The Dead I Know (14 page)

A nurse entered, one I’d not met.

‘Here she is,’ Mam said. ‘Come and give me a hug.’

The nurse, to her credit, took the embrace sincerely but with a smile. ‘Can’t get enough of them,’ she said. ‘Do you need the toilet at all, Mrs Rowe?’

‘Fine at the moment, thank you.’

The nurse tugged on the belt, tightening and then
loosening it as if to remind Mam of its presence. She made a quick check of the machine beside the bed and left silently.

‘I knew you’d come,’ Mam said, and patted my hand.

‘Of course. Can’t let you have all the fun.’

‘You remind me of my son,’ Mam said.

‘Astonishing coincidence,’ I mocked.

‘True,’ she said. ‘Your eyes, particularly.’ ‘And what is your son’s name?’

She looked at me, her face suddenly empty. ‘You know.’

‘Do I?’

She slapped my hand and it reminded me of the petulant Skye. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘If you don’t know, I’m not about to tell you.’

With that fragment of conversation, I knew the scales had tipped. Mam had gone and probably wouldn’t find her way back. Perhaps she’d gone home? She’d done her work. She’d schooled me in life the way an institution never could. She’d made me think long and hard about everything and anything, answered every question I’d ever asked and many that I hadn’t. She’d fed me, washed me and clothed me until I could do it for myself. Until I could do it for her. She’d grown old and now she was growing young again, all innocence and hugs. It seemed to have happened so fast, but if I stopped to think about it there had been years of incremental decline, faithfully denied by us both until –
paf
, like a blown globe – she’d finally let go. Until that moment, when I’d let go too.

What is life without a memory? Is it death? Sometimes memory was death – slow and painful, eating away at your insides, reeking of decay. Losing your memory would
save you from that; wipe your slate clean. But the good would be swept aside with the bad. All the fine things to build a life on would be lost, leaving you just one thing – that moment. No dreams and no history. The ultimate expression of living in the now. There was nothing sweet or philosophical about holding Mam’s hand, however. She’d known she was going to prison. One without walls or bars where she’d be bound to forget and bound to ask the same questions over and over until she forgot how to ask. Forgot how to speak. Forgot how to eat. Or live.

Out of nowhere, Mam began to cry. Her face crumpled and she bowed her head and rocked.

‘What is it, Mam? Are you okay?’

‘It’s nothing,’ she sobbed. ‘Not a scratch.’

My arm over her shoulder, I wept for the second time that day. Wept for the future. Wept for the past. Wept for the nothing in between.

All the objects, sights, sounds and smells that once coalesced to make Home broke apart and reformed while I was away that Sunday. I could not settle. Being lost within the borders of the familiar was the scariest thing I’d ever experienced. What was once a cocoon now felt like a cracked shell.

The racket spilling from van
57
fuelled my restlessness. The music was loud, but the voices punching through were louder and as sharp as razor blades. Something bad was going down, worse than usual. Maybe I was hearing them clearly for the first time.

Getting ready for bed, I wondered if I could second-guess my subconscious by bedding down someplace irrational to begin with – beneath the bushes along the beach, under the stairs at the lookout, behind the charity bins in the supermarket car park. If my dream-self arose in an unfamiliar bolthole, perhaps I’d head for the caravan. Yes, and perhaps I’d head for van
57
. I imagined what it would look like to a casual observer, seeing a strange, lean figure in pyjamas stepping over the fence and bedding down in the coastal heath with the windblown rubbish. Vagabond of unsound mind – which didn’t seem too far from reality. I understood how a homeless person might evolve. It wasn’t necessarily some grand calamity that displaced you to the streets, it might happen gradually over a lifetime, with each step along the way making sense. It made perfect sense to me, and I would have slept out that night if the air hadn’t been so cold and damp. Ah, my kingdom for a bed with a seatbelt and a nurse to lock me in.

26

His cheeks are wet. His lips move but I can’t hear his voice. My ears are still ringing. He limps awkwardly from the shadows, leaning heavily on a crutch. He is naked. Claw marks score his chest and thigh, some weep red. His teeth flash as he speaks. He takes a long drag on his cigarette and shakes his head. His crutch is a shotgun.

So cold.

‘Sir? You okay? Sir? Can you hear me?’

Somebody shook my shoulder and I leapt to my feet, sucking air.

‘It’s okay. We’re here to help.’

The hand was back on my shoulder again, comforting now, warmth seeping through to my frozen skin. I rubbed my eyes frantically.

Policewomen – two of. I’d woken on the pavement in
front of the café where I’d eaten breakfast the morning before. I couldn’t feel my bare toes but in the feeble light I could see they were covered in sand. I’d walked the whole way – more than a kilometre, and certainly a personal best.

‘Can you tell me your name, sir?’ the woman with her hand on my shoulder asked.

‘Rowe. Aaron Rowe.’

‘Have you been drinking, Mr Rowe?’

‘No. Sleepwalking.’

They looked at each other.

A violent shiver sluiced down my spine.

‘Here,’ the other woman said, handing me her jacket. ‘Just put it over your shoulders.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Where have you come from, Mr Rowe? Where’s home?’

‘The caravan park.’

The woman who’d given me her jacket laughed. ‘Are you serious?’ Constable Nadine Price, her name tag said.

‘Can we give you a lift home?’ the other – Constable Kim Something-with-too-many-letters – asked.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

They swapped the jacket for a soft grey blanket and helped me into the back of the divvy van. I shivered all the way home and thanked them as they let me out at the pedestrian gate.

I handed Constable Nadine Price the blanket, shaking.

‘Will you be right?’

I nodded. ‘Shower.’

‘Good idea. Might want to make an appointment with
your doctor about the sleepwalking. Hate to see you mown down by a truck.’

I summoned a smile and left.

The best thing about the weekend turned out to be going back to work on Monday. In one tempestuous week, the funeral parlour had become my sanctuary. The smell of air-freshener flowers had become linked in my mind to the cool stillness of death, and death was my new best friend – someone I’d only just met but felt I’d known forever.

John was on the phone in the office. He greeted me with a grin and a salute. I bowed and headed for the mortuary. If Skye had been right about the pick-up, there’d be a new body to prepare.

Two new bodies, in fact. Both elderly, both female, both wearing pyjamas. The kindest way to go. Even if they’d been ill and suffering for months or years before, death in bed seemed like the gentlest surprise. It wasn’t hard to imagine them surrounded by their families as they did the last of their breathing. Said their goodbyes. Kissed cheeks. No luggage to check in. Leave your body with us, I thought. We’ll look after that.

I had a sudden longing. It was as clear as daylight and the longer John spent on the phone, the stronger it became. I wanted to clean. Something. Anything, really. I checked the public areas and found them spotless but the urgency turned to action and I cleaned the toilets anyway. I was hanging the mop up when John emerged, whistling, from his office.

‘Self-starter,’ he said. ‘That’s what I like to see. Morning, Aaron.’

‘John.’

‘Good weekend, I trust?’

I shrugged. ‘Happy to be here.’

‘Where’s your tie?’

I plucked at my collar. ‘It was . . . damaged. Bit of a long story.’

‘Damaged or ruined?’

‘Ruined.’

‘Ah, I see,’ he said.

He left the air empty. I had no inclination to fill it.

‘I have another.
One
other,’ he eventually said.

The room grew still again and I found the words he needed to hear right on the tip of my tongue.

‘Sorry, John. It won’t happen again.’

His brow bunched, ever so briefly. ‘No matter. Come.’

I followed him through the building.

‘We found some coveralls for you at the weekend. Mrs Barton figured out your size from suit measurements she remembered off the top of her head. Let’s see how clever she is.’

A sound stopped me in my tracks between the garage and the house. John kept walking.

There it was again – a small squeak. Insect or rodent. I followed it across the yard to the nest of pot plants and found the cat, on its side, damp with dew, panting. I moved pots and tentatively stroked its head.

‘John?’ I called. I’d never used his name like that and the panic was audible, even to me.

He was there in a flash, eyes big.

‘Oh, no,’ he said gently. ‘There you are, sweetheart. Are you okay? Moggy?’

He picked her up, her body spilling limply over his hands.

He groaned. ‘Moggy? Ah, you poor thing. You’ve had it, haven’t you darling?’

There were tears in his eyes. His mouth buckled and straightened. He forced it open, as if to call his wife, but no sound came out.

I jogged to the door. ‘Mrs Barton?’

‘Yes dear?’

‘We found Moggy. It doesn’t look good.’

She hurried to her husband, hand to mouth. She stroked the cat and Moggy’s skin quivered. She’d stopped panting, stopped breathing altogether it seemed.

‘Is she dead?’ Mrs Barton asked.

John gently laid the body on the grass beneath the clothes line. ‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Poor thing,’ Mrs Barton said, and walked back inside.

I watched her go, unable to believe she’d just walked away.

John was still for a long time, sniffing quietly and staring at the cat.

‘Deal with death every day of my life . . . in one way or another. You can never tell when it’s going to bring you undone.’

He pinched his nose. ‘Skye will be devastated.’

I had to wonder if he knew his daughter as well as he thought. Her nonchalance about death seemed as natural as her school uniform.

‘Would you be so kind,’ John said. ‘There’s a shovel in the corner of the garage.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Did you have a place in mind?’

‘Behind the pot plants there. In the garden bed. Just a hole. I think Skye might like to pay her last respects in person. I’ll fetch your coveralls.’

A smallish wooden box rested on the bench beside the stand of long-handled tools, the kind a special bottle of port might be sold in. It contained a collection of little shed things – assorted washers, screws, plant tags and string –
-
and would make a fine coffin for a small cat.

John saw it in my hand and laughed out loud. ‘Perfect. What did I tell you? You’re a natural!’

He took the box, emptied it on the bench and blew the dust out.

‘A clever craftsman could line that with silk,’ he said. He handed it back. ‘Might even find a small pillow to fit.’

‘Are you sure you’d . . .’

He dismissed me with a flick of his hand. ‘Go to town. Not often we have a death in the family, thank God.’

My coveralls were a perfect fit. I helped John dress the old ladies in the coolroom and spent the rest of the morning preparing a grave for Moggy. I lined the box with silk, cut a pillow in half – at John’s insistence – and stapled it to the thin timber. Moggy had gone stiff by the time the box was ready for her and I had to close my eyes as I bent her legs to fit. Ten minutes of shuffling and twisting and I finally settled on a restful pose for her – face down, slightly on her side with her legs tucked underneath. When the bereaved arrived, we’d be ready.

The florist delivered a load of wreaths for the funeral of Karl Stevens. A dainty posy had been hidden among the
masses of bloom. It had nothing on the card. I showed it to John.

‘For the Mog,’ he explained.

Eighty or so people crammed in the chapel for Karl Stevens that afternoon. Six people delivered a eulogy – two sons, a daughter, a brother, a close friend and Karl Stevens’ wife. There was a lot of laughter amid the tears. The dead man had been well loved, kind-hearted and generous. The picture they painted of a beach bum wasn’t that far removed from the one I’d imagined, and I wondered how I’d be remembered.

I wouldn’t be remembered at all. There’d be no family to remember me, no friends, no neighbours to speak of. I’d pass as a footnote of humanity, a poorly attached addendum to be left in the bottom of the box. I knew that John would dress me up and give me a send-off – they wouldn’t leave me on the street. As I pressed the button to send Karl Stevens on his way, I felt hungry for a place in the world. Even if only one other soul on the planet felt my passing as something more significant than a raindrop on a grey day, I’d die content. Even if that one soul was an ill-tempered child . . .

I laid Moggy’s posy on the dark soil beside the makeshift coffin.

‘What are you doing now, Robot?’

Skye had startled me and it must have shown.

She giggled but the giggle hit a wall when she realized who was in the box. Her mouth opened and closed but formed no words. The colour left her cheeks. She jettisoned her schoolbag and it toppled a pot plant.

‘Moggy?’

She squatted beside the coffin and stared. She reached out but had second thoughts and hugged her knees instead.

‘Moggyyyy?’

Tears dropped to the earth and she rocked, ever so slightly. It was hardly a movement at all but it felt like she was going to scream.

‘It was very peaceful,’ I said. ‘I found her just here, behind the pot plants. As if she’d gone to sleep.’

She stood, abruptly, but didn’t wipe her eyes. She turned and wrapped her arms around my waist, buried her face into my suit jacket and wailed.

I staggered – off balance in more ways than one – then stood firm and tried to stroke her head. Her plaits were stiff and opposed to stroking so I rubbed between her shoulderblades and felt her squirming with the pain. Felt as useless as I’d ever felt.