Astonishing Splashes of Colour (25 page)

On top of the cooker there are two plates, with bacon, egg, beans, sausage and fried bread arranged carefully, in exactly the same way on each plate. The eggs’ centres have sunk and congealed, grey mould has appeared on the fried bread and the shrivelled sausage, the beans sit solidly in their tomato sauce that has hardened and cracked.

Martin sees me looking. “I didn’t like to throw it away,” he says. “I thought it might help us work out what happened. Evidence.”

I don’t want to throw it away either, despite the smell. It seems so typical of their life together. Mrs. Harrison in the kitchen, Mr. Harrison watching the telly. A picture of a life that doesn’t exist any more. A generation that saw the beginning of the century and survived two world wars.

I go to look in the bedroom where Martin found them. The bedcovers have been pulled back and you can see the imprint of their two bodies lying side by side, two hollows that represent over seventy years on the same bed. You can see which side Grandpa slept in—he was heavier than Granny. I should have encouraged them to buy a new bed years ago.

Granny’s hairbrush and comb lie neatly on the dressing table—wooden handles with inlaid mother-of-pearl. I used to play with them when I was little, tracing the patterns with my finger, stroking the smoothness of the wood. There’s a lace cloth on the dressing table and a three-way mirror where you can see yourself watching yourself.

On Grandpa’s bedside table there’s a book about gardening, although he had to abandon the roses in his last few years. There is also a tea-maker, which they saw as a life-changing invention. When I stayed with them, I could hear it boiling up at six o’clock every morning.

“Have a good lie-in,” said Granny. “Don’t get up when we do. We’re older than you. We need less sleep.”

But I woke anyway, when the tea-maker started to gurgle and hiss as the water came to the boil. Then I waited for Grandpa to get out of bed at 6:15. I heard the tea being poured out, comfortable and satisfying, and I heard the clink of china as he passed a cup and saucer to Granny. They would have whispered conversations and I could catch isolated words. ”—Margaret—dahlias— rain—Kitty—” After a while, I’d turn over and go back to sleep, soothed by their predictability.

Granny’s bedside table has the clock, a reading lamp and her glasses.

For as long as I’ve known her, she’s been trying to read
Jane Eyre.
I used to watch her as she read. Every now and again, she would turn a page, sometimes forwards, sometimes backwards, and I saw that her eyes weren’t moving. She wasn’t reading it. Perhaps she couldn’t read at all, but gained some restful moments of peace without having to justify her inactivity.

I find
Jane Eyre
fallen to the floor, and the two cups and saucers on the window sill, still stained by the last drops of tea. They drank their tea before they died, but didn’t make it to breakfast.

There’s a wedding photograph of them both on the wall. Black and white, both of them rigidly upright, a crack across one corner of the glass. Two fresh young people—not like Granny and Grandpa at all. He’s handsome and looks like Adrian in the picture, although I was never able to see the resemblance in real life. She’s tall, black-haired and a bit like me now. Neither of them is much like Margaret, my mother. I examine the photograph and long to know what was in their heads when it was being taken. They seem so—young. Unmarked.

“They were dressed,” said Martin. “It was very strange. Both in bed with their clothes on, but covered by the blankets.”

I try not to see their old bodies lying side by side on the bed that they bought when they were first married, dressed in clothes that had never changed in style for all my life. A knee-length skirt in mottled green Crimplene, polyester pinstripe trousers and an Aran jumper.

Martin and I sleep in the lorry. We neither of us feel able to sleep in the house, because we feel it doesn’t belong to us.

During the day, I go through their lives. Piles and piles of old bills going back to the thirties: letters, cinema tickets, premium
bonds, things they didn’t want to throw away. A pile of cards from their golden wedding anniversary, wedding presents they had never used—a tablecloth of Irish linen, still in its original wrapping, a box of sherry glasses that has never been opened.

Each time I sort through a drawer, there are more things to remind me of them. I have to cry a little before I probe into each new compartment of their life. I feel I owe it to them. I can’t just throw things away without a struggle, but we fill black bag after black bag.

“What do we do about the furniture?” I ask Martin.

He shrugs. “I suppose we see if anyone wants any of it and then sell it to one of these house-clearing firms.”

I want it all. How can I let any of it go to a stranger? Every item of dark, heavy, cumbersome furniture is precious. It bears the handprints of all those years, polished by Granny’s busy hands, sat upon by Grandpa every day of his adult life, opened and shut daily throughout their quiet old age. If it’s sold in an auction, it’ll be stripped down, painted, varnished, years of familiarity rubbed away by harsh chemicals.

On the second day, the police arrive. I invite them in, a sergeant in uniform and a policewoman, and we stand awkwardly in Granny and Grandpa’s sitting room.

“We have the results of the postmortem,” says the sergeant. “Could we sit down?”

“Of course,” says Martin, and we perch on the edge of the furniture, unable to make ourselves at home.

“It seems that she died first. She had a massive heart attack ten days ago. He died about eight hours later, also of a heart attack.”

“But why didn’t he ring for an ambulance when Granny had the heart attack?”

The policeman clears his throat. “Well—we think that they both got up in the morning and drank their morning tea. Then she dressed and went to make breakfast while he shaved. She felt ill and came back to the bedroom where she was hit by the heart attack. He got her into bed, and then … We think he lay down beside her and waited to die.”

I look at them. “You mean he wanted to die with her?”

The policewoman nodded. “They were very frail, weren’t they? He must have been dependent on her.”

I remember two cats that a schoolfriend once had. One of them had to be put down by the vet and the next day the other one was found dead in her bed.

“It’s not particularly unusual with the very elderly,” says the policeman. “They lose the will to live without each other.”

I look out of the window at the distant sea. There are several sailing dinghies out in the morning sun, their different-coloured sails scattered gaily amongst the sparkling waves, forming a pattern in their randomness. I suddenly, desperately, long for James.

We arrange the funeral for five days later. Martin has to go home until then, to finish off his work contracts. I move into the house, taking over my old bed, where I always slept when I came to visit. The sheets and pillowcases are in a linen-press in the hall. It’s so neat—not neat like James’s obsessive tidiness, but neat and cared for. I can see Granny’s old, bent hands folding slowly and carefully, smoothing the fabric down with every fold, taking pleasure in her role as a housekeeper, a carer.

I phone James every evening, so that I’m not alone too often. We have long talks, better on the phone than in real life. I tell him about staying in Granny’s house. “They’re here with me,” I say. “I can’t imagine anyone else living in the house.” New owners, who would breathe their air, walk over their dust that has
drifted down into the floorboards. They would dig Grandpa’s garden, plant their own plants in soil enriched by Grandpa’s compost.

James finds our separation difficult. “Shall I come down early, Kitty, before the funeral?” He’s more lonely than me. He has days, even weeks on his own when we’re both working hard, but he can’t cope with the distance. He feels that the length of string that binds us together is stretched too tightly. He’s afraid it might break.

“Don’t come down yet, James,” I say. “Come the day before the funeral.” I want him to come now, to be here with me, but I need time on my own to think. I need to remember Grandpa and Granny properly in case I forget later on.

James phones up over and over again. “Where did you put my red tie, the one with Bugs Bunny on it?”

“How long should I leave the fish in the oven?” He rings me? He’s the one with the cookery books.

“Should I cancel your doctor’s appointment?”

“Yes, please. Unless you want to go instead.”

“No—I don’t think so. I’ll just cancel it, I think.”

Every evening before going to bed, I go for a walk and watch the sea. It’s calm and smooth all week. The sea that my father says he hates. The waves roll in over the pebbles and out again, over and over, endlessly. My grandparents have died, I think.

W
E MEET UP THE CREMATORIUM.
Everyone is here except Lesley, who has stayed at home with the girls. It’s the first time we’ve all been together since our wedding. We sit in pairs: my father and Adrian, Jake and Suzy (whom I avoid looking at), Martin and Paul, me and James. They are all wearing suits and ties. I love men in suits, especially the back of their necks and the sweep of their shoulders. Only Jake and Adrian have black suits—they have wives, who insist on doing things correctly. My father wears his usual herringbone jacket but his bow-tie is maroon rather than red—his concession to the occasion. Martin and Paul wear brown suits. Suzy is in a black dress, which I look at instead of her face. James looks devastating in his grey suit, and I’m glad he’s wearing the Bugs Bunny tie.

I wear a pink dress from a small, expensive shop in Lyme Regis. I chose it because it was intense and challenging, so that I wouldn’t look like Suzy or Lesley in any way. It shimmers. When I move, it shivers through purple, blue, grey, reflecting my changing moods back to me. It’s not a safe pink; there is no connection with the pink of Adrian’s house. It is bold, daring, angry.

The funeral is at 12:30. James and I have spent the morning preparing food at the house. We make platefuls of egg and ham sandwiches and cover them with clingfilm. We cook sausages and put them on sticks and leave crisps and peanuts waiting to be poured out into dishes. We buy packets of chocolate biscuits, Cherry Bakewells, miniature Battenbergs, ginger cakes and leave them all in their wrappings because there aren’t enough plates. We have no idea how many people will come.

At the crematorium, there are a few other people besides our family, but we make a small and unimpressive group in the bleak emptiness of the chapel. Somebody gives a short talk about Granny and Grandpa, but he talks in clichés and I know that he never knew them.

“This devoted couple,” he says, “faithful to the end—deeply loved by children and grandchildren.”

What does he know? Their only child is dead, and only one grandchild really knew them and then not for the last three years—I stop listening to him. We’re supposed to have our eyes shut in prayer as the coffins go down, one after the other, but I watch them go. I think of the flames waiting to eat them. I wonder what temperature is required. I see their old, tired bodies crumpling in the heat, folding up, abdicating. How many here really knew them, really cared about them? I did! I want to cry out. I loved them.

But I am silent. I don’t want the ashes. How can ashes substitute for those old hands smoothing down the bed linen? Or Grandpa’s lovingly pruned roses?

We go back to the cars without saying much. Everyone is polite. The men stand back to let the women in first. My brothers are respectable, polite people. Grown men who know how to behave. I sometimes forget to see them as others see them.

We drive back to the house and James takes the clingfilm off the plates of sandwiches while I go and switch on the kettle for cups of tea. There are several people here I’ve never met. A few elderly couples who are neighbours, a friend of Granny’s from Exeter, two old colleagues from the school where Grandpa used to teach—both retired years ago. The house is old, the people are old. I feel too young to be here.

Betty comes to talk to me in the kitchen, an old woman herself. She fusses over details, moving cups and saucers on to the table, putting more milk in the cups, an extra teabag in the teapot. “I feel so bad, Kitty,” she says. “We went on holiday. I asked my neighbour to call in and check, but she was ill and forgot.”