The Mass was interminable and the priest couldn’t even remember his name. The burial was worse, raining non-stop. And in the pub afterwards, distant relatives sat gawping at her. They were part of Robert’s extended brood from the countryside. Uncouthness clung to them like agricultural muck on your shoes.
They were the first to leave, most of them with barely a word of commiseration. A middle-aged cousin stopped by her table, as unsure of himself as a ewe before a sheepdog.
‘So like, y’ know… he’ll be missed. Good fellow he was… yeah.’
Missed? By whom? she’d wanted to say. But the ‘whom’ would probably have confused him.
‘Time to go home, Mum.’
That complacent smile, that pasty face with its expectation that she was going to pen herself indoors for the rest of her life with her ‘grief’. The same Lord almightiness as his father. What did he know of who she was at all?
‘Grant’s driving me back, Phil.’
Her teacher son looked suspiciously at the tall, well-built man at the bar. He was olive-skinned – West Indian on one side, apparently – and the guy must be ten years his mother’s junior. Victoria, his mother, was decently dressed today in black jacket and skirt. But recently she’d been dressing tartily, showing her cleavage, emphasising her bum. Had this Grant fellow been trying it on with her while his father lay dying in hospital?
‘I’m taking you home,’ he said insistently. ‘Let’s go.’
He wants me back in my cage, she thought. But she’d finally got a taste of freedom in her nostrils and liked it.
Grant sauntered across to her table, slow and cocky in a way she found attractive; just like John Wayne.
‘Everything OK?’
‘Hop it,’ Phil told him. ‘This is family.’
‘Why don’t you ask your mother what she wants to do,’ Grant said. He spoke nice and slow too. God, he made her hormones rattle. Sixty was the new thirty as far as she was concerned.
‘My son doesn’t think I need to be consulted.’ Victoria said, and then reiterated to her son, ‘Grant’s taking me home. And on Saturday we’re flying to Tenerife for a month.’
‘You – are – what? What about Dad? Are you just going to forget about him?’
‘Robert forgot about me years ago. I was just a bit of house furniture, a cook and cleaner. Didn’t you ever notice, Phil? No, I don’t suppose you did.’
‘Your behaviour’s bloody shameful. You’re an embarrassment to your family.’
Grant gave her his hand and getting up, she said:
‘A month in the sun together. Like a honeymoon!’
‘Listen to you!’ said Phil. ‘I honestly think you’re going senile.’
He stormed off.
‘He’s a conceited git,’ she said to Grant. ‘He’s like his father in every way. Well except biologically. No resemblance there, if you follow my drift. One day I must tell him about that – if the fun ever stops. Will the fun ever stop, Grant?’
‘Let’s go,’ came the reply.
