If Ray had died in a plane crash, if he’d been shredded and scattered, I’d be in a better position than I am, because I’d know there was no help for it. I’d understand the reasons. And nobody would be any better off than me, there’d be nobody keeping a secret. But knowing I’m the only one to be kept in the dark makes it feel like it’s me that’s been singled out for shredding and scattering.
That was when I decided. After I saw the dogs’ cemetery. I checked the tea room first, in case Mum had tired early and gone for some refreshment, and then I paid the extra three quid to go inside the house and retrieve her. I told her I’d like to have tea somewhere else, if she didn’t mind, at Box Hill. Box Hill where the bikers used to go on a Sunday. And still do I expect, only it’s no-one I know.
The drive took only ten minutes, between one National Trust property and another. Two treasures of different types. There’s no antique silver and no rose garden at Box Hill, but there’s no doubt it’s the more important asset. It’s been a beauty spot for centuries, it’s in books, it’s in paintings, there were a million visitors last year. Box Hill came to the National Trust thirty years before the Grevilles let go of Polesden Lacey.
I’d always thought that I would need to visit the place where Ray died, the bend and the tree on the B337, to finish things between us. At least I have a rough address for that moment in his life. I’d been thinking of asking Simon who shares the house to drive me one weekend, except I’ve not said a great deal to him about Ray, so it might seem strange.
A few weeks ago he was up in the attic and he found the martial arts magazines that I’d taken from Cardinals Paddock as a way of getting a little shelf room there. He took it for granted I’d want them throwing out, but I couldn’t do it. Even though they were yellowed with age — it looked as if the years had peed on them, and still I couldn’t let them go, having nothing else. And Simon had the kindness not to ask me why not.
He’s even helped in the past when he really didn’t know or care what it was all about. It’s a mistake to think that friends need to know everything about each other. Simon did the driving when I wanted to take some pictures for a class, of a unique little church that I’d mentioned in class often enough but never actually visited, God forgive me. Greensted Green in Essex, which pioneered the parish system before there were even parishes. What I mean is, the lord of the manor moved away and the church had to organise its survival on a new basis. So an interesting place in terms of church history, quite apart from architectural merit.
Simon drove, and then lay on a convenient bench in the churchyard sleeping off the pub lunch that had been the reward for his trouble. Completely uninterested in what I was goggling at and taking pictures of, a nave built of Saxon oak, simply split tree-trunks set side by side, with long tongues of wood fitting in grooves between them to seal the gaps. The oldest wooden building standing in Europe. The oldest wooden church in the world. Not to mention a picturesque churchyard, bees going about their business, bushes in flower and berry, a crusader’s tomb with a low railing round it. He couldn’t care less, bless him.
But it wasn’t going to be Simon helping me with my past, it was going to be Mum, even if she was too tactful to mention Ray’s name. Mum and I didn’t talk much on the drive to Box Hill, and perhaps it wasn’t quite like our usual companionable silences. I was thinking that I’d told Mum too early that widowhood was not going to be the worst part of her life, that she owed it to herself to have a good time. It sounded heartless, it sounded disloyal, but it was the truth. It wasn’t going to be the worst part of her life because the worst was over — the second half of her marriage.
We’ve never talked about the reasons for Dad’s stubborn decline over twenty years. Perhaps it’ll be my turn this Christmas to open and close a huge subject in a single conversation. Perhaps while I’m sticking cards on the picture rail and the mantelpiece, and Mum lays out crackers on side plates, I’ll say, ‘You know what happened to Dad, don’t you?’
Because it’s not complicated. When my little Dad stood up on his wedding day and said he took this woman till death did them part, he was only thinking of one way that could happen. He was eleven years older, he thought he was safe. Death would take him and leave her, to manage on her own. That would never happen to him.
Then when Mum went to hospital in 1975, he suddenly realised it didn’t need to be like that. She might die, and he be left. He never really recovered from the knowledge of that moment. He was a changed man. He didn’t decide to die, exactly, but he was determined to get his dying in first, to stay safe and not face life without her. Never mind that from that day on he did something worse, before he widowed her.
With any luck all I’ll need to say will be, ‘You know what happened to Dad, don’t you?’, and she’ll say, without even looking up, ‘Yes, he needed to be the one who died first,’ and then we’ll just get on with Christmas.
So on the way to Box Hill in Mum’s car I was bound to be preoccupied with the past, but it may also be that she was thinking of her own problems. We both know this will be her last year driving, before her arthritis shuts down that part of her life. It’s only a short time since she started to have a little freedom again, but she’s cheerful about it. She even says she’s looking forward to selling the car and getting an electric buggy to take her to the shops. That’s silly, of course. All very valiant, but she knows I’d do her shopping for her. Having a son next door, let alone a son she calls her bestest and only, she won’t be short of help. And Simon who shares the house is always offering to help. In fact he’s over there so often, seeing if anything needs fixing, that I wonder if it’s not him that needs the company.
It’s trips like these she’ll miss. It took me a long time to get her out of the house after Dad died. She’d got out of the habit. It was as if she’d been infected over the years by his fear of the world outside. I had to take drastic measures to break her isolation. Then when she told me there was this club she wanted to join, it would give her a bit of a social life, only she couldn’t face it unless I joined too, I felt I couldn’t say no, even though it’s pretty embarrassing.
I can cope with being called Brainiac at work, with being asked the meanings of fancy words, and to help with application forms and difficult letters, but I’m not sure I could live with it if word got out. It’s bad enough being a self-taught late learner, that’s an opsimath and an autodidact, without your workmates knowing the shameful truth. That you have a membership of Mensa, not only that but you share it with your Mum. Well, they’ve a reduced rate for people who share an address, and she does only live next door, so it seemed silly not to go for that option. It’s in our names jointly, but the bumf comes to her address.
By rights I should take the summer to get my driving licence, but Mum says I mustn’t unless I actually want the car for myself. I know she doesn’t hide things from me, and I’ve learned to take what she says at face value. I haven’t quite made up my mind. But for myself, personally, what use do I have for a car?