‘I couldn’t! She’d have persuaded me to stay! Just like she persuaded me to marry her in the first place!’
‘She was in such a mess’ – Robert frowns – ‘and she kept saying she wanted to see your mother.’
‘Why would that matter so much?’ William asks. Again, he sees the helpless glance between the two men.
‘William.’ Howard sounds matter of fact. ‘These things are between you and Gloria, not us. You need to speak to her.’
‘I’ve told you, I can’t. Gloria getting to know Mum isn’t going to help anyone.’
‘You’re not in a position to judge that, William. Not until you’ve spoken to Gloria.’
‘Are you going to the wedding?’ Howard picks his mug up and takes a sip.
‘I wanted a proper conversation with her. I won’t be able to do that at the wedding. Don’t you think it will be odd, just being there but not being able to talk?’
‘Maybe,’ says Howard, ‘but this whole situation is odd, always has been. It’d be one hell of an olive branch, don’t you think, being there, with a big beautiful smile on your face, as she comes down the aisle?’
‘If Gloria wasn’t going to be there it would be a lot easier,’ William says.
‘How about you do this for your mother,’ Robert says, ‘and then deal with Gloria afterwards.’
‘Easily said.’ William can’t help but smile at the hopeful looks on their faces. ‘But OK. I’ll try.’
‘Hallelujah!’ says Robert. ‘Will you go back to Cambridge in the meantime?’
‘I’ve got to get Martin’s car back to him.’ He smiles at them. ‘But I’m home now. You can leave the mortuary to me, I’ll take care of everything.’
61
William gently lifts the seventy-three-year-old man into his coffin. The embalming has taken him two hours. He quickly puts him in the tweedy suit and checked tie his family has provided. The sun casts the golden glow that appears in the room mid-morning. He’s nearly finished; the man’s sparse hair only needs a quick comb. It feels good to be back in here, doing what he does well.
After two quick knocks, Howard comes in. ‘Martin on the phone for you.’
William puts the comb on the man’s chest and goes through to the office. ‘Martin?’
‘How are you doing?’
‘OK. Just finished my first embalming. Still trying to get to grips with Mum’s wedding.’
‘Are you going to go?’
‘Yes. Howard pointed out it would be the mother of all olive branches.’
Martin chuckles, then after a pause asks, ‘How do you feel about seeing Gloria?’
‘Terrified.’
Another pause, and he hears Martin inhale suddenly. ‘She rang me, from your mum’s. She says that if you’re going, it might be good – for everyone – if I came too.’
William sees Howard looking up from his desk. ‘Easier? How?’
‘They think you’d have me, if you needed someone. And so would Gloria, I suppose.’ He lets out a weak laugh. ‘Think of me as ballast.’
William wants to be indignant at the two women making arrangements for him, but all he can think is how good it would be to have Martin there. ‘I could drive down after work in your car next Friday, stay the night and then we could leave first thing.’
‘It’d make more sense for me to come by train to Birmingham and then drive with you from there. Saves you going to and fro.’
‘You sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Thank you. Robert and Howard want to get there in time for a pub lunch. They hate being hungry at weddings.’
‘The prospect is getting better by the minute.’
Apart from sleeping, embalming, and eating comfort food served by Howard and Robert, the only other things William does in the next week are buy a grey suit, so there’ll be no mistaking it for his undertaking uniform, and arrange for an audition for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Chorus. Boys in his sixth form played in the CBSO youth orchestra, but Robert recently told him about their brand new amateur choir, all set to perform challenging works to the highest international standard. William applied before he let himself think about it too much and has been invited to an audition in a week’s time.
Very quickly, it’s Friday, with the wedding tomorrow. Howard is cooking beef bourguignon. The kitchen is relaxed, full of the smell of itself. William is laying the table, and Robert is getting a head start on the washing up with the saucepans.
‘Quick drink before we eat?’ says Howard. ‘Beer? Gin and tonic?’
They sit at the table; him at the end, Howard and Robert on either side.
‘Ready for tomorrow?’ Robert asks.
‘Not sure.’ William flips the caps from the three beers and slides a bottle in front of them both. ‘Have you, even for a moment, felt sad for Dad?’ he asks Robert. ‘That she’s marrying someone else?’
‘I’m sad at how short his time with your mum was, but if anyone knows that this is what he’d want for her, then it’s us.’
Howard lets out a mixture of a sigh and a gentle laugh, and nods. Are they referring to something he should know about?
‘William,’ Howard says, apparently reading his confusion, ‘you do remember, don’t you? What he said to us just before he died?’
‘No,’ he says, ‘I wasn’t there. You were, but me and Mum got there too late.’
‘You don’t remember at all?’ Robert seems incredulous.
‘I remember you both leaving us on our own with him, but he was already dead. And Mum was so upset we’d missed it. She was talking to him, and I was embarrassed for her, because I knew he’d already gone.’
He’s suddenly at the edge of a precipice, a feeling that something’s coming to push him from behind. A pulse is thumping in the ball of his right foot.
‘That’s not what happened, William,’ Robert says.
Howard gently puts his beer down on the table.
‘Your mum had been at the hospital all day,’ says Robert. ‘We’d been looking after you. She called us early evening and said we needed to come. When we got there, she was in quite a state. She hadn’t eaten, hadn’t even had a cup of tea or been to the loo. We said she should take a few minutes.’