So what do we do now?
She looks at me as if I have an answer, not just to this question, but to all questions.
I don’t know. What do you want to do?
I want to do nothing. I want to sit here and drink this tea and do nothing for the rest of my life.
Okay. Let’s do that. I can’t think of anything better.
She looks at me again, that look she gives when she’s disappointed, but doesn’t want to say anything. She doesn’t have to.
We will have visitors soon.
Yes.
Do we have enough put out on the table?
She turns her head to look over the cakes and sandwiches and biscuits and cups and saucers that are spread in an orderly way over the old and stately wooden table I have inherited from my father. He had inherited it from his mother, and she had inherited it from her grandfather. It once survived a fire, and has the scorch marks to show it. If anyone is interested, which they usually aren’t, I tell them that the fire destroyed everything else in the house, 150 years ago, but that this table survived. A great-aunt couldn’t believe the sight of it, covered in ash and fallen debris, smouldering, but intact. There are letters that I have, carefully preserved, recording this event. I look at them, every now and then, and carefully run my fingers over the ageing paper, breathing in the smell of another person who lived long ago.
Where are you? my friend asks.
I am still here. Would you like to eat?
No. I will have another cup of tea. I will be sick if I try to eat anything.
I hear someone coming up the steps.
We both get out of our chairs, and go into the hall. There is a man standing in the open doorway. He is thin and pale, which is no surprise. Everyone is pale now.
Welcome, we say in unison.
He bows to us, and enters, bows again and offers his hand. We each shake that hand, then lead him into the sitting room. We have all sat down when we hear another person arrive. I get up, but she is already at the sitting room door, looking in at us. I take her hand and she gazes at my face as if she has never seen it before.
It’s all right Maria, we are here.
Maria sits down, next to the man, who we do not know. He is very tall, solid, with long fingers and manicured nails and one missing thumbnail. How do I notice this? I notice most things, even at times like this. He eats nothing, but sips the tea we pour into his cup. He has not said a word.
Maria, says my friend, how is your husband?
Maria looks at my friend and her face dissolves. She cries and cries, there on the sofa, next to the man we do not know. It is a soundless crying, the type we do not see very often, and it worries us. This is not the time for soundless crying, I think, and I know my friend is thinking the same thing. I see it on her face.
Maria, you are allowed to tell us how you are feeling. You are allowed to tell us how John is feeling, too. This is why you are here. Isn’t it?
She nods. And weeps.
The man is sipping his tea. We are watching Maria cry. I pick a biscuit off my plate, and look at it. It was made by my friend yesterday, and is called a mourning biscuit. It is made with wholemeal flour and every household has these biscuits to give to visitors. In every house, right now, there are people with these biscuits on their tables. At least one is thrown into the garden for the birds to eat, and take the soul of the dead away into the sky.
Another person comes to our door, and then a family, and then my mother, and then the man I have hopes for. We all sit together, a biscuit on each of our plates, Maria crying, the unknown man sipping his tea.
The family is my friend’s brother’s. He lives two blocks away, in a house with a large and ancient tree in the frontyard. He has a wife who rarely smiles, and two children, both girls. These girls stare at Maria and her soundless weeping.
My mother is eighty-nine years old and walks everywhere she wants to go. She is thin and has a face so wrinkled it is hard to see where her eyes are. I once asked her if she had ever considered plastic surgery for her eyelids, and she laughed for half an hour. She sits next to Maria, and puts her hand on her hand, sitting quietly with her weeping, giving it something the rest of us could not.
The man unknown to us sips the last of his tea, and suddenly looks bereft.
The other person I mentioned who came in is our neighbour, Pirie, who kisses us both on both cheeks and shakes hands with everyone else in the room. He then sits down on the chair we always forget is the rickety one, and we have to warn him to be careful. He smiles and tells us he will not sue us if it collapses, but we may be called upon to cook meals for him for the rest of his life if he is rendered an invalid.
Would that be our penance, I ask him.
Yes, he says. But I would not complain all the time about the potatoes being too hard or the meat too tough. I would accept whatever you brought me.
Broccoli and ice cream? says my friend.
He shrugs and raises his hands. Okay, I will accept it.
I would get off the chair now, says Maria. I have eaten their broccoli and ice cream and it is horrible.
She smiles and weeps, and the rest of us smile too. Pirie smiles again, briefly, then that is all.
The man for whom I have hopes is called Michael, and he has squeezed himself in between my friend and me on the other sofa. He looks at me and raises his eyebrows every now and then. That is enough. It is not enough for many people I know, but it is enough for me, in this moment.
The two little girls, who are not really so little, are whispering to each other, and looking towards the window, where Peter is. I know they are wondering what it is like. When I was a child, I was more interested in death than birth. I asked my mother to tell me what happened when you died, where did your body go, did the bones last a long time under the ground. I was not so interested to ask her about how I physically came into the world, or why she and my father locked their bedroom door on Sunday mornings. That came to me, for some reason, much later, and it was not my mother I asked. It was not even words that gave me the answers I needed, then.
There is one biscuit left on the table. We all know that the time has come to put it outside, and my friend and I get up off the sofa, take the plate off the table, my right hand and her left hand holding it, and go out into the front garden. Everyone, my mother, Maria, the unknown man, Pirie, the family, the man I have hopes for, follow us.
The sky has clouded over a little, but it is warm.
Our group gathers in the small front garden, facing the living room window. Peter is there, behind the glass, uncovered, in his death’s bed, waiting for us. My friend and I lower the plate, then heave it up, the mourning biscuit flying high above us, then down to the ancient ground. We all stand there, silent, and look at it, as if expecting it will do something.
I look up, and see the street is filled, not just with people like us, doing our mourning, walking their grief in the sticky air, but with coffins. All the streets are filled with them now, and all the air with birds, taking our souls into the sky.
© Sue Bond 2005
