He leaves two strong wonderful men, his sons. I know them so I know.
I knew him too, held him tight a few months ago at the death of his beloved wife, my longtime friend.
Now he is gone. The music man, the gatherer of voices, the conductor, the shy man, quiet, gentle, loving, the nothing left of the something he once was. A tryst. A perfect melody. I hope he finds her out there somewhere. Actually, I know he will.
It’s weird. I eat, sleep, rise, clean the loo, sort the wood burner, fill the bird feeders, puddle through the rain, buy veg and cheese and a toothbrush at the local shop. I play online scrabble with friends, drink coffee, wonder when, if ever, the dream cleaner will come to crush the dust with some poisonous spray in a schmancy bottle, a load of squirts rising into the corners of my spidery home. I wake to find hours and hours ahead of me, even though I love the waking thing, the morning offer of opportunity and chance. I decide to make a coffee and walnut cake. Lord nose why. I don’t eat cake, any cake. It’s a thing to fill the hours, and this one proffers me 45 minutes plus another 60 of baking. It helps, the thought of it. The cake, once retrieved from the oven, is beyond help. I fling it, as my darling Granny would say, in the bucket.
I have only connected with the Woman Gone, now and again over the decades. I married as a teenager, birthed my beautiful first born son at 20. She, the She of this, was already rising into the world of music, and she soared. Her voice. More than that. She, and I remember this, was good at her piano practice. She stuck when I wanted to build fireballs and to run. She stuck, she held, when I lost myself in the running thing, going pretty much nowhere. And then one man held me safe. I had no longing for a career, unlike her. I just wasn’t steady enough, I know that. If the running is in you, in your feet, you probably need someone to, not stop you, no fricking way, but in a gentle hold, breathe, wait, let’s talk, thing.
I have known death, watched it come, and often. But this, this woman, too sudden, too fast, too much. I know how well she was loved, how shocked those who thought, as I did, that there was no chance Death would softly take her. There will be a funeral, memorial, of some sort. And, to be honest, I am glad I will be there. The confusion of this whole frickin awfulness may, just may, find solace in a gathering.
I remember us at the bus stop right outside her house. I walked to it. I’m a primary girl, 6/7/8/9 and on. It was bloody freezing, the frost thick, the snow holding the cold, pushing it into anyone who passed, and particularly into feet and fingers. She laughed at me as I trudged towards her. As I moved closer, I noticed her fur-lined boots. How did she manage that? My mother had read the rules (always), and my shoes were regimen. No fur. My toes were threatening gangrene even then. We boarded the bus for the 25 minute ride to a school I hated, in a uniform that didn’t fit, was grey and puckered in all the wrong places,for me. We moved to the back, as we always did, being early birds on the pickup list. She dug in her lovely schoolbag, coloured and soft, whereas mine, of course, was a hideously rigid satchel, and pulled out a pineapple chunk.
I will never forget that.
Singing is a lark don’t you think?
I feel like singing a lot of the time and sometimes in the wrong places such as the dentist’s waiting room or in a queue at the airport. In my imagination I play out what would happen if I did sing. That old lady over there would probably smile. The kids would gawp and wonder if they had stepped into a movie and all the rest would study me from top to toe and think me bonkers. None of that would matter if I could guarantee sounding good, which is never a given. I would have to be travelling alone because being with someone else puts me in a situation of being One of Two, giving Two the right to an opinion and to take preventative action, neither of which boost conifdence. I can feel very sure about a spontaneous decision and very unsure indeed about that same decision in the flip of one second when I am One of Two. No, I need to be One of One if I plan to orchestrate my own flashmob without the mob. I suspect this leaves me ‘flash’ and all my minders will roll their eyes and nod their heads at that association.
What, I wonder, is so wrong about bursting into song all alone whilst completely sober just because other people are around? Other people are always around. I would have to wander a desert or fly to the moon to find no people around. It isn’t the same singing in the shower, or the car or when the house is empty and I don’t know why but it just isn’t. There’s a sudden joy that pre-empts a desire to sing which I just don’t feel in the shower or the car or when the house is empty. There is something about being out in the world, being among fellow humans, being alone among the crowds; a sort of devilment, a pixie sense of fun, a frisson of excitement at absolutely nothing. This is when I want to jump over the railings or tightrope walk a garden wall; when pavement squares threaten bears and, in their less dangerous moments, hopscotch. I like sitting on the pavement and I do if I feel tired of the concrete seeping into my legs but rarely, if ever, has anyone joined me. Why do we hate to stand out in a crowd when we so long to be individual and recognised as such? It’s about looking foolish isn’t it. (not a question)
The thing is this. We are a long time dead. A boarding school best friend, lost over the years and found again quite recently has just contracted a wasting disease and died within months. She was the same age as me. When we unwillingly schooled together, we recognised a fellow scallywag immediately. She didn’t want to knuckle down to ancient scratchy-knickered traditions any more than I did. We found many ways to make life fun, and to make fun of everyone else. She was wiry and fizzing with energy and always up for a lark. And now she’s gone. But I did know her and I am remembering her and that time we hooked up in London and shared lunch and memories. Our lives had been different and neither one a merry breeze but we were resilient, strong, feisty women who ‘sung’ our hearts out at every opportunity whether it sounded good or not. If I had Kate behind me as my foolish imagination began to propel me into a flashmob without the mob, she would have joined me, not having a clue what to do but looking all enthusiastic about it anyway. Perhaps we are born bonkers and perhaps this bonkerness is so deep within us that no man nor beast nor disaster nor catastrophe can even dent, never mind eradicate. Well YAHOOO! to that is what I say.
When we talked, Kate and I about the other girls there, we discovered she had kept up with them whereas I had not. She knew bits and pieces about each girl’s life and had met up with a few of them, even returning once to an old school reunion which I most definitely didn’t, not least because by that time I had 65 children and lived on the moon. I wonder about their lives lived – what they really dreamed of. We never talked that way at boarding school. We talked about netball and ghastly cheese pie and who had fallen out with who, and why. Most girls kept in line. The risk of being punished was way too great for any out-of-line-stepping. It was all about the ‘Team spirit gels!’ – a team spirit structured by Them for Us, regardless of allergies or differences of opinion on the ‘how and why’ of such a structure. Clomping to church in galoshes on a dry morning did little to encourage this team spirit and a whole lot for my inventive imagination. In fact, I think it may well be precisely because I was grown in Boot Camp and then, at my most difficult stage, packaged off to Corntonvale au Sud, that I learned singing at all. I don’t mean this literally, although I was a choir member and I did take my pianoforte exams, but more the sort of singing that comes from a deep place, one that won’t be stopped, one that doesn’t mind how it sounds when allowed to escape; that singing that lifts and separates better than any playtex living bra; when one of two is suddenly one in a million and forever fixed in 999999999 minds, with adjectives various affixed; that singing you meet in another’s eyes, the one that tells you it’s ok now. There are two scallywags in this convent.
Singing is a lark. Kate was a lark. Therefore Kate was Singing.
Judy Fairbairns 