Tangled Lives (28 page)

*

‘What do you think we should do?’ Marsha asked Ed as they walked away from the house. ‘I feel so helpless, seeing Mum like this.’

‘Me too. I don’t know … I suppose with death you just have to go through it. She was pretty old.’

‘Yeah. But maybe that doesn’t count when it’s your mother. And Mum seems to blame herself.’

‘That’s dumb. She wasn’t there.’

‘It’s weird, thinking Grandma’s dead.’

Ed didn’t reply for a moment. ‘I do feel upset, but she wasn’t really the sort of person who allowed you to be close. I always felt she was judging me a bit,’ Ed said.

‘She wasn’t warm and fuzzy, I grant you. But I never felt judged.’

‘Yeah, but you were her favourite, Mash. You and Dad. You could do no wrong.’

It pained Marsha that Ed, once again, was feeling second best.

‘Mum definitely felt judged.’ Marsha turned to look at him. ‘I don’t think they had such a great relationship.’

‘She seems pretty cut up about her dying though. She must have loved her.’

They walked in silence for a while. It was beginning to rain, and Marsha stepped up the pace.

‘You can love someone and still not like them very much,’ Marsha commented.

‘I know that,’ Ed muttered, and Marsha wondered who he was referring to.

‘So is Emms staying with you forever?’

‘Not sure … she doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere yet.’

He turned and saw the question in his sister’s eyes, but he said no more.

‘At least Grandma’s death has meant you and Mum have made it up a bit.’

Ed nodded. ‘Puts things into perspective.’ Or at least shook him and Emma off the obsessive track they’d found themselves on since the night of the party. Thank God she’s stopped crying, he thought. But nothing had been resolved about Daniel.

‘I was right, it was a heart attack.’ Dr Graham’s voice on the phone was gentle. ‘Her arteries were in a bad way, I’m surprised she didn’t have any symptoms.’

‘She never was very keen on vegetables – she always told Mercedes they gave her wind,’ Annie told him sadly. She was sitting at her desk at home. She’d said to Jodie that she would not be in for a few days, there was so much to organise: the funeral, Mercedes’ future, the flat, probate. ‘If you’d known, could you have done anything?’

‘At her age, probably not a lot. The last time I saw her was over a year ago, and her blood pressure was up a bit, but that’s natural at eighty-plus.’ He paused. ‘She was lucky in a way, to go like that … peacefully.’

‘It’s just she seemed so well the day before.’ She spoke almost to herself, repeating the same sentence for maybe
the fiftieth time since her mother died. She still couldn’t believe she was not still sitting there in her wing-back chair, wearing her padded navy hairband and silk poloneck. ‘Do you think it was quick, when she went?’

‘I expect so,’ said Rob cautiously.

‘And she wasn’t in pain?’

‘Perhaps for a moment or two,’ the doctor said, honestly. ‘But it wouldn’t have been for long.’

As she stood in the front pew of Chelsea Old Church, the coffin within arm’s reach, Marsha felt shock rather than sadness. Shock that inside that panelled oak casket, a single wreath of white roses resting on its polished surface, was the dead body of her grandmother.

She’d never been to a funeral before. Her father’s mother had died when she was only five – she hardly remembered her. And Gramps’s funeral happened the week of her GCSEs. He lived in Lancaster and they hadn’t let her go.

She clutched her mother’s arm with one hand, the crumpled paper containing her eulogy in the other. The church was packed – Grandma was obviously a bit of a hit with her Chelsea set – the smart, black-clad congregation mostly over seventy-five. She felt sick with anxiety at having to talk in front of all these people. Lucy, leaning across her mother, gave her an encouraging nudge. ‘OK?’ she mouthed.

Marsha’s nod was hesitant. She glanced sideways at Ed, solemn and silent between Dad and Mercedes, who was
kitted out in an impressive black mantilla, her face puffy from prolonged weeping. Poor Mercedes.

They began the first hymn, chosen by her grandmother in the detailed plan for her own funeral. Marsha still couldn’t get her head around the idea of planning your own funeral and found herself stumbling through the half-familiar words. Church had been a sporadic thing when she was young. Dad keen, Mum not so keen.

‘Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more; Feed me till I want no more.’ The voices swelled behind her. These people certainly knew their hymns.

She checked on her mother, who was standing in total silence, and squeezed her hand tight. Marsha hadn’t seen her cry yet, and that worried her. Maybe she did it in private – her mother wasn’t given to displays of emotion – but it didn’t seem quite normal to be dry-eyed in front of your mother’s coffin.

The vicar, a portly man with the plummy drone she associated with religious discourse, was signalling to her. She felt her stomach flutter. She got up and went to the lectern, smoothing out the piece of paper in front of her. A sea of curious faces, pale against the uniform black funeral weeds, stared back at her.

‘My grandmother,’ she began, hearing the shake in her voice, ‘was not someone to be messed with.’ She heard the laughter with relief. ‘But to me she was everything a grandmother should be …’

She felt as if she was talking forever, and skipped a couple of paragraphs of her typed sheet. When she came to the end, she looked over at her mother. She felt tears welling behind her eyes, but not so much for her grandmother, more for the desolate, lonely figure of her mum. She looks so bereft, she thought, as she made her way back to the pew. Her mother reached to kiss her gently on the cheek as she sat down.

‘Are you OK?’ Marsha whispered. But her mother didn’t reply, just clutched Marsha’s hand, holding tight to Lucy’s on the other side.

‘Death of death, and hell’s destruction …’ As the last hymn ended, Marsha began to feel calmer. The eulogy was over and she realised she was absolutely starving.

‘Wonderful send-orf,’ A bluff old gentleman, whose name she thought might be Gerald, told Annie as he bent slowly to retrieve his umbrella from the hall stand in her mother’s flat. ‘Eleanor must be in seventh heaven.’

She looked at him quizzically and the old man chuckled.

‘Well, you never know with Eleanor … she usually got what she wanted. Perhaps she bullied the Almighty into fast-tracking her up to the seventh level. Sorry, sorry, no offence meant, but you know what I mean … she was always the star of the show.’ He held out his hand. ‘Thank you so much, Annie. I’ll miss the old girl, you know.’

At last they were all gone.

‘God, that was quite a marathon.’ Marsha kicked off
her black heels and wiggled her toes into the faded-rose drawing-room carpet.

‘Well, we started out at nine this morning and it’s now nearly five,’ Richard pointed out with his usual precision. ‘Your speech was brilliant,’ he added to his daughter. ‘Not an easy thing to get right.’

Annie was only half listening. It was just the family who had sat behind in the cortège on the interminable journey to Putney Vale, the traffic up Putney High Street almost stationary as usual. Mercedes had gone home to finish making the smoked-salmon sandwiches for the wake. The crematorium passed off without incident, a quick dispatch to the majestic strains of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, rendered tinny and ridiculous by the crematorium sound system. She had felt as cold as death as her mother’s body rolled off behind the dull blue curtains, but still no tears. My mother, the redoubtable Eleanor Westbury, reduced to a jar of ashes? It seemed impossible … ludicrous.

She looked around at her family now and it was as if there were a veil between her and them. They wouldn’t understand how I’m feeling, she thought. It was a longing … not for her mother as such, but for
a
mother, any mother, who might hold her, keep her safe, give her the love Eleanor had never been able to show, and now never would. It was like a huge hole had opened up inside her chest.

‘Tea?’ Ed was suggesting. But Mercedes was ahead of
him and appeared in the doorway with a tray holding Aunt Alice’s massive silver teapot, pale green polka-dot Royal Albert china cups and saucers, a silver milk jug, matching sugar bowl complete with tongs, and a saucer of thinly sliced lemon halves. Annie hadn’t seen the set in thirty years – Eleanor used to bring it out for her ‘girls’, to show them how to preside over a tea table properly, despite the fact that almost no one ‘took tea’ by the sixties. Now the thought of her mother’s anachronistic rituals made her sad.

‘What will happen to Mercedes?’ Lucy whispered when the Spanish housekeeper had gone back to the kitchen to clear up.

‘Mother has left her a good chunk of money. She says she’ll go back to Spain to be near her daughter.’

Ed poured the tea, smiling as he offered her a cup; her hand shook as she received it. They were all being so kind. Emma hadn’t turned up to the funeral – she was ill, Ed said. She didn’t believe that for a second, but she was grateful not to have to deal with the girl. Daniel’s name had not been uttered by any of them since Eleanor’s death. She’d texted him to tell him the news, but he hadn’t responded. She sighed and pushed the painful thought to the back of her mind.

19

It was nearly two weeks since her mother had died, and still Annie hadn’t been able to cry. The numb emptiness that settled in the day she stood beside Eleanor’s coffin had not gone away. It frightened her, because she felt that if she gave way, even a little, she would be consumed by such sorrow that she might be fatally overwhelmed. To avoid any chance of this, she filled her days with constant, almost frantic activity that kept her busy from morning till night; it provided a certain sort of comfort.

She would manage to sleep, at most, for four or five hours, yet her body seemed to have a false energy which propelled her through the day. She was up at six and walking on the Heath, then swimming, the gym. She stayed long hours at the bakery, and when she got home she cooked, sometimes late into the night. Endless, elaborate, largely uneaten meals, including cakes, puddings, biscuits, which Richard surreptitiously consigned to the freezer. But cooking, as always in her life, was therapy of a kind.

Richard, as co-executor of Eleanor Westbury’s estate along with her lawyer, Leo Silver, began to deal with probate while she responded to the letters of condolence, many eulogising her difficult mother. There were no surprises in the will. Eleanor had left the Cadogan Gardens flat and the bulk of her money to her daughter, with small bequests to the three grandchildren, and a sizeable legacy for Mercedes. She’d told Annie what she was doing over a decade ago, then never mentioned it again. In Eleanor’s strict code of etiquette, it was very vulgar to dwell upon one’s money.

‘Jamie … are you busy?’

She heard him groan on the other end of the line. ‘Uh, no, just lying here sound asleep, seeing as it’s six thirty in the bloody morning.’

‘God, is it?’ Annie looked at her watch. ‘I’m so sorry … I didn’t realise it was so early.’

‘I can hear traffic. Are you out?’

‘I’m walking to the gym. I’m not sleeping much these days.’

‘Clearly.’

‘Do you mind if I run something by you?’ She heard her friend heave himself out of bed.

‘Nope, I’m awake now. Go ahead.’

She paused as she crossed the road. ‘You know the Carnegie thing? The day Mother died?’

‘Yes … you and him stark naked and just about to get
it on when your mother calls from the Astral Plain … Don’t do it, Anneee, don’t do it.
That
Carnegie thing?’

‘I wish I’d never told you the last bit,’ she muttered.

‘And?’

‘I think I should tell Richard. I don’t think it’s fair …’

She heard a loud spluttering.

‘Do
not
! Do absolutely NOT tell Richard a single thing. You’re trying to absolve your guilt by ’fessing up. I get it. But it’s unforgivably selfish. The poor man might never get over it. Men, as a rule, don’t.’

She thought about this for a moment. ‘I thought it was the right thing to do. He’s my husband. Shouldn’t I be honest with him?’

Jamie harrumphed. ‘No, you certainly should not. Honesty is a very overrated commodity – it should carry a government health warning. For “honesty” read “selfishness”.’

‘I don’t mean to be selfish.’

She heard him sigh. ‘I know, I know, of course you don’t. But this really isn’t the time to be making decisions like this.’

‘Maybe not.’

‘Oh, darling … you sound so miserable. Fuck the gym. Come over and bring some croissants. I’ll put the coffee on.’

‘No … thanks, Jamie. I’d better get going.’

*

‘Annie.’ Richard was looking at her with concern that night. ‘Sit down will you? I can clear up later, it’s definitely my turn.’

She turned to him. ‘It’s OK, I’ve started now.’

But Richard came up behind her and put his arms round her body, pinning her yellow rubber-gloved hands by her side. ‘Please … stop.’

She stood tense in his embrace. She didn’t know why, but the pressure of his body against hers was almost unbearable these days. She felt so raw and irritable and, frankly, mad. She wanted to shake him off, but she knew she couldn’t do that. So she waited, waited until he let her go. Richard, unwittingly, still held her tight, both of them stranded stiffly next to the open dishwasher.

‘I wish you’d talk to me. You seem so …’

‘Mad?’ she suggested softly.

‘No … no, of course not. Just closed up and miserable. I know it’s been hard, losing your mother so suddenly, but don’t you think you should talk about it? You haven’t cried since the day she died. And you’re not sleeping. Please … tell me what’s going on.’

She gently shook him off, and stubbornly resumed rinsing the plates.

‘I’m fine, really,’ she replied. ‘I just need a bit of time.’

‘Me and the children are worried about you. We don’t know how to help.’

She tried to summon up a smile for him. ‘Sorry … sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. We’re just concerned for you. Is it Daniel?’ Richard asked. ‘Has he still not been in touch?’