The End of the Affair
Petey dies one glorious morning in June, just as the world is waking.
A window was cracked open to let the sour air from the room escape, but the morning was still and no fresh breeze filters through. Yet the songs of goldfinches and wagtails, chirping and trilling as they greeted the dawn of a summer’s day, filled the room. The sun, swinging a hand-span above the horizon, had begun to steal fingers of golden light through the thin drapes.
By tacit agreement, neither Jasmine nor Gillian wanted to leave Petey alone for a single second in case he woke and thought himself abandoned. Jasmine could see Gillian diminishing before her eyes, hollowed out by the grief yet to come, worn through by the care she had tried to give her son. It was clear to both that this time Petey would not rally; Gillian finally gave in to argument and summoned Kate back from Afghanistan. Jasmine took the bulk of the night shifts, pressing his mother to get some sleep. But although Gillian was in her bed, she was awake when Jasmine came to get her in the darkness before sunrise. She looked as exhausted as the previous evening.
Snuggled in Kate’s double bed, Jasmine too found it impossible to sleep. Her thoughts remained in the room along the landing – so much misery contained in one small space. In the end, she gave up trying and made her way to the kitchen. She makes coffee for herself, with two heaped spoons of granules, and tea for Gillian, strong and sweet. Then she elbowed her way through the door, hands full of warm comfort, to help them face the day ahead.
Gillian was lying on the bed beside Petey, her hand on his shoulder, her eyes closed, mother and son both as drawn as each other. Jasmine crossed the room to put the mugs down on a chest of drawers when Petey gave a sigh, as if every trace of air had left his body. The tea slopped onto the carpet as Jasmine hurried to get rid of her burdens. She crossed to the bed, slid her hand under the quilt, and found Petey’s wrist. Curling her fingers around his arm, she held them over his vein. His skin was still warm. She adjusted her grip, moving gently up and down, desperate to feel even the faintest of pulses. She closed her eyes, as if it might make her sense of touch sharper. No trace. She withdrew her hand and considered for a minute; it would be the cruellest trick to rouse his mother for a false alarm. Once more, she laid her fingers gently on Petey’s body, this time on the hollow to the side of his Adam’s apple. Pressed down. Nothing.
Her first instinct was to reach out and shake Gillian but then she stopped. The moment Gillian awoke, it would all change. They would begin a new normal, one in which Petey did not exist, where he would not marry, would not have children, would not grow old. A new normal in which Gillian buried her son and lived her life bereft of her child. What did it matter if she took a few minutes now? Gillian would have the rest of her life to mourn. Let her sleep a little longer.
This would be the only time Jasmine would have to grieve for her friend, these few minutes. From the moment she touched his mother, Gillian’s loss would take over and Jasmine would have to be strong instead. So she stood by the side of the bed, her hand still on Petey’s wrist, with her eyes closed as the tears dripped down her cheeks. She remembered the boy on the bus and his happy grin; she remembered him pushing her books out of the way to lift her onto the table, stepping between her legs to kiss her. She remembered her lover’s body over hers, his piercing grey eyes holding hers as he slid into her, trembling with the effort to keep it slow. She thought of him dancing at parties, with a bottle of beer in each hand, twisting and twirling with wild abandon. Petey capering, his long arms flailing as they walked along the river, Petey always moving, always alive.
Now, Jasmine wipes her face, steels herself, and reaches out.
“Gillian,” she breathes, and the older woman’s eyes fly open. “He’s gone.”
She sees comprehension extinguishing hope and the older woman’s face crumples, a moan like a keen escaping as she clutches at the body. Jasmine backs away. She has no place here, intruding on the last private moment Gillian has with the boy she raised. She leaves mother and son together, and closes the door. There are a myriad calls that have to be made, to the doctor, to the funeral director and, with the heaviest heart, to Kate.
She stops on the landing, though, unable to go further. Leaning back against the wall, Jasmine realises Petey was her first everything. Her first love, her first kiss, her first lover, her first death.
What Jasmine Did Next
“I’m back.”
Jasmine drops the keys into the bowl which stands on a small corner table in the hallway and goes in search of Gillian. Petey’s mother is exactly where Jasmine left her, on the hard wooden chair at the end of the kitchen table.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Jasmine says with a calmness she doesn’t feel.
“How did it go?” Gillian rouses herself enough to ask.
“Fine.”
It had not been fine. They’d had five days to register Petey’s death but Gillian had been obsessed with it, unable to move on and focus on the funeral. At her insistence, Jasmine had called to make the appointment and been given a cancellation the next day.How could you cancel a death?she’d thought. Gillian was clearly in no state to attend, so Jasmine had gone. She had sat in the little waiting area, two black plastic chairs and a potted ficus. She perched on the edge of the seat, clutching Petey’s Cause of Death certificate. A radio, playing low in the background, switched to the bouncy opening bars of a Kylie song. It was a Petey favourite, one he could not resist, always pulling her to her feet and spinning her around. Sitting alone in the slightly dingy waiting room, tears came, big drops rolling down her cheeks. She could not stop them. There was no sobbing, no ugly crying, just the tears.
She had no tissues, no handkerchief. She used her sleeve, like a five-year-old, wiping them from her face but still they came. The song ended and the tears dried. She knew she must look like a madwoman as she entered the registrar’s office, but reasoned she was not the first. She needn’t have worried. The official barely looked at her as he took the certificate and began to tap on his keyboard.
“What was your relationship to the deceased?”
For a moment, Jasmine considered her answer. “I was his girlfriend,” she said at last. “Four years.” It was extraneous information, but she had to say it. Then she added, because she knew it was more pertinent, “I was present at his death.”
When the registrar was finished, Jasmine took the forms, the death certificate and the extra copies she had paid for and folded them carefully. She had no idea if Gillian would need them; Petey had been a young man with barely a current account to his name, not an elderly businessman with a portfolio of investments, but he might have had a workplace pension. She should have brought a handbag, but she had not thought beyond exchanging the medical certificate for a death certificate so they could cremate his body. Although she knew she needed to get back, she had stopped for a moment outside the building, just to breathe, before she set off up the street to find where she had parked Gillian’s car.
But there is no need to burden Gillian with the story of her emotional breakdown at a song. SoFinesuffices and Jasmine makes tea. They have not long finished when the doorbell rings. With unspoken agreement, Jasmine gets up to answer it. There have been quite a few callers, quiet murmurs of condolences on the doorstep, for Petey and his mum are well liked in the village. Jasmine has dealt with them all as Gillian hides in the kitchen, not up to receiving even the gentlest of well-wishers. But when she opens the door, it is not a neighbour; it is Kate, looking exhausted but hale. For the first time in weeks, Jasmine feels a small lift in her shoulders – the tiniest, infinitesimal raise – but it is there.
“Where’s Mum?” Kate extracts herself from the welcoming hug and Jasmine nods towards the end of the hall. If Jasmine felt a lightening of her mood at Kate’s arrival, it is nothing to the transformation that comes over Gillian. For the first time in the hours since Petey’s death, her eyes register something other than despair.
“Oh! Kate!” she cries as she clings to her daughter and Jasmine retreats backwards, quietly closing the kitchen door, leaving mother and child together.
Kate’s arrival signals a major change for Jasmine. For weeks she has been single-handedly looking after both Gillian and Petey, but now the relief party has arrived. Kate takes charge. She deals with the crematorium and the funeral directors. It is Kate who restrains her mother from spending every last penny she has on Petey’s casket. Her mother is not a rich woman and Petey would have been appalled if he thought she was spending her pension fund on something that would soon be nothing but ash. It is Kate who arranges the wake at the Blue Lion in Larkford, although in truth it requires nothing beyond a request to the landlord.
So it is that a mere ten days after Petey’s passing, Gillian, flanked by Kate and Jasmine follows his coffin down the central aisle of the packed crematorium. The village has turned outen massedespite it being a working day. Jasmine notices Flora, on the end of one row, reaching out a hand to squeeze her arm as she passes. Distantly, she notes her own family, ranged out, father, mother, and four daughters. She is oddly grateful Anna has made the trip back from London but otherwise she ignores them. She is not here as a representative of the Mortimer family. She is here as part of Petey’s.
She is thankful Gillian has chosen traditional hymns, words of mourning that have no association in her head with Petey, for she is unwilling to risk a repeat of the incident outside the registrar’s office. Here she is not only Petey’s girlfriend, she is also the Baron’s daughter, and she feels the weight of public attention – something she usually avoids.
Kate sits stiff-backed like the soldier she is, and Jasmine realises she might have more experience of death than any of the mourners present, despite her youth. Jake had not been able to join her. Gillian clutches her daughter’s hand on one side. On the other side snuggle her two young nieces, who are crammed against her body as if love can be transferred by pressure. Jasmine sits at the end of the pew, gladly yielding her place to the youngsters, although she feels odd, as if she is giving Petey back to his family. Family raises you, then lets you wander your own path until, finally, family claims you once again at the end.
