‘Yes.’
Through it all he went. How many times was he going to have to go through all this today?
‘Oh, James, I am so very, very sorry. Is there anything I can do?’
‘Well, tell everybody who needs to know.’
‘I sort of meant … is there anything personal? I mean … this evening, for instance. I don’t like to think of you all alone.’
‘That’s very sweet of you, Marcia.’ Oh, give me strength. ‘But my brother’s going to be here.’ Philip would have long gone, no doubt, but there was no need to add that.
‘The concert pianist?’
‘The other one.’
‘Well, that’s all right, then. I … p’r’aps I shouldn’t say this but I … you’re more than a boss to me, Mr Hollinghurst, and I …’
Oh, no. Oh, suffering serpents and suppurating sores, this was terrible. Interrupt, quickly. No time to lose.
‘Thank you, Marcia. That’s very sweet of you.’
Thank God, the doorbell. His sweet sweet friend the doorbell.
‘Philip’s here. I’ve got to go.’
A gust of brotherly love disturbed the still, windless morning. ‘The other one.’ Poor Philip, clever scientist, esteemed statistician, conducting vital research into climate change, a nobody in celebrity Britain.
They hugged. James always hugged Charles, you had to, Charles was a hugger, but he didn’t remember Philip ever hugging him before.
James and Charles had broad, almost round faces from their mother. Philip had his father’s long, narrow, slightly beaky face. It was a face that suggested that he might also have his father’s caustic tongue. It was not a relaxing face. But Philip was kind and much more easy-going than he looked. James felt so very pleased that he was there. Philip met his eyes, shook his head as if to rid himself of the bad news, and looked away.
‘The accident’s made the nationals,’ he said, and he handed James a paper. ‘Page seven.’
‘Tragic death of joy-ride war hero,’ read James. What?
‘Craig Wilson came back to England from Afghanistan just three days ago, delighted to be alive after seeing two of his friends killed in Helmand Province.’ Oh, no. ‘Now he too is dead, killed in a head-on car crash in a borrowed Porsche on the A143 near Diss.
‘The driver of the other car, a 46-year-old woman, also died.
‘“I feel so guilty,” said Craig’s best friend, local skip magnate Ben Postgate (30) yesterday. “There hasn’t been much joy in his life recently, and I lent him my Porsche for a joy ride. He was all properly insured and stuff, and he was a very good driver, but I think the fun of it, after what he’d been through, must have gone to his head. I keep saying to myself, “Oh, if only I hadn’t.”
‘“Craig was a brave committed soldier and a thoroughly nice lad who had a great life in front of him,” commented his commanding officer, Colonel Brian McIntyre. “We’re all devastated.”’
James shared a grimace with Philip.
‘I know,’ said Philip. ‘All Deborah’s vitality, her beauty, her kindness, her energy, all described as “the driver of the other car”.’ He wasn’t aware that he was sometimes called ‘the other brother’. ‘Upstaged in death. Mind you, she had no shred of pomposity or self-importance. She wouldn’t have minded.’
‘No. A fitting obituary, then, perhaps.’
James didn’t tell Philip why he had been grimacing. He had lost his villain. He no longer had anybody to blame.
He gave Philip a list of tasks. Look on the web for information about funeral directors in Islington and how much they cost. Look for any comment pages, if there were such things. First-rate service. Will definitely use them next time. Snotty-nosed, supercilious and extortionate. Wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole. Find a vicar. How did you do that? Look up ‘Vicars’ in Yellow Pages? Use the web again. Vicars, Islington, search. Try to begin to fix the date of the funeral. Try to avoid Tuesday and Wednesday, Charles wouldn’t be able to make it. Make morning coffee. Make lunch. Answer phone and door as required.
‘I so appreciate this, Philip.’
‘No probs.’
He left Philip indoors with the land line, got his mobile, went out into the garden, sat on the white William Morris chair Deborah had picked up in a little shop in Winchcombe, placed his address book and a glass of chilled water on the cast-iron table she had spotted in Much Wenlock, wondered briefly if there was one single thing in the whole house and garden, except stains, for which he was responsible.
He looked round the garden, delaying the moment when he would have to begin. It was broken up into little gravelled areas and small, irregular flower beds, which cleverly hid its narrowness and its uninspiring rectangular shape. There were cyclamens and lilies and attractive green ferns whose names he couldn’t remember. The smell from the pots of lavender brought back memories of lunches taken outdoors in weather such as this. The passiflora growing up the back wall was in full flower. Giant grasses were used as windbreaks. And all this, the ingenuity, the elegance, the restraint, had all been created by Deborah.
He sat in the middle of this living memorial to her artistry, and he felt awkward and ashamed. He sensed that he was about to miss her deeply, and so, in the end, he picked up the telephone almost eagerly.
And began.
‘All right, all right, I’m coming as fast as I can.’
Stanley Hollinghurst, James’s uncle, his father’s brother, talked to himself quite a lot now. He didn’t care. Charles had once pointed it out, and that evening he had caught himself saying, ‘So, you’re talking to yourself, are you? Well, Charles, you’re wrong. It isn’t the first sign of madness. It’s the first sign that there are sod all other people to talk to. It’s all right for you, you’re surrounded by people, you complacent young fool, but I talk to myself because it’s someone to listen to, all right?’ And then the humour of his talking to himself about his habit of talking to himself had struck him, and he’d laughed till his teeth came out.
‘Don’t ring off. I’m on my way.’
He didn’t have an answer machine. He was a Luddite. Well, he was an anthropologist. The past was his business. Or had been. All that was in the past now. Ha ha! Ironic!
He got to the phone while it was still ringing. Must be somebody he knew, making allowances.
‘Stanley Hollinghurst, OBE.’
‘Stanley! You haven’t got an OBE.’
‘No, but very few people round here know that. How are you, James?’
‘Fine. Stanley, I—’
‘How are Charles and Philip?’
‘Fine.
