Our Father Who Are Out There...Somewhere (2 page)

Tutting, Jo adds six I’s to the nine word sentence.

Lily raises her chin, forgetting, in her excitement, to keep her voice down, “I’m so bored I think I might kill myself?”

Jo fills in the missing letters as they both start to laugh. Mr Wardle raises his hairy eyebrows from the podium at the front of the class. “Quiet there at the back, please.”

Lily bites the skin on the inside of her cheek to try and stop herself from snorting with laughter. She daren’t look at Jo. As Mr Wardle clears his throat and rustles his notes, the door opens and a woman in a grey suit enters the room. She doesn’t glance up at the ten or twelve rows of students, but goes straight across to Mr Wardle. The room falls silent, so that Lily, even from her position on the very back row, can hear the sounds of the woman’s urgent whispering. Adrenaline starts to seep into Lily’s stomach, heightening the waves of nausea she’s been fighting all morning. As she watches Mr Wardle nod, Lily glances out of the window just in time to see another lone magpie sailing across the sky, its tail feathers like an arrow behind it.

Mr Wardle glances up, his eyes searching the rows of students. He clears his throat again, “Lily Appleyard?”

Lily jerks her head up and he spots her. As soon as he makes eye contact he averts his gaze. “Could you go to Student Services please?”

She stumbles her way along the row, tripping over another student’s satchel as she does so, before making her way down the steps at the side of the theatre. Her dreadlocks bounce off her shoulders as her heart hammers against her skinny ribs.

The woman in the grey suit waits for her, holding the door ajar. She doesn’t say anything to Lily. Lily follows her out of the room, down a flight of stairs, and then down the corridor at a brisk pace, until she stops at a door with a sign that says, 'Stuart Strange, Head of Support Services'. The woman nods at her to open it. Lily knocks, the heavy wooden door making her knuckles sting. She pushes it open and steps inside.

A man in his early fifties, with a greying beard and black rimmed spectacles, presumably Mr Strange, stands to greet her. A large black topped desk lies between them.

“Ah, Lily,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “Thank you for coming.” He takes a deep breath, puts his finger tips on the edge of the desk, as if to support himself. “I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you, Lily that your uncle has telephoned the polytechnic this morning with the news that your mother has passed away. She died last night, peacefully in her sleep. She didn't suffer.” He takes another breath, looks her straight in the eye, counts to five and says, “I am very sorry.” 

Her hangover helps in some strange way, cushions her from too much reality. She stands looking at the bookcase behind him. The colours are all wrong. Three large books with bright red spines, are stacked next to each other on the right hand side, without any thought to counterbalance. It makes it look like the bookcase could fall over at any point.

“Would you like to sit down?” He points to the two leather armchairs and small coffee table in the corner of the room.

Lily takes a moment to register she’s being asked a question. “No, no thank you.” Even a purple cover or a dark blue tome in the bottom left corner would have sufficed.
Working with the Problem Drinker
, she reads down the spine of one badly sited yellow textbook, that’s half the size of the book next to it. She adjusts her weight onto her left leg and tries to pull her mind back to the man in front of the bookcase.

They stand in silence across his desk, facing each other. Mr Strange is the first to crack. He looks across to the door as if he’s heard someone knock at it. Lily tries to search for any useful clues in her head for what to say in a situation like this. She tries to think of a film she's watched, or a book she's read where this same thing has happened because she is at least aware that questions should be asked. But the only question in her mind is why he has ordered the bookcase the way he has? Her breathing starts to quicken. Mr Strange looks at her with concern.

“I don’t have an uncle,” she says at last.

This news takes him back a bit, “Oh,” he says. He picks up a piece of paper from his in tray and peers at it. “He said he was your uncle.”

Lily sees the phrase, ‘died peacefully’, with the peacefully underlined. More than how she lived, she thinks.

“Ah, yes Uncle, Bert?"

“He’s not my uncle.”

Stuart Strange looks at her questioningly, waiting for her to expand. He’s also trying to work out what’s wrong with her face. Lily tries to engage in conversation, “He’s just the perv who lives next door to my mum. He’s always trying to get me to call him uncle, and look at his puppies,” she adds as a joke.

Mr Strange looks alarmed. “Is there someone else I can call, someone who could collect you?”

Lily shakes her head quickly. The last thing she wants is to have this man feel any more concern for her. “No, there's no one else. It’s alright. He’s harmless.”

Mr Strange looks at the wall behind Lily. “He said he’d arrive at 2 o’clock to pick you up. He said to meet at your flat.”

Lily becomes aware of a clock ticking. She turns to look. It’s half past eleven. She watches the hand of the clock tick off the seconds; jerking so violently each time one passes, it appears the clock might fall from the wall and Lily starts to worry for its safety. She watches twenty-eight seconds jolt past without incident and calms herself.

“Should I go back to my lecture?” she asks. She wants to get out of this too warm room. She’s not up to this kind of scrutiny; not without eyebrows.

“Have you a friend who could wait with you?” 

Lily’s face lights up with relief, “Jo.” Jo will know what to do.

“I’ll go and get her for you.” Mr Strange starts towards to door.

“No it’s ok. I’ll go,” says Lily, throwing herself at the door handle. She runs down the corridor before Mr Strange has time to argue. She opens the door of the lecture theatre and sees Jo stand immediately. Leaving her books on the bench, Jo runs down the steps to Lily. No one inside the theatre says a word. Jo takes Lily’s hand and together they hurry from the building.

It’s only when they get outside that Jo asks, “What's up?”

“Me mum’s dead,” says Lily.

Jo pulls a packet of cigarettes from her pocket. She lights two and holds one out to Lily. “Shit.” They start walking, neither knows where. “Pub, or home and a spliff?” Jo eventually asks.

Lily sighs, “Spliff I guess, I’ve got to pack some stuff. My, er uncle’s coming to get me.”

They’ve been inseparable for over a year, and yet Jo knows so very little of Lily’s life, beyond the fact that she doesn’t like to talk about it. She knows Lily hardly ever goes home to Accrington. “I’m really sorry, Lil.”

“Yeah, it doesn't matter. She died a long time ago, before I was born. Her soul I mean. It’s just taken nineteen years for her body to get the message.”

Jo links arms with Lily as they make their way up the hill, past the polytechnic and its university neighbour, until they come to the park. The September sunshine is still warm enough for there to be groups of students lounging around, some reading; the more energetic playing Frisbee. Lily breathes in deeply as they pass one brightly coloured group, savouring the sweet smell of hashish.

“I hope Tim and what’s-his-face aren’t in,” says Lily, as they walk up the path to their front door. Two bedroom houses were hard to find, so when they’d first start looking for a flat, Jo had suggested them getting two rooms in a shared house. When the landlord had shown them round, they’d met the two final year chemistry students; Tim with his jam jar glasses, and been immediately satisfied they wouldn’t impinge on their lifestyle.

“If they are, they can fuck off,” says Jo.

At a quarter to three, Bert pulls up in a pale blue Vauxhall Chevette, circa 1976, his pot belly nestling the steering wheel. As Lily climbs into the car she turns to Jo, “Do me a favour, post this for me?” She takes a battered envelope from the side pocket of her holdall. It’s addressed to the Salvation Army, written in a childish scrawl; the I’s have circles over them.

Jo looks at her questioningly. “You’re not going to get God on me now are you?”

Lily smiles, “The next best thing.” She ducks into Bert’s car, “Please? You won't forget? It needs a stamp.”

Jo puts it inside her coat. “Course.”

Standing above the open dirt pit, Lily watches as ten black suited men bear her mother’s coffin aloft through the headstones. She can see beads of sweat running down the red faces of the front two; Bert and Mr Peterson. What they are carrying looks more like a boxed sofa than a coffin, appropriate really as her mother had hardly left the settee in the last few years. The funeral parlour had offered the use of a steel-framed trolley, but Lily had insisted. The coffin was to be carried.

Finding ten men ready, willing and able to carry the coffin had been no mean feat. A real ‘Challenge Anneka’; Lily could almost hear the voice-over, “You have six days, no living male relatives (leastways none you’ve ever met), and a dead, agoraphobic mother who weighs more than a carthorse.” Volunteers were going to be thin on the ground. Luckily Mr Peterson across the road had two sons, and the bloke from the chippy was duty bound. And Bert of course. The funeral home had made up the rest. It’s hardly nearest and dearest, but at least she’s in the ground. As the vicar brings proceedings to a close with a solemn rendition of the Lord’s Prayer, Lily takes a seat on a conveniently sited gravestone and lights a cigarette. Relief floods her body, making her feel like she can breathe again, really for the first time since Mr Strange had told her of her mother’s death. Her mother is safely in the ground; in a way her whole life has been in anticipation of this moment. Lily has fulfilled her birthright.

Bert sidles up to her, still sweating from his earlier exertions, his hair slicked back and wearing a shiny dark grey suit that fits badly, where it fits at all. “How you doing, Lil? Crash us a fag, will you?”

She pulls a Lambert and Butler from her packet and hands it to him, trying her best to avoid any physical contact as she does so. Technically she’s giving away her inheritance (she found 100 packets of them in the dresser, the warning printed in Arabic or something, probably the most valuable asset in the house), but what the hell. She’s guessing there won’t be any fighting over the will.

“Do you know, no one here’s said sorry?”

Bert lights his fag, and wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, he looks at her, like he doesn’t understand. She spells it out for him, “I’m nineteen years old, me mum’s died, I have no other living relatives, no money and no one’s said to me, “I’m sorry your mum’s dead.” Everyone murmurs inane crap like, “at least she’s at peace.”  Even the vicar said he hoped she’d be happier where she is now. No one’s sorry for me. I’m completely alone.”

Bert coughs, a cough that comes from deep within his lungs. Lily can hear the mucus rattle in his windpipe. He bends over and puts his hands on his knees for a moment until he recovers. He takes another drag on his cigarette and then says, “You can move in with me.”

Lily laughs, momentarily taken out of her self-pity. “I’m not that alone, thanks anyway, Bert. I meant I don’t have any family left, look at this lot.” She gestures at the sparse funeral congregation. Mr Khan from Passage to India mistakes her gesture for a wave and returns it. The woman he’s talking to turns round to see who he’s waving at and smiles across at Lily. Lily hasn’t noticed her before and she frowns as the elderly woman bustles her way across the grass, over to them. She’s small, with an ample bosom cradled tightly in a floral print.

“Lily,” she says, taking Lily by both arms and pulling her up to her feet. “I’m so sorry.” Concern brims over in the woman’s eyes as Lily stares at her, trying to place her. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Lily opens her mouth to protest, but then closes it again.

“You used to call me Aunt Edie, you poor lamb.”

“Aunt Edie?” Lily puts out a hand onto the headstone next to her, as standing up so quickly seems to have made her light-headed. “I thought... I mean... I haven’t seen you for years.”

“I saw the notice in the paper and thought I’d come.” Aunt Edie speaks slowly, each word laced with sympathy. “I hope you don’t mind. I know we didn’t see eye to eye in the end, but, well, you know. Hopefully she’s found some peace at last.”

Lily senses a response is required, but the words aren’t coming to her. Aunt Edie watches her for a moment and then continues, “You were eight years old last time I saw you. Do you remember? You used to come round for tea every Thursday? You don’t look like you’ve had a decent meal since, look at the size of you.” She turns Lily from side to side. “There’s nothing of you, and what’s going on with your hair? You used to have lovely hair.”

Lily’s mind fills with memories of beef paste sandwiches and wagon wheels. “But what happened? I mean Mum told me you’d ... well.” Lily’s cheeks start to flush as she tries to run a hand through her dreadlocks.

“What did she tell you?” Aunt Edie cottons on. “She told you I died? She never. Bloody hell. You wouldn’t put anything past that one. She always was a-”  The vicar walks up to them and smiles. Aunt Edie almost curtsies. She doesn’t complete her sentence.

“I’m going to have to dash, I’m afraid,” says the vicar. “I have another, engagement.” 

“I actually went to your funeral,” says Lily, once the vicar has moved on. She stubs her cigarette out on the nearest headstone. “I knew something was odd at the time, but I was only eight. Mum told me not to speak to anyone; she said it was rude to talk at funerals. And then we left straight after you, well, after someone was cremated.” 

Bert pulls heavily on the stub of his borrowed Lambert and Butler. Lily chews the inside of her mouth. “Well, there was me saying to Bert I didn’t have any family, and now I’ve got an aunt I thought was dead.” She lines the extinguished cigarette up between her thumb and middle finger nail.

“You’ve still got a dad as far as I know,” says Aunt Edie.