Birthday (23 page)

The minister (or whatever he was: Brian had never sorted out the titles or hierarchy of those in the church industry) was a tall, pale, balding man who said a few words about ‘our sister Avril' as if he had known her all his life. Brian thought what a hypocrite, but he was only doing his job, and he supposed it comforted Arthur to hear Avril's name mentioned in a public place.

Passages were read from a softened down version of the Bible, too much mention of Jesus for Brian, though he supposed you had to expect it at a service for sending a dead body into the ground.

Everyone got back into their cars and drove a few hundred yards to the far end of the cemetery, lips of dull earth around an oblong hole, the box already in position. He had to remind himself that Avril's body lay inside. The wind blew colder, and clouds ran across the sky as if to bring news of rain before the ritual finished.

Arthur stood tall and dignified, his face looking raw, eyes as if unseeing, alone as only he could be. After the words ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust' (mud, more like it, not being in the desert for which the words were written) he picked up a handful of heavy soil from the spade given to him, and sent his last goodbye clattering onto the box. Others in turn did the same, the only part of the procedure that brought Brian close to tears. A vivid picture of Avril smiling and talking in her prime vanished when he stooped to lift a handful of soil from the ground, muttering farewell as he let it fall.

Arthur stood in the garden among the dead midwinter plants, staring as if to bring back all their colours after he and Avril had tended them into growth. Harold laid a hand around his shoulders, and said something which made Arthur smile, and take his son's arm to come into the house.

Brian sipped his coffee, for the first time in years stirring sugar into it. Few people bothered with alcohol, as if it was out of place, but all were talking in the same old lingo, telling stories and reminiscing. He recalled a remark by Hannah Arendt that ‘the homeland of the Jews is in their language', and being again among people he had grown up with, he realized that their idiom was his home base as well.

More people were at the house than had been at the funeral, because some neighbours had come in. Arthur looked as if a ponderous weight had been taken from his back now that the interment was over, but Brian realized that a year would need to elapse before he could be anything like himself.

Harold was telling them about driving to Calverton one winter's dusk, a northerly drizzle slewing against the windscreen of his white Mercedes van as he went over the Dorket Head crossroads. ‘After so many houses on the edge of town you're suddenly on your own in the middle of nowhere. You all know where I mean. I went down the hill and the lane got narrower, or it seemed to, because there was hedges on either side. Then the drizzle changed to sleet, as if somebody was chucking it in buckets.'

To encourage him, a darkly clouded sky threw rain against the living room window. ‘There's a sharp right hand bend, and after a few hundred yards another bend to the left. Then the lane goes down steep, through the wood.' He turned to Arthur: ‘Then I saw her, as plain as I'm looking at you.'

Arthur nodded, and told him to get on with it.

‘Are you sure you weren't sloshed?' Derek said.

‘Not then I wasn't. I had to go slow, and put the main beams on. She came from the trees, right across my path. I couldn't believe it, but I had to, because she looked at me. The fucking ponytail I wore in them days stood up on its hind leg. She had a white face, and big dark circles under her eyes. I thought she was going to do a header through the windscreen, she was that close. I shouted. Talk about panic, and I'm not like that. Screamed, more like it. I braked, and nearly hit a tree. Missed it by inches. Then I pressed on, but I was shaking like a leaf. I hadn't had anything to drink the night before either.'

‘I can't believe in ghosts,' Ronald smiled

‘So what was it?' Eileen said.

‘Maybe she'd broken out of Mapperley Asylum,' Arthur suggested.

Harold's hands shook while lighting a cigarette. ‘Say what you like. When I got to the village I delivered my packages. Then I had to go in the pub for a sit down and a drink, I was so shaken up. An old chokka at the bar asked why I was looking so white at the gills, and when I told him he laughed, his false teeth doing a dance from one side of his mouth to the other. “There's been a lot of accidents at that spot,” he said, “but it's nothing to worry about. You've only seen the ghost. People do from time to time.”

‘Then he told me what happened about a hundred years ago. He said that just off the first bend of the lane was a place called Abbey House. The owners were abroad at the time, and the housekeeper was living in, with her twenty-year-old daughter. Anyway, on a winter's afternoon the mother took ill, didn't she? The girl put on her cloak and bonnet to go and get a doctor from the village.'

Everyone was quietly waiting to hear what happened next, as Harold, now knowing that he could take his time, reached the arm of a chair and shook ash from his cigarette. An increasing ferocity of rain reminded him to get on with it. ‘She thought she'd take a short cut, down the fields and through the wood, and it was nearly dark when she got to the trees. She must have been wet through, because it was the worst afternoon you can imagine, and just as dark as it is today.

‘Anyway, she went into the wood, but she never came out. She was found next day, or her body was. She had been raped and murdered. A shepherd found her, and they never got the one as did it. The old bloke told me all this in the pub. Funnily enough, he said, all the accidents at that spot had been to men drivers, never to women, though these days with everybody having long hair you'd think she'd make a mistake now and again. But she never did. He told me to be extra careful on the way back, because she'd be angry I'd got away, and might have another go. She wants to kill all the men she can. “Fuck that,” I told him, “she ain't going to get another chance with me. She's blown it already. That was my lot.” I drove the other way out of the village, went like a bat out of hell, flashing everybody in front to get to the A614. And I've never been that way since. I never will, either. I don't see why the daft bitch should want to do me in. It wasn't me as raped and killed her.'

Oliver stood by the mantelpiece to fill his cold pipe. ‘Are you sure it wasn't an hallucination?'

‘You bet I am. I wouldn't even go that way on a bright summer's day. I'm not a coward, but I was shit-scared. If she hadn't had such big mad eyes I might have fancied her, but she looked like trouble, so I didn't. I couldn't clear out fast enough. Anyway, it's you I love, ain't it, duck?' he said to Harriet.

She reached for his hand. ‘And I love you. Luckily, I talked you into getting rid of that poncy long hair and buying a proper suit, not to mention pulling out that daft earring.'

‘She nearly yanked my tab off over that.' He sounded in no way regretful. ‘And I got a job as well, didn't I? I ain't had the sack yet, and I won't either.'

She was a tall girl, wearing slimline trousers and a green duffel coat, and Brian saw a resemblance between her and Avril that wouldn't be lost on Arthur. ‘You'd better not get the push, either,' she said, ‘or you've seen the last of me. I go to work, so you've got to. I don't need a house-husband yet. Not that I believe you ever saw that ghost. I've heard too many of your tales.'

‘There you go, showing me up in public again.' He released her hand and straightened himself. ‘If there's one thing I can't stand it's being called a liar. It ain't right. I tell everybody about the most terrifying experience of my life, and the one I love most says I didn't see it.'

‘You're worse than Arthur.' Eileen helped Rachel to clear away cups and plates. ‘I've never heard such a daft story.'

‘I believe you: thousands wouldn't.'

He laughed. ‘I don't care about the thousands. All I know is I'm telling the truth.'

‘The place is on a hill that used to be an ancient camp,' Brian said. ‘Or so it says on the map. Maybe there is something spooky about it.'

‘I'm glad you believe me, Uncle Brian.' Harold reached for Harriet's hand. ‘We've got to be off, though. I told the gaffer I'd do the afternoon shift, and he's starting to rely on me.' He embraced Arthur. ‘You'll be all right, dad. We'll see you at the weekend, won't we, love?'

‘I like your dad, even though he's wary about me because I'm a social worker.'

‘Don't be so daft,' he said.

She kissed Arthur. ‘We'll see you in a few days.'

‘I thought Avril was marvellous,' Harold said. ‘She was always good to me, and I'm dead sorry she's gone. She was one of the best. She was lovely and generous.'

Arthur, unable to speak, kissed his son, and let him go. He looked gravely after him, Brian noticed, as if he couldn't fully believe in Harold wearing a smart suit, and even regretted the lack of earrings, ponytail and jeans. Maybe Harold's settling down – if you could call it that – in some way disappointed Arthur, who saw him as ceasing to rebel against the toffee-nosed poxed-up loudmouthed swivel-eyed fuckpigs who had plagued him all his life and would continue to do so. It was no good thing when a bloke stopped wanting to dynamite the Houses of Parliament. Nor was it so good that Harold no longer looked as Avril had secretly liked to see him, a saddening factor because she couldn't see anybody from now on.

‘It's like being in a submarine.' Arthur sat in the front seat, Derek's car smoothing its way through Burton Joyce and up the Trent Valley. ‘Round here, the sky sucks water out of the river and spews it on the road.'

Brian, sitting behind with Eileen, thought he might create a character called Joyce Burton. She'd be a bit of a tartar, tall, statuesque, with red hair, and wearing little gold-rimmed glasses, an opinionated woman always convinced she was right, but causing mayhem wherever she poked her sharp nose, ending in bed with someone totally unsuitable at the end of each episode.

It was main beams on and all systems go, though plenty of cars came with panache and confidence from the other way. Derek turned on to a lane out of Thurgarton village, the car splashed as if trundling along a stream bed. ‘What a rotten night,' Eileen said.

‘It would be, today of all days,' Arthur said, in the gloom of the car. ‘I'm glad the funeral's over.'

‘We all are.' Derek swerved slightly, then righted. ‘We'll be in a snug pub soon. It's quite close to the river.'

A car coming head on, no time or inclination to dip its beams, nearly drove them into the hedge. ‘We could have been in the river just then,' Arthur said, everyone glad to hear him laugh. The all-enclosing dark after Bleasby was as if drifting through space. ‘You'd better slow down. We don't want four more funerals. At least not for twenty years.'

‘I'll be driving back,' Eileen said, as Derek slotted into a space at the car park. They ran through the rain into a comfortable lounge warmed by flame from real logs, a score of people at tables and by the bar; an aroma of meat and chips and mellow beer filling the air. ‘Now we can warm our arses,' Derek said. ‘Though let's get tanked up first.'

Brian stood by a table laid for supper, and let Eileen choose their seats. Arthur took his pew, as always without using his hands, looking straight before him, and when the pint came, elbow at an angle of ninety degrees, he lifted the rim to his mouth, and took the first long draught with movements, Brian recalled, exactly like those of his grandfather.

The pub was isolated in the Valley of the Trent, strong gusts across sodden meadows spattering rain to fill the dykes and runnels, driving swans into hiding and fish under wavelets on the river. ‘I don't suppose the water ever comes over the lanes?' Brian said.

‘If we do get stuck,' Arthur said, ‘we'll be all right as long as the beer doesn't run out.' Avril had been with them last time, which he remembered, because his hand shook so much on lifting the glass for another go that he had to put it down.

‘It'll be like that for a while.' Brian thought it better to mention than not. ‘It'll take a good year to get over a blow like yours.' Eileen and Derek said comforting words as well, till diverted by a waitress asking what they wanted to eat.

No one had much to say during the meal. Brian went to the bar and replenished their pints, and Arthur was unable to finish his cutlets. ‘It's the first time it's happened to me.'

Eileen put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I wouldn't let it bother you.'

‘Grandad Merton would have forgiven you,' Brian said.

‘I expect he's looking down on us,' Arthur smiled.

‘If he can he will,' Derek said.

‘When I used to go to his house on Sunday morning,' Arthur recalled, ‘grandma would set a place for my dinner. I once left something on my plate. It couldn't have been much, a bit of potato or some gristle. Grandad looked at it. He had his eye patch on, and the good eye glared as if it would burn right into me. So I swallowed what was left. He'd never let anybody leave a scrap of food on their plates.'

Brian remembered the copy of Mrs Beaton always on the sideboard. ‘He didn't want you to insult grandma's cooking.'

‘He needn't have bothered. Everything she brought to the table was good to eat.'

‘I hope she's listening,' Eileen said.

He tampered with what remained of his meal. ‘I never know what to think about that.'

Brian knew that right now he was wondering about Avril. ‘Nobody does.'

‘It's hard to imagine she isn't still looking.' Eileen had picked up Brian's thoughts, which she knew Arthur wanted to hear.

‘Have one of these.' Derek pushed his case across, the top section off, five cigars like a magazine of ammunition waiting to be slotted into a rifle. Tears were in Arthur's eyes as he pulled one out, as if only a bullet for himself would soothe the anguish. Derek peeled off the cellophane, lit it, and put it into his hand. Laughter from the bar, but nothing to be done except stay calm and help their brother to endure. Every tortuous minute of the year to come would, at a quick calculation, need over half a million before the worst of the pain wore off.