20

Perth, 2000

It was early morning, only days after her meeting with Marcia, and she was walking to one of her favourite spots, the reserve by the river. She wasn’t going to force more meetings between them – they would happen naturally, spontaneously. The important steps had been taken.

Would you look at the height of those gum trees! And the winter sun just coming up, low but gaining, craftily edging its way through the eucalypt under-branches.

‘You don’t know you’re alive,’ people often said. But Celia knew: if you were not fully functioning how else could you feel the sudden shaft of joy that was in the habit of catching in her throat; or the glimpse of a magic sickle moon through the trees. The swings and roundabouts of everything. But better than being emotionally dead, like some erstwhile workmates she could think of who were still actually sitting at their desks, in a state of languor, incurious about nature, dull-eyed. She’d had, she reminded herself, quite a bit of experience in her life at being alone in company. Once people realise this and seek freedom, she believes, they find that solitude can be far more entertaining.

In the distance she saw the house overlooking the reserve, where the clinging vine, getting its boost for the coming season, was gushing through the white picket fence, the vine with a soapy scent that bespeaks spring. That’s right, bespeaks, with a nod towards John Keats in this happy-in-nature state of mind. The soon-to-be resurrected gasworks, down here by the river, long since abandoned, its chimneys intact, was earmarked, as the real estate salesmen and developers liked to say, for restoration. A moment of genius for the State government, formerly so ready to bring in the bulldozers.

Back home a quick go on the computer to catch some emails and then a cup of tea before the full works of bath and beauty treatment, to get ready for the afternoon, a movie with Sally. One does one’s best. She turned off her old computer that made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a snort. Sometimes it gave a little gulp which she figured out was giving her a reminder.

Something was bothering her, a stone-in-the-shoe niggle. It was something to do with the visit to see Marcia. After all their talk she realised that she had left her friend without asking about her health – almost the whole purpose of the meeting. Marcia had made her forget about it. Other talk and music had pushed aside the obvious question. It was as though they had to get this top layer seen to: the bringing up to date and clearing of misunderstandings; the new-found exchange of confidences and general re-establishment of the old bond, before they could go deeper into the unknown. She had noticed that her friend was thinner, and she, Celia, managed a question about that, fishing for a confiding response, but Marcia’s face was wonderfully alive, talking the way she once did, using her eyes and mouth – the natural actress and teacher. There had been phone calls between them since the visit and still Celia hadn’t been able to pursue it, due to Marcia’s gift for turning conversations around:

‘Marcia, how are you?’

‘I’m well, darling. But I wanted to ask you about James.’ And on it would go to other things.

And so Celia didn’t probe, out of the old Anglo respect for privacy, she supposed. Only Marcia knew the extent of Celia’s diffidence. People coming towards Celia would say to themselves: Now, here is someone you don’t tangle with. Indeed a woman said to her recently: ‘Oh, you’re walking with such a purposeful air!’ It was meant and taken humorously and gave her an idea of the way she appeared to strangers. Oh wad some power the giftie gie us/ to see oursels as others see us! – as Robert Burns would have wound his tongue around it. No, she wasn’t one to give a good first impression. When younger it could have been put down to an unthinking gaucherie, a lack of experience. She knew her place, and it was in the best chair, with the smartest people. Now that life had belted her about quite a bit she knew that her place was in her own heart and she didn’t have to or even want to be on view with anyone for anything. At times she found herself being inordinately happy sitting by herself simply listening to Brahms or Donizetti; at times she heard herself singing for the joy of hearing her own voice. And she knew that she had no intention of ceasing to dance around the kitchen simply because she didn’t have a partner.

Time passed, the way it does, slowly yet fast. However today she was going to a wedding – the first she had been to in about twenty-five years (bar one in Sanlorenzo), since she made a point of not accepting invitations to them. But go she would to this one, as she was fond of the couple, and intended to look terrific, smell like an angel. You look gorgeous in that, said the woman in the boutique, admiring the get-up she’d chosen. She hauled out of the dark wardrobe her Chanel No 5, the famous fragrance she’d personally never set much store by, considering it pretty overrated. But this was a gift, if you could call it that – something the world knew was expensive and which had been rather carelessly passed on to her by Sally, who’d received it with the compliments of the cosmetics company she worked for, and who had a talent for giving the unwanted present. Celia tried a squirt of it again with the thought that at last she was old enough for it. In earlier times this scent had seemed altogether cloying, loaded with responsibilities. Now she could probably carry it off with the insouciance it merited. She intended to dance at this wedding – it was going to be a big affair and the bride, a great girl, had delivered her a personal invitation.

The rituals go on. Weddings, funerals, christenings, giving birth, twenty-first birthday parties, life and death and the myriad of others not mentioned, our first this (and our last that). People will still keep going through the whole cycle of it. At least for another million years or something like that, before we burn ourselves out. Mm – these trousers are a most elegant cut. Must show them to Marse.

Marcia lay awake. It was only 2.30 a.m. and her mind was wandering about. The magpies were making noises, not chirping or whistling, the things they did close on daybreak – which surely was more than two hours away? They were up to something and their soft cooing or whatever it was had roused her.

She put the radio on and got, of all things, a gentle guitar version of My Sarie Marais – the South African song reminded her of a short tour of North Africa by herself, from London. It must have been the year after her trip to stay with Celia in Calabria. She’d felt lonely after being with Cele for all those weeks, so the following year, with Celia still in Italy she had set off on a cheap deal, staying in pensioni and youth hostels. Mickey was in Wales and Marcia had never thought it important to mention her little trip to anyone. In two of these pensioni she met a young woman – was her name Monica? – who seemed to be travelling the same route, always with a guitar on her back. She knew every song, it seemed, this Monica, and played all the popular and national songs of every country they could think of; it was truly a youthful meeting of the nations, with nothing but goodwill and optimism. Every song the girl was asked to play and sing she knew. Marcia wondered how that girl of long ago was growing older. What politics did she have now? Those characters of our earlier years of course always remain young, as they should. Monica had dispelled much of the anger towards South Africa felt by Marcia and other travellers of that time, young idealists or even revolutionaries some of them, back in Britain. They had not talked politics, thankfully, and it was clear that Monica loved old Africa, as she called it, like no other country.

Marcia had just managed to free herself once and for all from the neighbour Mrs Thompson, that interfering woman, and felt nothing but relief. Once she would have felt guilty about bidding a quick hello and determinedly passing on to her next chore. But now she thought she just didn’t have time for some people. Relieved of the regular listening to whingeing gossip, her heart was doing handsprings. She was better off with herself and a smaller circle around her – barely a circle at all. Mrs Thompson had never been a friend anyhow – and now there was Celia in her life again. Celia, who said to her at their last meeting: ‘Friendship is a tricky thing, don’t you think? We think it’s robust. No, we don’t even think about preserving it at all; it’s supposed to look after itself. Someone I used to like very much has gone to ground – as she always did now and then, as a matter of fact – but this time for good, I think, and for a reason I know nothing about. She passed me in her car recently, almost stopped then started up again as though she had just remembered we were no longer on speaking terms. What do you make of that? People are vile.’

‘Celia! You always exaggerate.’

‘Listen: Marcia – you know how I’ve told you about that woman, how much I listened to her bloody woes. And that flaky new-age dreck she’d go on with.’

‘That’s true. But we can’t afford to expect any quid pro quo in matters of love and friendship. Such an expectation leads inevitably to disenchantment.’

Celia fingered the pendant around her neck for a while. ‘You’re probably right. Expecting gratitude or even recognition is loving someone for the wrong reasons; emotional insurance of a kind. And I reckon the old philosophers were right: when we search for someone to love we’re really trying to love ourselves. Remember all that stuff of La Rochefoucauld Mickey used to talk about? Apparently La Roche was a mate of Madame de Lafayette and Madame de Sévigné and they’d all meet in her salon on a daily basis, in her boudoir, and talk.’

‘Yes, what an excellent thing. He was a pessimist of course,’ said Marcia slowly, gathering together her old knowledge, ‘but he said that if we were aware of our self-regard we would do something to remedy it.’

‘An excess of self-regard, he must have meant. We do need some. Nevertheless, to get back to my former mate, I’m not going to forget it quickly, what a shabby gesture on her part! Deciding from one day to the next to pass an old friend by.’ And Celia lifted her head in thought: ‘It occurs to me however, she probably decided on it long before she gave me the flick, so it wasn’t from one day to the next at all. The human race is beyond hope, don’t you think? I wonder if I can even trust myself with anything.’

Marcia, alone, smiled in the darkness, remembering the circular nature of this conversation in its entirety. It seemed akin to the long talks (like La Roche and his two lady friends) they used to have years ago, when Celia would twirl the drink around in her glass and say: ‘I’d like to know when my death is going to be so I can make a programme.’ To Marcia that was an extraordinary thing for a youngish woman to say, even considering death at all. And Mickey would say: ‘You should live every day as if it were your last.’

Marcia considered that many people, especially those with particularly delicate sensibilities, were not equipped for close society. More people, not fewer, should live alone, to learn how to do it.

The cause of our unhappiness is, according to Pascal, man’s inability to sit quietly in his room. But Marcia disagreed with quite a bit of Pascal, since each of his famous thoughts was based on the premise that you believed in God. And she thinks now that the cause of our unhappiness is our inability to admit that we are, in essence, entirely alone. There is not necessarily a soulmate there. If you can’t live inside your head there is no hope for you. There.

A journalist on the radio the other day asked a celebrity – who was either a scientist or a philosopher – a question on, now what was it? Yes. When human beings become extinct, having had their time on this planet and faded away, when we are no longer here, will there be any meaning to life on earth?

The interviewee replied that yes, there would still be a point to it. The world will still exist for the so-called lower orders of life. He went on to say that although we didn’t attach too much value to these lesser creatures and their experiences, they certainly had times of, for example, real happiness: you only had to observe them to know this. Oh yes, there was certainly a meaning to the world as we know it, that is, this planet. What he was saying also, quite cheerfully, was that human beings are not the centre of meaning in this world, as we all fondly imagine. We are not enormously significant in the grand scheme. All of this she supposed must be the essence of solipsism. She must remember to run it by Celia.

It was very close to New Year and as usual she was thinking these thoughts in bed, and also remembering other New Year’s Eves. With fewer people around you, indeed almost no one left as we get older (if we get older) to celebrate it with, she wondered if New Year was meaningless in itself.

There were people she could hear, not far from her front door, being optimistic, joyous, a little drunk, waiting for the fireworks, but will they be expecting the world to be a better place, or pitting their faith into becoming a better person, when the historical evidence shows that as far as wisdom goes we are not gaining any ground at all? Trying to make the future legitimate is the role of youth always, just as the old and dying have to take a part that is plagued by doubts. This was rather dispiriting to the aged, hearing time-worn sentiments brought out and dusted down, the speakers thinking they were coming up with freshly minted notions.

Nevertheless she believed that the world was still invested with a lot of meaning because Celia for one would be here to look at the sky, grow passionate and tearful at music, grieve at the death of her cat. You can’t dismiss the world by any means just because you yourself no longer have the strength or capacity to enjoy it.

She dozed a little finally, then sank into sleep for a couple of hours. Waking up but still half-buried in memory of Celia, the other day, who had broached the subject of Marcia’s thinness. Was there something seriously wrong with her? Celia wanted to know. Well there: it was the perfect opening for Marcia yet she made little of it, saying that there was a problem, and they were going to carry out some more tests on her lungs. The Celia of old would have looked straight at her and asked six pertinent questions, but seeing Marcia quickly, slightly impatiently perhaps, change the subject she honoured the silence. So alas, she didn’t give Celia the opportunity to say: Let me know about the tests; tell me what I can do.

It was possible her old friend was being exquisitely tactful. Or fearful, because Celia had said nothing since. Marcia ran her hands over her once lovely body. The swellings were more evident as the disease gained ground. She had learned a few years ago, to her astonishment, that there was a place in the United States – Minnesota? – that had never repealed its earlier-established Ugly Laws: people deemed so unattractive as to cause distress to others were not allowed on the streets. This still holds, she believed. You’d be in your rights, in Minnesota, to have charged a person with cerebral palsy or facial port-wine birthmarks, for cluttering the public thoroughfares and forcing you to notice them. Perhaps even those with a crooked eye or a gammy leg were suspect. People who were quite stupid were OK, so long as they were personable. Good luck to them; very thick folk were despised enough by the bright, Marcia thought.

And what is intelligence, in any case? Not the learning of facts and storing them neatly in your head. Such people are so often the most dimwitted: unaware of the possibilities in front of their very eyes. She remembered once in a restaurant with a group of people where a medico, to his cost, at the dessert stage, gave Celia an unsolicited explanation of the meaning of tira mi su. Celia had remarked, tucking into the delectable pudding, that yes, she spoke fluent Italian and would explain about tonsillectomies to him later on.

She smiled to herself, lying in bed, thinking of old Cele. So uncompromising on the one hand, so tender and oversensitive on the other. Well, at least and at last they had met up again. She’d call Celia soon and suggest a long walk around the inner city, arm in arm like sisters, as in the old days.

It would have been easy to have fallen in love with Celia and she didn’t know why she hadn’t, thinking of that rapturous look on her friend’s face when they listened to Puccini together. That is the very moment when we do fall in love, and perhaps the fact that Marcia remembered it so vividly proved that she had indeed always loved her friend, more than sexually. Sex had become irrelevant, and once long ago she never thought she’d think that! What remains, what one recalls, was the instant of knowing a moment like that: someone turning her head, or reaching forward to help someone – and we were lost again.

Outside the window, as she proceeded to drag herself out of bed, a young lad suddenly cried out: ‘It’s not fair!’ – one of humankind’s two principal plaints, the other being ‘You don’t love me anymore!’ As for the latter she now knows that when love ends one goes down and through one plateau, and then another. She knows how it is, could write one of those smug little do-it-yourself books on Grief and Loss – several people already have. First there is the trough of misery where you have to hose down your ever-rising hope that one day things will be good again; following this is the not quite so bleak but still self-pitying period, the Why? stage. But then it occurs that one no longer has to listen to the whining reproaches of others. Or witness questionable personal habits. And eventually, in Marcia’s scheme, comes resignation, overwhelming relief and gradual rearrangement of the life that’s left.

Some days later, early in the morning, Marcia gave her friend the news. Celia was asleep when the phone rang.

‘Hello?’ Celia’s voice was furry and deep.

It was Marcia. The bumpity-bump buoyancy of her talk, up and down a scale with the ease of an actor. And of someone who has been up for some time. Sorry to wake you up at this ungodly hour on a weekend, Cele dear. You can’t be taught this kind of speech skill, thought Celia sleepily but wallowing in the pleasure of it.

But what was this unfurling on the other end? Within seconds she was listening in dread, like a character in a classic suspense film, as though there was a fiend at the end of the line. And it was a fiend, via Marcia, though uttering worse than obscenities.

‘Thought I’d get you early, darling.’ Her friend now wearing her brisk voice. ‘To let you know it is quite serious apparently. I’ve had the tests done as I told you, and as the doctor feared, they are positive.’

‘The doctor feared – quite serious?’ scrambling around for her wits. ‘Hang on. You …’

‘Well, I feared too, more than he did of course,’ and the trace of that indrawn light laugh, but just a trace. The pause that followed seemed endless, and at the same time brief.

‘Oh Marse, oh Marcia, dear. Don’t die on me.’ There, it was out.

‘I have to, sweetie.’

This is the worst thing about mortality. The selfish living who need to be consoled by the moribund, to be buoyed with phrases.

‘I’m just ringing James, no one else. Thought I’d get it over with early before you can object too much.’

‘But Marcia, I want to see you!’

‘You can see me, whenever you want to.’ She even sounded amused.

Then they both hung up, each with her own concerns. Celia lay back and stared at her white ceiling that had witnessed not a few tears and fears. And there was her friend, being quite British about it, calling her when she hadn’t had time to arise from slumber, making the news-breaking even worse for the recipient, easier for the caller. Celia looked out of the bedroom window at a sullen sky, gathering its forces for a horrible day.

Celia stood at the foot of the bed and thought that there was nothing but people having done with it lately. ‘What are you doing there, smiling?’ she said accusingly to the patient.

‘What one does. Laying past ghosts, paying my dues.’ Marcia holding her old friend’s gaze.

Could it be possible that Marcia had brought this on herself, the hastening of her own death by an act of will? She had never liked to keep people waiting. Celia wanted to know exactly what she was feeling and Marcia simply looked at her because the energy it would take to tell her was no longer there. If she could, she’d tell her that it was a weariness of the kind that could only have come out of Hamlet. She would tell her that it was a mind-registering pain that was never obliterated and barely relieved by injections of morphine that numbed her into a worse state of nausea and darkness peppered by shadows, by malodorous and swift-moving spirits that meant she was hallucinating, or had in fact already gone to Hades along with the worst beings on earth, and surely she hadn’t merited such an end, her dull mind tried to reason?

Marcia opened her eyes and gave the remnant of that terrific smile of hers. Celia, gratitude rushing through her, moved forward but Marcia murmured, not wanting to be embraced:

‘No darling, please don’t come near. Not the time. I don’t think I smell very nice.’ Dear God, dear Celia, in the old days clumping around saying she had no one to love, too dense to see that Marcia couldn’t have loved anyone more, even though they never touched, other than in friendship. She sighed. With an effort she said, ‘Let’s talk of fine and funny things, darling. It’s too easy to be sad.’ Then lapsed into silence while Celia was allowed to at least hold her hand.

But Celia can only feel spine-chilling sorrow as she gazes upon the sheet that covers her friend’s body, which she knows is distended all over like a pregnancy gone wrong, which indeed had occurred, once, many years ago. That was bumbling Mickey, not taking enough care of her. Celia had collected her from the clinic and taken her home as they both wept. ‘I think it’s murder, I don’t care what they say,’ said Marcia, and Celia had made her a cup of tea, knelt at her feet like the Magdalene. Celia had soaked Marcia’s feet in warm water and cut her toenails, tender ministrations, because her friend at that time was unable to bend down to attend to it herself.

Marcia’s shoulders rose with the effort of trying to say something. When had the best times been? James’s parties: his inspiration in giving the music his all and their heartfelt response, faces shining – the quite elderly woman one year with, unforeseen, the strong, sweet voice of an angel. And what else? Italy of course, and not for the trumpet player: did Celia have the same memories of that holiday as she did? Summer flowers: poppies and broom and others whose names she didn’t know, and the country smells, raw, organic and fresh. Sandrina’s dog pattering up to meet the strangers – no guard dog this – as if he’d been sent with a message but when he reached them couldn’t remember what it was but wagged his tail just the same.

Marcia standing at the window, already dressed, was looking out onto the Calabrian landscape, misty with summer rain, the weather finally cooling. ‘It’s a beautiful cold morning,’ she’d said to Celia, murmuring it almost to herself, words of approbation for the mystery of life, the unfolding day.

She looked up, now. ‘The bank in Rome,’ she murmured. Celia smiled nodded, then grinned.

‘That’s more like it,’ said Marcia, closing her eyes.

They had tried entering a bank which must have been the first in the land, in the world! with the latest top tech security installations. The lackadaisical guard roused himself from leaning on the wall outside and sauntered over to them, amiable enough, and showed them how to work the door to enter the bank. Once inside, there was another narrow revolving door which issued mechanical farting noises along with a red light which also bleeped, telling them they didn’t have access. Yet there were people inside, making transactions with staff. The guard who had taken up his position on the pavement opposite, propping up a low wall, spotted their dilemma after their third attempt. He re-entered the bank and pointed to the small safes with keys where they were meant to stow their bags and valuables (and guns and dynamite) before gaining entry to the inner sanctum. Thankfully they laughed their gratitude.

After divesting themselves of potential danger to the bank, they tumbled finally through the revolving door and into the marble spaces of the bank proper and began an hour of negotiation with the teller. Strictly speaking, the officer at the Banca del Popolo explained to them, these travellers’ cheques were meant to be cashed in at an exchange, at a cambio, rather than at this bank. Just the same, they were prepared to help, he added miserably.

Once the calculation was accomplished Marcia was given her lire. But it was only half of the money she needed and she now politely tendered the other half, which was in fact cash owing to Celia, from Marcia and Mickey, brought from England, The sorrowful teller hadn’t realised there would be two lots to be done, but he sighed and went through the whole process again. Celia gave it a cursory look and saw that it was wrong; it was mistakenly short-changed. She pointed it out to them and the teller looked at the money and the receipt with such consternation that the error must have been genuine. At this point Celia was all for giving up: ‘Let’s go, it’s not really right but I don’t mind; let’s get out of here,’ but Marcia calmly persisted, saying ‘No, it’s not right; they’ve given us considerably too little,’ and with no Italian at all Marcia smiled and smiled and shook her head charmingly at the teller and pointed to the figures he’d done correctly for herself, and those for her second transaction. The mistake was self-evident.

Had there ever been in the Western world so many conversations between tellers and supervisors, so many explanations, gesticulations, remonstrations, in order to get these very few hundreds of dollars changed? But eventually it was accomplished and they were able to quit the bank by reversing their entering procedure and stumbling out, bent over laughing, into the sunlight.

They each respectively saw now scenes like this, the minutiae of their lives which are, after all, the important bits: the merry times, small mercies that we recall at the end of youth, the tiny manageable pieces. Marcia tried to smile and Celia’s eyes glistened, clasping her friend’s hand, which had the texture of paper. If only she knew how much this wrings me out, thought Marcia, even smiling, holding Celia’s gaze. She finally looked away, went into a reverie that placed her in the Italian countryside where the birds do more than whistle and tweet; she and Celia had finally heard the birdsong, the fabled nightingale that was real after all, doing something in three-quarter time, showing off its considerable repertoire.

And Celia, also still in Italy in her mind, registered the young Marcia – a travelling companion par excellence for the volatile Celia – untroubled by anyone else, unemphatic, living inside herself, even when surrounded by people. Marcia, reading a book in a still attitude, attending to her smalls or just sitting in the sunshine, was wholly herself. At night on that holiday they sat like any two spinsters, reading their books companionably. Computers were in early stages, there was no television, no radio, no traffic noise, no telephone. They were turned in upon their own resources of conversation and reading and walking. It was the most unforced and memorable holiday Celia had ever known.

The dwelling that was Sandrina’s house, where they stayed before moving into the village, was large and comfortable, but the road to it was made of clay, more of a wide pathway than a road, with ruts and potholes. They would visit Sandrina’s by bus from the village every so often. The nearest farm just a couple of kilometres away had chooks and white cows and their dog. Whenever the foreign women passed by, the owners gave a brief salute of good morning and went about their tasks, country style. The day had its rhythms and they had to be met. A neighbouring child with her cat and the dog all paid their respects each day.

But Marcia is by now going back further than Italy. What more can we ever expect of life than love, when you’re working like a demon and thinking you’re getting somewhere? There is a space inside her – is it in her head or in her soul? – where she is in momentary relief from pain, to the extent that she can think quite clearly. It must be just at that moment when the morphine takes effect, verging on the delicious. So she is able to be curious for a second or two as to when she’ll slip away. Oh death, where is thy sting? Grave where is thy victory? Was it Alexander Pope or Saint Paul who said that? Possibly both. But she gets their drift. Too many of us see him as the enemy, the reaper in black with his sickle so sharp … well, so deadly. She is inclined to see him now as sensible poets did, e.g. Christina Rosetti: Sweet life, but sweeter death that passeth by. One should think of the advantages: No more listening to newsreaders putting stress on the wrong syllable; no more having to hear people slurping from bottles of water in the cinema; no more being woken up by the leaf-blower nearby – aural irritations, all. On the other hand, no more watching Celia’s strict demeanour turning into a smile again, no more talking and drinking red wine with her, and here comes the blackness, the dark of a London theatre and the lights are down at the end of the play. Then they came up again and she, the star for once, emerges from behind the curtain, to step downstage. Take another bow, make it gracious, oh do, but so exhausted she can barely smile at the audience who are now on their feet applauding. Well for heaven’s sake, what’s come over them: she’s done better than that before without this fuss. She hardly feels able to acknowledge it, but does another slow deep bow, then steps aside to hold out a welcoming arm for support cast to join her.

The chapel was too small. Mrs Thompson came, invited or not, and got the last seat in the back row. Some students and an older woman – perhaps a parent – came late, breathlessly, and the woman went to sit on the floor. James immediately got to his feet and offered his seat. He didn’t even know why he was here when all these younger people were dying. Luke came too, though no one knew who he was. He arrived late, having set off early but lost his way and he stood with his back to the wall, with others. A chap who looked remarkably like Mickey, though of course it couldn’t have been, arrived in motley as though he were on his way to the circus – patched multi-coloured pants and his hair spiky and bleached white. Was he at the wrong funeral? He sat with his head bowed. Do people attend funerals looking like that because they’re being defiant? Celia asked James later. She knew that Marcia would have said that they came like that because they thought they looked splendid, and you had to admit, he did. Someone in a wheelchair she had never seen before came. Bouncy music that sounded like Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head came through the system. James moved about on his chair and scratched his neck at this, but Marcia would have approved, indeed it was she who’d staged it ah-ah-ah: a secular ceremony. Humanity was at the heart of it, represented by the best in humankind with poetry, music and a few lofty aspirations, but no god-bothering.

Throughout, Celia stood up and sat down and sang and wept and wondered why she was so well prepared for the mundane yet so ill prepared for the predictable, which she should have learned by now were unavoidable: a bout of illness, and of course, death.

You mustn’t always be looking for things to be sad about, Celia love, Marcia would say. Think of James’s parties, before they got out of step.