This Is All (99 page)

There’s a small tree-lined garden of remembrance beside the crematorium with a couple of park benches for visitors to use. He asked if we could sit there for a while.

We sat in silence side by side till he suddenly took a deep breath and said with almost angry passion, ‘She saved you, you know that, don’t you?’

I asked him what he was talking about.

‘What do you think I’m talking about?’ he said. ‘Cordelia! I’m talking about Cordelia. She saved you.’

‘Saved me from what?’ I asked.

‘Turning into your mother,’ he said.

I said I didn’t know what he meant.

He said, ‘Look at you. You’re twenty-two, you’ve just been to the funeral of your twenty-year-old lover, the mother of your infant daughter, and what are you doing? You’re dragging your stupid father out of the bog because he’s the one who’s crying like a baby, and you haven’t a tear in your eye. I couldn’t have been that tough at your age and I still couldn’t. Only your mother could.’

‘Don’t tell me how to grieve, Dad,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it my own way.’

‘I’m not telling you how to grieve,’ Dad said, calming down and blowing his nose. ‘I’ve been in this business for thirty-odd years. I’ve seen every kind of grief and every kind of expression of it. I know you’ll do it your own way. You always do everything your own way. Just like your mother. And I don’t mind. I admire you for it. I wish I was like that, I’d have done a lot better for myself. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about that lovely girl, who saved you from turning into your mother. At least, I hope she did. I hope she finished the job.’

I’d never had a conversation like this with my father before. I was learning that what he’d always told me was right: a death in the family brings out the best and the worst in people, and funerals are occasions when the harshest truths are spoken.

‘If you think so badly of my mother,’ I said, rattled and wanting to get back at him, ‘why did you marry her?’

Dad shrugged. ‘The same reasons Cordelia wanted you. Your mother was clever, and single-minded and ambitious. They were qualities I wished I had and knew I hadn’t. And she wanted me.’

‘So what changed?’

‘What makes someone attractive when they’re young can turn sour when they’re older. Cleverness can turn into arrogance, single-mindedness into one-track bloody-mindedness, ambition can turn into ruthlessness. And it’s possible to want someone, not for themselves, but because you can use them to achieve what you want for yourself.’

‘And you’re saying that’s what’s happened to Mother and it’s what could happen to me because I take after her?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. I could see it happening already before you took up with Cordelia. You were always your mother’s son and she was determined you always would be. Like she’s done with your brother and is doing with his kids. But then Cordelia got hold of you and I saw how she
gave you some of the qualities that made her such a lovely person. And what’s more, she had the guts and the strength to stand up to your mother and take you away from her. Your mother met her match and by god, I was pleased. You’ll be lucky to be loved like that again.’

‘I know, Dad,’ I said. ‘And I know I’ll never love anyone else like I love her. But thanks for telling me.’

‘See what I mean?’ Dad said with a wry smile. ‘That’s Cordelia. Your mother would never thank anybody for telling her the truth about herself, not in a million years. Instead, she’d cut them into little pieces and leave them for dead.’

I couldn’t help asking why he’d stayed with her, if he felt like that.

Dad stood up, blew his nose again on his crisp white handkerchief, checked his tie was straight, adjusted his heavy black funeral director’s overcoat and brushed it down – always dapper, always neat – and said, ‘I’m not like you, Will. I don’t do things my own way, much as I wish I did. I’m good at my job but I’ve never been ambitious. I like what I know rather than taking a chance on what I don’t know. And I admit to the terrible weakness of keeping my promises. For better or worse, till death us do part. I meant it when I said it, and I’m sticking to it. But apart from that, what you’re forgetting is that the business that provides us with a good living isn’t called Blacklin’s, it’s called Richmond’s. Your mother is the apple of her father’s eye. Whatever she wants she gets. Me included. He’s more in love with her than he ever was with his wife. What you don’t know, because I’ve been too ashamed to tell you, is that when he retired, your grandfather didn’t hand the business over to me, he gave it to your mother. She owns it. As far as your grandfather and your mother are concerned, I’m still their employee.’

For the first time in years, I couldn’t help getting hold of my father and hugging him like I used to when I was little and saying, ‘Dear god, Dad, I’m so sorry.’

He hugged me back, and kissed me on the cheek, and let go, and adjusted his overcoat again, and sniffed and wiped his eyes, and smiled and said, ‘Don’t be, son. There’s nothing to be sorry for. I’m happy enough. I’m not complaining, only explaining. And I’ve got you, haven’t I. And I’m proud of you. And honest to god, Will, I didn’t mean to say any of this, not today of all days. But there it is. And you see why I was crying just now. I wasn’t crying for Cordelia. She has no need of tears. I was crying for you.’

My father hadn’t intended to tell me that, and I hadn’t intended to tell you. I’m just following my nose. Not my usual style, more your mother’s. On a journey she had absolutely no sense of direction. It was not unknown for her to get lost on her way home from school or from work. Sometimes I wondered how she found her way to the bathroom. But when she was writing she knew exactly where she was going and how to get there without a plan or any notes to help her. Whereas I have no trouble navigating on land but have about as much sense of direction when I’m writing as your mother did when driving, and I get lost even when I’ve made careful notes. But I don’t think this was a congenital condition in either of us. I think it’s a question of attention – of where the mind is focused and what matters to it and gives pleasure.

I mentioned your mother’s funeral, and must tell you something about it. Though saying that (writing that!) makes me wonder whether you’ll need to read any of this when you’re sixteen. Between now and then I’ll have told you who your birth mother was, you’ll have questioned me, we’ll have
talked about many things, and so much will have changed. I wonder where we will be living, and who with, and what we will be doing and why, and what will have happened in our country and in the world, and whether you will have fallen in love, and how we will regard each other. What your mother has written will still be news to you, but what I’m writing for you will be familiar history. Not only because I’ll have told it to you already, but because we’ll have lived together for sixteen years, you’ll know me, the worst as well as the best, and you’ll be the age when the main attribute of a father is that he is a bore and an embarrassment. But when you read for the first time what your mother wrote for you, she’ll be your age and unknown and as fascinating as a new lover.

Your mother’s death was such a shock that none of us could think straight about her funeral. All we could decide was that Cordelia would be cremated and we wanted the funeral to be simple and private, for family and close friends only. We didn’t have the strength to face anything more. That’s why we left it to my father to organise for us. Which is why it was held in the crematorium chapel and why, though none of us is a practising Christian or even a Christian by faith, Dad’s friend, Father Pippin – Ellylugs – took the service and followed the rites of the Church of England.

George and Doris were there, of course, though George was hardly conscious; we’d had to drug him to the eyeballs just to keep him on his feet. The other mourners were Julie and Arry, my brother David, one member of staff from each of George and Doris’s offices, my father and myself. You were looked after by Elizabeth along with her two girls, who loved playing with you. My mother was there but arrived at the last minute and left as soon as the service was over and before anyone else, claiming she had ‘a business appointment I really can’t cancel, darling, I’m so sorry.’

Afterwards, Julie was upset. It wasn’t the kind of funeral
Cordelia would have wanted, she said, and she was right, we all knew that. So, with her usual persistent determination, she put together a programme ‘In Celebration of the Life of Cordelia Kenn’ and laid it on in the theatre at school. She invited everybody she thought Cordelia would want to attend – friends and teachers from her school days, staff from the clinic where she’d worked as a receptionist until the last few weeks before your birth, people from the local bookshop and library, friends she’d made through me, and many more – 136 turned up on the day.

The programme included poetry and prose selected and read by Julie and Arry. Doris and I played César Franck’s Piece No. 5 for piano and oboe, a favourite of Cordelia’s. Three of her oldest friends performed a scene they’d written in which they talked about her like characters in a play waiting for the arrival of a friend they hadn’t seen for a few years, remembering what she was like as a child and the things they used to do. The scene ended with the doorbell ringing and the three girls going to let her in. It was funny and sad, and the hit of the evening. My old band got together again to play the three songs Cordelia wrote for me, which one of the band’s girlfriends sang (I didn’t dare try). A video was shown, made by Izumi and sent from Japan, about Cordelia and their friendship. She reminisced about the day Cordelia made friends under the maple tree at school and the day they were having a facial and I turned up late. Then Julie read three of Cordelia’s poems followed by a montage of photos Arry had put together of Cordelia from childhood to some camcorder shots of her playing with you on our bed taken just before she died. To finish, three boys and two girls from the present Year 11 sang unaccompanied two pieces from Shakespeare: Ariel’s song ‘Full Fathom Five’ from
The Tempest
, and Sonnet 18, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ in arrangements by the Swedish jazz composer, Nils Lindberg.

At the end we rose to our feet quite spontaneously as
though it had been planned and stood in silence for a minute or two before someone started to clap, slowly, alone, then others joined in, and then everyone, and the clapping became faster and faster and louder and louder, and people began to cheer, and some to whistle, till the noise reached a climax when suddenly, to the split second, everyone stopped clapping and shut up, and there was complete silence again. And then with shufflings and gathering of belongings we left the theatre, no one saying a word.

Outside in the dining hall buffet food and drinks were provided, and people started talking and laughing and greeting each other as if they’d just arrived, all a little too loud to cover the emotions the celebration had stirred up, though some were still crying, during which I wondered what Cordelia would have made of it, Cordelia the loner, who didn’t like mixing her friends and never enjoyed being together with more than two of them at one time. Whatever she’d have thought, I’m sure of this: she’d have been surprised by the number who were there, the depth of feeling for her, and the ages of the people who came to celebrate her life, from you, a five-month-old baby, to a man of eighty, a client of the clinic, who came, he said, because Cordelia had ‘the most beautiful spirit of anyone I’ve ever met’. Apparently, he’d taken her for a coffee quite often during her break after his treatment; she used to ask him about his experiences as a soldier in the Second World War. That she was interested in his wartime stories didn’t surprise me, she was fascinated by that period of history and had studied it at school; what did surprise me was that she had never mentioned him. What else, I wondered, didn’t I know about her? And I thought again how mysterious other people’s lives are, most of all those you love and are closest to.

The Celebration was held on a Saturday evening. Next day George, Doris, Julie, Arry and I drove to the White Horse.
You were with us. It was misty, we could hardly see more than twenty metres, everything was wet and icy cold. While George held the wooden casket – the same one he’d used for her mother’s – I scattered Cordelia’s ashes on the eye of the horse. Nothing was said. Doris, Julie, carrying you, and Arry were in tears. As the last of the ashes sifted through my fingers George broke down completely, threw himself full length onto the eye, clawing at the ground, shouting Cordelia’s name, and wouldn’t get up. It was all Arry and I could do to lift him to his feet and by the time we managed it, George was covered with chalk from the eye, doubtless mixed with some of Cordelia’s ashes. We tried to brush him down, but the chalk was wet and sticky and our efforts only smeared it further into his clothes. He looked like a ghost. With one of us either side of him, Arry and I helped him back to the car.