The Fowler Family Business (23 page)

He picked up the phone to the main office: ‘Mrs G – can I have a cup of tea please lot of milk and a chocolate digestive? Oh – so it is. If you could manage – before you go. Ta ever so. Two chocolate digestives.’

He distracted himself with the composition of a list:

Jesu Joy Of

Gather Lilacs in the Spring

My Special Angel

Oh Mein Papa

By a Babbling Brook

Jerusalem

Elizabethan Teresade OR Green sleaves

Al Bowley

He put a line through ‘Jerusalem’.

He added to the list ‘My Boomerang Won’t Come Back’.

Would Charlie Drake’s squeaky shrieks of indignation detract from the dignity of the occasion?

The door opened, too slowly.

His pen was poised above the paper. He asked without looking round: ‘Charlie Drake, Mrs G. Pro or …’ He turned. He had sensed a different presence: ‘Oh – hullo … Miss ah …’

Mrs Grusting’s space was occupied by a paunchy golden labrador in an elaborate harness and, behind the creature, Miss Sullivan clutching a mug in her leashless hand.

‘I’ve brought you your tea. Where thall I put it?’

‘Here, let me, let me,’ Henry clambered across the room. He gripped the mug tight then eased it from her.

‘And,’ her hand reached deep into her cardigan pocket, ‘your bithcuith. Excuthe fluff eh? They’re a bit sticky.’ She licked a tache of chocolate from a finger. ‘Pawph. Orrww. Whath
that?
Itham half whiffy im here.’

‘Preserving chemicals.’

‘Oh ith that what it ith. Whoog! Muth take a bit of gettib uth to. What d’you reckob Jane?’

The bitch Jane wore the expression of indignant resignation. What a job. What a fate. What a name.

‘You don’t smell it after a while. Don’t notice … Goes with the territory, as they say. You make yourself take it for granted. It’s like … ah …’ His search for a simile was stillborn by the sight of Mrs Grusting across the yard Nosy Parkering without dissemblance, attempting to gape through the half-open door of the Body Block.

‘Like a blime perthon hath no choith about beem blime.’

Henry only half-heard. He was waving his hand to decline Mrs Grusting’s gestural offer to come and fetch Miss Sullivan.

Then he recoiled from the oblique accusation of the message stored in his head: ‘No, no, no. That wasn’t what I was thinking.’

‘I dint thay you wath. What you doon?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Why were you boovim your armths like that? I cab feel, I cab. The air it booves too.’

‘I was just waving to Mrs Grusting.’

‘Thee thent me acroth here hoping I wath gomb to drob your tea dim’t thee?’

Henry spluttered into it. It seeped down his chin. Foam formed on its surface.

He knew that Miss Sullivan was right. This was Mrs Grusting’s means of proving the temp’s incompetence. The sly old thing. He realised he need not bother to keep a straight face.

‘What on earth makes you think that?’

‘Obviouth innit. Dithabilitith cam’t be fired, not for beem dithabilitith. Juth ‘cauth I’b blime duddon meab I’b dumb.’

Jane farted.

‘Wha …? No. Of course not. Christ what is that … Of course not.’

‘Amb it duddon meab I’b deaf. I ’eard ’er. Pathing notes to Mith La Dee Da. ’Bout be.’

‘I’m sure Mrs Grusting didn’t wouldn’t you know.’

‘It’s OK: there’s always subwun tryn’ it ob. Achually I tell you what, it’s bot OK. But – gothe with the territory,
ath they thay.’

‘I’ll – I’ll look into it if you really …’

‘I woobm bother. Not om by accord. Eberywun taykth the pith owb uf dithabilitith. Uthed to ib. Uthed to do ib mythelth.’

Henry Fowler stared at Miss Sullivan, at her fat redundant eyelids, at the indignant head jerks, at the bodily lassitude learned, maybe, from the farting bitch Jane via the once-white leash. She might have just come out of hibernation.

He thought about her whilst he was hauling old encrusted sauce bottles and solidified packs of flour and greasy tins from kitchen cupboards around 19.50 on the 24-hour clock which had been bought despite familial objections to the EEC, the Fourth Reich – as Father was liable to call it before Mother urgently shushed him.

What an aggregate of misfortunes Miss Sullivan is. How massively insulted, how harmed, how resentful, how vulnerable to exploitation.

The next day Miss Sullivan crossed the yard again. She was still led by Jane but was less dependent on the drooling bitch. She walked steadily as though she retained a pedal memory of the path’s idiosyncrasies, of the sites where the asphalt was worn and the cobbles laid by Henry Fowler’s grandfather showed through. She had brought him a slice of Mrs Grusting’s cake. And Henry Fowler had dared say what he had never said before, never would have said during his parents’ era, during the thirty years of Mrs Grusting’s weekly cake which was an ‘office tradition’.

He said: ‘No wonder it’s called
sponge
.’ And he dipped it in his tea.

Miss Sullivan grunted quizzically.

‘Sponge?
Like in the bath.’ he explained.

‘Oh! Thoap-yourthelf-down thponge.’

Hoops of mucus were suspended from Jane’s gums. He exhaled in repulsion.

‘Can’t be that bad,’ said Miss Sullivan.

Mrs Grusting phoned to remind Henry she was leaving early. He didn’t need reminding. This was another, more recent, office tradition. No matter how much work there was to do Mrs Grusting left an hour early every Wednesday to do her duty to her mother at a sunset home for the hard of hearing beside Gatwick Airport. Henry admired the logic of that enterprise.

‘Ai was wonderin’ if you wouldn’t maind as a special favour draivin’ Miss S. there to the station. Ai been attendin’ to the matter misel’. There’s no obligation. Just a little common kaindness – so long as she’s with us.’

Henry sighed yes.

‘Ai knew you would. It’s off to the hurlyburly of the M23 then. Byee.’

Miss Sullivan stretched to pat Jane’s slobbering nose. The bitch, off duty, was snoring on the back seat of Henry’s car.

Her hand stumbled. ‘Whass tha’?’

When he stopped in a traffic-lights queue he turned to watch Miss Sullivan kneading the fabric of his mother’s wedding dress, aquainting herself with the slub, the stitching, the sheerness of the satin puff sleeves. The Fowler wedding he had not participated in. 1933. How they’d waited to make him, how they’d waited twelve years till the world was safe for their precious child.

‘Wedding!’ She explored the raised, beaded bodice: ‘Feelth lubbely. Ith’t white?’

Even with functioning eyes she couldn’t have seen what he saw: the album’s pages interleaved with crisply creased tissue which he’d lift to reveal the fine grained prints of the severally textured dress, his monochrome mother’s plump radiance, his father’s bashful pride, the inky morning suits, the bouquets, the snag-toothed bridesmaid, the best man (drowned in a torpedoed submarine), the families united by love’s happenstance.

The van behind flashed its headlights.

‘Yes,’ he told her as he declutched, ‘it’s white. Always were in those days.’

‘Fwhat fwhite?’

‘Uh? What d’you – well,
white.
Sort of …’

‘Ivowy? Polar?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fwhich?’

‘Bit of both?’

‘You woulb’t make much of a fwitneth to a cwime.’

‘Dear me, suppose not. Oh Jesus.’ Henry braked hard.

A bald head and a vestful of belly held up a lavishly tattooed arm to stop him whilst it guided a reversing pantechnicon. ‘Look at that – oh, sorry, sorry, I …’

‘Uthed to it.’

‘I tell you what,’ Henry’s fastidious eyes were fixed on the stained vest, ‘it’s
snow
white.’

‘Oh thath by fabouwite.’

Henry gaped. He didn’t ask: how do you know? He assumed that she preferred the sound of snow to that of ivory or polar, to dazzling, lily, chalk, fleece, blinding. Certainly, to blinding. He said nothing.

‘We did
Thnow Fwhite
at pwibawy thchool. I wath a dwarf… I wath the talletht in clath and they thtill mabe me be a dwarf.’

Henry gaped again. He didn’t ask: how did you avoid bumping into the other dwarfs?

‘I like thnow fwhite betht of all. Cab I twy it ob pleath. Will it fit be? Neber wore a weddib dreth. You cab tell be fwhat I look like in it.’

Henry glanced at her, appalled. The accepted rules of decorum, the etiquette of respect for the departed – these had evidently not been learned by Miss Sullivan. Nor had respect for the bereaved, let alone deference to a boss. This was a temporary employee, a woman aged – how old was she? Her childish voice was a mask. Old enough, anyway, to know better, blindness or no blindness. Blindness was no excuse. It didn’t absolve her of an obligation to courtesy, to the apparatus of restraint which anyone, anyone, not only a funeral director, will identify as a mandatory qualification of civilised adulthood. Checks and balances, checks and balances.

He nonetheless heard himself say: ‘I … uh – it’s my mother’s.
Was
my mother’s – yes …’

‘Your mump woulb’mt mind – woulb thee. Mithith Gwuthtib’s always thayib fwhat a kind thoul thee wath, your mump.’

Saved by the station.

Henry pulled into the forecourt, negotiated a wave of jaywalking commuters and stopped the car behind a taxi.

‘Here we are then.’

‘Eber tho nithe ob you to dribe me. You not goin to let me twy im then?’

A vehicle’s horn yapped.

‘It’s a very unusual thing to be asked. You’ll miss your train.’

The horn yapped longer.

‘They all thaid after the play Teretha thould have been Thnow Fwhite.’

‘That’s – you’re called Teresa? Teresa.’

The horn: this time a hand was held on it to produce a monotone squeal.

‘Yeth. Tho fwhat?’

Bobby Camino was, without bidding or rehearsal, crooning in his head.

‘It’s, well it’s funny. I’ve never met anyone called Teresa, not so far as I know – but when I was a kid there was this record …’

‘Thath fwhy I’m—’

‘Oi!’ A corrugated jowl lunged into the open window: ‘Cab rank.’ A hand pointed with a tightly rolled tabloid.

‘What?’ Henry was distracted.

‘Cab rank.’ The eyes were tiny, the nostrils were richly furred caves.

‘There,’ Henry said, gesturing at the taxi in front.

‘Thissis a
dedica ’ed space.
Cabs only.’

‘Sorry?’

The rolled tabloid was now a weapon. It was thrust again towards a sign on top of a standard: ‘You’re parked in my manor. You blind or wha’?’

Henry stared, speechless.

‘
I
am,’ said Miss Sullivan.

Jane growled.

The tiny eyes glanced at the bitch, the harness, the folded white stick: ‘Oh so you are. Well, I never knew it was catching. Come on – move!’ The corrugated jowl wobbled in ostentatious disbelief.

Henry Fowler drove across the forecourt with furious negligence, inciting a cyclist to swerve and swear. He turned on to the road without braking, without looking. ‘Jesus. How often doés that happen?’

‘All the time.’

‘I can’t believe it I really can’t. It’s just … What kind of person says that sort of thing. I, ah, I was going to say …’

‘They think it’th you obe fault if you blime.’

‘Look – if you want to try that dress on you’re welcome. You’re more than welcome,’ said Henry in an access of deflected guilt and shame for his sex.

‘Oh do you meab that? Thath fantathtic. When?’

‘Well, I suppose you could now if you want.’

‘You don’ have to …’

‘No, no – it’s the least I can do.’

He drove more steadily now, heading back home. He was going to point out some sights (pub signs, ancient trees) as he did to everyone, as he had so often to his children who were not his children that they anticipated him. But he remained silent. She’s had enough embarrassment for the minute. She doesn’t need reminding of all that she knows only by touch, smell, hearsay.

‘It’th twue fwhat they thay.’

‘Uh? What is?’

‘That it’th by obe fault that I’m blime.’

One gram of apple seeds (pips) contains a 0.6mg secretion of the cyanogenic glycoside called prunasin which when digested reacts in the gut with the enzyme beta-glucosidase to release hydrogen cyanide. To obtain the fatal dose of 50mg at least
9og
of seed must be eaten or, should the subject be hungry as well as suicidal, 20 kg of whole apples. For a job well done Dream Topping
^TM
proposes a dose of 110g: an inadequate dose may leave the subject alive but brain damaged, liver impaired or blind. Cyanide attacks the retinal nerve.