Red on Black

‘I will not be defeated by a funeral,’ said Maria to her mother. ‘I will not.’

But her mother just blinked and smiled and went on playing Patience, red on black, black on red, on the shiny mahogany table. Black the colour of death, red the colour of blood, that is to say life. Blood streamed monthly to prove your youth. Yellow sun shone on cream pile carpet; pink papered walls were lively with bursts of pale refracted light, as ocean waves beat against rocks below. The other side of the French windows, double-glazed to keep out the weather, the lawn which stretched to meet the sea cliff was acid Easter green.

My mother did not even hear me, thought Maria. Black on red. Red on black. The black Knave moved up to be on the red Queen. ‘I need a King,’ said Maria’s mother. ‘An empty space, and no King. Please, St Anthony, bring me a King!’ And there the next card was, black King of Spades, St Anthony’s doing. Up went the Queen, and a train of dependents of lesser moment, after her.

Maria’s mother wore a dress splodged deep purple and bright mauve. Expensive imagined flowers clung to a body once slim, now bony. She’s nearly seventy-five, thought Maria. But even as the colours bleach out of this one life, see how they reassert themselves all around.

Maria pulled the chintzy curtains to dull the glare from outside. Maria’s mother went on playing cards. Maria was silent, sulking.

‘Who did you say had died?’ asked Maria’s mother, eventually, when it became evident that this particular game would remain unresolved, and she’d swept up the cards, swiftly and certainly, the sooner to shuffle, deal, and begin again.

She will live out the rest of her life like this, thought Maria, proving to herself over and over again that resolution of any kind is a rare event indeed, and there is nothing to any of it other than luck. And if there is only luck, there can be no blame. Black on red, red on black, in a beautiful room by the edge of the sea.

‘I didn’t say,’ said Maria. ‘And put the black four on the red five,’ said Maria, but her mother’s hand had already moved. ‘It was Bernard’s father who died. He was eighty-nine, and it was expected. It’s not so bad in itself. I saw him just a week ago. We parted on good terms. All the same it’s a shock and I don’t like funerals.’

Maria’s mother studied the cards, to make sure she’d missed nothing. ‘Little Maria!’ she observed absently, not even looking up. ‘Always trying to see the best in everything. Your father could never look a fact in the face either.’

‘I’m forty-two,’ said Maria. ‘I think I have my own nature by now.’

‘I expect so,’ agreed Maria’s mother, and found the three she’d hoped for. Red on black, black on red. And there’s the Ace. Good luck, bad luck, which will it be? Three coins in a fountain. Which one will the waters bless? Mother, father, Maria? Mother, when it comes to it. The one who leaves, not the ones who are left.

Mother left Maria with her father when Maria was fifteen to run off with a rich, rich man so that, now widowed, she can play Patience for ever at the edge of a sea. Today the weather was wild and bright, which was why the walls were so lively with shifting patches of light. You could search for a pattern and not find one; the wind-whipped waves broke out of proper sequence against their cliffs. Maria’s car had been drenched in spray as she took the sea road up to her mother’s house. Maria hated driving. Maria’s car was cheap and old; Maria’s mother’s car was new and expensive and properly garaged, though seldom used. Maria was always constrained by money, by necessity, by proper feeling. Maria had to argue with her boss in order to take a couple of days off work to visit her mother, to go to a funeral. She had to go to her mother; her mother never came to her.

Maria had been exultant when her mother left home. It was the first and last illicit emotion she could remember. Sorry that Father was upset but exultant all the same, able at last to look after him. Mother gone! Now I can stop Father’s ears forever to the sound of bitchery and complaint; only nice things will sound through this house from now on; at last I am in charge. Why should the world be all discord, when it can be harmony? Mother gone, so what? If a man has a daughter who loves him, what can he need with a wife? All his wife did was deny and deride him. Now we, the proper people, father and daughter, can start again. This gentle, kindly man deserves no less.

Only within the year Maria’s father invited into his bed a woman called Eleanor; so Maria began to hear her mother’s voice in her own, mocking and dispirited, carping and mean, whenever she spoke to her father, and it was so disagreeable a sound Maria married Bernard rather than stay home a second longer than she need.

Maria’s mother came to Maria’s wedding with her new husband, Victor. Maria’s father came with his new wife, Eleanor. Eleanor had lent Maria a dress – Maria lived on a student grant, Maria’s father had no money to spare: talk of money distressed him – and Eleanor had posted off the invitations. Maria’s mother hadn’t helped at all: she just said Maria was too young to get married; she’d have nothing to do with any of it, and hadn’t. Eleanor had done everything, had been wonderful.

Except that at the wedding Maria’s mother said, ‘I left because of Eleanor. I found her suspender belt in the marital bed. And you, Maria, didn’t have the guts to stop her coming today. You want everything to be nice. You can never see why everyone shouldn’t just be happy. But they can’t be.’

Maria had said, ‘You’re spoiling my wedding, please go away, like you did before,’ and Maria’s mother had done just that. Walking away down the path through the bright green grass, in a beige shantung suit and a little blue hat, next to grey-suited, solid Victor. In those days Maria’s mother had dressed quietly.

‘Never mind,’ said Eleanor. ‘We did what we could. At least we invited her.’

‘Good riddance,’ said Maria’s father.

When family angels turn to demons, when the worm in the apple is healthier than the apple, what’s a girl to do? Except marry Bernard, forget the whole thing: quarrel with your mother, remember never to forgive her for abandoning you; make a friend of your stepmother: see her through a pregnancy more troubled than your own: gain a half-sister the day you gain a son. Watch Father wander through the house, in this marriage as in the last, but happier. Watch for and iron out the note in your own voice that reminds you of your mother: eradicate it. Make things good, as your mother made things bad. Get on with loving Bernard.

Red on black. Black on red. Maria’s mother is stuck on a nine. Not an eight anywhere in sight. Maria’s hungry. But not till a game comes out will Maria’s mother ring the bell, call the maid, ask her to serve lunch. When it comes it will be frugal.

Eleanor’s table was always extravagant. Stepmother came with a ready-made family: brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins; peopling a world, filling it with conversation and event. Maria’s father gave up his job on a matter of principle. Eleanor’s earnings eventually kept everyone: even subsidised Bernard, Maria and little Maurice. Superwoman Eleanor! Bernard was getting a PhD. Maria tried to repay Eleanor by looking after little Winnie, her half-sister, when Eleanor’s child care arrangements broke down.

Another game. Red on black, black on red. She’s polite, but she never really speaks to me. Can she really not forgive me because Eleanor asked her to my wedding, because on that one day I spoke out of turn? Eleanor, whose suspender belt had induced Maria’s mother to leave home. Except it wasn’t like that. Maria’s mother had been mercenary, after Victor’s money. That was the only reason she’d left home, abandoned everyone. It was because Maria’s mother had done such a dreadful thing that Maria’s father had needed the consolation of Eleanor. Everyone knew that. Maria’s mother was the villain of the piece.

Perhaps I can’t forgive my mother, thought Maria, not because she abandoned me, but because in leaving us she let me think my father could be mine, gave credence to my illicit fantasies. Didn’t I once hate Eleanor? I can hardly remember. Eleanor and my father, rising as one from the evening’s television, hand in hand, going off into the bedroom together, where he’d been with my mother since the beginning of time, that is to say the beginning of my life? Leaving me shut out and excluded, to listen out for the sounds of gasps and moans, not the plaintive rise and fall of marital reproaches. When did I stop hating Eleanor? I can’t remember that. Perhaps the day I married Bernard, and my mother saw Eleanor there, and I had to choose between Eleanor and her, and I chose Eleanor. Is not-hating-Eleanor the price I pay for not-hating my father?

* * *

‘All you women,’ Bernard would say, ‘squabbling over one poor man.’ Such passions as we had, Bernard would reduce to nonsense.

‘You shouldn’t wear grey,’ said Maria’s mother, clearing away the cards. ‘And shouldn’t you do something about your hair?’

‘Bernard’s father is dead,’ Maria wanted to say, ‘and I am in a state of distress. I am not entitled to official mourning: I have been disinherited from grief by divorce, along with everything else. I like grey. I will wear my hair as I want.’ The dancing patches of light on the wall stilled: as if the waves were holding their breath. Maria said nothing. The pounding began again. A trick of sea and wind, working in unison for once. The curve of the wave, held in suspense, foam whipped along the crest, as a gust of wind beat it back, before falling into its melee of navy and white. Lunch was served. A little thin soup. A mackerel, freshly caught.

‘How is Bernard?’ asked Maria’s mother. ‘Still living in half your house?’

‘It works well,’ said Maria. ‘It’s sensible. There’s no reason after a divorce why you shouldn’t be friends.’

‘Careful of the bones,’ said Maria’s mother. ‘I wouldn’t want you to choke.’

‘And Maurice can go between us as and when he wants,’ said Maria, hearing the plaintive edge to her voice. Why do I have to suffer so others can be happy? I have to live beneath my ex-husband Bernard so Maurice can run upstairs to see his father when he wants: so I don’t even have proper possession of my own child: so Bernard can criticise the way I bring him up: the clothes he buys, the pocket-money he has; can find fault with me if I have any kind of social life: all the while congratulating himself on his forbearance, on his self-control – living above a wife who so aggravated him when she was with him, was so frigid, so neurotic, he was obliged to have girlfriend after girlfriend just to stay sane. And how, having a child in common, and being noble, he now helps her out. She is of course a hopeless mother – absent-minded, over-emotional: Bernard can’t leave Maria unprotected in the world, because of the damage she might do to Maurice. So to the detriment of his own life, his own artistic, poetic need to be free, he puts up with staying where he is, in the ex-marital home, halved by hardboard. The stairs are shared. Up the stairs go the succession of girlfriends. Turn up the music so as not to hear the moans and the groans, the creaking of the floor. What kind of example is that for a growing boy? Bernard changes the girls so often. The backs of their legs are oddly the same. Bernard seems to like girls with solid calf muscles. Maria’s own legs are thin; straight up and down without much ankle. Mad legs, Bernard would call them.

‘We couldn’t afford to buy two houses,’ said Maria to her mother. ‘We had no choice but to do it the way we did.’

Maria’s mother pushes away her plate: the half-eaten mackerel lies dull upon it. The maid poaches them with the heads on. White, white sightless eyes.

‘Disgusting fish,’ said Maria’s mother. ‘I can’t think why she buys them.’

‘Because they’re cheap, I suppose,’ said Maria, and Maria’s mother raised her eyebrows, in surprise that this should be seen to be an adequate motive for doing anything.

‘I don’t think I ever met Bernard’s father,’ said Maria’s mother, and Maria said, ‘He came to our wedding,’ and then realised it might be better not to have said it.

‘The wedding,’ said Maria’s mother. ‘Of course, you asked that bitch to it and didn’t warn me. Do you like ginger ice cream? I’ll get the maid to bring some in if you like.’

It was easier to say no, but Maria made herself say yes. The ice cream came, a small single scoop in the middle of a large white plate. The ‘maid’ was a broad local woman, with shoes trodden down at the back; local wages were low. Maria’s mother spent money carefully. Maria’s father spent everything there was to spend, as soon as possible, and always absently, and seemed surprised when he’d done it. He’d look at bills wonderingly; it was a family joke. Eleanor worked long hours, perforce – she was a graphic designer; she worked freelance – but her voice never hardened into reproach and complaint. Maria would listen as Eleanor spoke to confirm that it didn’t, and would listen to her own voice likewise.

‘It’s a wild day,’ said Maria’s mother: foam flew up the cliff and swept over the lawn and gently patterned the French windows. If the tide rose any higher it would not be so gentle. ‘The other side of the glass the wind will be howling. And it’s a high tide. Sometimes we get the foam up here, not often. The garden’s salty. Growing things is a problem.’

‘Twenty-three years later and you still call her a bitch,’ said Maria, boldly.

‘She was,’ said Maria’s mother. ‘And you should never have asked her to your wedding. You’re my daughter, not hers.’

‘I didn’t ask her,’ lied Maria. ‘She just came. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d turn up. You were so against poor Bernard.’

‘One look at Bernard,’ said Maria’s mother, ‘and you could tell what would happen next. You’d see him through college, you’d have his child, you’d take responsibility, provide all the money, and he’d wander off. Another child, like your father, not a grown person at all. I’m glad that bitch Eleanor got what she deserved. I could never understand why you were so thick with her.’

She rose, as if to say the audience had ended. Her cheeks were pink: she knew she had been unduly talkative; she blamed her daughter for it. The maid came in to take the ice cream plate from under Maria’s nose. Maria sat with her head lowered, as if she were a disgraced child.

Eleanor had developed breast cancer and taken four years to die: Maria’s father now lived well on her life insurance money. Maria had asked him, at the time of her divorce, for the loan of enough money to buy a house at a distance from Bernard. She’d never asked her father before for money. It had been her habit to ask Eleanor.

‘I don’t think lending you money would be a good idea,’ said Maria’s father. ‘I don’t want to interfere between husband and wife, even when they’re allegedly exes. You two get along well enough. A divorce by mutual assent. Very civilised. If anyone can make it work, you can, Maria. I only wish your mother had been like you.’

Eleanor would have understood, would have lent her the money. Maria had cried for a week when Eleanor died. Bernard said, ‘Crocodile tears. No one loves a stepmother.’ But then he was angry at the time. Bernard didn’t see why Maria wanted a divorce; why she couldn’t adjust to a husband’s need for sexual variety, or take lovers herself to ease the emotional burden from his shoulders; Maria was rigid in her outlook, he complained; hopelessly jealous and possessive; she needed therapy rather than a divorce. And a divorce would upset Maurice. Maria had persisted. Now every time Maurice had flu, or was in trouble at school, or failed to satisfy Bernard’s expectations of him, Bernard would raise his eyebrows and say, ‘His parents are divorced. Of course he’s unhappy and disturbed. What did you think would happen?’

Maria took in Bernard’s mail when he was out, looked after his cat when he was away, let in his girlfriends when they’d lost their keys. They’d look at her curiously. She wondered what Bernard said to them about her. ‘Isn’t it time you found yourself a boyfriend?’ Bernard had asked her once or twice, meeting her on the stairs. ‘But I suppose, since there’s such a glut on the market of unattached women, you have a real problem.’ Maria knew better than to protest. Bernard was a journalist, a columnist: he was clever, moody, talented. He had the statistics of society at his fingertips. If she looked doubtful, he’d quote such figures as suited him to prove his point.

‘I do seem to have a problem,’ she’d say, hoping he’d leave it there. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. ‘Divorced women over forty,’ he’d say, ‘rarely re-marry.’ If she said she didn’t want to re-marry, wasn’t interested in men, he’d raise his eyebrows as if she was protesting too much. Maria felt uglier and uglier. At the beginning she’d given a couple of dinner parties; Bernard had asked himself down to them, and hogged the conversation, and laughed at her cooking, which was indeed bad. She didn’t try again. He’d grabbed her on the stairs and kissed her once, a couple of years into the upstairs-downstairs arrangement, and said he was free on Saturday night, why didn’t she come up after Maurice was asleep? Not to make it a habit, he said. Just the once to show there was no ill feeling: that she didn’t hold grudges: that she wasn’t like her mother, and a nag and a bore. And just the once she’d gone, to prove exactly those things, and he had been a wonderful lover, and she’d thought perhaps she could put up with all those girls after all, but he hadn’t asked her up again. Maria felt worse. And the next girl, Angela, seemed a permanent fixture. Maria didn’t want Bernard to marry again, she wasn’t quite sure why. Especially not someone like Angela, a currant bun: tight little curls, lax mouth, stocky legs. Why would anyone want Angela when they could have Maria? Amend. Could have had Maria. These days Maria told her friends she loathed Bernard, they’d laugh at his dreadful behaviour, the things he’d done, but when he was away, when she couldn’t hear the footsteps overhead, she was uneasy and nervous, though relieved of the burden of thinking about Angela and Bernard together.

Maria’s mother sat down at the round mahogany table and dealt the cards again. Face downwards, blank, all but the last card in each row, face upwards. The pink faded from her cheeks.

‘Be all that as it may,’ Maria said, ‘it’s the present that counts, not the past. I don’t mean to be defeated by a funeral. I hate funerals, but I’ll go to this one.’

Red on black, black on red. Death on life, life on death. Her mother said nothing.

‘Bernard’s father lived with us for four whole years,’ said Maria. ‘Of course I want to pay him my last respects. He was gentle and nice. While he was about Bernard behaved. It was after he left that the women got out of control. Their suspender belts in our bed. Well, you know about that.’

Slap, slap, slap went the cards.

‘But I take a lot of the responsibility,’ said Maria. ‘I was working full-time and Maurice was still small, and I expect I neglected Bernard. I went off sex. Well, he said I did. I didn’t notice. It can be like that, I suppose. It was understandable Bernard looked elsewhere. I expect I should just have put up with it. In the light of death these little dramas seem so pitiful.’

Maria’s mother gave a little cough.

‘Well, forget all that,’ said Maria. ‘I shouldn’t burden you with it. I’m grown up now. Bernard and I will go to the funeral. At least this is something we share – a particular grief: his father’s dying. The end of something. There were really good times, some of the time, when I was first married to Bernard. That’s why the marriage had to end: I didn’t want it to get spoiled, in retrospect: unravel itself out, backwards, into nothing. The divorce was damage limitation. Do you see? In a marriage the past is forever piling into the present.’

Maria’s mother’s game resolved itself. Four rows of up-turned, revealed cards announced finality: the imposition of order upon chaos, design over happenstance. Maria’s mother smiled.

‘I need a breath of fresh air,’ she said, and threw the French windows open, and the sounds of wild weather and pounding sea charged into the room, spray dampened their hair, the curtains billowed almost to the ceiling, Maria’s mother’s dress swirled around her legs, and the cards were flung about the room and in profound disorder again, as if thoroughly shuffled. Both women laughed, exhilarated.

Maria leaned against the windows to close them against the gale. Enough was enough.

‘What do you mean?’ asked her mother. ‘You won’t be defeated by a funeral? Why should you be defeated?’

‘It’s the journey,’ said Maria. ‘The drive. You know how I hate driving. The funeral’s at the Golders Green Crematorium. I hate driving into London. And I get lost.’ Maria had been late for Eleanor’s funeral. She couldn’t forgive herself for that. She’d kept missing the turning: finding herself back on the one-way system. When she did get it right, she lost more time trying to park in a space too small anyway, panicking.

‘Get Bernard to drive you,’ said Maria’s mother. ‘That man must be of some use for something.’

When Maria got home, Maurice was back from school: he’d made his own supper. He was lying on the floor watching football on TV and doing his homework at the same time.

‘Why didn’t you go up to your father?’ she asked.

‘Because he doesn’t like me watching football,’ said Maurice in his croaky adolescent voice. ‘He thinks television rots the brain. And he can’t stand me rotting my brain and doing my homework at the same time. And Angela’s there again, and she gets on my nerves. You know they’re getting married?’

‘Why her?’ asked Maria, after a little time.

‘Because he really only likes stupid women,’ said Maurice. ‘And Angela is really stupid. Will you come to the wedding?’

‘I expect so,’ said Maria, bleakly. ‘There’s no point in making things more difficult than they are already. We all have to get along together somehow. I wish he’d told me himself.’

‘He probably meant to tell you at Granddad’s funeral,’ said Maurice. ‘You know what he’s like. This is a really boring football match. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

‘What is he like?’ asked Maria. ‘What is your father like?’

‘How do you expect me to know what he’s like?’ enquired Maurice. ‘He’s my father. But you’re okay.’

She had to be satisfied with that. If there was a battle, and she had tried so hard for there not to be, she was winning. Maurice was on her side. Later Maria called Bernard and asked him if he could give her a lift down to the funeral: it seemed a waste for two cars to go from the same address. Bernard said there was no room in his vehicle: it was only a sports car, he was of course taking Maurice down, and he was surprised to hear Maria wanted to go at all. Maria had in all probability triggered off the events which had led to the death in the first place. He and she were, after all, divorced. Divorce meant that his family and her family were wholly separate. And he would hardly expect to go to Maria’s mother’s funeral, for example. Maria said briskly that she would make her own way to the Crematorium.

Maria intended to start early: to allow at least two hours for a journey which would take Bernard one and a bit. She put on a grey suit. Black at funerals always seemed self-conscious, primitive. Widow’s gear: the renunciation of sex. That’s it, that’s gone: the delights of the flesh deliquescing into mud. That’s you served right for enjoying yourself. Black on red. Maria put on a red scarf to cheer the suit up. The hem of its skirt was unstitched. She found needle and cotton to see to it. Maurice had to be persuaded not to wear an overlarge, cannabis-worship jacket; pink curling puffs of smoke on a yellow background, and words she failed to understand but Maurice said were acceptable, Granddad wouldn’t have minded. It grew later and later. Maria seemed unable to accept the dictates of the clock. Her will and the material world were at odds. Something rebelled. In the end she and Bernard left at the same time.

Bernard went down the steps in front of her; he was wearing a grey suit; he carried a portable phone. She remembered Victor long ago. Bernard seemed a stranger to her. There was a clattering behind her, and Angela pushed past. She was wearing a light shiny blue suit, and a lot of pearls, as if she were going to a wedding.

‘’Scuse me, Maria. I hope you’ve got Maurice ready. We’re going to be so late if you haven’t.’

‘I didn’t know she was coming,’ said Maurice, but he got into the car with Bernard and Angela, folding himself into the small space at the back, leaving Maria to stand on the doorstep. Perhaps it would be better if she didn’t go? All that way, to what end? To stand in a dingy room, listening to melancholy music, contemplating mortality and the death of hope, the death of love, the death of her body? What sort of ‘respect’ was it that she thought she could pay? She had failed Bernard’s father in this life, she had failed to keep him alive, let alone healthy; she couldn’t even stay married to his son, a failure which had distressed the old man. She could just turn back now, into her half of the matrimonial home, take the day off work, get accustomed to the idea of Bernard, married to Angela, living on top of her. Accept her role as murderer, not mourner.

But her feet walked her, almost of their own accord, towards her car. Maria wore black court shoes, worn out of shape, as she felt she was herself. Denatured: altered perforce to fit the circumstances.

The Golders Green Crematorium is sombre and leafy, concrete-pathed and well-signposted: it serves large areas of the city. Its memorial rose garden is denatured. The ashes of the dead are dug into the soil, but somehow fail to produce abundance. Little red brick chapels are used for individual services, as little individual jars of breakfast jam serve these days instead of the whole jar. Hearses come and go, quietly: coffins are carried by experts, expertly. An almost agreeable hush descends upon the little clusters of friends and relatives: the air is hard to breathe, as if the place were indoors, not outdoors, or at any rate covered by some invisible bell-jar: you might as well be in an airport, or a hospital, so devitalised the place has become, by virtue of so many human passions stultified, brought up short by the advent of death. Too late now. For who ever lived totally as they wanted to: who ever, if they have time to think about it, dies wholly satisfied? And those who remain know it.

Maria was late, but the chapel services were running even later. The deceased’s friends and relatives, an official said, were gathered in the appropriate waiting room. Maria pushed open the heavy gothic door: it groaned. Blank and hostile faces looked back at her. Angela was bright in her shiny blue. Maurice came out to be with his mother. Maria and Maurice leaned against the chapel wall. Maurice smoked a cigarette. Maria hoped Bernard would not come out and catch him.

‘Angela’s pregnant,’ Maurice said. ‘That’s the only reason he’s marrying her.’

Maria didn’t say, ‘Well, I was pregnant, too. That’s why he married me.’ Or perhaps he made me pregnant in order to be obliged to marry me and then blame me.

‘Angela shouldn’t be here,’ said Maurice. ‘It isn’t fair. She never even met my grandfather.’

‘I expect she just likes to be with your father,’ said Maria, ‘wherever he goes, and so she should. Try to like her, Maurice; it will be better if you do. We have to be civilised.’

A clutch of hearses approached, passed: following after them, on their black coat-tails, came a cream Rolls Royce, which parked in a space clearly marked ‘Official Parking: hearses only’, and Maria’s mother stepped out. She wore a pink turban and a yellow suit, and all around were the colours of brick chapel, concrete paving, a dull sky and bare branches, on which new buds still struggled to provide just a hint of the new season. It was such a late spring: no one could understand the weather these days. ‘Mother? All this way!’

‘I didn’t want Maria to be defeated by a funeral,’ said Maria’s mother to her grandson. ‘I was defeated by a wedding once. It doesn’t do to be defeated by rituals.’

‘He brought her here,’ said Maria, suddenly tearful. ‘He had no right to do that. He was my father-in-law, not hers. How dare they?’

‘Pull yourself together; you’re not a child,’ said Maria’s mother, out of some kind of dim maternal memory, ‘or I’ll wish I’d never come.’ Maria was sobbing and gulping. Bernard and Angela emerged from the chapel. Bernard seemed disconcerted. Angela was pink and angry.

‘I have every right to be here,’ Angela said, stopping to face Bernard, taking in the presence of the first wife, his ex-mother-in-law, her soon-to-be stepchild. ‘I love you and you love me and I want every single part of you, and that means your past as well. If you loved your father, I loved him too, he’s my baby’s grandfather, and I’m entitled to come to his funeral, so I don’t know what you mean, Bernard, by my “cashing in”. I don’t want to hear that kind of mean, miserable thing from you ever again. I’ve heard far too much of it from you lately. I don’t know what gets into you sometimes.’ Then she turned on Maria. ‘What are you doing here, anyway? An ex is an ex, as you’ll find from now on. You depress the hell out of me, to tell you the truth. That godawful grey suit is a case in point and no one’s worn a scarf for years. Self-pitying bitch.’

The nasal voice stopped. It had come bursting in like some destructive gust of wind, thought Maria; everything settled, everything you clung to, was up in the air, whirling. They were all looking at her, waiting for a response. Maurice hovered half-way between Bernard and herself. Oh Eleanor, Eleanor, help me now. I married Bernard in the spring, but then the day was bright and clear. Eleanor smiled and drove my maternal mother out. Let me re-phrase that: together, Eleanor smiling, myself scowling, we held the whip that drove my mother out. Perhaps Eleanor was a false ally, after all. If she smiled it was because now she’d have my father to herself. Of course my stepmother lent me a dress. And afterwards she could afford to be generous. She’d won. Angela wants Bernard to herself, of course she does. She uses different methods, that’s all – sulks not smiles. And Bernard just spreads his hands and thrives in the warmth of our squabbling.

Even as I hesitate, I see Maurice drifting over to Bernard’s side. Mother love? What’s that? What’s required? I want Maurice to grow up to be the best of his father, not the worst. We aren’t meant to be on sides: we are meant to try to be civilised. All my life spent understanding and forgiving – but these are matters of life and death; desperate things. Red on black, black on red: understood but not forgiven. Has my mother come here today to explain that to me? She can’t forgive me, she won’t forgive, she must not forgive me because what I did was unforgivable; nor can she understand it. But she can still instruct me. She won’t look me in the eye, she never will, but she came today to set an example, to help me.

‘My father-in-law,’ said Maria to Angela, ‘mine. And it’s you who have no business here. You can have Bernard’s future, you’re welcome to it, but you can’t have Bernard’s past. That’s mine. You will not unravel my life from this moment back. Why don’t you just go back to the house? Go on back, let me mourn in the peace I deserve. I came first and you came second; all you are entitled to is the dregs –’

‘Bernard!’ wailed Angela, but Bernard just spread his fingers helplessly, and licked his lips.

‘It’s her or me,’ cried Angela. ‘I’m warning you, Bernard.’

‘I do as I like,’ said Bernard. ‘What you do is up to you.’

‘This is our business, not yours,’ said Maria’s mother to Angela, as once she should have said it to Eleanor. ‘You go, we stay.’ And she looked Angela’s suit up and down as if to say this is a funeral, not a wedding; can’t you tell the difference? I’m old enough to do as I like but you’re not. Whoever can have brought you up?

Angela looked at Maria’s mother’s attire and curled her lip.

‘Mutton dressed up as lamb,’ she actually said.

‘Excuse me,’ said a group of black-suited, sleek-haired men, passing through, bearing a coffin on accustomed shoulders. The little cluster of mourners had to part and reform. Maria wondered if the body inside the coffin were male or female, young or old; how they’d lived, how they’d died. Whether they were persecutor, self-interested and invalidating; or victim, understanding and forgiving, this was the outcome. Since there was no justice in death, you’d better find it in life, however disagreeable it made you in the eyes of others, in your own eyes too.

‘Just go away,’ Maria said to Angela, with a snap of anger so sharp and severe it all but cracked and slivered the sheltering bell-jar; or at any rate a breath of cold, fresh, lively air suddenly whipped around their legs: a memento of winter in the presence of spring. Everyone looked startled.

‘Go away,’ repeated Maria, ‘and take Bernard with you.’

Bernard said, ‘I can’t do that. I’m the chief mourner. He’s my father. I have to stay. But you don’t have to, Angela. Really it’s best that you don’t. Wait in the car.’

And Angela walked meekly off to wait. Maurice moved over to stand by his mother’s side.

‘That’s better,’ said Maria’s mother. ‘At last!’

‘What’s more, I’m not living beneath a baby,’ said Maria to Bernard, ‘let alone you, Angela and a baby. What do you think I am?’

‘That’s okay,’ said Bernard. ‘Now my father’s dead I can afford to move out. You can have the whole house.’

They stood together in the chapel, and afterwards went their separate ways. Bernard to Angela and a new baby, Maria and Maurice back home, Maria’s mother back to her cards. Red on black, black on red; red on black, life on death.