Finishing Touches

Finishing Touches

"I think you should call this baby Neville, It's the least you can do
for your brother's memory."
It was the first time my father had spoken Nev's name to me in the
fifteen months since the cold, cheerless funeral in January. I doubted
if this was going to be the beginning of a long, soul searching, heart
to heart about Neville or about anything meaningful but it was a start
and at least he was acknowledging the fact that I, if not he, had a
future. A future with a husband and a baby. A normal future.

The funeral, of course, had been awful but how could it have been any
other way? How could anybody's funeral be other than gut wrenchingly,
finger nail scraping down the blackboard, worst moments of your life
awful? But this one was doubly blighted by a blanket of shame. There
was so much that could not be said but so many doubts and questions
that we all needed answers for. Answers that even in that first
anguished week since his death we all knew would never come. The
officiating priest followed a cold, neutral formula rather than
creating the praise and eulogy that would have been Neville's due in
any other circumstances of death. Around the shallow grave the inner
circle of mother, widow and two elder sisters wept silently, faces
bereft, drained of emotion. My mother crumpled and crushed, incapable
of speech or expressing a gracious greeting, a word of thanks to the
few mourners who had come. My father and I prowling around the outer
edges, alternately avoiding and approaching each other. My father still
licking his wound at the ignominy of our arrival at the church. It
could have been funny, if "funny" had been on the menu; As the funeral
car drew up, he turned inwards to take the mass cards off my sister,
one buttock resting on the leatherette seat, he leaned back just as the
funeral director pulled open the rear door and tumbled out onto the
grass verge. It wasn't a trip or a stumble; it was the full Buster
Keaton arse over elbow tumble. He wasn't hurt, his suit wasn't stained
and he was on his feet in a moment but the younger of the two
undertakers couldn't resist a little joke
"Careful there now, can't have the clients thinking we're trying to
drum up more business, can we?"
It was harmless enough and despite a reproving glance from his boss, he
would have forgotten it by evening. But my father would store it up.
Humiliation upon humiliation. Mortified beyond bearing and compounded
by a young whippersnapper grinding salt into his wounded pride. I felt
for him at that moment, far more than for my mother's anguish or my
sister-in-law's broken heart. I understood.
The next day my colleagues tried to be tender with me.
"How did the funeral go?"
But how could you reply?
"Hmmm, beautiful day for it, the photos should come out nice."
Or should you just announce to all at the front desk that you felt like
your soul was being ripped out of you with every step you took closer
to the gaping hole. Or that a wall of impenetrable shame had built
itself around you. Or that even when you had tried to reach out to your
heartbroken father, gently brushing your hand against his, he had
turned his back on you and taken four deliberate steps away from you,
oceans of solitude opening up between yourself and your
sanctuary.
Of course you don't, you thank them quietly and try to show everybody
how well you are bearing up. That's exactly what I did for the last six
months before I took off, leave that became indefinite and expanded to
fill as much space and time as I could possibly manage. Still trying
to.
_____________________________________

My very first memory is of Nev's return from the states where he'd been
on a two-year scholarship at Berkeley. I was four and I'd been hearing
about big brother for weeks, a lifetime when you're small. I know that
I'd been granted the special privilege of staying up later than my
strict early evening bedtime. I know that my Mum and grown up sisters
were nervous and excited. I suppose I was washed and scrubbed and
everybody would have been in their mid 60?s best. Janet would perhaps
have been in hot pants or a mini skirt to show off how grown up she had
become in his absence. Mum would probably have been in crimplene
paisley, a texture and pattern I came to despise when I hit adolescence
in the 70's. I would have undoubtedly been wearing a nightie; little
girls didn't wear pyjamas until at least ten years later. I had been
sitting at the top of the stairs for half an hour or so, snorting and
giggling at the way the adults ran to look out through the curtains of
the bay window every time they heard a car.
The tension and excitement was getting to me. I'd already run up to the
next floor twice for a pee, the second time wetting my panties before I
could wriggle them down, so I'd slipped them off and held them bunched
up in my clammy little fist before settling down again at my vigil
post.
It was a mild evening but the staircase of our tall, Edwardian house
acted as a chimney so that every time someone opened the front door to
see if this really was my father and Neville, a cool draught of night
air would come rushing up the stairs and under my nightie to tickle my
legs and what I coyly called my twinkie. I sat there slapping my thighs
together and fidgeting on the top step, loving the thrill of it all and
feeling that I was touching the outer rim of a magic circle. One false
move and I could be banished.
The women's shrieks and hollers reached new heights just after the nine
o'clock chimes as the headlights of my father's car swung into the
drive, the engine died and doors opened and slammed. There was such a
flurry of hugs and swirl of kisses in the downstairs hall that it took
several frozen moments for me to realise that the huge, hulking beast
in the midst of all this love was the hero I had been waiting for. I
wasn't so stunned by his size, I come from a large family in all
senses, but I was totally unprepared for the hairy face and mass of
long hair. I didn't know anyone with a beard, let alone one so unkempt
and bushy, for all I knew he could have been the evil bear prince from
"The Singing Ringing Tree".
I blinked, I blanched, my lower lip trembled and finally I
screamed.
I screamed as only small children can. Uncontrollably, inconsolably,
beside myself with cold, stark horror. A full ten minutes passed before
I began to calm down, the screams being replaced by gulps and shivers,
low pitched moans and crumpled features. At some point my mother took
the still damp panties out of my hands and, thinking that here was the
root of the problem, gently chastised me for making such a fuss about
nothing. I was not allowed back downstairs that night and my mother
missed the first half hour of the homecoming celebration. It is to her
eternal credit that her impatience and sorrow did not show through. Not
once did she get up from the edge of my bed to call out instructions or
hover by my door trying to catch snippets of the conversation drifting
up the stairs.
She stayed with me until I was quite asleep and then crept back
downstairs to join in their glee and to hush their peels of laughter
and shrieks of delight if they threatened to wake the sleeping child
above them.
________________________________________

We had our last family holiday together in the summer after I took the
Eleven Plus. Nobody had any doubts that I would pass with ease so there
was no element of reward in our trip to France. If anything it had been
posed as a punishment for Irene, a last attempt at distancing her from
the grim, unsuitable young man she had taken up with. I think Janet's
first husband was with us though I remember little of him other than
huge teeth and dreadful fungusy breath. He didn't last long enough for
me bother learning more than his name.
Neville was, surprisingly, still single. Tall and dark with a classic
chiselled jaw, rather close set eyes and the sort of exuberant nose
that only men can get away with. He was a catch and he must have known
it. He couldn't have been satisfied with the clumpy English girls with
their hairy legs and blotchy skin; so he'd been biding his time,
waiting for such a perfect essence of French charm, elegance and spirit
as Chantal.
They met on the second evening our holiday; at the time I was far too
busy absorbing the sights, sounds and smells of a different world:
fruits I'd never dreamt of, fragrant mangos and kiwis, multi coloured
melons; the sensuality of a fondue dripping from its fork; the
titillation of a topless beach; to pay any attention to my big
brother's courting but Chantal told me their story years later. They
met at an art gallery in Angoul?me, a gallery that would later be
famous for promoting the Salon du Comic, but at the time was simply a
showcase for local talent, and Chantal was definitely local talent.
They fell in love a coup de foudre, recognising each others needs,
responding each to their own superiority. Chantal was of average height
but delicate and graceful with elegant languid movements occasionally
interrupted by bursts of Latin hand flashes slicing through the air or
arms being thrown heavenward in Gallic desperation. She had perfectly
cut hair in a long bob and perfect features both in repose and in her
moments of unexpected passion. An invisible string ran through her body
from crown to toe, maintaining her catwalk posture and her chin tilted
upwards, a hairsbreadth away from arrogance. I fell in love with her,
too.

Neville and Chantal conducted their affair across the channel and spent
much time and money on Easter, Christmas and Summer flights.
Unfortunately, airline price wars and weekend breaks were many years
off and I wasn't allowed back to France until I had two year's worth of
Grammar school French under my ceinture, just enough to frustrate my
conversational efforts, but I was brash and cocky enough by then to
think I had no need of grammar or vocabulary. I travelled on my own for
the first time, the Kerosene in the Boeing fuelling my own desires for
motion, and arrived at Poitiers airport ready to take on the world. I
was to stay with Chantal's cousin from Royan for three weeks, a girl of
approximately my age who I'd been pen pals with for 6 months. This
actually translated into 4 letters in dreadful French repeating a tired
adolescent formula of J'habit dans un grande Vile. J'aime beacoup a
Marc Bolan, et toi? and a rather sad Christmas card showing a snowy
Nordic mountain covered in glitter.
I would be spending the first week making friends with Jeanette and
then Neville and Chantal would join us for the second fortnight after a
whirlwind visit to those of her family who wouldn't be able to make
their September wedding.
Chantal's grandparents owned a share in a growing campsite and so her
parents, aunts and uncles and numerous cousins had taken over a
sprawling plot in one corner where they had spread their shacks and
shaky outhouses, roulottes and ropey tents. Every summer they gathered
there and squatted as shamelessly as any Rag, Tag or Bobtail. I was in
a bohemian heaven.
On the first night we strolled along the Avenue de la Republique of
Sant Palais du Mer, Jeanette and I arm in arm, determined to become
best friends. After an hour or so of strutting our stuff we joined her
parents at an ice cream parlour on one side of the main square. They
ordered huge glory glasses of Chantilly cream for us while they had
grown up demitasses of luke warm coffee. I can't say I liked it that
much but I loved the name and practiced getting my lips and tongue
around the French pronunciation shan-tee-yee, shan-tee-yee. Maybe it
reminded me of Chantal who I had such a huge crush on. I ate half of
mine and offered what was left to Jeanette who wolfed it down eagerly,
a step closer to cementing our friendship.
Jeanette was the first to go under; she started vomiting at about five
o'clock on Tuesday morning and by six thirty the whole compound was
awake and suffering with her uninhibited moans. It didn't hit me till
twelve hours later, I was taller and sturdier and I'd eaten less. What
had been treated as an inconvenient nuisance in Jeanette became a
serious medical crisis in the case of La Petite Anglaise. Doctors were
called, family councils were held, litres of water were boiled. On
Wednesday morning Madame came into my room waving a thermometer
energetically and handed it over to me with a gabble of instructions of
which I only understood cinq minutes. As I raised it to place it under
my tongue she screeched "Non, non, ici, non? le derriere"
I had no problem understanding these words but the overall message
eluded me, she was turning her ample backside towards me and waving the
thermometer in that general direction but she couldn't be serious! Up
until that moment in my life it had never occurred to me that an object
could go into rather than come out of an anus. There was no way that I
was sticking glass and poisonous metal up my bum so after a while we
compromised by placing it in my armpit. I had a very slight fever and
was still feeling queasy so it looked like I was going to be confined
to bed for at least another day. Jeanette was far from well and I could
hear her occasional wails for Maman from the main bedroom.
Monsieur was sent off into town to bring some books back for me (it
baffles me that I had none with me, as far back as I can remember I
have had reading material in reserve, just as obsessively as my
mother's pantry was stocked up with preserves and pickles against
nuclear war or earthquakes.) Mid morning he arrived back with a carrier
bag full of paperbacks; two of them were in German, one of them was
"The Tropic of Cancer" and the last was "The Story of O". I was not
bored.

Neville and Chantal arrived in a flurry of love five days later, the
night before the Duchamp girl disappeared. They were a day earlier than
expected and so Jeanette was pushed in with me and we spent the night
giggling in two languages. The next morning we were supposed to meet up
with Claire Duchamp, a plain girl with a pretty name who was a year
younger than us. The summer before she had been Jeanette's best friend
but her nose had been pushed out by my arrival and the mothers had
decided that this would not do.
It had been arranged that we should meet outside the H?tel de la Ville
but during the night we had persuaded ourselves to other plans with
only lip service to our twelve year old consciences. We passed by our
meeting place half an hour earlier than arranged?we'd been there - she
hadn't - we'd left?and headed off into the labyrinth of the only
department store in town. As we came out of the front doors, sated with
fantasy shopping, we saw Chantal and Neville pass by, earnest heads
down, hands in each others' back pockets, and as we had no plans for
the rest of the morning we decided to follow them at a discreet
distance. Saint Palais is surrounded by maize fields, most of it
cultivated for animal feed or oil pressing, local residents and
tourists help themselves to the sunny sweet cobs and the farmers rarely
make more than a perfunctory protest. I'd hovered around the outskirts
of these fields of green and yellow soldiers with Jeanette but had had
no reason to venture in. After my adventures in adult reading I had a
pretty good idea why N and C were pushing in through the growth and was
on the point of pulling Jeanette back. But I didn't stop her and I
didn't say anything and I didn't turn back.
What followed I can only recall in flashes; strobe light images of
faces, voices and movement; two little girls crawling along a prickly
floor, parting the leaves to get a better view; a different Chantal, no
longer composed or elegant but rough and guttural, her face screwed up
into a snarl of pleasure, flesh slapping against flesh, Thighs
squelching, moans and groans reflecting our own heaves of sickness a
few days ago. I see us racing back along the main road, not daring to
look at each other, a distance stretching between us as we run. We
hurtle into a crowd of adults who are waiting for us, there are far too
many of them: brothers, neighbours, shop keepers, gendarmes. We don't
understand. For the moment nobody expects us to speak, the women are
crying, the men are cursing and everybody wants to touch us, to stroke
us, to share in the miracle of the return of the lost children.
"Mais ou est Claire? Elle n'est pas avec vous?"
The adults seemed determined that we had all been together and Jeanette
and I were too shocked to tell the truth. Our panic only increased when
Neville and Chantal returned and Neville reached out for our hands and
pulled us close to him. But instead of questioning us himself he told
the police that we had been just behind them on the path through the
corn fields, that he had not seen Claire with us then. Chantal glanced
sideways at him, obviously startled by this news but he avoided her
questioning stare. He would not meet my frightened eyes either and he
avoided being alone with me for the few days that I stayed on in
France, my parents desperate to get me home as soon as possible. I felt
very scared and very lonely.

They found Claire's split, broken little body twelve hours later, fifty
yards away from the bloody heap of small clothes that had raised the
alarm and within shouting distance from where we had been watching.
They did not find her killer.
__________________________________________

It was a fluke of fate that I should have been the one to find him. One
of those subtle blips in time that can alter everything forever.
I'd come down to London for my second try at IVF, I was young for such
treatment but I'd known for years that a natural conception and vaginal
birth were out of the question. Dreadful menstruation had been
diagnosed at 16 as an inexplicable U- bend between cervix and uterus.
Another twist of fate.
I was more nervous this time than the first round of jabs and prods,
probably because we knew that this was the lost shot, our finances
wouldn't stretch to another attempt and in the late eighties this was
still a revolutionary technique and a decade away from being available
through the NHS. Who knows why I got my dates mixed up? A simple lapse
of memory, that's all it was. I was a day early for my appointment and
now I had several hours to kill in London. I was uptight, frustrated
and annoyed with myself, in no mood for shopping or a gallery so popped
over to Chantal's office on Germaine Street to pick up her house keys
and spend a quiet afternoon on my own at their South London
house.
As I nudged Chantal's key into the lock of their front door I vaguely
registered the fact that it wasn't double locked but I had no sense of
impending doom, no sixth sense warning me of catastrophe, nothing I
could lean on and later claim "I knew it, I just knew something was
wrong." I often wonder about those who claim to such episodes of
prescience, I can't help but doubt their veracity while envying their
imagination. I was involved in an utterly mundane car crash a few years
back. Driving back late from some unmemorable evening engagement, wet
road, stair rods of rain reducing my husband's vision, a couple of
glasses of wine slowing his reflexes. He hit the brakes a few seconds
too late and we slid inexorably into the back of a Ford Granada. I saw
it happening, heard his shout of warning, felt his arm fling out across
my chest to protect me but I didn't brace myself, didn't pull up my
legs or lift my hands to my face, didn't really believe we were going
to crash until it happened. Flip flop of the windscreen wipers, squeal
of brakes, thud of metal on metal and above it all the sharp, clean
crack of my femur snapping.
So it was with ease and composure that I stepped into the cool of their
stylish hall. The sound of Whitesnake blaring out from the downstairs
study didn't faze me: there was bound to be some simple explanation for
someone listening to heavy metal in the middle of a Wednesday
afternoon, despite Neville being a strictly radio 4 man and Chantal
introducing the easiest listening to their easy, elegant living. My
heart was pacing normally; my breathing was regular, no sweaty palm as
I turned the handle and took a step into Neville's work room.
A heartbeat passed, two beats, three, and four. Breath stopped and all
my trivial thoughts were dropped. Time halted for me and all life was
suspended while I, or someone very like me, took in the scene. Calmly,
this new person I had just turned into, detached, aloof, walked over to
Neville's naked inert body. He was sprawled across the tan and ash
lounger we had bought him two years ago, carefully chosen to blend in
with the understated, sexless study. A room with beige walls and
touches of aubergine paintwork for witty contrast, shelving designed by
a friend, soft lighting and softer carpeting, state of the art
technology on the long Danish desk. I loved that lounger; it was such a
perfect place for such an utterly cool man to die. But not like this,
not with a plastic bag over his head, a bathrobe belt around his neck,
accoutrements of fetishism scattered around the floor like accolades
saluting their king.
I turned the stereo down, not off. If Neville wanted music, then music
he would have. I stood in front of him and studied his body as a
grotesque piece of modern art; I think I even cocked my head to one
side. I examined his ageing drooping chest, the blanket of grey hair
reaching to below his navel, the softer cushions of flesh that had
gathered around his midriff. I saw the flaccid genitals as simple
arrangements of flesh, neither embarrassing nor erotic, leftovers from
a packed lunch that somebody had forgotten to put away when they went
home for the day. I was baffled by the red smudges of lipstick around
his groin, but there were traces on his fingertips too. I moved down to
his legs, I crouched before him, I saw the bald patches on his shins
from forty years of leg crossing, I traced the blue veins on his inner
ankles that would have turned varicous in later life. I took my time,
taking it all in before shifting my attention to the floor and the
contents of the Safeway bag. The irony of the supermarket's name was
not lost on me but the scruffiness struck a discordant note, it was
creased and cracked, the letters almost illegible in places, its very
vulgarity protecting its contents from prying eyes. Spilling out of the
bag and onto the floor under my brother's limp hand were things that
had me stumped, a few that I could identify like a rather discrete
dildo, a leather mask and a cilice but most of them were unrecognisable
pieces of tortuous metal, leather and rubber. I was so fascinated by
this collection from another world that I almost missed the one item
that I knew well, I'd already pushed it aside and dismissed it as
uninteresting, apporting nothing new to the enigma. But I wasn't going
to escape that easily, my hands had to creep back to pick it up again,
didn't they? Slowly turning over the garment against my unconscious
wishes. I knew they were mine, a pair of knickers that I'd bought with
my teenager's pocket money, a garish yellow with a white lacy waistband
and the corny legend "Groovy baby" emblazoned across the front. No way
would my mother buy them for me, Knickers were plain white cotton or
large navy blue contraptions for P.E in those days and she thoroughly
disapproved of such frivolity. On sufferance she allowed me to keep
them but on the condition that I kept them hidden from my father so I
assumed she'd whisked them away out of circulation after six months or
so. Here they were though; they'd turned up in my brother's bag of
tricks twenty three years later. Turned up just in time to shock me
into the present, into reality and to start me screaming in helpless
horror just as helplessly as I'd screamed that first time in his
glorious, gruesome presence.
__________________________________________

My son owes his life to my brother and so I called him Joseph Neville
Barker. Had it not been for the small fortune that Neville had tucked
away in various accounts and the very generous amount that Chantal
turned over to me a couple of months after his death, we would never
have been able to afford a third attempt let alone the fourth that
finally bought us our joy. He was a strong picture book baby with the
earliest smile and loudest laugh I have ever heard. In his second year
though, everything slowed down, he became quieter and his learning
curve stagnated. He didn't seem unhappy or in pain but something was
obviously wrong. He was almost two when his gluten intolerance was
diagnosed and the next few years were heartbreaking. People have no
idea of the disruption that a condition like this can cause. It is
invisible, undetectable to outsiders so elicits no sympathy. Blindness
in a child brings tears to a stranger's eyes; missing or broken limbs
make people wince or shift uncomfortably but they long to become his
friend and stroke his hair; Joe Public smiles and chucks the chin of
the little girl with Down's syndrome. It is the silent beasts, lurking
in corners to pounce at unexpected moments that cause so much silent
pain and fear. Autism, Cancer, Brittle bones are the true monsters,
bringing no relief of immediate help or compassion, needing explaining
and then the awful pause while your new acquaintance tries to think of
what to say.
Gluten intolerance is a life threatening disease, too but you do have
at least have a chance It has almost taken Neville from me twice but
most people's reaction is "Oh I'm allergic to Strawberries, too" or "My
mother can't even look at a prawn." You are nothing if you don't have
an allergy these days, celebs seeming to outdo each other in the
bizarreness of their intolerances. peeled carrots, bottled water,
bleached napkins, unbleached napkins but few realise how challenging
life is for a celiac.
A life without Pizza or Lasagne or penguin biscuits or ready meals,
constantly looking up ingredient lists, interrogating waiters, looking
for the harmless birthday cake.

When he was twelve Joseph Neville chose just Neville and became a
vegetarian. He went from victim to warrior, from freak to champion. By
limiting his diet even more he sliced out all the pitying looks, the
tedious explanations, his classmate's attempts to tempt him into wheaty
sin. In one fell swoop he turned his body's weakness into strength and
by choosing less he could control more. It was a challenge to himself
and to me and he had laid down a gauntlet that I took up gladly.

Neville is tall and strong and has the patrician good looks of his
uncle. He's a swot but not a nerd. He's the coolest boy in his class
but has few friends. He doesn't need them, and he doesn't need me as
much as I need him. Did my husband leave because he knew he would not
be missed?
My son has shown me that we all have our weaknesses and we have to
learn to control them before they control us. My brother was so strong
and so powerful and he believed he had his weakness tamed and tied up
in a cheap plastic bag. He had had it under control for most of his
adult life but it got him in the end. Just as some undeclared noodle or
hidden grain could catch my son when he's not quite alert or forty
minutes away from help.

Neville wants to know about his family. He wants to know why we hardly
ever visit my father since mother died. So we'll be driving over this
summer; it'll be the first time I go through the channel tunnel and I
find the thought of it surprisingly exciting. Like the thrill of my
first trip to London. Like travelling abroad on my own for the first
time. I won't be alone though, I shall be with my son and I shall be
taking him to meet people he hardly knows.
I imagine our conversation on the short train journey.
"why don't you talk about Uncle Neville? Tell me about him."
And I probably will.