The Cookbook of Common Prayer

by Francesca Haig

  My hands are shaking so much that I’m worried I’ll tear the paper, still soggy from the steam.

  Next door, Gabe’s thanking the woman on the phone and saying goodbye. I tuck the damp letter between the pages of a book, and shove it back into my bag.

  Mediterranean vegetable soup for the day you land in England to collect your son’s body

  During the meal, you will want something to do with your mouth, which won’t be fit for speaking. Chop the celery only roughly, so that you’ll be picking the long threads from your teeth for hours. For the same reason, it’s important not to de-stone the olives. Leave the stones in, and when you are eating, take your time loosening each one with your tongue. Use your fingers to fish them from your mouth like dislodged teeth.

  Teddy

  ‘You don’t have to go to school today if you don’t want to,’ Sue says. She’s trying to get out a piece of toast that’s stuck in the toaster. She burns her finger and yells ‘Fuck!’, then drops the burnt toast onto my plate.

  I remember once, when Mum told off Dougie for swearing, and he said, ‘You never tell Sue off when she swears, and she swears all the time.’

  ‘Have you ever tried telling Sue off?’ Mum said, and we’d all laughed, because nobody, not even Dougie, the bravest of everyone, was brave enough to tell Sue off.

  Sue skids the butter across the table towards me. ‘Seriously,’ she says. ‘Don’t go if you don’t feel up to it. I’ll be around all day anyway.’ Normally she flies up to Melbourne almost every week for work meetings, but she tells me she’s cancelled them for this week. ‘I’ll be here until your folks get back. Just to keep an eye on you and Sylvie, and Papabee.’

  ‘I keep an eye on Papabee myself,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ She gives me a kiss on my head. ‘So: school, or not?’

  ‘Mum said it’s probably best to try to keep going like normal.’

  ‘OK.’ She nods. ‘Fair enough. This isn’t really normal, though, is it?’

  My turn to nod. ‘But I think I want to go anyway.’

  I don’t tell her that it’s the day we’re presenting our science projects. I want to be there to show the rocket that Alasdair-Down-The-Road and I made. We spent ages building it, and Mrs Hooper said we can even take it out to the oval and see how high it will go. Does it make me a bad person, that I still want to do it, even now that Dougie’s dead? I don’t understand how two such different things can fit in my head at the same time. Rocket. Dougie. Rocket. Dougie.

  Sue rests her hand on the back of my neck. ‘Do you want to talk about it? About Dougie?’

  ‘No.’ I wouldn’t mind talking about it, but I don’t know how. Dougie being dead is still just a thing in my head. It hasn’t made it as far as my mouth yet.

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry – I won’t make you talk. But if you want to, or if you have any questions, I’m around.’

  I look down at the dog, instead of her. I bend forward and squish my head down so my face is in SausageDog’s fur, and I close my eyes and I wish I could be Dog-Teddy and burrow under fences, squeeze under tree-roots, find all the hidden places. I’d be a real dog, even the gross bits: bum-sniffing, wet-nosed. I’d roll on my back and show my belly, which is how a dog says Yes with its whole body. Pissing proudly on every tree: Yes! Yes! Yes! Chase my nose into every hole. Smell-chasing, cat-chasing, wave-chasing in the shallow water at the Neck. I wouldn’t have to lie to Sylvie because dogs can’t tell lies – their tails always tell the truth. And if I was Dog-Teddy I wouldn’t be afraid of bones.

  Sue drives me into school, instead of making me catch the bus, which makes today feel even less like normal. We drive past the shops and the newspaper display outside the newsagent says Hobart Boy Killed in Cave Tragedy and for a second I think the cave’s called Cave Tragedy and I think Why did they even take them into a cave called Tragedy? and it almost seems funny and then I remember that there’s nothing funny about it. Sue says, ‘Thank Christ your mum’s not here to see the Mercury having a field-day with this,’ and drives faster.

  At school, Mrs Conway and the other teachers are extra nice to me, and even my friends must’ve heard the news because Alasdair-Down-The-Road says, ‘Are you OK?’ and gives me a pat on the arm that’s kind of a cuddle and kind of a shove. He doesn’t say anything else about it, but at recess he gives me his whole muesli bar. I think he wants to say something about Dougie, but he doesn’t know how, and I don’t mind, because it’s the same for me.

  All day Elsie Parr and Chibek Deng keep staring at me. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be acting. Am I doing this wrong? Elsie’s the only person who actually says anything about Dougie. She comes up to me in the art room and says, ‘How exactly did it happen?’ and Alasdair tells her to shut up, but afterwards he looks at me like he’s waiting for something, and I realise that he wants me to tell him too.

  ‘He drowned,’ I say quietly, so Alasdair can hear and Elsie can’t. ‘In a cave.’

  ‘But he could swim, couldn’t he?’ Alasdair asks.

  I’ve been thinking that too. Dougie was a really good swimmer – better than Mum and Dad. At the Neck, he could swim out so far that we could hardly see him, and Mum got nervous about sharks and would shout to him from the beach. When I was smaller, Dougie could even swim with me holding onto his back. It doesn’t make sense that somebody like him could drown.

  ‘I think it’s different underground,’ I say. ‘I think maybe it was too dark.’ I haven’t worked out yet exactly how the dark makes a difference, but it seems important.

  I don’t want to talk about it any more, because that would mean thinking about Dougie drowning. So I don’t say anything else to Alasdair, and just pretend to concentrate really hard on my painting.

  After school, Papabee picks me up, just like normal, and we go back to his tiny little flat, just like normal. While I hang up my blazer on the hook on the back of the door, he’s already getting out the dominoes.

  ‘I thought we might have a biscuit while we play,’ he says. ‘What do you think?’

  I say yes – I always say yes, even though I’ve learned to check the biscuits for mould, and to sniff the milk before he makes me a hot chocolate. Papabee doesn’t really cook any more – not properly. That’s why Mum and Dad bought him a microwave for his flat, last year. A few months later he said, ‘That television that you very kindly gave me doesn’t seem to be working,’ and Dad went around to see what Papabee was talking about, and there was the microwave, set up on top of the chest of drawers in Papabee’s bedroom.

  I wonder if I should tell Papabee again about Dougie, but it seems mean, and anyway I don’t want to, so that Papabee’s flat can be one place where Dougie isn’t dead, and Sylvie isn’t sick, and I don’t have to imagine being Bird-Teddy or Dog-Teddy or any other kind of Teddy at all. Instead we play dominoes, and I show him movies on my phone of penguins falling over, and he says, ‘How extraordinary.’ I show him another penguin movie, and he laughs again. I’m not good at very many things, but I’m better than pretty much anyone at making Papabee laugh.

  Papabee makes hot chocolate, and when he puts the milk away in the cupboard next to the cups I take it out again and put it in the fridge, without saying anything. I show him another YouTube movie, of dogs knocking over toddlers, and just at the bit when the big white dog pushes the toddler into a puddle, I remember that Dougie is dead. Properly, totally, dead. Papabee’s still looking at the movie. He points at the boy onscreen and says, ‘I hope that poor little chap suffered no lasting ill-effects. Is he a friend of yours?’ But my tongue has got too big in my mouth. It feels like the ox tongues on display in the window at the butcher on Argyle St – bigger than you’d believe, great big heavy chunks of muscle so thick and grey that when we go down that street I make Mum and Dad cross the road with me to walk on the other side.

  A bit of me wants to yell, Dougie’s dead, remember! Don’t you know? And another bit of me wants to take Papabee’s not-knowing and crawl
under it with him, the way I used to crawl right under the covers in Mum and Dad’s bed when I had a nightmare. I want to pull Papabee’s not-knowing right over my head and stay in there with him and never come out.

  When it’s time to go down the road for dinner, I remind Papabee to lock the door, and make sure he puts his key in the top pocket of his jacket. I counted once: one hundred and seventy steps, from Papabee’s front door to our back door. Inside our house, when Papabee bends down to let SausageDog lick his ear, his hat falls off, like it always does, and I pick it up and hang it for him on the hook by the door, like I always do. I love the sameness of these things, now that Dougie’s dead and it feels like normal has gone away for good.

  Sue’s in the kitchen, and she says, ‘You’re looking particularly handsome today, Papabee,’ and kisses him on both cheeks.

  Papabee smiles, such a big one that his moustache goes up at the ends like a cartoon smile. ‘You must forgive me, my dear, if I don’t remember your name,’ he says to her, ‘though I do, of course, recall you most fondly.’

  ‘I would forgive you anything, Papabee,’ Sue says. She’s always like that with Papabee – she flirts with him even though she’s married to Dan, and even though Papabee’s super old. Sue’s old too, but only Mum-and-Dad old, not proper old-person old.

  He asks about Mum and Dad, and Sue says, ‘They’re away for a few days, remember?’ and he says, ‘Of course, of course,’ and she doesn’t remind him why, and I’m glad. Sue makes it all the way through dinner with me and Papabee without crying, but afterwards, while Papabee’s drinking his coffee in the lounge room and I’m helping Sue to load the dishwasher, I catch her doing it again, just like Mrs Conway did – the kind of trying not to cry that’s so obvious that you might as well just actually cry.

  ‘It’s OK if you want to cry,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not going to cry right now. But if you want to, I don’t mind.’

  ‘Thanks, Teddy,’ she says. She puts down the plate she’s holding and stands there, letting the crying happen for a minute or two. Then she blows her nose – a really good, loud, snotty blow, and says, ‘Do you know what? I might be finished with crying for now. But if I need to have another one later on, I’ll go for it.’ She gives me a little salute, with just one finger.

  On the third morning, Sue makes us pancakes. Most of them she burns, and when she’s scraped them off the pan they’re all scrunched up. But she eats the squished ones herself, and gives me the good ones.

  ‘I don’t normally get pancakes for breakfast,’ I say, with my mouth full.

  ‘I thought you might like a treat.’

  ‘Because Dougie died?’

  For a moment she doesn’t say anything. ‘I suppose so.’

  I really like pancakes – even Sue’s burnt ones. But it doesn’t seem like a good deal to me. I try to work out what kind of deal would be fair, for a dead brother. A new PlayStation. Being able to fly. No homework ever again. I can’t think of anything that would be big enough to make it a good deal.

  I still eat all the pancakes though. They’re not very good – burnt on the outside, and squishy on the inside – but I eat them anyway, and pass the blackest bits to Sausage under the table.

  ‘Hospital after school, or Papabee’s?’ Sue asks. ‘I can give you a lift to the hospital, if you want.’

  ‘I’ll go and see Sylvie, I guess,’ I say. I won’t be able to figure out what her price is if I stay away from her. But when I think about going in there, and trying not to let anything slip about Dougie, my tongue feels like ox tongue again: too thick, too wet, too heavy.

  But I know I have to do it. If I can work out Sylvie’s price in time, she might not be the one from the one-in-five. Because I’m starting to think it’s all joined up: what happened to Dougie, and what’s happening to Sylvie. Sister in the hospital, brother in the water – it’s part of the same thing, and it’s got something to do with stories, and something to do with bones. I remember the last summer before Sylvie went into hospital, when I sat on the beach and stared at her sharp shoulder blade. The triangle of bone looked just like a signpost. I think that when Dougie went into that cave he was following the signpost on Sylvie’s back. He followed the bone sign all the way down.

  Gabe

  We have a morning appointment with a woman from the coroner’s office. We need to catch a train to Beaconsfield – she explained on the phone that even though Dougie was living at the school in London, the accident was in Buckinghamshire, so the local coroner has jurisdiction. I almost fall asleep on the train, drunk with jet lag or grief, and Gill has to nudge me awake when the train slows at the station.

  When we’re shown into the coroner’s assistant’s office, she introduces herself as Heather, but although I say, ‘I’m Gabe, and this is Gill,’ as I shake her hand, she insists on calling us Mr and Mrs Jordan throughout.

  ‘You’ve come a long way,’ she says.

  ‘Of course we came,’ I say, abruptly. My capacity for small talk has been left somewhere between Hobart and Heathrow.

  ‘Of course,’ she echoes, and I feel bad for my rudeness.

  ‘Please,’ I say, softening my voice. ‘Can you explain what happened?’

  ‘We don’t yet have the whole picture, I’m afraid. What we can confirm, so far, is that the flood happened suddenly, when the caving expedition was well under way. I’ve got you the contact details of a police officer who should be able to give you more details.’ Heather glances at her computer. Her office feels like just that: an office. There are filing cabinets, a battered desk with piles of forms. It could be an office at a car hire firm, or an insurance company. I’m grateful for the administrative surroundings. If this conversation were happening somewhere cosy – on a couch in somebody’s living room – I’d fall apart. This is better. The printer on top of the filing cabinet, its red light blinking; the sound of people talking in the next office. It doesn’t feel like a place in which it’s appropriate to cry, and so I don’t.

  ‘I understand that someone from the Australian High Commission has been in touch with you,’ she goes on. ‘They told you about the inquest?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes, I spoke to a woman. But I don’t remember anything about an inquest. Maybe she did mention it, but there was a lot to take in.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says again. ‘In cases like this, where the death doesn’t take place in the hospital, and where the cause isn’t entirely straightforward, there has to be an inquest. But the important thing for you to understand is that you don’t have to wait until the inquest to move forward with the funeral, or burial.’

  I haven’t got as far as that in my head: the process, the reality of Dougie’s body, and what we’ll do with it.

  ‘The inquest has been opened,’ Heather continues.

  ‘Without us?’ I jump in. ‘Why? Shouldn’t we have been told? We should have been there.’

  She raises her palms. ‘There isn’t a there,’ she says patiently. ‘It’s not something that happens in a courtroom, or anything like that. It’s just a technicality, so that we can start the process, record the death and the identification of the body. The inquest’s already been adjourned, while we investigate. It’ll be months, minimum, before the inquest itself. But I do need to inform you that there’ll have to be a post-mortem examination.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ says Gill, straight away. ‘Surely there’s no need? They know what killed him. They fished him out of the cave. There were other people there, when the flood happened, right? This isn’t an episode of a detective show. We know what killed him.’

  I put my hand on her arm. ‘It might not be as simple as that.’

  ‘Your husband’s right, Mrs Jordan. I know that the idea of a post-mortem can be confronting. But the inquest is about establishing the precise cause of Douglas’s death. We don’t know for certain whether equipment failure might have been a contributing factor. Whether the guides followed correct protocol, or whether search and rescue procedures were properly follow
ed. Whether Douglas’s death was even drowning, strictly speaking. As I’m sure you can imagine, there are other injuries.’ I hadn’t imagined – though now I can do nothing else. ‘The post-mortem will hopefully be able to give us more information about the exact sequence of events and which of these injuries might have resulted in his death.’

  ‘I don’t want to know any of that,’ Gill says, turning away.

  I do. I want to know it all, I realise. I want to know exactly what happened to my son.

  Heather’s still talking – something about how future tragedies might be averted, if they can learn a lesson from Dougie’s death.

  ‘He’s our son,’ says Gill. Her voice is very calm, very dignified. ‘Not a cautionary tale. What if we say no to the post-mortem? Do we have the right to do that?’

  ‘In ordinary circumstances – if Douglas had died after an illness, say – then yes, you would. But in a situation like this, when the post-mortem has been ordered by the coroner, then no, I’m afraid there’s no choice.’

  Gill’s holding my hand so tightly that I can feel her pulse, or my own, at the point where her fingers crush against mine.

  Heather continues. ‘But, as I said, we’ll be able to release the body as soon as the post-mortem is finished, so that you can move on with your own arrangements.’

  Gill lets go of my hand. ‘So you’re going to cut up our son, and we have no say in it?’

  ‘I can reassure you that the whole procedure is done with great care and respect. You’ll be able to view Douglas’s body afterwards, and it’s probable that you won’t even notice a difference.’ She refers to her notes. ‘Also, you have the power to make decisions about any tissue removed during the process.’