A Bird on My Shoulder (18 page)

As if drawn by the clamouring voices in my head, Oliver found me in the orchard and sat down beside me.

We talked about possible arrangements for Julian's funeral and the plans we had for the next few days. ML was flying over from the Solomon Islands as soon as she could get a flight and her parents, Joan and Michael, were cancelling all their plans so they could drive up to the farm from Melbourne and help in any way they could.

‘I would hate to think that we won't see you guys anymore,' I said abruptly.

Oliver looked genuinely surprised. It was clear the thought had not entered his mind. Like Julian, he was reserved and rarely expressed his deeper emotions – he was simply always consistent and honest. He looked at me directly, his sad eyes full of kindness.

‘We're not going anywhere,' he said.

•••

Last impressions count.

The middle-aged woman at the funeral home was squeezed into a black suit. She greeted Mary-Louise and I with a fixed, sympathetic smile and gestured towards the open door.

‘Mr Thirlwall has been prepared for you and is in the viewing room.'

I remember a door closing and the sound of retreating shoes squeaking on a padded carpet. ML, who had just flown in from the Solomons, was bundled into one of my warm winter coats. The lighting in the room was dulled by orange lampshades, and the air smelled slightly of industrial cleaner. ML put her arm through mine, a deeply comforting presence that neither held me back nor urged me forward.

The world seemed to hover at a distance as I digested the unnatural scene. I had been adamant that I should come and say my last goodbyes, in part because I feared that I might regret it if I did not, but also because I had such a strong desire to see Julian again.

I could feel ML's breathing, long and heavy; life moving slowly in the presence of death.

As we moved towards the coffin, there was Julian in his familiar clothes: a blue-and-white-checked shirt, green corduroy trousers, brown leather brogues and his wedding ring. A discordant thought flew into my mind. He was normally so fastidious. Why was he lying down with his shoes on?

For a moment I debated whether to ask if they might be removed. I thought of his long, bony toes with the rounded toenails, of the drugs he took which made it too painful for him to walk on bare feet; the eight pairs of identical unworn shoes from England that sat in pristine boxes under the stairs.

A telephone rang in another room, another life. ML squeezed my arm.

I was transfixed by the absurdity of it all; the quietness, the awful piped music, the contrived stillness. I wanted Julian to wake up, to open his eyes and speak to me. ‘Hello, darling, how was your day?'

I scattered onto his chest a bowl of wax petals that George had made the day after Julian died. Our small boy had been hunched for hours in fervent concentration as he dipped his fingers into the multicoloured candles that had filled the house, peeling the wax from his fingertips into a bowl when it had cooled. Around him, the air had swirled with visitors, voices, tears, flowers and
phone calls. Later that morning, when Julian's body was driven away, George continued to make his petals and did not look up.

I put a handwritten letter by Julian's side and drawings from the children. I had asked them that morning if they wanted to come with me – no, they did not. Perhaps, I suggested, they would like to send a letter to Dad? They should tell me what they wanted to say and I would write it down.

Before we left, I paused to look at Julian again, still unconvinced, and steeled myself to touch his hand for the last time. A stone on a windswept beach. As I closed the door behind me and
stepped out with ML into the brisk October air, the chasm of a cold new world, alone now with three small children, so far away from my family, quietly opened at my feet.

•••

Early the next morning, I woke up to the sound of the phone and heard the familiar, faint and quavering voice of my grandmother calling from England.

Already in her nineties and plagued by bad knees, she confessed she had partially crawled across her living room just so that she could call me, something she had never done in all the years I had been away.

‘How are you?'

‘I'm okay,' I said.

The line began to hiss and crackle.

‘Hello? Granberry? Can you hear me?'

‘I just wanted to know, love. How are you
really
?' Her voice sounded hollow, cored like an apple.

‘Not great,' I said.

She sighed. ‘It's terrible, isn't it, Luce? Terrible.' The line went quiet again. ‘How old are you now, love?'

‘Thirty-eight.'

‘Yes, that's right. It was the same for me too. Oh, love.'

Granberry had rarely spoken about the loss of her husband John, a bus driver who had a heart attack in his early forties.
If she ever talked about him, it was only to speak about how deeply affected my mother had been, as she was only a teenager when she found him dead.

When we were young, Libby and I would often go and stay with her, and be subject to her strict and sometimes bizarre rules: only one sheet of toilet paper to be used after a wee, no pulling on the cord above the double bed we shared as it would cause the house to explode, and no entering alone into the most treasured room of all, the dusty attic full of family treasures. There was to be no picking damsons off the tree before they were ripe, and no-one was permitted to place more than one lump of coal into the tiny grate she called a fire.

Libby was definitely her favourite child: quiet, polite and helpful. Granberry made it very clear that she did not like me very much at all. I used too much lavatory paper, I was cheeky, I complained, I kicked too many footballs near the windows, I ate the forbidden damsons off the tree and gave myself a well-deserved stomach ache. Furthermore, I secretly climbed the fence into the neighbouring garden to steal their fruit, causing mild suburban annoyance.

When she put us to bed at night, she would come up the stairs like a shrunken ghost in a long white nightgown, minus her daytime wig and the set of dentures she had worn since gum disease destroyed all her teeth as a teenager.

‘No monkey business,' was all she ever said.

One night, as Libby and I lay in my mother's old double bed with its unbearably hard bolster pillow, I said I was going to pull the forbidden cord.

‘Please don't,' Libby pleaded. ‘We'll die.'

I weighed up the risk. At the age of seven I had already grasped the frequent absurdity of adult logic. If this piece of string would destroy the house, why was it even there? Who in their right mind would tie a bomb to their own bed?

I sat up in the dark and fumbled behind the headboard. ‘There's a plastic end!' I whispered.

Libby started moaning and pulled the covers over her head.

I took a breath then pulled – the overhead light, something we were never permitted to use ourselves, came on.

‘Look! It's just the light! Ha!' Within seconds, I heard the bottom of the stairs start to creak and hastily pulled the cord again and we lay, trembling in the darkness, waiting for the wrath to descend. I could sense Granberry waiting and then, after a few agonising moments, retreating to her room where she slept with Monster, her similarly toothless and ancient poodle.

The next morning, she buttered our pieces of Weetabix and sprinkled them with sugar, her mouth tight with disapproval.

‘Little monkey,' she said, glaring at me.

Granberry had a very unforgiving and Victorian view of children, believing they should be seen and not heard. She was not a particularly affectionate person, but by the time I was
around the age of fourteen and she had moved into a small flat near our home in Kidderminster, I began to earn her love and approval by helping her with her shopping and calling in to see her whenever I could. It took many years for us to make our peace, but once achieved, we became extremely close.

‘I don't suppose you feel like fetching us some roe and chips, Luce?' she would ask.

So I would either walk or cycle to the tight little row of terraced houses in nearby Lorne Street to collect our dinner from Magg's fish-and-chip shop. By the time I returned to the flat, she had laid a small table with beautiful plates.

I never saw my grandmother as boring or provincial, even though she had rarely left the town or had much of a career apart from working in a printing factory and as a dinner lady in a local school. I was drawn to her stability and quiet courage; she became a wonderful refuge during my turbulent teenage years and a living example of deep acceptance, healthy cynicism and wry pronouncements on the shortcomings of others.

We spoke for a few minutes more; her face, etched with lines, so familiar and loved, appeared in my mind as she might have been all those years ago, a widow, devastated and alone with two elderly parents and a young child.

‘I love you,' she said.

‘I love you too,' I replied.

‘Put the phone down then.'

‘No, you go first.'

Our echoing laughter filled the distance between us as we hung up.

When she died just a few months after Julian, I often thought of her as a small but brightly burning candle; not glamorous or extraordinary but, in the best sense, very ordinary and simple and true. In the brief few minutes that we spoke, I had the strongest feeling that she was telling me – without saying a word – that whatever must be done, I could do it and she would lead the way.

20

Wreaths of gaudy flowers are piled up against a

small white wooden cross in the late afternoon sun,

in the dirt. The children play hide-and-seek among

the gravestones. Now you see me, now you don't.

I had never realised the extraordinary amount of administration involved in organising a funeral: the lists, phone calls and family consultations; choosing a coffin, working out who to notify and how, newspaper announcements, arranging who would speak and what music should be played. Family friends in Port Moresby rang to say they were organising a memorial service in the Anglican cathedral to be held at the same time as the mass and burial in Australia. So we would all be together.

Over the next few days and weeks we received many letters, cards and faxes. I particularly loved the ones from the children we knew, their bluntness so liberating and sincere.

I also loved people's recollections of their friendship with Julian: his generosity as a host, his treatment of people, his reserve, his humour and eccentricities. Julian's physical energy was an aspect of his life I was fully aware of, but it was not until he died that friends told me stories of just how reckless he had been as a younger man. Simon Leigh, a poet living in Canada, sent a brief and affectionate portrait.

•••

A condolence letter from my somewhat eccentric uncle, Terry, opened by telling me that he had been impressed by Julian during their brief meeting, adding with his usual tact:
as I would be by anyone who took you on
. He urged me to:

Somewhat brutal, perhaps, but amid the sea of well-meaning flower and angel cards, there was something rather comforting about his lack of saccharine sentiment.

•••

The night before the funeral, ML, her father Michael and mother Joan and I sat up after dinner, talking and threading deep navy ribbon through the funeral booklets. We had the same emblem on the book – a small bird – and the same PNG basket which we had also used for our wedding and both christenings. Still tied
to the handles were the remnants of yellowing cream ribbons from happier days.

I was in good company. There was nothing I had to hide, nothing I could not say. A small fire crackled in the grate as we talked late into the night.

•••

St Peter's Catholic Church in Burrawang stood alone in its own timeless space on the edge of the village. The long weatherboard building, originally built over a hundred years before with shutters and a shingle roof, was simple and unadorned both inside and out. Behind, in the graveyard, carved headstones were covered in moss and lichen, some weathered beyond recognition.