‘His smile fixed in the stars ad infinitum.’ Ellie’s voice meanders in from the podium. ‘That means forever/How I remember/My heart in a tether/Forever and ever/Whatever the weather/Special and clever…’
Wearing head-to-toe leather?I don’t know why that line comes in my head but I use Maya, who is sitting on my lap, to hide my smirk. Ellie has been up on the stage now for five minutes. She introduced herself as one of Tom’s great loves and I watched as my four sisters looked set to charge the stage. That would have been a sight. I mean, Beth is at a nice rotund stage of pregnancy so she’d have aided the attack.
Through her words, Ellie stops to dab at the corners of her eyes and, as much as I jest, and as much as it pains me, I know there is depth to the emotion. We shared him at one point in time. She loved him too. Her grief is valid even though her poetry kind of sucks. Would Tom like this? He’d like the sentiment of being adored but this poem is as long as theIliad. Limericks would have been more his jam.
I have to do this, don’t I? Just focus on this strange internal monologue of rationalising everything so I don’t think about my dead husband. I think we did well with the wine choice. We didn’t go with wine out of a box as that’s definitely not what Tom would have wanted.I don’t want a hint of cardboard when I’m necking wine.But I see the giant pile of sausage rolls, next to a more meagre one of mini spring rolls. That’s an obscene amount of sausage. And then I think back to this morning with all the boys in the hall with their balls out. What a day.
Naoko is here. So is Robyn, who slept with Tom in Japan. If she cries and reads out a poem then I may have words. All the Japanese contingent is here, Astrid and Farah sitting behind them, cousins and aunts, friends and neighbours. Even Sam and Helen drift around at the back of the crowd. They came. You didn’t even know him. But you know me. Thank you for being here.
I hear clapping and Ellie returns to her seat. I should clap too. Maya knows, doesn’t she? She can feel every sinew of my body awkward and tense. I can tell from the way she takes a thumb and rubs it on the inside of my palm. She’s always done that; it’s always worked. I squeeze her fingers back, her skin soft and silky. I can also see someone else who knows exactly how I feel. Mum. Please look at someone else. She looks like an owl, transfixed. Like that stuffed owl on Carrie Cantello’s mantlepiece. Dressed in yellow. That’s not your colour, Mum. Don’t laugh. Don’t cry. Don’t notice how your mum is just staring at you, hoping, praying her daughter is not going to break. Don’t think anything. Just get through this.
Joyce is up to talk next. She’s been sitting next to Linh. They’ve always got on, bonded by that shared grief of having lost children before their time. Linh grasps her hand tightly. Joyce got a huge kick out of sending Doug and I down on ball-watch before. It was wholly intentional as she wasn’t sure she could do it and didn’t want to scare us off. She climbs the stairs slowly to the stage and adjusts the microphone.
‘Oh my god, I just can’t believe how many of you are here today,’ Joyce says, the microphone crackling. ‘He’d be so happy, so proud, so very pleased.’
Don’t look at her. Just don’t take any of the words in. You can do this, Gracie.
‘I just didn’t expect to be so emotional. I mean, I was having wine and all these people were coming up to me, talking to me about Tom and telling me all your stories. I can’t tell you how proud it makes me that my son touched your lives in some way. As his mother, that makes me so…’
It’s Maya who looks up to me first when it happens. Joyce turns from the microphone, her bottom lip trembling. She tries to bite it to control it but she takes a sharp intake of breath and exhales it in a quiver, rubbing at tears with the base of her palm. Mr Harrison offers her a tissue.
‘Mama…’ Maya says, terrified to see her Aunty Joyce so sad. Joyce sticks a tongue out of the corner of her mouth, almost as if to lap up the tears that trickle down her cheeks. You can do this, Joyce. Please do this. But she steps back from the microphone to have a moment. Linh looks over to me and I smile back.
‘Maya, can you sit with Ba Linh so I can help Aunty Joyce?’
She beams up at me. ‘I can come with you?’ she says.
‘I can too,’ Cleo adds.
My heart twinges for a moment as they both cling to me. Let’s hang out together. Forever. But this? I need to do it alone.
‘I love you both… so very much. But stay here, littlies, OK?’
They nod and I trot up the stairs to the stage, silence filling that small courtyard space as Joyce stands there, trying to compose herself. I go up and embrace her.
‘Hey.’
‘God, I’m a bloody mess. This is fucking embarrassing,’ she mutters. I pick a crumb of tissue off her cheek. ‘Please say something, anything.’
I walk up to the microphone, my arm locked in hers, and look down towards the crowd. What is one hundred people? Is that the number of people Jesus fed with the minimal amounts of fish and bread? I have an inkling that could be more. But I feel like I’m about to talk to a stadium’s worth. It’s never been my forte in any case, to talk, to persuade a crowd with rhetoric and jokes. That was always Tom’s job. That was a good opener, if I could remember what I just thought. I see Lucy move seats to go and support Linh and throw her thumbs in the air, a half-smile gracing her face. Don’t look at my mother. Don’t. Because she’s crying. Meg’s crying too. And Beth. We’ll forgive Beth because of the hormones but the rest of them are of no use to me whatsoever. Useless.
‘Hi.’
That’ll do. Just tell them about the sausage rolls and take your leave, Grace.
‘I’m Grace. Which is a really stupid thing to say because half of you know I’m Grace. Well, that person is my mother so I really hope she knows who I am.’ My mother cry-smiles at that point and I see my father’s hand slide into hers.
‘I was Tom’s wife.’ I play with the wedding ring on my finger. ‘It’s been three years since he’s been gone and it still feels strange to say that in the past tense. To say he’s not here because I think all of you here today are testament to the fact he’s never quite left us.’
Preach, sister. You can do this. Exhale.
‘In the past months, the one thing I’ve learnt is how that man got about. In the nicest possible way, of course.’
Was that funny? I hope that was funny. I see shoulders moving up and down so I will take that as a yes.
‘That was him all over, he had the biggest and most adventurous heart, and I am really happy many of you got to meet him and share in some of that. I’m glad he taught here and people remember him so fondly too. Teaching was a real passion of his so this is such an honour. He would bloody love this, a building with his name on. Because most of you will know he liked an element of occasion, a sense of grandeur. I think it was reflected in a love for fancy dress. He would go all out. Did anyone ever see his Henry VIII?’
It was for school. He made me dye his hair. He wanted to do the pubes too for authenticity. It stained the sink. I wonder how much detail I need to go into. A hundred people is a lot of people. They all sit here, waiting for me to say something, to close this. There’s that same camera that was there this morning. There are my girls. Maya waves at me.
