Vengeful love, p.20
Vengeful Love, page 20
“Tea?” she sings.
“Absolutely, I’ll put the kettle on.”
* * *
Unsurprisingly, the lethal combination of sugar, caffeine and the day’s events kills my ability to sleep. Rain pounds my bedroom window and wind gently rocks my curtains forwards and backwards. Images flash through my mind like storyboards, mapping my life with my father, how I met Gregory, the bloodstains on the staircase, how my father died, Lara’s visit to my house, the story she told me about Gregory’s past. Thoughts of the future and unanswered questions—what will I do with the house, will I continue to live with Sandy, will I accept my promotion—intermittently break my trips through the past.
A thunderous rap of the front door knocker startles me, echoing through the house. I dart upright in my bed. I wait for a few seconds then the rapping comes again, longer and louder, once, twice, three times. There’s a sound like Sandy’s flicking the switch of her bedroom light, followed by soft footsteps and the creek of her door. Slipping into my silk kimono, I poke my head out of my door.
Sandy holds a finger to her lip on the landing above the staircase. “Shhhh.”
“I’ll come with you,” I whisper.
We tiptoe down the staircase together, jumping each time the floorboards creak. We reach the front door in darkness and the doorknocker thuds again, making us cling to each other.
Sandy picks up two golf umbrellas and hands one to me.
“What on earth am I supposed to do with this?”
“It’s all I could think of.”
“We each take one side peer through the door curtain.
“Gregory,” I say, jumping back from the window.
Sandy looks at me in anticipation then undoes the dead lock.
“Wait!” I whisper. “I don’t want to see him.”
“But, Scarlett, he’s getting soaked through out there.”
“No, I don’t want to. Please send him away. Tell him I’m not here or something, anything. I don’t want to see him.” I scurry behind the wall into the lounge, close enough that I’ll be able to hear his voice.
His soft South African twang asks where I am and Sandy tells him I’m not home.
“Is she okay?”
There’s silence and I wonder what’s happening, then Gregory shouts, “Scarlett, please.”
There’s a genuine pleading in his voice that makes me want to go to him, to soothe him and tell him that everything will be fine.
“Scarlett!”
“She doesn’t want to see you, I’m sorry.”
There’s silence again and I listen to drops of rain hitting the ground. Leaning back against the lounge wall, I close my eyes, thinking of the last time he wore that outfit. Chapel Down. I bite my cheeks but it doesn’t prevent tears forming in my eyes, welling, waiting to fall.
“He’s gone,” Sandy says.
I nod but can’t speak.
“Come on, it’s after three and the vicar is coming today, let’s go to bed.”
I nod and take the hand Sandy offers me.
* * *
“Scarlett,” Sandy whispers through my opening bedroom door. “Sorry to wake you but the vicar will be here in an hour.
“What time is it?” I mumble with my face squashed into my pillow.
“Eleven-thirty.”
“Oh my God! I’m up, I’m up!” I say, not moving at all.
“Okay, I’ll pop a pot of tea on. Would you like some food? Pancakes maybe?” she says too temptingly, forcing me to sit and smile in response.
“Oh, and Scarlett,” she says, stepping back into my room from the landing, “mind your use of the Lord’s name for the next few hours, won’t you?”
Reverend Griffiths arrives in smart black trousers, a black shirt, a white dog collar and a tweed blazer. A remarkably ordinary outfit. His grey hair is thinning but still covers his head and his bright blue eyes look pure and honest beneath his large, round-rimmed glasses. It almost seems silly how long it took for me to eventually settle on a blue LK Bennett day dress and navy cardigan. Sandy has made an extra special effort to look angelic too. Her hair is tightly curled and pinned back. Tiny kitten heels have replaced her slippers and she wears a pretty pastel-green wrap dress with a white Victorian collar.
We exchange pleasantries and sit to take tea in the lounge. Reverend Griffiths sits in my father’s striped high-back chair, which irritates me more than it ought to. Sandy takes the lead with conversation, being more familiar than I am with how to address a man of his stature. Watching them smile and converse politely, they look like nice, good people. Increasingly the feeling of being an outsider overwhelms me. Clinging to my cup and saucer for support, I walk to the bay window and stare out to the low, end-of-October sun.
“It would be helpful if you could tell me about how Doctor Heath passed on,” Reverend Griffiths says.
Sandy reacts with wide, startled eyes.
“It’s nice to be able to put the congregation at ease if possible. To say Doctor Heath passed peacefully in his sleep, for example.”
I want to tell him, to confess everything to the Reverend and pray for his forgiveness, for my father’s forgiveness. The words play out in my mind. He was ill, yes. He was dying, yes. But it wasn’t his time. He was murdered. I brought it upon him and he was alone. He was alone because I left him alone whilst I played Gregory’s fucked-up games and drank wine.
“Doctor Heath had been sick for a long time, Reverend. Alzheimer’s disease, he had. Oh but he still had his moments, he could still make us smile,” Sandy sings. “He was peaceful enough when he died. He was the most peaceful I’d seen him for months.”
“No!” I yell, banging my cup down onto my saucer. “No, Reverend, he was not peaceful, he was alone! He was in hospital because I wasn’t here to look after him and he died alone because I didn’t stay with him. I should’ve been there. I could’ve stopped it.”
“That is not true!” Sandy snaps. She walks half way across the space between us and gestures for me to sit. I can’t meet her eye but do as instructed and take a seat on the sofa next to her.
Reverend Griffiths shuffles in his chair to place one hand on my knee and says, “I can see you’re angry, Scarlett, but remember this, if your father knew you loved him he would have died a happy man.”
I wish I could hear truth in his words because if I could, my father would’ve died the most loved and happy man I’ve ever known.
“Tell me, what was your father like?”
“The best,” I say honestly. “He brought me up. He did the best job he could and it was more than good enough.”
Smiling as memories of our life in this very space flash through my mind, I stand and walk to the center of the room beneath the sparkling crystal chandelier.
“Do you remember how he taught us to dance, Sandy?”
“Oh, yes, he twirled me around so fast I could hardly breathe.”
“He lifted me onto his feet and turned me and turned me until my head was in a spin. I had to hug into his stomach to stop me from falling but I kept telling him ‘faster!’ We spun, faster, faster...’”
“And you spun until he fell back onto the sofa still holding you in his arms,” Sandy adds.
I stop turning on the spot. “He was the best.”
“Oh dear me,” Sandy says through a laugh. She tries to speak but ends up hugging her ribs, almost folded in half as she chuckles from the pit of her stomach. “Do...you...rem...remem...remember when he...when he taught us how to do a sack race.”
I laugh too.
“It was for my sports day at school,” I tell the Reverend. “I was nervous about being picked to represent Red team in the sack race. I had no idea how to do it. In the past I’d always been picked to do the relay or the egg-and-spoon race.”
“Oooooo,” Sandy calls, wafting one hand to cool her face in an attempt to cease her laughter. “Go on! Go on!”
“Sandy told my dad how nervous I was and when he came home from work he’d brought with him two large, yellow clinical waste sacks. They were obviously plastic,” I add for the Reverend’s benefit. “After dinner we all went outside to the garden and Dad marked out a track for us to jump. ‘Right, get in your sack,’ he said. Sandy helped me shuffle to the start line. ‘Ready, steady, go!’ she said. Dad took two flawless jumps forward in his clinical waste sack. ‘See how easy it is!’ he said. It did look easy, so I took two jumps forward. Dad hopped twice again and I followed. ‘Keep going! Keep goooooiiiiiiing!’”
“And splat!” Sandy adds. “His bag slipped on some cat poop and he went flying.”
“He tried to save himself by kicking his legs but he was kicking against the plastic and the cat poo had spread by then.”
“Next thing we heard was ‘whoaaaa!’” Sandy says.
“He realised it wasn’t quite as easy as he thought after that but the next day, when I stood at the start line and looked over at my dad watching me, all I could do was giggle. It turned into one of the most fun things I ever did at school.”
“Jolly good story!” Reverend Griffiths says with a clap. “Excellent! Would you be happy for me to use your stories tomorrow?”
Tomorrow. It strikes like a lightning bolt.
“That would be nice,” Sandy says.
We stand at the door and wave to Reverend Griffiths as he drives his silver Peugeot away from the house.
“Do you know what occurred to me today, Sandy?”
“What’s that?”
“You’re the only family I’ve got.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I watch myself in my floor-length mirror, slowly stepping into black heels then pulling tight the waist belt on my black mac over my suit. I move my loose curls back over my shoulders.
“Ready?” Sandy asks beneath her black net veil as I walk down the stairs.
“As I’ll ever be.”
The doorknocker is tapped and Sandy steps toward the door, her heels clipping once, twice on the floor.
“Good morning,” she says, motioning for the greying man to step into the house.
As he crosses the threshold in his striped trousers and black morning jacket, the undertaker removes his top hat and dips his head.
“Am Richard,” he says in a broad Cockney accent, stepping into the hall.
“I’m Scarlett and this is Sandy.”
His hand is covered in a thick, black leather glove protecting him from the frost in the air.
“D’ ‘earse is ready. D’ya ‘ave flowas ya’d like me to take?”
I motion to the large arrangement of blue, orange and white flowers to be placed on top of my father’s coffin.
“And this one’s from me,” Sandy says, handing him a small, delicate posy of winter flowers she’s made herself.
“It’s beautiful, Sandy,” I say.
Resting a hand on her shoulder, we both watch Richard leave the house. My body stiffens at the first sight of my father. His perfectly polished coffin gleams through the shaded windows of the hearse. Sandy’s body convulses beneath my hand then she begins to cry. I take a deep breath and hand her the cotton tissue I tucked into the pocket of my mac.
I stand in front of her, my body shielding her from the view. “Come on, Sandy, let’s be strong for him.”
She nods and wipes her nose with the tissue. Pulling the door shut behind us, we slowly make our way to the black limousine parked behind the hearse. When we’re inside, the undertaker signals and both cars crawl behind him as he walks the first hundred meters away from the house. At the first T-junction, he climbs into the front of the hearse and the cars pick up some speed as we head toward the church.
I’ve never noticed before now the reaction that seeing a funeral car procession evokes. It seems obvious that a hearse carrying a coffin held in place by one thin metal prong is limited in speed but why would a person ever put their mind to the speed of a hearse if it’s never affected their life? I’m one of those people, the unaffected. My father is the first person I’ve seen die. It occurs to me that the shitbag who revs his Volvo V40 alongside the hearse in a desperate urge to overtake us when the traffic lights flick to green is probably also one of the unaffected. I could slap his bum-fluff covered, Yankee cap wearing face.
We move forward through the lights. An elderly man pauses in the street, takes off his flat cap and, holding it in front of him with two hands, he dips his head to my father. This turns Sandy’s whimpers to a sob. Pulling her toward me, I kiss her brow and she blows her nose into my handkerchief.
“Fuck man, look! Shut the fuck up!” says a girl in low-rise stone wash jeans and a yellow crop top, despite the weather. She strikes the boom box her boyfriend or boy friend is carrying on his Adidas zip-up covered shoulder.
“He’s dead, what the fuck does he care?” the ignorant dick asks.
He disappears from my view as the limousine continues to move forward behind the hearse. A woman is pushing a baby in a pram and holding the hand of a young girl with braids. The young girl tugs on her mother’s hand and points. The mother bends to the girl and speaks into her ear, their eyes never leaving my father.
Reverend Griffiths meets us at the church entrance and motions for Sandy and me to walk behind the coffin. I squeeze Sandy’s hand as she weeps quietly into a handkerchief. Reverend Griffiths leads us into the church and down the aisle. My father is set down centrally, on display for the mourners to see. I’m pleased to reach the front of the church and turn my back to the staring eyes.
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies,” Reverend Griffiths recites from John 11:25, just as he said he would.
Sandy wraps her arm tightly in mine as we take a seat in the front pew. I stare blankly as Reverend Griffiths continues the service and all of the way through the first hymn. I’m considering the words of John, he who believes in me will live. My father believed, so somewhere, somehow he’s looking down on us and watching as sniffles and tears fill the church. He’ll still be watching tonight, tomorrow and the next day, watching every move I make.
What would you do, Dad? What do you want me to do?
Anger builds like a weight in my body. I want revenge.
Reverend Griffiths talks about my father and relays the stories Sandy and I shared with him. I try to listen to distract me from my rage.
At the end of the service, Reverend Griffiths asks God to care for my father. I hope that God does a better job than I did. The reverend explains that only close friends and family are invited to the committal but that all other guests can make their way to the wake. Some make their excuses and leave directly from the church, others kiss and hug me before I’m able to climb back into the sanctity of the limousine with Sandy and drive to the committal grounds.
“I’m not going to the wake, Sandy. The cars can take us home or we can drop you at the wake first. I’m sorry, I just can’t sit in a room with those people.”
She nods, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with my approach but understanding.
At the first set of traffic lights a lorry driver leans forward in his seat when his vehicle brakes to a standstill parallel to the limousine. He leans as far forward as he can to see into our cars. Sandy flaps a hand angrily to tell him to look elsewhere then breaks into another round of tears.
Small, light, infrequent raindrops begin to fall on the tinted windows. I hold up my fingertips as I step out of the car beneath the dark sky and rub a drop of rain between my finger and thumb, then put on my black leather gloves. Our driver offers me an umbrella.
“Let Sandy have it,” I say, motioning to the back of the car where the driver offers a hand to Sandy.
Reverend Griffiths leads the way to my father’s plot, followed by four men bearing the coffin. An ominous looking hole awaits, a mound of dirt resting to one side of the plot. I take note that my father will rest between Martha and Rodger Haines to his right, eighty-two and seventy-nine years old, respectively, and Patricia Whelehan, sixty-six, to his left.
Sandy stands to my side, to the left of Reverend Griffiths, who’s positioned himself at the head of the coffin. As my father is being lowered, I briefly search the small gathering of people who’ve come to see the committal and offer Amanda a soft half smile. The rain is suddenly heavy and loud as it bounces off the polished wood.
“We now commit his body to the ground. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.”
And that’s it. That’s my father’s goodbye.
“Scarlett,” Reverend Griffiths says, placing a hand onto my elbow, encouraging me forward.
He opens a small casket filled with soil. I take a handful and step forward to throw it over the gold plaque displaying my father’s name, followed by the white rose I’ve been holding since we arrived.
People begin to disappear into the grey background, their faces with silent moving mouths step closer to mine, some kissing my cheeks. More than once, I feel the faces touch my sodden padded shoulder or my gloved hands. They walk away, hidden beneath their large black umbrellas. Some run, their grey coats blending into the decaying headstones that cover the ground of the cemetery.
The rain suddenly stops in just the spot I’m standing. I turn my gloved hand in front of me. There are no fresh drops of water. The smell of dampness, foist and loneliness is smothering. I’m vaguely aware of an arm around my shoulder, encouraging me to take my eyes from my father. My thick, brown hair is stuck to the sides of my face. My once buoyant curls are drowned. My suit clings to my trembling body beneath my soaked black mac.
The arm around my shoulder tugs but I can’t take my eyes from the coffin, despite desperately blinking through dripping eyelashes. My father would scarcely recognise his little girl—who she’s become and the corrupt web in which she’s gotten herself entangled.
The hand tightens on my shoulder and becomes strong enough to turn the weight of my heavy body, dragging my heels from the saturated ground. The groundkeepers move in to cover the coffin and the white rose. This is it, all his years of goodness, caring and strength, buried deep beneath sand and dirt. He deserves more than this. For every time he picked me up when I’d fallen, for every time his thumb swept tears from my face, he deserves more than this.
