The Undertakers

The whole thing needs gutted. Restarted. The switches are in the wrong place, and if we’re going to have a bath and shower with space for handles to be mounted, then the sink needs moved. Some pipes will have to be rejigged which means working with the dodgy panelling from the seventies that I did myself. Crazy to think we used to live here with only two deck chairs in the front room. The rest of the house didn’t exist. I was younger then. Stupider and stronger. Poorer. Financially, for sure. But I didn’t know the wealth of experiences that were ahead of me. 

Her bedroom. That was the hardest decision. We’ve always kept it the way it was before she moved to Glasgow for uni. It had come in handy a few times. When she needed to be home for this or that: the break-up with Mark, the flat that fell through, or when she quit the job that was making her cry on the phone each night to Martha. Just come home, honey, and she did for a while. Though she was ashamed for a few days – I could tell because her face was always buried in a bowl of cereal – I think she appreciated it. She was comforted in some way. I knew she didn’t like to see her room which was caught somewhere between her teenage years and adult life. Pink was no longer her favourite colour and something about it oppressed her. Or depressed her. I don’t know which. I’m still learning all these new terms. 

She’s been with Owen for three years now and living together for two of those, which surely means they’re as good as wed. Sure, an engagement ring might reassure me that changing her room into our master bedroom is the right decision, but she has told me countless times that she no longer needs it, and we should make good use of it. She says that she can use our old bedroom upstairs when she needs it. As can we, I keep saying to Martha, but Martha says we should get used to living downstairs sooner rather than later. She talks about the risk of falls from the stairs, with a terrified look on her face. I don’t like to admit it, but when she catastrophises like that, it can begin to vex me before I remind myself of her aunt who had a  pretty nasty chute down two flights. There was blood everywhere on the white tiles of her  bathroom. And her blood was thin, Martha reminds the listener, to impress upon them the hideousness of the scene. Who knew a skull could snap just like a bone in your arm? 

I don’t know where it came from, but it took me by surprise all those years ago. I tried to remember the last time I cried before that. Was it my father’s funeral? I hadn’t felt that chill in some decades, something creeping over my skin, peeling it down to a sensitive layer that even the coolness of the air was able to make singe and prickle. When she insisted that she take the boat across herself, that she’d be fine with all the bags as the coach would leave her in front of the university halls, I knew something was telling me your job ends here. We had been pushed off the shelf into retirement from a post we thought was a job for life.  

It's perhaps selfish of me, but I wished that she didn’t need to leave. That I could have paused that year when she was studying for her A levels. That year when we lived in this house together as adults for the first time. It was a joy to get to know her, who she was and who she wanted to be, and to sense her getting to know me as a person in my own right, which had the effect of showing her the kind of father I had wanted to be - whether I had been successful or not is a different matter. Her questions seemed to pierce judiciously into the shadowed corners of a room I wanted her to peer into. A place that I’d been hiding away, from her or myself, during her childhood. I don’t know why.  

Martha said the same thing to me one night about a year ago. Around the time we had the first discussion about living on the ground floor. About futureproofing the home, a term which, at the beginning had seemed professional and motivating, but now made both of us feel frumpy and sad.  

I found her crying as she sat on the edge of the bed. Her beautiful half-naked body was slumped and something wept out of her like a baby. I thought perhaps she was nervous. Her health – sometimes she gets these ideas - or the pension, but I took care of money stuff. Or the war on the news, because she lived each story she was ever told. She said she wished to have that year back, with Grace at home. I asked her what she missed specifically because, yes, I wanted to comfort her, but I was mostly curious. I was curious as to what image she held in her mind that was able to make her weep so strongly and if it was the same as mine. The tears had got stuck in her throat and she was coughing.  

She described the scenes of Grace studying for her final exams. English, French and History. When it all seemed so hopeful, it all felt so together. We were a team launching her forward into a future that none of us acknowledged was not one we could share. The dreaming we did together. We consulted each other on the great possibility our lives represented like an enigmatic question. As if we were all on the precipice of eighteen. The questions and answers about our lives circled between us, about where they went, what we did with them, and how we would have done it differently. 

I know that I would have done nothing differently, and perhaps that is why Grace so  compassionately asked me the question on more than one occasion, to embolden a sense of resolve or satisfaction. The friendship my family have afforded me has been a gift that I could hardly have dreamed of, a gift that has created a new me that was worthy to receive it.  

* 

Grace arrived with Owen around midday on Christmas Eve. She rang the doorbell like a guest, and I wondered why she hadn’t brought her key. She wore clothes I hadn’t seen before, knitted and warm, and her hair was cut shorter. The corners of her eyes creased, and her skin shone in a radiant fully-grown way that I wasn’t yet used to observing. Hello dad, hello darling, you look well, you’ve grown, adult growth spurt, about time. 

She was shocked when she saw the downstairs bathroom. Her hand lingered on the rail, and I knew something about it disgusted her. Some idea of our bodies becoming frail and which made me feel deeply ashamed. When I sat on the downstairs loo the next morning, I couldn’t stop staring at it too, the white plastic aid that was always cool to the touch. I thought about using the drill to take it off - it was only two screws - at least over Christmas. But I didn’t want her to know that her reaction may have upset me. It had taken long enough to admit to myself that I’d been hurt by her mouth hanging open for a fraction of a second too long, the look of fear that was on her face. It felt terrible, like I had done something quite violent to  her.  

The whole evening, we were distracted by small talk. The job, the apartment saga, the plans to see Owen’s family in Aberdeen for New Year’s. It was only when I caught her, just me and her, in the kitchen, that I got to hug her and ask her how she was. She had a plate of cheese and crackers resting on her forearms, both hands carrying drinks. I’m doing fine dad. Are you sure? I just miss you both. I hugged her again, forgetting the cheese plate was in front of us and two crackers landed on the floor, but she knew what I meant. It is strange, all the missing that you can do for someone that’s still alive in the world, that’s still beside you, even. It seems an awful  waste of energy, an awful ache that should really be deemed unnecessary. I understood exactly  what she meant about all the missing that was being done by the three of us, and for a second I regretted spending time with any of the acquaintances I’d ever met in my life; I should have spent more time at home with Martha and Grace – I still think that from time to time. Perhaps you’d go mad without meeting the odd stranger though, the odd cuckoo person that makes you think I am quite sane and doing alright in fact. 

I watched her set the plate of cheese down on the table in front of the sofa. I hoped Owen appreciated her and knew how lucky he was. And she too, for Owen was a lovely guy, always smiling, always caring, always considerate. I could tell that she loved him by the way she fixed his shirt collar when it got stuck under his jumper, or when she’d place a hand on his arm when the conversation was drifting into territory about people he didn’t know, usually family members he hadn’t met.  

I knew Martha was enjoying having her home but when she returned from the bathroom, I could see ever so faintly that she had been crying. It was there in the stillness of her face and in the effort she made to smile as she walked back into the living room. I hoped Grace hadn’t spotted it.  

That night they slept in our now-old-bedroom which only contains some of Martha’s dresses she no longer wears. I hope Grace liked the room, because the house is going to her anyway when we die. As we slept on the ground floor beneath them, I had the thought of them pushing us under. Not voluntarily of course, but I saw how it was to go: first floor, ground floor, basement or earth. A soft humiliation moved between Martha and me in the bed, and I  knew she wasn’t asleep, both of us keeping a night watch.  

We woke the next morning and Grace and Owen were already preparing breakfast. They must have called at a supermarket on their journey the day before as the croissants, strawberries and orange juice that I hadn’t seen were laid out on the dining room table. I could hear the sound of eggs boiling, and the smell of toast was wafting from the kitchen. We were invited into our dining room by Owen, our Maître D’, and I half thought about whether I should change out of my pyjamas and dressing gown which now felt slightly indecent. They insisted on cooking all of Christmas dinner, demanding that Martha and I make ourselves comfortable in the living room. Two drinks had been poured for us, but we barely touched them - it being so early in the day - and both Martha and I couldn’t make eye contact with each other. 

When they left on Boxing Day morning, there was the usual pain that tugged at both our chests. A ripping or a shearing and a small sense of panic that wanted to have one last hug or one last look. What was new was the quiet sense of relief like we’d narrowly escaped something. It was lurking underneath all the tugging from the missing that was already underway. They left in Owen’s car. Its tyres crunched over the gravel path. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe next time they would come to finally bury us.

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