David Mitchell: The Book of Other People

‘Did Philip’s birthday card ever arrive, Daddy?’

‘Philip has to lick the Adelaide office into shape.’ With tweezers and a surgeon’s delicacy of touch, Daddy tied a droopy cactus limb to a bamboo splint. ‘I raised that boy to see a job through. Not to ponce around with cards and Interflora and ghastly ties.’

‘So nothing’s come of his plan to make it over this summer?’

‘Philip’s the project-leader.’ Daddy measured out a cup of cactus feed. ‘He has too much responsibility just to drop everything.’

‘Oh, dear. Still no Mrs Philip Castle on the horizon?’

‘How the bloody hell should I know, Judith? You ’ll be the first to find out when he does get hitched, via your global intelligence network.’

‘Only asking, Daddy. Only asking. I see you got the CCTV installed around the front.’

‘And the back. The Old Vicarage had a break-in. I’d get myself a couple of lurchers – teach ’em to bite first and ask permission later, like my father in Rhodesia – but Marion isn’t having it. We booked that kayaking trip in Norway, so you’re on the garden-watering detail in September.’

‘If I’m around, I’ll be delighted to oblige.’

Daddy gave me a significant look.

I held it. You mustn’t let Daddy intimidate you, or he’ll turn you into Mummy. ‘A new development on the Glebe, I see.’

‘ “Development”? Don’t get me started. Once upon a time, this village was a village. These days, any Paddy O’Speculator can slip those human turds at the council a few quid and knock up a dozen houses overnight for seven hundred grand apiece. Ah, Marion’s back. I can hear her car.’

‘ Such a shock!’ Marion poured the coffee while I stacked her gold-edged tableware in the dishwasher. ‘So much life ahead of him! Poor, poor man. And poor, poor Judith.’

‘I died with him, Marion. That’s how it feels.’

‘A photographer, you mentioned?’

‘Ha!’ Daddy dunked his biscuit. ‘ That old chestnut.’

‘A very highly regarded one. His gallery’s in Lyme Regis. Daddy, what is so amusing about Lyme Regis?’

‘Nothing whatsoever.’

Marion gave him a glare like Mummy never would. ‘The police are bound to catch the driver sooner or later, aren’t they?’

‘The police won’t shift their comfy arses an inch,’ muttered Daddy, getting up. ‘Not if it’s not about blowing up airports. Not these days.’

‘The sergeant told me the rain washed the clues away.’ I sat back down and sipped Marion’s excellent coffee. She replaces her machine every year, whether it needs replacing or not. Mummy used a percolator only once in her life. She put three filters in instead of one, and the kitchen floor was flooded. She cried about it for three nights running.

Marion had reconditioned yew boards laid everywhere after she married Daddy. A hanging stitched by one of her sponsored African children adorns the Afrikaner fireplace: Happiness is not a Destination, it is a Method of Life . As long as flies aren’t drinking from your eyes, I suppose that’s true. A lesser woman would be upset at how Daddy has let all trace of Mummy disappear from her home. What would Mummy’s ghost recognize now? The alpine rockery, installed years ago to keep up with the Taylors; the cactii and their greenhouse of course; Mummy and Daddy’s honeymoon photograph on the dresser, bleached blue by four decades; the summer house Daddy built for her, in the vain hope it would help with her agoraphobia; the chill in the downstairs loo. That’s her lot. I haven’t been upstairs here for years. Nor do I care to. Marion and Daddy’s love-life is doubtless conducted on some space-age double mattress. They do have a love-life. I sense these things.

‘If your engagement was an open secret,’ Marion was saying, ‘Olly’s family must want you there for the funeral.’

‘They wouldn’t dream of burying him without me. Olly’s brother told me the dreadful tidings before he told Olly’s ex-wife.’

‘So, when is the service?’

Daddy turned the kitchen radio on. ‘ – has announced that industrial action threatening rail travellers with chaos and misery this weekend has been averted, following the rail union’s acceptance of a 4.9 per cent pay increase over two years, with an enhanced system of bonuses. Officials say - ’

Daddy fiddled the dial, in search of cricket, grumbling incoherently.

But the universe had spoken loud and clear.

‘My train leaves tomorrow. Crack of dawn.’

The taxi-driver at Axminster Station flicked his cigarette away and heaved my suitcase into his unwashed cab. ‘Cheer up, love. May never happen.’ I replied, tartly, that ‘it’ already had happened. ‘I am here to bury my husband. He lost his long battle with leukemia.’ My words wove an instant magic. Off went his trashy local radio station, away went that ‘love’ and on came a proper air of respect. As he drove me down to Lyme Regis through the drizzle, he made attempts at informed conversation about his son’s school and the Ofsted table; about a proposed site for a low-security prison, shouted down by outraged locals; about a Victorian mansion once owned by Benny Hill and, rumour has it, home to all sorts of goings-on, obscured now by leylandii of gigantic height. My responses were polite but minimal. Widows should not be chatty, and I had my pelvic-floor exercises to run through.

‘Hope the weather picks up for you,’ he said, as I paid, ‘madam.’

It was the same at the Hotel Excalibur. ‘Business or pleasure, is it?’ asked the bouncy creature in that cud-chewing Dorset accent. ‘Neither,’ I told her, with courage and dignity. ‘I am here to bury my husband. Iraq. I’m not at liberty to tell you any more.’ Before my very eyes, she transformed into a real receptionist. She checked if a quieter, more spacious room, away from the conference wing, was available. Lo and behold, it was. ‘At no extra charge?’ I verified. She was pleasingly shocked. ‘We wouldn’t dream of it, madam! You’ll be more comfortable there, Mrs’ – she glanced at my form – ‘Mrs Castle-Dunbar. Would you like a lie-down now? I can send some tea up to your room.’ I’d prefer to stretch my legs, I told her, and she got me an umbrella. Several ‘Made in China’ umbrellas were in the stand – left behind by forgetful guests, doubtless – but she picked me out a sturdy, Churchillian, raven-black affair.

Yes, there are boxes of tatty junk in Lyme Regis, but also cabinets of bona fide rareties. Nestling between Cap’n Scallywag’s Diner and Wildest Dreams Amusement Arcade you’ll find Feay’s Fossils and Henry Jeffreys Antiquarian Maps. From a florist on Silver Street, I purchased twelve ruby roses. In a jeweller’s on Pound Street, a pearl necklace caught my eye. £395 is not small change, but one doesn’t bury one’s soul-mate every day of the week, and I negotiated a discount of £35. I got the elderly proprietor to snip off the tag so I could wear it now. ‘Very good, madam,’ he replied. England would be a superior country if everyone in shops spoke like that.

Then I came to the Cobb.

It curves out into the sea, this ancient stone wall, before dividing into two arms. One arm shelters the modest harbour. The other lunges into open water. Judith Castle-Dunbar followed the latter, cutting a swathe through a platoon of German pensioners. She booted their backsides into the briny drink, or imagined doing so, so vividly that she heard their cries and hearty Teutonic plop! s. Sir Andrew’s Requiem – more sublime than Mozart’s, who never knew when to stop – thundered over the water, for her, for the soul of Oliver Dunbar. Beadlets of mist clung to her overcoat. She reached the end. Judith Castle-Dunbar gazed towards France, obscured today by an inconsolable sky of tears. An inconsolable sky of tears . Judith Castle-Dunbar flung one red rose into the funereal waters below her. And another, another, another, sinking into the fathoms. Rest in peace. The widow has an uncanny sensation of being in a film.