Authors: Aidan Chambers
A pause. She riddled sand through her fingers.
‘You know about that?’
‘We had a row about it.’
‘O dear, that does make things rather difficult.’
The children were building new castles; the woman, leaving them to themselves, was pouring herself a drink from a flask.
‘It wasn’t so much about you. Not your fault. I was jealous. He didn’t like that. Said I wanted him all for myself. He meant I was possessive and was stifling him.’
‘And were you?’
‘I didn’t think so. . . . Does it matter anyway? He thought I was.’
A pause.
Then she said, ‘You want me to go?’
I put a hand on her arm. ‘No. Stay. I’d like you to. Honest.’
I think I meant to take my hand away, but before I did she slipped hers into mine and let them rest together between us.
‘It is difficult,’ she said, ‘to give everything to one person.’
‘Maybe it’s wrong to want that. Maybe it’s wrong to try.’
She shook her head. ‘I am rather confused about it.’
‘Can I join the club?’
She looked at me, puzzled. ‘Club?’
I smiled at her. ‘Forget it. Just a saying.’
We turned our attention to the kids again: their funny stomping way of doing things before they are manually dextrous. Wanting more than they’ve the skill to achieve. Miniature Laurel and Hardys. (Maybe that’s what’s so funny about L & H. They’re children who are trapped inside adult bodies and lost in an adult world they can’t quite find out how to control, while pretending all the time they know how.)
If J had thought about it before that moment I think I would have said Kari was the last person I would want to be with right then, and that I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to talk to her about everything that had happened between Barry and me.
But as it turned out just the opposite was true. She was the only person I could have been with, and most of all she was the only person I could talk to. As though this was the very reason we met that morning, I told her everything, starting with the capsize of
Tumble
and finishing with my rejection that morning by Mrs Gorman. Sometimes we laughed; the first time I had laughed
in forty-eight hours. Now and then she asked a question. Towards the end she wept, quietly, without noise or fuss.
Meanwhile, the woman had gathered up her two children, slipped them into their doll-size pants and shoes, packed their picnic oddments, and sauntered away with them chattering at her heels. The numbers of wanderers on the esplanade thinned, gone to lunch. The tide had crossed the mud, reaching the beach; a yachtsman or two were already out and rigging their boats. The sky’s greyness had lightened; a veiled sun showed through and was brightening. The afternoon would bring crowds; the beach would be an escape no longer.
20/We moved to Leigh gardens, buying a snack on the way.
‘What about your work?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘It will have to wait. Mrs Grey will understand.’
We sat on the grass, our backs protected by bushes.
‘There are a couple of things I haven’t told you,’ I said.
‘I would like to know everything,’ she said.
I lay on my back, hands behind my head. She turned and lay on her front at my side, supporting herself on her elbows so that she could look into my face.
‘When we first got together,’ I said, ‘he made me swear an oath. He made me swear that whichever of us died first the other would dance on his grave.’
A pause while she took this in.
‘But that’s . . .’
‘Weird?’
‘A little.’
Silence.
‘You can’t.’
‘I must.’
‘You’ll be stopped.’
‘At night?’
‘At night!’
‘An oath is an oath is an oath. Will you help?’
‘What!’
‘Not with the dancing. I have to do that on my own.’
‘How then?’
‘Find out where he’s to be buried and when. Mrs Gorman won’t speak to me, I told you. And I’ve got to know where his grave is. Mrs G. will talk to you. Say you’re a friend, want to attend the funeral. Get the details.’
‘I don’t believe this.’ She turned and sat up, her arms round her knees.
‘I’m not sure I do.’
‘But—’
I sat up and faced her, cross-legged. ‘Please.’
‘I’ll think.’
I said quickly, ‘There’s the other thing.’
She said, looking nervously at me, ‘What other thing?’
‘It’s a bit weird as well.’
‘I think I’d rather not know.’
‘You said you wanted to know everything.’
She looked away across the gardens, her chin planted on her knees. ‘All right, go on.’
‘I’ve got this . . . compulsion. It’s crazy, I know. But I’ve got to see him. I mean his body. I have to know for certain. I can’t explain. I just have to, that’s all.’
She sighed. ‘Poor Hal,’ she said. ‘For you it wasn’t just . . . casual, was it? But very serious.’ She reached and took my hand in her slim fingers.
‘You’ve been hit rather badly,’ she said.
I took her hand in both mine. ‘I have to know where they’ve taken him,’ I said.
She nodded, the movement felt through her fingers.
21/‘He’s in the mortuary at Leigh General Hospital,’ Kari said when she returned an hour later. ‘I talked to Mrs Gorman’s son-in-law. He was rather nice. Mrs Gorman was resting. Her daughter and son-in-law arrived about lunchtime and they put her to bed at once because she was so distressed and tired from not sleeping. Her daughter is sitting with her.’
‘In the mortuary? Why there? Why isn’t he at home?’
‘There must be an inquiry—no, that wasn’t the word—an inquest?—yes, an inquest.’
‘An inquest! Why?’
‘Mrs Gorman’s son-in-law says it is all quite normal. When there has been a death because of an accident your law says there must be an inquest by—a coroner?’
‘Yes, a coroner.’
‘Who has to find out what happened. In case someone is to blame. Mrs Gorman’s son-in-law explained everything but it is all new to me.’
‘When’s the inquest?’
‘On Tuesday, they hope, but perhaps later.’
‘So when’s the funeral?’
‘On Wednesday, but if the inquest is over soon enough on Tuesday it will be on that day.’
‘Why the rush, for God’s sake?’
‘There is no rush. It’s their rule—their custom.’
‘Whose custom?’
‘The Jewish custom, of course. Barry was Jewish, Hal, you must have known that!’
‘I knew, I knew. But he wasn’t practising. He didn’t go to church, I mean synagogue.’
‘That has nothing to do with it.’
‘Of course it does! He was like me. We didn’t believe in religion. Or in God come to that.’
‘So?’
‘So why should out-of-date customs he didn’t believe in matter now?’
‘Out-of-date?’
‘Yes! The Outina Indians of South America used to scalp an enemy’s corpse, break the bones in the arms and legs, tie the body into a bundle, leave it to dry in the sun and then shoot an arrow up its arse. Are you saying South Americans should still do that because the Outinas did it?’
‘You’re being ridiculous and disgusting. I don’t want to hear these things.’
‘In the Middle Ages in ever-so-civilized Europe they sometimes boiled dead bodies to get the flesh off so they could easily carry the bones around the place in their luggage. They had this thing, you see, about bones being kept in certain places, like nick-nacks with sentimental value. D’you think we should still do that? It was a widespread custom among our ancestors.’
‘You’re horrible.’
‘But they did! When our brave and chivalrous Christian knights of the crusades went off to slaughter the heathen of Islam for the greater glory of the God they were both supposed to worship, they used to take their own cauldrons with them for the purpose. They wanted their nice clean bones carting back home when they were dead, you see. You wouldn’t want your left femur to fall into the hands of the rival gang, would you now? Never know where you’d end up.’
‘Why should I listen to this rather silly lecture—’
‘I’m not lecturing you.’
‘—when I’m only trying to help you with your—weird plans.’
‘I’m grateful. Honest!’
‘Anyway, what would
you
do about Barry? Even if you don’t believe in anything as you seem not to, you still have to do something with dead people.’
‘I know.’
‘Well? You’d just throw their bodies into a furnace and forget about them, would you?’
‘No, of course not!’
‘Then what would you do?’
‘I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet.’
‘O, how wonderful! So the world must pile up its dead people until you decide what to do about them, eh?’
‘Don’t be so daft. All I meant was that I haven’t made up my own mind about what should be done about me, when I’m dead. Barry didn’t care about religious customs, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Isn’t that rather obvious, as he made you swear to dance on his grave? Which also means he expected to be buried, not cremated, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
‘That isn’t all you haven’t thought of either.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘You’ve upset Mrs Gorman terribly, that’s what I mean.’
‘What about her?’
‘You’ve upset her with your phone calls. Especially asking to see Barry. How could you!’
‘She should have been pleased. Aren’t friends supposed to visit after a death?’
‘No. Not in Jewish families. They don’t go and look at their relatives and friends. They’re supposed to bury them as quickly as possible, and simply, and everybody in the same way so there is no difference between rich and poor. They show respect for their dead, which I think is admirable and beautiful. And, after all, you should know all about such things, being so expert on customs of death! Or are you only interested in the gruesome kind!’
‘So how come you know so much?’
‘Mrs Gorman’s son-in-law tried to explain to me.’
‘He seems to have explained quite a lot.’
‘I told you, he was very nice.’
‘I’ll bet! Ask to view your body, did he?’
Kari sprang to her feet, furious. ‘That is a disgusting remark,’ she snapped, and began spluttering garbled English, stamping her foot in frustration, and then poured upon my startled head a spew of Norwegian the gist of which her flaming face and vehement gestures translated. Unmistakably vituperative. After which she stalked away, her old mac flapping around her legs, leaving me marooned in bilious turbulence.
22/As it happens I do know what Kari said in her Norwegian invective. You will have guessed that I didn’t remember all this chat word for word, not being a human tape-recorder. Kari helped me reconstruct it, so, yes, she’s still around, but I don’t want her involved in this mess. even though she says she’ll tell all publicly in court if I want her to. Remember, TISS, what you promised: TOTAL CONFIDENTIALITY. You wanted the truth and an explanation for yourself
only
. (And just to show how much I trust you, I’ve changed Kari’s name and place of abode, just in case . . .)
What Kari says she said was, roughly translated, ‘You are a selfish, nasty-minded little squirt who doesn’t deserve any help from anyone and you can go and take a flying @*+/ at the moon
2
for all I care because all you are good at is wallowing in self-pity and upsetting a nice old lady because you think half-baked ideas are more
important than people and are only interested in your own lousy petty piggy feelings.’
I am glad she could only say it in Norwegian at the time. Otherwise there might now be no more Kari in HSR’s life.
Being in ignorance of her sentiments, however, I worked myself instead into a sweat that evening about being friendless and having no one to turn to for help, and how all this was my fault and how I might as well be dead. Which led to imagining various ways of achieving the desired state.
A knife to the throat or wrists. I rejected this as too messy and slow, not to mention painful. Pills would be okay. But none were available except aspirins and they didn’t even cure my mother’s backaches, and I’d also heard somewhere you have to take so many they make you spew before you’ve swallowed enough to kill yourself. (She kept her Valium locked somewhere in her bedroom.) Jumping out of my bedroom window wouldn’t have worked either. I was only one storey up and would have landed on the tablecloth lawn of our front garden. Poison? My dad’s aftershave or my mother’s hair shampoo were the nearest thing to poison in our bathroom, though I did remember some slug pellets in the back garden shed. But they didn’t seem too good at getting rid of the slugs so I decided not to chance them. Hanging myself. The ceiling would come down, even if I got a hook into it without being heard. Suffocation? Holding a pillow over my nose till I expired didn’t seem quite me. Guns were romantic, but the only one in the house was a water pistol I used to have when I was a kid and the inner tube that holds the water leaked anyway.
Willing
myself to death. I’d read about some tribe somewhere who could decide their time was up and lie down and think themselves to death.
I tried this for half an hour and all it did was make me feel more awake than before I started.
I gave up after two hours of sorting out the options. It does seem that if you want to do away with yourself you have to plan pretty carefully for a long time previous. Unless, that is, you’re prepared to give yourself the chop in some disgustingly messy manner that leaves someone else to clear up after you. And I didn’t/don’t think that’s fair. Which is all very discouraging when you’re in the sort of depressed state I was in that night. At such moments you want a simple, quiet, comfortable croak that provides just long enough before your last gasp for you to relish a few of the zizziest scenes post mortem. Like the satisfying devastation caused by your discovery. The sumptuous distress at your crowded funeral. The way everyone bewails your passing and wishes they had done this for you or that. The speeches of praise. The lavish regret for past offences against you. The gap they all feel in their own lives for the rest of their natural. Ah, the loss you’ll be to the world—and serve it right! And the deep and gratifyingly painful GUILT they’ll all feel they didn’t do something to save you.