The Ashes

There’s something that’s been bothering me for the last…how long? Two and a half years probably.  My mother.  Well, more accurately, my mother’s ashes.  She died nearly three years’ ago and at first…well...  Her long cruel illness, her awful death…I simply couldn’t think about it.  I buried (except…but no...) all memory of it. 

She’s been residing at the funeral ‘home’ (Home? Really? Surely not?) Funeral 'parlour'? Interesting. An ‘audience chamber’ – where we talk with the dead? Anyhow. Whatever. It wasn’t right. I hated the idea of her there, sitting on some shelf with the rest of the dispossessed, like baked bean cans in the supermarket. 

My family is small and far-flung.  We got as far as deciding that we’d scatter (rest act) her at Cerne Abbas, where she’d lived as a child, on Giant Hill (which she loved). Which bit, exactly, we hadn’t decided. I rather favoured his erect knob (as that would have amused her).  But anyhow, we didn’t agree a date and months passed and then (time flies) years.  I started getting perturbed, a vague psychic wrongness. 

I asked Adrian if he would go to pick her up.  He said yes but forgot. Again and again and again.  

Why didn’t I go myself? Well, because the place gives me the willies.  I’m not squeamish, not remotely, and I don’t get spooked easily, but there’s something about the suburban banality, the tin-tacky denial of a funeral home/parlour that sends shivers down my spine. Anyhow, it had become a point of principle.  I don’t often ask Adrian to do stuff for me – I’m not the helpless type.  This was symbolic though.  A bit like the skirting board.  But that’s another story, from twenty years’ ago… Yeah, I have a long memory when it suits me. :-)

So you could have knocked me down with a feather yesterday.

‘I’m fetching your mother today.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve phoned them up. They’ll have her ready.’

Huh?

So he dropped me off at the health shop in town and reappeared twenty minutes later.  I had a large bag of muesli, soya yoghurt, tofu and a bar of Green and Black’s.  He had…nothing.

‘Where is she?’ I hissed as the guy behind the counter weighed the muesli.

‘Eh?’

‘My mother.’

‘Oh. In the car.’

The guy smiled benignly. 

‘What’s she in?’

The guy looked puzzled.

‘Huh?  Oh…don’t worry,’ said Adrian.  She’s in a bag.’

‘A bag??’  I held up the muesli.  ‘My mother’s in a bag?’

The guy hastily gave me my change and busied himself with re-arranging herbal cough pastilles.

‘Noooo.’  Adrian shook his head vehemently. ‘Not a bloody paper bag. It’s more of a pouch.’

A pouch? It was getting worse. I began to wish we’d never started this. 

‘Anyhow, if we’re going to watch James play rugby, we’d better go.  Look…’ He smiled reasonably. ‘…she’s coming too. She’d like that.’

I frowned. Was he really suggesting I stand at the touchline with my mother tucked under my arm…in a pouch?

Anyway.  We got home eventually and James sprinted off leaving Adrian and I to unpack the car.  Needless to say, neither of us had told our son that his grandmother was in the boot, in pieces, in a pouch.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you going to look?’  He nudged his head towards the boot.

‘What?’

‘Your mother, for pity’s sake.’

Oh.  So I looked, eyes half-closed, squinting, wincing.  And there it was.  A sort of drawstring bag, a bit like one of those fabric doorstops.  Maroon. Velour. It looked vaguely Christmassy, in a sort of tacky way.  Who chose maroon, I wondered?  Is there a catalogue that funeral home/parlour people flick through, choosing colours, fabrics?  Could you get other choices?  Perky gingham? Jaunty Cath Kidston?  Conservative tweed? Why didn’t we get Timorous Beasties, FFS?

I picked it up. She weighed more than I would have suspected.  I undid the bow, opened it up like a present.  Inside sat a grey plastic container.  Like some kind of chemical container. Industrial.  Banal. That’s it?  A bald label. So you know you’ve got the right one, I suppose.

‘It’s not her, you know,’ said Adrian.

‘I know. Well…’

‘No,’ he repeated, firmly. ‘It’s not her. She’s up here…’ He pointed at his head.

‘What? She’s possessing…’  My eyes widened.  No.  Let’s not go there. My mother is most certainly not possessing my husband.

He frowned and shook his head. Dislodging the thought? Because, of course, you don’t need actually to speak the words for them to reach the psyche.  ‘I meant in our memories. By the way, do you still want her in the drinks cabinet?’

‘Absolutely. She’d like that. In amongst the spirits, of course.  Next to the gin, probably.  Up above the Knob Creek.’

And there she is.  In the Oak Room (made of pine).  By the fireside.  In the drinks cabinet with the weird carvings (which may be oak, come to think of it).  On the top shelf (of three – nearest to heaven?).  She’s living with me… as she always wanted.  And, you know what?  It feels good, it really does. 

Ordeal by swan

‘If we’re the only ones there, we’re getting right out. OK?’
Rachel was worried. We’d decided, a few weeks ago, that we needed some ‘culture’. So, having had a successful night at the village ‘cinema’ watching Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (rather charming) we thought we’d up the ante and go for a bit of theatre.
‘Are we stuck right at the back?’
‘No. That’s what’s worrying. We’re right in the middle. Prime seats.’
I took her point. When you book last minute and get the best seats in the house, it does rather point to a stinker.
Our doubts were confirmed when we got to the theatre and were greeted by, not the usual polite hum, tinkle of laughter and the clank of long beads, but a raucous wall of noise. The theatre bar had turned into a student union with hoards of sixteen year olds shrieking and squawking.
‘School outing?’ Rachel said hopefully.
‘Nah. Dressing the house. It’s desperate.’
Sure enough, when we walked in, the audience was, shall we say, sparse. Every new entrance was greeted by a collective spinning of heads, along with a frequent checking of watches (in the dim hope maybe that we’d all got the time wrong and everybody was suddenly going to pile in, laughing and waving programmes). Indeed, the cavalry did appear – fifty or so of the aforementioned students, clearly not a ticket amongst them, wooshed in and at least gave the appearance of a half-full house.
‘What’s it about?’ I asked.
Rachel had the grace to look abashed.
‘Er, well. It’s about a woman who falls in love with a swan.’
‘Ooh. Greek myth type thing?’ My hopes rose.
‘Hmm. Not really. There are puppets.’
‘Puppets could be good.’
‘You’re so bloody optimistic. Puppets are never good.’ Rachel looked glum.’

The actors came on and were deeply thespy. My heart sank. There was a lot of gesturing towards what looked like a white piñata but was, apparently, an egg. ‘It’s a bloody balloon with papier mache,’ hissed Rachel and started to giggle.
The ‘egg’ was then taken down and whooshed around the stage while two other people added wings and a long neck. Rachel stuffed her head in her handbag and made muffled snorting noises. I bit my cheek so hard I nearly yelped but still my shoulders were shaking with helpless laughter.

It got worse and worse. There was a girl whose mother had died (and came back to visit her in dreams) who liked swans. There was a rather unpleasant man from the library who fancied her (the girl, not the dead mother). There was another girl who tossed her father’s ashes into the river, only to have them eaten by the swan. The swan then started to talk to the first girl. The swan was the second girl’s father (presumably ashes hold the ‘spirit’ of the person which can be transferred to anything passing by – makes you think twice about where you scatter really – you don’t really want your parents cropping up as talking fish, or ducks, or slugs, do you?). Are you still with me? Ten to one you wish you weren’t.
The canny bastards didn’t chance an interval – they must have known darn well that we’d have collectively made a run for the doors.
So we endured.
The girl fell in love with the swan, even though the swan crapped on her floors. They made plans to buy a house-boat ‘to lead a normal life’. Which begs the question, what kind of normal life are you going to live with a swan? The other girl never found out that her father had turned into a swan (which was a blessing as she was feeling guilty enough about dumping his ashes in the river without telling her mother). Then some drunken oik tried to rape the other girl and the swan, being her father, intervened and got himself bashed in. Girl cries. Swan dies. Lights go down. Sigh of relief all round and rapturous applause to the players’ evident bemusement. We’re grateful, you nutters. Grateful as puck that the darn thing is over and that it only lasted 90 minutes or so.

We limped home in Rachel’s on-its-last-legs car (cracked windscreen, two bald tyres, smashed headlight and a tendency to stall on slowing down) and decided we were both too tired and depressed to go for a drink.
‘Next one might be better,’ I said hopefully.
Rachel just gave me a look and drove off, bald tyres spinning into the night.

What was the play? Sorry. Cobbo by Theatre Alibi at the Brewhouse Theatre.....