Rita and Vic are standing side by side while a family friend is telling Patsy Bedser’s life story. The speaker leaves out the difficult events in their lives. He merely alludes to them. But this is enough to send a small flutter across George Bedser’s sleepy eyelids. Embarrassing moments are being dragged out onto the public stage. There is laughter. Somebody is hooting. Patsy Bedser is looking away. George Bedser hears it all. He hears the happy sounds of his daughter’s engagement, but he is not really listening.
It happened just the way you hear. I came home and she wasn’t there. Not that she should have been, but I knew something was wrong. Straight away I noticed that. I don’t know why, but there was a silence in the house like someone had stepped out for a bit longer than it takes to do the shopping. Or drop in on a movie. Or a friend. I know that kind of silence. There’s a teacup on the sink, a half-eaten biscuit still resting on the saucer. And you know she’s ducked out and she’ll be back soon.
But it wasn’t like that. The kitchen sink was clean. Bloody sparkling. And there were no messy cups around. No biscuits. No cakes. Everything was stacked away in cupboards like it is before a holiday. Like when we go to Blackpool every June for two weeks to see her parents. But it wasn’t June and we weren’t going on holidays. So I wandered through a spotless house. Vera always kept a clean house, but not like that.
Then, and I don’t know why, I opened the drawers in the bedroom and her things were missing. So I opened another drawer, and except for a few odds and ends, they were all empty. Then I saw some old scarves hanging from the bedroom mirror, and her hats still on the rack in the hall, and I thought that maybe, maybe, it was all right after all. But I knew it wasn’t. I knew it was all wrong.
I sat on the bed with my hat in my hands and I still hadn’t taken my coat off. I didn’t know how long I’d been home. Our Patsy was at her friend’s like she always was after school and I was sitting on the bed staring at the empty drawers in front of me ’cause I hadn’t shut them yet. Her lipsticks and powders and polish had gone from the dresser, but there was perfume in the air. It was fresh. I mean, it was really fresh. She could still have been standing by the mirror and I could have just been sitting on the bed tying my shoelaces and we could have been getting ready to go out. But I knew we wouldn’t be going out anywhere again. So I closed my eyes and breathed it all in. The last of Vera.
I know that perfume. I’d know it anywhere. It’s common enough, I suppose. But, even now, on the train or inside a shop. Even now I sometimes smell it, and think of Vera. I do. I was on the bed breathing her perfume in and thinking about getting up and following it about the house, like following her last steps, wondering where they’d end up, only I knew they’d end at the front door. I was sitting on the bed, the drawers opened and empty in front of me, the dresser cleared and bare, the smell of the perfume swirling round inside my brain, and I realised I was sitting on something.
I knew it was a bloody awful thing from the moment I picked it up. I saw my name on the envelope and I could tell it was Vera’s hand that wrote it. She was always leaving notes around. Gone here, gone there. Back soon. I liked her notes. I’d always liked her notes, but I knew the one I was holding was a bloody awful thing before I even opened it.
It wasn’t sealed and there wasn’t much to it anyway. It started off Dear George, and that’s as good as it got. Things aren’t right any more, she said. Things hadn’t been right for a long time, apparently. And she went on about things not being right and all for a bit, and I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. I brought the money home, didn’t I? I didn’t piss it up against the wall like some others. In fact, I wasn’t one for going out much at all because I’d always rather be in with Vera and our Patsy. And that’s God’s truth. Not that I care about God. And I didn’t boss her about like some others because I learnt very early on that you don’t boss Vera. So I was looking at the letter trying to understand what she meant when she said things weren’t right, but I couldn’t figure it.
Then she talked about fun. I’m a good man, she said. She knows I’m a good man. And she made it sound like some kind of, some kind of limitation. Like I haven’t got the imagination to be anything else. And that’s when she said that she wasn’t having fun. Not that it’s my fault, she said. It was nobody’s fault. But I’d no sooner than read it and I was thinking of all the fun we had the Friday before. Friday was the big night in our house. Always was. And it was usually chips and fish in batter, a bit too much brown ale and soft drink for our Patsy. With a few of the old records and a bit of dancing before the old legs went funny. But apparently Vera wasn’t having fun and that’s why she’d decided to leave. Although, she never said she’d left. Not in the letter. It’s not like the movies where the notes always say Dear somebody or other I’m leaving you. The fact was she had left because I could see all her clothes were gone. She didn’t need to say it. I could see it all plain as the writing on the piece of paper in front of me and I was wondering what I was gonna tell Patsy when she walked in the door. That her mother’d gone because she wanted some fun in her life. Fun she called it.
At first I thought somebody was shaking me by the shoulders, the way people shake you by the shoulders when they’re saying to you it’s all right, you’ll pull through, cheer up George. But nobody was there. Then I realised I was shaking all over and I can’t even remember now if I ever finished that letter or not.
I learnt a week later that she took off with some flashy type. Some flashy type who sold things door to door. One of those shiftless flashy types that moves around the country, from place to place, and talks himself up because nobody else will. Because that’s all he’s got anyway. Talk.
And that’s fun, eh? No home, no proper roof over your head. Just an old car filled with the useless junk that nobody in their right mind buys anyway, a flashy type in a cheap suit, and long days spent travelling from one town to another that looks more or less the same as the one you’ve just left. And that’s fun? Well, it shows there’s different types of fun in the world. And different types of people, who just might call that fun. But I don’t call that fun. I call that bloody stupid. I did then, and I do now. Bloody stupid.
I don’t remember what happened to that letter. I only remember breathing in Vera’s perfume like she was still there in the house, and I remember getting up and walking about the house and opening all the windows.
When George Bedser finds himself suddenly looking round at the record player because there’s a song playing, he realises that he must have missed the last of the speeches. Patsy is already slicing up pieces of engagement cake. Her fiancé is finding chairs for those who need them. Rita drifts out to the front lawn again, Vic stays in the hallway near the refrigerator. George Bedser’s English friends are singing along to the record. Couples are dancing. George Bedser sits down. The party doesn’t need him any more.
Minutes later, Patsy is standing on the porch farewelling the first of the guests to leave. The Millers, clutching their wrapped slices of engagement cake, wave from the street and begin walking back to their house. Doug Miller is not a drinker, but he is feeling light-headed as he lowers his hand after waving farewell, rests it on his son’s shoulder and gazes up at the sky for the comet. This time next week, he thinks, he is scheduled to work late at the factory and will miss Saturday night with the family. But that’s no matter. It is still a week away. And he doesn’t really mind. Besides, he’ll be finished by nine, the drive back from the factory is a short one, and he will be home for a late dinner.
The children are tired, their feet dragging. He carries his son, his wife carries their daughter. Behind them music from George Bedser’s party is still audible and Doug Miller walks slowly back, whistling quietly along with the music, tired, but alive to every moment, every sight, every sound, every smell.