s illness, Portia responded in the only way she knew how to; with insults.
“You heartless bastard! Of course I care about him. I’m just being honest. If he’s dangerous, he needs to be locked up. At least I’ve got the guts to say it. You always were completely spineless; always sucking up to Ma and Pa and never once standing up to them like me!”
Baby Jane could see that things were getting out of hand, and she wasn’t having her friends spoken to in that manner. A low growl rumbled her displeasure. Portia sought out the source of the admonishment and set eyes on the feisty little pug for the first time.
“What on earth is that revolting-looking cushion-pisser doing here? I should have thought you’d have had enough when that other little monster finally died.”
Eunice glanced across to where Douglas’s ashes sat safe in a box on Bomber’s desk and offered a silent apology. She was just wondering how to inflict appropriate and excruciating pain on this execrable woman, when she realized that Baby Jane had already decided. Leaving her cushion with the prowling menace of a lion who has just spotted a dithering gazelle, she fixed Portia with her fiercest stare and turned up the volume until her whole body vibrated. Her lips curled back, revealing a small but businesslike set of teeth. Portia flapped her fingers ineffectually at her, but Baby Jane continued her advance, eyes fixed firmly on her prey and growl now punctuated by dramatic snarls.
