The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (35 page)

‘We therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.’

The old lady scatters a handful of earth on the box.

‘Goodbye, Perry,’ she says. ‘Goodbye.’

The old man starts to shovel the heap of earth back into the hole. It seems the service is over.

Jimmy Hall steps forward.

‘Sorry to intrude,’ he says. ‘I’m here for the
County Chronicle
. Do you have a moment?’

The old lady stares at him blankly.

‘Come on, Mummy,’ says the young woman he understands to be Alice’s mother. ‘Let’s get you home.’

They depart without another word. Alice has her head down as she follows behind. Jimmy Hall tries the old man wielding the spade. He uses another of Joby’s tricks.

‘Excuse me, sir. Could you confirm the correct spelling of your name?’

People sometimes don’t like to give their name, but they hate having it spelled wrong.

‘P-E-A-K, Peak,’ says the old man, neither looking up nor ceasing in his labour.

Jimmy Hall has more luck with the vicar.

‘A very moving service, vicar,’ he says.

‘Bereavement is bereavement,’ says the vicar. ‘In whatever form it comes.’

‘I didn’t catch the name of the deceased.’

‘Perry. Like the drink, you know.’

‘A dog, I understand.’

‘A dearly loved poodle.’

‘And Mrs Peak is heartbroken, I suppose?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘She finds it hard to believe her little friend is gone for ever.’

‘Yes, yes. No doubt about that. But for ever is a long time, don’t you think? You can say for ever, or you can say eternity. Eternity feels to me like a place, you know. Which is more comforting somehow.’

Jimmy Hall makes notes, but he is conscious that he is missing the personal note. The reader wants to know how it feels.

‘How does Mrs Peak speak about her loss?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘For example, does she call his name and wait in vain for an answer?’

‘An answer?’

‘Well, a bark, or some such.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

Jimmy Hall is pre-armed for just such a response. ‘If they’re not sure it happened,’ says Arthur Joby, ‘then they can’t be sure it didn’t happen.’

‘So it’s possible?’

‘The poor lady has certainly taken the loss very much to heart.’

PERRY THE POODLE LAID TO REST

By our Reporter JAMES HALL

On Saturday morning in the historic graveyard of St Mary’s Edenfield Mr and Mrs Peak paid their final tribute to their dearly loved poodle Perry. Mrs Peak wept as the flower-decked coffin was lowered into the grave by her husband. Speaking after the simple but moving service she said, ‘It’s hard to believe my little friend is gone for ever. I call his name and wait for an answering bark, but it doesn’t come.’ The Rev Miles Salmon, who conducted the service, comforted her with the words, ‘Eternity is a place you know.’ As the devoted group of mourners made their way out of the churchyard there was one onlooker at least who thought he heard a ghostly parting sound. Could it have been ‘Woof-woof’?

One hundred and twenty-eight words. If you count headline and by-line, one hundred and thirty-nine. Jimmy Hall re-reads his copy with considerable satisfaction. The final line strikes him as combining humour and pathos in a particularly happy image. This is the touch of personal style that elevates the mere reporter into a writer.

He phones his copy through to Editorial, which turns out to be Arthur Joby himself.

‘Well done, old chap,’ says Joby. ‘You know what? I think I can do us both some good with this.’

‘Excellent. What do you think of my final touch?’

‘I’m talking about the story. The pet funeral. I think you’ve dug up something that could go places if we move fast.’

‘Do you think it warrants a byline?’

‘We’ll see, old chap. We’ll see. I’ll make a call or two.’

42

Alice is making molasses cookies from a recipe brought home from school and playing her Abba Gold CD on her Walkman. She has set it up complete with its auxiliary speakers on the top of the fridge. Out of consideration for her mother, who is supposedly working at her laptop on the kitchen table, the volume is low. The juddering hum of the Kenwood blending flour, sugar, butter and black treacle easily overpowers the thin throb of ‘Dancing Queen’.

Liz drinks coffee and lets her eyes roam over the word-dense screen, but her thoughts are elsewhere. She’s recalling how Alan Strachan wept in the school library and said, ‘We’re all unhappy.’ Overlaid on this is the line of dialogue he so admired from
Friends
: ‘I liked it better before it was better.’

There’s a place we want to be but it’s not here. A way we want to live but it’s not the way we live now. So where? What?

She looks up at Alice, happy with her music and her sweet dark goo. But she too endures terrors daily. Why must this be so? The question, asked in silence, remains unanswered. Liz feels a shudder of loneliness. This is why we bond and mate, not for sex but for conversation. There are thoughts that need to be spoken aloud, endorsed, amplified, contradicted. Worse than financial anxiety, worse than the endless complications of childcare, the single parent has no one to tell her daily, hourly, minute-by-minute story.

The phone rings.

‘Liz? It’s Kieran. Birmingham, remember? The glamour years.’

Kieran Walsh. She trained with him on the
Birmingham Echo
.

‘Kieran? My God! Long time.’

‘Aren’t you impressed I found your number? I even know your address. You live in Lewes, and Lewes isn’t far from a village called Edenfield.’

‘What exactly is this all about?’

‘I’m with this press agency these days and I just took a call from the old boy who runs the local rag. I think it could be a real runner for one of the Sundays, which means we have to move fast. How would you like to pick up a quick couple of hundred?’

She sees Alice about to pour her cooking mixture into a baking tray.

‘Grease it first, Alice.’

Kieran chuckles down the line. ‘You tell her, girl.’

‘My daughter. She’s eleven.’

‘Fucking Ada! Eleven! Now I’m depressed. So what do you say?’

‘What’s the story?’

‘You a churchgoer, Liz? Stupid question. Never mind. The vicar of St Mary’s Edenfield conducted a funeral service this morning, the whole banana, coffin, grave, prayers. Wait for it. For a dog.’

‘I know. I was there.’

‘You were there!’

‘It was my mother’s dog.’

‘This is fantastic! Can you do me five hundred words by noon?’

‘No, I can’t. This is private, Kieran.’

‘Not any more it isn’t. There was a local reporter there. I told Alfie I’ll take the story but if I don’t he’ll sell it somewhere else. You can’t spike it, Liz. So you might as well write it.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘What’s the problem? Dear old lady, beloved pet, tender-hearted vicar. Solid gold human interest.’

‘Can I use a pseudonym?’

‘Call yourself King Kong, I don’t care. I’ll bike you a photographer, vicar by doggy grave etcetera. You know the form.’

Alice doesn’t take the news well.

‘What about my cookies? I can’t leave them, they’ll burn. It’s Saturday. I thought you didn’t work on Saturdays. What am I supposed to do?’

‘It’ll only take half an hour, darling. An hour at the most.’

‘We’ve already been in that church for hours. I hate it. It’s creepy. It smells.’

As always Liz compromises.

‘Well, I suppose if the Horners are in. I expect Sarah would agree to look out for you.’

‘I’m fine, Mum. Just don’t be too long.’

Liz finds the rector in his little terraced house on Edenfield’s main road. He ushers her in to a neat sitting room which is so clearly arranged for single occupation that it’s almost comical. The one armchair has a reading lamp on its left and a side table on its right, the kind that swivels across the chair to form a meal tray. There are newspapers and books in stacks on the floor and a pair of soft beige slippers before the unlit fire.

‘Not very grand,’ he says, ‘but ample for my needs.’

He points her to the armchair, but she doesn’t sit.

‘About your mother, is it?’ he prompts.

‘In a way. She’s so grateful to you, Rector. You really have made an immense difference.’

‘Well, that’s something, isn’t it? We could sit in the kitchen if you like. There are two chairs there.’

So they sit facing each other across a small table covered in white oilcloth. The kitchen, like the sitting room, has been tailored round the little bird-like vicar.

‘You’ve been here a long time.’

‘Thirty-seven years, would you believe? I know every inch. When we have power cuts, when there’s a high wind and the lights go out, I get around much as I do with the lights on.’

He shuts his eyes and reaches for the shelf on the wall by the table.

‘Tall mug. Short mug. Egg cup. Mug with pens in.’

He touches them as he names them. Opens his eyes and smiles.

‘So you see, I shall be quite able to look after myself when I’m senile. But happily that day has not yet arrived. Now what can I do for you, my dear?’

She explains. He bows his head and wrinkles his brow and tugs at one ear.

‘Not really my sort of thing,’ he says.

‘I’d just as soon not make anything of it,’ Liz agrees. ‘But there was a local reporter there, apparently, so there’s going to be something in the papers whether we like it or not. So I thought, better I do it myself.’

‘Yes. I see.’

He traces patterns on the oilcloth with the tip of one finger. A spiral maze from which he would like to escape.

‘It’s what they call a human interest story. Old lady’s beloved pet dies. A church burial gives her comfort.’

‘Well, that was the point, of course.’

‘So many people will identify with the story. People grieve as much when their pets die as if they were members of their family.’

‘Which they are, of course.’

‘I can tell my mother’s side of it. With a few quotes from you.’

He closes his eyes in thought, tipping his head a little to one side.

‘Would there be a theological aspect to this?’

‘Theological? God, no. This is for the Sunday papers.’

She hears the irony in her words and smiles. The rector also gives a wry smile.

‘Theology on a Sunday. How silly of me to suggest it.’

‘So will you help me?’

‘It seems I must. But you will keep it as short as you can, won’t you?’

Liz takes out her notebook and leaning forward on the table, her eyes fixed on the rector’s face, her head gently nodding understanding and agreement, she causes him to open up his heart. This is what she does. This is her skill. Create a bond of trust, listen and repeat, make him feel nobody has ever understood him so well before. And the sad part is that this is true. A good journalist will discover more of her subject than his most intimate family or friends have ever known.

Miles Salmon, himself a professional listener, has no defences against such soft-spoken interrogation. He yields up his secrets without a struggle. The dog funeral becomes the prelude to far deeper revelations.

‘It’s such a peculiar function, you see. In a sense the parish priest has no role any more. We’re like the farmers, I sometimes think. There was a time when the farmers were the heart of the community, because everyone worked on the land. Now as you know farm workers are a very small minority. But the fields are still there, and the barns, and the livestock. It’s the same with the church. The building remains, and carols at Christmas, and weddings and funerals. But very few people are churchgoers. Twenty or thirty on a Sunday, if we’re lucky. The farmers are converting their outbuildings for holiday lets, or selling up altogether. But what are we priests to do?’

‘My mother turned to you when she needed help.’

‘No, no. She didn’t. Victor Peak told me what had happened. I called on her unasked.’

‘So that’s what you priests are to do.’

‘It’s one answer, yes. When one can. One doesn’t like to intrude.’

‘Like with non-believers, you mean.’

‘Oh, there are no non-believers. There are non-Christians, of course. But everyone believes in something. Take your mother. I’m not aware that she is in any strict sense a Christian. But we were able to find common ground.’