The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (37 page)

Brian said, ‘What if it was Ruby, your own mother?
Would you leave your bed for her?’

‘I need notice on that question,’ said Eva.

‘I can’t bear to think about her lying on those cold
kitchen tiles,’ Brian said, tearfully.

Eva stroked his hand. ‘She was fed up with the
modern world anyway, Brian. She couldn’t grasp the fact that there was
pornography on her Freebox. When she first watched the telly, the newsreader
was wearing a dinner jacket.’

‘Do you think she had a good life?’

Eva said, carefully, ‘As good as she could have,
given that she was born into a man’s world, and that your dad wouldn’t let her
wear trousers.

He said, ‘You know those Valentine’s Day cards she
got every year?’

‘An amazing number.’

‘She wrote
them
to herself as well.’

‘She must have been horribly lonely, Bri. She never
got over your dad’s death.’

Were you lonely when I was at work?’ Brian asked.

Eva said, ‘I was lonelier when you came home, and we
were sitting next to each other on the sofa.’

‘But we did have some good times, didn’t we?’

‘We must have, but I can’t remember what they were. ‘Brian
said, sounding slightly annoyed, ‘The holidays abroad. Camping in Wales.
Florida.’

Eva wanted to concur with Brian, but her memories
were a blur of mosquitoes, rain, mud, sunstroke, dehydration, endless driving,
bickering and grudging reconciliations.

54

The
Beaver ancestors had bought a family plot in the shade of a small copse of
dense conifers at St Guthlac’s. There was no room between the trees to drive a
mechanical digger, and roots made digging new graves a trial of strength and
stamina.

As the chief mourners were chauffeured up the drive
of the forbidding Norman church, to the ringing of a sonorous bell, they saw
two young gravediggers throwing small stones at each other. When Brian,
Titania and the twins passed the youths, they heard one of them shout, ‘You
twat,
you nearly got my eye then!’

Brian ordered the driver of the car to stop. He got
out and walked purposefully towards his mother’s unfinished grave.

The youths threw down their stones and picked up
their spades.

Brian said, ‘I know that lessons in inappropriate
swearing are on the curriculum at your lame-duck comprehensive, but this
hole
you’re meant to be digging will be my mother’s final resting place. Do not shout
“twat” across her grave.’

He walked back to the limousine.

As soon as the door closed, one of the youths met
Brian’s eyes, muttered,
‘Twat!’
and jumped into the grave.

Brian was about to open the door again, but Brian
Junior pulled him away from the handle. ‘Leave it, Dad.’

Brian was unnerved. For three miles they had been
following the hearse that carried his mother’s body. Behind them all the way
was Alexander, driving his old van, with Stanley Crossley and Ruby on the bench
passenger seat.

Yvonne’s sisters, Linda, Suzanne and Jean, were
standing around the porch, smoking and tapping the ash into the palms of their
hands. Brian thought this, and the fact that they were displaying so much
cleavage, was inappropriate. He had not spoken to them for years. There had
been an ‘incident’ at a family christening that had ended badly. His mother had
never felt able to tell him the details — all she would say was, ‘There was too
much drink taken.’ But it could explain why they were staring at him with such
malevolence.

They stared even harder at Titania, checking her
face, hair, black suit, handbag and shoes. She was of great interest to them.
How dare Brian flaunt his knock-off in public? His crazy wife had disgraced the
family by making a show of herself, and had now insulted them all by not
turning up for her mother-in-law’s funeral.

They stepped aside to let Alexander, Stanley
Crossley and the twins into the church. Ruby had sensed the atmosphere, and
scuttled away to find a lavatory.

After everybody was seated, Ruby made a late but
dramatic entrance by failing to control the immensely heavy church door. The
wind dragged the handle out of her hand and slammed it so loudly that the vicar
and the mourners, who were kneeling on cassocks in silent prayer, jumped and
turned round, in time to see her rooted to the floor in shock. Stanley
Crossley, who was wearing a black armband over his dark suit, was sitting on a
back pew He got up and helped Ruby down the aisle to join her own clan at the
front.

She was outraged when she saw what appeared to be a
cardboard box up on a trestle near the altar. She whispered to Brian, Who left
that in the church? Where’s Yvonne’s coffin?’

‘That
is
her coffin,’ Brian whispered back. ‘It’s
ecologically sound.’

What’s that when it’s at home?’

The vicar began to tell the small congregation that
Yvonne had been born into sin and had died in sin.

Ruby whispered to Brian, ‘She wanted a walnut coffin
with brass handles and a puce satin lining. We looked through a catalogue
together.’

Out of the side of his mouth, Brian said, ‘Her
funeral policy didn’t stretch to walnut.’

The vicar looked like a badger in a surplice. He
said, in his fruity voice, ‘We are gathered here today on this dreadful wet and
windy morning to celebrate the life of our sister, Rita Coddington.’

There was angry muttering and stifled laughter as
the congregation registered his mistake.

He carried on, ‘Rita was born in 1939, the daughter
of Edward and Ivy Coddington. It was a difficult forceps birth, which left Rita
with an elongated head. She was teased at school but —’

Ruby stood up and interrupted. ‘Excuse me, but what
you just said is rubbish. The woman in that cardboard box is Yvonne Beaver. Her
main and dad were Arthur and Pearl, and she had a perfectly normal head.’

The vicar sorted through the notes on his lectern,
and saw at once that he had mixed up Yvonne Beaver’s notes with those of the
next service. He readdressed the congregation, saying, ‘I can only work with
the information I’m given. Before I proceed, could I check a few facts with
you? First, hymns. Did you request “All Things Bright And Beautiful”?’

Brian said, ‘Yes.’

‘And “Onward Christian Soldiers”?’

Brian nodded.

‘And now popular music. Did she request “Yellow
Submarine” by The Beatles, and “Rawhide”, sung by Mr Frankie Laine?’

Brian mumbled, ‘Yes.’

‘Was she a punch card operator until her marriage?’

Brian nodded again.

Brianne said loudly, ‘Look, can you just get on with
it?’

The vicar announced, ‘The eulogy will be read by
Yvonne’s grandson, Brian Junior.’

Those acquainted with Brian Junior watched apprehensively
as he walked to the lectern.

Alexander groaned, ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, no,’ and
crossed his fingers.

Brian Junior’s eulogy was the first time he had
spoken in public at a formal occasion. He started well, guided by a website
called funeraleulogies.com. When he had used up his conventional script, he
improvised.

He spoke of the twins’ early memories of Yvonne.

‘She was hyper hygienic, and when we stayed with her
overnight she would take my teddy and Brianne’s monkey and put them in the
washing machine so they’d be nice and fresh for us in the morning.’

He looked around the church at the carved pillars
and the signs and symbols that he could not decipher. The light outside was low
but the stained glass glowed, giving a half-life to the familiar biblical
figures in stained glass.

‘She took Teddy’s smell away,’ he said.

Brianne said, from a front pew, ‘And Monkey’s.’
Brian Junior wiped his eyes using the sleeve of his jacket, and continued, ‘I
know some of you are worried about the apparent flimsiness of Gran’s coffin, so
I researched the decomposition cycle of the human body. Given her height and
approximate weight, and allowing for the variables of climate and temperature,
I reckon that her coffin and corpse will last for —’

Brian called out, ‘Thank you, Brian Junior! Step
down now, son.’

The vicar hastily took possession of the lectern
and, before Brian Junior had reached his place in the pew, had signalled to the
organist for the first hymn to be sung: We plough the fields and scatter’

Stanley and Ruby sang lustily, neither of them
needed a hymn book.

Ruby glanced at Stanley’s face and thought, ‘It’s
amazing what you can get used to, given time.’

Eva was luxuriating in the silent house. It had
stopped raining and she could tell by the light on the white walls that it was
approximately eleven o’clock.

It was quiet outside. The downpour had sent most of
the crowd looking for shelter.

She thought about Yvonne, who she had seen at least
twice a week for twenty-five years. She dredged out memories.

Yvonne at the seaside, shaking sandy towels into the
wind.

Yvonne with a child’s fishing net, trying to catch
tadpoles with the twins.

Yvonne in bed, crying with arthritic pain. Yvonne
helpless with laughter at Norman Wisdom on television.

Yvonne’s teeth clicking as she ate her Sunday
dinner.

Yvonne arguing with Brian about creationism.

Yvonne dropping cigarette ash into a casserole she
was serving.

Yvonne’s horror in a restaurant in France, when her
steak tartare turned out to be raw meat.

Eva was surprised to find that she mourned Yvonne’s
death.

Back
in church, the vicar, who was trying to be relevant to the community, led the
congregation on the last verse of ‘Yellow Submarine’.

When it was finally over, he said, ‘You know, life
is like a banana. The fruit is inside, but the skin is green, so you leave it
to ripen …’ He paused. ‘But sometimes you leave it too long, and when you
remember it again, the skin has turned black, and when you finally remove it,
what has happened to the good fruit?’

Brian Junior said, from the front pew, ‘The banana
has produced ethylene, and will eventually oxidize and break down into a new
gaseous compound of equivalent mass.’

The vicar said, ‘Thank you for your contribution,’
and carried on. ‘Eventually, Yvonne’s body will decompose, but her soul will
attain everlasting life in God’s Kingdom, and will forever remain in your
memory.’

Brian Junior laughed.

The vicar asked the congregation to kneel again
while he read them a passage on resurrection from the King James Bible. Only
Ruby remained standing. She pointed to her knees, mouthed the word, ‘Knees!’ to
the vicar, and shook her head.

When he’d finished the passage, the vicar looked at
the congregation. They were shifting from foot to foot, glancing at their
watches and yawning. He thought it was time for the Commendation and Farewell.
He cleared his throat, turned to the coffin and said, ‘Let us commend Yvonne
Primrose Beaver to the mercy of God, our Maker and Redeemer.’

Brian Junior said, very loudly, ‘Maker? I think not.’
He added, as if he were in an advanced tutorial, ‘Variation plus differential
reproduction plus heredity equals natural selection. Darwin one, God nil.’

The vicar looked at Brian Junior, and thought, ‘Poor
chap, Tourette’s is a cruel affliction.’

Alexander thought, ‘When will this
end?
When
will this dreary tight-arsed ceremony be over?’

At the last funeral he’d been to, there was a gospel
choir, steel drums and dancing. People had swayed their hips and raised their
arms above their heads, as though they were truly joyful that the departed one
would soon be in the arms of Jesus.

When the vicar said the words, ‘We entrust Yvonne to
your mercy, in the name of Jesus our Lord, who died and is alive, and reigns
with you, now and for ever,’ the congregation said, ‘Amen,’ as though they were
truly thankful that the ceremony had finally ended.

Four undertakers walked solemnly up the aisle,
lifted the eco-box coffin on to their shoulders and, to the accompanying sound
of ‘Rawhide’, walked back down the aisle, out of the church and towards the
poorly dug fresh grave.

The mourners followed.

Brian sang along quietly with Frankie Laine. He
cracked an imaginary whip and envisioned himself herding stampeding cattle
across the Texan plains.

When the cardboard coffin was carried to the
grave-side, some of the angel worshippers from the Bowling Green Road crowd
joined the procession. At their head were Sandy Lake and her friend, the
anarchist William Wainwright.

Sandy was carrying a single lily she had bought from
Mr Barthi’s shop. He had not wanted to split a ready-made bouquet of six stems,
but she had been so tenacious that he had eventually given up, telling his wife
later that he was thinking of retiring and starting a new business where he
wouldn’t have to interact with people.