Jessica is dead.
I
cannot say these words out loud, because that would make it so, engrave her
death into the indelible history of our family, just as the date will be goldly
engraved forever into the black shiny granite of her waiting headstone. They
circle around inside my head with no escape, polishing the inside of my skull
to a head-aching shine. I can change where I live, change where I work, even
change from being alive, but I cannot change the truth of those words. I would
do anything that would allow me to.
‘Bring
her back, Jack,’ Diane begs.
‘Bring
her back, Dad,’ Amanda begs.
‘Bring
her back, God,’ I beg. ‘Take me instead’. There is no answer.
We
will bury her today but it doesn’t help; talk of closure is nonsense. It pushes
Jessica further away from us. It is all too predictable. Family and friends
come and talk, offer to help, ‘anything I can do, just ask’.
‘Bring
her back,’ I reply. They look down and shuffle their newly-shined shoes in the
dust like guilty children, refusing to meet my entreating eye, shiny with yet
more, unshed tears.
‘Why
didn’t you save her?’ accuses Diane. ‘You’re her father, it’s your job to
protect her. You failed her.’
I
think, but dare not say, ‘you are her mother,
you failed her too.’ She knows this, I know this, we will both know this
for our separate, eternal, purgatories.
We
did the tumbler test. We raced her to hospital. We screamed at the doctors,
‘Help her, help her, please. Do something, anything, quickly, now.’
The
heart has gone from our family. This will surely destroy us as we try to
apportion the available blame. Without Jess we don’t have a family. We are now
just individuals. Diane is Jessica’s ex mother, Amanda, her ex sister, I am her
ex father. We are now just extras in the short story of her life. At night, I
turn over and clasp Diane’s hand but she tugs it back, turns and shrivels away
from me. There is no sleep or comfort here.
Diane
blames me but blames herself more. A mother should not allow her child to die
before her. We always thought that it would be Jess who would look after us in
our old age, she is was – why do we have to change the words? - the
caring one. Amanda is the practical one, always looking to fix things. She has
now found something that she cannot fix. Her sister is dead, she cannot allow
it, we cannot allow it. What can we do?
*
We drive in a shiny black convoy through the South
Downs, to Pyecombe, to the Church of the Transfiguration. We slowly climb the
gentle dip slope of the chalk hills. We suddenly drop down the steep scarp at
Dale Hill; like the story of Jessica’s life - a long slow learning and growth
to near adulthood and then a sudden crash into death.
We
don’t talk during the drive. Diane keeps her hands clamped around mine. They
slowly whiten.
The
car stops outside the church and I help Diane out. She moves slowly, like an
old woman bent under an unbearable burden. We walk through the rows of ancient
headstones that carry faded, forgotten names, to meet the waiting vicar. He is
new, not the one who christened Jessica here nineteen years ago in August ’95. The polished silica surfaces of the knapped
flints in the ancient walls glint the sunshine back at us, guarding against any
entry of cheerfulness or warmth.
Diane
refuses to enter the church. Everyone waits. I sit with her in the porch and
clasp her to me.
‘Come
on Di, we need to do this for Jess. She is waiting for us.’
‘I…
I just can’t do it, Jack.’
Amanda
kneels on the worn flags and strokes her mother’s hands. ‘We can do it Mum,
just like we always do, the four of us, together.’ She wipes away her mother’s
tears with her thumbs and helps her to her feet.
‘You’ve
torn your tights Mandy.’
‘Doesn’t
matter Mum, come on, hold on tight.’
We inch into the church, Amanda on
her left, me to her right and take our places in the front pews where the
sidesman silently indicates. We are helping Diane but who is going to help me?
Why do men always have to pretend to be strong? ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’
We
sit in the cold, shiny wooden pew in this old, cold church. We listen to cold
comfort from the vicar. I try to pray, but God coldly turns his face from me.
Is it guilt or is he just laughing at us all, with our tiny, pathetic, human
emotions? If anyone knows how we feel, it should be him, so why does he turn
away from us when we are in most need of his comfort? Does he care? Does he
exist?
I
gaze at the oaken coffin, polished to a shine that reflects the slow burning
candles, on its oh-so-practical stands in the aisle. I insisted that it should
have rounded ends so that there would be no corners; I know that evil lurks in
corners. I had to do something for her. How can it be Jess in there? Will she
suddenly pop the lid, jump out, skip over and tell us it was just one of her
silly jokes and laugh with us?
I
don’t think I will ever laugh again.
I
swivel round on the oak bench, polished to a dull, smooth shine by a thousand
backsides, to look at my lifelong friend, Bill. He returns my look,
expressionless. He knows what I am thinking, just as I know what he is
thinking. ‘Is it because of all the
things we have done and left undone over the years of Jessica’s life?’ He
slowly shakes his head at me, ‘No,’
he is saying, ‘it is nothing to do with
that, there is no cause and effect.’ How does he know? He doesn’t even believe in God.
It
has always been this way, we used to say that we were telepathetic. When we met
a few minutes ago, he said nothing, just clasped me in an unmanly hug and
looked me directly in the eye, which I know is difficult for him, he says that
he cannot collimate. He is a typical architect, mildly autistic. No one else
did that. Everyone else looked sheepish, didn’t know what to say, except to
murmur, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and then quickly flock to the back of the church, just
in case death is contagious and takes a shine to anyone who lingers.
The
organ has been playing, but I only notice it when it stops. The vicar rises
from his oaken chair, using the shiny
armrests to lever himself upright, prepares to start the final rituals. I want
to stand up and tell him to wait, perhaps Jessica isn’t dead after all; how
foolish would he feel if he started too early and Jessica was to live for
another seventy years? It’s too final. Please wait. Perhaps she is outside, she
never liked being inside churches.
‘Why
would God want to come in here, when all His creation, birds and flowers, are
outside in the sunshine?’ she used to say to me.
I
don’t stand of course, so the vicar starts. I don’t listen. Why would I want to
hear any of this? There are meaningless phrases and platitudes that God must
hear a thousand times each day, in different languages, with ethnic variations,
and some that pass him by because they are addressed to one of the myriad other
gods. The vicar winds down.
The
undertaker’s men slowly file in to take up their places and lift the coffin
onto their shoulders with a practised heft. One even remembers to fold away the
oh-so-practical stands, so that no one trips over them. Heaven forfend that
anyone should get hurt and die at a funeral; too convenient.
We
file out and approach the waiting hole in the ground. Diane wanted cremation,
but obviously I couldn’t even consider that, it would be too final and my
thoughts would visualise too clearly what was happening in the hidden furnace.
The grave is deep, deeper than I imagined, a black hole in the white chalk of
the Sussex downland. I am having second thoughts about cremation, too late, my
thoughts race around seeking scenes I refuse to visualise. How long will it
take for the damp earth to remove the shine from the coffin, how long will it
take the coffin to rot away, how long before…?
I
realise that the shine has been taken from our life forever, no amount of
regretful polishing will ever bring it back.
Why are the birds
singing? Has no one told them that Jessica is dead?
There;
I almost said the unsayable words.
1500 words
