England and Other Stories

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

I NEVER THOUGHT this would happen to me, Hettie, though I always knew it could. But I never thought I’d be lying here like this in your spare room, looking at your picture of the ‘Old Harry Rocks at Studland’ on the wall. Death’s a funny thing, Het. Can you say that?

Have I told you about Lawrence of Arabia?

There’s supposed to be a family that rallies round. But it was just me and Roy, like it was just you and Dennis. We were the two Mrs Underwoods, but there was something tricky with the Underwood genes. Never mind. Carry on. Now it’s just you and me, and it feels like we’re a couple of real sisters, not sisters-in-law, and you’re the older one, though you’re not, because you went through all this ahead of me with Dennis. Not the right order, but what bloody order is there?

And when Dennis went you had Roy and me. Or rather we both had Roy. We both had Roy being an older brother like he’d never been before, taking charge like he’d never taken charge before. Well, he stopped taking charge just over a week ago, and it was all I could do, in the time before he went, to make him understand he didn’t have to take charge any more.

I know, Het, of course I do. Studland. It was where you and Dennis went for your honeymoon. It was a joke once, wasn’t it? In a different world. Honeymoon. Studland. And Roy and I went to the Scilly Isles. There was a joke there too.

A couple of sisters, a couple of widows. It makes me think of a couple of crows. Or do I mean crones? Who’d have thought it, years ago, when it was Roy the Boy and Dennis the Menace, that one day we’d become like those pairs of crumple-faced women you used to see in pubs, nursing their glasses of black Guinness.

No, all right, that’s not exactly us. Nursing our glasses of white wine.

I’m so grateful to you for taking me in. You had other plans. You were going somewhere warm. I’ve forgotten where already. Not Studland anyhow. You said, ‘I’ve cancelled everything, Peg. You’re staying with me.’ You said, ‘It’s Christmas, but it can be whatever you want, it can be not Christmas if you like. I don’t have a bit of tinsel in the house. Don’t argue, Peg, you’re staying with me.’

Did I say ‘taking charge’?

And why should Roy have hung on for Christmas? So he could spend it in a hospital bed? So I could come in with a cracker for us to pull, if he had the strength? So he could wear a funny hat?

They say however much you prepare, nothing prepares you. They say it doesn’t hit you till after the funeral. Well, that was yesterday, the day before Christmas Eve. You can’t choose your date, can you? Or the weather. A howling gale, umbrellas blowing inside-out. And you’d been going somewhere warm.

They say — who are these they with their big mouths? — that you’re in a state of shock. I don’t know about that. Do you know what I thought, Het, when I left that hospital, after he’d gone? I thought: This can’t be happening, I can’t just be sitting here on a number nine bus. I thought: He’s with me still, of course he is, it’s up to me now to make him be with me. I felt in a state of importance, that’s what I felt. Never mind shock. Nothing so important had ever happened to me before. Except of course the importance of meeting Roy in the first place.

The Scilly Isles, 1965. Us and Harold Wilson.

A state of importance. Does that sound silly? I’m not an important person. Nor was Roy. All he did, before he retired, was get to the top of the Parks Department and run five public parks and nine other sites of horticultural amenity. And how he took charge of them.

There I was on that bus, wanting only to be with him, wanting only to make him be with me. But do you know who else was on that bus too?

Peter O’Toole.

Maybe I’d already heard it at the hospital. Maybe I’d heard one nurse say to another, ‘Have you heard — Peter O’Toole has died?’ And if I did hear it maybe I’d thought: No, I didn’t hear that. I don’t want to hear it anyway. Not now.

But the bus was full of people going to work, holding newspapers with Peter O’Toole on the front. I couldn’t not know about it. And only days before it had been Nelson Mandela. Deaths don’t come much bigger, do they? And I hadn’t wanted to know about that either. But even Roy, lying there with his tubes and drips, had to be aware that Nelson Mandela had died. Nelson Mandela who took charge of South Africa. And you know what he said? ‘Well perhaps it’s all right for me then.’ And perhaps in some way it was. And you know what else he said? ‘All these black nurses, Peg. It matters for them, doesn’t it?’

There I was on that bus, at seven in the morning, with the Christmas lights floating by outside, just two hours after Roy had died, looking at the face of Peter O’Toole. Except it wasn’t even Peter O’Toole. It was Lawrence of Arabia. On every newspaper. It was as if Lawrence of Arabia had died all over again. As if Lawrence of Arabia had got on the bus.

How unfair to Peter O’Toole. How unfair to Roy.

But the truth is I couldn’t help thinking, just like everyone else: Those blue eyes, that golden hair, that man in the white robes, striding along the roof of a train. How old were we when Peter O’Toole suddenly came along? And what girl wouldn’t? In her dreams.

Two hours after Roy had gone and I was thinking about Peter O’Toole. Or thinking about Lawrence of Arabia. Or not thinking about either of them, since I was thinking about that man in the fluttering white robes, who only ever existed in a film, didn’t he? I’ve seen pictures of the real Lawrence of Arabia and he looks like a little squinty man you wouldn’t want to spend any time with.

But he was important, wasn’t he? He’d done something important. So had Peter O’Toole, if only to turn into Lawrence of Arabia. And so of course had Nelson Mandela. A state of importance, don’t we all want just a bit of it?

It must be Christmas morning already, Het, no longer Christmas Eve. I’m so grateful to you. A couple of sisters, in our separate rooms, waiting for Father Christmas, in his red robes, who never existed either.

All those crazy Englishmen — and Peter O’Toole wasn’t even English, was he? — who went off to foreign parts, to do crazy things, wear Arab costume or whatever, to make their mark on the world, take charge. All those crazy Englishmen in the midday sun.

There I was on that bus, riding along Fairfax Street with Lawrence of Arabia. Now here I am in your spare bedroom, with the light on because I don’t want to lie in the dark, wondering who the hell was Old Harry.

Well, I’m a lucky girl. Most widows get a few flowers, I get five parks.

Roy never had blue eyes or golden hair or wore white robes, like some bloody angel. He died in one of those hospital nightie things, all peek-a-boo up the back. He had brown eyes and black hair, most of which had gone anyway. His little brother went before him. So did Nelson Mandela. And now he’s gone too, Hettie, he’s gone too, like his hair.