It’s inconvenient of my mother to die the day after our house goes on the market. I end up calling family and funeral directors while Carys shows people around our four-bedroomed detached.
‘Although,’ I say in a lull between Couple Two and Family Three, ‘it means we don’t have to tell her about us.’
Carys looks up from her clipboard. ‘We weren’t going to tell her anyway. You were.’
She finishes auditing every last teaspoon we’ve accumulated in twenty-seven years and starts googling flights from Chicago to bring Naomi home for the funeral. At least we can now tell our daughter in person that we’re separating.
~
Family Six comes back on Monday and offers the asking price.
‘We should have put it on for more,’ I say.
Carys turns from measuring the bookcase. ‘We’re in a hurry.’
‘You mean you are.’
‘Neither of us is getting any younger.’
~
I drive south to clear my mother’s terraced cottage of the leftovers of a life of nearly nine decades. For her, there were few things as satisfying as a good list, like her notebook of Scrabble scores from twenty-five years of games with her arch adversary and best friend, Belinda. Underneath Mother’s RSPB Bird Spotter’s Checklist are two closely-written sheets of every ailment suffered since the age of ten, starting with mumps. It includes the pregnancy that produced me, although she’d had the grace to put this in brackets.
There’s a list headed ‘People to notify in the event of my death’, except she’d crossed out the second part of the title and substituted ‘when I die’. As I telephone her old cronies, thankful for notes like ‘neighbour from Oakfield Road’ and even ‘schoolfriend’, I notice she’d used pencil, never pen, to cross out those who’d predeceased her. Perhaps it was her way of holding on to them, as if she hadn’t completely lost them.
~
I’m binning out-of-date cake decorations when Carys calls.
‘Which sofa do you want?’
I picture her hovering over her tablet two hundred miles away, itching to allocate one more item on her spreadsheet.
‘I don’t care,’ I say, tipping out a jar of chocolate sprinkles. ‘Neither of us has found anywhere yet.’
‘That’s the other thing. I’ve seen a townhouse I like. To rent, while I look for somewhere to buy.’
‘Well … thank you for telling me. You’re still coming to the funeral, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I’m coming. I loved her too, you know.’
I do know. Carys has plenty of love for lots of people. But no longer for me. Neither of us had pressed the emergency button by having an affair. Our love, it seems, evaporated without us noticing, like water from a birdbath. We swapped early-to-bed lust for night-feeds and nappies, progressing through pantomimes and parents evenings to teen-queen dramas and driving lessons. Before we knew it, we’d settled for empty-nest companionship and home deliveries from Sainsbury’s. I’d thought when we retire in a year or two we might take up cycling, something to get us out of the house together. But now we’re selling the house. I’d prefer to keep going and try harder. But Carys wants out.
~
I decline the funeral directors’ Chapel of Rest option, another way of loading their already eye-watering bill. Mother had looked more and more awful over her last months in the nursing home, as the life leaked out of her, often literally. No embalmer’s alchemy could transform her into the person I prefer to remember. Instead, I splash out on a special coffin, covered with shiny images of British garden birds against a pale blue sky. I don’t tell anyone, even Carys, who’d always shared her mother-in-law’s enthusiasm for anything feathered. I want it to be a surprise.
~
I tackle Mother’s bookshelves. pulling out the novels I’d given her over the years, knowing they’d come to me eventually. It’d been like storing them on an invisible shelf of my own, without Carys moaning about Too Many Books.
The date-ordered programmes for Shepperton’s Annual Gala Day fail to make the final cut into my stash crate. The softback volumes of the St Michael Cookery Library are a no-brainer for Oxfam, in case anyone wants titles like the mouthwatering Cooking for your Freezer, although their smeary covers must constitute a health hazard. More interesting is a pair of pocket-sized notebooks, ‘Books I Have Read’ and its companion ‘More Books I Have Read’. I half expect to find the last in the trilogy, ‘Books I Have Not Read’.
Then I discover an A4 hardback one with a cover of white swans against a golden background. In blue fountain-pen inside, in my mother’s familiar schoolmistress script, are the words ‘My Book of Best Days’.
As I open pages at random, I realise what she’d done. Starting with the day of her wedding, she’d compiled an edited super-diary, probably transcribing each record from her pocket diaries, calendars, and other scraps of memory.
Each entry has its own page, like ‘We welcome darling baby Michael.’ Others chronicle my first smile, first tooth, and the day I first rode my red Triang bicycle without stabilisers. On a page for my first day at school she’d itemised every piece of the green uniform we’d piled on the glass counter at the outfitters, and into which she’d sewn a Cash’s woven nametape. She’d dutifully logged my first, and only, sporting achievement: ‘Michael comes second in the half-width at Swimming Sports.’
For our wedding, Mother had written ‘Michael and Carys are married today. This is the happiest day of my life.’ A few pages later is ‘My gorgeous granddaughter is born. This (underlined) is the happiest day of my life.’
There are long gaps, sometimes of several years. Had nothing happened which was worthy of qualifying? The last entry, nearly nine years ago, describes a tea party she’d held in aid of the hospice, detailing friends invited, friends attending, and cakes baked.
There’s no mention of her divorce from my father. I’m glad this wasn’t a ‘best day’.
One page celebrates a trip with Carys to the Slimbridge Wetland Centre, with sightings of shelduck and sandpipers, barnacle geese and bar-tailed godwits. There are pages and pages dominated by one person: ‘I take Naomi to see Aladdin’, ‘I give Naomi a Snow White costume’, ‘Naomi comes to stay by herself’. Under this one she’d detailed their activities and outings. The entry ‘Naomi and I hold a doll’s tea party’ includes a guestlist of dolly participants.
And there’s my visit on a Sunday afternoon long ago. ‘Michael brings the sweetest, most kind-hearted girl to meet me. I can only hope I have raised him to be good enough for her. Her name is Carys.’
~
I’m bagging-up damask tablecloths and hand-embroidered napkins when Carys calls, checking I’ll be able to collect Naomi from Manchester Airport. We agree to wait until after the funeral to tell her our news.
‘I’ve told the agents to collect the For Sale sign,’ she says. ‘And not to put up a Sold one.’
‘Yeah, good thinking.’
‘How’s it going with Operation Clear Out?’
‘Well, I’m on first-name terms with the manager at Oxfam. I’ve given them so much stuff she’s asked me to soft-pedal, so I’m switching to Barnardo’s. I’ll bring all the jewellery back. Mother left a list of the pieces she wanted you and Gnomey to have.’
‘Aww, how sweet of her!’
‘And I’ll bring the CDs. There’re some Val Doonicans which will have eBay watchers in a frenzy.’
‘You’ve got CDs of your own to get rid of. You don’t listen to most of them.’
‘Because you always tell me to turn the volume down.’ And because you can’t stand the likes of Jimi, Eric, and Led Zep.
I load the boot and back seat to drive home. But I leave my mother’s Book of Best Days on the coffee table.
~
As we pack the car the day before the funeral, Carys hands me a bag. ‘Want to choose some music?’
‘These are mostly mine. You don’t like this stuff.’
‘Well maybe I can put up with it.’
‘You sure?’
‘Don’t argue Dad,’ Naomi says. ‘Or I’ll get my Westlife ones from upstairs.’
‘Okay, let’s start with Meat Loaf,’ I say, trying not to think about Naomi boxing up everything in her bedroom.
~
We stay at the cottage, the girls in the spare room with the second mattress pulled out to leave barely a foot of floor space. Naomi and I go up to bed at the same time, leaving Carys in her dressing gown looking through bird books from the bookcase.
I sleep in my mother’s single bed, which, although she’d died at the nursing home, might have felt odd had I not been exhausted. I wake early and notice that the Book of Best Days has moved from the table to the sofa. After breakfast I rehearse my speech until it’s time to leave for the crematorium.
As we wait, I’m so proud of Naomi, composed and immaculate in black, chatting to one stranger after another, putting them at their ease. Carys does the same, equally elegant and poised. Anyone can see who Naomi takes after.
The doors open and we shuffle in and sit down, my wife and daughter either side of me at the front. To a recording of the Shepperton Choral Society we stand and turn to watch four burly men carry my tiny mother her final few yards. As the beautiful coffin draws level, Carys clutches my arm. ‘You didn’t tell me about the birds!’ Then she buries her head against my shoulder.
Naturally, I refer in my eulogy to Mother’s long love affair with lists. This releases ripples of wry smiles, rising to a restrained chuckle when I mention her file of tradespeople not to use. But when I quote from her Book of Best Days, I’m not the only one in tears.
All too soon, our contracted half hour concludes with a meditative minute of Albinoni’s Adagio. I pay my last respects before the coffin and stride out into the thin sunlight with Carys on my arm, followed by Naomi and the stalwarts of the Shepperton Seniors Day Centre.
~
Later, as we climb into the car, I see Carys or Naomi has popped Mother’s Book of Best Days into a bag. We lock up the little cottage and start our long journey home, Naomi falling asleep even before the M40. Carys is very quiet, doubtless, like me, lost in memories.
When we stop at the service station, Carys and I get back to the car first. We watch Naomi sauntering through the neon-lit twilight, swinging a bag from Costa, the muted roar of the motorway ever-present.
‘When shall we tell her?’ I say. ‘Now, or in the morning?’
She’s back, reaching for the door handle.
‘Actually,’ Carys says. ‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘Yep?’
‘About us.’
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield. His winning entry in the Off the Rails 3 Minute Story Competition was read aloud to passengers on the Esk Valley Railway between Middlesbrough and Whitby. He’s packed Christmas hampers in a Harrods basement, sold airtime for Radio Luxembourg, and served a twelve-year stretch as an insurance copywriter. He liked the writing job best.
@chriscottom.bsky.social
