All at Sea, page 13
W can at least be disinvited to the funeral. Our bigger problem is a relative of Tony’s who will not stop phoning Tom, hysterical and belligerent. Nothing Tom can say satisfies her need for acknowledgement of her own loss. When she threatens to turn up and force her way into the house, ‘to look after Decca and the boys’, he tells her he will lock the door and phone the police. So instead she starts emailing Tony.
The emails are truly disturbing. They open with ‘How are you?’ and sign off ‘Speak soon.’ I don’t know what else to do but ignore them, until one arrives demanding – no, insisting – she be allowed to speak at the funeral. I am aghast. I have always been fond of her, but am desperate to protect Tony’s dignity, and in her current state I am terrified of what she might say. But I do not think I have the moral authority to refuse her.
Tony’s daughter does, and fires off a fairly robust email, telling her to stop sending weird emails and forget about making a speech. But now I worry that this relative may have a go at her at the funeral. It would probably only take a dirty look to provoke Tony’s daughter, and if that happens her mother might well wade in too. I would guess that security is not a standard fixture on the funeral checklist, and am joking when I suggest it might be wise to hire a bouncer. But the prospect of a cat fight breaking out between Tony’s relative, his ex-wife and his daughter at his own funeral is so unconscionably awful that Tom books a female bouncer just in case.
As each decision is made, the narcotic allure of agency begins to ring alarm bells. Having always been prone to fantasies of omnipotence, I am familiar with the delusion that making plans means taking control, and can see how easily I might absorb myself in all these details to distract from the unbearable reality of helplessness. Is that what Tom and I are really doing, as we obsess and fret over the minutiae of the funeral? But no, it isn’t that. Until you have to organise one yourself, it is impossible to appreciate the enormity of the responsibility. To honour another human being’s life is a terrifying undertaking, and the imperative to get it right consumes me. And yet, at the same time, I couldn’t care less.
Because what does it matter if we get this or that detail right? It won’t change anything. The most dazzlingly brilliant ceremony in the world won’t bring Tony back, so who cares if the food is West Indian or Persian, or whether the Roundchapel’s piano has been tuned? When it’s all over, he will still be dead.
I am not even clear who this funeral is meant to be for. Not me, that much at least I know. Given the choice I would rather not even go, and although this option is plainly out of the question I am under no illusion that the day will hold any emotional value for me. From the furtively studied nonchalance of the boys’ occasional questions, I can tell Jake and Joe are not looking forward to it. The only person whose approval I find myself constantly consulting is Tony’s. But he is the one person who definitely will not be there, so who are we doing it for? There are moments when I wonder if I must be quite mad to care so much about creating an event I wish to God was not happening, and do not even want to attend.
Someone else who will not be there fills my thoughts. As the day draws near I become obsessively preoccupied by Tony’s birth mother. In the past I had only ever pictured her as the underage teenager who gave him up for adoption, but now I cannot stop thinking about the middle-aged woman who must have wondered about her son every day for nearly fifty years – and will still be wondering. The image of her in my mind torments me. She deserves to know her son is dead. But of course, I do not know how to find her.
On the morning of the funeral, I wake up beside Jake and Joe in a hotel bed in Hackney. The outfits they have chosen are neatly folded on a chair; Jake wants to wear his green Usain Bolt T-shirt and yellow shorts, Joe his pink T-shirt from Jake’s hotel, and bright pink shorts. It is what they wore most days in Jamaica, and as I get them dressed I am braced for the pathos of their choices to undo me. But I feel nothing. Even as we walk hand in hand through Hackney to the Roundchapel, across the parks where Tony and I used to play with them, past the pubs we used to drink in and the restaurants he loved, I feel nothing at all – literally nothing.
Having dreaded the agony of this day for so long I am thrown by this icy blank numbness, and mildly appalled. What is wrong with me? I am leading my sons to their father’s funeral, and even when I try to make myself feel something – anything – I cannot feel a thing. The hearse carrying Tony’s coffin is parked outside the Roundchapel when we arrive, and for a fleeting second shocks me out of my anaesthesia. But as I register the gathering crowd of mourners, I sense myself disappear again. I can see it is, by anyone’s standards, a wildly incongruous congregation. There are three or four hundred people here – Guardian journalists, Kids Company teenagers, East End villains, Kentish farmers, mums and dads from Jake and Joe’s nursery. But in my dissociated confusion, and this sea of black clothing, I struggle to recognise faces. Even close friends are hard to place, and I have to bluff my way hopefully through hugs and greetings.
The service passes in a daze. As far as I can tell, everything seems to go to plan. What had never occurred to me during all the endless preparations was that the mourners would want to talk to me. How could I have overlooked something so obvious? I am completely unprepared for any obligation to make appropriate conversation, and to this day can barely recall a word anyone said. Among the afternoon’s many surreal exchanges is a moment when I’m belatedly realising that the man I am hugging is Alastair Campbell when a woman taps me on the shoulder and introduces herself as Tony’s therapist.
By the evening I have nothing left in me, and we retreat to my friend’s house with close relatives and friends. Tom goes off to the bar, and returns with reports of raucously hedonistic chaos. I am delighted, because it is exactly what Tony would have wanted, and also immensely relieved not to be there.
The following morning a minibus takes some of us home to Kent, while others follow in cars. It is a blazing midsummer day by the time three dozen of us assemble at the cemetery. The previous day’s numbness has vanished, and the scene is in blinding technicolour. While we wait for Tony in the sunshine, an undertaker teaches Jake how to pull the bell rope in the tiny chapel, and so when the hearse carrying Tony pulls in through the gates the bell rings out to greet him. The undertakers show my three brothers, my father, my cousin and one of Tony’s friends how to carry the coffin to the grave. Joe wants to help, so I hoist him onto my hip and he holds the foot of the coffin as we inch our way unsteadily forward.
We had still been in Jamaica when Jenni had suggested we should fill the grave ourselves. She said it would be profoundly moving. I had wondered why. What difference would it make? And wouldn’t it take for ever? It is not until three of us take spades and begin shovelling earth that I see what she meant. In the midsummer heat sweat streams with the tears down our cheeks as spades pass from hand to hand. No one says a word; the only sound is the scrunch of the shovels and the thud of falling earth. When each one of us has helped fill the grave, the primitive symbolism takes our breath away. It doesn’t feel like we are burying Tony, so much as tucking him in. Jake and Joe plant violets in the mound.
I had not thought myself susceptible to a pseudo-spiritual preoccupation with ‘the body’. To my mind, a corpse was just what is left after somebody dies. So the intensity of my relief that Tony is now no longer in the custody of strangers, but safely buried close to home, astounds me. But this surprise is as nothing to what comes nine days later.
On the day of the funeral service I didn’t cross paths with one of Tony’s oldest friends, but had thought nothing of it at the time. When I receive a voicemail from him a week later, asking me to call, I can’t get through or leave a message, so send the following text:
‘I’ve tried calling but it says phone’s unavailable, hope you get this, I’m so sorry we didn’t get to speak at t’s funeral, your family was such a lovely strength and presence don, I really hope you felt happy about how it went, and I hope we see each other soon xxxxxxxxxx’
I think his reply is a joke at first. As I read on, my eyes widen.
‘To be honest I was really disappointed. The service and church reception went well but it wasn’t about all that. As a black man it is important to bury your people and put the dirt on your loved ones if you can. That’s like personally closing the door on their life with your blessing. We wasn’t allowed to do that. I’ve known Tony for 25 years. He’s dead and buried but most of his REAL friends weren’t privelege to bury fallen brethren. I won’t speak for others but I’m really hurt and offended by the decision makers decisions. I don’t feel Tony got the burial he deserved, surrounded by people that made and named him TONY DREAD. Another shameful and disrespected thing about all of this, the wreath saying TONY DREAD was left behind at the church. What the fuck!!! I thank you for helping to turn Tonys life around and giving I’m two beautiful children. However I feel you, and or whoever else, let him down when it was obvious what he would have wanted’
As I reread the text, over and over, I know it should outrage me. Instead it quite dismantles me. I feel septic, poisoned by the words and my horror that Tony’s burial has been contaminated by anger. All I can think or care about is how to detoxify it. So I write an email apologising for causing offence and explaining that the private burial was for Jake and Joe. I say how sorry I am for having not thought to explain this sooner, and how sorry I am that the wreath was left behind. I tell them it had been delivered to the grave two days later, as soon as I was made aware of it. I apologise again and again.
Not one replies. But I think I understand how a funeral can become a battleground over ownership of the deceased, because it can be easier for the bereaved to find something to be angry about than to let themselves feel sad. I recognise this, because protecting myself from sadness is what I have been doing for pretty much most of my life.
I am forty-three years old, and haven’t the first clue about how to grieve. I am an expert in grief-avoidance. In fact, I strongly suspect that had Tony survived long enough to get to hospital, just twenty-four hours on a life-support machine would have bought me enough time to decide not to mind very much when he died. But Tony’s death happened too quickly for my normal defences to organise themselves, and so for the first time I am at the mercy of grief. Ever since I turned ten, nobody’s death had meant anything to me – because once you have decided you don’t mind your own mum dying, how could anyone else’s death bother you?
8
Some memories resemble photographs, and others are more like video clips; snatches of an old life that freeze as abruptly as they begin. I have one of Tom and me at home, when I am nine and he’s eleven. I am following him from one room to the next, and as we reach the doorway I say something that makes him turn around. I’m astonished to see that he is crying. What’s the matter with him? Tom’s face is all red and choked up with snot and tears. ‘What do you think’s the fucking matter?’ he shouts at me. ‘I’m upset because my mum’s fucking dying!’ He shoves ahead, and I stare after him, completely bewildered. He’s crying because of that?
It is one of the most precise memories I have left of the year when our mother was dying. In December 1979 she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and gathered us together to tell us that the doctors thought she had perhaps twelve months left to live. She sat on the sofa beneath the window in the living room, with her legs curled underneath her, leaning against our father’s arm. She was thirty-seven; he was thirty-nine.
My brothers were ten, twelve and fourteen, and I was eight. I don’t know if we cried, but I am fairly sure she didn’t. I can’t remember what anyone said. When I was older I used to wonder why Tom’s outburst months later had soldered itself on my memory, when so much of that year had drifted from view. It seems obvious to me now. His rage was as unforgettable as seeing an adult steal, shocking because it was a transgression.
It’s not possible for me to know if we used to be a happy family. Everyone tells me we were, but the extravagance of bliss they recall cannot be wholly reliable, for tragedy plays havoc with truth. Disaster tends to cast an unreal light of perfection over what came before. But we were probably happy, or happy enough, and certainly looked so.
We lived in a hamlet of half a dozen eighteenth-century houses called Long Dean, at the foot of a narrow, wooded valley. Later than Laurie Lee, but long before rural gentrification, it was a version of childhood closer to Cider with Rosie than the manicured formality I find when I go back today. The four of us went ferreting, fished in the river, built treehouses in the woods, kept a goat and a crow for pets. The nearest town was miles away, and consumerism several years off; in old photographs we look like raggle-taggle gypsies, wild in a patchwork of jumble-sale jeans. When old friends of our parents came to visit from London, I would sometimes catch the breath of their wistful longing – a kind of dreamy enchantment with our life.
Our mother’s death began so innocently, it didn’t cross my mind to be scared. Our doctor’s surgery in those days was a room in his private home. He lived in a honey-coloured village a mile up the valley, in a house overlooking a fourteenth-century market cross. The doctor was a tall man, angular and lean; had he not been a family friend, I might have found him quite forbidding. But his house held no fears for my six-year-old self, the day we went to see him about a lump in my mother’s breast.
She used to wear soft, practical bras. They might have been Playtex Cross Your Heart bras, and were always off-white from the wash, with straps wide enough for three hook-and-eye fasteners at the back. I sat in a corner and watched my mother undress to the waist. Our family was relaxed about nudity – I didn’t know you could be anything else – and I sensed no atmosphere in the room. ‘A lump in my breast.’ It sounded innocent, like a lump in your pocket, more a child’s word than a medical term.
When she had to go for tests to determine whether the lump was cancerous, she explained to us the probabilities. Only one in ten lumps ever turned out to be malignant. They would almost certainly find it was benign. I’d never heard these words before, but something in the sound of one had communicated itself already. Be-nign sounded relatively neutral; it could mean almost anything. Mal-ig-nant could only be bad.
The hospital was in Bath, and this was vaguely unsettling, for though only 12 miles away, Bath was reserved for shopping expeditions, which happened only once or twice a year. But the odds were simple to understand – just one out of every ten – and the way she articulated them seemed to eliminate even this tiny mathematical chance. I had never heard of cancer before, or known anyone to be ill, so had no reason to doubt the equilibrium with which our mother appeared to regard the whole affair.
When she had to tell us that her breast was going to be removed, I still don’t remember a great deal of drama. It was the necessary, sensible solution to the problem of this lump. The language of fear or disfigurement never featured in family conversations, and so it never entered my head. When we visited her after the operation, four fuzzy brown and blonde heads around the hospital bed, I only remember her smiling.
It must have been summer, because we packed up the VW van as usual and set off to Scotland for the annual holiday on my grandparents’ farm. She stayed behind for the first week, to convalesce – another unfamiliar word – before joining us. We were playing near the byre on our grandparents’ farm when we heard the car pull up, and I can remember running across the gravel towards her. She was carrying a brown paper bag with something round inside it, and I asked if it was her old breast. She crouched down to hug me. ‘No,’ she laughed, ‘I’ve brought you peaches,’ and she handed me one.
As far as I could tell, having one breast was almost the same as having two. The main difference was that she had to wear a special bra, with one normal cup and one filled with something soft and spongy. She would let me play with it, and the feel of it made me laugh. But she looked just the same when she had her clothes on, and seemed unselfconscious about the thick red scar when she undressed. She would swim naked with us in the river at Long Dean, and I thought nothing of it.
On Saturday mornings we used to go to the swimming baths in the local town, and I was startled when she used a cubicle to change. By then I had discovered that some people didn’t like to be seen without their clothes on, and must have grasped our family’s subtle moral distinction between those who hid away in cubicles, and people like us who got changed in the open. What was she doing in a cubicle? I was embarrassed. ‘Oh,’ she said lightly, ‘it’s just that strangers might be upset if they saw my scar.’
It was a stunning idea, intimating possibilities I had never considered and couldn’t begin to formulate. It must have been my first-ever glimpse of a world that allowed having a cancerous breast cut off the slightest emotional meaning.
For a long time, our mother seemed to be well again. I’m not sure how aware I was when this began to change, or whether we’d been warned that it might happen, and had been waiting all along. But two and a half years after her mastectomy, the cancer had spread from her breast to her lung, and was inoperable.
The lists were limitless. First of all, a cooking rota was drawn up, allocating each of us a night of the week to make supper, assisted by a meal plan compiled by our mother. The menus were heartbreakingly basic, but she had left nothing to chance; how to make mashed potato and grated cheese could run to several pages. In the evenings, she would sit propped up by pillows in bed, surrounded by paperwork, compiling intricate guidelines for every eventuality. Some of her lists addressed mundane practicalities: what to buy for the weekly shop, when to see the dentist. Then there were the one-off categories: who to send Christmas cards to, where to buy birthday presents. Page by page, the anatomy of her entire life was broken down into series of meticulous instructions.
