Read Trials of the Monkey Online
Authors: Matthew Chapman
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Retail
Trials of the Monkey (38 page)
‘I’m afraid that’s not company policy.’
I explained I was trying to organise my mother’s funeral. It was a local call. It would only take a few seconds. I would happily pay. The face pinched into itself like a fist. A sympathetic look but a firm no. If the envelopes were the wrong size I could bring them back. I told the woman I had arrived from Los Angeles that morning. I was very tired. My mother died only last night. If the envelopes were wrong, I’d have to drive out to the village and then come back. It would take an hour. ‘Please …’
‘I’m sorry.’
There was the phone, I could see it on the wall. I was insistent. The woman, at first only wilfully obedient and correct, now looked up at me with obstinate trepidation. I insisted on seeing the manager. A balding man with a wretched swipe of hair pasted across his oily dome came hurrying up the stairs. Mr. Filz.
Mr. Filz seemed angry. ‘It’s not company policy to allow customers to use the phone.’
I began what was to be a series of questions.
‘What harm could it do?’
‘That’s not the point. It’s company policy not to let people use the phone and I’m the manager.’
‘I understand that but …’
Before I could develop a logical argument (Did he think the man who came up with this policy was thinking of this particular case?) Denise self-detonated. Her face red with fury, she started screaming at him. How dare he behave like this? What kind of
a man was he anyway? Didn’t he have a heart? Is this what it meant to be English?!
a man was he anyway? Didn’t he have a heart? Is this what it meant to be English?!
I studied her, thinking her next move would probably be to start throwing things. Instead, she threatened to walk out. Checking that nothing impeded a swift retreat back into the basement, Filz gestured encouragingly toward the front door. I have no appetite for physical violence. I went to pay for the envelopes.
When we got back, the village vicar was at the table, the greedy priest scrabbling at the atheists in their grief. All we wanted was to use the church, the only building large enough in the village to accommodate all those who wanted to bid the reprobate goodbye.
He was a limp little man with damp, protruding eyes and a weak chin. ‘Are tears being shed?’ he asked solicitously, as if dealing with cretins.
When, just to bait him, I brought up some larger issue of faith, I think it was to do with the obvious inefficacy of prayer—the poor and miserable seem to do it most and get least—he hesitated and then looked up at me.
‘Discuss? But not now?’ He smiled, rubbing his hands together.
Trying to comfort us in advance for the gruesome peculiarities of the crematorium (or ‘the Crem’ as he referred to it affectionately) he said, ‘The coffin will be to one side. The curtains will come around—but you must realize, she’s not there.’
‘Where is she then?’ I asked, genuinely surprised, thinking, Why burn an empty coffin? and only when it was explained did I realize he was talking about her ‘spirit.’
Unfailingly polite, but probably somewhat condescending, we began to argue every detail of the service in a desperate attempt to keep religion to a minimum. We wanted my brother Francis’ father-in-law, also a vicar, but one who knew and liked my mother, to take charge of the whole thing; but the grasping and insensitive local would not relinquish power.
‘Of course I’m delighted that Reverend Shiress will be involved, but this is my service.’ On the subject of additional
prayers (and there were we attempting
subtraction
), he said, ‘I like to personalize, so instead of saying, “Dearly beloved who has gone beyond,” I like to say, “Dearly beloved
Clare
who has gone beyond.” ’
prayers (and there were we attempting
subtraction
), he said, ‘I like to personalize, so instead of saying, “Dearly beloved who has gone beyond,” I like to say, “Dearly beloved
Clare
who has gone beyond.” ’
He was insufferable, immutable, dreary, relentless. Soon it became apparent he was on a fishing expedition, in search of a character to feed into his personalizing machine.
‘Who was this woman?’
We should have said, ‘Fuck off,’ instead we merely shrugged. Who knew?
‘Was she a happy woman?’
‘No, she wasn’t.’
‘A good woman?’
A laugh and then, ‘Well, yes and no.’
We really couldn’t help him—she was a mystery to us, irreducible by cliché—nor were we inclined to yield to his authority as consoler. There were details to be organised, that was all. We wanted one thing, he another, and even in our sorrow we would not quite give in and, in spite of our sorrow, nor would he.
There was an argument over who should play the organ. K, my parents’ oldest friend, the woman who had introduced them, had a son-in-law who was a professional pianist and organist. Along with two of her children, he was to play a piece of classical music. We suggested he should stay on the organ and play the music which would accompany us out of the church. No, he wouldn’t have that. One piece of music from outsiders, fine, but the official (the official!) organist should have the honor of the finale.
My father, now thoroughly irritated, decided he would try and get ‘The Red Flag’ as the last piece of music in honour of my mother’s left-leaning politics. In its original form it’s called ‘Tannenbaum’ and is a traditional German song about fir trees. Referring to it as such, he slid it past the ignorant churchman, and finally we won the battle for the second half of the service.
‘The Church has swallowed whole nations and the question of indigestion has never arisen,’ says Mephistopheles in
Faust
. This
was more like a ferret nibbling at a wounded rabbit cornered in a dark hole, this was the petty exercise of power by a small man, but underneath it lay the blind, resolute lust of the Church: Here were atheists in mourning, here was an opportunity. To hell with common decency or compassion, make the sale, bend the will. It was as tough a negotiation as I’ve ever seen in Hollywood.
Faust
. This
was more like a ferret nibbling at a wounded rabbit cornered in a dark hole, this was the petty exercise of power by a small man, but underneath it lay the blind, resolute lust of the Church: Here were atheists in mourning, here was an opportunity. To hell with common decency or compassion, make the sale, bend the will. It was as tough a negotiation as I’ve ever seen in Hollywood.
Atheist though I was, I would occasionally imagine my mother looking down on me. One time I went out to the garage. There was her tiny Mini Minor, versions of which she had driven since I was a child. To my amazement, I found myself patting the roof affectionately and speaking to her, ‘Oh, Mumma, I do miss you,’ then I stepped back, embarrassed at what the old cynic would think of me if indeed she was above.
Sometimes after a night of drinking, my mother would shuffle off to bed, leaving her children behind, stunned by the cruelty of her despair. Often we would then discuss the conundrum of her alcoholism and get ferociously drunk.
Now she had shuffled off into death and the tradition continued.
My father went and got some old photographs. In every one of them my mother wore the same look of melancholy alienation. So sad did she look in one or two, you might think she was in mourning or deranged. A group photograph taken in St. Cast, the French town where we often spent our summer vacations, showed everyone sitting on the steps of the house, Clare on the top, separate from Cecil, right in the corner of the frame looking out as if meditating on some loss. What was she thinking? Was she thinking of her dead brother? Or of a lover?
After a few hours of this, during which many amusing memories were spoken of—occasions when her mordant wit, her eccentricity, her gift for laying into pomposity and affectation were at their most extreme or endearing—we started to discuss the disposal of the ashes. By this time everyone had drunk a lot. Ludovic, who now owned his own computer-training company in Cambridge, and Sarah, employed in a semi-diplomatic position
with the Franco-British Council, were eerily reasonable and diplomatic. My father moderated cheerfully, but you could tell his mind was elsewhere. Francis, meanwhile, my mother’s son by Peter, now a photographer with two children, was making bizarre faces and speaking in an odd voice. I understood his pain, his more than anyone’s, but I didn’t want to talk about my mother’s ashes with a drunk. I suggested we wait a year and bury them then. The idea was eagerly embraced by all, I suspect for the same reason, and then abandoned a short time later for reasons I cannot now remember.
with the Franco-British Council, were eerily reasonable and diplomatic. My father moderated cheerfully, but you could tell his mind was elsewhere. Francis, meanwhile, my mother’s son by Peter, now a photographer with two children, was making bizarre faces and speaking in an odd voice. I understood his pain, his more than anyone’s, but I didn’t want to talk about my mother’s ashes with a drunk. I suggested we wait a year and bury them then. The idea was eagerly embraced by all, I suspect for the same reason, and then abandoned a short time later for reasons I cannot now remember.
I thought my mother’s death would bring us closer. I thought, in a way, she was an impediment. Now, sitting in her house, I began to see how central she was to the whole scheme. She may have been an imploding sun, but she was the centre of our small universe. Our concern for her was the means by which we expressed our love for each other. Without her, there was no gravity.
I went to bed depressed.
The next day we burned her in a dismal crematorium. You would think that even if you set out to build the most hideous building on earth, somehow, by some accident, one brick, one tile, a
doorknob … something
, would retain some element of beauty. But no. Next to a motorway, the squat, degenerate building hugged the ground, governmental, sullen, resolute in its ugliness.
doorknob … something
, would retain some element of beauty. But no. Next to a motorway, the squat, degenerate building hugged the ground, governmental, sullen, resolute in its ugliness.
The village vicar had the nerve to produce … an egg. He held it up between his unworked hands.
‘This is an egg, but it is not an egg. It looks like an egg, but in fact it is an egg shell. It’s hollow. So it is with Clare. Her body lies over there behind the curtains, but Clare, the Clare who we all knew’ [liar, he never knew her] ‘has gone to heaven …’
Oh, you
fucker!
How dare you! Shut up before I strangle you! But no … on he went, the petty egomaniac pissing a torrent of banal clichés on the individuality of my mother, a one-size-fits-all, generic, unisex eulogy … on and on, taking up the rag of
who she never was and twisting it until the last drips of meaning had been wrung from it and nothing was left but the municipal stink of false sanctity.
fucker!
How dare you! Shut up before I strangle you! But no … on he went, the petty egomaniac pissing a torrent of banal clichés on the individuality of my mother, a one-size-fits-all, generic, unisex eulogy … on and on, taking up the rag of
who she never was and twisting it until the last drips of meaning had been wrung from it and nothing was left but the municipal stink of false sanctity.
The efficient whir of machinery, and she was ashes.
Another day passed, a Sunday. The family was together, all the children, a rare thing this, and an almost festive air prevailed.
On Monday morning, it was my job to go into town and collect the ashes and have them back before the memorial service at the church. She was not to be buried there, but up in an abandoned graveyard that lay on our land, and still we had not decided when to dig her in; best therefore to have her handy. Off I drove, through the countryside, past St. Anne’s Prep School, and up to a gaunt, dark reddish funeral home in a grim section of the town: run by the Co-op, some quasi-Socialist outfit, I believe, and appropriately utilitarian. I parked outside, went in. A gloomy, unprepossessing lobby indistinguishable from any other administrative gape—except for an overwhelming smell of shit … A Mr. Theobold, more flustered than funereal, produced the container, a cardboard box large enough to contain a bottle of port, but, when I took hold of it, heavier than port. On the box, a label:
‘Name of Deceased, Ruth, Clare Chapman; No. of Cremation 92760. Date of Cremation 8/5/92. Remarks: Cambs-Co-op.’
Poetic.
I needed to pee so badly I decided I had to brave the toilet even though it must, I figured, have recently exploded. Theobold ushered me through a flap in the counter and directed me toward the rear. Entering the toilet, I was surprised to note that it was not the source of the smell. In fact, it smelt better in here than anywhere else. Where then did this overwhelming stench come from? I would soon find out. When I came back into the lobby, I could see Mr. Theobold off to one side, furiously at work with an air-freshener, laying down a sickly scent on some previously unseen coffins, and only then did I realize that what I had smelt was the smell of death.
It was Monday, first thing in the morning. A couple of dead
’uns had been lying up here over the weekend and the smell of their decaying flesh had, I supposed, been augmented by some last-meal leakage. Rotting fried eggs and baked beans on toast …
’uns had been lying up here over the weekend and the smell of their decaying flesh had, I supposed, been augmented by some last-meal leakage. Rotting fried eggs and baked beans on toast …
‘Would you like a cup of tea now, dear? Hello? I said would you like a …’
Carrying the carton, I walked out to the car and headed for the trunk. But no! I could not put my mother in there. So I took her with me into the car. I thought of laying her on the floor in the back, but that too seemed somehow disrespectful, so I let her sit next to me, upright, all strapped in and safe in the passenger seat. How many times had she rescued me from prep school and driven me home, as helpless as this, to lie at home in bed pretending to be sick, listening to the buzz of flies circling the room and the distant hum of a vacuum cleaner?
I was relieved to get her out of the funeral parlor; it felt, in fact, almost heroic: I was rescuing her from the bureaucratic aspects of death, the hospital, the crematorium, the funeral home, and was returning her to a place where, in spite of herself, she was loved. Every now and then I would reach across and pat the carton with my hand and say, ‘Okay, Mumma, okay … I’m taking you back to Barrington. That’s where you belong. You’re going home.’
Back at the house, I took her upstairs to the spare bedroom. In the final year of her life she had moved in here, for medical and emotional reasons, and this was where I was now staying. Ludovic stormed in to get dressed for the memorial service. He looked around at the room and said, ‘This is kind of spooky, isn’t it?’
‘Spookier than you think,’ I said, and nodded at the carton reclining on the bed.
The family walked up the lane together, hung over in the bright day, toward the village church. Many, many cars. A woman walking out the churchyard gate in tears, waved at us that she could not go in. Her husband, Alf, a friend of mine whom I’d worked with in my father’s factory (he taught me the song ‘Balls to your Auntie, arse against the wall!’ which we would sing loudly
together when things got dull) had died only a few weeks ago and the memory of his funeral was too recent. Alf too?! I didn’t know.
together when things got dull) had died only a few weeks ago and the memory of his funeral was too recent. Alf too?! I didn’t know.
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