As he sits next to the window on the tired upholstery, with a spring nudging him in the backside, William is unexpectedly overwhelmed with a sense of his mother. Not the mother who moved to Swansea without him and now manages the biggest music shop in Wales, but the mother who took him to Cambridge, who knelt on the gravel in her stockings to tell him how proud she was, trying so hard not to cry. He stares out of the window, not bothering to wipe his face until he feels drips on his hand.
The harvested fields snap across his vision like rolling sand dunes. Alone in the carriage, he glances at his watch just as the train plunges through a tunnel and he has to wait for the flash of returning daylight to see the time. Still well over an hour before he arrives in London, with the challenge of the Underground.
He hasn’t told his mother he’s off to London to start his formal training. Uncle Robert might have told her, he supposes. He knows they write to each other now; the frostiness started to thaw a year or so ago. He knows that makes Robert happy but he has never felt comfortable with it himself. The last four years, since leaving Cambridge so abruptly, only make sense if he keeps holding his mother accountable for what happened. As another train suddenly rips by in the opposite direction, William sits back and closes his eyes. It’s no good; rocked by the train, with late summer gold flashing across the countryside, he can’t withstand the memory of saying goodbye to her all those years ago, and the feeling it brings of being totally loved by her, the centre of her universe.
He’s lived with Robert and Howard since that nightmare Ash Wednesday, when he refused to even finish his final year. Evelyn had arrived straight from Swansea to hear William sing, fizzing with excitement and intent. In two short weeks, she’d found a house, a job, a school with Eisteddfod ambition keen to welcome a Cambridge chorister. She would move there as soon as possible to get settled during William’s final term and he’d join her there for the summer. Walking into the college chapel, that was her glittering plan. A short hour later, everything had come crashing down.
When none of them – Phillip, Mr Atkinson, his mother or Robert – had even put a dent in William’s resolve to leave Cambridge immediately, the only option was for him to stay temporarily with his uncle while Evelyn got settled in Swansea. That he ended up staying four years, through his O and A levels, was a surprise to everyone.
For the first few weeks with Robert and Howard, William put all his effort into forgetting the last four years had even happened. He schooled himself to block any memories as soon as they appeared. He wouldn’t listen to choral or church music, he wouldn’t sing, and he wouldn’t allow himself a moment’s hesitation before dropping Martin’s unopened letters in the bin.
What he swore he would never forget, however, was that all this was his mother’s fault.
William leans down now, to click open the lock of his new briefcase and grip the broad spine of Scudamore’s opus, hoping that the weight of it, the dusty smell, the small text and detailed drawings, can work their magic. Six months ago, once he was accepted on the course, William started to read his father’s textbook and found it an unexpected treasure, light relief when he wasn’t studying for A levels. He’d known about veins and arteries, but a retromandibular vein? A superior mesenteric artery? He was mesmerised, laughing out loud when he found out there were two circulatory systems in the human body: the pulmonary circulation loop and the systemic circulation loop. In the past weeks, he has romped through the dense text and meticulous illustrations, finding he can easily retain the most outlandish names, from the lateral circumflex femoral vein to the dorsalis pedis artery. Following the surge of fluids through the cardiovascular system, William couldn’t understand why people don’t talk about it more often.
It takes a while, but eventually Scudamore transports him from his past, with its lingering presence of Evelyn, and into his future as an embalmer. The pull of the decelerating train an hour later drags him from the complex world of hypochlorite disinfectants. After replacing the book and locking the briefcase, he slides his arms through the silky tunnels of his coat sleeves, picks up his bags and steps off the train.
32
‘William Lavery. Is that Lavery and Sons, Sutton Coldfield?’
‘Yes, sir.’
William and three others are being shown the workrooms in the basement mortuary. He expected desks, but there are none. The small group stands between the two fireclay embalming tables. Lying on one is a cadaver, covered with white paper. Arthur Mason, Director of the Thames College of Embalming, tall, congenial yet authoritative, is greeting each of them individually.
‘I knew your father, William.’ Arthur stands with his hands behind his back, his head slightly inclined and dipped – the undertaker’s quiet air of compassion undergirded by expertise. William nods. Undertaking is a family business; it would be unusual – embarrassing even – if your family was not known. But it pleases him again, that choosing this work, this way of life, he has aligned himself to his father. Most of the time, this is a comforting thought. Only occasionally does he wonder if his father might have preferred him to have made choices that aligned him to his mother instead.
‘Is your uncle well?’
‘Yes, thank you, sir.’
‘Good.’ Arthur turns to the stocky, ruddy-faced man to William’s left, older than William, but possibly still in his twenties. ‘And you must be Roger Turner. How’s Mr Turner?’