‘How are you, Connie?’
‘I’m all right, thanks.’ A colourless answer, but it was difficult to be any more expressive to cousin Elaine.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ Elaine sighed. Like Jackie she was divorced. Her two non-committal boys were now in their twenties. They came briefly back to the house to escort their mother, but had already left.
Elaine was reaching for another cigarette. She exhaled smoke and crossed her leather-booted ankles, ready for a talk, while Connie wondered vaguely how to make an escape.
‘It was nice, that music of yours,’ Elaine offered.
‘Was it? Thank you.’
Bill asked Connie if she would play some of her music during the funeral service. ‘Jeanette would have wanted this,’ he said.
They had decided on a version of the tune she had been working on the day of Jeanette’s death, a simple melody into which she had attempted to weave some of the Balinese gong notes and sinuous drumbeats. In the end, however, the piece had sounded to Connie like an awkward hybrid, without proper roots in either tradition, when she would have wished it to be the best music she had ever composed.
Even worse, as she played it with the polite audience ranged in their pews, she had felt an incongruous resemblance to Elton John.
Funerals were like this, she knew. You tried to concentrate on the person who was no longer there, and tides of inapt reminders of the busy, clamorous, still-living world swept in and eddied distractingly around you.
Connie tried to listen to what Elaine was saying. She felt all her perceptions distorted and her responses headed off into dead ends and irrelevances by the bulky interposition of grief. Elaine was waiting for an answer to a question, her mascara-ed eyes fixed on Connie’s face.
‘Yes, still doing the composing. Commercials, some film work when I can get it,’ Connie managed to say.
‘That’s nice. It sounds glamorous, anyway,’ Elaine sighed.
‘What about you?’
‘Oh, you know. I work in admin, NHS.’
Connie couldn’t even remember the last time she had spoken to Elaine or Jackie. Not at Hilda’s funeral, certainly, since that had taken place before she could get home from Tasmania.
Weddings and funerals, when families that were not familial briefly and painfully got together.
Elaine’s thoughts must have been following the same path. ‘I was thinking about when Uncle Tony died.’
‘He wasn’t your dad.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re adopted, aren’t you?’
‘We weren’t very nice to you in those days, Jackie and I, and we deliberately got Jeanette on our side as well. I’ve been meaning to say this for years, and now I’m going to. I shouldn’t have told you about being adopted, that was wrong of me.’
‘I suppose it was, yes. But I would have had to find out somehow, in the end. Perhaps you did me a good turn.’
Connie tried to imagine how Hilda might have told her, but couldn’t envisage it. Maybe Tony would have done it, if he had lived.
Elaine clearly wanted to say more and Connie waited. The caterers had moved away and were stacking up the serving trays that had been used to hand round sandwiches cut into pale triangles and small pieces of sombre cake.
‘We were so against anything that was different, back then. So suspicious. You were only such a little bit different, weren’t you, really? But it seemed an immense secret, that you weren’t born into the family. Whereas nowadays…’ Elaine sighed again, looking through the door of the kitchen and out into the hall where people were passing on their way to the front door. Bill and Noah were out there, quietly thanking people for coming. ‘…nowadays, we’re all alike, everyone. Community, that’s the word, isn’t it? Ours is the
middle-class
community, the one that Mum and Auntie Hilda were so dead-set on belonging to. Now we find ourselves stuck in it, a bit of difference would be quite welcome, funnily enough.’
Connie realised that Elaine was slightly drunk and that she was talking about her own life, or some choice she had made that Connie would probably never know about. At the same time she reflected that it was Jeanette who had been truly, dramatically different from all of them.
That was why Bill had loved her. She was a series of contradictions: her luscious appearance against her puritanical spirit, her cloak of conventional behaviour adopted as a protection for her deafness, and her constant denial of deafness itself.
The past reared up within the Buntings’ kitchen. The whole of Connie’s life seemed now to have been lived by and against her sister. The sea of Jeanette’s absence swelled and pushed the continents of normality towards the horizon and almost out of sight.
‘Do you mind me saying this?’ Elaine was asking glassily. ‘Do you? I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.’
Connie wasn’t sure whether she meant the apology or the reference to her perceived difference from Hilda and Sadie and their three daughters.
‘No, of course I don’t mind,’ Connie smiled. She had warmed to Elaine. The other woman immediately grasped Connie’s wrists. Her nails were manicured ovals, painted red. She tilted herself forwards until their foreheads almost touched.
‘Friends, then,’ she murmured dramatically. ‘It’s taken long enough, hasn’t it?’
This was how Jackie and Sadie found them. Sadie’s arm was tucked under Jackie’s. She looked older than seventyfive and her face was grained and puffy after all the crying.
‘I’ve been saying to Connie that I’m really sorry,’ Elaine told them, and Jackie nodded wisely.
‘That’s what Jeanette would have wanted.’
Quite a number of things have been grouped under that umbrella today, Connie thought.
‘It’s been a sad day,’ Sadie said, in a voice that startlingly resembled Hilda’s. Uncle Geoff had already gone, sunk into his black overcoat, coughing with the onset of a chill from wearing thin shoes in the wet cemetery. Sadie hadn’t spoken a word to her ex-husband. Her ability to bear a grudge was as developed as Hilda’s.
Connie said goodbye, kissing all three of them. She watched them go, out into the night, with Jackie and Elaine supporting their mother on either side.
The last of the friends and neighbours also filtered away and the caterers ferried their equipment out to a waiting van.
Connie emptied ashtrays and put the remaining glasses into the dishwasher. Bill closed the front door.
The house was finally empty, except for the three of them.
‘Thank you for doing so much to help,’ Bill said to her.
He spoke with an odd formality. His face was drained of colour; even his mouth looked bloodless. Connie ached to put out her arms and hold him.
Noah had undone his black tie and it hung loose from his collar. He said, ‘I’m going upstairs to phone Rox, then I’m just going to chill for a bit. Is that okay, Dad?’
Roxana had insisted that she would not come to the funeral.
‘I didn’t know Mrs Bunting so much, and all the family and friends will be there, I don’t feel it is quite right. And now, after all this that has happened because of me, I would prefer not.’
Bill answered now, ‘Of course, that’s fine. Are you all right?’
‘Yeah, Dad.’
Bill and Connie watched him walk up the stairs. His shoulder dragged slightly against the wall and he corrected himself before taking the last steps at a gallop.
Connie followed Bill into the drawing room, past the pinboard with the photographs. Bill poured himself a whisky and Connie shook her head to decline one. They sat down facing each other and silence crept round them.
‘Do you think that went the way Jeanette would have wanted?’ Bill asked abruptly.
‘Yes, I do.’
He let his head fall back against the cushions and gave a congested sound that was more a cough than a laugh. Silence fell again, in the muffled depth of which Connie thought she could hear a door closing upstairs, the creak of polished parquet, maybe even a whisper of the barometer’s metal finger creeping from
Rain
to
Storm
.
It’s here, Connie thought. Afterwards is now.
And then,
I have to get out of this house.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bill said, even more abruptly. He sat up and
drained the whisky and then rotated the glass on the sofa arm.
‘What for?’
‘Let’s see. For everything I have done, and also failed to do.’
‘Bill, don’t
talk
. There’s nothing to be said at this minute. It’s the day of Jeanette’s funeral.’
‘So it is,’ he said, with a hollowness she had not heard before.
For so many years, even when they hadn’t seen each other for months, whenever they spoke the words had been ready and fluent, seeming to spring straight from their hearts. Yet now they found themselves stiffly talking like two actors under a spotlight.
Connie would have gone to him, warmed his hands between hers and tried to offer what comfort she could, but even the way that Bill was sitting told her that he didn’t want – could not bear – to be touched. She sat in her place, her ankles together and her hands folded, and let the silence lengthen. After a moment Bill got up again, with the restlessness of exhaustion, and poured himself more whisky.
‘What were you talking to Elaine about?’
‘She wanted to say she was sorry for telling me I was adopted.’
‘Ah.’
‘Funerals are when people feel the need to confess that sort of thing. And weddings.’
‘Yes.’
This time the silence seemed to go deeper, into the core of both of them. It seemed that unlike other people on this day, they did not have anything to acknowledge or to confess to each other. Bill was staring out of the window into the dark garden. He knocked back another mouthful
of whisky and Connie felt the shudder of it chasing through her own system.
‘I think’, she said carefully, ‘I should head back home now.’
‘I miss her.’ Bill’s words cut across hers and they jumped, because this dissonance was new to them.
‘I know you do. So do I. I wish it had been me, not Jeanette.’ She spoke impulsively, out of the whirl of her thoughts, not thinking she should measure what she said. To Bill, she had always spoken what she felt.
His eyes moved from the window and settled on her face. ‘I don’t think you do wish that,’ he answered. There was a thin metal edge in the words.
Connie was lost for a response.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, after a moment.
She got up from her seat and went to stand beside him. The black glass of the window reflected their faces.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘This week, I am going to look after Noah, do paperwork, write letters. Next week, go back to work. Next month, probably also work. Next year? The year after that? I don’t know, Connie. That’s the truth.’
‘You’re wise not to make too many plans. Or to place yourself under any obligations.’
She saw his reflection incline its head. He was so sad that her heart knocked in her chest with pity.
Connie half-turned from the window. She touched her hand to Bill’s arm, then withdrew it.
‘I’ll be at the flat if you need me.’
He came out into the hall, handed her her bag and helped her on with her coat.
‘If there’s anything I can do,’ she began again.
‘Thanks, Connie.’ He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, cold-lipped, as if she were one of the neighbours.
He stood in the doorway, his hands at his sides, watching her cross the gravel to her parked car. As she drove out of the gate the door closed behind him and the porch light blinked off.
She navigated the country lanes with furious concentration.
Grief. Everything that was happening to them was a manifestation of grief and it did not have an expiry date, or a set term to run. She was only just beginning to comprehend the pervasiveness of it, but one certainty was growing in her. Jeanette’s death was as much of a barrier between Bill and herself as their marriage had ever been. (Connie made herself articulate these thoughts with cold precision.) And that was as it should be. She had made her own pledge to Jeanette, back in the garden of the Surrey house. The separation that she and Bill thought they had endured for so many years was, in reality, only just beginning.
It was still only the middle of the evening, although it felt to Connie somewhere closer to the dead of night. As she came to the outskirts of London she saw the blue-and-green neon lights of a bar/café that she had often noticed on her route out to Surrey. She was very thirsty, and also hungry.
In a booth in the corner of the bar she ordered a drink and food. While she was waiting to be served she reluctantly turned on her mobile. Immediately it started to ring, and the text-message envelope simultaneously blinked at her.
The first voicemail message was from Angela.
‘Con, I got your email. I’m really worried. Of course you can count on me, whatever you need. Call me when you get this.’
There were three or four others, on similar lines. The last one was from
Seb
.
‘Connie? What’s happening? I’m in Chicago but you can reach me on this number any time.’
She read through the text messages, and found more of the same. She realised that she had more friends and supporters than she would have estimated, and that was a happy discovery. She didn’t know what was in the email all these people were referring to, but she could make an informed guess.
Blindly, she had put off doing anything about the escalating crisis in her affairs until the funeral was over. She had not been able to find the necessary reserves of energy and application even to think logically about it. But now, plainly, she was going to have to deal with the situation.
A waitress wearing a plastic name badge that read
Olga
put a bottle of water and a bowl of noodles in front of her. Connie drank all the water and attacked the food. It was, she thought, quite a long time since she had eaten a meal. The hot noodles quickly disappeared. As she ate she was working out what needed to be done.
The text message she sent to Angela read:
Didn’t send email. Laptop stolen. My sister’s funeral today. I’ll call you.
She dealt with the others in similar fashion. Restored by hot food she drank a cup of coffee, paid her bill with a generous tip for Olga, and headed back to her car.