Bachelor Boys (28 page)

Read Bachelor Boys Online

Authors: Kate Saunders

BOOK: Bachelor Boys
4.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
More people were smiling now. There was a kind of collective breath, like a sigh of relief.
Fritz said, “I think we should all remember the dishes we loved, that Phoebe loved to make for us. Personally, I couldn't get enough of her beef stew with Guinness. My brother would still do anything for her chocolate cream pie. Little Cassie from next door was addicted to her Bakewell tart.” (Oh yes—the smells of warm raspberry jam and almonds waft around me now.) Fritz gave me a special, intimate smile. He then smiled round at us all, taking in the people crammed into the gallery. “Come on,” he said. “Think about food. Let's have more nominations.”
There was a silence, rather tense and awkward.
A female voice, from somewhere in the middle of the congregation, timidly offered, “Damson chutney.”
“Thank you,” Fritz said. “Come on—get your memories and your salivary glands working.”
It was like an auction. There was a general stirring of interest, and more silence. Fritz waited patiently.
Someone called, “Pheasant bordelaise!”
After that, they came in thick and fast.
“Ginger pudding!”
“Plum duff!”
“Ham and lentil soup!”
Then, the loud voice of the boys' old headmaster—“Spotted dick!”
And the whole chapel dissolved into a warm hum of laughter.
Someone else shouted, “Marmalade!”
More laughter—and a round of applause, starting cautiously, then rolling on and on. The mood lifted. At last we had evoked the spirit of Phoebe. She hovered over us and scattered herself among us like a summer breeze. We applauded thunderously. Now we were clapping the entire performance and wishing we could call for an encore.
“I was waiting for someone to mention the marmalade,” Fritz said. “It was deservedly celebrated. When you all leave this chapel, you'll be handed a piece of paper containing the recipe. Ben and I want you to make Phoebe's marmalade for yourselves, because we think it's exactly how she'd want to be remembered.”
 
And in fact, that is what I remember most distinctly about Phoebe's funeral—not the blur of the coffin sliding away behind the curtains, leaving behind a horrible polished void, but the undertakers handing out copies of Phoebe's most famous recipe. Everybody took one, and I saw more than one person reading it while we were all milling about outside, looking at the flowers (incidentally, what an awful part of a funeral this is—all flowers are hideous at funerals, I think because they look so dead). I saw a couple of women I knew to be good cooks murmuring to each other, nodding approval.
“So
that's
how she did it,” one of them said.
I can testify that there wasn't a Seville orange to be had next day, in the whole of northwest London.
 
Fritz had ended his funeral oration with an invitation and a request. The invitation was to an informal wake back at the house. The request was for alcohol, which the Darlings couldn't afford. And I have to say, the friends and neighbors came down handsomely. George and Ruth brought four
bottles of malt whiskey. The slightly scary couple next door produced a whole case of champagne. Betsy, her daughter Sally, Jonah and my dear old friend Hazel each dragged in a clinking bag of red wine.
There is something about a funeral that inspires an almost pagan jollity. Barely an hour after the velvet curtains closed on Phoebe's coffin, we were all as sozzled and merry as Christmas puddings. I think that once the emotional part of a funeral is over, people are giddy with the sheer relief of being alive and belonging to the world.
We didn't mind the party atmosphere. Not at all. Fritz absolutely revelled in it. He and Ben poured wine. Annabel and I made vats and vats of spaghetti. The sitting room and kitchen were crowded with animated people, all talking, drinking, eating and even laughing. Phoebe's last party was going with a real swing.
I lost all track of time, but I think it was dark when I registered that I hadn't seen Fritz for ages. The party had reached a stage where everyone was full of food, and happily helping themselves to booze. Nobody appeared to need looking after. The friends were lapsing back into sociability, and the relatives were avidly exchanging news. I climbed upstairs, above the noise.
The door to Phoebe's bedroom stood slightly open. There was lamp-light inside, for all the world as if Phoebe herself were still propped up in bed, with her blue cardigan round her shoulders, her reading glasses pushed up on her forehead, turning the pages of a magazine—see how easy it is to slip back? Remembering was a constant effort.
I pushed open the door. The room still smelt of her; of roses and sponge cake. The scent lingered deep in the drawers, and inside the white-painted cupboards.
Fritz was sitting on the bed, crying. He didn't stop when I sat down beside him. I gave him a tissue, from the emergency supply inside my bra.
He said, “Thanks.”
I didn't put my arms round him. We sat for a few minutes in silence, listening to the chatter downstairs.
I asked if I could fetch him anything. “A glass of wine, some tea? Something to eat?”
“No, no. You don't have to ply me with things. Just stay here for a bit.”
“Okay.”
He blew his nose. “Phoebe loved you a lot, you know.”
“I know.”
“A few months ago, when she heard that I was going out with Poison, she told me that I had to take care of you—no matter who I married.”
“Did she?” I wanted to laugh at the idea of anyone taking care of me. But I remembered that Phoebe had always thought me “delicate” or “peaky,” and in need of special care, and almost cried.
“She told me not to let you marry anyone whose head belongs on a taxidermist's wall.”
“She did not!”
“Okay, I made that bit up.” Fritz blew his nose. He smiled thinly. “I'm trying very hard not to be an arsehole at the moment. But the old Adam will keep breaking out.”
I told him, in that sacred room, how much I had admired him—looked up to him, relied upon him—while Phoebe lay dying.
I said, “You don't have to be brave and virtuous any more. Give yourself a rest.”
“Hmmm.” He frowned slightly, to himself. We sat for a moment longer, then he kissed my cheek and stood up. “I think I need to be on my own for a while.”
 
My doorbell was ringing. It ripped me out of a deep, dreamless sleep at half past two in the morning. I pulled on my dressing gown (I wonder why dressing gowns are always inside out when you need them in a hurry) and stumbled downstairs.
On the doorstep I found Fritz, and a rather spotty young policeman.
“Cassie, darling,” Fritz said. “This is Chris. Tell him you know me, then you can make us both a nice cup of tea.”
Chris, the policeman, asked, “Are you Cassie Grimble?”
I was, by now, awake enough to see that Fritz was splendidly drunk.
“Actually, it's Cassie Shaw,” I said, “but I do know him. What's wrong?”
“I've been told off for making a nuisance of myself,” Fritz said. “Chris was summoned, and when I explained that I'd just buried my mother, he couldn't have been sweeter. I'm beginning to feel that our police are wonderful.”
Chris raised his eyebrows at me. “He asked me to bring him here. Can I leave him with you?”
“My dear Chris, of course you can,” Fritz loudly declared. “Cassie is my sanctuary.”
“Do come in,” I said. I drew my inside-out dressing gown around me, wishing my hair did not look crazy. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“I'd absolutely love one,” Fritz said. “And something to eat. And I'm dying for a pee.”
“I wasn't asking you.”
Chris said, “No thank you, madam. If you're sure everything's all right …”
I assured him that it was. Fritz, highly amused to be handed over in this formal manner, embraced Chris, who turned scarlet.
I shut the door and pulled Fritz up the stairs to my flat. “Keep quiet—the woman downstairs goes crazy if I make a noise at night.”
“You poor little shrimp, we got you out of bed!”
“Fritz, shut up.” I closed my door. “What on earth has been going on?”
“Tell you in a minute.” He dived into my bathroom.
The bathroom was in a bit of a state, but I didn't think Fritz would notice. He didn't have Matthew's eye for an unwashed tub. I put the kettle on, took out the plastic box containing my latest batch of biscuits, turned my dressing gown the right way out, and tugged a comb through my hair.
Fritz was in the bathroom for a long time. He emerged smiling. I saw that he was not as drunk as I'd thought. “Biscuits? How wizard. You're a goddess.”
“I'm curious, Fritz. The last I heard, you were wandering off to be alone with your emotions. How on earth did the police get involved?”
“Oh, Grimble, don't call poor Chris ‘The Police' like that—it sounds so mean.”
I was laughing. “Come on, you've dragged me out of bed for this. Make it good.”
Fritz sat himself down at my tiny kitchen table with a mug of tea and all the biscuits. “You were right, being extremely virtuous has been a strain. I was following your advice and giving the old virtue a rest.”
I said, “I didn't advise you to get arrested.”
“I needed to stop being a tower of strength,” Fritz said. “When I walked out of the wake, I had an overwhelming urge to be a tower of terrible weakness. I went to three pubs, intending to drink myself into oblivion. I was as drunk as a fart but I couldn't pass out—it was like a witch's curse. The pubs closed, and I was still full of this horrible energy. I found a whole pile of spare marmalade recipes, so I thought I'd post a few of them through people's doors.”
I said I didn't think giving away recipes for marmalade was a criminal offense.
“Oh well,” he said. “You had to be there.”
“What else did you do?”
“I was making a nuisance of myself at the traffic lights.”
“Sorry?”
“There was some singing, apparently,” Fritz said, as if he had not been present. “Also some shouting. Chris apprehended me in Flask Walk, and insisted on escorting me home.”
He was quiet. The anger around him subsided. He was very tired.
“You didn't go home,” I said.
“I couldn't face it. Ben and Annabel were asleep downstairs. The rest of the house was too empty. I saw what was wrong about it. It didn't have you in it. I wanted to be with you. Seriously, do you mind?”
“Of course not. Stay here as long as you like.”
He smiled suddenly. “You've turned your dressing gown the right way out. That's terribly sweet. Are you naked underneath?”
“Sorry, I'm wearing a voluminous Edwardian bathing costume.”
“Don't. That's even more arousing.”
“Would you like some toast?”
“No. It would interfere with the purple riot of my thoughts.”
I made toast and more tea—mainly to avoid looking Fritz in the eye. He lounged magnificently on one of my small folding chairs. I had to keep stepping over his legs.
“People ask me if I'm all right,” Fritz said. “But what a stupid question. No, I'm not all right. I can't stand the way life looks without her. And I failed to save her.”
“Did you think you could save her?”
He frowned. “I was giving one last chance to the gods of medicine.
They couldn't save Dad. Now they've let me down again. It's all a total waste of time.”
I said, “Don't—you know that's not true.”
“There are no cures for anything that matters,” he said. “And no real illnesses, except for the one that kills you. What a waste of time.”
I wanted to protest. I wanted to say all kinds of encouraging and invigorating things. But Fritz looked at me with such black-eyed intensity that I couldn't assemble the words. The comforting clichés only seemed to work for other people.
He said, “God had better not exist, that's all. Because if he does, I'll chin the bastard.”
I ate a biscuit. I wasn't hungry, but once again I needed something in my mouth to block out the platitudes. All I could do was watch him and listen to him, hoping he could sense how much I loved him.
Fritz stood up, making the room far too small. There was a phone attached to the wall. He snatched the receiver and began punching out a number.

Other books

The Gloomy Ghost by David Lubar
The Snow by Caroline B. Cooney
Redemption by Rebecca King
The Good Boy by John Fiennes
Golden Trap by Hugh Pentecost
Lines We Forget by J.E. Warren