Dark Places (38 page)

Mother was the first to go, passing away in her sleep in Aunt Daphne's house, after a vigorous day of good works in the form of a cake stall for the Woman's Temperance Union: one Dundee Seed Cake too many, and she was gone. Daphne sent me a few of her things, and, such is the weakness of the best-regulated man, when I saw Mother's double strand of pearls lying on the worn black velvet, as I had seen them so often lying against her skin, I had to get out my handkerchief and pretend something had gone down the wrong way.

As for Norah, she had tyrannised us for all those many years with her endless
headaches
, her
pains in the joints
, her
weaknesses
, her
fevers
, her
palpitations
and her
rashes
, but I had never thought of her as doing anything as definite as actually dying. With so much practice at it, you would have thought she would have done the thing in style, but all she could do was to shrivel in the bed, go a papery colour, and stare sunken-eyed at the people around her. She did not even manage a proper deathbed speech: she simply withered and shrivelled and stared until the nurse came to me one afternoon with the news that she had
slipped away.

At the funeral I spoke movingly of my wife's
wit and wisdom
, and even got an affecting huskiness going. I was turning out to be rather good at funerals. Afterwards I stood at the church door with the minister and shook a very large number of hands. Norah seemed to have known more people than I would have imagined, and several of them were able to go one better than me, and produce an actual tear or two.
Oh you will miss her
, they said.
What a gap. What a loss.
I nodded, and looked grave, and pressed the hands between my own, but I grew more and more weary of it. I knew that they were only repeating what they knew were the correct sentiments, but how could they possibly think that her going could leave a gap, when she had performed no actual function in the world? How could they imagine I would miss someone who had never impinged?

Kristabel went too, but not before she had undermined me for one last time. Somehow she had persuaded the doctors that Lilian had had enough
rest and routine
, and that she could now be officially declared sane. Sane! She had never in her life been sane, I could see that now. Certainly it was true that
rest and routine
had been promised to work
wonders
, had not included actually becoming sane!

The last time I saw Kristabel alive was when she came to me with a grim look in her eye and a sheaf of papers she wanted me to sign. ‘She will not bother you, Albion, but she must have regular money, I have got it all drawn up here.' There was a look in her eye I did not like, a certain unyielding flat tone in her voice as she reiterated meaningfully that Lilian would not
bother
me, there would be no
interference
, there would be no
unpleasantness of any kind
if I just signed these papers from the bank. I could see she was prepared to stand there frowning in front of my desk all day, and I had several urgent things to get on with, and in any case the money was a trivial sum to a man in my position. In the end I was glad to sign and be rid of them both so cheaply.

Kirstabel's funeral was a pretty small affair, and there was no missing my daughter among the handful of mourners. She had become a gigantic coarse woman with stringy hair and a skirt with a split down the back, no longer young enough to get away with such things: she had gone terribly to seed, and in spite of the regular money she had been getting from me, she looked as though she was sleeping in the park, and probably hearing voices too. To the eye that knew, she was as crazy as she had always been, but she put up a good show. It is a well-known fact that the madder a person is, the better they can pretend to be sane. She had a few words for John, spoke to two old ladies who had been neighbours of Kristabel's, even greeted the Minister, and if you took no notice of the knots in her hair and the mismatched socks visible under the edge of the skirt, she could have appeared almost normal.

I watched her face, watched for her to turn and meet my eyes, and had just the right expression prepared: tolerant, even forgiving, but firm. I was not a man to be taken advantage of in any way, or made to look any kind of fool in public. But in all the time that she talked to John, to the old ladies, and to the Minister, she did not so much as glance over towards me. Not that I wished to speak to her, or have anything to do with her, if the truth were known. Why would I want to approach someone who looked as if she could do with a bath? What would I have to say to someone so obviously a brick short of a full load? Frankly, I was glad she kept her distance, and when I lost sight of her, and realised she must have left, I was not sorry.

When John and I got home from the funeral, he made to go straight up to his room, but I stopped him. He was not much, but he was my only son.

Well
,
we will have to take care of each other
,
now
,
John
, I said, in the loud way you had to speak to John to get his attention, and he shot me a stricken look.
Yes
,
Father
, he said, because he knew better than not to answer when his father spoke, but he was not really paying attention. I had not seen him cry at the funeral: in fact, when I considered it, I had not seen him cry for years. But his eyes seemed shrunken in their sockets and his face was pinched. ‘
Yes
,
Father
, he said, and blew his nose so loudly the pictures shook on the walls.

When his nose was well and truly blown, I said it again.
Just the two of us
, I told him,
just you and me now.
I made sure we were together a little more, as befitted a widower and his only son. I took him to Dingle for a proper suit, as Father had taken me to Chapman, and lunched him at the Club, and brought him with me more often to the Business. He was at the University now and it was high time he took an interest, but all he could do was sit there like a lump on the chair, and could not even be got to express any enthusiasm for the new-fangled moving stairway.
This will all be yours one day
, I reminded him.
When I am dead and gone
,
you will be the Mr Singer here
, but I had to laugh at the idea of myself dying, and of John ever being Mr Singer. He shot me a look of surprise, as though the idea of my death had never occurred to him.

Of all the people in the world, John was surely the one least likely to astonish me. And yet it was this gormless son of mine who took the wind right out of my sails. We sat in Norah's dining-room one night, while I explained to John the importance of extravagant public display in business. ‘In the business world,' I was saying, ‘any reek of thrift is as bad as a rumour of typhus,' and I was pleased with the way I was putting it. I would have liked a better response from John, and said rather sharply, ‘Remember that, John, you will be glad of it, when your time comes.' John nodded and said, ‘Yes, Father,' in that mechanical unconvinced way he had, but then he suddenly looked up at me and said clearly down the length of the table, ‘Well, actually no, Father, I have got a job, you see, and a room in Macleay Street.'

I could not have been more astonished if the mahogany table had opened up the crack between its leaves and nipped me on the nose. But I was not going to give John the satisfaction of seeing me stumped. I did nothing more than nod, and ask him whether he could pass the pepper. It was an insurance company, he told me, as if I had asked, and he was going to
work his way up
, but I did nothing more than nod and chew. ‘I will be leaving tomorrow,' he said, although I certainly had not asked.

In order to regain the initiative I went upstairs and came back with my second-best cuff-links, the ones from Father. ‘Here you are, John,' I said. ‘My father had them from his father, I had them from my father, and now you are having them from your father.' John opened the box and glanced at the cuff-links, but an heirloom was wasted on the boy, and so was an occasion. ‘Thank you, Father,' he said with no more feeling than if I had handed him a handkerchief he had dropped. ‘I had better go and pack now.'

Now that it was just myself to be looked after, I began to think of letting Cook go. Alma could cobble together the simple meals I needed, and do the little cleaning I required, and it seemed an extravagance to employ a cook just for myself. But before I had definitely decided, I was forestalled. Cook and Alma came to me one morning, together, as if giving each other courage, and announced that they were handing in their notice,
What with dear Mrs Singer gone
,
and now dear little John gone too
,
Mr Singer sir.
They were puffed up with triumph, both of them, spinning out the business of getting their trunks down to the front door, and doing some definite hovering, saying goodbye several times, and allowing extensive pauses to take place. ‘Oh well,' they kept saying, and studied the pattern of the floorboards. It was obvious that they were waiting for me to beg them to stay, and claim I would be
lost without them
, and cry at them about
however would I manage.
I gave them no such satisfaction, and if they were hovering for a
keepsake
or a
little gift
they were not going to get that either: just a week's wages and my best wishes.

Mrs Philpott was found to
do
for me, and she did perfectly well, considering. She was deaf, so chatter was not in her line. I had tried in the beginning. ‘It is a well-known fact, Mrs Philpott,' I began, but she had simply left the room and closed the door on my fact. She was surly, which was also fine by me, and made no secret of her feeling that she was doing me a favour coming up the hill twice a day to see to my needs. But she could put a meal on the table in front of me in the cold gleam of the empty dining-room, and kept me in clean shirts. What more could a man need?

It was just what a man needed: it was just what a man wanted: it was an ideal sort of set-up. I did not mind being alone, and I did not miss my family.
All on your own
,
Mr Singer
, people sympathised, and tried to get me to break down in front of them. All my life I had felt people watch me tiresomely, their eyes avid on my face, waiting to see me unmanned by emotion. Mother had done it, reading improving stories to me as a boy, of the deaths of angelic children. Norah had done it, bursting into tears over the perfidy of lady-friends or a broken vase, and wanting me to weep too. Even sad old Rundle had watched me as he had spun me hard-luck stories about some drone of an employee, how he had a sick wife and fourteen tubercular children and the bailiffs coming in next week.

Now I brushed away these sympathisers as I had always brushed away false displays of emotion. I was not lonely, I did not miss anyone: a man of inner resources has no need of chatter around him.
Family life
was one of the things expected of a man, and certainly in the abstract it was a fine idea: but in the all-too-concrete flesh of actual
family life
, a man's energies were dissipated. Bills for goods had to be checked against actual objects, and their internal arithmetic checked against the slyness of tradesmen: objects broke, or wore out, with suspect alacrity, and mulish people, mostly women, had to be quizzed about details of cup handles and shoe leather. The children of a
family man
had to be watched closely to ensure they did not slacken in their Irregular Verbs or their Nine-Times Table, and wives had to be kept an eye on in case they
let themselves go.
Finally, the endless minutiae of family life wore a man down.

Now, as the house gradually emptied, I felt as if I could return to my true self as simply Man rather than Family Man, encumbered on every side. Everything now was just as I had always wanted it. Windows could be open or closed, just as I myself wished: there were no plaintive squeaks from Norah about draughts.
Strengthening liver
and
blood-purifying swedes
could now be entirely removed from my table, and Mrs Philpott could be told to provide tripe once a month, and brains every other week, without Norah murmuring in disgust; if I wished to stay out till all hours, there was no one to whom I needed to explain about
going to see someone on a little business matter;
and after years of distraction and trivia, there was nothing to stop me thinking.

I was free at last, but somehow it seemed that I had almost forgotten how to enjoy my freedom. The tripe was bitter in my mouth, the breezes from every window chilled me to the bone,
seeing someone on a little business matter
seemed somehow more trouble than it was worth, and I could not always settle to a good think. There was something wrong with the air in my study; it was too thick or too thin, so that the print danced before my eyes, the chair wrestled with my spine, the books themselves had to be held open by main force. I would wake up with a brassy taste in my mouth, the shadows falling the wrong way through the window, the book on the floor beside my boots, and I would for a few moments be unable to summon any kind of fact at all.
My name is Albion Gidley Singer
, I would need to remind myself.
And I must have just dropped off for a moment.

A man's home is his castle, but it seemed that a man's castle was capable of turning on a man, and making him evaporate. There was silence now from down below where Cook had clashed her saucepans for so many years, silence in the attic where Alma's heavy tread had made the mirrors tremble downstairs, and dust began inexorably to gather. I sat in the dining-room, waiting for Mrs Philpott to bring dinner in, and the sounds as I unfolded my table-napkin, drew in my chair, and swallowed a mouthful of water, were enormous. The room was still
done
as Norah had had it
done
all those years ago: I had never let her
re-do
it again, so it remained a monument to her folly. I had never noticed in the heat of family life what a very chilly room it was. Perhaps there was even a suspicion of damp. I had had the men in, and they had charged me an arm and a leg, but there was still a chill that struck at you as you came in, and a certain stony magnifying silence.