A Perfectly Good Man (40 page)

It was a comfortless, unsummery day, intermittently showery and with a nasty north-easterly blowing.
Pendeen weather
, he thought harshly,
weather for weeding out the proper Cornish from the incomers and tourists.
He was half-minded to turn back, confident that no one would blame him, at least not to his face. It was not Carrie that made him press on in the end, up to the Mount Misery roundabout and then up the narrow road through Newbridge towards St Just, with the ordinarily glorious view of Mount’s Bay opening out behind him. As a van pulled over to let him pass on the dramatic lane that forked off towards Pendeen from above St Just, he wished he weren’t in the brand-new suit and mourning tie after all. It marked him out, he felt, as a man late for a funeral. Worse, in so under-populated an area it probably marked him out as Dot’s son late for his own mother’s funeral.

It all looked completely unaltered, the inexcusably hideous bungalows facing the attractive granite terrace, the entrance, ever hopeful, to the museum where there had still been a working mine when he was a baby. The two pubs and then, all too soon, the easily missed turning up to the Sunday School and church.

The service was extremely well attended. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Dot was of old Pendeen stock and popular in her unassuming way. He parked near the mouth of the church lane behind the other late arrivals. As he walked up he was uncomfortably aware of two undertakers watching him from near the hearse. One of them nodded respectfully and handed him an order of service.

‘It’s nearly over, I’m afraid, sir,’ he said.

Phuc went no further than the porch. There was a crowd of people standing just inside, most of them in bandsmen’s uniforms. One of them glanced over his shoulder, saw Phuc, and made to open the door and make way for him but then his neighbour nudged him and he raised his cornet and joined in playing the introduction to the final hymn, which was ‘The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended’.

Phuc panicked, and backed away. Ignoring the undertakers this time, letting them think what they like, he hurried back to his car and waited in there. Humidity from his drizzled-on suit and the numerous showers he had driven through now rapidly steamed it up, which suited him fine. He sat low in his seat and watched through a spyhole he wiped on the glass as the band grew louder, still playing the hymn, and the cortège led by Tabby Morris, who carried a small black umbrella to shelter her prayer book, wound up into the corner of the churchyard where the woman he couldn’t help but think of as Granny had been buried.

The burial service was over surprisingly quickly, perhaps an abbreviated version had been opted for in view of the weather. As it began to drizzle again in earnest, mourners filed away down the lane beside him. Some on foot, most in cars. He slumped low in his seat until the last had passed, followed by the empty hearse. There would be a gathering back at the house. Carrie would have found relief in putting on kettles and slicing donated cakes. Old friends would be rallying round, kindly trying to elbow her out of the one occupation that would help her maintain her equilibrium. And Morwenna? Being new, Morwenna probably felt an intruder on the scene and would be keeping well back, chatting animatedly to some misfit or another spare spouse to make them feel less awkward, or carrying around trays as Phuc had learnt to do as a boy, to avoid having to make more than desultory conversation.

And Barnaby? Phuc could not or would not imagine him. It was too hard. He had a feeling that Barnaby, who could normally be relied upon to stay buoyant, if only to make life easier for others, would be poleaxed by grief, frighteningly incapable even of greeting people.

Phuc let himself out of the car and walked back up towards the churchyard entrance. The sexton had only just finished his work and was walking away from the grave with his shovel over one shoulder like a musket. He was whistling ‘The Day Thou Gavest’ but stopped when he saw Phuc.

‘Hello,’ Phuc said but the sexton had evidently forgotten his name or didn’t recognize him at all and simply muttered a greeting under his breath.

The drizzle stopped again. Phuc laid his flowers alongside the others on the stony earth, whose smell, close to, was almost overpowering. Granny’s headstone said nothing about Dot yet. That would come, presumably. There was plenty of room, room enough for Barnaby too. He reached out to rest a hand on the stone. He had nothing to say, no prayer, no form of words, but he remembered the two women together in the kitchen, the room broiling because the oven was going full pelt, and there was laundry on the overhead drier. They were chuckling at something and encouraging Phuc and Carrie to have a go at stirring the Christmas cake mixture in the enormous mixing bowl that only came out for major tasks. Jim, rather; Phuc had no place in that scene.

He turned away and was heading into the church, thinking he might simply sit there for a while to think, when someone shouted his name. It was Barnaby. He was clutching his bicycle and breathless.

‘Dad,’ he said automatically.

‘Sorry,’ Barnaby panted. ‘Bit breathless. I thought you hadn’t come.’

‘Well … I didn’t really. Dad, I’m so sorry.’

‘But Carrie’s new friend, Morwenna, said she’d seen your car parked on the lane so I dropped everything and …’

‘You shouldn’t have.’

‘Don’t be silly. Can … could we go back up and have another look? I was a bit misted up earlier, what with the band.’

‘Sure.’

Barnaby leaned his bike against the church wall and they walked back up to the graveside. ‘Are you quite … still quite well?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Yes, I think I am. I’ve been clean for five years next week.’

‘That’s brilliant,’ Barnaby said and Phuc suspected he had no idea what
clean
meant. ‘Carrie said they’d been to see you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And she said how nice your … Fern is.’

Phuc smiled. ‘Good. Fern liked her back. And Morwenna.’

They reached the grave and their pitiful conversation petered out. Barnaby crouched. Phuc had almost forgotten how tall and thin he was. He’d always thought he looked like a giraffe next to Dot; tall and benign and never entirely focused on matters at ground level. Phuc thought he was crouching to read the notes on the flowers people had left but then he thrust one of his hands deep into the soil and pressed down hard with a shoe on the spot where his hand had been.

‘Her wedding ring,’ he mumbled, staring down at the mess as though it were not of his own making. ‘Some ninny at the undertaker’s had taken it off. She’d have wanted to be buried in it.’

‘Have you put it in deep enough? Someone might find it and steal it.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Barnaby said and blew his nose, getting earth on his handkerchief. ‘Symbolic.’

‘Oh. Yes. I’m afraid there’s no card with my flowers as I bought them on the way and they’re just sort of plonked down.’

‘She’d have liked yours best. She liked orange.’

‘No she didn’t. Stop being kind.’

‘I’m so glad you came, Phuc. She loved you so much, you know.’

‘No she didn’t. You loved me. Mum never quite managed it. She tried but …’

‘She was very proud of you doing so well at school.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘Afterwards you were ill. She rather blamed herself. Because of her not … of you not being close.’

‘I should have talked to her. I was a coward. Still am.’

‘You came, though.’

‘Yeah, well. You should get back. Carrie’ll be worrying.’

‘You’re coming back too.’

‘Not this time, Dad. Soon, though.’

‘That would be good. Bring Fern.’

They walked over to the bike. Phuc got there first and wheeled it for him as far as his car. Holding the battered handlebars gripped by Barnaby every day felt like a way of touching him.

‘She has children, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes. Four. If I ever married her, you’d have four step-grandsons overnight.’

‘Wow!’ Barnaby said and his forced enthusiasm struck Phuc as the saddest thing all afternoon.

He groped for something to say. ‘The band was a nice touch.’

‘It was specified in her will.
Pendeen Silver Band to play all hymns
. She’d even set aside a bit of beer money for them. They were delighted to be asked, I think. She also said you were to have this.’

In his still slightly earthy fingers he handed Phuc a ring.

‘But shouldn’t Carrie have it?’

‘She has her granny’s and I think she’s pretty embarrassed at having to wear even that, don’t you think? Take it. You can keep it or sell it or give it to Fern. It’s only stuff, after all. It’s symbolic.’

‘It’s beautiful. What’s the blue stone?’

‘A sapphire. And the smaller stones are diamonds. It was my mother’s and her motherin-law’s before that so it’s only right it should come to you.’

‘Was it … was it a Palmer ring, then?’

‘Probably. It’s about 1810, I think. Pretty.’

Phuc turned the icy thing in his hand, marvelling that Dot should have worn it day after day yet it should be so completely unfamiliar. He put it on his own hand for safekeeping. Dot’s ring finger was thicker than his and he had to move the ring to his index finger to hold it even slightly in place. He caught Barnaby watching this and was drily amused that he would now be worrying that Phuc planned to wear it himself. ‘It’s just until I get it safely home,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ Barnaby said. ‘I didn’t think you’d be …’ He broke off.

Rain was starting up again. Proper rain now. Looking instinctively towards the sea, from where bad weather had always seemed to arrive, Phuc saw a thick grey curtain of it coming towards them, hanging in rags. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Quickly or you’ll get soaked.’ By setting the bike back in Barnaby’s grasp, he forestalled any embrace and simply patted him on the shoulder as he wobbled off.

He tuned the radio to Atlantic FM on the drive home, filling the car’s small space with loud love songs, most of which were unfamiliar but had the desired effect of holding off thought beyond whatever was needed to drive. In fact it was as though he drove unconsciously. He travelled for over an hour with no sense whatever of waiting at turnings, negotiating roundabouts or overtaking, yet he must have done all three repeatedly. He had passed Bodmin and was crossing the moor between there and Launceston when he could no longer maintain control. He turned off the blaring radio and swerved in front of a honking lorry to enter a lay-by he had just spotted.

He cut the engine. In place of the rain there was now fog, thinning and thickening as a slack breeze stirred it. He stepped quickly out of the car, not bothering to lock it. The traffic was loud nearby. It was the afternoon rush hour or what passed for one out here, but there was no sense of the harsh immensity of moorland all about, not even a shadow of Brown Willy and Rough Tor, which he knew were only a mile or two away. There was no sense of being anywhere in particular; the empty, fogbound lay-by was a limbo. He walked away from his car to a wooden picnic table, placed for the view that was usually there, sat on it, his feet on its bench, heedless of the damp marks it was surely leaving on his new suit trousers. Giving in to grief was a little like waiting to be sick; the gulping anticipation was horrible but he knew relief would follow.

Only he wasn’t grieving. Was he? Or not for Dot. He twisted her lovely, modest ring back and forth on his finger and, instead of receiving the hot balm of tears was merely racked by a few dry, spasmodic sobs. He swore loudly several times, shouting because there was no one to hear and the cars and lorries drowned out his voice. He stripped off the suit, standing by the car, careless of the wet on his socks, and folded it neatly back onto its hanger and into the carrier bag before getting back into the clothes in which he had indecisively left the house.

He drove in silence back to Exeter. The girl in the suit shop remembered him, responded to his flirting and didn’t even check for stains or damage.

‘You want to try another one instead?’ she asked. ‘Or get a refund?’ It wasn’t her business; she didn’t care.

‘Refund, please,’ he said. ‘It was an impulse buy and I shouldn’t have.’

‘That’s fine. The card machine’s down, though, so it’ll have to be cash.’

‘Ideal.’ Armed with the cash, which felt like free money, of course, rather than merely credit, he walked decisively to an old haunt.

On the face of it the place was a perfectly attractive bar, somewhere young mothers went for lunch and barristers came after work, which was why his dealer had always favoured it. The clients were nice not desperate, the atmosphere was unsuspicious, there was no CCTV and the bouncer was only there on match days and weekends. She also had the perfect cover for paying little visits to every table in the place and stuffing cash into her apron: she worked there as a waitress.

She greeted him like a long-lost friend, even giving him a hug, which was rich given that she had done nothing more amicable over the years than feed his addiction, repeatedly bleed him dry of cash and occasionally seduce into addiction friends he took in there with him. ‘Long time no see,’ she said. Her name was Vivien. She was extremely pretty – model pretty. He had forgotten that detail. ‘I hear you’re a poacher turned gamekeeper these days.’

‘Well, we all have our weaknesses. You’re looking well, Viv.’

She was. One looked in vain at her pretty hair and smooth, lightly tanned skin for any gratifying sign of depravity. Life could surely have offered her so much more? Was that then what drove her; that this smooth surface, this getting away with it, was sufficient pleasure in itself? It was extraordinary. She really did look and sound like someone to whom one could cheerfully entrust small children for milk and cupcakes.

‘Thanks, babe,’ she said. ‘You too. Sad, though. Something sad happen?’

‘My mum died.’

‘Oh babe, I’m so sorry!’

‘It’s fine. We … Viv, could I just have a glass of house red?’

‘Sure. Large?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And the usual?’

He would like to think he hesitated for minutes but it was no more than seconds. ‘Sure,’ he told her. ‘Thanks.’