England and Other Stories by Graham Swift

Author:Graham Swift [Swift, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471137426
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2014-07-02T20:00:00+00:00

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

I NEVER THOUGHT this would happen to me, Hettie, though I always knew it could. But I never thought I’d be lying here like this in your spare room, looking at your picture of the ‘Old Harry Rocks at Studland’ on the wall. Death’s a funny thing, Het. Can you say that?

Have I told you about Lawrence of Arabia?

There’s supposed to be a family that rallies round. But it was just me and Roy, like it was just you and Dennis. We were the two Mrs Underwoods, but there was something tricky with the Underwood genes. Never mind. Carry on. Now it’s just you and me, and it feels like we’re a couple of real sisters, not sisters-in-law, and you’re the older one, though you’re not, because you went through all this ahead of me with Dennis. Not the right order, but what bloody order is there?

And when Dennis went you had Roy and me. Or rather we both had Roy. We both had Roy being an older brother like he’d never been before, taking charge like he’d never taken charge before. Well, he stopped taking charge just over a week ago, and it was all I could do, in the time before he went, to make him understand he didn’t have to take charge any more.

I know, Het, of course I do. Studland. It was where you and Dennis went for your honeymoon. It was a joke once, wasn’t it? In a different world. Honeymoon. Studland. And Roy and I went to the Scilly Isles. There was a joke there too.

A couple of sisters, a couple of widows. It makes me think of a couple of crows. Or do I mean crones? Who’d have thought it, years ago, when it was Roy the Boy and Dennis the Menace, that one day we’d become like those pairs of crumple-faced women you used to see in pubs, nursing their glasses of black Guinness.

No, all right, that’s not exactly us. Nursing our glasses of white wine.

I’m so grateful to you for taking me in. You had other plans. You were going somewhere warm. I’ve forgotten where already. Not Studland anyhow. You said, ‘I’ve cancelled everything, Peg. You’re staying with me.’ You said, ‘It’s Christmas, but it can be whatever you want, it can be not Christmas if you like. I don’t have a bit of tinsel in the house. Don’t argue, Peg, you’re staying with me.’

Did I say ‘taking charge’?

And why should Roy have hung on for Christmas? So he could spend it in a hospital bed? So I could come in with a cracker for us to pull, if he had the strength? So he could wear a funny hat?

They say however much you prepare, nothing prepares you. They say it doesn’t hit you till after the funeral. Well, that was yesterday, the day before Christmas Eve. You can’t choose your date, can you? Or the weather. A howling gale, umbrellas blowing inside-out. And you’d been going somewhere warm.

They say—who are these they with their big mouths?—that you’re in a state of shock.

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