by Nina Stibbe
‘In fact, a birdwatching hide is to be built in his honour on the River Sense by the birdwatching club, who counted him as an active and knowledgeable member. Donations to this can be made at the end of the service.
‘Andy was also a champion of the allied dental professions and demonstrated against the British Dental Association’s bar to technicians and dental nurses from joining. To quote Andy, “People think it’s dentists who make dentures but they’re wrong. It’s the technicians–people like me and Fred Burridge–who craft the teeth. We’re precision engineers, dentists just fit them.”
‘Andy made people smile, literally.’
The congregation–apart from Tony Nicolello and Mr Burridge who looked sad, and my grandmother who looked bemused–seemed cheered by the thought of all these glorious, comfortable teeth, and Andy’s fluffy, blow-dried body. My sister, my mother and I were crying and shaking with suppressed laughter at the same time. It hadn’t been what we’d been expecting at all. It was a triumph.
As Reverend Woodward stepped down from the pulpit, he looked at me. I nodded and he nodded back and blinked.
Willie Bevan, the unknown friend of Andy’s who’d warned him my mother was a goer, stood to read a poem about owls:
‘Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.
‘Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry
‘Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.
‘And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.’
After which, I was quite startled to see Tony Nicolello, in an ill-fitting black suit, take to the pulpit to read. He stood for a while patting around in the unfamiliar pockets for his specs and then, finding them, struggled to open them up because his hands were shaking so. My mother clapped her hand to her mouth in sadness at the pitiful sight and tears filled her eyes. Tony continued to fiddle around up there for what seemed like an hour, arranging sheets of paper, adjusting the lectern, and moving a large Bible. He cleared his throat more than once and by the time he spoke, everyone was in a state of high anxiety. He looked across the congregation, and then, looking down at the quivering piece of paper in his hand, he read:
‘Andy loved birds, all birds, but especially owls. This is a note he left for me last time he was in our house. It’s a birdwatching tip that I’d like to share with you all.’
He coughed.
‘“Go out at dusk, walk by the scrub field and you’ll see them swooping, or wait till dark and you’ll see them in the trees above the churchyard. Your eyes will get used to the dark. Keep still. Never shine a torch up into the trees. It’ll scare them and can cause blind flight.”’
After that, there was a family-only event, which I was allowed to miss but which Reverend Woodward attended, and then there was the bun fight in the village hall. My granny Benson stayed by my side throughout. We’d not seen eye to eye on a few things recently, especially after the cheese-knife incident. Now she was being subtle and supportive in the way formidable people sometimes are when it really matters. Towards the end of the afternoon, when people were no longer sad, but merrily chattering, she said she had a cheque for me.
‘What for?’ I asked.
‘Driving lessons.’
‘But, Mrs Woodward,’ I said, looking across the room where she was busying herself with the clearing-up.
‘I think it might be time to move along from the Woodwards,’ said my granny.
The final thing was Tony Nicolello giving me an old John Collier bag containing Andy’s gruesome wind-up teddy.
‘If you don’t want it, give it to charity,’ he said.
The next day, Sunday, I wanted the world back to normal and it almost was. I phoned Tammy at home, apologized for disturbing them on the Sabbath, and said I’d be coming back to work. I would remain living at home though, for the time being, and travel in every day by bus.
‘Thank heavens,’ said Tammy, but quickly added, ‘but take as long as you want.’
I took the bus in on Monday morning and dropped Danny at Curious Minds where Mrs Danube, the principal, was quite rude to me.
‘Make sure to collect on time, please.’ Which felt lovely.
JP was also very business-as-normal, which I admired, and Tammy was self-conscious and odd, of course, but that was Tammy and it didn’t matter, especially after Mrs Danube.
29. Claire Rayner
One lunchtime after the Christmas break, I was queuing for a sandwich at the Lunch Box when Priti tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Hi,’ I said, glancing at her upper left two.
Since doing Priti’s dental treatment, I’d always stared at her new tooth. I knew it was rude and I’d catch myself and then look her in the eye, but nevertheless she started unconsciously shielding the tooth, either with a raised hand or sometimes with her tongue.
‘Hi,’ she said, ‘happy New Year! How’s everything going?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ I said. ‘I’m just getting a sandwich.’
‘Me too.’
And then there we were, with our sandwiches (me, salad on toasted granary, her, cheese and onion on Rearsby), sitting on a bench in the weak January sun, and I realized I’d got to tell her about Andy. I couldn’t do it while she was eating, so I made small talk about her studies and told her that Tammy had left the salad spinner in the flat, knowing that would set her off grumbling about customers returning defunct spinners, denying empty-spinning and wanting their money back or a replacement.
I tutted at these people and Priti said, ‘You just know they’ve been spinning them.’
‘Idiots,’ I said.
Priti shook her head, tutted too, and took a bite of her sandwich. I gazed down at mine, which sat on paper in my lap, and it struck me that I’d started to prefer the top half of a slice of bread to the bottom half. This hadn’t been a whim; I’d always eaten the crusted top half of a slice of toast, to get it out of the way before enjoying the softer underneath half. And now it was the other way around. It was a shocking realization. What had made me change? I don’t know–perhaps I was eager to change as many things as possible. I’d known sadness before, I’d seen it, but I’d not experienced the sort of pain that makes a person switch sandwich preference.
Eventually, Priti finished eating, brushed her knees and began folding up the paper bag. I had to tell her now; she’d be terribly upset and our friendship would be changed.
‘Priti,’ I said, and she looked up. ‘I’m afraid Andy died.’
‘Andy died? Your Andy?’
‘Yes.’
‘When? How?’ she said, almost in disbelief, her eyes imploring me to explain, her tongue hiding that tooth. And to my horror I felt emotion rising in my neck. I coughed and swallowed and breathed deeply through my nostrils and did all the things you’re supposed to do when anxiety starts in public. Priti understood and put her hand on my arm.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s walk.’ So we walked towards the park and I explained what had happened and Priti was shocked and saddened of course and asked if there was anything she could do.
She offered to come to the flat later, to make animal biscuits. So I had to tell her I was staying at home with my mother for a while.
And she said, ‘Oh, your mother? How is she taking it?’
‘She’s taking it OK.’
‘Good,’ said Priti, ‘good.’
‘And, don’t worry, I fully intend to sort out your dental work,’ I said. ‘Obviously Andy can’t make the bridge now but I’ll sort it out–you won’t have to go to university with a denture.’
‘Oh, no, you mustn’t worry about that.’
‘I do worry,’ I said, ‘and I will sort it.’ And I realized I did worry and it was nice to have a worry of this kind. Difficult but possibly solvable, if ‘solvable’ was a word.
I was now the girlfriend of someone who had died and, to put it poetically, death was like a fine dust that covered my sandals, my sea-coloured dress, my tiny cleavage, my ex-bistro/taverna-style kitchenette, the surgery, my family, the dog, and just about everything else in my life. You could brush it off but it’d settle again. It was in the air.
As often as I had the energy, I’d walk up to the King’s Head for a pint of weak shandy and a snack. I didn’t care any more if people saw me red-necked from the alcohol, tucking into chips and ketchup, covered in metaphorical dust. I honestly didn’t care whether they stared at me, avoided me, or came over to tell me they were sorry to hear about that bloke, etc. I’d just sit there, reading my book and licking my fingers–anything to not be at home.
In the end, the only person I felt I could talk to was Claire Rayner and so one day, when I hadn’t taken a pill, I poured my heart out to her, but within the allotted word count which seemed to be one hundred:
Dear Claire Rayner,
I am 19 years old. My boyfriend recently died in an accident (nothing to do with me). I loved him and I’m sad about it but, if I’m honest, we didn’t know one another all that well. My problem is that people are defining me by his death and my emotional proximity to it. My question is, can I move away to a new life, or do I have to stay in the area and mourn for a year?
I know I must sound selfish but I think I’m going mad.
Name and address supplied.
I wrote ‘emotional proximity’ so that Claire would clock that I wasn’t as simple as some of the readers. And though I addressed it to the Woman’s Own counselling team I really, truly hoped and believed it would find its way to Claire Rayner because she was the best at advising on real-life things.
Regarding my getting back to normal, when I wasn’t at the surgery my mother’s novel was a godsend–for both of us.
She started writing long, awful chapters for me to edit–just to give me something to do, and coming up with new working titles, some bad (‘The Noble Bird’) and some good (‘Calipastra and Powdered Soup’). I fell for it and though I was disappointed at what a poor writer she’d turned out to be, and though her inability to work within the rules of her own sci-fi world actually quite worried me (re her cognitive ability), the occupation knocked the death dust off my life. I’d write copious notes about how she might fix things, and suggestions for the story.
Mum [I’d write], chapter 5 doesn’t make sense because of something important in chapter 3. How can you have forgotten that it’s illegal for an unaccompanied woman to drive a car in 2024?
Mum, you write here that Calipastra’s husband is benign. Have you forgotten he’s twice tried to strangle her for not laughing at his joke?
And then, to help us further, my mother received a most positive letter from an editor at the Heron Press regarding the actual novel. This was good because it boosted her confidence, and yet bad because she might be tempted to abandon Faber & Faber, just to get published, which wasn’t the point.
The letter–addressed to my mother’s nom de plume–from the Heron Press went like this:
Dear Mildred Quietly,
Thank you very much for sending us the outline of your novel ‘The Waiting Room’.
We cannot offer you a contract on such a short synopsis but it is very promising and I should like to see more when it’s ready. I like the science-fiction aspects and would very much like to see how the novel develops.
In anticipation,
S. J. Barmy
‘S. J. Barmy?’ I said. ‘God!’
‘I know,’ said my mother. ‘I’m still hoping for Patience Tidy. But I’m going to use S. J. Barmy as a lure.’
She read me her letter to Patience:
Dear Patience,
I am writing to let you know that S. J. Barmy of the Heron Press has been in touch to say she is very interested in ‘The Waiting Room’. Which is the new title for my book. Please could you explain why she is so keen, when you’re not. What is it S. J. sees that you cannot?
I should hate for you to miss out on this book and, indeed, for me to miss out on Faber & Faber when I know in my heart that we are meant for each other.
Yours,
Mildred Quietly
(Elizabeth Benson-Holt)
PS If we two are not to be, perhaps you might know something about S. J. Barmy to help our acquaintance, should it come to that.
‘What does that last line mean?’ I asked.
‘It means, “Spill the beans to me about S. J. Barmy,”’ she said.
A letter from Patience came by return. She wrote:
Dear Mildred Quietly,
Thank you for your letter yesterday.
I too should be pleased to see more of ‘The Waiting Room’.
S. J. Barmy is a well-regarded editor at the Heron Press.
Yours,
Patience Tidy
My mother thought this rather dull but supposed Patience was being professional.
I hadn’t discussed the future with anyone, other than Claire Rayner c/o Woman’s Own, or even given it much thought. I was deliberately keeping my mind focused on my mother’s novel, the surgery, and baby Danny’s reading progress. And beginning to think about how to get Priti’s bridge made on the NHS.
One day I’d been in the middle of a long explanatory note to my mother about some of the basics of science-fiction writing, such as: whatever rules you invent for your world, you must be clear and you must abide by them throughout, and can’t just go back in time to save a robot’s life–and perhaps she might abandon time travel altogether–when Mrs Woodward appeared, tapping at the window. What was it with those bloody Woodwards? I supposed the clergy had to do this otherwise they might never see anyone. Anyway, she came in and said yes to a beverage. I made frothy coffee because she was one of the few adults I knew to take three sugars (the sugar in the mix being the frothing agent–the more sugar, the more froth).
She let me prattle on about time travel–how you can’t just go forward (or back) in time and save someone’s life and think the present will be OK because it doesn’t work like that–before telling me that she’d been worrying about a thing she’d said to me some time before and wanted to say she was sorry.
‘I’d like to apologize for a thing I said, a flippant thing about Jesus.’
‘Oh?’
‘About us not all meeting up again in heaven.’
‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe that either.’
‘Well, I just wanted to say I was sorry.’
‘But it’s true,’ I said. ‘I’m not hoping to meet Andy again in a future life, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I know, but it was wrong of me.’
‘It’s fine.’
Mrs Woodward wanted me to resume my driving lessons. She knew I’d be reluctant, she said, but if there was one thing she knew about life, it was that you needed to get on with it.
Also, she told me, London was missing one of its journalists–and that was me. I’d forgotten I’d told her of my plan or had assumed her to be fast asleep as I’d rambled, and I laughed at the idea of London waiting for me.
‘No, Lizzie, I’m not joking,’ she said, and leaned across the table and took my hands in hers. And I began to cry. Not about Andy but about her and life and time travel and her lovely old hands.
‘Come on, lovey,’ she said, and I agreed to get back out on the road. We finished our coffee and I put my sandals on, and was suddenly back in her car, adjusting the seat and the rear-view mirror, with her arranging the t
ravel blanket over her knees.
‘Where shall we go?’ she asked.
‘Shall I just drive ahead until you give me directions?’
‘Yes, you just drive,’ she said, and within two minutes she was fast asleep with her hands in her lap and I was heading east and keeping to the speed limit. After we’d left the familiar villages behind, I took a turn which led us up a lane to a farm where you could have tea and scones, and look around at young animals.
I parked by a plough and Mrs Woodward woke.
‘Very good,’ she said. ‘Oh, where are we?’
‘Cambridgeshire, I think.’
We got out and had tea and stroked some calves and I bought a jar of honey, and to tell the truth it was very nice, chatting and laughing and gazing at the teeth on Mrs Woodward’s upper denture that Andy had made so, so long ago. She told me I was a very good driver and that Reverend Woodward had found me ‘easy to work with’, and also that Mr Burridge had made a donation to the Nicolello family. And, a thing that had almost choked me, my grandmother had paid for Andy’s funeral.
‘That’s hundreds of pounds when you add it all up,’ said Mrs Woodward.
Later that evening I returned my granny’s cheese knife and the cheque, and gave her the jar of farm honey. Also, I smoked a cigarette in front of her and stayed for dinner and watched a hard-hitting TV documentary.
Time went by and I did very little except work, watch TV, edit my mother’s novel, and practise driving. I don’t know if it was the weather warming up or the days getting longer, but I decided it was time to try living in the flat again. It seems strange, looking back, but being at home wasn’t helping anyone. I hadn’t stayed at the flat since the accident. (I’d started calling it ‘the accident’ because my sister told me that calling it ‘Andy’s death’ was upsetting for people.)
Anyway, Mr Holt drove me back to the flat one Saturday morning. We stopped at the lights at the top of the hill, and they stayed on red so long I imagined for a moment they were out again and that we’d gone into a time-warp scenario reminiscent of the one in my mother’s novel.
