Cooee (38 page)

I don't think this is true. I don't think Zoë wanted children at all; and Henry certainly didn't: it would have up-ended their neat lives, their organised lists, their careful careers, their complex diaries, their tidy house.

She never forgot the children's birthdays, I'll give her that. But she was perfectly happy, it seems to me, to remain an aunt, to forgo all the messiness and indignity and turmoil of motherhood, retaining an arm's-length intimacy, a burdenless responsibility, an affectionate distance.

I am annoyed by Henry's easy assumption that Zoë's childlessness was cause for sorrow or sympathy, and I stop listening for a while.

I try to put Frank out of my mind, but it's an effort. He's starting to hover in the pew directly behind me, his flat capable fingers about to descend vice-like on my shoulder.

Deliberately I turn to repel him and find myself gazing into the reproachful eyes of a mousy-looking woman I've never seen before in my life, who presumably is an ex-colleague, or an ex-student, or somehow a beneficiary of my sister's efficient and intrusive habits. I turn back again.

I can never go to a funeral without visualising my own. I don't know if everybody does this: I suppose it's egotistical and perhaps irreverent. But I can't help it. While Henry speaks, reading in his finicky tones from a piece of paper that he has obviously prepared with meticulous care on his computer, I can't help reflecting that there will be no husband to speak at my funeral.

Not that husbands or wives usually do speak, anyway; Henry has already made reference to this and said that he feels this is something he needs to do; he feels for some reason I cannot understand that he will not have bidden Zoë goodbye unless he does so formally, publicly. He looks tired, but his voice doesn't shake and he seems to have himself well under control.

I never did think they were very fond of each other. I wouldn't want a husband who could get up and say a few pernickety, dry-eyed words about me when I died.

But if Steve won't speak at my funeral — and Max certainly can't — who will? Who will be left? Will Kate say anything? Will Dominic? Will they care? What will they say? I steal a look at Dominic, sitting in the front pew on the other side of the chapel, next to his sister. He is on his own: Paula hasn't come. Steve has: he is sitting in the same pew as Kate, further down. Sophie is there, in her school uniform, on Kate's other side. Kate told me she wanted to come; so did Liam, but she sent Liam to school as usual, because she thought he wasn't old enough. She's probably right.

Well, Sophie's twelve. She's old enough to know people die; people go away for good. She is sniffling quietly into a tissue. She knows I'm here, but hasn't looked over at me. She's still upset with me after our last meeting.

Kate is upset, too, but she and I have achieved our precarious semi-reconciliation. I can tell nothing from Dominic's expression. Is this something he felt he had to come to? It meant time away from the office, after all, time stolen from the all-important things he has to do that crowd in on him and prevent him from having a proper lunch. He is soberly suited, eyes cast down. Was he impelled by a sense of propriety? Did he care much about Zoë? Does he care much about anybody?

Just as I look across, I see Kate lean towards him, whispering something; he leans back, nods, smiles. He puts his hand on Kate's for a second.

Let's replay that.

He puts his hand on Kate's hand. I feel the shock of it quiver through me. This is Dominic: Dominic the isolate, the ascetic, the austere loner; Dominic who hates to be touched, who doesn't kiss, doesn't hug, doesn't do any of those vaguely social things people expect of one. And here he is, touching his sister. Unbidden, evidently in compassion and — well, yes, love.

Why are they all sitting over there, anyway? Why are they sitting with their father? I'm more bereaved than he is: she was my sister, after all. Steve didn't even like Zoë very much.

I can't recall the last time Dominic willingly touched me, let me touch him. Probably during his toilet training.

I find myself thinking about the apparent closeness with his sister that Dominic has just manifested. Will she talk with him, I wonder, uneasily. Will she tell him any of the things she now knows? Dominic is a lawyer. Not a criminal lawyer, but a lawyer just the same. He probably has strong views about people who kill people, whether they do so inadvertently or not.

Suddenly I feel immensely vulnerable because of Kate's knowledge. I wish I'd never told her anything. I don't think she'd deliberately betray me: it's not that she's untrustworthy in that way. But she's such a fool, such a hopeless idiot, she might easily say something to incriminate me without meaning to.

There goes that shadow again, behind me, Frank's shadow, the quick blurred movement of Frank's hand about to grip my shoulder. For a moment, I tense.

Will Kate come and visit me if I go to prison? Probably, I think. Will Dominic? Much less certain, I imagine.

Perhaps, though, Dominic might be nicer to me. If I went to prison, I mean. Surely he'd be a bit sorry for me?

My attention is drawn momentarily by something Henry is saying about Zoë being warm and generous, somebody young people could easily relate to, somebody her pupils readily confided in. I'd as soon confide in a death adder, I think; and then I feel ashamed of myself.

Seriously, what will happen at my funeral? Will anybody even come? Will anybody bother? What music will they choose? I don't want Vivaldi. But what do I want? And how will they know what I want?

Now Henry is saying something about Kate.

And, suddenly, Kate is standing, going pink and blotchy around the cheeks, as might have been expected, holding a piece of paper in her hand. She is making her way to the microphone.

Nobody told me Kate was going to speak. Henry asked me if I wanted to; he didn't say a word about Kate doing so. I didn't want to. I don't know most of these people: they are Zoë's friends, Zoë's professional acquaintances, Zoë's ex-students.

I've met some of them, but they have nothing to do with me. Why should I open my heart to them and speak to them about my dead sister? I don't know what I'd say, in any case. I don't know what's in my heart: it's closed, even to me.

But Henry mentioned nothing about Kate speaking. What on earth will she say? Kate and Zoë weren't a bit close. Is she going to make a fool of herself? She hates doing things like this: Steve and I used to have terrible trouble with her whenever some kind of performance was demanded of her at school. There's nothing Kate hates more than standing up in front of a crowd of people.

And it's really very crowded, not just full but spilling over, and mainly with people I've never seen in my life. Ex-students? I can't think of a teacher whose funeral I would willingly have gone to, but I imagine they are ex-students: they're mainly pretty young. Why on earth is Kate doing this? Why is she exposing herself like this?

When Henry said
we
like that, did he mean him and Kate and Steve and Dominic?

Well, Kate got on reasonably well with her, I know. Zoë made an effort: she was not acerbic with Kate as she was with me. She did not positively hound Kate, or criticise her, or flay her. But surely they weren't close.

Kate looks dreadful. The pink blotches make her resemble a plague carrier; she's been crying and the flesh around her eyes is soft and swollen; she's ill at ease, shifting from one foot to the other. I feel a trifle cross with Henry. Why is he forcing her to go through this?

Kate starts to speak. ‘My aunt Zoë was a very special person,' she informs her audience, in faltering tones.

Well. Here's originality.

‘Dominic and I always used to like it when we were little and Aunt Zoë visited,' Kate confides to the chapel at large.

It's another of the irritating things she does:
Aunt
Zoë;
Uncle
Henry. It infantilises her. They were always taught to call their relatives by their Christian names, none of this circuitous aunting and uncling. Sophie and Liam call their uncle plain
Dominic
. Well, Sophie does. I can't recall what Liam says, in fact. And I certainly don't recall my children jumping up and down for joy when Zoë happened to drop by, which she did infrequently.

Kate continues, feet shuffling, blotches flaring, looking as if she's about to fall over. ‘Whenever Aunt Zoë came, she'd always talk to us as if we were real people.'

And when did anyone not, I wonder?

‘What I mean is, she wouldn't talk to us as if we were kids. She wouldn't talk down to us. And she'd tell us what she thought. She wouldn't be soft on us. I remember once I didn't do well at school in something, and everyone else was inclined to say, oh, well, never mind, and Aunt Zoë said to me: “Kate, you can do better than that. What went wrong?” And I had to think about it, and I had to come up with what I thought went wrong, and she said: “Well, next time, you'll know what to do, won't you?” And I did.

‘Dominic and I used to think she would be the most fabulous teacher, and I can see' — she looks up, smiling faintly — ‘I can see, from the numbers of you here today who must have been her students, you all must remember her as the most inspiring teacher imaginable. She was always very honest, that's what I valued most about Aunt Zoë.

‘She was very direct, and she told you exactly what she thought, and you always knew you could trust her. And she knew we trusted her, and we knew she loved us. I hope she knew that we loved her. Goodbye, Aunty Zoë. We'll always remember you, and we'll always love you.'

Kate sniffles once more, casts a desperate apologetic look at Henry, and goes to sit down again while an approving kind of sugary murmur creeps across the chapel.

I remain still. I become aware that I am sitting stiffly, my muscles at full stretch, and it occurs to me that my face may look stiff, too. I arrange it in order to minimise its stiffness, its amazement, its pure steaming rage at my daughter's soppy sentimentalising, her distortions, her craven fibs.

Zoë may well have felt affection, to some extent, for my children, but she had no capacity to interact with them — or with other people's children — spontaneously. This is something I recognise since I, too, suffer from it; but I did better than she did, with my own children anyway. I suppose she may have been a spectacularly good teacher of adolescents (though I must say I doubt it); but she did not have the gift for speaking with small children; she was unable to address them save through a bracing interrogative style under which Kate (little as she seems to recall it) positively wilted. Her directness wasn't because she was honest; it was because she was undiplomatic and insensitive.

Steve and I used to joke about it.
Your bloody sergeant major of a sister
, he used to call her. Involuntarily I glance over in Steve's direction and see that he is nodding and smiling encouragingly at Kate, who is still dabbing at her eyes.

Yes, indeed: I remember Stalinist cross-examinations like that which Kate has just described so winningly:
Well, Minky, why did you do that? You can do better than that, Minky. What went wrong? How can you do better next time?
On it would roll, deadly as a puffball fish, inescapable as a guided missile. Caught in her sights, one could only shuffle in agony. And, invariably, to finish, in a despairing wail, as if you were the most moronic person on the face of the earth:
What were you
thinking
, Minky?

But none of this had anything to do with self-improvement, with doing better next time, with strengthening oneself or one's relationship with Zoë. It was only to pander to her ego, to foster in Zoë the entirely erroneous impression that she was necessary to one's development. It didn't issue from love or warmth. It issued from a paranoid need to dominate, to intimidate, to prove how indispensable she was, in short to bully.

I feel like jumping up and shouting all this to the assembled snivelling congregation. Then I see to my horror that Dominic is approaching the lectern. What the hell is he going to say?

He doesn't say much, as it turns out; but what he does say is to the point. Dominic has, as I know, a gift for this sort of thing. He doesn't allow himself to be overcome by Kate's brand of sentimentalism; he speaks crisply, without fuss.

How handsome he is!

He tells a couple of mildly funny stories; subtly he intimates that it would be foolish to deny that Zoë could be a difficult person. Well, a bit of a character, anyway. I start to relax.

Then he says: ‘Zoë was a remarkable aunt, and a no less remarkable sister. It is not possible to conclude this tribute to her, to her energy and compassion and her sheer zest for life, without referring to her relationship with my mother, to whom she was devoted.'

My rage is swelling again. Why is Dominic doing this to me?

‘For Zoë,' he continues, ‘Isabel's welfare was always paramount. When Isabel was born, Zoë's delight knew no bounds. Zoë would have done anything at all for her little sister. She adored her as a baby, a toddler, a child and as a woman. Nowhere did Zoë's exceptional generosity of spirit show itself more clearly than in her love for my mother, who wishes to join with us in this tribute to her greatly beloved big sister.'