I take a deep, wobbly breath. And as I lay the book open on the podium, I spot him.
The watch-seller.
He’s sitting in an empty pew right at the back of the church, his blue eyes fixed straight on me. The rest of his face is unreadable beneath his wild grey-gold facial hair. He’s still wearing his shabby suit, with the jacket buttoned right up and his reindeer tie just about visible underneath. He nods at me solemnly, and without thinking, I nod back. A sad smile cuts through his scruffy beard, and I’m reminded again of Grandad Jack. It’s weirdly comforting, like there’s another member of my family here, spurring me on.
In the front row, Daphne is smiling encouragingly too. Three rows behind her, Harv is doing the exact same thing.
For some reason, I don’t feel angry at being back here any more. I don’t need an explanation. I understand.
Trying to keep my voice steady, I open the book and focus on the words in front of me:
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
I look up. The sea of faces is now completely blurred by my own tears. But I got through it. I didn’t let her down.
People are clapping now as I walk back to my seat, and Uncle Simon grabs my shoulder as I pass and whispers, ‘Well done.’ And as I reach Daphne, she stands and takes me in her arms, and I just feel so pathetically grateful that I was given this second chance.
When the ceremony is over, my cousins and I carry the coffin outside while Mum’s all-time favourite track, ‘A Song For You’ by Gram Parsons, echoes around the church’s wooden beams.
I look around for the watch-seller, but I can’t see him. The whole congregation gathers as the coffin sinks down into the earth, and I remember what happened at this point last time. I just walked out: told Daphne I needed some time to myself before I joined everyone else at the wake, and spent the next hour wandering the streets alone, fizzing with misery and anger and horror at the idea of living the rest of my life without Mum in it.
This time, though, I take hold of Daff’s hand and ask if she minds if we stay here a little longer, just the two of us. I tell Simon and Harv we’ll be right behind them all, and before long the graveyard is empty, and it’s just me and Daphne, sitting in silence on a bench in front of Mum’s grave.
‘I’m so glad you did that reading,’ Daff says. ‘Your mum would’ve been so proud.’
‘I’m glad, too,’ I tell her. ‘Though to be honest, just before I got up to do it, I thought I was going to lose it completely. I’m sorry.’
She shakes her head almost angrily. ‘Ben, are you crazy? You don’t have to say sorry. You should be losing it. You don’t ever have to apologise for that.’
‘I do, Daff. I wish I’d told her … I wish I could have said sorry to her.’
‘Don’t be so silly. What would you possibly need to say sorry for?’
And so, finally, I decide to tell her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was a Sunday night, eight days before she died.
Daphne and I were supposed to be round at Mum’s for dinner, but Daff had been called to some last-minute film screening in Soho. So in the end, it was just Mum and me.
And that felt weird for a start, because at that point I hadn’t actually seen Mum, just the two of us, for a while. Whenever we met up, Daff was usually there too – the old clichés about hating your mother-in-law being totally untrue in our case – and her presence always softened the edges, made the conversation flow more easily. Not just because she was upbeat and fun, in contrast to my usual mardiness around that time, but because she actually had stuff going on in her life. She had things to talk about. She’d tell Mum about whatever exciting project she was currently working on, or whatever gossip she’d heard about such-and-such actor or writer. Mum loved all that.
But I had nothing going on, nothing to say. So when it was just the two of us, the room felt smaller somehow, the silences harder to fill.
And on that particular Sunday night, they felt even harder than usual. I was in the middle of an arid spell work-wise, staring down the barrel of another entirely blank week, so I arrived at Mum’s in a pretty rotten mood. And over the course of dinner, it got steadily worse, despite the deliciousness of her beef-and-Yorkshire-pudding Sunday roast. We small-talked our way through the meal, and when the plates were cleared away and soaking in the sink, Mum made coffee and set a slab of the posh Waitrose dark chocolate she liked on the table between us.
‘So, what time will Daphne be home tonight?’ she asked.
‘No idea.’ I shrugged.
Mum tutted and broke off a chunk of chocolate. ‘Poor girl. They work her far too hard at that place.’
‘She’s all right. She enjoys it.’
‘Yes, well, it’s brilliant that she’s doing so well.’
I shrugged again at this, tore off some of the silver foil from the chocolate wrapper and curled it into a tight, tiny ball between my fingers.
Mum gave me a look that fell somewhere between exasperation and pity. ‘Come on, love. It won’t be like this forever. I’m sure things will calm down at some point, and she’ll be around more.’
‘I know, it’s just … I barely ever see her these days. She was in the office all weekend, and out most nights last week too.’
‘Well, like I said, she’s doing well. That’s a good thing. You should be proud of her.’
‘I am,’ I muttered, but clearly it wasn’t very convincing, because Mum snorted into her coffee and said, ‘Please don’t tell me you’re having a ridiculous macho crisis because your wife makes more money than you do?’
I flicked the little foil ball into the middle of the table. ‘No, Mum. Of course not.’
‘Good. Because I thought I’d raised you better than that,’ she said huffily.
‘It’s not about money,’ I snapped. ‘Money’s got nothing to do with it. I’m happy she’s doing something she’s good at and she loves. It just reminds me that I’m not doing it, that’s all.’
Mum sighed through her nose and fiddled with her necklace. I remember it struck me then that she was the only person I could really talk to about this kind of stuff: frustration with work and the feeling that Daphne was leaving me behind or getting sick of me. I couldn’t speak to Daff about it, for obvious reasons, and I never found a way to broach it with Harv or any of my other mates either. Mum was my only real lifeline for this stuff. She always knew the right thing to say. But that night, I didn’t want to hear the right thing. I just wanted to lash out.