‘Goodbye, Louise,’ he said, which was all he would say to me now. His face had hardened over. He was fixed in his position. He was hardier than I was, more used to the game. Maybe it was just a game to him, a game in which he latched onto some do-gooder like me and made them pit their wits against him, against the impossible.
I thought he would go on ignoring me forever, then one April day, as I turned round to wave to him before quitting the gardens, I saw him rise and stretch himself. He was making tracks towards me.
‘You going back to work?’ he said casually, as though never a cold word had crossed his lips. I nodded.
‘See you then.’ He started shuffling off across the lawn.
‘You can walk this way with me if you like,’ I called impulsively. ‘We could go for the cup that cheers.’
‘No thanks. Ta-ra, Louise.’
‘But Roy …’
‘I said ta-ra, Louise, ta-ra.’
I drew my gloved hand to my mouth, feeling terribly anguished. This brief sally of his to tell me ta-ra was worse than his blanking me on the bench these last few months. It felt significant, as though he was about to do something, something I would not like. ‘Roy,’ I shouted brokenly, but he only raised his hand in limp farewell. ‘Ta-ra, Louise!’ Was that it then, I wondered, my head reeling? I wanted to chase after him, but work was calling me back. Other bereaved relatives had need of me, and all that I could offer them was tea and sympathy.
‘Ta-ra then, Roy,’ I said fiercely, and set my face to the road. A car nearly knocked me down as I stepped out onto the Inner Circle. At least I had ID on me this time, I thought grimly, ID and clean knickers. At least they would know whom to send for me.
I had decided, with that last ta-ra, to banish Roy Woods forever from my mind, to stop running back like a fool to plague him in the park, although it grieved me to abandon him like that; but maybe he saw that I was ready to call his bluff this time, which made him move things forward. For later on, much later on that day, I saw him walk into the undertaker’s yard. The receptionist pressed the buzzer beneath her desk, which activated a light in Mr Byrne’s office, but I was already on my feet and out of there before my boss could follow me.
‘Hello, Roy,’ I said steadily. And to the receptionist: ‘I know this gentleman, Kim. It’s quite OK.’
‘Why wouldn’t it be OK?’ Roy said. ‘I’ve come to take you up on your kind offer.’
Mr Byrne was standing at my shoulder now, smelling fresh as a newly-squeezed lemon. ‘The memorial garden,’ I gasped, for this was the one offer I’d accepted Roy would not accept. He wanted the rose in the park, the rose that was never to flower. He wanted the impossible from me.
‘I know you’re keeping the ashes safe for me here,’ he said to Mr Byrne, ‘in a pot of basil. I think I’d like to let them go now. Farmer, farmer, scatter your seed, over the fields so brown … My mam used to sing that to me.’ Mr Byrne nodded. He knew how to handle all comers.
Panic started to freeze me. ‘Roy, I never said …’
‘Yes you did, Louise. You said they were safe.’
Mr Byrne intervened. ‘We look after people’s ashes till they’re ready to be collected,’ he said brightly. ‘People come when they’re ready. What name is it, sir?’
‘Roy Woods.’ He was moving towards the comfortable sofa on which callers were asked to wait.
‘I mean the name of the deceased.’
Roy looked steadily at me. ‘Edith Mary Woods,’ he said. ‘Died 29 August 2002 at three in the afternoon. Cause of death …’ He smiled: ‘fall and a stroke.’
‘Stroke and a fall,’ I said. ‘She fell, Roy.’
‘If you say so. You weren’t there.’
‘Why not give us a few moments while Louise and I just look at the ledger?’ Mr Byrne put in. ‘Maybe Kim would fetch you a cup of tea? Would you like that now?’
Roy beamed at the receptionist and sank luxuriously back into the cushions of the sofa, his parka rustling about him like dry leaves.
‘They’re not here,’ I burst out, shutting the boss’s door behind us. ‘They were thrown away when he got chucked out of Hammond House. I told you all about it.’
Mr Byrne had let slip his professional mask. He looked quite anguished, for Roy’s sake, I thought, though Roy had this effect on so few people. Mr Byrne had been distraught when I told him the full story of theTesco carrier. He had not been able to tell me why they had not fetched Edith’s ashes back here after my accident. They had fetched John Frederick Getty’s when they’d gone back for Monday’s run. A terrible oversight, he said, and one he was not used to making. Had Bubba worked for Byrne & Co, she would have been given her cards, though, as far as I was aware, she was still bullying for England at the City. Samuel Veil’s complaints had not got far.
‘Roy’s not well,’ I said, for something to say. I wondered what he was doing out there, fidgeting on the sofa, eyeing Kim up in her neat French navy suit, looking at the company photograph, framed large to look like an oil painting. ‘He’s getting worse. He shouldn’t be sleeping rough like that.’
‘God knows, I’ve got boxes and boxes of the poor things.’ Mr Byrne was reading the ashes ledger. ‘Some going back before my dad’s time. There’s one here now, dates back to 1959. You think someone is going to come along and claim it?’ He winked at me. ‘Let’s give it a whirl, what d’you say? Let your your man there choose the pot – he can even grow his basil in it if he wants, after he’s been and scattered them.’
‘I thought he wanted to plant a rose,’ I said.
‘Let him plant one then. I’m checking out what’s not been claimed here.’ The undertaker tapped the ledger. ‘They’d be a lady’s ashes. It’s not as though they’d be the opposite sex now, is it? I’ll take the label off.’
‘I suppose he’d never know the difference,’ I said doubtfully. ‘I told him they were safe.’
‘What safer place than this? I’ll go and fetch them.’
While my boss was swapping labels on a box of ashes, I took Roy out to the place where we kept a selection of urns for sale. Obviously, I said, we could not store ashes in a pot of basil, but he could use the urn as a planter after he had scattered them, if he wanted, and put basil in the bottom, if he drilled some holes. (And how would he do that, I heard Chas snidely ask.) He picked out a modest-sized pot in a marbled grey glaze, not the cheapest by any means, but Mr Byrne had told me to let him pick whatever he wanted, and we fetched it back to Kim, who had the steadiest hand. She used a little silver funnel for this procedure, not wanting to lose a single speck of the remains. Roy drank another cup that cheers and watched, not missing a trick, I thought. I hoped he would not sneeze.
The memorial garden was bathed in late spring sunshine. There was hardly any wind, but the air took the stream of ashes over the tops of the rose bushes. ‘They’ll be red, I think, when they flower,’ I said, peering down at the markers. ‘You can put another in here if you like, Mr Byrne said there’s plenty of room.’ And I left him there, alone with what he thought remained of his mother, my face on fire as I picked my way back to the office to take another call. Was that the end of it now? I wondered. The end of Roy and me. What had caused his change of heart, what stroke of luck? Would he get over his mother now, get over himself? Would he move on? He was like my brother in a way. He was part of some family romance. Did you ever move on from that? Change the record, Chas enjoined. But for me it was the same old story.
The call was from a man in Kilburn, whose mother had just passed away. We were to collect her from the mortuary at Charity’s, he instructed. Her name, he said, was Mary Edith O’Dowd.
***
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Grave Truths Page 19
