1. VISITORS
It’s my father’s funeral today. So inside I’m a jelly. But outside – pure steel.
Meanwhile, way out in the so-called real world, up to a billion people are said to be glued to their television screens waiting for a couple of American guys to step onto the dusty surface of the moon for the first time without a care in the solar system.
But none of that has anything to do with me, because I’ve just lost the best friend I ever had: Evan Griffiths, born Carmarthen 1910, resident of north London. He died last week at the Edgware General of complications following surgery for cancer; ridiculously young – not even a pensioner. So I am not in the least interested in the first moon walk today; they say there will be plenty more of them in the future.
I’ve reached Golders Green crematorium an hour early, and there’s only one other person outside, an elderly woman.
“Hi there, Jennifer! I thought some extra flowers might come in useful…” She looks at me with a kindly smile.
Damn! We haven’t done flowers. My mother said you couldn’t be expected to deal with anyone as trivial as a florist, for God’s sake, at a time like this.
“I can get some more if you like,” the woman goes on.
Can’t quite place her for the moment. She’s clutching a massive armful of summer blooms in brilliant colours. “Sorry it’s too late for his favourite daffodils!”
Ah, she knows Dad, then. She looks familiar – grey hair with tinges of red, probably a member of the family on Dad’s side. Not sure who – reminds me of great-aunt Morag – who died when I was little.
“Oh that’s really kind of you, er…?”
“Call me Jay – everyone does, these days.” She sticks her hand out and her grasp is firm.
Dad’s is the first cremation of the day so they let us in early. Help! I’m going to start sneezing – there’s an ancient dusty smell in here. It’s a huge place, this chapel, and Jay’s flowers don’t go far. She whips out a little black thing from her pocket and taps a few buttons on it, then she presses it to her ear. Oh gosh, has she got earache?
“Hi, it’s me….” she says, gazing up at the ceiling. “Yes, I’m here at the crem… Fine… Signal’s OK so far. Listen, Kate, can you bring five or six more bunches of flowers when you come? Thanks… I’ll see you soon – got to go!”
Then she puts the little black thing back in her pocket; what the hell is it?
“My daughter will sort something out.” Apparently she’s talking to me again. “You’re looking great, by the way, Jennifer; turquoise really suits you. And your hair is just right.”
Which is not at all what my Mother said this morning; she told me it was a pity I could never do anything with my hair these days. Mother went on to inform me that it didn’t really matter, since I only work with primary school children. But the turquoise was her idea – Mother comes from Holland, and she maintains that the obsession over here with black for funerals is ridiculous.
“And how’s the writing going?” says Jay.
What? How the hell does she know about that? No one knows that I write. No one at all – well except for Duncan of course, but that doesn’t count; sometimes I think Duncan lives inside my head. Oh, and I told my sister Sue once, but she wasn’t listening.
There’s a noise at the back, and several more people have arrived.
Oh good heavens! There’s Duncan after all; I didn’t think he’d get time off work to come. How very kind of him! He’s the father of Joey in Standard Two, the class I teach. He’s also an old friend of Dad’s; they met at bookbinding classes, of all things, at the institute where I went to school. He lives alone with Joey now, since his wife died a couple of years ago. I’ve got a lot of time for Duncan.
“Morning, Jennifer,” Duncan is coming over, his thick black hair flopping untidily over his eyes. “How are you feeling?” He looks at me solemnly and shakes my hand – I don’t think we’ve ever shaken hands before. It feels good. “Today must be a big ordeal for you, but you look stunning. You always do.” I grow six inches and the jelly inside begins to set.
Why is everyone suddenly telling me… Oh look, my sister Sue’s just sailed in. She’s positively blooming, carrying all before her, in a tasteful black maternity dress. She’s not actually due for another six weeks, but you wouldn’t think she could get much bigger. Drippy Tim is following in her wake as usual.
“Is Mother here yet?” Sue calls out. “We ought to wait outside till she comes, don’t you think?”
Duly we all troop outside and stand gazing up at the huge plane trees lining Hoop Lane. I know this road so well – I walked up here every day for eleven years when I was a child. When I was very small Dad used to walk with me.
Jay disappears for several minutes, and comes back with some more flowers – where has she got them from? But there’s no time to think about that. I glance at my watch after twenty minutes – time is passing – and Mother is cutting it fine. Presumably she is planning to turn up?
“Tim has only just managed to fit the funeral in,” Sue mutters as we stand waiting. “He’s off to Edinburgh to see his supervisor tonight.” She pauses to wipe what looks like an egg stain from Tim’s black tie.
At last the car bringing Mother comes round the corner, followed by the hearse, and we all turn towards it.
My brother Max leaps out of the car first, and dashes round to open the door for Mother. She glances up, taking in what is quite a crowd by now, and regally stretching out her legs she steps onto the pavement, taking Max’s arm for support. She smells strongly of eau de cologne.
“Thank you, all of you, for coming, thank you so much,” she murmurs. Effortlessly she has become the focus of all attention.
No change there, then.
The coffin is unloaded and wheeled into the chapel in front of us. Oh, how small it is! Dad isn’t – wasn’t – a big man, but he was big to me: not only when I climbed onto his knee as a young child, but later as I grew up and took him for granted, my rock that would always be there. Now he is reduced to that tiny wooden box those men are wheeling in. No, stop: this is all wrong!
Glancing over my shoulder, I catch Duncan’s eye. Oh God, he must be thinking of the day of his wife’s funeral! Poor Duncan, and how very brave of him to come today in spite of that. He gives me a faint flicker of a smile, and I try to smile back. What a dear person he is!
Max leads Mother slowly towards the chapel, and the rest of us follow, Sue and I tucking in behind them. I’ve given the sign for the organist to begin, and she plays some rather fine Bach, one of Dad’s favourites. She’s a very good musician.
“Oh I love this piece!” cries Jay, falling into step beside me. “I got a CD of it from Amazon last year.”
I have no idea what the woman is on about, or indeed what Brazil has got to do with anything, but I let it pass over my head.
As we shuffle into place in the front row, Mother erupts into a sudden burst of hysterical sobbing. The minister allows a decent interval before he begins proceedings.
Jay has slipped in next to me in the front row, which is meant to be reserved for close family only, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Mother stops sobbing abruptly and gives her a hard stare, but Jay just nods at her and smiles benignly.
As the minister begins to speak, Jay takes out the mysterious black thing from her pocket and points it at Dad’s coffin. She looks intently at it for a moment and then presses a button. I must ask her later what she’s up to, if there’s time.
After a while they put on one of Dad’s favourite records – a male voice choir from the Welsh valleys. He used to play it a lot – when he was fed up with life in London – or perhaps with Mother. He’d go upstairs on his own to a little room we called his cubbyhole and play them.
“Guide me, O thou great Jehovah…”
I’ve got a horrible feeling I’m going to cry. Not out loud like Mother, of course; I never do that. But tears are beginning to stream down my face.
“Feed me till I want no more…” Dad used to say that was what a line of rugby forwards shout when they pass the ball along. I think he was joking! He was deeply into rugby; he used to take me to Twickenham to watch Wales.
I’m not the only one crying; Jay is too, at least as much as I am, she must have known Dad really well then; so how come I don’t recognise her?
Even my brother Max is surreptitiously wiping away the odd tear from his eyes. He likes to pretend he’s big and hard, does Max.
Things are dragging on a bit now, and Mother is drumming her fingers on the front of the pew, not quietly. She’s looking pointedly at her watch, and she taps it to see if it is still going. Oh God this is so rude – I just hope the nice minister doesn’t notice.
He has and he’s looking straight at Mother. What are the chances of a big hole opening up in front of me and swallowing me up? Not great. I used to pray for that when I was a child and Mother was being particularly embarrassing in a shop or a bus queue, but God never saw fit to oblige.
Saved! The organist strikes up again, and at last it is time for the coffin to slide away behind the curtain.
Is that it, then? Goodbye, Dad!
We all stand up, and Max leads Mother down the aisle, followed by the rest of us. Duncan catches my eye and smiles.
My sister stumbles as she gets to the back and I grab her arm swiftly. “You OK, Sue?”
“Course I am – don’t fuss, Jennifer!” But I don’t like the way she’s clutching her bulge as though she thinks it’s going to escape.
Mother has insisted that everyone should come back to the house after this, and I jolly well hope a fair number of them do, because I have arranged catering for a moderately sized battalion or two and I don’t want it wasted.
We sort ourselves out into cars – Max with Mother of course – and I squeeze in with Sue and Drippy Tim. Jay isn’t with us any more – she’s cadged a lift off Duncan of all people. She’s got a young woman with her now, another person I don’t recognise – but oddly she reminds me a bit of Duncan: she has his huge brown eyes, dark floppy hair, although her prominent nose reminds me of Dad. She looks friendly. Jay goes off muttering something about her carbon footprint, whatever that is. I don’t suppose Duncan was even intending to come back to the house, but he’s got to now he’s agreed to bring them.
As I look properly at my sister, I can see she is quite exhausted, and when I press her she admits she hasn’t been sleeping well for some time.
Ah good – the caterers are already here and they’ve got everything set out – as promised. It all looks very clean and nice, with white tablecloths on trestle tables, some in the house and some in the garden, and there’s an appetising smell of sausages and coffee. Mother decides to stand by the front door greeting guests as they arrive, while I tell people where the loos are. I recognise nearly everyone; a few cousins down from Wales that I haven’t seen in a while, and a lot of Dad’s colleagues from the office. I’d better talk to them, and offer them some bridge rolls.
“What have you got here?” I turn round as Mother’s voice rings out in the hall. She is confronting a waitress who looks about fourteen, in a black and white uniform.
“Er… egg and cress, madam,” the child mutters. “I think.”
Mother lifts up the edge of one of the bridge rolls, and the plate wobbles in the girl’s hand. “Oh no, that won’t do. Won’t do at all. Egg, you say? All I can see is a thin scraping of something white… Pathetic. Where’s the smoked salmon?”
“I don’t know…” the poor girl stammers. “I don’t think there is any. Or maybe in the other room…”
Jay rushes up at once. “Oh come now, Mrs Griffiths! That’s not the way to speak to the young lady, is it?”
Mother stares at her.
“These people have all worked their butts off to provide a feast for you and your guests, and the least you can do is treat them with courtesy,” Jay says, with a reassuring smile at the waitress, which seems to include Mother. “I’ll have an egg and cress one – ooooh, my favourite! Thank you so much, dear; you’re doing a great job. Now come along with me, Mrs G, and we’ll see if there is any smoked salmon. I rather fancy there may be…”
Jay puts her arm around my poor, astonished mother’s shoulders and steers her firmly into the sitting room. There’s a look of what I can only call deep satisfaction on Jay’s face.
“Close your mouth, Jennifer – something might fly into it!” Duncan appears behind me, laughing, and I join in.
I think everyone’s got something to eat by now. What about the drinks? Is there enough sherry?
“Stop worrying, Jennifer!” Duncan is still beside me – actually he’s been a great help, directing people to the different tables in the garden, finding seats for the older visitors and fetching them drinks. He’s good with old ladies, I’ve discovered. “Everyone’s OK. Relax!”
There’s a sudden burst of laughter from the group next to us, and we turn to look. Sounds as if they are talking about this wretched moonwalk.
“When are they going to land, do you know?” someone says.
“Should be today – I can’t wait to see it!”
“No, nor me!”
“So dangerous – what if they miss?”
“Are they actually going to get out of their space craft and walk on the ground? I can’t imagine it!”
“Ah yes…” I notice Jay in the middle of this group. “That’s one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.”
There is an astonished silence.
“Wow!”
“What did you say?”
“Hey, that’s rather good,” says Duncan. “Did you just make that up, Jay?”
She blushes and laughs. “No, no. I must have read it somewhere. In fact it ought to be one small step for a man, not man – to get the contrast with mankind – you see? But transmission is difficult, and anyway Neil Armstrong is overcome with awe, obviously.”
“Who’s Neil Armstrong?” someone asks.
I’ve no idea, either, but I think I’ve heard the name recently.
Mother has adjourned to the garden – how lucky we’ve been with the weather! She’s sitting on the bench, holding forth, and several guests relax on deckchairs around her. Dad’s roses are looking splendid, and are much admired. I love the smell of our garden in the summer. Max mowed the lawn yesterday, and it freshly mingles with the flowers.
You ought to be here showing the place off, Dad – why aren’t you?
“Your father was very proud of his garden, wasn’t he?” Duncan looks at me solemnly. “And it will live on, you know. Hang onto that, Jennifer.”
At the back of the garden, under the apple tree, the young woman who appeared with Jay is standing still and pointing something at the crowd. My brother Max is talking to her.
“Who is that, do you know, Duncan? She came in your car, didn’t she? I’ve never seen her before.”
“Nice young woman – she’s Jay’s daughter, apparently. She’s called Kate.”
“Look, she’s got one of those tiny things that Jay had – what on earth is it?”
“No idea. Let’s go and ask her.”
We make our way over, threading through the crowd.
“Kate has just been showing me,” Max says excitedly. “Look, it’s a camera!”
A camera? I don’t see how that would work. It’s far too small and flat, for one thing.
“I’m going to transfer these pictures to my laptop and email them to everyone,” Kate explains.
“You’re going to what…?” Duncan asks.
“My big brother Joey wants to put them in his blog.”
His what?
She flicks a few buttons on it and the most amazing pictures appear on a little screen: there’s Mother sitting on the garden bench, and then – another button – we make out a picture of the whole of the back of our house, looking rather fine, framed by trees on either side. You should see this, Dad!
“I must take one of you two,” Kate declares. Obviously she means me and my brother, but no – she seems to be looking straight at Duncan and me. Us? No one has ever photographed us together before. He puts his arm around my waist, which is rather a pleasant sensation I have to say, and he smiles into the little gadget Kate is holding up. She steps back and clicks several times.
There is a sudden commotion behind us as Mother lets out a great moan. “Oh, what is going to become of me, without my wonderful Evan!” An auntie pats her shoulder sympathetically.
“At least you’ve got your children,” says someone on a deckchair. I think they are trying to be helpful.
“Oh but they have got their own lives – they won’t want to bother with little me!”
Little?
“My son is frightfully clever, you know. And ambitious, of course. And my daughter is having a baby in a few weeks – she is totally wrapped up in that. She and her husband, they both are. Can’t talk about anything else.”
Some sympathetic nodding goes on. “Only natural, isn’t it?” someone says.
“But at least there’s Jennifer. She does have a job, but she’s only a primary school teacher. She will be leaving her flat and coming back to live with me now that Evan is gone. I think that would be the best thing. It will save her money – she can hardly afford her flat, and you should see it – it’s tiny! She’ll be glad to give it up.”
Jay sits up. “Oh now come on, Mrs Griffiths – you don’t mean that, do you? Jennifer needs her independence just as much as Max and Susan do. She’s got her own plans for life…”
“But I wouldn’t interfere! I never interfere with any of my children…” says Mother, flustered.
That is a matter of opinion.
“Ah but you do, you know! Mrs G, you have never been shy of putting forward your own views on everyone else’s lives, have you?”
Mother considers this. “Well, I’m certainly not one of those wishy-washy English women who can never pass a judgment on anything!”
Jay laughs. “No, indeed you’re not!” She puts her hand lightly on Mother’s arm. “But you see, you don’t always allow other people to breathe. To think for themselves. You are convinced you know the best for people. You have to step back a bit. Try not to suck the life out of them.”
Mother glares at her, speechless for once. It’s not like Mother to take this lying down; what is going on?
“Look, it’ll be alright – believe me, Mrs Griffiths,” says Jay. “You have far more inner strength than you realise...”
People are starting to leave at last, and Duncan is fetching coats. But I haven’t seen my sister for some time, and Drippy Tim is looking for her anxiously.
“She went upstairs to the loo,” he tells me. “But that was ages ago.”
“Don’t worry, Tim – I’ll go and check,” I say.
I run into Jay at the top of the stairs.
“Ah, there you are, Jennifer – Susan needs to get to hospital. Now!”
“What? Why? She’s not due for six weeks…” I am confused.
She smiles. “They have their own ideas of when they are ready to come, these babies! Her waters have just broken. She needs to get there quite soon. Can you find Tim? Best if we call them a taxi. You can take care of their car, if they leave it here, can’t you?”
I’m struggling to take all of this in.
“Oh, and Jennifer…” she adds as I turn to go downstairs. “Don’t keep calling him Drippy Tim! He’s got hidden depths, I tell you. He’s not at all drippy – as you will surely find out!”
Look I know I’ve always thought of him as Drippy Tim, ever since my poor gullible sister married him, but I have never ever uttered that phrase out loud. I swear I haven’t. Is she reading my thoughts, or what?
After that, everything is confused. Non-Drippy Tim phones for a taxi and hands his car keys over to me. Mother has the situation explained to her and decides that it isn’t worth her while to panic because no one would take any notice. My sister comes downstairs, looking pale but somehow radiant at the same time: I’ve never seen her like this before. I am quite envious.
They’re off! We watch the taxi sweep down the road and turn the corner out of sight.
“They’ll be OK, don’t worry, Jennifer!” Jay is standing by my side in the street. “And before the end of the day you’ll be the auntie of a fine…” She hesitates. “Let’s just say, a beautiful baby.”
Oh my goodness. I guess she’s right. I’m going to be an auntie!
“And as for Duncan…” Jay goes on.
“What about him?”
“Nothing… Just, I suppose you do realise he’s in love with you?”
I stare at her.
I don’t know what to say.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said that,” Jay adds. “But I think you knew anyway, didn’t you, Jennifer?”
I take a deep breath.
“And now Kate and I must be off too,” says Jay briskly. “Where’s she got to?”
“Will I see you again?”
She looks at me silently for a moment. “I don’t know, Jennifer. Maybe. But probably not.”
Kate comes rushing up at that point. “Mum, are you sure we mustn’t tell them to bet on Obama?”
Who?
“No, we’ve been through all this, Kate. You know perfectly well it wouldn’t work!”
Kate shrugs her shoulders.
“Have you come a long way?” I ask them.
She smiles. “Yes, you could say that.”
On a sudden impulse I lean forwards and plant a kiss on her cheek.
She smiles and grips my shoulders. “Take care, Jennifer!”
*
“Oh, have they gone already? What a pity, I wanted to say goodbye…” Duncan has been busy tidying up the chairs in the back garden. “Interesting woman, that Jay. I’d like to have talked to her more. How did you say she’s related to you, exactly?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest. She felt very close, somehow. But I’ve never seen her before in my life, as far as I can remember.”
He looks at me. “Yes that’s exactly how I felt! She was very close, but I’ve no idea why.”
Then he smiles, and touches my arm lightly. “Jennifer… You’ve done incredibly well, today. You must have been dreading it.”
Now he’s reading my mind too, the way Jay’s been doing all day! Weird.
“Would you… I wonder, would you let me take you out for a meal? Soon?”
“Oh! Well yes… That would be nice. Thank you, Duncan.”
He gives me a great, big grin now, and takes my hand in his as we turn and walk back to the house.
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about the author
Leela Dutt is an outsider, brought up in Golders Green by an Indian father and a Danish mother. From grammar school she read history at Oxford and briefly became a teacher. Later she sold dress fabrics, wrote for a local paper and then set up and ran a database on housing research at Cardiff University before becoming a proof-reader and review writer for the Big Issue Cymru.
She took a computing degree, beginning when her oldest child went to university herself, and recently Leela has set up the website attfieldduttbooks.co.uk
She’s married to the philosopher Robin Attfield and lives in Cardiff. They are both Quakers, and have three children, seven grandchildren (of whom six survive) and one great-granddaughter. Years ago they took their young family to live for a year in Nigeria, a formative experience for them both. Since then they have travelled widely over the world - cheerfully, most of the time, as George Fox would hope. Travel inspires much of Leela’s fiction, particularly her novel Only a Signal Shown in which the heroine travels to many places that Leela has visited, including her father’s ancient home in Kolkata which has been in the Dutt family for three centuries
