Chapter 42
42
D espite the tall, sashed windows either side of the entrance, the reception room of Brackenford Town Hall was a dark room. The floor was tiled chequerboard and the chairs positioned along each side were covered in a sombre, muted material. The brightest light came from a digital TV that had been mounted against the wood-panelled wall. Sweeping images of parkland and busy markets played on loop, conspicuously modern against the Edwardian setting. On the far side stood a desk with a perplex screen and a signing-in book. Aside from a young couple with a new-born baby, Kay, Alex and her father were the only ones there.
‘Why don’t you take a seat?’ she whispered, as she turned to him now. He’d stumbled on the steps up and supporting him she had been startled by his frailness. ‘It’s very warm and we still have a few minutes.’ The ceremony was due to start in a quarter of an hour, but with no one else here, it looked like they were the first to arrive.
He didn’t protest, and after she had settled him into a chair, Kay looked across at Alex who was watching the TV. ‘Pop outside,’ she said, ‘and see if there is any sign of Helen and Libby? I’m going to find out where we need to go.’
Alex left, and Kay approached the desk. There was, she saw immediately, no need to ask. A list of names already signed in the book, answered her question. Her finger traced the lines. Caro’s brother and his wife were here, their names listed underneath two Polish sounding names. Against every entry, in the far-right column were the words, Heritage Room. So, they weren’t the first, they were almost the last. She frowned. Caro wouldn’t arrive until just before, but she was surprised not to see Tomasz’s name, he was leaving it a little fine.
The only other things on the desk were a small brass bell and a stand full of leaflets. She inched her foot out of her shoe and reached down to press at the red bulb appearing on her toe. A blister. Already. That had to be a record. Winching with pain, she pushed her foot back in, pressed the bell and turned to read through the leaflets, top to bottom: Registering your baby’s birth. How to give notice of a marriage. What to do when someone dies.
‘We had to press it twice,’ the woman with the baby called across.
‘Oh.’ Kay turned. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She was about to ring a second time when the front door swung open, throwing a rectangle of bright light into the room. It was Helen. Or it looked like Helen, the figure was mostly a silhouette, an outline topped by a dancing feather.
‘Lovely dress,’ Kay said as Helen stepped out of her shadow. ‘I was worried you wouldn’t make it out of the t-shirt.’
Helen smiled. ‘Well, I still haven’t finished unpacking, so obviously I had to buy something new.’
‘Obviously.’ Kay laughed. ‘I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t bothered.’
‘Why?’ Helen put her head to one side. ‘The dress is lovely.’
‘Not the dress. It’s my shoes. They’re killing me.’
They both looked down at Kay’s feet.
‘Don’t you have liner socks on?’
‘What,’ Kay said, ‘are liner socks?’
‘These.’ And lifting her leg, Helen pointed down to a neat little flesh coloured sock, peeping out of her sandal. ‘Honestly, Kay. Before you go to Cyprus, I’m going to have to take you shopping. You’ll need these, they make life that little bit more comfortable. Have you ––’
‘No Libby?’ Kay blurted. Nothing was booked; nothing was happening … those were the only honest answers to questions she didn’t want asked.
‘She’s with Alex,’ Helen said, oblivious. ‘I left them catching up. They haven’t seen each other in ages.’ Glancing at the couple with the baby, she frowned. ‘Are we first?’
‘I think we’re just about last,’ Kay said. ‘Everyone must have gone through already. We need to sign in.’ And as if she had only to have given the right cue, a security guard appeared.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he said, wiping crumbs from his shirt. ‘You’re here for?’
‘The Hardcastle-Nowak wedding,’ Helen said.
‘Great.’ The guard nodded, trying and failing to hide his hand as he wiped it on his trousers. ‘If I can just ask you to sign in and we need to do a light bag search.’
‘Bag search?’ Helen dipped her head as she handed her bag over. ‘It’s a bit different from St Marys, where I got married.’
‘Me too.’ Kay nodded.
‘Mind, Caro’s dress is a bit different as well.’ Helen chuckled. ‘When I think back. I was like a giant meringue!’
Kay smiled. ‘I had an enormous bow on my backside.’
‘To be fair,’ Helen whispered, ‘everyone who got married back then had a bow.’
‘But not everyone’s bow fell off,’ Kay whispered back. ‘You had one job, Helen. One job.’
‘I was scared of pushing the pins in too far! Thanks.’ Helen took her bag back. ‘I’ve been telling you that for thirty years,’ she said as she turned to Kay. ‘One day you’ll believe me.’
‘You were tipsy before we left my parent’s house!’ Kay said, as she handed her own bag over. ‘And one day you’ll believe me !’
‘Maybe.’ Helen picked up the pen, as she did Kay waved to her father.
’I’ll sign in for you, Dad.’
‘Oh!’ Helen looked up. ‘I didn’t see your dad there.’ She waved across, and turning back to Kay said, ‘He looks well.’
‘He’s getting married.’
‘He’s what?’ Helen blinked.
‘Next week.’ Kay nodded. ‘Don’t ask me how I feel, OK? I know the lady and she’s lovely but …’
‘Next week?’ Pen in hand, Helen didn’t move.
‘At the retirement home where Lizzie, lives. That’s her name.’
‘Oh.’
‘And then he’s moving there.’
Helen nodded, slowly she turned back to the book, but she didn’t write anything. ‘Is he happy?’ she said.
Is he happy? This was the second time in just a few days that Kay had been asked a question she hadn’t been expecting to hear. Holding her jaw stiff, she moved her eyes to look across at where her father sat, small, suited and still. He was dressed in the suit he had worn for her mother’s funeral, the suit he was wearing the day he met Lizzie, smiling as he watched the baby across the room. The baby, she supposed, who was here to have its birth registered. That first leaflet in life. The broad end of a funnel that would inevitably lead to the last leaflet, What to do when someone dies.
She took a deep breath, her eyes moist with tears. And what should you do when someone dies? Move on? Forget them? Ask someone you barely know, to marry you? There would be nothing in a three-page leaflet to explain this third option.
The baby burped, a loud and uninhibited sound that slapped off the walls like a wet flannel.
‘Babies don’t care.’ Smiling, Helen bent to sign her name.
Kay watched. Her father was also smiling, and the baby? Nestled against its mother’s breast, the baby sucked a finger, oblivious to any unspoken etiquette it might have broken.
‘Here.’
She turned to take the pen Helen had offered, but before she could make a single stroke, a buzzing sound stopped her. A low constant vibration, that sounded like … Heart thumping, she looked up to see the security guard holding her vibrator. ‘It’s a …’ But her voice died, crept back down her throat and gave up.
Helen put her hand to her mouth.
Limp with mortification, she watched the guard turn a pillar-box red as he fumbled to turn it off. ‘Shall I …?’ she managed. ‘I can …’
He almost threw it at her and switching it off she stuffed it back in her bag, deep out of sight. As she did, she felt a firm arm linking through her own, leading her away.
‘Why,’ Helen hissed as soon as they were out of earshot of the guard, ‘would you keep it in your handbag?’
‘I needed somewhere safe,’ she babbled. ‘I didn’t want anyone to find it.’
Helen’s lips twitched. ‘Who was going to find it, Kay?’
Kay shook her head, but the words she was going to say wouldn’t come. Words like, don’t laugh. It isn’t funny. But it was funny, and why shouldn’t Helen laugh? A woman of fifty- two hiding a vibrator because she had been terrified of anyone finding out she owned one? Not just hiding it. No, that wasn’t good enough. She’d had to carry it with her everywhere. As if it were a gun. Or a signed confession to murder. Adding weight where there wasn’t the slightest need. As if life wasn’t heavy enough. It was simply an instrument of pleasure, her pleasure, and wasn’t she allowed to seek and find pleasure in life? In the same way an infant is allowed to burp in public, she was surely permitted to find a way towards pleasure, towards happiness. She looked back at her father. He was watching a point across the room, a square of sunlight reflected on the wood panelling, one small space of light amongst the dark. And now she remembered what he had said, and why, when she had repeated it, so soon after, it had sounded so familiar. ‘I don’t want to keep looking back.’
There was only one way, and it was forward, and what should be done when someone dies, was not a leaflet. There wasn’t a prescriptive or a commandment to be followed, there was only life. Messy, embarrassing, imperfect, and most of all, continuous