Читать книгу One Large Coffin to Go - H. Mel Malton - Страница 10

Babies resemble grandparents and great-grandparents because, just as there are many seeds hidden in the earth, so there are seeds hidden in mankind, which give us the features of our ancestors. That’s what they used to say.

-From Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide

Why is it that passport photos always make you look criminally insane?” I was sitting in the Slug and Lettuce Pub (drinking soda pop, I might add) with my photographer friend Dimmy Cox. I contemplated my picture, the one I’d had taken at Shutterbug, the local photo shop, which now adorned my brand new passport. I looked sullen—no, worse than sullen—I looked like a terrorist.

“My theory is it’s because passport photos are usually taken by people who would rather be doing something else, and they make you feel uncomfortable,” Dimmy said, sipping a Kuskawa Cream Ale. It looked ice-cold, condensation beading on the outside of the glass, golden yellow and delicious.

“Hey, can I have a sip of that?” I said.

“You think you should?”

“A sip won’t hurt,” I said. “I just want to see if it tastes okay.” I did truly want to know that, because ever since I had become pregnant, my body had taken it upon itself to reject beer in no uncertain terms. Beer, my favourite beverage, and Kuskawa Cream, my beer of choice, had made me gag back in August. I had brand loyalty issues at stake here. Just because I was abstaining for the requisite nine months, didn’t mean I was on the wagon for life. I just wanted to experiment. After all, I was going to the United Kingdom, homeland of perfect beer. I couldn’t help remembering something my mother had said, many years ago, that had somehow stuck in my mind. “When your grandmother was carrying us,” she’d said (which was back in Ireland, before they’d emigrated), “her doctor prescribed a pint of Guinness every day. He said it was good for pregnant ladies—full of vitamins.” Of all the things I remembered my mother saying, this was one of the biggies. “Guinness is good for you,” spoken in all seriousness.

I lifted Dimmy’s glass, looking around me before I did it to make sure nobody was watching. Taking even a mouthful of alcoholic something or other while pregnant is considered a serious crime. I didn’t want to offend anybody. I took a sip, and it was gorgeous. Yummy. Nectar, in fact.

“You be careful,” Dimmy said, watching me. “You don’t want this kid coming out with one of those thin upper lips and eyes too far apart—the fetal alcohol syndrome thing.”

I bristled. “One sip of beer won’t be doing that, Dimmy,” I said and told her what my mother used to say.

“Yeah, I think we’re maybe a bit overprotective about that stuff over here,” she said. “Still, you want to give yourself every opportunity to have a healthy baby, right?” I nodded glumly. My having been forced by circumstance to abandon my cherished vices still rankled, and this was the first time I’d been in the pub since July. Maybe it hadn’t been a terribly good idea meeting Dimmy there. I was clearly not over-endowed in the impulse-control department. This would mean that in England, I’d have to avoid pubs—and what kind of insanity was that? England—the place where the word pub was born, those warm rooms in every village, cozy and ancient, with dozens of wonderful, dark and powerful brews just begging to be sampled. It was going to be torture.

“Back to this passport,” I said, handing back Dimmy’s glass with more than just a twinge of regret. “It just arrived, and I’m glad to get it in time, but you know, I’d kind of expected it to be more imposing, somehow. More official. It looks like a cheap notebook from the dollar store.” The small, blue booklet was softcovered, stamped in gold, certainly, but with none of the heft I’d imagined. “It looks like something you could lose really easily.”

“You better get one of those body purses,” Dimmy said. “You know, the kind you strap below your clothing, to put your travellers’ cheques and passport in.”

“I’m going to England, not India,” I said. “I don’t want to do the paranoid traveller thing. I can just see me having to undress every time I want to buy a newspaper.”

“I think you’d be safe carrying your cash in the usual place,” she said. “Anyway, it’s just a thought. Canadian passports are very much in demand, I hear.”

“You think I need one of those little Canadian flags to put on my backpack?”

“You’re taking a backpack? No suitcase?”

“Well, I was hoping to do a little hiking while I’m there.”

“Polly, you’ll be seven months pregnant by then—you won’t want to be hiking. Anyway, February in England will hardly be hiking season.”

“I’m not planning to do any mountain climbing. I just want to be able to travel around without worrying about luggage,” I said. Okay, maybe I was being unreasonable, but it was my first time going anywhere, and I had a romantic image of walking along one of those footpaths England was famous for, brandishing an old hickory walking stick and enjoying the view.

Dimmy knew me well enough to let the subject drop. The more she tried to convince me that hiking in England in February was a bad idea, the more inclined I’d be to do it.

Later that afternoon, I did go to the luggage place and pick up one of those body purses. It was white cotton and looked like a rather spinsterly piece of underclothing, with curious straps and a little zippered pocket. However, it held my passport quite nicely, as well as the modest number of travellers’ cheques I’d bought at the bank.

About a week before I was due to leave, Becker showed up at my door, carrying a mysterious package. He had the same expression on his face that Eddie had worn when he’d arrived at my doorstep with the automatic baby. He wanted something.

I was in the middle of packing up my puppets. I’d found a sturdy case at a junk shop—a hard-shelled thing with a nice leather handle, which had once upon a time been used for a brass instrument, a horn of some sort. I’d torn out the insides and lined it with styrofoam, carved to conform to the shape of the little bodies it would contain. In a fit of morbid creativity, I’d then finished the interior with satin, so it looked an awful lot like a small, two-person coffin.

“What the hell is that?” he said.

“It’s a packing case. I’m taking a couple of puppets with me for a seminar I’m doing.” I was hoping he wouldn’t look too closely at the policeman puppet, which he had seen before, acknowledging that it looked a teensy bit like himself. He had not seen it since I’d remodelled the missing appendage and wired it up. The little trousers had a peek-a-boo slit in the fly, and a discreet line ran from the tip of the tiny member to the complicated cross-piece at the top, from which the puppet was manipulated. With a flick of a finger, the puppet penis could spring to attention. I’d showed it to Susan the night before, and she’d almost wet herself. Becker, though, might not find it quite as amusing as we did.

“You’re gonna have trouble with that going through customs,” he said.

“I hope not. The conference people told me to get a carnet—you know, a set of import papers that describe what you’re bringing in, and I did that. Here it is—it should be okay.” The carnet had cost me a pretty penny, but international regulations required it. I had photographed the puppets and made a list of the materials from which they were made, as well as estimating the value of the things. The puppets were deemed “professional equipment”, and it wouldn’t cost me any extra duty or tax, as long as I had the carnet. The official I had dealt with suggested that I keep the estimate of value low, because I’d been told I had to give them a deposit equivalent to the duty and tax payable if the goods had been exported for sale. It was sort of like a bond—I didn’t really understand it, but then there are times when it’s best just to do what you’re told. I scratched out what I’d originally written (”priceless”), and wrote $200 instead, which was low-balling, big time. However, a $200 ransom, which is how I thought of it, was all I could afford.

“You’re really going through with this trip, aren’t you?” Becker said, which struck me as a monumentally dumb thing to say. I had my passport, my ticket, my knapsack (with a little Canadian flag sewn on) and my puppet case and the official carnet. It wasn’t as if I was having cold feet, for pity’s sake. I’d be gone in seven days’ time.

“Yes, Becker. I’m really going through with it.”

“Nothing I can say to make you change your mind?”

“Nope.”

“You wouldn’t be interested in hearing about the rumours of terrorist activity at Pearson International Airport?”

“That’s not fair, Becker. You’re just making that up.”

“Am I? How do you know? I’d know better than you in this case, at least, because I’ve been working with the people in security down there.”

“I know you have. And I know as well as you do that if the rumours were true, they’d shut the airport down and send us all home. So quit fretting. I’ll be fine.”

“Didn’t the airline make a fuss about letting you fly when you’re, um, like that?”

“Like what? Fat, you mean?” We were getting spatty. Well, I was. I suspect that Becker was trying to be patient in the face of it.

“I mean,” he said, after a tiny pause, “when you’re so far advanced in your pregnancy.”

“As of next Monday, I’ll be twenty-eight weeks gone. You’re allowed to fly up until week thirty-two. I made sure about that. I even have a note from Cass Wright about my expected delivery date, in case they ask.”

“Which is the first or second week of May, right?”

“Right. No worries, Mark.”

“What about cabin pressure, low humidity, stuff like that?” I was impressed. It was almost as if he really cared—like he’d done his homework and was truly worried about me and the child I was carrying, and not just freaking out because he wasn’t in control of the situation.

“They suggested an aisle seat at the bulkhead,” I said, “so I made a special request. Not that I know what a bulkhead is, you understand, but I’m trying to do this by the book, you know. I’m not really the perverse little puppy you think I am.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“And they say I’m supposed to drink lots of fluids during the flight—and walk around a lot so my ankles don’t swell up—although if I’m drinking fluids, I’ll be walking to the bathroom every two minutes during the whole flight, anyway.”

“Bathroom—that’s what the bulkhead is, Polly. You won’t have far to walk.”

“Oh, great. Put the pregnant lady next to the can—isn’t that like being stuck at the table by the kitchen door when you’re dining alone? Charming.”

“You’ll probably be thankful for it.”

“So you’ve accepted that I’m going, then.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course I have, sweetheart. Just making a last ditch effort.” He hadn’t called me sweetheart in ages—not since that night about a week after I’d told him about the baby, when he’d got roaring drunk and held me in his arms, stroking my bare tummy with a freckled hand and rocking me back and forth while he held back tears. We hadn’t made love that night—he couldn’t, truth be told, but it was the closest we’d been in all the ensuing months. Hearing it gave me a twinge below, down in the places where I used to play, as Mr. Cohen would say. I touched the back of his hand gently with one finger.

“I’ll be fine, Mark,” I said again.

“I hope so. And if you’re really going, I have a favour to ask you.”

“Uh-huh?” I was actually hoping the favour he wanted was a sexual one, because I was all of a sudden quite willing to provide it, but that was not what he had in mind.

“You know that we cremated my dad, back in October, right?”

“Yep. You told me that.” I was still a tad unhappy that he had not asked me to fly out to join him for the funeral. It would have been something at least, seeing as he’d never let me have the chance to meet the old guy while he was still alive.

“Well, my sister and I were going to scatter the ashes at his fishing cabin up at the lake, near Jasper, but we decided not to.”

“How come?”

“Ever since I can remember, Dad talked about going back to England—to Sussex, where he was born—just to visit, not to live. He always talked about it like it would be as good as winning the Stanley Cup, like he would win something there that would make him happy. When Mom was alive, he always said he’d take her back to visit his mom. He never did, though. He didn’t even go back for her funeral, in 1980.”

“Where in Sussex?” I asked. Not that I knew Sussex from Wales as far as geography was concerned, but I could see where this was leading, and I wanted to find out how far Sussex was from Canterbury. “Eastbourne,” he said. “A small, seaside town, I think. Picturesque, probably. Worth a visit. There are these white cliffs there—you know the song ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, the one the Andrews Sisters used to sing? Like those, I guess. He used to go up there and look at the sea and play when he was a kid, a place called Beachy Head, I think.”

“You want me to go and scatter his ashes there, don’t you?”

“My sister and I talked about it on the phone last night. She’s cool with it.”

“This is something you two should be doing, not me, Mark. I didn’t even know your dad.”

“I know you never got the chance to meet him, and I’m sorry about that. You would have liked each other.” I refrained from mentioning that I’d wanted to meet him, and Becker had made it almost impossible to do so.

“So, why don’t you hang on to the ashes a bit longer, and go over there with your sister in the summer and visit your family, or whatever? It’s not that I wouldn’t be happy to do it, Mark. It just seems a kind of ceremonial thing, and it would be meaningless if I did it.”

“It won’t get done, otherwise, Polly,” Becker said with some bitterness. “I’m a lot like my dad in more ways than you can imagine. I’d just talk about it and talk about it, and Dad’s ashes would just sit there in my bedroom closet for years and never get back to Sussex, ever.”

“Isn’t it illegal to sprinkle human remains in public places?”

“Officially, it might be. But nobody needs to know.”

“And how do I get dear old Dad through customs, Mark? You got a carnet for him?” I didn’t mean to sound so callous, but then he was the one who was so all-fired serious about customs issues.

“Hey, it’s just a little bag of ash, and I’ve got a photocopy of his death certificate and his cremation form from the funeral parlour. It should be fine. You can just say you’re returning the ashes to his birthplace for interment. It’s done all the time.”

“It is? Golly. And do you have relatives over there in Eastbourne who might be interested in being involved, or do I just hike up there to Beachy Head by myself and cast him to the winds?” Hike. I’d said the word hike, and suddenly had a lovely picture of a solemn walk along a blustery clifftop, the wind whipping the waves into stiff peaks, the salt air on my lips and my hair blowing out behind me like a scene from The French Lieutenant’s Woman. This might take care of my hiking yen quite nicely, with the minimum of fuss.

“Dad was an only child, but Grandma had a sister who still lives in the area, my great aunt Edith.”

“Are you in touch with her?”

“No, I only met her once, when she came over for Mom’s funeral in ’97. She was pretty frail and had never even met Mom, although they wrote lots of letters back and forth. I think they started that after my grandmother died. Mom used to say that Edith was lonely all by herself over there. Dad was surprised she made the trip for Mom’s sake, though.”

“Did you let her know when your dad died?”

“We sent a letter, but she didn’t respond, but then she’s really old, and her connection was really with my mom. She still might be alive, anyhow. I’ll find out and get you her address. So you’ll do it, Polly?”

“I suppose so,” I said. “There’s a little free time in the conference schedule, so as long as this place isn’t too far from Canterbury, I could probably swing it.”

“Yesss,” he said and did that clenched-fist, pumping-arm thing people do when they’ve won something. He really seemed hugely pleased, like I’d just given him the best present in the world. There was a curious gleam in his eyes, as if he’d been expecting me to say no and couldn’t believe that I’d agreed. It felt great to make him happy so easily. God knows I hadn’t been excelling in that department recently. With a conscious air of ceremony, he handed over the cremated remains of Edward Millbank Becker, tightly wrapped in plastic and nestled in a little blue velvet bag, complete with travelling papers. It weighed more than I expected, a couple of pounds, actually, but I suppose the bony bits of an adult male human, even after a spell in a fiery furnace and a session in a big crusher-thing, would still add up, bulkwise. I handled the package gingerly, the way I’d handle a baby if someone suddenly handed me one without warning. Ashes to ashes. It occurred to me that I had just added enormously to my status as a courier of metaphor—I would be crossing the Pond as a representative of three stages of humanhood, a beginning, a middle and an end.

At the time, it struck me as enormously significant.