My mother’s letter has me chasing thoughts round my head like a coked-up hamster on a wheel, but I do eventually doze off into semi-sleep for a couple of hours, before waking, dry-mouthed and panicky, just after five. I decide to make a virtue of the early start and catch the first train to London, thus avoiding Annie and whatever emotional extravagance she may produce at the news of her grandmother’s death.
I shower and conscientiously eat a bowl of cornflakes; I drink tea rather than my usual coffee, sensing that a caffeine rush might just undo me. Then I dither lengthily and ridiculously over what to wear. It has been hard enough finding the right clothes during this unsummery summer, but factor in some concession to mourning wear, a visit to an unknown solicitor and the likelihood of a tramp round a muddy graveyard and the problem seems, to my befuddled mind, insoluble. I somehow get hooked on the idea that a skirt is called for but I need flat shoes for the graveyard and the skirt/flat shoes combo looks frumpy in the extreme. And, besides, it has settled in to rain again and I would end up spending the day with folds of wet cloth flapping round my legs. So trousers it is, which means sewing up the hem of my black linen ones, but once that’s done, and I’ve got my grey jacket on, I decide that will do. My outfit lacks the éclat I usually go for, with varying degrees of success, but dreariness is, perhaps, what is called for now. I depart, leaving the chaos of discarded clothes for later.
I cycle to the station, stopping for cash at the bank cashpoint in the high street, and get myself onto a seven fifteen train. I am outraged to find that this hour on a Saturday doesn’t qualify as off-peak but I have no heart for making a scene. I buy myself a Guardian but can’t concentrate, even on the crossword. I wish I’d bought a cup of coffee to take on the train with me.
I lean back and close my eyes and remember suddenly that yesterday evening I had a theory about the murders of Karen and Lara Brody. Well, theory is too strong a word; I had a glimmer, a thought lurking in the outer shadows of my mind that I was reaching for and I had to go home to think clearly and pin it down, but home turned out to be no place for thought, clear or otherwise. For this, the absconding from rehearsal, the dereliction of duty, I was sacked, wasn’t I? I had completely forgotten all this. I am on a train to London on the day of the dress rehearsal without even thinking that my sacking has turned out to be timely, leaving me free for whatever weirdness I’m about to encounter today. I am shaken. This is not the woman I am. I don’t forget things. I seem to have lost myself and I want myself back.
In pursuit of finding myself, I decide to text David. I have not forgotten my vow not to communicate but since I’m not going to catch hold of yesterday’s elusive thought any time soon, I had better pass it on to him and see what he can do with it.
Had a thought about the murders, I type, but lost it due to circumstances beyond my control. Involves shoes, pronouns and idiolect, with something about Odysseus, I think. Will try to think further. Meanwhile, find out the name of Karen’s sister’s boyfriend. G
At St Pancras, I buy a modest latte and an apricot croissant and sit watching people as they come off their suburban and provincial trains ready for a day of excitement in the capital. Do I look as though I’m one of them? I rather hope so. I hope, at least, that I don’t look as bewildered and disoriented and, frankly, crazy as I feel.
When I get out of the tube at New Cross, I ring Margaret, awarding myself a small nod of approbation for having her number stored in my phone. She sounds a bit bleary and I realise that it is still quite early, so I decide to walk the twenty minutes to the flats and give her some time. She opens the door to enfold me in a plump, spongy hug. ‘Such a lovely lady, she was,’ she says. ‘Such a lovely lady.’ I hug her back, envying her uncomplicated grief.
She gives me a cup of coffee – ‘Decaffeinated all right?’ – and goes through the events of the previous afternoon, such as they are. ‘Just sitting in her chair, she was. Quite peaceful. So like her, isn’t it? No bother. Bless her.’ I ask the question I have to ask but feel absurd asking.
‘So, where is she now, Margaret?’
‘Oh, not over there, bless you,’ she says. ‘The ambulance took her.’
‘So she’ll be at the hospital?’
‘I suppose so, love.’
‘Which one?’
‘Well, Queen Elizabeth, I suppose.’
‘Right.’ I feel more helpless than I remember feeling ever.
She is looking at me, head on one side, as though she has only just really noticed me. ‘You’ll need an undertaker, Gina,’ she says gently.
‘Yes. Yes, I will. And then there’s the solicitor – I hope he’s there on a Saturday – and the funeral. A church funeral, would you believe? And letting everyone know. And then the plot in the churchyard and – did you know about that?’
‘About what, dear?’
‘About Christopher?’
‘Christopher?’
Relief of a sort; not a secret kept just from me then.
‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
She gives me that examining look again. ‘I don’t want to butt in,’ she says, ‘but would you like me to find an undertaker for you? Once you get that settled, you know, they’ll do a lot of the work for you.’
‘Would you?’ Gratitude brings tears to my eyes. What is the matter with me? I’m a woman who is equal to anything, aren’t I? How come organising a funeral seems such a mountainous task?
‘You leave it to me,’ she says. ‘You look peaky, and no wonder. I’d offer you a brandy but it’s a bit early for that, isn’t it?’
It is, and it’s the last thing I need. The cotton wool in my head needs no encouragement to expand.
‘It’s nearly ten now,’ she says. ‘You go off and see the solicitors. You know where to find them, do you?’
‘I do.’ My self-esteem picks itself an inch or two off the floor. I have googled Hart and Lyman and I have an address and a map. I give her another hug and go across the hallway to my mother’s flat.
There is an absence, of course, but what actually hits me more is how scruffy the place has become. Without my mother to focus on I see what I have missed before: the patch of carpet worn bare in front of her chair, the chipped paint on the doors where her stick has hit, a strip light hanging by its flex in the kitchen, a missing handle on a chest of drawers. And I can hear her voice, Not worth replacing it at my age. I haven’t really come to see the place; it’s her address book I’m after. Tomorrow I shall have to start letting people know. I find it in the drawer where the unopened bills were tucked away. Farewell cruel world, I think.
Outside I look at the map, decide that I’m not, after all, up to navigating my way to the solicitors and walk back towards New Cross, where I find a taxi and am dropped outside a small, discreet slip of a house, squeezed between strident shop fronts like a prim, elderly spinster at a rather brash party. It takes a while for the door to be answered and I realise that I should have phoned ahead. When I announce my business, the receptionist is pleasant enough, however, and sits me in a pale green waiting room with copies of Country Life. In Lewisham? Really?
After a while, a young man comes in, shakes my hand, introduces himself as Roger Aggleton, and takes me into his office. I realise at this point that I have been harbouring a completely inappropriate picture of my mother’s solicitor. Too much literature again. Without really thinking about it, I have been picturing the old family solicitor so beloved of golden age crime novels: the silver-haired, plummy-voiced gentleman who has known the deceased since she was a girl – possibly carried a torch for her at one time – and will now give wise and fatherly advice to me. This is stupid, of course. My mother didn’t have a solicitor looking after her affairs; she didn’t have affairs. She sold a house and bought a flat, and she made a will. That was it. Roger Aggleton clearly never met her and knows nothing about her.
He has the will in front of him, but instead of reading it out in time-honoured fashion he pushes it across the desk to me. Maybe this is because there is only me; it requires the gathering of eager would-be heirs to justify the solemn reading aloud, I suppose. I pick it up and scan it. No surprises in the first paragraph: five thousand each to Ellie and Annie, and five thousand to be kept in trust for Freda. Nothing for Nico, but then the date is 2008. The residue goes to me – just the flat, I imagine, once the girls have their legacies. But it’s the next bit, of course, that I’m really interested in:
Instructions for my funeral: I wish to be buried in the plot reserved in St Olave’s churchyard beside my son, Christopher. I have no views on the nature of my funeral.
The tone is instantly recognisable and the content unenlightening; I knew Christopher was her son, didn’t I?
‘What happens now?’ I ask Roger Aggleton.
‘There will be a delay until we get probate, but your mother’s estate seems to be very straightforward, so that shouldn’t take long.’
‘Have you any idea where St Olave’s Church is?’
‘I haven’t.’ He flushes slightly. ‘I don’t live round here, and I don’t really do churches.’
‘Me neither,’ I say.
The receptionist, Claire, tells me where St Olave’s is, however, and kindly calls a cab to take me there. Solid and rather squat, it stands marooned on an island, with roads running all round it. I walk through the churchyard, looking to left and right, and realise that it will take me forever to find this grave without help. I look into the church in search of someone who looks as if they belong. A verger? A churchwarden? The extent of my ignorance embarrasses me. Anyway, the place is empty. A July Saturday and no wedding? Well, its position hardly makes this a prime venue, I suppose.
Outside, on the large notice board that declares this to be St Olave’s Church, I find the vicar’s phone number. I hesitate, but if I’m going to ask him to conduct the funeral I’d better get onto it, hadn’t I? The phone rings and rings and I imagine it trilling away in a cavernous vicarage somewhere. Eventually, I get a message to say that my call is being transferred, a voice answers, and I explain my mission. ‘So it’s the funeral,’ I sum up, ‘but I would also like to see this grave, which I knew nothing about and don’t know how to find.’
‘We keep a plan of the graves in the vestry,’ he says, and his voice is young but has the appropriate warmth for a vicar. Good casting, I think. ‘Our verger’s laid up with a back problem, otherwise he could show you. You’re up from Kent, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Give me five minutes and I’ll come over.’
‘Oh that’s r—’
‘No problem.’ And he’s gone.
Five minutes later a motorbike roars up the path to the church door and Peter Michaels, vicar of St Olave’s, jumps off and removes his helmet to reveal a buzz cut and bright blue eyes in a thirty-something face. No clerical garb, not even a dog collar, I notice. Perhaps arranging this funeral will be less excruciating than I feared. He shakes my hand, dashes into the church, emerges with a rolled document and leads me round to the back. He moves at speed and I have trouble keeping up with him, weaving among the graves, even with my sensible shoes on. He is wearing trainers, I notice, which reminds me of something and makes me wonder whether David has read my text yet.
Peter Michaels stops eventually, in a far corner, near a nicely ancient bit of mossy wall, and unrolls his plan. He glances around, moves a bit along the wall and stops. ‘Here we are,’ he says.
I join him and am furious to find that my heart is thumping. I look down and there it is, a small gravestone with a simple message:
In loving memory of Christopher James Sidwell
b. 6th May 1949 d. 17th January 1950
‘Grief fills the room up of my absent child’
I stand in the cold drizzle with hot tears running down my face. The quote must have been my father’s choice. It’s from King John and he was the Shakespeare buff, not my mother, who had no time for fiction of any kind. 1949. I had a brother born in 1949 – a baby boomer, really. Aeons away, it seems to me, from my birth in heady 1962. Twenty-six my mother would have been, newly qualified and newly married, ready for her grown-up life.
I look at Peter Michaels, making an attempt to wipe off the worst of the tears, noticing that some have dripped down to make stains on my pale grey jacket. ‘Where will she go?’ I ask.
He squints at the map. ‘Just here,’ he says, indicating a patch to the left of the headstone. ‘Your father is here, you see.’
And I do see, to the right of the headstone, an urn and a plaque:
Harold James Sidwell
15.11.17 – 4.8.74
In loving memory
No quote for him, then, though if she had asked me I probably could have come up with one. I was twelve, after all, and had read quite a lot. Did I know he was here? I don’t think so. I remember the crematorium, the coffin sliding behind the curtain, my mother’s hand on my arm, but I don’t remember what happened after that. I suppose my mother came here alone to place the ashes and commune with Christopher.
‘Would you like me to leave you alone?’ Peter Michaels asks.
‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s all I need to see.’ In spite of the giveaway tears, I am aiming for bright and businesslike, and I turn briskly away to accompany him back to his bike. ‘I suppose there’s plenty of room in your church?’ I ask as we go. ‘She was a GP locally and I think there’ll be quite a turnout.’
‘Oh, yes, she’s quite a monster,’ he says. ‘The church, I mean,’ he adds as he sees my startled face. ‘Have you any idea of the day you would like?’
‘Soon,’ I say. I have thought about this. ‘My daughter will be up in Edinburgh but she’ll be back on Thursday. Would Friday be possible?’
We go into the church and while he goes to check the diary I take in its chilly grandeur. Victorian, designed to impress and intimidate, I think. God, Mother, what have you got me into here? He returns, we agree on Friday afternoon, he shakes my hand in both of his, and I watch him roar away. I remember an Indian friend saying to me once, ‘Whenever I meet an only child, I always think, Who will walk beside you behind your parents’ coffins?’ Well, Ellie and Annie will be with me won’t they? I might have expected David to be there too, but not now. Too bad. And, anyway, do I really have to walk behind the coffin? Does it have to be that theatrical? I have led a sheltered life. I’ve reached the age of fifty without having to think about funerals. Now I’m going to have to think fast, and this bit, at least, I shall have to do on my own.
I realise, standing outside the church door, that I am getting very wet. The rain didn’t seem heavy enough to warrant getting my umbrella out but it is persistent and penetrating and I’m beginning to feel clammy inside my jacket. I go into the porch and fish my mother’s address book out of my bag. Dawn is the person I’m looking for; Dawn might just be able to tell me about Christopher. She is the daughter of Betty, who was my mother’s receptionist for years. Betty is dead but she, if anyone, was close to my mother. I can’t remember Dawn’s surname but I find it eventually – Reilly, so it takes a while – and I call her.
‘Where are you?’ she asks when I broach my business with her. ’Oh God, Alcatraz,’ she says when I tell her. ‘There’s a café. Turkish. Down the road to your right if you’re standing at the church gate. I can meet you there in fifteen minutes.’
It takes me a while to negotiate my way across the roads, but I find the café and cheer up at its robust aromas of coffee and cardamom. I’m ready for serious caffeine now and a good dose of carbohydrate, so I order a Turkish coffee and a piece of baklava. The café’s proprietor seems to smile at me with particular kindness and I wonder if he has spotted the tear stains on my jacket (I hope the rain has dealt with my face). I have always depended on the kindness of strangers, comes to mind as I lean back in my chair, close my eyes and wait for my order. I’m no Blanche DuBois and I don’t solicit or elicit kindness as a general rule but strangers have been kind to me this morning: Claire at the solicitors’, Peter Michaels, this smiley man with the black moustache. Not to mention Margaret and Dawn, having me intrude on their Saturday morning, willing to help. I have to battle with the idea that all this kindness comes because I seem to be pathetic. It occurs to me that self-sufficiency is a kind of selfishness; it deprives other people of the opportunity to exercise the thoroughly desirable human instinct to be kind. I consider at least forty years spent marching through life, coping, and think how much thwarted kindness I have trampled underfoot.
My coffee and baklava come, and so does Dawn. She gives me a hug and says she’s so sorry about my mum. She is a few years older than me, rather muscly and leather-skinned. She runs marathons for charity, I know, and spends her summer holidays climbing mountains. She orders a mint tea and gets straight to the point. ‘Your mum really never told you about the baby?’ she asks.
‘Not a whisper. I had no idea. Did she talk to you about him?’
‘Not to me. To Mum. She called my mum when it happened – when she found him.’
She looks at me as though she expects me to know what she’s talking about. I stare back, dumb.
‘It was a cot death,’ she says, ‘only I’m not sure they called it that then. She went to pick him up from a nap and he wasn’t breathing. She called an ambulance, tried to revive him and rang my mum, who lived round the corner. By the time Mum arrived the ambulance was there but she wouldn’t let go of him. Just kept trying to get him to breathe. Mum said it was the most dreadful thing she’s ever seen. And she spent the whole of the war in Lewisham, so she’d seen a few things.’
‘And there were no more children, until me?’
‘No.’
‘Was that deliberate, do you know? Or did it just not happen?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure that Mum knew that. She had a sort of nervous breakdown afterwards, your mum, I think. Didn’t work for a while. Then she went back and just poured everything into her work, Mum said.’
‘Well, that explains some things,’ I say. I take a swig of my coffee, like a dose of medicine, but I can’t face the baklava now. I offer it to Dawn, who shudders her rejection. We finish our drinks without saying much more. Dawn offers to get the jungle drums going about the funeral and gives me a lift to New Cross Station. We part with another hug.
As I go onto the concourse to look for the next train to St Pancras, my phone cheeps with an incoming text.
How did you know about Leanne’s boyfriend? it asks.
Elementary … I reply.
My phone rings. ‘Where are you?’ David asks. ‘You sound as though you’re in a station.’
‘That’s because I’m in a station.’
‘Why? Where? Aren’t you supposed to be doing your thing at the abbey?’
‘Actually not. Long story. I’m at New Cross.’
‘Going where?’
‘Coming home.’
‘Wait there. I’ll drive you home. Give me twenty minutes.’
‘Where the hell are you, then?’
‘I’ve been at Wormwood Scrubs.’
‘Lovely.’
‘If I drive you home we can talk.’
‘We can?’
‘Yes. This theory of yours.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Yes, that. What did you think I meant?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’