Next of Kin (19 page)

It had been assumed – indeed, he had assumed it himself – that the painful work of the last ten days would be his, that it would be he who would identify Joe's body, that it would be he who supplied information for the police report confirming that there were no suspicious circumstances, that Joe's mind, ever prone to darkness and disturbance, had tilted fatally from such equilibrium as it had ever had, and had fallen. He had detested that. He had abhorred the descriptions of his brother's personality which honesty had compelled him to confirm; it had seemed a terrible disloyalty, as if he had prevented Joe from taking an essential precious privacy to the grave. But it had to be done, just as a post-mortem had to be done, and a toxicology test to establish that Joe had been neither drunk nor drugged, and an inquest opened by Stretton Coroner to establish the cause of death, and the identification of the body, before a cremation order could be issued as Joe had wished, as Joe had actually articulated as his wish to Judy within Robin's hearing at Caro's funeral.

‘Burnt and scattered,' he'd said. ‘Particularly scattered. And in the river. Not on the bloody farm.'

Had he really thought of his own death? Had Joe stood at Caro's grave and known, at some unarticulated level, that her end meant his, too, that she had been his last thread of hope? During the fitful night that had preceded Joe's funeral, Robin had been deeply preoccupied with the idea that, as he, Robin, grew to pin fewer and fewer hopes on Caro, Joe by contrast was pinning more and more. Couldn't help it, couldn't even help himself. Any more than he could help looking at Dad's gun, and seeing it as a way out, the only way out. Yet he'd looked calm enough in the mortuary, relieved almost. Robin had emphasized that sense of relief to Lyndsay to try and soothe her, and then immediately regretted it. Who could, he realized too late, be comforted by knowing that their dead husband, whom they felt they had ultimately failed, looked relieved to be dead?

Such thoughts had plagued Robin in half-sleep and half-wakefulness until his alarm clock showed four in the morning. He'd got up then, and made tea and done a bit of paperwork (final demands only) and still been in the milking parlour before Gareth. Gareth hadn't been pleased. He didn't like getting out of bed at five-fifteen if he didn't need to, and he didn't like having Robin around if there wasn't an emergency. Robin did things slightly differently, brought another atmosphere, and the cows knew it and took advantage of it, banging about in the collecting yard, jostling and shoving.

In any case, Gareth hadn't slept well either. Debbie had burst into tears just as they were getting into bed the night before and said, between gulps and sobs, that they had to leave Tideswell.

Gareth, half into bed, had paused with one knee up and said, ‘What d'you mean, leave?'

‘We've got to get away from here,' Debbie said. She had collapsed onto the edge of the bed and was holding herself and rocking backwards and forwards as if she had a pain. ‘You've got to get another job!'

‘You mad?' Gareth said. ‘What are you on about? You daft, or what?'

‘It's haunted, here. It must be. First Caro and now Joe. And suicide – Gareth, I can't get it out of my mind, I can't stop thinking about it. We mustn't stay, we mustn't. Not with the kids and all. It's like there's some sort of curse on the place, it's like we're being picked off one by one—'

Gareth got into bed and lay flat, pulling up the duvet.

‘You've been watching the kids' videos—'

‘I mean it!' Debbie shouted. ‘I mean it, I mean it!'

He glanced at her. She didn't look like his Debbie at all, but like some wild thing, with her mouth open like that. He reached out to flick back a corner of the duvet her side of the bed and patted the sheet.

‘Get in, then,' he said. ‘You get in and we'll have a cuddle. You don't want to go putting two and two together and making seven.'

She had cried for a long time, talking raggedly in between sobs about Lyndsay and Caro and loneliness, about being left to cope with life when you couldn't. At last she had gone to sleep, heavily, damply, against his shoulder and left him wakeful instead of her, staring into the darkness and listening to the silence of the quiet night, which suddenly seemed not peaceful but mildly threatening, as if some great force out there was holding its breath before unleashing its power. When the alarm had gone off, Gareth had been deep, deep down in the final exaggerated slumber and had felt almost sick to be awakened. Debbie had slept on, her face half buried in her pillow, her eyelids moving slightly.

And then he had found Robin in the parlour.

‘Something up, then?'

‘No,' Robin said. ‘Only me.'

‘Could've told me,' Gareth said. ‘Could have said you'd do first milking. Couldn't you?'

Robin didn't look up at him.

‘Didn't know myself.'

Gareth clumped down the concrete steps into the pit. The milking machines clanked and thumped, the steady sound interrupted every so often by the erratic splatter of slurry.

Robin said, fitting on a cluster, feeling the cow's teats with his hand, ‘What's up here? She lost a quarter?'

‘Yes,' Gareth said, sulking. ‘A month back. She's fine. She milks fine on three.'

Robin gave the cow a slap.

‘Funny old girl. Always gets herself in the same place. Always gets herself at number four.' He glanced at Gareth. ‘I'll leave you then. I'll go and give myself a shave.'

Gareth said nothing. Robin went up the steps out of the pit and paused, holding on to the battered metal rail at the top.

‘Gareth,' he said. ‘Are you coming today? You and Debbie?'

‘I expect so—'

‘You don't have to,' Robin said. He paused and then said awkwardly, ‘If – if it's all a bit difficult, if you can't—'

Gareth turned away, and jabbed at the buttons on the control panel for the automatic feeder.

‘We'll be there,' he said, and then rudely, ‘What else did you think?'

Nothing much, Robin thought now, scraping at his chin, only maybe trying to spare you something, a second death in the family in only months, a different kind of death, one about which there was nothing to say, no murmurs of comfort, only endless, endless things to ask.

‘Why,' Judy had said, all the evening before at supper. ‘I know it's no good asking, but I can't stop. Why? Why then? Why that way? Why didn't he think of Lyndsay and the children?'

Judy had brought a friend with her, a boy this time, a tall, gentle-mannered young man in spectacles who called Robin ‘Mr Meredith' and cleared plates from the table without being asked. Robin had been mildly surprised to see him, but soon saw why Judy had brought him. Or had, at least, brought somebody. He had wondered, briefly, why she had not brought Zoe, but he had said nothing and nor had she. Zoe hadn't been mentioned. At bedtime, Judy had shown Oliver to the bedroom Zoe had slept in and a few minutes later Robin had encountered him on the landing, holding a towel and a toothbrush, without his spectacles on. His eyes had looked soft-shelled without them.

Robin dipped his razor into the basin of hot water and swirled it clean. In the bedroom next door, his only dark suit hung on the wardrobe door, brushed by Velma. She had also polished his black shoes and left a white shirt out. She hadn't done that for Caro's funeral, but then Caro hadn't been Joe, Caro had never become a part of Velma's fixed order of things. But Joe had been part, from boyhood, big and golden and good-looking and haunted, a figure of romance, even in his overalls. And Velma had known it, felt it. Robin wondered, letting out the scummy water thickened with soap trails and bristles, if Velma would break her rule about funerals and come to Joe's. Not because of death, not because of respect or sympathy or manners or anything else; but because, quite simply, of Joe.

Dilys stood bolt upright in the front pew of Dean Cross church between Lyndsay and Harry. Beyond Harry, at the end of the pew, was Robin, and behind them all were Judy and the young man Judy had brought. He seemed a nice enough young man but he should not, in Dilys's opinion, have been there at all. This was not an occasion for strangers.

It was, instead, an occasion for a display of family strength, solidarity and proper behaviour. It was an occasion for making it impossible for the world to pity the Merediths. They had had Joe; now they had lost him, but they had been unique in having him in the first place. This unquestionable fact must be reflected in everything, from the brushing of hair, through the firmly affirmative prayers, to the immaculate sandwich lunch which awaited the mourners at Dean Place Farm, garnished with parsley, and radishes cut like roses, and safe from flies under pristine domes of white muslin.

She glanced along the pew. Robin looked almost as she would have wished – his hair, however, was too long – and he held himself well, he had her father's carriage. Harry, brushed and polished and starched until he gleamed, had shrunk down inside his clothes as if they were quite foreign to him as well as too big, and although he was obediently wearing them, they didn't fit him, either in body or mood. She had trimmed his hair in the kitchen and inspected his fingernails. He had submitted to this like a docile child, but he hadn't looked at her; his gaze had been far away, milky and detached. She looked back towards the altar and the big coffin of pale oak with Lyndsay's lilies on it. Dilys had wanted to put her own flowers on as well, flowers from the Dean Place garden that Joe had known all his life, but Lyndsay had flared up out of her torpor and refused.

‘No,' she'd said. Her eyes were glittering. ‘He was
my
husband and the father of
my
children. Just
my
flowers. Flowers from Hughie and Rose and me.'

Dilys didn't even glance at Lyndsay now even though her right shoulder was less than a foot away. She knew what she'd see, anyway, and she knew she wouldn't like it. She'd see Lyndsay's misty pale hair scooped up into its combs as it always was, half hanging down her back, instead of tidily, appropriately, put up into a smooth French pleat, and she'd see a long dark-green coat – green, at a funeral! – which Lyndsay insisted on wearing because it was Joe's last present to her, the previous Christmas. It might have been, Dilys said to herself, but it was wrong, utterly wrong. It had a black velvet collar and cuffs and dull gold buttons. It wasn't a funeral coat, it wasn't even a spring coat. It was just upsettingly, defiantly, the wrong coat for this day.

‘Let us pray,' the Vicar said.

The church was immediately full of creakings and rumblings as the congregation knelt. It was a big congregation, Dilys had noted, very big and much bigger than the congregation for Caro's funeral. The whole village seemed to have come, and Gareth and Debbie, and even Velma, and all manner of people from the local farming community as well as the National Farmers' Union County President and the chief auctioneer from Stretton Market. Dilys put her forehead against her clasped gloved hands and closed her eyes. She hoped there would be enough sandwiches. Perhaps, when they got back from Stretton crematorium – none of this sentimental business of full burial for Joe such as Caro had had – she ought to get some sausage rolls out of the deep freeze and thaw them in the oven. Robin could deal with the drinks – Harry had never had a grasp of it – and Judy's young man could help him. Thwarted of putting them on his coffin, Dilys had put flowers from the garden on the dining-room table, flowers from Joe's garden, from his home, where he had grown up and belonged.

‘“For ever and ever,”' the Vicar said.

‘Amen,' Dilys said loudly. ‘Amen.'

There was a starched white cloth on the table, and flowers in a silver rose bowl, and Dilys's best cut glass, and a neat regiment of bottles, and plates and plates of precise sandwiches, crustless triangles of white bread and brown bread, with little flags stuck in them on cocktail sticks, little banners cut out of white writing paper, with ‘Egg and Cress' printed on them in Dilys's careful hand, ‘Salmon and Cucumber', ‘Ham and Mustard,' ‘Celery and Cream Cheese'. The chairs had been pushed back against the walls, and the windows polished and the Turkey carpet brushed by hand until the pile stood straight upright, and the colours glowed.

‘Open the sherry,' Dilys said to Robin.

‘Shall I wait until people come?'

‘No,' Dilys said. ‘Open it now. To be ready for them.'

She was very pale, Judy thought, but then, no doubt, they all were. Judy stood in the bay window of the room with Oliver, and was obscurely grateful for him. He hadn't taken her hand during the service, but he had, once or twice, just touched her lightly to reassure her, to keep living in view. He was being extraordinary, she thought, just accepting things, just quietly, kindly being there, in this funny over-furnished old-fashioned room, with her grandparents and her father all rendered mute by the intensity of the occasion. And it was awkward that Lyndsay wasn't there, that she had refused to come, saying that she must get back to the children. Of course she must be with them, especially Hughie, but her absence somehow felt pointed, as if she was making some kind of statement, of separateness.

‘Here's the Vicar,' Dilys said, looking out past Judy towards the drive. ‘Always the first, the Vicar.'

They all turned and watched him climb out of his car, slowly and tiredly, and then his wife got out of the other side and looked towards the farmhouse with apprehension.

‘Oh!' Dilys said, and her voice had an edge of surprised gratification to it. ‘
She's
come! Well, that's something.'