The Last of the Bowmans

by J. Paul Henderson

  Hearing their names again, Greg was reminded of the mysterious young woman who’d been at the funeral and asked Syd if any of his daughters had been there.

  ‘They were there in spirit, Greg, but I’m afraid none of them could make it in person.’

  ‘You knew my father as well as anyone, Syd,’ Greg continued. ‘Did he ever date younger women?’

  Syd laughed out loud. ‘Your dad was a one-woman man, Greg – and that woman was your mother. She might have been dead, but he was still in love with her. He had no interest in meeting or marrying anyone else. Why are you asking me this?’

  ‘There was a woman at the funeral and no one seems to know who she was. It’s been puzzling me.’

  ‘I can’t help you there, I’m afraid. I never even saw her. It’s a pity your dad’s not here to tell you.’

  His father was here, Greg thought, and his father knew exactly who the young woman was. It was just that his father wasn’t telling.

  Lyle appeared again that night, but stayed for only a short time. He’d changed out of the paloma long dress into a turquoise bustle back ball gown, but looked tired, and his opalescent form had lost some of its shimmer.

  ‘You okay, Dad?’ Greg asked him. ‘You’re looking a bit drawn.’

  ‘I’m weary, son, but I’m fine. I made the mistake of not changing myself into a golf ball last night and I think the old batteries have got a bit worn down. I’ll be okay tomorrow. So tell me, what have you done today?’

  Greg told him about Fred Stubbington and that the crack would be fixed next week. He described the three estate agents, the one he’d decided upon and the price they were going to ask for the house.

  ‘I was hoping for more,’ his father sighed. ‘But if that’s what the estate agent says.’

  Greg then told him about bumping into Syd at the dump and Syd describing him as his best friend.

  ‘He was mine too,’ Lyle smiled. ‘It’s funny: if someone had told me that my best friend would be a second-hand car dealer I probably wouldn’t have believed them. People in that line of work never enjoyed much of a reputation. Strange old world, isn’t it?

  ‘I don’t know if I ever told you this, but Syd’s got three daughters and they’re all as tall as skyscrapers? Lorna, she’s the eldest…’

  Grandparents

  The following morning Greg made three further trips to the dump and then washed and changed. Today was the day he’d arranged to take Uncle Frank for lunch, and the day he would have to broach the man’s strange behaviour. It wasn’t something he looked forward to.

  Uncle Frank lived in the first of a row of four terraced houses with garden on three sides. Greg opened the gate and made his way to the side door – the used door – knocked, and turned the handle. Unusually, it was locked. He knocked again and waited, but there was still no answer. Strains of loud rock music seeped from the house and Greg could only surmise that his uncle was deaf to his knocking – as he was deaf to all things when he wasn’t wearing his hearing aid.

  He walked to the back of the house and peered through the window. Uncle Frank was standing in the middle of the room twitching his body and flailing his arms and, if not in the middle of an Apache war dance, appeared to be having a fit. Greg knocked hard on the window and was relieved when his uncle turned. Uncle Frank looked sheepish for a moment and then broke into a broad grin.

  ‘What’s going on in here? You having a party?’ Greg asked, once inside the house.

  ‘What, lad? I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Turn down the music and put your hearing aid in, will you? The radio’s loud enough for your neighbours to hear it.’

  Uncle Frank did both, and then asked Greg to repeat what he’d said.

  ‘I said your neighbours are going to be deafened. I could hear the music outside.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about my neighbours!’ Uncle Frank said. ‘I’m sick to death of them.’

  ‘Why, what have they done now?’

  ‘It’s their son! He’s out of control and they just make excuses for him.’

  Greg had noticed a small boy of about seven bouncing on a trampoline. ‘He looked harmless enough to me, Uncle Frank. He didn’t strike me as being a tearaway.’

  ‘You don’t know him!’ Uncle Frank retorted. ‘He keeps kicking my fence down. When I went round to complain, his father just shrugged and said his son had special knees. What kind of a damn-fool answer is that? I told him his boy wasn’t using his knees to kick my fence down, he was using his feet, and if it happened again I’d call the police. I told him I had friends in the police force.’ (Greg knew this to be true: Uncle Frank did indeed have friends in the constabulary.)

  ‘I think your neighbour was telling you his son had special needs,’ Greg said.

  ‘Why would he have a special need for wood?’ Uncle Frank said. ‘He’s a kid, not some damn cabinetmaker.’

  ‘I’ll explain in the car, Uncle Frank. Now go and get yourself ready.’

  His uncle left the room and then, just as quickly, returned. ‘I like this song,’ he said, turning up the volume and disappearing again.

  Greg sat down on the pouffe his aunt had used for resting her legs on and smiled: there was no way his uncle would be playing music like this in the house if Auntie Irene had still been alive.

  Although her golf and tennis trophies continued to adorn the sideboard, Auntie Irene had died thirteen years ago, shortly after Billy married. She herself had never married, and had instead spent much of her life looking after ageing parents. She had at one time, however, been engaged to a man called René and, after his unexpected death from scarlet fever, had looked upon herself as a widow rather than a spinster. Irene had been thirty-six at the time, and the news of his death hit her with the force of a sledgehammer. It was a blow she never recovered from, and René forever remained her one and only.

  For her parents, however, Irene’s tragedy and decision to eschew further ideas of marriage had been a blessing in disguise. Old, and in their own minds increasingly infirm, they now encouraged their daughter to leave her job in one of the city’s two department stores and tend to their needs. Her father, her mother said, was now suffering the effects of a gas attack he’d endured during World War I; and her mother, her father said, was so worn out she was in danger of hopping the twig. They led Irene to believe that without her help they, like René, would suffer untimely deaths – though probably not from scarlet fever as they’d both already had the disease.

  Eventually, Irene submitted to their pleas and agreed to become their carer. The day she resigned from her job, her parents climbed the stairs and took to their beds, staying there for the next fifteen years and only venturing down for special occasions. One such occasion had been the time Lyle had brought Mary home to meet them.

  Mary described the meeting to Greg in one of their frequent tête-à-têtes, when just the two of them were in the house. She was nervous, she said, as anyone would be on meeting their future in-laws for the first time, but it had struck her that Lyle was even more apprehensive.

  Grandpa and Grandma Bowman had been sitting in the lounge in their pyjamas, dressing gowns and slippers; Grandpa smoking his chewed pipe and Grandma knitting a pair of bed socks. Neither had stood when Lyle introduced her, and it was apparent that they were surprised by her young age. ‘They were probably wondering if Lyle was intending to adopt rather than marry me,’ Mary laughed. They asked about her parents rather than herself and appeared disappointed when she told them her mother was dead and that her father worked in a lumber yard.

  ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ Grandma Bowman had enquired with a weak smile.

  ‘I have a sister called Rita, Mrs Bowman, but she emigrated to New Zealand. She’s two years older than I am.’

  Grandpa Bowman muttered that Rita may as well be dead too then, as the chances were good that Mary would
never see her again. When Mary had replied that she was hoping to visit her one day, he’d retorted that it was unlikely she’d be affording the trip on Lyle’s wages. Lyle was about to enter the discussion when Frank walked into the room and Grandpa Bowman turned his attention to him.

  ‘Go and put that damned eye patch on!’ he shouted. ‘And make sure you wash your hands well: we don’t want any rat droppings on the table!’

  (Frank had woken up two weeks earlier with one side of his face paralysed, and despite his protestations to the doctor that he’d never even met anyone by that name, was diagnosed as having Bell’s palsy. It was a condition that caused the left side of his face to droop alarmingly and his left eye to remain stubbornly open.)

  Frank rolled his eyes – or at least one of them. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Father? I work in the office, not in the field.’

  ‘It’s the same thing,’ his father countered. ‘And don’t use that tone with me, boy. While you’re living under my roof, you’ll show me respect.’

  Grandpa Bowman turned to Mary. ‘Never in a million years did I think a son of mine would end up as a rat catcher.’

  He then turned his attention back to Frank. ‘Do you know how embarrassing it is when people ask me what you do for a living and I have to tell them you catch rats? It’s probably how you got that damn palsy in the first place – caught it from a rat! The sooner you get yourself a proper job the better. Now get that ugly face of yours upstairs and sort yourself out.’

  ‘I’ll admit he looked a sight, Gregory, but there was no need for his father to talk to him like that, especially in front of me.’

  After Frank had left the room – with literally only half a smile on his face – Mary had tried to lighten the atmosphere by saying she liked the wallpaper.

  Grandpa Bowman glanced at the raised swirly-patterned paper and told her it was Anaglypta, the most sanitary wallpaper on the market. (The antiseptic nature of the house, Mary later found out, came to a crescendo in the bathroom, where she found a block of orange Coal Tar soap and a box of medicated Izal toilet paper – little better than greaseproof, she commented.)

  Irene had been busying herself preparing a salad for their tea, and it was only after they’d sat down at the table that Mary had a chance to talk to her. Irene, she told Greg, had a no-nonsense, almost gruff manner and smiled rarely. In her own way, however, she was warm and welcoming towards her, and though Frank eventually became her favourite in-law, Irene was always the one she’d confide in – something she’d have never done with Lyle’s parents.

  Grandma Bowman had said little during the meal, deferring the whole time to her husband who, with the exception of Irene, appeared to believe that his fatherly duty was to belittle rather than praise his offspring – Frank, in particular.

  Mary recalled for Greg the moment when the tomatoes in the bowl had dwindled to one and Grandpa Bowman had asked if she’d like it. Sensibly, she’d declined. It was then that Frank had said he’d have it. ‘No you won’t, you greedy little bugger!’ Grandpa Bowman had snapped. ‘This is my house and I’m having it! You’re fat enough, boy. You go on eating the way you do and you’ll end up looking like a beach ball. Now, pass me the bowl!’

  ‘It’s difficult to believe your Daddy was cut from the same cloth as that man, Gregory. I only wish you could have known my father. He was a good man. There was no kinder.’

  Greg remembered visiting his grandparents only once, recalling his grandmother propped up on pillows eating a bag of Pontefract cakes and his grandfather lying next to her staring at the ceiling and sucking on a Fox’s Glacier Mint. After insisting that he and Billy kiss them on the cheek, they effectively ignored the boys and talked only to their parents.

  Greg and Billy were spared further visits to their grandparents when, shortly after that visit, both Grandpa and Grandma Bowman died on the same day – a washday.

  Grandpa Bowman had been suffering from a chest infection and had coughed and spluttered for two weeks. When his wife noticed that he hadn’t coughed for a good twenty minutes, she turned to him and said it sounded like he was getting better. He didn’t respond, which wasn’t unusual for Grandpa Bowman as he rarely saw any need to respond to anything his wife said, and Grandma Bowman went back to reading her magazine unconcerned. After a while, however, his continued silence began to trouble her and she examined him more closely. It was then she realised he was no longer breathing.

  Frantically, she rang the bell for Irene, called her by name and urged her to hurry: something had happened to her father, something awful! Irene, however, was oblivious to the alarms of her mother. The day was Monday, a washday, and while her father was pegging out inside the house, Irene was busy pegging out outside the house.

  In growing desperation, Grandma Bowman climbed out of bed on jellied legs weakened by years of inactivity. She walked unsteadily to the landing, lurching from the bedside table to a chest of drawers and from the door jamb to the banister. When her calls for help still went unanswered, she walked to the top of the stairs and took hold of the balustrade with both hands. She took a deep breath, tilted her head backward and gave an almighty yell: ‘Ireeeeeene!’

  The sudden exhalation of so much air left her dizzy and disoriented, and what strength remained in her decrepit body quickly drained. Her legs gave way beneath her and her hands slipped from the balustrade. She lost balance and, in a silence punctuated only by thuds, toppled headlong down the stairs.

  Needless to say, things weren’t quite the same when Irene went back into the house.

  The deaths of his grandparents had meant nothing to Greg and neither, it seemed, did they mean much to his mother, who had long believed that Lyle’s parents were taking Auntie Irene for a ride. She doubted Grandpa Bowman’s claims that he was suffering from the effects of a gas attack, doubted even that he’d ever found his way to a trench in World War I, and was of the firm opinion that both he and his wife were simply lazy. ‘At least now Irene’s got her life back,’ she’d said to Lyle. ‘I just hope she does something with her hair!’

  Just as René’s death had been a blessing in disguise for her parents, so too were her parents’ deaths a blessing in disguise for Irene. Although she never went in search of romance, as Mary had hoped she would, at the age of fifty-two she returned to the store where she’d previously worked and took a part-time job in the glove and scarf department. She also rejoined the tennis club where she’d met René, and started playing golf. She won trophies and made friends, went on holidays and started to smile.

  Irene and Frank continued to live together and chores were divided as before: Irene taking charge of the house and Frank the garden. Theoretically they were now joint owners of the property, but it was Irene’s voice that held sway. Frank had no quarrel with this and was more than satisfied to come home to cooked meals and laundered clothes. Although he never once mentioned this to his sister, he was also much happier returning to a house where his father no longer lived.

  The amicable arrangement came to an end a year after Frank retired from pest control when, at the age of seventy-two, Irene died. For the first time in his life Frank now had to take care of himself. Guided by Lyle, he learned how to cook, use the washing machine and iron clothes. He dusted, cleaned and kept the house in good repair, preferring to maintain rather than change its character. In one way, however, the house did change.

  Although Frank missed his sister, he never once missed her choice in music and, while happy to keep her sporting trophies on display, was unprepared to keep any of her records in the house. A week after the funeral, therefore, he took the entirety of her collection and dumped it in the dustbin, which to his way of thinking was the only suitable place for the likes of musicals and crooners.

  That same day he unpacked the radio Billy had bought him for Christmas and, after a lot of twiddling and false starts, found the station of his dreams: Planet Rock. He pushed the
store button, turned up the volume and, in the privacy of his own house, started to dance!

  Greg looked at his watch. According to the DJ, Nantucket Sleighride, the song that had been playing when his uncle left the room, had been ‘five minutes and forty-nine seconds of pure heaven’ (recorded, Greg noted, four years before he was even born), and since then there’d been an advertisement for Autoglass and at least two minutes of a song recorded when Greg had been two. He went into the hallway and shouted up the stairs.

  ‘How much longer are you going to be, Uncle Frank?’

  ‘You’ll have to give me a few minutes, Greg. I’ve just pissed on my pants!’

  Greg sighed – worryingly, he realised, like his father – and returned to the dining room. His eyes fell on the television and he noticed that it wasn’t plugged into the socket. He rolled his eyes: no wonder the television wasn’t working if it wasn’t even plugged in! He knelt down and pushed the plug into the socket, switched on the current and then turned on the television. The screen was immediately filled with thousands of hissing and dancing dots, and whichever station he chose or button on the control he pressed, the static remained.

  ‘I told you it didn’t work,’ Uncle Frank said, having just re-entered the room. ‘I don’t know why people don’t believe me.’

  ‘You’re sure there’s nothing wrong with your TV?’ Greg asked, still puzzling the situation.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve already told you: it’s the government. Those people are buggers!’

  Village

  Greg started the car engine and waited for his uncle to fasten his safety belt.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Uncle Frank asked him.

  ‘I’m waiting for you to fasten your seat belt.’

  ‘Why do I have to do that? I don’t like seat belts.’

  ‘Well, first of all, the law requires it,’ Greg replied, ‘and secondly, I don’t want to listen to that pinging noise for the next forty minutes.’

  Uncle Frank made an exasperated grunting noise and reluctantly fastened his belt. ‘I still don’t see why I have to do this. What’s it got to do with the government if I wear a seat belt or not? It’s my business if I go through the windscreen, not theirs. And I’ll tell you another thing: I’d prefer to go through a windscreen than go to The Dales again! You’re not taking me there, are you?’