by Angela Huth
Evans came often, too. Each time he brought scarlet flowers – geraniums, poinsettias, carnations. He arranged them with great care on the small bedside locker, and when there was no more room he’d put some on the table that bridged the foot of her bed. They were always the first thing she saw on waking, a flurry of scarlet petals which made a confetti of pink shadows on the white blanket, reminding Lark of her own room. Evans spoke much of the progress of the house: it was nearly finished, now. They’d be moving in a few weeks and would combine their house-warming party with celebrating Lark’s recovery. She better not drink too much gin that night, he said, because he didn’t want anyone being sick over their new carpets. Lark at once pictured herself in her grey dress, fluttering among the guests. They’d be bound to ask her to sing. She looked forward to it.
One evening Evans arrived solemn-faced. Lark’s mother, he said, was unable to visit her because her arthritis had taken a turn for the worse. She was in bed, unable to move, but sent Lark much love and would dictate a letter. It was nothing to worry about, Evans added: just a little extra discomfort brought about by the bad weather, bound to clear up in the spring. Lark had scarcely thought about her mother since she had been in hospital. With Evans’s news she now imagined her – not with twisted joints lying in bed, but sitting on a shingle beach, dark hair blowing in a sea breeze, unwrapping egg sandwiches. Later they had held their skirts above their knees and paddled, and Lark had remembered it to be the nicest day of her childhood until, in the evening, eating ices on the pier, her mother had said that her Dad had gone off with a new lady and wouldn’t be back any more. Now, she felt a small flicker of worry, but the worry slid about, eluding her concentration. But she knew Evans was right: arthritis was less bad in the spring, and when she was better she would go herself to Westgate-on-Sea. She hadn’t been for months, and her mother never complained.
Lark felt more tired than usual that evening. She strummed her fingers on the sheet and Evans pulled up a chair to sit close beside her. He still clutched a new pot of poinsettias, burning red. Their colour reflected into his face, making Lark want to laugh.
‘Lovely, thank you,’ she said.
‘Just adding to the collection.’ Evans put them on the locker by her bed. ‘Roses, tomorrow, if I can get them.’ He lifted her hand, waggled it about as if it was a thing independent of her body. ‘Not much flesh on this, then, is there?’ he said. ‘It’s all that living off gin and eggs, you know. Not a healthy diet at all. We’ll have to be fattening you up – and we don’t want any complaints.’ He was smiling and frowning at the same time. Lark could smell him: some kind of leathery after-shave, rather sweet. Familiar. His face so handsome, so gentle. The funny eye twitching. His big hand heavy on hers on the sheet. Dear God, I love you Evans Evans, she wanted to say: you’re the only one I’ve ever loved. She opened her mouth, but no words came. Perhaps a good thing: misplaced love should be kept secret, for fear of encumbering. But, tonight, Evans so close and quiet, she wouldn’t have minded risking . . . She opened her mouth again. It was quite dry.
‘You remember that night . . .?’ she whispered. The sound was like a scraping of leaves, far away. Evans nodded, blushing. His eyes were full of horror. ‘Well, that night, Evans . . . That night was . . .’ But she could not think what it was. She could not think what it was she had to tell him, except that she loved him, and he must be able to see that, this close.
The details of his face began to recede, then. She felt his arm behind her head, and she felt him holding the glass against her mouth. She swallowed a lot of gin: some of it ran down her chin and fell in cold spots on her chest.
‘Reckon you needed a swig of that,’ Evans was saying, and sat down again. He talked to her for a while, house news, and saying that she was the belle of the ward, mind she didn’t let the doctors take any liberties or he’d be right jealous. Then he got up to go, promising to be back before work next morning. Lark would have liked him to bend over her and kiss her cheek: instead she watched him pick up her hands and kiss each scarlet nail, slowly, one by one.
When he had gone she reached for the glass of gin. It was empty. She picked up the half-bottle, surprisingly heavy, and drank directly from it. Soon, as she knew it would, her mind became beautifully silvered. Later that night she died.
Lark’s mother requested that she should be buried near her friends. She herself, bedridden, was unable to attend the funeral.
It took place on a bitter day in early January. The sky was swollen with snow waiting to fall. The churchyard yews stood dense black shapes against it, and the elms quivered in an easterly wind. There were few mourners: Augusta Browne, Henry and Rosie, Brenda and Evans, and Lark’s boss, a balding man with a permanent drip on the end of his nose. Now, he would have to offer his security elsewhere.
They stood by the grave listening to the monotonous threats of the vicar. Dust to dust, in his voice, lacked resonance. Everyone had sent scarlet flowers. They Uttered the coffin, and the ground near the grave, only brightness in the landscape. Augusta stroked her cheek with a bare hand. The cold hurt. Her skin was hard and icy as slate. She was thinking this sort of finality was in some ways easier to accept than the smaller deaths, the lesser endings, which life itself distributes. At least, after this kind of death, according to her own belief, there was no proven going on. In life, an era over, to continue with some measure of normality is the battle. To acquire optimism. To re-pursue. To believe in the possibility of further chances. When it came to such matters, and the time had come, Augusta was aware of her own helplessness. Her weakness. She shivered in a blast of wind, despising herself: here she was at Lark’s funeral thinking about herself. Though perhaps that is the secret of most mourners. The death of another is the strongest reminder of one’s own transience: one’s own frailty: the body in the coffin narrowly thought of only in relation to oneself. Augusta tried to visualise Lark – not as she had last seen her, prematurely geriatric in hospital, but the night of the concert: enchanting the pensioners with her voice, drinking champagne by the fire, singing of Persian kings. But Lark’s face had gone for the moment. Had it eluded them all so soon? How long did it take for buried flesh to relume itself in the memory? Augusta looked round.
Brenda could see Lark lying in the coffin clearly as if the wooden lid was transparent: white wax face, hands with scarlet nails crossed over her breasts, fluttery grey dress motionless now round her ankles. She had insisted Lark should be buried in that dress though she had refused to look at her, as Evans and Rosie had done, in the undertaker’s chapel. Which, she wondered, would turn to dust first? The silvery materials, or Lark? At the thought of such decay Brenda let the tears run uncontrolled down her cheeks, to be dried by the wind. The bloody unfairness of it all. Lark so good, and dead. Ill for years and no one noticing. No one caring. Brenda blamed herself. She would never get over it. Never, never. She’d never be able to look at another geranium without thinking . . . and she hadn’t even said to Lark, ever, how good she was. How much she loved her. Why didn’t people take chances instead of spurning them for fear of looking foolish? Well, with Lark gone, there was one chance she wasn’t going to lose, now: Evans. In the void caused by Lark’s death his living presence had become desirable in a way Brenda had not experienced before. Not exciting, mind: just precious because it was alive, and firm, and steadfast. Worth clinging to, worth appreciating. Poor Lark: she had had a mean life, known nothing of the luxury of a man’s fidelity. Just a few screws behind the filing cabinets. Remembering such indignities, given in generosity, Brenda sobbed more loudly, and got a look from the vicar. Silly old bugger. He ought to know people were entitled to cry at funerals. Evans pressed her arm.
He let his fingers twirl through the beaver fur of her coat, a clumsy but soft old thing she’d picked up at a jumble sale. Through its skin he could feel the warmth of her flesh: a strange sensation, out here: as if he was experiencing both the warmth of indoors and the harshness of the elements at the same time. There was
comfort in the warmth beneath the cold. There was no comfort in the memory of Lark’s bones, covered by a scant white sheen with little resemblance to flesh, that would haunt him always. He remembered with loathesome clarity the way that maddened night she had crumbled beneath him like paper, whimpering. He must have hurt her badly. Dear God, that she might have forgiven him. Poor little wretch: kind and lonely and uncomplaining, all her pleasures vicarious. Yellow kitchen walls, she’d said. Well, they’d have yellow kitchen walls all right, the last tribute he could pay her. When he had left her, that last time in hospital, she had tried to smile, dragging back her lips from teeth which had protruded more cruelly each day. He had meant to kiss her on the cheek, but had not the courage. Thinking only of his own horror and repulsion, his final gesture had been the formal kissing of her hands, a thing he had never done in his life before. He was sorry. Christ, when he heard she had died that night, how sorry he was. He hoped she had not thought too badly of him before death reached her. He hoped the gin had nicely silvered her mind (he remembered her description with a renewed pang) and brought her peace. On the coffin lay his huge bunch of scarlet roses, too late for her to enjoy, but symbol of his affection. Blasted by regret, his cold hand felt for Brenda’s warm one. The vicar’s intonations blurred in his ears with the wind as privately he thanked God, upon whom he rarely called, for the warmth of a girl he loved. Brenda, beaver-coated, breathing near him, who must not die for many years.
On his other side Rosie, in black mackintosh and velours hat and red scarf knitted by Lark, was beset by fatigue as well as sadness. She had been up much of the night before arranging flowers in the church in a way she thought Lark would have appreciated, and making a wreath of carnations from herself and Henry. The days preceding Lark’s death had taken their toll: visits every day to the hospital, and Henry more difficult than ever at home – snappish one moment, morose the next. Almost constantly intoxicated. Scarcely eating, restless in bed every night. Rosie planned a secret meeting with the doctor, though the very idea of this caused a battle within her conscience. On the one hand she felt it would be disloyal, on the other she badly needed help and advice. Cheerfulness and tolerance, it seemed, were sometimes not enough. She still had not made up her mind what to do, and the problem battered her resistance.
Sudden tolling of the churchbells brought Rosie’s attention back to the present. Poor dear Lark. Always such a scrap of a thing. Quite undeserving of so horrible an end. Of course, Rosie could have told anyone it wasn’t indigestion Lark suffered from: but no one had asked her, and it wasn’t her place to interfere. In the circumstances, it was a good thing Evans had chosen a healthy girl. She wouldn’t wish any son of hers an instant widower: but she did wish Brenda would control her sobbing. The sound brought tears to Rosie’s eyes as she remembered Lark’s appreciation of her Christmas cake. In the end, Henry hadn’t touched a slice. He didn’t know how he hurt, Henry. Like this morning: it was only good sense to advise him to put on his overcoat for the funeral. Standing about in an east wind, Rosie had said, anyone could catch their death. But he had defied her, told her to mind her own bloody business. He could look after himself, didn’t feel the cold. Afraid of the note in his voice, Rosie had said no more and had set about peeling the potatoes with inflamed hands that shook quite hard. She had silently prayed to God to make him change his mind, and put on the coat at the last minute. But God was evidently too busy welcoming Lark to heaven – where she was entitled to rest in peace, poor lass – to hear Rosie’s prayer. And when they left the cottage for the church, Henry at her side, he was not only coatless, but undid the buttons of his jacket. Rosie had struggled hard and forced herself to say nothing. As the bell continued its melancholy tolling she glanced sideways and saw the wind bubbling under his shirt. She looked quickly back at the coffin. Lark, she knew, was safe. It was Henry she feared for now.
To catch his own death at Lark’s funeral was precisely the idea that appealed to Henry very much, and once he had decided not to wear his overcoat nothing could alter his plan. He knew it would worry Rosie, but her concern was nothing to him. He also knew, should he actually catch pneumonia and die – pretty likely in his frail condition – he might risk missing the cruise and life with the Leopard. But cruising plans, since he had told them to Lark, had gone a little sour on him. The brochures had arrived in plain brown envelopes, and he had studied them many times in the lavatory at the Star. After several drinks, the white-shored, palmy islands tempted in their original fashion: but at other times, sober, they seemed very remote. Besides, where was the money to come from? Henry had reluctantly agreed to selling the car and Rosie had stored away the £75 in a secret place. To request it would mean her asking why. What convincing story could he tell? And anyhow, £75 wouldn’t go far towards the kind of luxury cruise he planned.
While Henry’s mind, at the graveside, was tormented by such problems, his body was happily wracked by the savage wind. He liked the feeling of it razoring through his bones, between his ribs, freezing his blood, numbing his face and hands. At this rate, it was almost certain he would become the next admittance to the graveyard. In the unlikely event of survival – ah, well, that surely would be an omen. That would mean that Fate endorsed his life with the Leopard, and he would re-encounter her quite soon.
Henry looked down to the coffin, encrusted with pillar-box-coloured flowers, vulgar as a hat, and longed for a drink. He couldn’t say with any honesty he was that upset by Lark’s death: she had been a nice enough little thing – pretty voice giving him a nasty turn that day in the woods – but he had not known her well. He would remember her, should he live, as the girl who had taken part of his secret to her grave. And due to the vicar’s sense of self-importance, by God, she was taking a long time getting there. He must remember to tell Rosie he wished to be cremated, and none of this mumble-jumble over the scattering of the ashes. It required all his strength, now, not to protect his chest from the wind with his arms, but that would cause too much gladness in Rosie’s heart. So he remained upright, frozen hands at his sides, and listened to the church clock strike four. Two hours till opening time. Jesus Christ. Bloody hell. He noticed all the others had their heads bowed, pinched faces, eyes shut. Could be they were coming up to the finale at last.
‘Amen,’ they all said, together.
Too late to join the chorus, Henry would not have liked it said of him he had failed to salute poor Lark. He looked up at the billowing sky and his heart ached for the rougher grave of a naval man. Burials at sea had always moved him to a tear: Lark’s cage of earth left him without feeling.
‘Amen,’ he said, alone.
When the ceremony was over Augusta Browne invited everyone for a drink in Wroughton House. Henry was the only one to accept with reluctance, but decided it would be as good a way as any to pass the time till his visit to the Star.
They sat about, a disparate group, on odd chairs and upturned packing cases, in the hall. Rosie, always nervous on social occasions, immediately spilt sherry down her scarlet scarf, causing Henry unspeakable irritation. Mrs Browne filtered about in a long black coat and a black Stetson hat. She looked like a young widow, Henry thought, sad eyes bearing no relation to her kind smile as she poured large glasses of strong drinks. The heat of the fire and the strength of the alcohol induced the kind of post-burial conversation that is the final part of the mourners’ duty. The sniffing boss took upon himself recollections the others could not dispute.
‘Best little secretary of my experience. Not a natural one with figures, I will say that, but always humming away, always pleasant, always concerned I should have a nice selection of gâteaux with my afternoon tea.’
‘Ah, God bless her soul,’ said the vicar, who had never met Lark.
‘Just a small one,’ said his wife, to the offer of more sherry.
‘You’ll be leaving these curtains, will you, Mrs Browne, to the executives?’ asked Rosie, who liked to think all businessmen were executives. ‘I expect they’ll be
glad of them, such lovely stuff.’
Henry, too cold to speak, sat huddled by the fire. The decrees of convention seemed to him most unreasonable: why should people who had nothing in common except the death of a friend bother to gather uneasily together? In low spirits already, why tax themselves further? It all seemed daft to him. Only compensation was Mrs Browne’s fine whisky. He drank three large glasses before leaving. She was a generous lady, ever alert to his empty glass, and he blessed her for that.
He accompanied Rosie down the drive and to the cottage, very steady, the depression of the day slightly lifted. He told Rosie he would be back later for supper, and when she had gone upstairs to relieve herself of her gloomy hat, he quietly took down his overcoat. Melted by Mrs Browne’s fire, he did not relish a second freezing.
Henry walked briskly to the pub. Though bitterly cold, it was a fine, clear evening, the sky full of stars. His footsteps, cracking like shots on the road, signalled the frost that would come later. Henry envisaged the warmth inside the Star: the lights and low voices, the small fire and thud of darts. There, at his corner table, – of late, he noticed, the others had given up trying to draw him into conversation – he could sit and think of the Leopard undisturbed. Drink his six or seven whiskies, and keep his eye on the door. An evening identical to countless others, only escape from the stifling life at home.
Soon as he went through the door into the lounge Henry smelt the gust of warm familiar smells: rubber flooring and hot pies and smoke, dearer to his senses than the more sophisticated scents of Mrs Browne’s hall. He hung up his overcoat, rubbed his hands to scrape away the chill they had acquired on the journey, and looked round. A few of the regulars were already at their tables. A single figure, back to him, was on a high stool at the bar.
