Authors: Catrin Collier
He found himself wondering, not for the first time, why people couldn’t die during respectable daylight hours, say between eight in the morning and six in the evening.
‘She was.’ Phyllis dried her tears and set about spooning pungent black tea-leaves from Rhiannon’s old tin caddy into the pot.
‘Now, about the funeral ...’ He removed a notebook covered in shiny black cloth from his pocket and licked the lead on the pencil that had been tucked into its spine.
Phyllis stared at the book. She had only ever seen red notebooks before. Even the manager of the White Palace had carried a red one. She wondered if black ones were produced specially for undertakers.
‘ ... How many cars besides the hearse?’
‘Just one,’ she answered instantly and decisively, much to Trevor and Charlie’s admiration.
‘One mourners’ car. That’s all? You sure?’
‘There’s no family, only me. Rhiannon had no one.’ Phyllis picked up the boiling kettle and poured water into the brown china teapot.
‘But there’ll be friends and neighbours,’ Fred urged softly.
‘Who’ll make their own way to Glyntaff.’ Trevor had taken to calling Fred in on his final visit to a patient, to ensure that none of Fred’s subtle pressure was exerted on families at a time when they were least able to cope with it.
The undertaker debated whether or not to press the point, and decided against it. Jones & Sons might be the biggest undertakers in town, but they weren’t the only ones. ‘I’ll put you down for a hearse and one car. Grave?’
‘She wants ... wanted,’ Phyllis corrected herself sharply as she handed out filled teacups, ‘to be buried with her husband and her son. It is a grave for three. Rhiannon bought the plot in Glyntaff cemetery when they were killed in the pit accident.’
‘I’ll need the grave number.’ He looked up from his notebook.
Phyllis pulled out a bundle of papers neatly tied with black satin. ‘These are the grave papers.’
He squinted at them and took down the number. ‘There’ll still be costs, you know,’ he sniffed.
Russian Charlie had made the decision that a standard pine coffin with wooden furniture would do without even consulting Phyllis, although heaven only knew where he fitted into the household. And with only one car and a hearse, and no new plot, pickings were going to be slim –very slim indeed. The next thing they’d be saying was they wanted to cut back on flowers. ‘The grave has to be opened so you’ll still have to pay for the gravediggers’ time. Twice. Once to open, and once to close the plot. I take it there will be a new engraving to be put on the headstone?’
‘Only the date of death. Rhiannon put her name, date of birth and "beloved wife of’ on the grave when her husband died. How much will it all come to, Mr Jones?"
‘Well it seems that you want a simple funeral, but even so, all things considered you won’t get much change out of thirty pounds.’
‘That will be fine, Mr Jones.’ Phyllis breathed a sigh of relief. Rhiannon’s insurance would come to exactly that sum, and in addition she had taken a penny a week policy out on her landlady’s life which would pay her five pounds. More than enough for flowers and black mourning clothes for herself and her son and extra tea and cake for the mourners.
‘The insurance will cover all the costs?’ the undertaker asked prudently,
‘It will. Please go ahead and make the arrangements.’
Trevor handed Phyllis his empty cup. ‘Well if you’ll excuse me I must be going. There’s a case of bronchitis I promised to visit in Penycoedcae last thing tonight. But I can call in again on my way down the hill.’
‘There’s no need, Dr Lewis,’ Phyllis said as she left her chair.
‘Then I’ll be back in the morning.’
‘Thank you for everything you did for Rhiannon, Dr Lewis, and thank you for coming out so late.’
‘If it wasn’t for the sad circumstances I’d say it was always a pleasure to visit this house.’ He gripped Phyllis’s hand firmly. ‘Remember, if you need me for anything, just send. Any time, day or night.’
‘I must be off too.’ Fred scribbled a final line in his notebook and snapped it shut.
Charlie walked both men to the door. Trevor hung back for a moment to hand Charlie a small packet when the undertaker was outside and out of earshot.
‘She’ll probably insist on sitting up all night. If you stir this into her tea, she’ll sleep. Don’t worry, she won’t taste it, and there’s no after-effects.’
Charlie pocketed the envelope.
‘Strange set-up back there,’ Fred commented as Trevor walked past his hearse on the way to his car.
‘In what way?’ Trevor asked warily.
‘Russian Charlie being there. You think he fathered her bastard?’
‘I have no idea, Mr Jones,’ Trevor replied frostily.
‘Could be. She’s a bit long in the tooth and thin in the face, but I’ll say this much for her, she’s not a bad-looking woman considering her age.’
Charlie walked back into the silent house and glanced into the parlour. Phyllis was sitting on one of the high-backed, heavily carved, Rexine-covered chairs. Bethan was standing behind her. The main light had been switched off, the thick green plush curtains were drawn, but the women had lit two red candles that had stood in Rhiannon’s brass candlesticks on her mantelpiece for years; possibly saved for this very night.
They had placed them on a small octagonal table at the head of the coffin. The flames flickered, creating shadows that danced and bowed in every corner of the room, lending the scene the sepia and gold effect of a Rembrandt.
Charlie stood and watched for a moment. Bethan was holding Phyllis’s hand, but the older woman had clearly withdrawn into a world of private grief.
In the kitchen the pot of tea was still warm, and Charlie poured out three cups. Stirring the powder Trevor had given him into one, he carried it into the parlour.
‘Thank you. Both of you.’ Emerging from her misery Phyllis took the cup Charlie handed her and wrapped her freezing fingers round it. A fire hadn’t been lit in the parlour since the day of Rhiannon’s husband’s funeral. It was a perfect temperature for corpses but uncomfortable for the living. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you,’ Phyllis continued.
‘You would have managed.’ Bethan took her cup from Charlie. ‘People always do when they have no choice.’
‘It’s easier when you have someone to help.’
‘There’s nothing more you can do tonight. Why don’t you go to bed and try to get some sleep while you can?’ Bethan suggested.
‘I don’t think I could sleep. Besides, my place is here.’
‘I’ll stay with Rhiannon tonight,’ Bethan offered.
‘No, it’s all right, really ...’
‘You have a few more days to say your goodbyes. Why don’t you sit in the kitchen for a while? Eat something. I doubt if you’ve eaten all day.’
‘I haven’t,’ Phyllis admitted.
‘I’ll make you some fresh tea and toast,’ Bethan offered.
Phyllis suddenly realised that she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t eaten for hours. ‘I’ll go and make us all something,’ she said and finally left her chair.
‘I’ll sit with Rhiannon.’
It didn’t occur to either of the women to consider Charlie’s suggestion odd.
Phyllis found two toasting forks, Bethan opened the door to the stove and they set about making toast. As soon as the first piece was ready Bethan buttered it and handed it to Phyllis, who sat back in her easy chair to eat it.
Her eyes closed before she’d finished chewing the second bite.
Bethan plumped up a patchwork-covered cushion, pushed it beneath Phyllis’s head and lifted her feet on to an ancient beadwork stool. The knitted blanket Rhiannon had used to cover her arthritic knees was still folded on her chair. Bethan tucked it around Phyllis’s slumped figure.
‘I’ve made you some toast and tea.’ Bethan stood in the doorway of the parlour.
‘Is Phyllis asleep?’ Charlie asked.
Bethan nodded. ‘In the kitchen.’
‘I’ll carry her upstairs.’
‘You’ll risk waking her,’ Bethan warned.
Phyllis didn’t wake. Charlie laid her next to her son, and Bethan, who’d followed him, slipped off Phyllis’s shoes and draped the bedcover around her.
‘You eat and I’ll sit with Rhiannon for a while,’ Bethan whispered as they reached the foot of the stairs.
‘If we leave the door open we’ll be able to see the candles from the kitchen.’
‘And that’s all that matters?’
‘I don’t think Rhiannon is likely to tell us any different.’
In all of the four years she had been acquainted with him, Bethan had never known Charlie to be flippant or make light of any situation, but that didn’t stop her from scrutinising him as they went into the kitchen.
He took off his coat. Hanging it on the back of a chair he rolled up his sleeves and went outside to wash his hands and face.
‘Remind me to replace the food I’ve used tomorrow,’ Bethan’s voice was soft, low, although there was no real need to whisper.
‘You won’t need reminding.’ He sat down and took a piece of toast.
‘No I suppose I won’t.’ She looked across the table as she poured out fresh tea for both of them, and smiled, suddenly blessing Charlie’s presence here, in this house of death; his solid dependability and his habit of saying very little, but always what was short, important and to the point. ‘Now that the worst is over why don’t you go home and get some sleep?’ she suggested.
‘It’s all right, I’ll stay with you.’
‘You’ll be exhausted tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’
‘What about the stall?’
‘It’s too late to worry about that now. What William hasn’t done will have to wait until Monday. Let’s just hope he hasn’t lost another pig.’
‘Will you sack him if he has?’
‘Maybe.’ She still couldn’t detect any trace of humour in his voice. He sat back and drank his tea. Bethan thought of all the times she’d sat in this kitchen as Rhiannon’s guest, talking to her, eating her Welsh cakes...
‘It’s strange to think I won’t see her any more when I walk through here on my way to town,’ Bethan said.
‘Rhiannon?’
‘Yes.’ She pushed the plate with the remaining slices of toast over to him. ‘Everything seems to be changing so quickly, and I’m powerless to stop it. I go away, come back and nothing is the same. My father’s gone –’
‘He’ll be back soon.’
‘And my mother?’
Charlie didn’t answer that question.
‘And it’s not as if it’s just Rhiannon and my father. It’s Haydn and Maud as well. I turn my back for five minutes and the whole family splits up. Nothing will ever be the same again.’
‘You grew up, left home and had a family of your own,’ he pointed out logically.
‘I suppose I did.’ She was ashamed of the bitterness she could hear creeping into her voice. She felt as though she was condemning and betraying her own son simply for being born.
It was most peculiar, sitting here, in another woman’s kitchen across the table from Charlie. She was thinking and talking about more important things than she had ever dared to discuss with Andrew. Perhaps it was Charlie’s undemanding, uncritical presence.
His habitual silences had taken a great deal of getting used to, but now she was grateful for them.
Charlie lit a cigarette and moved from the table to one of the easy chairs. ‘The candles are still lit,’ he said.
‘Corpse lights. We used to watch their flames flickering through the shadows of drawn curtains when we were children. My grandmother told us that they were lit to guide the soul to heaven. All it had to do was follow the line of the smoke.’
‘That’s a nice thought.’
‘When my grandmother died and I sat up with her, I watched the candles burn in my Aunt Megan’s back bedroom for hours. I really felt as though I was watching her soul leave for a better place.’
‘I wish I’d had the same thought when my grandfather died.’ It was the first time she’d heard Charlie mention his family, and she waited, hoping he’d say more. He left his chair and opened the door to the stove. The fire was burning low. He picked up the tongs and heaped half a dozen large lumps of coal from the bucket into the embers.
‘Russia is not so different from Wales.’ He was speaking so quietly she had to strain to catch his voice. ‘Not when it comes to matters of death. The corpse is watched. Everyone in the village comes into the house to view the body and pay their respects before the burial.’ He replaced the tongs, closed the oven door, looked up and gave Bethan a rare smile. ‘The village gossips count the funeral carriages, the cost of the headstone and the widow’s clothes.’
‘You have gossips in Russia too?’
‘People may speak different languages and wear different clothes, but from what I’ve seen they’re much the same the world over.’
‘They weren’t in London.’
‘No gossips?’ He brushed his hands through his thick hair and for the first time she noticed the layers of fair hairs on his lower arms.
‘No gossips,’ she repeated firmly. ‘I would have been happy to have met just one. I would have had someone other than Andrew and myself to talk to.’
‘Is that why you came back? Because you were lonely?’
‘That and ...’ she faltered as she realised what she was saying, and who she was saying it to. If her father had been home she would have talked to him. As he wasn’t, why not talk to Charlie? After all, she could be sure that her confidences would go no further.’ ... and the baby. Everyone in London wanted me to put him in an institution,’ she stated harshly.
‘A workhouse?’
She had just told him that no one had talked to her in London. It didn’t take a lot to deduce who the “everyone” was.
‘It would have been a workhouse in all but name. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ...’
‘I can understand that.’
‘You can?’
‘I think that children like Edmund need their parents even more than healthy ones.’
‘What happens to them in Russia?’
‘Oh we have institutions in Russia too. Perhaps even more than here. It is peculiar, I’ve never really thought of it before. The well-educated people always send their crippled children to institutions, but not the peasants. They keep their children with them no matter how they turn out.’
‘I don’t suppose it matters so much on a farm. They won’t get pointed or stared at, or disgrace the family.’ She could hear resentment in her voice, but was powerless to stop it from surfacing.