The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy (15 page)

My father liked a game. Maybe because my mother was so practical and because language was a problem, he often played the games with me. The ones he liked most were those of his own invention. When I was very little, he’d stand in the sitting room in his overalls, apparently unable to see me. I was smaller than my parents, of course, but I was never thimble-size.

‘Where is that girl?’ he would say, lifting the plastic mats from the table, the antimacassars from the sofa.

‘Here I am! Here! Here!’

He never seemed concerned, never angry, just extremely sure of finding me. I’d be the opposite. Wheeling my arms, pulling at his overalls, sticky and screaming and laughing so hard my insides felt screwed up.

‘Where is that girl?’

The game was hilarious because it was safe. I was there and my father was there and even though he appeared to have lost the ability to see – or was it me? Had I acquired the ability to not be seen? – I knew that the game wouldn’t end until my father’s eyes swooped down to meet mine and he exclaimed, ‘Well,
there
you are,’ and lifted me on to his shoulders.

‘You two,’ my mother would say, as if my father and I were strangers from a place she’d never visited. She would go back to shelling peas or dropping things.

When I was older, my father invented a new game. It began with ‘I have a serious question.’ This became my mother’s cue to stand up, although my father was a mild-tempered man and he never took offence. He’d describe a journey on an aeroplane. Suddenly you’re told the plane is about to crash. What do you most regret not doing with your life? (Here I’d answer, ‘I wish I could play the piano.’ ‘I wish I had bosoms like Wendy Tiller.’ That sort of thing. My mother’s answer – if she could be persuaded to play, and unless it was Christmas or my birthday she couldn’t – my mother’s answer was more pragmatic. She’d roll her eyes and begin to stack plates.
Clash, clash
. We winced. ‘I wish a person would make a cup of tea.’)

‘Good news!’ my father would say. ‘Your plane has been saved!’ He’d look jubilant, as if he were directly responsible. ‘But what are you going to do, Queenie, about learning to play the piano?’

All this from a man who had never been on an aeroplane, let alone played a musical instrument. It moved him every time.

As I grew older, I grew less tolerant. I regret this, but I began to follow my mother’s line.

Your plane is about to crash. What do you most regret, Queenie?

What do I most regret? Going on holiday.

What do I most regret? Not booking a train ticket.

My mother found these answers disproportionately hilarious. In fact they made her snort.

When I left for Oxford, my father abandoned his games as if they were foolish. I’d come home for holidays, but there was a coldness in the house. My father lined up broken items in his workshop. My mother dropped them and threw them away in the house. I’m not saying it was an unhappy marriage, only that it had become a well-worn one, like an old coat you stop looking after. There were holes during that time. There were thin patches. My mother would have thrown it away, and my father hoped he would one day get round to mending it. Neither thing happened. They just kept wearing it. My presence, when I deigned to visit, seemed to pin the marriage back together. My mother would fetch out what was left of the best glasses. She would try to entice me with pan-fried liver. (‘You look pale,’ she’d say. ‘She looks pale.’) My father would watch me with glittering eyes. I think my parents could never quite believe they had a daughter at Oxford. They treated me as a prize, a thing above them, and I, in turn, behaved like someone a little apart. I wrote letters, but they were not regular. I rarely telephoned. After Oxford, I found reasons – good ones, all of them – for not visiting.

I regret now that I did not see my parents more frequently. But I got caught up in my own life. My own mistakes. The last time I saw my father he was pruning an old apple tree. He said he wanted it to see another spring, but from the way he was going at it I’d have been surprised if it made another week. I fetched the ladder and did it for him, though I had no idea in those days about trees. The rest of the weekend we spent mostly in the sun. My father talked about his retirement. He said he would like to take my mother to Austria for a holiday, and she held his hand. It was a happy time, and I remember wondering why I had kept away so long. In my absence they had clearly resolved their differences – or at least they had grown to treasure the kind of love that they had. My father was sixty-two when he died. My mother died only months later. And the rented house? That, of course, went with them. They never made it to Austria.

But it is a noble profession, the making of chairs. I wish I’d shown my parents I could dance. It is what they gave me, after all.

What shall we sing of when we die?

‘D
EAR
Q
UEENIE
,’
read Sister Catherine.
‘Visited the Roman Baths and had spa experience. Also met a very famous actor whom I did not recognize and had cream tea with a surgeon. It has been a difficult day. Best wishes, Harold Fry.’

‘It doesn’t sound that difficult to me,’ laughed Barbara.

Today we were promised a visit from the counselling unit at the hospital. Owing to staff illness and recent cuts, the counselling unit was a single woman in her early thirties who spent a long time trying to negotiate her Fiat into a parking space. From the dayroom we watched her reversing first over the Well-being Garden and then into the sign that says
DO NOT PARK HERE
. She was dressed head to toe in purple. Purple headscarf, purple dress, purple cardigan, purple shoes. The woman looks like a giant bruise, said Mr Henderson. She ran through the rain with her head bowed. The wind lashed the windows and flattened the plants.

The counselling unit arranged us in a circle and asked if we wanted to talk about dying. We could ask any question we liked, she said. There was only a soundscape of throat-clearing and raspy breath and stomach grumbles. We all got very busy, doing nothing. Steam rose from her wet hair and clothes.

‘I’d rather talk about sex, if you don’t mind,’ said Finty. ‘Anyone had it lately?’

The Pearly King laughed so much his arm fell off.

No, it did. He admitted that he hadn’t strapped it on to the stump, he’d just propped it inside his jacket sleeve. The straps make him sore. Barbara made a happy humming noise to cover a fart. The counselling unit opened her file and examined her notes.

Perhaps we should talk about music instead, she suggested. Did anyone want to make a request for their funeral? A lot of people die, she explained, without sharing their favourite songs or poems. ‘And it is
your
funeral,’ she said. ‘You must say what
you
would like. It can take enormous pressure off friends and family if they know your favourite songs.’

‘None of us has got any friends or family,’ said Mr Henderson.

‘Speak for yourself,’ said the Pearly King. ‘Last time I asked, I had twenty grandchildren.’

‘And I have my neighbour,’ added Barbara. ‘She is just too busy to visit.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Finty. ‘My life has been a right mess. Married at sixteen. Divorced at seventeen. And that was the best bit. No one’s gonna shed a tear for me. When I go, you can stick a match under me and turn on the radio.’

This time when the Pearly King laughed, he held on to his shoulder.

Mr Henderson rolled his eyes and stared at his watch. A patient with a tartan dressing gown – he arrived yesterday – had already closed his eyes.

I felt sorry for the counselling unit. I wrote something in my notebook for Sister Catherine to read out.

‘Queenie would like a song by Purcell called “O Solitude”. And also “Mighty Like a Rose”, sung by Paul Robeson.’ My heart was pounding.

‘That’s very lovely,’ said the counselling unit with such enthusiasm that the new patient was woken and cried out in alarm. ‘Would you like to tell us why?’

I wrote in my notebook that I used to listen to the Purcell on my record player in Kingsbridge. I’d borrowed the record from the public library. I wrote that it reminded me of a friend’s son, though I was careful not to name him.

The second song, I wrote, was one of my father’s favourites, and so it had become one of mine. He used to sing it from his workshop, and my mother would stop her housework and listen. Sometimes you can love something not because you instinctively connect with it but because another person does, and keeping their things in your heart takes you back to them. It took a while to get all this down in my notebook. No one complained, not even Mr Henderson. It was the first time I had written about my funeral.

I didn’t add that I still possess the Purcell record. I’ve never stolen anything in my life, apart from that. The record department of Kingsbridge library could buy a whole new classical section with my penalty fine.

If there is still a library in which to put the classical section, of course.

But I expressed none of this in the dayroom. ‘You’re a class act, Queenie,’ said Finty. ‘I’d be that gal on the
Titanic
. With her arms out and everything. What’s that song?’

‘Do you mean “My Heart Will Go On” by Céline Dion?’ asked the counselling unit. ‘That’s a popular choice for funerals.’

‘My third wife chose it for our wedding,’ said the Pearly King.

‘Also weddings,’ added the counselling unit.

‘My third wife’s heart didn’t go on for very long. She took off with the barman.’

‘Céline Dion has a new scent out,’ piped up Finty. ‘So does Jade Goody.’

‘Isn’t Jade Goody dead?’ asked Mr Henderson.

‘She still has a new scent out,’ said Finty.

‘Shall we get back to our funeral music?’ called the counselling unit.

Things livened up after that. Finty told us she’d like everyone to wear bright colours at her funeral and have a bop in the car park. She didn’t want us to hang about being sad in the Chapel of Rest. (‘No offence, Reverend Mother,’ she added. ‘But it gets nippy and a bit serious in there.’) Everyone laughed, including Sister Philomena, and Finty told the counselling unit she could wear her purple, if she liked. Then the counselling unit went very quiet, very still, as if she’d been touched inside her clothes, and said, ‘Do you mean you want me at your funeral, Finty?’

‘’Course I do. I need all the friends I can get. At the reception I want Cornish pasties and alcopops in all them colours. There can be lemonade for any AA geezers that turn up, and also the nuns.’

Others began to join in. The Pearly King said he hoped there would be no trouble at his funeral. His ex-wives had issues; his daughter’s wedding had cost a thousand pounds in damages. Then the new patient said he’d like to be buried in a willow box, and Mr Henderson asked, Willow? What’s wrong with the traditional wooden coffin, brass fittings, silk lining? The Pearly King growled, That’s fine if you can
afford to bury cash, and the new patient said, Some of us have got families to think about, and Mr Henderson shouted, Do you think I like living alone?

As the noise rose, the counselling unit went pale. ‘One at a time! One at a time!’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Finty. ‘We’re having a nice time. This is living.’

Well, that did it. Everyone was howling, even the counselling unit. And Finty was right. We’ve spent so much time recently, all of us, being examined and cut open and having bits removed. We’ve spent so much time being the recipients of bad news. It doesn’t lend itself to jokes, all that. But here we were, rejects, you might say, or at least at the end of the line, and it was a relief, a blessed relief, to look at the end of the line and stop being so fearful and argue like anyone else. Even if the topic in question was our funeral plans.

‘What about you, Queenie?’ said the counselling unit. ‘What do you want?’

I thought a little and then I wrote,
Please scatter my ashes on my sea garden
.

Barbara began to sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’. She sat with her hands in her lap, and also her eye. (‘I swear that thing’s moving,’ said Mr Henderson.) Barbara’s voice was thin and pure, like a veil of sea mist when it swirls in with the tide and hangs above the branches of my garden. Then the Pearly King began a deep bass accompaniment, followed by Mr Henderson. The new patient managed a few bars, and Finty nodded at me and said, ‘Come on, Queenie. Hum along, gal.’

I’m not saying we were a choir. I’m not saying we got the same words or even a tune. But it felt a small gift, to open my mouth and no longer
be one person.

Do you remember?
‘Mice blind three
’? I remember. When I sang to you it was like showing you my feet without my shoes.

After the song, the counselling unit blew her nose and apologized. The Pearly King said, ‘You cry if you want. God bless you for coming. There’s a load of people that wouldn’t even cross the threshold. Would you like to take my arm?’ But I think by this point she feared he meant without the rest of him attached, so she said she was all right, really. It had just been a strange day, she said. Strange but wonderful.

‘That’s the bugger with funerals,’ said Finty. ‘All those nice people singing songs you like and saying stuff about how good you were and you’re not even there. I’d rather hear it now.’

‘For what it’s worth,’ murmured the Pearly King, ‘I think you are one in a million.’

Finty went the colour of boiled beetroot. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’

‘I do, darlin’, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true.’ He gave a soft smile and kept his deep-brown eyes on Finty. He must have been very handsome once.

‘Aw, fuck no,’ she cackled. ‘Get off, will you.’ She couldn’t speak for smiling after that.

Over tea, Mr Henderson kept looking at me. I thought it was because of the mess I had made down my linen serviette, but he was still doing it when the plates were gone and everyone had left the tables. He stood and limped towards me and stopped his walker at my side.

‘I like Purcell,’ he said.