Chapter 16
16
The countdown to the funeral is awful. “Awful.” What a limp word for this experience. Queues at the supermarket on Christmas Eve are awful. Banging your elbow on a hard surface is awful. My sliding scale for “awful” has completely changed and I need an enhanced vocabulary to deal with it. You don’t realize the flippancy of your generation’s attitudes and language until you grasp for the terminology that conveys the impact, and it’s not there. It’s been shopworn by silly jokes and ironic hyperbole.
Reliving the morning I found out, which I do, constantly, compulsively, is harrowing to the point of some sort of PTSD. Yet the word “harrowing” isn’t enough.
I can see myself and Susie in my mind’s eye, sitting in sleepwear at her house. Susie in a cricket sweater over her pajamas, hair like Beetlejuice and with brightly pedicured feet up on the coffee table, describing our aftereffects from shotgunning rosé wine in a local bar as “harrowing.”
“This is an ordeal,” Susie would say. “We’re going to need Uber Eats KFC, and possibly dips from Domino’s. We’ve been to war. We have been through the wringer and in the trenches.”
When you’ve used those words to mean “got sick” and “wish you’d not kissed a man whose Twitter handle is @DoctorPenis” it feels wrong to apply it to seismic, disturbing, stuff-of-darkest-fears that have changed you forever.
It took me two and a half hours, and pauses for whimpering and bawling, to write my eulogy for Susannah Hart. I sent it to Ed, who replied: That’s me broken into pieces. And then a few minutes later. It’s beautiful. I can only hope to do it justice. Xx
Then I went back to work on Monday, accepting everyone’s curious pitying looks with a wan smile, fielding the volley of questions with polite but peremptory answers. Yes, hit by a car. No, they weren’t a drunk driver. Funeral next week. Yes, it was no age. No, she wasn’t married and didn’t have kids. Thanks, I am bearing up.
Satisfied they have the intel, Phil, Lucy, and Seth go back to staring at their monitors.
I feel like I’m playing dress-up at normal life. As if I’ve put on armor in a battle reenactment game with a bunch of fellow geeks in a field. Oh, are we doing the one where it’s life as usual and we write for a website?
I sit and type:
There’s hotdogs, then there’s THESE hotdogs. Find out why people are going crazy for the dirty loaded sausages at Who Let the Dogs Out?
“Are you doing the trashy frankfurters piece?” asks Phil. Phil has been tentative around me, as even he doesn’t think his bombastic mode of jocular insult works with a newly bereaved person.
“Yeah,” I say. Defiantly calling them “frankfurters” is so Phil. Coke is still “fizzy pop.”
“Bloody horrible, aren’t they. Who wants fried prawns on a hotdog? Filthy bastards. We’re not in America.”
“It’s hipsters,” I say. “They’ll put anything on anything.”
“There seems to be a glorification of things you only used to eat when you were steaming at three a.m. in my day.”
“Modern world, Phil. It’s not for us,” I say.
“Ah stop, you’re young!” Phil says, and I can see by his face he’s awkward at being even that complimentary. Is this that thing called flattery , he’s thinking. Am I doing it right?
“Well, thank you.”
Phil looks at the page I’m on.
“Can we call them ‘dirty’? Isn’t that a bit contrary to health and safety?”
“It’s accepted to mean ‘calorific stuff dumped on top,’ now. Marks and Spencer do dirty fries.”
“Oh. Right you are.”
Phil shakes his head in dismay at his monitor.
I drag an image of the El Gringo Dog—jalape?os, avocado, and crushed tortilla chips topping—onto the page and wish I did a more useful job, like Ed teaching kids or Justin caring for old people. It’s pretty hard to tell yourself to soldier on so that the region gets vital information about the Triple XXX Ringstinger Chili Dog.
What would Susie want me to do? I ask myself, as an antidote for feeling useless. I know the answer immediately. She’d want me to check on her dad, beyond one stilted phone call. It’s intimidating, given I’m unsure about who I will encounter.
I remember when she first mentioned he was struggling, a couple of years ago. She said: I caught my dad looking up “ice cream” on Wikipedia. I was like—“Dad, are you thinking of a retirement business, churning your own?” He said, “It’s the darndest thing, I can’t remember what ice cream is. Is it ice, and cream?”
Susie talked him through mint choc chip and vanilla flavors and cornets by the seaside, and he laughed and said, “Of course!”
At the time, we brushed it off as a slightly worrying but ultimately quirky bout of senior forgetfulness.
It sounds ridiculous, but Susie’s dad used to run his own engineering company and was an amateur tennis champion. Iain Hart, with his soft Caledonian burr, was a self-made, old-school, head-of-the-family type, with a bristling mustache. He was a very involved governor at our school, a member of the Masons, a bootstraps Tory who brooked no self pity. It didn’t feel as if he could get dementia. We were sure he’d kick dementia’s arse until it apologized.
In my early twenties, I was briefly in a house share with two others where my female housemate was never there due to shift work, and my male housemate was a lunatic and a creep, given to throwing furniture around and warning me he’d pursue me if I tried to leave.
Susie told her dad. In absence of me having a dad (in the UK) to do the same for me, he barreled around in his BMW 5 Series, parked right outside with a noisy screech of brakes, audibly pulling the handbrake on so hard it was like he was cocking a gun. He banged on the door, marched in, and told me to pack my things in front of the perp. Mr. Hart then calmly informed him if he touched a hair on my head, he’d find himself floating in the Trent. My housemate suddenly wasn’t such a bully, and insisted meekly that I’d misunderstood. I’ll be forever grateful for that intervention.
After work, I catch a bus heading the other way out of town and walk the short distance from the bus stop to the Harts’ family home. It’s too cold for kids to be playing out—and possibly too much in the age of Minecraft—and the streets seem eerily quiet, compared to my less expensive postcode.
These houses with their bay windows and neatly delineated, walled territories used to seem like imposing castles to me when I was small, in the long summers of childhood. They’re far more quotidian suburbia in my thirties. Which is ironic, really, given I’m even less likely to inhabit one after piddling away my career chances in my twenties: they’re further out of reach than ever.
The cost of this area means the demographic skews older—not within the reach of young professionals and families, who, if they do take on this size of mortgage, would probably go for something more fashionable they could stick bifold doors and a marble kitchen island into.
I walk up to the Harts, No. 67, and as I do, I think: How many times did I stand on these very paving flags as a kid and think nothing of it? Looking forward to a swimming trip, or tossing gaily about in Susie’s huge bedroom, gossiping and trying on lip glosses, the consistency of runny honey.
The wrongness of all this hits me once again.
Life’s veered sharply away from the script. We’re traveling a branch of an alternative future we were never meant to be on. Some other Eve, in a parallel place, is having after-work drinks with Susie right now. Not only is that Eve a different person, so is the one at the pub quiz. That night was the last night of The Past, and we had no idea.
My heart speeds up as I press the old-fashioned button doorbell that ding-dongs dimly in the hallway beyond. I guiltily hope Susie’s dad’s not in. But within seconds the inner door opens and he appears.
“Hello, Eve!” he says. He looks a little more sunken in his sweater than I remember, a little thinner on top, but otherwise incredibly well and unchanged, all considered.
“Hi!” I say. And “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me,” which is meant as politeness and, I think, maybe not what you say to someone with Alzheimer’s.
“Of course I do. You’re Susie’s lovely friend.”
I am momentarily so wrong-footed I can’t speak, both by him knowing my connection to his daughter, and the mention of his daughter.
“Yes!” I say. “Well. Hope I’m lovely, haha.”
“Come in, come in, good to see you.” He hustles me in, seemingly with real enthusiasm and pleasure.
The hallway beyond is a time capsule to me—the same round table by the side of the wide stairs, with the cream plastic rotary landline sitting on a doily kind of mini tablecloth. The thick plushy pile beneath our feet is the color of a hamster.
Fashions of all kinds passed the Harts by. Susie’s glitzy, ritzy mum liked Dubonnets and lemonade, a Dynasty blow-dry, and her downstairs loo to be a symphony of shrimp-pink. Adolescent Susie declared it all “tacky”; I loved it as pure exotica.
“I wonder if you wanted any shopping getting in, see how you’re getting on?” I say.
“Hah, thank you, I’m not that useless yet! The only drive out the car gets is to Sainsbury’s.”
My plan with Mr. Hart was simply: make him this non-specific offer, which, if he seems entirely lucid and announces he has no need of such help, I can row back from without too much embarrassment. It didn’t seem worthwhile plotting out a strategy when I had no idea what his state of mind would be like.
Now what?
“No, I’m very well, thank you, Eve. But how are you? I’ve not seen you in ages! Susie never brings you ’round.”
I flinch at the mention of her. I had guessed he wouldn’t have held on to the fact she’s dead, but it’s still a shock for him to demonstrate it.
“I’ve been busy,” I say.
“Sure you two haven’t had a falling-out?” he says.
“Definitely not,” I say, and then, haltingly: “Close as ever.” As I say those three words, my voice suddenly thickens and my throat closes up, and I pray he doesn’t notice.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” he says, and I accept, thinking, I will get a look at the state of things, domestically .
Susie insisted that while her dad didn’t have a grasp of which year it was, or correspondingly, his time of life—thinking he was off work, marveling that his holidays felt so lengthy—he was absolutely himself in regards to every practicality. She’d been through his bank statements, made sure his clothes were clean, checked the fridge. There was never anything to do. Chunks of his memory had fallen away like masonry, but tasks right in front of him were fine.
I follow him through to their sunshine-yellow kitchen with its frothy white blinds—tart’s knickers, my mum used to call that style—and watch Mr. Hart fill a kettle, get a polka-dotted cup from the cupboard.
“Has everything been OK with you?” I say.
“Not too bad,” he says. “Some aches and pains, you know, but that’s age, isn’t it. I’m still managing the garden. Eric still comes over once a month for the heavy lifting.”
“Oh yes!” I step forward and peer out the window at a garden that’s every bit as manicured and brochure-perfect as I remember. “It looks wonderful.”
“How are things at college?” he says. “Not too worried about your exams?”
Aside from the lack of understanding about Susie being gone, he’s not said anything overtly odd until now and I try not to look startled. I’m pretty sure Justin’s told me that with dementia, following the person into the delusion is preferable to fighting it and upsetting them.
“No, no. I’ve done my revision,” I say. “Feeling confident.”
Extra confident given I got my three As and two Bs, sixteen years ago.
As Mr. Hart’s finishing dunking the tea bag and is about to hand the cup to me, the doorbell goes again.
He trots off to answer it and I hear male voices in the storm porch in a conversation that becomes, in pitch, if not a quarrel, then certainly more fraught than a chat.
One line becomes distinct:
“Look, I’ve told you. You’ve got the wrong house.”
Finlay Hart looks as overjoyed to see me, hovering behind his father, as I am to see his moody visage in the darkening evening.
“Can you tell this young man who I am, please, Eve?” Mr. Hart says. “He’s convinced he’s some relation. I’ve never seen him before in my life. Oh, hang on, your tea will be getting cold.”
He disappears back to the kitchen and Fin steps inside and closes the door behind him.
“What are you doing here?” he says, in a low, forbidding voice.
“I came to see how he is.”
“And what do you think?” Fin says, though there’s no genuine inquiry in it.
“He seems OK, I think? Not distressed, anyway.”
“Well, he’s...” Finlay stops as the door moves.
“Here you go,” Mr. Hart says, reappearing with the Tetley’s, which I accept. He seems momentarily taken aback that Fin is now in the door and says to me: “Ah, I see—do you know this man?”
“Uhm, yes,” I think, sipping. The whole “busking it and playing along” thing feels like it’s unraveling quite fast.
“A boyfriend?” he says, looking from one to the other.
“... Yes,” I say, gritting my teeth as I glance at Finlay, whose jaw flexes in cold fury. What else would he have me do? No, he barged his way in, call the police!
I realize Mr. Hart is waiting expectantly for an introduction. “Finlay,” I add.
“Oh my goodness,” Mr. Hart says, and Fin and I stare at each other, as we know what’s coming. “My son’s called Finlay. Fin, more often.”
We stand in silence and I sense that Finlay, above and be yond his deep irritation at my unexpectedly being here, is embarrassed. My seeing his father like this is a privacy invasion and he feels exposed. Fin is about the iron-clad fa?ade, the KEEP OUT sign he has hung on himself. This is weakness and vulnerability, if only by proxy.
“Tell you what, I’ve got some nice biscuits, with fruit in them,” Mr. Hart says. “I’m going to find those, then let’s chat about what you’ve been up to. Go on, take a seat through there and I’ll join you.”
I carry my cup of tea to the sitting room, Fin right behind me, near-closing the cream gloss painted door with its floral enamel handle behind us. The Harts’ home belongs to an era where the wife made all the interiors choices. It always blew my mind they had a sitting room they watched television in, here, and a posh front room next door with a dining table with a runner tablecloth and candelabra, where they received guests. (Not scrubs like me, I mean dinner parties.)
“You shouldn’t be here,” Fin says, in a loud whisper. “He doesn’t need the disorientation of strangers from Susie’s life turning up on his doorstep.”
“He knows who I am! He greeted me as Eve!”
“He thinks Susie is seventeen years old. He has no real idea who you are.”
“You’re here, and he has no idea who you are?” I say.
“I’m his son,” Fin says, eyebrows shooting up. “I have a right. You have no right.”
“You wouldn’t be in the door if it wasn’t for me.”
“Here we go, they’re pieces of crystallized ginger, I think,” Mr. Hart says, pushing the door open, bearing a plate, which he sets down on the coffee table. “Delicious. Would you like a cuppa, young man?” he says to Fin. “I do apologize. I’ve forgotten you.”
Indeed.
“... Yes, thanks,” Fin says, after a pause, where he no doubt realized it’d be a useful prop to extend his stay. “Milk, no sugar, thanks.
“Have you been into Susie’s house?” Fin says, after his father leaves. “I thought it looked like someone had tidied up.”
“Yes,” I say, sitting up straighter, spooked, thinking, Thank God for Ed . Thank God for him being the kind of person who spotted that we needed to attend to that straightaway.
Finlay Hart was clearly at Susie’s with the locksmith as soon as he’d got out of the airport transfer from Heathrow.
“Did you take personal effects from her room?”
My skin prickles.
“A box of personal mementos, nothing of financial value whatsoever.”
“Can I decide if they’re of value? What things, specifically?”
I have no idea whether I should dissemble and I don’t quite dare stonewall him.
“A box of letters and diaries.”
“Right. Can I have that back, please?”
“No, they’re private.” I had not, for a single moment, thought her brother would either know these things existed or identify their absence, and I’ve been caught off guard.
“They were private, to Susie? They’re not yours.”
“I’m keeping them private for her.”
“But not private from yourself.”
“Yes, actually. I’m not going to read them.”
Fin does a double take.
“You’ve got something you say I can’t have, that you’re not going to look at?”
“Yes. It’s about protecting Susie.”
“Er, OK, noble as that is, you don’t get to appoint yourself guardian of her possessions without asking me.”
“Why do you want her diaries?” I say. “You were hardly close.”
“I don’t have to justify my motives. How do you justify doing a smash and grab?”
“As her best friend, who knows the last thing she’d want is her brother”—I vainly try to be more diplomatic—“or anyone, reading her old diaries.”
“It’s not for you to decide.”
Pretending to get along with Finlay Hart, I’ve decided, is a jig that is up.
“Actually, it is. As I have the box, and that’s the end of that.”
“Do you want this to turn ugly? Do you want me to lawyer up? Because trust me, I will.”
“Knock yourself out,” I say, panicking that if he does this, I have no idea what his rights might be. As he pushes and I panic, the more defensive I feel. Should I burn them? Is there a destruction of property case he could then wield against me?
“... Are you pretending that you and Susie got along?”
Fin’s face contorts into restrained contempt: “I didn’t say anything about us getting along. I said that’s irrelevant to you effectively thieving, because you’ve decided her things belong to you. They don’t.”
I could tell Fin he was filed in her phone under a stinging insult but, in the teeth of his loss, in his old family home, and with his diminished dad in the next room, I don’t have the stomach to be that unkind. Nevertheless, I’m absolutely sure if he had the same on me, he’d use it.
Mr. Hart reappears, bearing a cup of tea for Fin, and the doorbell’s ringing again.
“I’m ever so sorry,” he says. “I meant to say, my cleaner’s due tonight. I hope you two lovebirds can entertain each other.”
The door closes again and we hear a female voice. She’s speaking in that pointedly upbeat, firm sort of way that suggests she’s well aware of Mr. Hart’s challenges.
“I fly back the day after the funeral,” Fin says. “Return Susie’s things to me by then or expect a nasty letter.”
“You don’t have any qualms about disrespecting her wishes, do you?” I say.
“You don’t have any qualms about using her speculative wishes to do whatever suits you.”
“ Suits me? ” I hiss. “You think I’m doing this because I’m enjoying it?”
“I said it suits you. Only you know why that is.”
We blaze at each other, at an impasse, and I don’t want to have this fight when it might upset a newly bereaved dementia patient. (Are you still bereaved when you’re unaware you’re bereaved?)
I drain my tea, head to the downstairs loo for both urination and reconnaissance, and find it pristine.
As I leave, receiving a cheery farewell from Mr. Hart, I see Fin has ducked into the front room to talk to the cleaner.
I wilt at leaving a vulnerable senior citizen with an enemy combatant in the house, but what else can I do?