Pat Barker - Another World

‘We’d better,’ Frieda says. ‘He’ll have stiffened by morning.’

They force the teeth into his mouth and then Frieda works on it, producing a more natural expression than the faintly sardonic sneer left by the stroke.

‘Doesn’t he look peaceful?’ Frieda says, standing back to inspect her handiwork.

Nick opens his mouth to agree, but at that moment Geordie’s voice says in his ear, so loud it’s like taking a punch: ‘I am in hell.’

His last words, Nick thinks, hoping it’s not true, straining to remember something else he’d said afterwards, but he said nothing else, except ‘Pull, pull’, which hardly seems to count.

‘Should we sit up with him?’ He’s treating her as the expert in death, though her experience, like his, is limited. The expert’s lying in the bed between them.

‘No,’ Frieda says. ‘I think you should try to get a good night’s sleep. There’ll be a lot to do in the morning. I’ll stop here.’

It’s now nearly midnight. He’s been dead two hours. His forehead’s cold and damp, the clammy feel of mushrooms before they’re washed.

‘Will you be all right?’

‘’Course I’ll be all right,’ she says.

‘You won’t be frightened?’

‘What of?’ A scornful sniff. ‘The dead can’t hurt you.’

Fran’s asleep. On a sudden impulse Nick walks along the corridor to Miranda’s room. She’s reading. ‘Miranda,’ he says.

She looks relieved to see him. ‘Dad. I’m sorry about Gramps.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry too. Shouldn’t you be asleep?’

‘I was just going to put the light out.’

‘It’s late, you know.’

‘All right, I’ll stop now.’

He leaves her reaching out a hand to the switch.

Gareth next. Only the bed’s empty, and for a moment he’s surprised, then he remembers that Gareth’s staying with Fran’s mother.

Jasper. Breathing snuffily, smelling of pee and milk, a warm, animal smell that makes Nick want to rest his face against the tiny chest. Instead he tucks the sheet more snugly round him.

Fran’s deeply asleep, but stirs, moving slightly to accommodate him as he slides in beside her.

Nick wakes to find her side of the bed empty, goes downstairs and finds her in the kitchen feeding Jasper soft-boiled egg. They embrace over his noisy gesticulating form. ‘I thought I’d leave you to sleep,’ she says, a little shy with him, not knowing quite how she’s supposed to react. ‘Yeah, thanks,’ he says, and bends down to Jasper, who knows nothing and is therefore easier. Jasper’s holding a soldier dipped in yolk up to him. ‘Is that for me?’ Nick says, pretending to eat. ‘Yum yum yum.’

‘Did Frieda stay there?’

‘Yes.’

‘You should have brought her back here.’

‘No, she wanted to stay. I’d better get back there,’ he says, looking at his watch. ‘We’ll need the doctor out, I suppose, and the undertaker.’

‘He’s going into the chapel of rest?’

‘I should think so, but she’ll want him home before the funeral. Apparently he wants — wanted — to be buried in St John’s. My grandmother’s buried there. So I thought we might have the tea here, but you know we —’

‘Of course we’ll have it here.’

‘I mean she’ll want him back home before the funeral, but she’ll sleep there, I expect. I don’t suppose he can be left in the house on his own. Though I don’t know why not, give the burglars a shock.’

‘Nick.’

‘No, he’d like that.’

Nick nibbles two slices of toast, standing with his back to the sink, wanting to be gone. At the back of his mind there’s some absurd idea that Grandad’s expecting him to walk through the door.

Instead, when at last he opens the front door, a breath of cold air greets him. Of course the windows will have had to be kept open all night. The house sounds emptier and smells different. Frieda’s winding up the cord on the vacuum cleaner, having cleaned the living room. She doesn’t look as if she’s slept much, he thinks, with a stab of compunction, as he bends to kiss her. ‘How was it?’

‘Quiet,’ she says with a roguish twinkle, and they giggle together like a couple of naughty children. ‘Will you go up and see him?’ she says.

‘Yes, all right.’ Straightening his face, he goes up, feeling the cold of Geordie’s bedroom meet him halfway up the stairs. Geordie’s still lying with the sheet pulled up to his chin. Well, of course he is, Nick tells himself impatiently; it’d be a remarkable state of affairs if he’d moved. But then he has moved, infinitesimally. The muscles of his face, stiffening, have changed his expression from stern to quizzical, and the eyes have opened slightly so that a line of white’s just visible. Nick reaches out to close them again, and the skin feels icy cold, and somehow thicker, which must be a sign of rigor mortis.

It has the curious effect of making Geordie untouchable, as he had not been the previous night, when his body, though cooling fast, had felt little different from his living body. ‘Oh, Grandad,’ Nick whispers aloud.

The movement of exhaled breath disturbs the dust motes that are sifting about in the shaft of sunlight that comes through the crack in the skimped curtains. The silence receives the whisper and deepens around it. Nobody here, Nick thinks, though he sits for a while longer, taking in the smells, all clean and cold, white sheets, soap, the musty smells of sickness banished, the smell of death mercifully not detectable yet. And then, as he stands up to go, there’s another smell: Antaeus. ‘Yon pansy stuff you put on your chin.’ But Nick’s not wearing any, and when he leans forward, putting his face close to his grandfather’s, he can detect no trace of aftershave lingering on the skin. There shouldn’t be — they washed his face last night. Yet the smell’s powerful — nothing vague or tentative about it. You’d think a whole bottle of the stuff had been spilled.

Nick remembers that he’s not yet told Helen about Geordie’s death and goes downstairs, intending to get it over with as fast as possible. She’s on her answering machine. ‘… and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’ Nick waits for the beep, knowing he won’t be able to leave this message on the machine. ‘Hello, Helen, this is Nick,’ he says, sounding self-conscious. ‘Could you give me a ring?’

The phone’s picked up before he’s finished. ‘Nick.’ Her voice sounds incredibly close and breathless.

‘Helen.’ Faced with her unexpected presence, he’s lost for words. ‘I’m afraid it’s over. Well, pleased it’s over, I suppose.’

He hears his voice objectively, as if this is a recorded message and he’s playing it back. He finds himself thinking, That man sounds desperate.

‘Peaceful?’ she asks, obviously detecting his uneasiness.

Nick hesitates. ‘Not exactly.’

‘I’ll be here all day.’

He was wanting her to say that. ‘Later this morning? About twelve?’

‘I’ll see you then.’

The doctor comes at half past nine. He stands by the bed looking down, a younger man than Nick, but used to death as Nick is not. Faced often enough with far worse deaths than this. ‘Well, he had a good innings,’ he says. Nick agrees. He goes on agreeing, because the neighbour says it too, and then the Vicar. A few old friends come in to see the body, and that’s good, because it’s the old way, and Frieda thinks Geordie would have liked it. But, at intervals, throughout the day, as startling as gas bubbles bursting on the surface of a pond, he hears Grandad’s voice: ‘I am in hell.’ Am . It’s the present tense that ambushes Nick now.

They’re going in later to choose the coffin. For now, the undertakers arrive with a body bag, and when he looks at this thing, this gleaming black plastic dustbin liner, Nick feels overwhelming anger. He’d imagined a coffin, labouring shoulders, jostling on the narrow stairs, that impressive mixture of extreme physical effort and silent respect, familiar from royal funerals. Instead there’s this zipper bag, drawn up across the face. Mind his nose, he wants to say as the zip closes. Stupid — even if they did catch the skin, he wouldn’t feel anything.