The Book of Other People (3 page)

‘Daddy! So here’s where you’re hiding!’

‘Why would I “hide” in my own greenhouse?’ Daddy was bent over a cactus, stroking it with a special brush. He switched off the radio cricket. ‘You aren’t due until Sunday.’

‘I was just passing. Don’t switch the radio off on my account.’

‘I switched it off because the agony’s too much. We’re 139 for 8 against Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka
.’

‘That’s a gorgeous bloom, Daddy.’

‘This, you mean? Mexicans call it the Phoenix Tree. The Yanks call it the Blue Moon. I call it a waste of bloody time. Six years of fussing and fretting, all you get is this mouldy mauve flower and the aroma of cat litter.’

‘Oh, Daddy!’

‘You can cut me eighteen inches of that twine.’

‘Sure. Is Marion not around, Daddy?’

‘She’s at her book group. You’re too old to say “sure”.’

‘Her book group? Jilly Cooper’s got a new one out?’

‘They’re reading an Icelander. Halldor Laxless, I believe.’

‘ “Halldor Laxless”. My.’

‘The only writer I can stomach is Wilbur Smith. All the rest are bloody Nancy boys. Eighteen inches, I said. That’s more like two feet.’

‘I put a punnet of strawberries on the kitchen sill.’

‘They bring me out in a rash. You’re staying for lunch, I suppose.’

Mummy used to complain that Daddy loved his greenhouse more than his real house. Neighbours’ children’s frisbees and shuttlecocks would get confiscated for landing too near it, never mind that they ganged up on
me
to vent their displeasure. And no silky mistress was ever cared for as much as the green velvet lawn upon which Daddy lavished vitamins and weedkiller. I remember the day Philip was shown how to mow it.
It’s a man’s job, Judith. Women are congenitally incapable of straight lines. End of story
. A lesser woman would still be bitter.

‘Did Philip’s birthday card ever arrive, Daddy?’

‘Philip has to lick the Adelaide office into shape.’ With tweezers and a surgeon’s delicacy of touch, Daddy tied a droopy cactus limb to a bamboo splint. ‘I raised that boy to see a job through. Not to ponce around with cards and Interflora and ghastly ties.’

‘So nothing’s come of his plan to make it over this summer?’

‘Philip’s the project-leader.’ Daddy measured out a cup of cactus feed. ‘He has too much responsibility just to drop everything.’

‘Oh, dear. Still no
Mrs
Philip Castle on the horizon?’

‘How the bloody hell should
I
know, Judith?
You
’ll be the first to find out when he
does
get hitched, via your global intelligence network.’

‘Only asking, Daddy. Only asking. I see you got the CCTV installed around the front.’

‘And the back. The Old Vicarage had a break-in. I’d get myself a couple of lurchers - teach ’em to bite first and ask permission later, like my father in Rhodesia - but Marion isn’t having it. We booked that kayaking trip in Norway, so you’re on the garden-watering detail in September.’

‘If I’m around, I’ll be delighted to oblige.’

Daddy gave me a significant look.

I held it. You mustn’t let Daddy intimidate you, or he’ll turn you into Mummy. ‘A new development on the Glebe, I see.’

‘ “Development”? Don’t get me started. Once upon a time, this village
was
a village. These days,
any
Paddy O’Speculator can slip those human turds at the council a few quid and knock up a dozen houses overnight for seven hundred grand apiece. Ah, Marion’s back. I can hear her car.’

 

‘
Such
a shock!’ Marion poured the coffee while I stacked her gold-edged tableware in the dishwasher. ‘So much life ahead of him! Poor,
poor
man. And poor,
poor
Judith.’

‘I died with him, Marion. That’s how it feels.’

‘A photographer, you mentioned?’

‘Ha!’ Daddy dunked his biscuit. ‘
That
old chestnut.’

‘A
very
highly regarded one. His gallery’s in Lyme Regis. Daddy, what is so amusing about Lyme Regis?’

‘Nothing whatsoever.’

Marion gave him a glare like Mummy never would. ‘The police are
bound
to catch the driver sooner or later, aren’t they?’

‘The police won’t shift their comfy arses an inch,’ muttered Daddy, getting up. ‘Not if it’s not about blowing up airports. Not these days.’

‘The sergeant told me the rain washed the clues away.’ I sat back down and sipped Marion’s excellent coffee. She replaces her machine every year, whether it needs replacing or not. Mummy used a percolator only once in her life. She put three filters in instead of one, and the kitchen floor was flooded. She cried about it for three nights running.

Marion had reconditioned yew boards laid everywhere after she married Daddy. A hanging stitched by one of her sponsored African children adorns the Afrikaner fireplace:
Happiness is not a Destination, it is a Method of Life
. As long as flies aren’t drinking from your eyes, I suppose that’s true. A lesser woman would be upset at how Daddy has let all trace of Mummy disappear from her home. What would Mummy’s ghost recognize now? The alpine rockery, installed years ago to keep up with the Taylors; the cactii and their greenhouse of course; Mummy and Daddy’s honeymoon photograph on the dresser, bleached blue by four decades; the summer house Daddy built for her, in the vain hope it would help with her agoraphobia; the chill in the downstairs loo. That’s her lot. I haven’t been upstairs here for years. Nor do I care to. Marion and Daddy’s love-life is doubtless conducted on some space-age double mattress. They
do
have a love-life. I sense these things.

‘If your engagement was an open secret,’ Marion was saying, ‘Olly’s family must want you there for the funeral.’

‘They wouldn’t dream of burying him without me. Olly’s brother told me the dreadful tidings before he told Olly’s ex-wife.’

‘So, when is the service?’

Daddy turned the kitchen radio on. ‘ -
has announced that industrial action threatening rail travellers with chaos and misery this weekend has been averted, following the rail union’s acceptance of a 4.9 per cent pay increase over two years, with an enhanced system of bonuses. Officials say -
’

Daddy fiddled the dial, in search of cricket, grumbling incoherently.

But the universe had spoken loud and clear.

‘My train leaves tomorrow. Crack of dawn.’

 

The taxi-driver at Axminster Station flicked his cigarette away and heaved my suitcase into his unwashed cab. ‘Cheer up, love. May never happen.’ I replied, tartly, that ‘it’ already
had
happened. ‘I am here to bury my husband. He lost his long battle with leukemia.’ My words wove an instant magic. Off went his trashy local radio station, away went that ‘love’ and on came a proper air of respect. As he drove me down to Lyme Regis through the drizzle, he made attempts at informed conversation about his son’s school and the Ofsted table; about a proposed site for a low-security prison, shouted down by outraged locals; about a Victorian mansion once owned by Benny Hill and, rumour has it, home to all sorts of goings-on, obscured now by leylandii of gigantic height. My responses were polite but minimal. Widows should not be chatty, and I had my pelvic-floor exercises to run through.

‘Hope the weather picks up for you,’ he said, as I paid, ‘madam.’

It was the same at the Hotel Excalibur. ‘Business or pleasure, is it?’ asked the bouncy creature in that cud-chewing Dorset accent. ‘Neither,’ I told her, with courage and dignity. ‘I am here to bury my husband. Iraq. I’m not at liberty to tell you any more.’ Before my very eyes, she transformed into a real receptionist. She checked if a quieter, more spacious room, away from the conference wing, was available. Lo and behold, it was. ‘At no extra charge?’ I verified. She was pleasingly shocked. ‘We wouldn’t dream of it, madam! You’ll be more comfortable there, Mrs’ - she glanced at my form - ‘Mrs Castle-Dunbar. Would you like a lie-down now? I can send some tea up to your room.’ I’d prefer to stretch my legs, I told her, and she got me an umbrella. Several ‘Made in China’ umbrellas were in the stand - left behind by forgetful guests, doubtless - but she picked me out a sturdy, Churchillian, raven-black affair.

 

Yes, there are boxes of tatty junk in Lyme Regis, but also cabinets of
bona fide
rareties. Nestling between Cap’n Scallywag’s Diner and Wildest Dreams Amusement Arcade you’ll find Feay’s Fossils and Henry Jeffreys Antiquarian Maps. From a florist on Silver Street, I purchased twelve ruby roses. In a jeweller’s on Pound Street, a pearl necklace caught my eye. £395 is not small change, but one doesn’t bury one’s soul-mate every day of the week, and I negotiated a discount of £35. I got the elderly proprietor to snip off the tag so I could wear it now. ‘Very good, madam,’ he replied. England would be a superior country if everyone in shops spoke like that.

Then I came to the Cobb.

It curves out into the sea, this ancient stone wall, before dividing into two arms. One arm shelters the modest harbour. The other lunges into open water. Judith Castle-Dunbar followed the latter, cutting a swathe through a platoon of German pensioners. She booted their backsides into the briny drink, or imagined doing so, so vividly that she heard their cries and hearty Teutonic
plop!
s. Sir Andrew’s
Requiem
- more sublime than Mozart’s, who never knew when to stop - thundered over the water, for her, for the soul of Oliver Dunbar. Beadlets of mist clung to her overcoat. She reached the end. Judith Castle-Dunbar gazed towards France, obscured today by an inconsolable sky of tears.
An inconsolable sky of tears
. Judith Castle-Dunbar flung one red rose into the funereal waters below her. And another, another, another, sinking into the fathoms. Rest in peace. The widow has an uncanny sensation of being in a film.

Gulls are her familiars. Damp tourists, anglers, local hoodies and drug addicts, bored rich Germans, spiteful June Nolans, soya-milk Winnifreds and bronzed Marions, holiday admirals in their affordable yachts . . . they watch on, wondering,
Who is that woman? Why is her sadness so deep?
She will remain anchored in the inlets of their memories, long after today. This woman moves in a separate realm. A Meryl Streep sort of realm. A realm which ordinary people can glimpse, but never inhabit.

 

Tucked up on the toppermost shelf of the town, Oliver Dunbar Photography was open for business as usual. A bell greeted me: the very bell Olly must have heard every day of his working life here. Right here. I must obtain it, and have it rigged up to my door at home. Inside, a man was speaking on the telephone. Leo! I recognized him by his voice. Leo is a touch beefier than Olly, but he has those sensuous Dunbar eyes, and that Jeremy Irons bone structure. His black clothes - obviously he’ll be in mourning for weeks yet - suited him well, and what pluck, I thought, to keep the show on the road at a time like this. Doubtless the Dunbars are rallying round. Despite my discreet enquiries, Olly never mentioned Leo’s wife or girlfriend, and all ten fingers were free of rings. With the receiver still wedged between his ear and his manly shoulder, Leo smiled apologetically and gestured that I should make myself comfortable. An electricity passed between us. I sense these things. Why should it not? He is my dead lover’s brother. I am one of the family. Closing my umbrella, I stood it in a bucket, and withdrew into a side-gallery to give Leo some privacy. His conversation wasn’t worth overhearing, anyway: arrangements for wedding photographs at the council offices. Olly and I were to have married in a stone circle.

The side-gallery was walled with portraits. Some faces are windows, others are masks. What jokes had Olly told to coax out those smiles? What gentlenesses? Whatever they were, they outlived Dear Olly, and, in these portraits, my dear man’s humour and compassion will outlive us all. Diamond-anniversary couples; babies on rugs; sisters in easy poses, extended families in stiffer groups; matriarchs amidst tribes of grandchildren; shiny newly-weds; surly, softened adolescents; a Sikh family even, here in Dorset. What a miracle it is, how two faces become one in their children’s.

Families, I decided, come in three types.

First, families who participate in each other’s lives.

Second, families who merely
report
their lives to each other.

Third, families who don’t even do that.

We Castles, I suppose, are type two. Philip has his sights on type three, which is his lookout. But my fondest aspiration is to belong to the first type of family. To belong to a family who won’t push you away for the crime of desiring intimacy! Even if I suggest to Camilla, my
daughter
, that I visit her in London, it’s
No, Mum, this week’s no good
; or
Sorry, Sinead’s having a party this weekend
; or
Later in the summer, Mum, work’s gone
mental
right now
. Then August arrives and she clears off to Portugal with her father and Fancy-Piece. How am I supposed to feel? So Muggins here does her best at the bookshop, the drama society, my England in Bloom Committee, and what do I get? The likes of June Nolan dubbing me a ‘busybody’ of course, that’s all water off a duck’s back, but where’s the sin in wanting to be needed? In telling one’s loved ones those home truths they need to hear?

Everything would have changed, post-wedding. Everything. Olly, his sisters, Leo here,
plus
better halves,
plus
toddlers, gather at their parents’ home every weekend. I’d be a peace-broker, a soft-shoulder, a mucker-inner, a washer-upper.
We swear, Judith, we don’t know how we got by without you.

 

‘
So
sorry to keep you,’ said Leo. ‘You wouldn’t believe how - ’

The phone rang.

‘Not
again
!’ Leo rolled his long-lashed eyes. ‘Do you mind?’