I’d spent more in these last few weeks than I usually spent in a year. Social interaction, it appeared, was surprisingly expensive—the travel, the clothes, the drinks, the lunches, the gifts. Sometimes it evened out in the end—like with the drinks—but, I was finding out, more often than not, one incurred a net financial loss. I’d a bit of money saved up, but it only amounted to a month’s wages or so, and Bob’s paychecks were far from generous. I saw now that this had only been possible because I hadn’t had much requirement to spend money on the social aspects of life before now.
Mummy liked to live extravagantly, but after . . . everything changed . . . I’d learned that money was something to worry about, to ration. It had to be asked for, and then counted out into my red raw hands. I never forgot—was never allowed to forget—that someone else was paying for my clothes, the food I ate, even for the heating in the room where I slept. My foster carers received an allowance for looking after me, and I was always conscious of making sure not to cause them to exceed it by needing things. And especially not by wanting things.
“Allowance” is not a generous, lavish word. I earn my own money now, of course, but I have to be careful with it. Budgeting is a skill, and a very useful one at that—after all, if I were to run out of funds, find myself indebted, there is no one, not a single soul, on whom I could call to bail me out. I’d be destitute. I have no anonymous benefactor to pay my rent, no family members or friends who could kindly lend me the money to replace a broken vacuum cleaner or pay the gas bill until I could return the borrowed sum to them on payday. It was important that I did not allow myself to forget that.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t attend Sammy’s funeral in inappropriate clothing. The black dress, the assistant assured me, was smart, but could also be “dressed down.” The coat could be worn all winter. My jerkin had more than paid for itself over the years, but I would keep it, of course, in case it was required again in future. I hung everything up carefully. I was ready. Bring out your dead.
Friday was bright, although it was impossible to tell if it would stay that way. I showered and put on my new clothes. It had been many years since I’d worn tights, preferring a handy pair of pop socks under my slacks, but I still remembered how to roll them on. I was very careful, as they were thin and delicate, and could be ripped in an instant by a careless fingernail. I felt enclosed in them, somehow, as though I was wearing someone else’s skin.
I’d made my legs black, and my hair blond. I’d lengthened and darkened my eyelashes, dusted a flush of pink onto my cheeks and painted my lips a shade of dark red which was rarely found in nature. I should, by rights, look less like a human woman than I’d ever done, and yet it seemed that this was the most acceptable, the most appropriate appearance that I’d ever made before the world. It was puzzling. I supposed I could have gone further—made my skin glow with tanning agent, scented myself with a spray made from chemicals manufactured in a laboratory, distilled from plants and animal parts. I did not want to do that. I picked up my new bag and locked the door behind me.
For safety and security reasons, I had specified that I should be collected from a location on a main road near my flat rather than disclose my home address, and an unprepossessing vehicle drew up outside the building at the correct time. The driver glanced quickly in the rearview mirror as I slid into the seat behind him, next to Raymond. It took a while, as I was conscious of my dress, trying to make sure that it did not reveal more of my legs than it was designed to.
Everything took so long. Before, I’d simply bathed, run a comb through my hair and pulled on my trousers. Being feminine apparently meant taking an eternity to do anything, and involved quite a bit of advanced planning. I couldn’t imagine how it would be possible to hike to the source of the Nile, or to climb up a ladder to investigate a malfunction inside a particle accelerator, wearing kitten heels and ten denier tights.
It was hard to gauge the full effect of Raymond’s outfit, but it was apparent, even from this position, that he was wearing an ironed white shirt, a black tie, and black trousers. I couldn’t see his feet, and issued a silent prayer that he was not shod in training shoes, even black ones.
“You look nice,” he said.
I nodded, feeling slightly self-conscious in my new dress, and looked at him again. He hadn’t shaved off his odd little beard, but it had been trimmed, and his hair was combed neatly. The taxi moved off, and we joined the slow morning traffic. The radio jabbered nonsense, and we didn’t look at one another or speak. There was really nothing to be said.
The crematorium was in the suburbs, a 1970s monstrosity of white concrete and brutal angles. The gardens were neat in a sterile, municipal way, but, surprisingly, were full of beautiful blown roses. There were lots of mature trees around the perimeter, which pleased me. I liked to think of their roots, coursing with life, snaking under this place. We drew up in an enormous car park which was already almost full, although it was only ten thirty. The place was out of the way and would be impossible to reach by public transport, which was completely illogical. There ought to be a train or a shuttle bus, I thought. It was a place we were all guaranteed to be visiting at some point.
Raymond paid the driver and we stood for a moment, taking it in.
“Ready?” he said.
I nodded. There were lots of other mourners, moving through the grounds like slow black beetles. We walked up the path, in silent agreement that we were in no hurry to leave the trees and the roses and the sunshine and go inside. A long hearse sat at the front door, and we looked at the coffin, which was covered in wreaths. A coffin was a wooden box in which Sammy’s corpse would be lying. What was he wearing in there? I wondered. I hoped it was that nice red jumper; cozy, smelling of him.
We sat down on the left-hand side of the room, in a pew not too far from the front. The place was half full already, and there was a low hum of muttered conversation, a muted, insect-like buzzing that I hadn’t heard in any other venue or set of circumstances.
I picked up one of the sheets that had been placed along the pews: Samuel McMurray Thom, it said, 1940–2017. Inside it told us what would happen, listed the readings and hymns, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with a desire for it to be over, not to have to be there and experience it all.
Raymond and I were silent. The room was much nicer inside than the exterior had suggested, with wooden beams and a high vaulted ceiling. The entire side wall to the left of where we were seated was glass, and we could see the rolling lawns and more of those huge, primeval trees in the background. I was glad nature should make her presence felt in the room in some way, I thought; living nature, not cut flowers. The sun was quite bright now, and the trees cast short shadows, although autumn was creeping up through a shimmer of wind in the leaves. I turned around and saw that the room was full, perhaps a hundred people, maybe more. The buzzing hum threatened to drown out the dull recorded organ music.
Something shifted in the air and silence fell. Both of his sons and four other men whose faces I recognized from the party carried Sammy’s coffin down the aisle and placed it gently on a sort of raised platform with a roller belt, at the end of which was a set of red velvet curtains. I tried to remember what the platform reminded me of, and it came to me: the supermarket checkout in Tesco, where you place your items and they move toward the cashier. I leaned across to tell Raymond, but he had fished a bag of peppermints from his suit pocket and offered me one before I could speak. I popped it in and sucked.