The first call of the New Year was from Dave to tell Nick that their dad’s sister, Auntie Pat, had died. Nick declined to go to the funeral. Dave called him again a month later, in February, at work.
‘All right, mate.’
‘All right, Dave.’
‘Know any good hymns?’
‘Good hymns? What for?’
‘For a funeral.’
‘What, Auntie Pat’s? I thought that was done and dusted, so to speak.’
‘No, Dad’s.’
After a moment’s silence, Dave broke out into a throaty chuckle. ‘He’s what you call a hymn short of a funeral service, our dad.’
Ken had become obsessed with death since Pat’s passing, he said. Talk about maudlin! He’d got himself a book on Victorian services of order and he wanted the whole shebang. He’d called them up at home and got Dave’s daughter, Emily, to look through her recorder book for school assemblies and play through this hymn and that hymn, and then he’d said, ‘No, that’s not the one,’ and put the phone down. He’d had Dave’s son, Matt, print off from the Internet some sort of order for non-intervention. He was in and out of the undertakers on Norman Road, leafing through funeral plans and making a nuisance of himself.
‘Get this, right, he had a bit of maroon-coloured nylon ruffle with him in his coat pocket the other day and he asked Marina what she thought of it. It was only flaming coffin lining.’
‘Silly old sod.’
He seemed to have developed a crush on the funeral director on Norman Road, Dave said. ‘A woman.’
‘That’s something.’
‘Keeps on about her being a fine woman and such a shame he’s met her so late in life. I think he’s hoping for a discount or something. He’s gone and offered her his services.’
‘Christ. Has he got anything left to offer?’
‘Helping out, working at the undertakers as a volunteer. Well, he’s more or less retired from the business, thank Christ. Got no interest in it any more. Says property’s usury, or something. I don’t know. He likes his Bible these days.’ He was going to church of a Sunday and talking a storm about the big man in the sky, but in truth, as Dave put it, Ken was clueless. He was like a man in a bar trying to order something he’d had as a child by explaining how it tasted. ‘Oy, Nick, right, to him, right, God, it’s like Dandelion and Burdock or something.’
He’d really gone downhill lately, Dave said. ‘Health-wise, I mean. He’s always been a bit bloody nutty, innie? But he’s frail with it now. ’
He’d had prostate cancer the year before, and he had the beginnings of Parkinson’s now and didn’t drive. Dave didn’t like to ask, but he thought their father was probably having a bit of trouble with the waterworks too.
He came to the point, in his way.
‘Look, you know, I mean, I know you’re going to say no, and you don’t have to and, I mean, why should you, know what I mean? If I was you, I wouldn’t, and you could say years have passed – too many, maybe – but, you see, well, I dunno . . .’
‘What?’
Would Nick consider a get-together?
‘I don’t think so, mate.’
Nick put him off, but Dave began to call every week and the calls become more and more burdened.
‘All right?’
‘Yes. You?’
‘Yup. All right.’
‘So, what’s going on?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Right.’
‘Busy?’
‘Yup. You?’
‘So-so.’ Pause.
‘Well, good talking to you.’
‘You too.’
‘Bye then.’
‘Yup. Bye, mate.’
This was how Dave prevailed upon his elder brother and the pall of the silences spoke more to Nick’s heart than anything Dave could say.
Astrid was as much prurient as compassionate when it came to Nick’s family. Very quickly, perhaps even before she’d thought it through, an outfit came to mind. She reasoned, pussy-bow blouse in mind, that they were so happy, nothing could touch them. You should make peace with your past, she said. After all, you’ve come home, haven’t you?
Her eyes sparkled.
Women, he’d said to himself, were the most mysterious of mates. Where a man wants to know what’s going to happen next, a woman wants to know what it means.