Weep a While Longer

by Penny Freedman

  *

  The others arrive and I buy drinks. This is turning out to be an expensive week, but I have been on property websites and am amazed at the price I can expect to get for my mother’s flat. Everyone makes an effort to chat brightly and I fend off enquiries about my plans by declaring that I’m thinking of taking a gap year. ‘Thailand, India, Australia,’ I say. ‘You know the kind of thing.’ They do, and I see the same look of longing in their eyes as I saw in Malcolm’s. They were all once EFL teachers, after all, teaching abroad before they upgraded to UK universities and teaching academic English. They’ve known the delights of freedom, of moving on when they got bored, before prudence told them it was time to come home and take out a mortgage. Travelling abroad actually has no appeal to me whatever but it’s a fantasy that satisfies them.

  We part with hugs and promises, in the usual way of these things, and I go home to find something to wear tomorrow.

  *

  In the evening I meet Annie and Ellie at Monks, Marlbury’s only cocktail bar. Annie is just off the train from Edinburgh and is edgy and sleep-deprived. They buy me an alarmingly green drink in a tall glass. I fear that it’s going to be sticky with crème de menthe but it turns out to have a lot of lime juice in it and to taste treacherously fruity and harmless. ‘I really mustn’t have a hangover tomorrow,’ I say.

  ‘Talking of which,’ Ellie says, and produces a piece of paper. ‘Order of service for tomorrow.’

  I look at it. They have chosen the sort of theology-light hymns that the non-religious do choose: ‘Morning has broken’ and ‘Who would true valour see’, finishing with ‘Jerusalem’. Then there are a couple of readings – Prospero from The Tempest for Ellie and Swinburne’s Garden of Proserpina for Annie. I ask if this latter isn’t a bit ostentatiously non-Christian, but she says, ‘Pete says it’s fine.’ I am puzzled about Pete for a moment until I realise that she means Peter Michaels, vicar of St Olave’s. Of course he’s Pete.

  He will, I’m told, do the eulogy. Dawn has been gathering testimonials from old friends and patients and he will weave these into something. We shall say the Lord’s Prayer and be sent away with a blessing. ‘It looks fine,’ I say. ‘It’s just all a bit odd, knowing Granny.’ They know now about Christopher; I told Ellie and she has told Annie. Ellie wept when I told her, but she is the mother of a baby boy and probably still a bit post-partum hormonal. Annie is not very interested except insofar as he necessitates this funeral.

  ‘Are we processing behind the coffin?’ she asks. Neither of them has ever been to a funeral, but they’ve seen them in films.

  ‘I told the undertakers not,’ I say. ‘It seems a bit black veils, if you know what I mean.’

  I return the paper to Ellie. ‘And now I have some news,’ I say. I tell them about the job but not about David, because they are young enough to think that a wedding is lovely under any circumstances and will berate me for turning him down. ‘So, I’m free,’ I conclude. ‘I don’t need to get another job right away because I’ll have Granny’s money, so I shall go away somewhere. I fancy somewhere by the sea but a bit remote. The east coast somewhere, damp and blowy.’

  ‘How long for?’ Annie asks.

  ‘I don’t know. A few months, I suppose.’

  ‘What about the house? Who’s going to keep an eye on it?’

  ‘I’m thinking of letting it.’

  ‘It’s my home!’ Annie protests. ‘You can’t let other people live in my home!’

  ‘It’s not really home any more, Annie, is it? You’ve got your flat in Oxford that Pa bought for you at great expense. My house is just a convenient youth hostel these days. Wherever I go I’ll have a spare room and you’ll always be welcome. And I’ll have Freda to stay. I think she’ll love being by the sea.’ I turn to Ellie. ‘I’m sorry about not being available for babysitting,’ I say.

  She picks up my empty glass. ‘We’ll cope. I’ve got a couple of year twelve girls who are dying to babysit for me, though they won’t do it for free, of course. And if you can manage three bedrooms, we’ll all come and stay,’ she says. ‘Refill?’

  After that, when everyone has had another drink, we quite enjoy ourselves constructing the fantasy of my new life.

  ‘A dog, definitely,’ Ellie says.

  ‘Eccentric clothes,’ Annie proposes, ‘long and floaty – with turbans.’

  ‘I was thinking of letting my hair grow,’ I say. ‘Long and witchy.’

  ‘And you’ll keep chickens.’

  ‘And pick samphire from the cliffs.’

  ‘And talk to myself when I’m out with the dog.’

  *

  We part with arrangements for the next day. Ben is going to stay with the children and Ellie is going to drive us so that we can go to the flat afterwards and take away any mementoes people want. They leave me at my front door; it is early still and Annie is having supper at Ellie’s. I was invited but I pleaded things to do. I make myself some beans on toast and go to bed.

  *

  Frightday. The church is filling up behind us. Since we are not walking in behind the coffin, Peter Michaels suggested that we go in early and settle ourselves in our front pew. ‘Plenty of time to greet people afterwards,’ he said. So we can’t see people arriving without craning our necks in an unsuitable way but we can feel them. We can hear the buzz. It’s a bit like being in a dressing room backstage and hearing the audience arriving over the Tannoy. Annie gets a text message.

  ‘Mobiles off,’ I hiss, but she gets up and heads off down the aisle, returning a minute later with Jon. He looks tired and he should be sleeping because he’s on nights, I know, but I am very glad to see him. He will keep us all steady, I feel, and steadiness is needed because I sense a latent hysteria in the three of us. It’s the strangeness, I suppose. I am reminded of a recurrent dream I have in which I find myself on stage in a play I have never rehearsed, in a role for which I haven’t got round to learning the lines.

  I allow myself one look round the church under cover of the business of greeting Jon and realise that it is packed. There must be a couple of hundred people here. And they all know what to do, even if we are bewildered. They sing ‘Morning has broken’ with extraordinary sweetness and laugh and weep at Peter Michaels’ tender account of Dr Jean Sidwell as her patients knew her. I am touched by these reminiscences but not moved to tears. It is when Ellie reads Prospero’s speech from The Tempest that the tears come.

  We are such stuff

  As dreams are made on; and our little life

  Is rounded with a sleep.

  Not such a little life, I think. A girl fighting to go to medical school in the 1940s; treating bomb victims in the East End while still a student; losing her son and nearly being broken by the loss; putting herself together again and devoting herself to mending other people for another forty years; this packed church a testament to her energy and skill and determination. And I never appreciated her because I wanted more of her for me. The girls, either side of me, squeeze my hands. They don’t know what I’m weeping for but I am grateful for the comfort.

  We finish with a rousing rendition of ‘Jerusalem’ and the blessing that exhorts the Lord to make his face to shine upon us, which I do think is rather lovely, and we step out into feeble sunshine to greet and thank and smile. We bury her next to her son and return to the church hall for tea. Much later, Ellie, Annie and I go to her flat and take home mementoes, more because we feel we should than because we really want them. She was always frugal, and more so as she got older. Annie takes a pair of eggshell china cups with a faint blue wash to them, which must have been a present and probably never used; Ellie takes a photograph of her at her graduation and a set of Russian dolls that we find in the bedroom – also a gift, I suppose; I take a little opal pendant, the only jewellery I ever saw her wear, apart from her wedding ring.

  Annie is staying in London, spending the weekend with Jon, so Ellie and I drive home alone. She rings Ben, who says the children are fine and in bed, so s
he suggests we go out for supper. She proposes the pizza restaurant next to the abbey, but I veto this for reasons I don’t explain, and we go for a curry instead. We drink some beer and get quite cheerful. I go straight to bed when I get home and, for the first time in weeks, it seems, I sleep well. Like the dead, in fact.

  *

  Shatterday. I wake to sunshine streaming through the curtains and a feeling of lightness that astonishes me. I get out of bed, push up the window, and lean out to savour the morning. The pathetic fallacy, I tell myself, but nothing can quell this astonishing feeling of buzzing aliveness that has taken hold of me. The albatross of failure – professional, personal, maternal and filial – that has sat on my shoulders for days appears to have flown off in the night, leaving in its place nothing but a light-headed irresponsibility. I am humming as I dress and make myself cinnamon toast and milky coffee. I eat and drink, pacing the kitchen, too light on my feet to sit down. I pack an overnight bag with a minimum of requirements – toothbrush, nightie, knickers, book, laptop.

  I ring Ellie’s house and ask to speak to Freda.

  ‘Hello, Granny,’ she says.

  ‘Freda,’ I say, ‘I’m going away for a holiday.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. Somewhere by the sea.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Quite a long time, actually.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I’m very tired, so I need a rest.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I thought you might like to come and visit me for a bit, and play on the beach.’

  There is a silence.

  ‘Are you good at building sandcastles?’ she asks.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I say.

  *

  At ten o’clock the estate agent arrives to discuss letting the house. Cosy and nice family feel are epithets she uses several times as she looks round, but I suspect this is code for scruffy and old-fashioned. When she has finished, she sits down on the saggy sofa and sighs. ‘To be absolutely honest with you,’ she says, ‘a house of this kind isn’t easy to let. If you’re planning to come back to it, I wouldn’t recommend letting it to students – student lets get very hard wear. And couples who are looking for a four-bedroom house are usually in a position to buy. We can do our best, set a reasonable rent, but I’m not very hopeful.’ She looks around. ‘You are planning this as a short-term let, aren’t you? I think that’s what you said on the phone.’

  ‘I’m really not sure,’ I say.

  ‘Only I could sell this for you just like that,’ she says, clicking her fingers.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s a lovely family house in the catchment area for good schools. We have people queuing up for houses like this.’

  ‘Even houses in the condition this one’s in?’

  ‘Oh yes. People like the opportunity to refurbish – put their own stamp on a house.’

  ‘Well, sell it then,’ I say.

  *

  When she has gone, I write a note for Annie and leave it on the hall table.

  You may find For Sale notice on house, I write. Expert advice says it makes sense on financial grounds. House is all yours for rest of summer, though. Have phone and laptop with me for emails. Lots of love. Ma

  I take a look round the house, checking doors and windows, then pick up my bag and walk out. I am stopped in the porch by the sight of my bike. I pat its worn seat. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ I say. ‘I’ll be back for you.’ Then I slam the front door and head off down the road. If I didn’t know I would look ridiculous, I would run. I actually feel as though I could fly. I have a great bubble of elation in my chest. I feel untethered, like a hot air balloon that is being released from its guy ropes one by one and is straining to float away. I jump up and touch a tree bough that overhangs the pavement.

  In the short term, I know where I’m going. I’m heading for the station, then London, where I shall see another estate agent, about selling my mother’s flat, and spend a few days doing theatre, galleries and some shopping, since what I’m wearing and a spare pair of knickers won’t take me far. When I’ve had my fill of metropolitan cultural delights I shall go to St Pancras and choose a train. I have a picture of where I want to end up; it’s just a question of finding it. I picture a small grey cottage on a cliff and myself inside it, sitting by a driftwood fire, a dog at my feet, reading a book and glancing occasionally at the foaming sea beyond my window. The picture is intense and I see it like a Vermeer interior: the yellow light from the fire and the pale square of a winter afternoon at the window; the rough texture of the dog’s coat and the graceful line of my bent head as I read. There will be false starts, no doubt, and a lot of nights spent in unlovely B&Bs, before I find something that can be moulded to match this Platonic ideal of a retreat from the world, but I am confident that I shall find it.

  I stride on, gathering pace, swinging my bag. There is an odd roaring sound in my ears and I think I know what it is. If I were just to turn my head and look over my shoulder I could be certain. It is the sound of bridges burning behind me.