up thinking about it all the way to Vaughn suddenly tensing and crying out, shouting in a way I’ve never heard him shout in the office, or the pub either, for that matter.
Feel rather grubby after that little lapse in concentration and have to get up out of bed at 02:45 to have another shower.
Martha asked me once about my parents. I must have been feeling communicative on that particular occasion, or else it could have been one of those situations where to refuse to answer might have appeared rude; in any case, I told her how my father died when I was eleven.
‘You poor boy,’ she said. I wondered if I should be offended, but then understood she was addressing my younger self. ‘It must have been incredibly traumatic to lose your father at such a difficult age.’
I did not understand what she meant by a difficult age, nor what she meant, really, by traumatic. ‘Life goes on,’ I said with a shrug.
‘Yes, but still – such a shame.’
‘The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species at that.’
‘That sounds like a quote, Colin. Who said that?’
‘I did. Well, to be fair, I’m paraphrasing Nietzsche. I’m assuming you would prefer to hear it in English rather than the original German.’
She thinks I’m weird; they all do. This was at the beginning, when I first started working for the council – they were all very chatty back then. Now I find that they leave me alone and avoid falling into conversation with me, unless circumstances force them to do so. Even then they seem to look at me warily. I think Martha views me as something of a personal challenge.
My father’s funeral was held on a Saturday to enable his work colleagues to come along. There was considerable debate about whether I should be allowed to attend. I remember overhearing a conversation between my mother and her friend a few days before.
‘You know what he’s like,’ my mother was saying. ‘He thinks about things so much.’
‘But he’s nearly an adult, Delia. It might help him come to terms with things.’
In the end my mother relented – although it might have also been due to the lack of available babysitters to keep an eye on me. As it ended up being such a dramatic occasion, I remain glad to this day that I got the chance to attend.
I had no appropriate outfit so I wore my school uniform, even the blazer and cap. It was a hot day, with fierce, unrelenting sunshine, and of course the assembled throng were all dressed in black. My mother even had on her black coat, the one with the mink collar he’d bought her in New York. Everyone sweltered on the way to the church, gained some relief during the service and then sweltered outside for the interment. Bored beyond bored, I roasted and sweated – my shirt was damp under my blazer. I stood next to my mother and thought about something I’d read: how King Henry VIII’s body was so bloated by decomposition gases while it was being transported from Whitehall to Windsor that the coffin burst open overnight. The next morning they found dogs feeding on the remains of the king. And that was in winter! What would the body of my father look like, given that it was the height of summer? I considered that his body, held in storage for nearly three weeks pending the post mortem and the inquest, might actually still be frozen, defrosting slowly in that box like a melting choc ice. I felt compelled to touch the wood, to feel if it was cold. As the vicar warbled on, I took a step forward towards the coffin, which was on a bed of plastic green grass of the sort you see covering the tables at the greengrocer’s. My mother, who must have panicked at my sudden movement, lurched forward, her hand out to grab my shoulder, and stumbled over the uneven ground. In doing so, she knocked me over too and we both ended up lying inches from the open grave. The shock of it all, or maybe the excessive heat and her ridiculous coat, or maybe even the gin she’d consumed earlier to fortify herself for the ordeal ahead, caused her to vomit as people rushed to pull her to her feet. I couldn’t help laughing at them, being sprayed with vomit as my mother continued to heave. Some