Burley Cross Postbox Theft. Nicola Barker
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the first half of the date was fine, but then as soon as I hit the year, this terrible green colour exploded from the nib (I say ‘terrible’, although in truth I actually quite like the green myself – in the abstract – it’s just all those unfortunate connotations…).
I’d have started over (of course), but this is Rhona’s best paper (handmade – manufactured in situ, no less – from recycled egg boxes, which makes it ludicrously absorbent and fractionally stiff). There’d be hell to pay if I wasted a piece.
Enough of my waffling, though (I know how much you hate my waffling – my ‘pointless flummery’ as I believe you once called it!). Can I just say how broken up we all still are about your mother? We miss her horribly. Chester’s inconsolable (although he stole – and devoured – a whole partridge earlier. It was sitting on the sideboard, covered with a tea towel, resting, after I’d plucked it. I didn’t think he could get up there – he’s still huge; over three stone, but somehow he contrived to. It’ll be tomato omelettes, all round, for dinner again tonight, I fear). The parrot still won’t speak (and his chest is now completely bare). Even Rhona (who isn’t, as you may recall, much given to emotional displays) was heard to mutter over her salted oats at breakfast how much she ‘missed the silly old trout’.
Of course I don’t mind in the slightest that you didn’t respond to my last letter (although there was the nagging doubt that it might’ve gone astray, but then Mr Baquir, your lawyer, kindly told me that this was not the case. I really appreciated that. And he seems a very charming man, Mr Baquir. He and Rhona spent some considerable time on the phone reminiscing about Egypt. It seems he was growing up in the outskirts of Cairo during the late 1960s at almost exactly the same time she was working as a volunteer there with Christian Aid).
It’s only natural that you would feel angry, Donovan. And, of course, you feel hurt – even betrayed. Anyone would. In fact we were all perfectly miserable when we found out about the funeral – especially Rhona, who sets great store (well, greater store than I do) by these formal occasions. ‘We have an inalienable right to say goodbye,’ she harrumphed, ‘and now she’s snatched that away from us. It just doesn’t seem fair.’
Fair or no – I imagine it must be hard for you to get any real sense of closure. If it helps at all, William Dunkley (the funeral director) told me, in strictest confidence, how he took it upon himself to say a little prayer over the coffin (and recited a Psalm, I think, although I’m not sure which one). He had been strictly prohibited by Glenys – on pain of death (or worse, he said!) – from doing so, but that didn’t deter him.
I spoke to him on Tuesday at the Christmas Fair. He was quite shame-faced about the whole mess, but I assured him that we bore no grudges (although I didn’t absolve him on your behalf, obviously. It would hardly be my place to do so).
He was only fulfilling her wishes, I suppose. He said she had made all the arrangements in mid-2005 (after her main diagnosis), and then had rung him up – twice, on subsequent occasions – to stress the finer details. It wasn’t a fly-by-night decision, in other words. She had insisted on perfect secrecy and he had decided – with some serious pangs of conscience – that it was his professional duty to respect that last request.
Bill was very fond of Glenys himself (I don’t know if you remember him well – he’s quite a few years younger than we are – the nephew of Arthur and Polly). He said she beat him black and blue as a boy after he released her dog – Trumpet – from the special hook outside the shop and he ran riot on the main street, then careered up on to the moor where he savaged a moorland sheep and was shot (this was a while after you’d left home, I think, and some time before Rhona and I arrived at Threadbare, but I know she doted on that dog – he sounds extraordinarily unlovable! – and often referred to the incident in barbed tones).
I asked about the ashes. Bill said they’d been scattered ‘locally’. I tried to press him further on the point but he wouldn’t budge. I’m guessing it was on the moor, near the war memorial (what better place than where your father’s plane went down?). She hadn’t been up there herself since the mid-eighties, when her thyroid first became an issue (and her weight ballooned), but she asked me to take a bouquet most weeks, and I was always happy to oblige her. It was never any trouble.
I have continued to take the bouquets since her death. In fact Rhona has actually accompanied me on several occasions (straight after our morning swim, although she finds the last stages of the hike a little difficult because of the problem with her knee joints). I know your mother truly loved that place.
We were standing up there only the other day, squinting over towards the power station (it was an especially beautiful, crisp, clear winter’s morning) and laughing together about our early experiences with Glenys after we first arrived at Threadbare. She was always a rather singular creature!
We remembered her throwing that brick through our kitchen window – and we’d barely been ensconced a week – because we trimmed the ash hedge between the two properties without seeking her permission first (we honestly didn’t realize that the hedge was ‘hers’; it didn’t look like it had been trimmed in years!). She’d been perfectly charming up until that point – even brought us a basket of greengages from her garden on the day we arrived (although it later transpired that she’d stolen the fruit from our greengage bush the week before; they were a little soft. I always wondered why the crop was so thin that year!).
We were quite distraught about it, as I recall (the brick, not the greengages! The windows were original – that marvellous, dimply, slightly imperfect old glass which Rhona’s so passionate about), and as I said at the time (you’ll probably remember – we’ve rabbited on about it enough, since!), ‘If only she’d just come outside and said something – shared what was on her mind – we’d have stopped what we were doing without so much as a squeak of protest.’
But that wasn’t Glenys’s nature. She was never a big one for speaking out. She’d rather dwell on things, brood on things. She knew it was a fault in her. She even admitted as much, herself.
I was convinced she and Rhona would never make it up. Rhona – as you’ve discovered, to your cost – has an impressively short fuse. Although I think Glenys is the only person I’ve ever known (and I include our own, dear Dad in this select little group) who could actually make Rhona quake.
I think they probably recognized something in each other, something wild and uncontrollable, and realized – as lethal predators are wont to do – that some kind of compromise needed to be reached, quickly, as a matter of urgency; it had to be, or all hell would break loose. And so was.
Rhona bit her tongue from that time onwards. She bit it, and she bit it (sometimes I feared she might almost sever it!). ‘It’s good for my soul,’ she’d mutter, or else, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’
Over time the relationship with Glenys undoubtedly improved. She learned to trust us, and even (I like to think) to rely on us a little. But you still couldn’t take anything for granted. There was never any predicting when she might blow, or what might provoke her. It was like having a rumbling Vesuvius on your doorstep! You’d think everything was proceeding along equitably (no real clouds on the horizon), and then suddenly there’d be this tremendous outburst. A cataclysm!
Her rage was all-consuming – like a dam wall collapsing. This terrible roar! Indiscriminate destruction! Everything engulfed and obliterated… Then afterwards, this amazing calm – a gentle sun, a washed-denim sky.
Glenys rarely bore a grudge for long – except with you, Donovan.
I remember that Easter – three years after your final, huge row – when you drove up from Derby (you were on your sabbatical), bringing her that exquisite, miniature Japanese maple as a peace offering, and she snatched it out of your arms (it was a fair old weight in the pot!) and tossed it into the road. It lay there for hours. I saw the argument that followed (you didn’t see me – I was sheltering behind our greenhouse). I watched you storm to your car, climb inside, slam the door and then sit there for a while. I longed to do something – to say something – but I didn’t dare interfere (I wanted to. I really wanted to. More