gathered up towels and brought them in a heap to the side of the bath. She folded one and put it behind the wet, heavy head like a pillow. She draped the others over Jessie’s body, tucking them in like a mother with a child. The tears ran down her face but she went on working without stopping to wipe them away.
Jessie’s face wasn’t like Jessie now, but Julia left it uncovered. She couldn’t hide her as though she wasn’t a part of the world any longer.
When the job was done Julia sat down to wait. She was wet to the skin and shivering, but she felt that she couldn’t leave Jessie alone, not now. She thought about the boy with a bunch of marigolds who had come looking for Jessie on a hot summer’s afternoon.
At last the doorbell rang. She stood up stiffly and went to open the door to help that was much too late. The men came up the stairs in their uniforms and Julia showed them where Jessie was lying. They bent over her and Julia turned away. She went and stood in the kitchen, still in her wet clothes, looking out at Felix’s earthenware flowerpots in the angle of the roof. He would be home soon. Julia closed her eyes and clenched her fists, thinking about him, and then she heard his light, quick footsteps on the stairs.
She met him at the door, and saw his face. ‘The ambulance?’ he asked.
Julia put out her hands and he gripped her arms, frowning at the clammy coldness of her sleeves.
‘It’s Jessie,’ she said. He was already looking past her, into the darkness of Jessie’s room. ‘Felix. She’s dead.’
There was nothing to soften that. No time for it, no words that could change anything. Julia wanted to put her arms round him, to comfort him somehow from her own meagre stock of comfort, but he put her gently aside.
The ambulance men stood awkwardly in the bathroom doorway. Felix walked past them, going in to his mother, and shut the door behind him.
Jessie had died of a heart attack in the bath. Her weight and the bottles of vodka she had come to depend on had contributed to it, of course. The doctor explained carefully to Julia and Felix when he came to sign the death certificate. They listened, without looking at each other.
Felix made the funeral arrangements. Jessie had left no instructions but she had once said to Felix, only half joking, ‘Make sure there’s a party when I go. All the old faces, if there are any left by then.’
They buried Jessie in a bleak, windswept north London cemetery. A little group of people, Mr Mogridge and a handful of others like him, came to the funeral. Mr French, the property developer, turned up and watched Felix covertly across the heap of raw earth. Felix’s face was as expressionless as if it was carved out of wood. Mattie arrived just before the brief ceremony began. John Douglas had given her one day off.
‘Do your friends and relatives die regularly?’ he had asked her.
‘I’m not asking for sympathy because Jessie’s dead,’ Mattie said quietly. It occurred to her at that moment that she was making a mistake in wanting, or needing, to love John Douglas. ‘I’m just telling you that I’m going to her funeral, whether you say I can or not.’
He had looked ashamed, just for a moment. ‘We need you here, that’s all,’ he mumbled. Mattie stood at the graveside, the black fur of her coat collar blowing around her face, holding Julia’s hand tightly.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here,’ she whispered.
‘What could you have done?’
‘Is Felix all right?’
They didn’t look at him.
‘I don’t know.’
The vicar arrived at the graveside, the wind whipping his surplice. The little knot of people bent their heads.
Afterwards they went back to the square, leaving the mound of earth in the graveyard fluttering with wet flower petals. More people came to the flat to remember Jessie. Felix had made some food and bought whisky, and Julia laid out plates and glasses in Jessie’s room. The photographs and mementoes crowding the walls already looked faded, as though they belonged to a sad past, although Julia had tidied and polished them.
It was a subdued gathering. They missed Jessie’s talk, and her lewd laugh. Too many of them were remembering the other party, the unexpected, joyous one that Mattie and Julia had given for her. Jessie had sung the old favourites, and ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me’. No one tried to sing tonight, even though Freddie Bishop was sitting in the corner with his mouth-organ in the pocket of his black coat.
It was very early when people began to leave, in twos and threes, gravely shaking Felix’s hand at the door.
At last it was time for Mattie to go and catch the last train north. She hugged them both, wordlessly, and they let her go.
Alone in the flat, Felix and Julia went round picking up empty glasses and clearing dirty plates. They moved past each other considerately, in almost complete silence, as they had been doing ever since Jessie died. It was as if they didn’t know what to say to each other now, and were afraid that if they said anything it might hurt in some way.
Felix picked up an empty whisky bottle. He stared blindly at the label, and then he groaned and hurled it against the wall. It smashed and glass scattered amongst Jessie’s possessions.
Julia reached out to him, but he evaded her.
‘I couldn’t even give her the goodbye party she wanted.’
Julia heard the bitterness in his voice. ‘You can’t make people behave to order,’ she said gently. Jessie could make people want to celebrate just by telling them to have a party. That’s what she was good at, not you. We all missed her too much tonight.’
‘Do you think she knows that?’
Felix had been so controlled up to this moment, but now his loss and bewilderment was clear to Julia.
‘Of course she does,’ she whispered.
Jessie seemed very close, then, in her over-filled room.
Felix nodded, and bent down to pick up the pieces of broken glass. He found another empty bottle on the floor beside Jessie’s armchair.
‘There’s nothing left to drink,’ he said. ‘I’d have liked a drink, now.’
Julia went into the kitchen and took out the bottle of wine she had bought for him.
She carried it back into Jessie’s room and held it out, an offering.
‘Let’s drink this. We’ll make our own celebration for her.’ She saw that Felix was looking at her, a long, careful look.
‘Jessie would like that,’ he said, at last.
Wouldn’t you? Julia wanted to ask him. Wouldn’t you like it, too? She remembered how she had wanted to comfort him when he came home on that terrible evening. She had been aware then that she had few enough resources to offer him, and she thought now that she didn’t know what they needed or wanted from each other.
Julia pushed the confusion of her feelings aside and held out the bottle. ‘Open it.’
They
