Last Post Read online

“After all, why should you do anything? Your dead mother had a lesbian affair in the past. So what? She never told you. Tough, but that was her decision, one she had a right to make. So why can’t you just move on?”

  Eve thought.

  “But what about the reference to my father?”

  “Was that John? I don’t think I ever heard his name. You didn’t talk about him.”

  “Yes, his name was John McNabb. I never knew him. Mother didn’t talk about him.”

  “You never asked her?”

  “I expect I did. But not very urgently, obviously. You blame me for that, don’t you?”

  “You know psychiatrists don’t much go in for blame. But it does surprise me.”

  “Mother was obviously all I wanted, and I didn’t need to imagine a benevolent, wise, lost father.”

  Eve was silent for a moment before asking her next question.

  “Did you get the feeling that the pair of them, Jean and May, had done or tried to do something serious, something perhaps to stymie John and his claims on my mother?”

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think much at all about that sentence. Probably I would have if I’d known your father’s name . . . Yes, maybe you’re right. What do you know about your father? All you’ve told me is that he is dead.”

  “Yes—he died when I was about three or four.”

  “Any memories of him in the house?”

  “Hardly anything, and I don’t remember anything that was there earlier on but is now gone. That I do find odd. Mother was not sentimental, but she wasn’t ruthless either. Clearing him away like that seems out of character.”

  “You actually remember asking her about him?”

  “Yes, occasionally. Once I remember asking about him and I was shown a photograph. That obviously satisfied me at the time. Maybe her coldness on the subject was her way of shutting me up.”

  “Seems to me there must be things of his, or things about him, in the house. Some wives in unhappy marriages have a spring clean of everything that reminds them of their dead husband. Did you ever get the impression that your father was hated?”

  “No, certainly not. But then, I never got any impression of him at all.”

  “She could just have put any things of his away somewhere—the attic, a high cupboard—that sort of thing. Worth trying.”

  “Yes. I’ve thought of doing that.”

  “Don’t you even know what he did for a living?” There was an edge of exasperation in his voice. Exasperation was his substitute for blame. He thought her lack of curiosity was blameworthy.

  “Oh yes, I know that. He was a cartoonist.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “Well, that’s more interesting than a train driver or a bank clerk, isn’t it? Who did he cartoon for?”

  “Oh, I think it was The Scotsman. Or maybe the Glasgow Herald or Tribune or something.”

  “Right. Were these daily political cartoons?”

  Eve really had to think.

  “No, I think they were human interest cartoons. Gentle.” Her voice brightened. “That’s right. Mother said they were gentle and she went on: ‘He was a gentle man.’ I remember now. There was a central family in the cartoons, and it was the funny things they did or said, and their comic dog and cat—that kind of thing. Sort of like the Gambols in the Express.”

  “Oh,” said Grant, who was a taste snob: anything that had gone out of fashion was deplorable in his eyes. “Well, let’s hope that he was funnier. Do you realize you’ve just endowed your father with his first characteristic, his first human trait?”

  “Yes, I suppose I have.”

  “If these two determined women ganged up on him, he probably didn’t stand a chance.”

  Eve smiled to herself.

  “I suspect you have just tried very hard to avoid using the word ‘dykes,’ and not to suggest they must have been sergeant-major types in drag.” Grant laughed. He was usually honest about his prejudices with Eve. “Anyway, you’re ignoring one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The fact that, as far as we know, my father won and the lesbian experiment failed. Does ‘Jean’ sound like someone who enjoyed a great triumph all those years ago?”

  “No,” admitted Grant. “She sounds like someone who suffered defeat, and has never been able to put it behind her.”

  “Agreed. So granted I’m going to do something, what do I do?”

  Grant pondered.

  “No address on the letter. Presumably she didn’t put an address on the envelope, as the Americans do?”

  “No.”

  “What about the postmark?”

  “Terribly smudged, as they usually are these days. I think the post office doesn’t want us to know when things were posted.”

  “You could consult a philatelist. Postmarks are probably important to them. He might be able to give you an idea of the length of the town name it was posted from, maybe even the initial letter.”

  “Maybe. That doesn’t get us awfully far though, does it?”

  “No. But you’ve got a two-pronged approach now. Your mother’s possible lesbian affair, and the ‘business with John’ that Jean talks about. Plenty on your plate for a start. Do you know, for example, when your mother took the school job in Crossley?”

  “Oh—when I was very young. No—before I was born, because I was born here. I never remember living anywhere else until I was grown up.”

  “Pin it down. And where did she come from?”

  “Melrose, in the Border country. She always said she took care to minimize her Scottish accent and vocabulary when first she came here. She thought the first priority was to be understood by the children.”

  “Unfashionable but sensible,” said Grant. “And was your father still alive then? And if so, did he come with her?”

  Silence from Eve for some time.

  “I really don’t know. My mother was here for such a long time that it seems like she was always here. But my father—I just didn’t ask about the details, so I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’ll pay for your lack of curiosity by having a mountain to climb. Still, there must be plenty of people in Crossley who remember when your mother arrived there. Get on to them, and see what they know—about your father and any other friends of your mother. Good luck. But remember I recommended you to do nothing at all.”

  And would always be quick to remind her of that if things went wrong, thought Eve. Her immediate reaction to the conversation was satisfaction that she had Grant as a friend, and even greater satisfaction that she no longer had him as a romantic partner. As long as something so ingrained, so much part of him, as his sleek self-satisfaction grated on her, there was no prospect of a really loving long-term relationship. She had always enjoyed her mother’s descriptions, out of Grant’s hearing, of psychology as “pseudo-science” and “high-class mumbo jumbo,” and she wouldn’t have done if she had real respect for his profession. No, that part of her life was over, and well over, and Grant would never again be more than a valued friend.

  Later that evening Eve poured herself a drink from one of the bottles her mother had left—bottles that had probably all been bought at Christmas and had lasted from Christmas to Christmas. Unless in those last weeks May had turned to alcohol as a deadener of pain and fear. With a stiff brandy in her hand Eve went from room to room, looking into drawers and cupboards, noting a few things that had been moved since she had lived there, and the many that were just where she remembered them. All the cupboards too contained just what she remembered—quite naturally: the top of the hall cupboard was piled rather untidily with scarves, gloves and woolly hats, just as she would have expected. There was a kitchen cupboard full of glasses and pudding plates and unwanted mugs, just as it had been when she was a young girl.

  But she did see that high up there were tops of cupboards which contained she knew not what. She rejected the idea of fetching a ladder or the library steps and having a look there and t
hen. Much better to do it in daylight, and without having taken a drop.

  In the bathroom she looked up and saw the covered-over hole that was the access to the attic. She never remembered having been up there. For all she knew it could be empty. But she was beginning to hope not.

  Next morning she ran out of eggs with her breakfast, so the first thing she did was to walk into town and do a shop for the everyday necessities. Then, hoping he began the day early, she went down the side street that led to Bradshaw and Pollock and was delighted to find Mr. Bradshaw in and improving the shining hour. She dealt with some more details of the burial, then, feeling the abruptness of it, she turned the conversation round to one of her current preoccupations.

  “Thinking ahead to the gravestone,” she said, “I suppose it’s usual to put ‘wife of’ or some such formula.”

  “That’s entirely a matter of choice,” said Bradshaw.

  “It’s so long ago, isn’t it?” said Eve. “Thinking about it, I wish I had pressed my mother more on the subject of my father. But I never had any memories of him. I know almost nothing beyond the fact that his name was John McNabb and he was a newspaper cartoonist. Did he come down with my mother when she took the job in Crossley?”

  “Oh yes. I met him—to say hello to—more than once.”

  “What were your impressions of him?”

  “A very nice man: quiet, effacing, just the right sort for your mother we all thought.”

  “Why that? Why did she need an effacing husband?”

  Mr. Bradshaw considered.

  “You know, in this job one sees an awful lot of marriages, with an enormous variety of combinations, successful and unsuccessful. One I’ve come to recognize—and as often as not it’s a successful combination—is the determined, ambitious, strong-minded woman married to a quiet, supportive man who enjoys being in the background. I suppose it’s a direct reversal of the Victorian pattern, but it works very well sometimes. It’s the Mrs. Thatcher and Dennis pattern, isn’t it?”

  “Oh dear,” said Eve. “I don’t think my mother would like that comparison. She called Maggie Thatcher ‘the milk snatcher’ to the end of her days.”

  “She probably wouldn’t like the words ‘ambitious’ and ‘strong-minded’ for herself, but she was both.”

  “But she stayed here for thirty-odd years.”

  “When you’re head of a good primary school, there’s nowhere else to go except into administration or politics. I suspect that neither prospect attracted your mother.”

  “Definitely not. So you met my father—where?”

  “Oh, a couple of parents’ evenings, I think. He came along to fetch May at the end, with the baby—you.”

  “Yes, me. Do you have any other memories?”

  “Not really. Gentle, persuasive, quietly humorous. I’m not being very helpful, am I? But it’s a long time ago.”

  “I’m very grateful to you. And you’ve told me at least one thing I didn’t know: that my father came down with my mother to Crossley.”

  And she had also learned that Mr. Bradshaw, though probably close to his seventies, had an excellent memory for small matters. Perhaps in his profession it was helpful never to forget a face.

  When she reached home she felt as though she was riding on the beginnings of a wave. And the name of that wave was John McNabb. She wandered around the downstairs rooms, identifying places where things might be put away and then forgotten. Her father had died when she was a small girl and it was perhaps most likely that at some point anything that had been kept that referred to him would either have been thrown out or transferred to the attic. Still, at some stage she was going to have a clear out, so it was natural to start now. She got a stepladder from the garden shed, then the biggest cardboard box that she could find. She climbed up to the highest cupboard in a seventies-style set of units, where the television and the CD player sat, along with open spaces for china and glass and big cupboards for games and toys at the bottom. The top cupboard was very high, and from the moment she opened it she realized that its contents were miscellaneous. She brought down stage by stage piles of newspapers and cuttings, odd prints in simple frames, a box of letters and forms, none of them personal, then a pile of old books that had outlived their usefulness—old Companion Book Club volumes, Jilly Cooper novels, a children’s encyclopedia and at the back an old, shiny but cracked photograph album.

  She climbed down carefully, cradling it to her breast, and took it to her old chair in the sitting room. It was only half used—her mother had never been much use at photography, or had much time for people who took photos instead of concentrating on the experience itself. A picture of May, her sister and their parents on the front porch of their house in Melrose began the book. The hostility to photography was mirrored in May’s face. Her grandparents Eve did remember, particularly her granddad, who had died when she was eighteen. May had never been close to her sister, who had died a couple of years ago. There were one or two other childhood photos, and then one with a male friend probably from teachers’ college. That would be about 1960 or so. No sign of miniskirts yet, and probably they wouldn’t have been allowed in college.

  Then at last one of John McNabb, cradling her in the garden at the back of the house in which she now sat. His face was shadowed as he looked down at his baby daughter. She turned the page.

  Here it was at last, a genuine likeness. It was a black-and-white studio portrait, perhaps made for professional purposes. Maybe his newspaper printed the portrait with one of his cartoons from time to time. He looked out shyly from under a lock of hair, his mouth turned traditionally upward in a tiny smile, perhaps requested by the photographer. Nice, humorous, unremarkable. Was Mr. Bradshaw wrong? Did John McNabb turn out to be quite the wrong husband for the determined woman who had called herself to the end May McNabb?

  CHAPTER 3

  Bakemeats

  It was a long time since Eve had been to a funeral. The last one must have been—oh, poor Bella Porter, who committed suicide after she had been diagnosed as having womb cancer. Memory stirred great pity in her: Bella had always said she was an awful coward where pain was concerned, and pills and more pills had seemed to her an unpleasant lesser of two evils. Cancer . . . So often cancer these days. She looked down at her feet as a substitute for praying.

  She had been led to the front pews of dear old St. John the Evangelist, and she had been overwhelmed by nostalgia as the much-loved building cast its spell. It had figured prominently not in family occasions but in school and communal events during the nineteen years of her residence in Crossley. Now she rather wished she had insisted on being seated at the back. Quite apart from the fact that she could have seen the whole nave and the altar better, she would also have had the backs of people’s heads to recognize them by. Ensconced in the pews for family at the front she had nothing but the occasional raised voice to guess who were taking their places behind her. She had a definite sense that the church was filling up. She couldn’t look around for fear she would be judged as assessing the turnout. Or even condemning the absentees. In fact it was a wonderful turnout, considering they must all be friends, colleagues, former pupils, even mere casual acquaintances. There was no family left, apart from her. And she no longer even had a partner to swell the number to two.

  “That place is vacant, isn’t it? I’ll just squeeze past.”

  The voice came from the aisle, a couple of rows back. Eve knew it at once, or knew that she had known it, but now couldn’t place it. She had to restrain herself from peering around at the newcomer. It was a couple of minutes to eleven o’clock. The vicar had stressed that everything should be done to time, since the church was booked for a wedding in the afternoon and would need to be decorated. Eve felt satisfaction in this continuing chain of the vital milestones of most people’s lives. Perhaps she could look around when the coffin began its journey up the aisle. The voice was so individual: a cracked, assertive voice, one that assumed its right to bear witness, its duty
to voice its opinions, however cranky and ill-informed they might be. A voice unheard since her childhood days, and only once then.

  Aunt Ada.

  But surely it couldn’t be Aunt Ada. Not that she was necessarily dead. She was only eight or nine years older than May, and in fact a cousin rather than an aunt. But the breach between the two women had been total, and Aunt Ada surely would not want to attend the funeral. Her mother had not mentioned her for years—probably not since she, Eve, was in her teens. She had seen (and heard) her once, at a family funeral, and had been fascinated. Apart from that, Eve had never met her and knew of her mainly through her mother’s hostility. Oh God—if it was Ada she would have to be asked to the funeral bakemeats afterward. Her pushing her way into the front pews suggested she was going to assert her status as “family.”

  The coffin began its journey to the front of the church, and everyone stood. Then the vicar took charge, an unusually precise yet commanding figure. They prayed, they sang “Guide Me, Oh Thou Great Jehovah,” then George Wilson, May’s deputy at Blackfield Road Primary for many years, read a poem. Eve had wavered between “No Coward Soul” and a Sylvia Plath, but she thought the Emily Brontë too metaphysical for her mother’s down-to-earth tastes and habits, and she then remembered May’s disapproval of a mother whose suicide appeared to her a dereliction of duty. She definitely would not have wanted Sylvia Plath. Finally Eve had decided—this was before the arrival of The Letter—that there was no earthly reason why the poem should be by a woman, and she had chosen “When the Present Has Latched Its Postern Behind My Tremulous Stay,” and Hardy’s view of the afterlife still seemed to her not unlike May’s, though her life had been very much more than a tremulous stay. The reading, very well prepared, as May would have expected, cheered her up, and she listened with good grace to the vicar’s not entirely accurate rehearsal of the facts she had given him about May’s life. There was no mention of a husband, but then she had not mentioned him to the vicar. Next there was a lesson, they sang “Love Divine, All Love Excelling” and via the vicar Eve invited all friends of her mother to refreshments (she couldn’t think of anything else to call them), and then slowly the coffin was taken out into the churchyard and toward the dug grave. Eve followed slowly after it.