The Lubetkin Legacy

Berthold: Mud

Just as Inna and I left the flat for the funeral, the heavens opened. Inna ran back to fetch her umbrella, a jolly leopard-skin-print number, which she flicked open as we raced towards the waiting minicab. Through the blur of rain, I noticed a small red car pulling up at the kerb behind us. Mrs Penny was at the wheel, staring in our direction.

‘Quick! Let’s go!’ I yelled at the driver, handing him the piece of paper with the hand-drawn map.

‘Green Glade? Never heard of it. Have you got a postcode?’

‘Um … not exactly. N4 it says. Just go!’

The minicab driver pulled away slowly. The red car didn’t follow. Phew!

‘Go where? N4’s a big area, mate.’

A steady rain was falling, drumming on the roof of the minicab. Inna was perched on the back seat next to me like a bird of ill omen, dressed all in black with a jet necklace and matching jet earrings, a dab of pink lipstick, and clutching her wet umbrella, unaware of the lucky escape we had just had.

‘Head north,’ I told the minicab driver, ‘and I’ll phone the funeral director.’

But Jimmy the Dog was doggedly not answering.

We passed up Kingsland Road, and Inna, peering through the misted-up window, started jumping up and down, ‘Oy! Stop here! Stop! My friend will know. He come from Georgia, but been in London long time.’

The cab driver pulled up outside a shabby shop which appeared to sell mainly international phonecards and ‘herbal Viagra’. Hm. That was something I might need to look into, should matters with my beautiful neighbour approach a consummation devoutly to be wished. It was a long time since I had put the beast through his paces.

‘Ali! Ali!’ Inna shouted from the pavement outside the shop under her leopard-skin umbrella, and moments later a huge man with a black beard, a gold front tooth and an embroidered skullcap opened the door. He looked at her, laughed, and hugged her in a giant embrace. She showed him the piece of paper. He frowned and turned it this way and that, muttering something I could not hear. She stood on tiptoes and kissed him on the chin — she could not reach his cheek — and hurried back to the cab.

‘He not very sure. Mebbe Finsbury Park next-door railway.’

As the minicab driver got on the road again, the mobile in my pocket rang.

‘Jimmy? Thank God! Listen, I don’t know exactly where we’re going … have you got an address? Or a postcode?’

His voice sounded faraway and scratchy. ‘Calm down, Bertie. Meet us under the railway bridge at Finsbury Park Station. You can follow the hearse.’

Follow the hearse — that sounded like the first sensible thing I had heard all day. The cab driver put his foot down and off we went, ploughing through a tropical-style downpour; the windscreen wipers dancing their crazy hand-jive barely managed to maintain visibility. I would have asked him to pull over and wait it out, but we were now pushed for time.

As we ducked under the shelter of a wide flat bridge, the drumming on the roof ceased instantly. And there in front of us, with its sidelights still on, was the hearse. I jumped out, and went over to where Jimmy was standing on the pavement. He looked superbly funereal, dressed in black tails with a black top hat and a black silk handkerchief in his breast pocket.

He shook my hand solemnly, and patted my shoulder. ‘Well done, Bertie. You made it. It is a little difficult to find. Nuisance about the rain. Of course she is beyond reach of all that now,’ he nodded solemnly towards the coffin in the back of the hearse with a single white lily laid on top of it. ‘Safe from tempest, storm and wind.’

‘Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower.’ A tear sprang into my eye, but something about the coffin bothered me. ‘The coffin — it seems a bit cheap, Jimmy.’

‘Cardboard, old pal. Biodegradable. More environmentally friendly. We’ve all got to do our bit on climate change, haven’t we?’

I didn’t like the look of it at all; it reminded me of those big supermarket boxes they pack loo rolls in. But I supposed it was too late to do anything about it now. At that moment, two elderly women, dressed alike — all in black, with black hats, white frizzy hair and bright red lipstick — rushed up to us.

‘Where is Green Glade cemetery?’ they gabbled. ‘Is this Lily Sidebottom’s funeral?’

I was so taken aback it took me a few moments to recognise Ted Madeley’s twin daughters.

‘Bertie?’ The first twin looked me up and down.

‘Jenny? Margaret?’

‘Jenny. That’s Margaret.’ She pointed at the other twin, who was standing at the back of the hearse, trying to peep inside. At first sight, she seemed identical, but as I got used to their likeness I also noticed differences; Margaret appeared older, more frail and stooped, though of course they were exactly the same age. ‘Thanks for getting in touch, Bertie. It’s good to have a chance to pay our respects. She was a fine lady, Lily, even though we didn’t always see eye to eye.’

‘Fine. Yes, indeed,’ I murmured.

When I had last seen them, they were in their thirties. The cruel hand of time had indeed scrawled his ugly mark over their once pretty features. Then again, I had been just a boy, so it was a miracle that they remembered me at all. Mum had kept in touch for a while, but I hadn’t seen them since I left home. I heard they had both married in their thirties, and both lost their husbands in their sixties. That’s one of the strange things about twins, the way their lives mirror each other.

‘Why is the coffin made out of cardboard?’ asked Margaret.

‘It’s ecological,’ I said. ‘This is going to be a woodland burial.’

‘But won’t it go soggy in all this rain?’ From the edge of the railway bridge, water was sloshing down on to the traffic like an overflowing bathtub.

‘Lily was a great campaigner on climate change. It’s what she would have wanted.’ That shut her up. ‘This is Lily’s friend, Inna Alfandari.’ Inna had been prowling around the hearse, examining the coffin. I introduced Jenny and Margaret as Lily’s stepdaughters.

‘I am mother? I am sister?’ Inna whispered, glancing at them with a nervous smile.

‘Friend. Just a friend, Inna. A confused friend.’ I did a quick Lear’s Fool roll of the eyes.

She winked beadily, ‘Hey ho! Rain it rain it every day!’ Then she flicked out her umbrella as if for an approaching storm, and they all gathered under it, even though it was quite dry under the bridge.

‘We’d better drive up as close to Green Glade as we can,’ said Jimmy, who was wearing fancy grey trousers and leather-soled shoes. ‘Just follow us in the cab. You and I can carry the coffin between us when we get there. It’s not heavy.’

He introduced the driver of the hearse as Miss Wrest, the owner’s daughter, a lugubrious mousy-haired young woman wearing a top hat and a black suit, her face blanked out with panstick make-up which also covered her lips. I have never slept with a female undertaker, but this may be one life experience that passes me by.

As soon as we left the shelter of the bridge, the rain sheeted down. The minicab followed close behind the hearse. Miss Wrest was a nervous driver, heavy on the brakes. Once we almost slammed into the back of her when she braked sharply to avoid a drunk who lurched out into the road, and after that the cab driver held back a bit. As the hearse sailed past a parade of shops, a bus pulled out, getting in between us and the hearse. It had the smirking George Clooney poster on the back, which I took as a bad omen.

We only just managed to keep behind the hearse as it turned right — our driver’s view was blocked by the bus. After that we wended our way down some anonymous residential roads and soon came to a halt in a cul-de-sac, at the bottom of which a footpath led towards a bank of trees. Here we got out, and opened our umbrellas. I noticed a not-very-prominent sign stuck into the ground that said Green Glade, with an arrow pointing towards the footpath. Beside it stood a couple of guys waiting under a green and white striped umbrella, whom Jimmy introduced as the gravediggers. They were wearing smart but soggy black tracksuits with a Wrest ’n’ Piece logo on the breast pocket, and both had pencil moustaches, presumably because they thought it was part of the gravedigger look. A third man — a thin elderly guy wearing a damp black suit, a bit short in the leg, and a bowler hat — stood beside them under his own black umbrella. I wondered who he was. I shook his hand and introduced myself, and he mumbled something I didn’t catch, his words mashed by the booze I could smell on his breath.

Jimmy was right — the coffin bearing my mother’s body was not heavy at all. So many years of life and love reduced to this puny parcel of cardboard and dust. I held back my tears as we hoisted it on to our shoulders, him on the right side, in front, me at the back on the left, leaving his right arm and my left arm free to hold umbrellas. This awkward equilibrium was like the balance of gladness and sadness in my heart as I bore my dear mother’s mortal remains towards their resting place. Although frankly, the rain was annoying.

Mousy Miss Wrest, who was wearing knee-high black boots, the only one of us with sensible footwear, strode out in front, holding a black umbrella. Inna and the Madeley twins huddled behind us under Inna’s leopard-print umbrella, and the gravediggers, sheltering under the green and white, brought up the rear, with the thin bowler-hatted man tagging along beside them. With downcast eyes we set off up the muddy path. The trees dripped all around us. My mind was so caught up with the solemnity of the occasion that I hardly noticed the slipperiness underfoot, but Jimmy was slithering about in his leather-soled shoes.

The footpath from the cul-de-sac joined another larger track through woodland, which was gravelled and raised, about the width of a railway track. Here under the trees the rain was gentler and the ground less treacherous. We followed this for some two hundred metres, until another Green Glade arrow pointed up a grassy rise towards a grove of trees through which I caught a glimpse of a wide green glade. It would indeed have been an idyllic spot, had it not been for the rain.

Even in her sensible boots Miss Wrest struggled to keep upright on the wet grassy slope, now partly trodden into mud. I cunningly pointed my umbrella downwards, and used the spike to stick in the ground to give myself a bit of leverage. I daren’t look over my shoulder to see how the old ladies behind were doing. In front of me, Jimmy was skidding dangerously, flailing with his umbrella arm. We had made it about halfway up the incline, when his phone rang. Balancing the coffin on one shoulder, he fumbled in his pocket.

‘Yes, Phil, yes, okay, I get what you’re saying … parting of the ways … sorry, I can’t speak now … Green Glade … sorry it had to end like this …’

Suddenly a roar like a low-flying jet reverberated through the trees, making the ground shake beneath our feet. In the moment that I lost concentration, Jimmy slipped. The coffin slid off his shoulder and bounced down the steep path on to the track below. I turned, lost my footing, and slid after it, my opened umbrella acting as a sort of parachute. Jimmy did a sideways skid and managed to bring down the three old ladies and the bowler-hatted gent, before landing beside the dented coffin, his phone still pressed against his ear in one hand and his umbrella aloft in the other. Only the gravediggers were upright, and they were still on the main track, standing by being elegantly unhelpful.

Amidst all the confusion, I was aware that there was a terrific amount of noise — the low-flying aeroplane now sounded more like a high-speed train roaring past quite close by behind the trees, Jimmy was still jabbering into his phone and the three women were screaming their heads off. The screaming seemed a bit excessive, I thought, but in a moment I could see the reason for it. The wet cardboard coffin had burst open, and the corpse had tumbled out, stiffer than its container, to join the melee. Inna was screaming and crossing herself. Margaret had fainted. Jenny, who was underneath it, was trying to push its shoulder out of her face. I looked, and looked again. Even beneath its muddy coating, the corpse didn’t seem quite right.

I screamed too. ‘There’s been a mistake! This isn’t my mother!’

‘Don’t distress yourself, Mr Sidebottom.’ Miss Wrest laid a soothing hand on my arm. ‘Appearances of a post-life loved one can often be deceptive. Death is a great counterfeiter, you know.’ She patted me with her fingertips; her nails were painted scarlet, the only touch of colour about her.

‘She was probably done by one of the trainees,’ added Jimmy, replacing his phone in his pocket. ‘We’ve had some new jobseeker placements in the funeral parlour. Lily would have been in favour of that, you know, helping to prepare the long-term unemployed for useful jobs. We’ve all got to do our bit on the economy, haven’t we?’

‘But …’ I looked again. It looked distinctly unlike Mother. ‘… it’s a man. An old man. An ex-old-man, I should say.’

‘It not my Lily! It fake!’ cried Inna.

The dead man’s false teeth had popped out and were grinning up at her from the mud. His face looked partly shaven with some ghastly cuts in the skin.

‘Nonsense! Look, we’ve got the death certificate!’ Miss Wrest flourished a soggy piece of paper, which did indeed bear my mother’s name.

The thin bowler-hatted man looked about him in surprise. ‘Is thish not Mrs O’Reilly’s funeral?’

‘No,’ replied Miss Wrest. ‘She’s with the Council up at St Pancras. They undercut us.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’ll all be over by now.’

‘Could you tell me, will there be a wake after thish funeral?’

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘Now piss off.’

‘I’m very shorry,’ he slurred, ‘I think I made a mishtake.’ He crawled towards the solid ground of the path and staggered off on his muddy way.

Inna was struggling to get up, but couldn’t find her footing. Her glasses were down in the mud beside the false teeth. I reached down to offer her a hand, lost my balance, slipped, and crashed. A piercing pain shot through my left eye. When I put my hand to my face, it was covered in blood.

Then I blacked out.

When I came round I was in the back of an ambulance woo-wooing through the streets of London. A male paramedic was pressing a blood-soaked pad to my face and the world was half dark. Miss Wrest was sitting beside me holding my hand. She had lost her top hat, and her long mousy hair was damp and tangled over her face. Most of the panstick make-up had washed off too, so that I could see her features, which were pudgy and babyish but not unattractive — as far as I could tell with my remaining eye.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘You stabbed yourself in the eye with the spoke of your umbrella,’ Miss Wrest answered calmly. ‘You were extremely distressed.’

The memory of the ghastly scene flooded back to me and I struggled to sit up, but the paramedic pushed me back gently but firmly on to the stretcher.

‘Lie still.’

‘Mother! What happened to my mother?’

Miss Wrest squeezed my hand reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry.’