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‘Maur—rice,’ then, less distinctly, a few more words that might
have been ‘who’ and ‘over by the …‘ Then he died.
    I stood
up and turned away. Diana looked at me with the fear gone from her face and
stance. Before she could say anything I went past her and over to Joyce, who
was looking down at the serving table. Here a tray had been placed with five
covered plates and some vegetable dishes on it.
    ‘I
couldn’t think what to do,’ said Joyce, ‘so I told Magdalena to leave it all
here. Is he dead?’
    ‘Yes.’
    At once
she started to cry. We put our arms round each other.
    ‘He was
awfully old and it was very quick and he didn’t suffer.’
    ‘We
don’t know what he suffered,’ I said.
    ‘He was
such a nice old man. I can’t believe he’s just gone for ever.’
    ‘I’d
better go and tell Amy.’
    ‘Do you
want me to come with you?’
    ‘Not
now.’
    Amy had
turned off the TV set and was sitting on her bed, but not in her previous
posture.
    ‘Gramps
has been taken ill,’ I said.
    ‘Is he
dead?’
    ‘Yes,
but it was all over in a second and it didn’t hurt him. He can’t have known
anything about it. He was very old, you know, and it might have happened any
day. That’s how it is with very old people.’
    ‘But
there was so much I meant to say to him.’
    ‘What
about?’
    ‘All
sorts of things.’ Amy got up and came and put her hands on my shoulders. ‘I’m
sorry your father’s dead.’
    This
made me cry. I sat down on the bed for a few minutes while she held my hand and
stroked the back of my neck. When I had finished crying, she sent me off,
saying that I was not to worry about her, that she would be all right and would
see me in the morning.
    In the
dining-room, the two women were sitting on the window-seat, Diana with her arm
round Joyce’s shoulders. Joyce’s head was lowered and her yellow hair had
fallen over her face. Jack handed me a tumbler half-full of whisky with a
little water. I drank it all.
    ‘Amy
all right?’ asked Jack. ‘Good. I’ll look in on her in a minute. Now we’ll have
to get your father on to his bed. You and I can do it, or I can go and fetch
someone from downstairs if you don’t feel up to it.’
    ‘I can
do it. You and I can do it.’
    ‘Come
on, then.’
    Jack
took my father under the arms and I by the ankles. Diana was there to open the
door. By holding him close against his chest, Jack saw to it that my father’s
head did not loll much. He went on talking as we moved.
    ‘I’ll
get young Palmer up here as soon as we’ve done this, if you approve, just to
put him in the picture. There’s nothing more that needs doing tonight. The
district nurse will be in first thing in the morning to lay him out. I’ll be along
too, with the death certificate. Someone will have to take that in to the registrar
in Baldock and fix things up with the undertakers. Will you do that?’
    ‘Yes.’
We stood now in the bedroom. ‘What are you looking for?’
    ‘Blanket.’
    ‘Bottom
drawer there.’
    We
covered my father up and left him. The rest was soon done. All of us managed to
eat a little, Jack rather more.
    David
Palmer appeared, listened, said and looked how sorry he was and went. I
telephoned my son Nick, aged twenty-four, an assistant lecturer in French
literature at a university in the Midlands. He told me he would get somebody to
look after two-year-old Josephine and come down by car with his wife, Lucy, the
next morning, arriving in time for a late lunch. I realized with a shock that
there was nobody else to inform: my father’s brother and sister had died
without issue, and I had neither. By eleven thirty, a good three-quarters of an
hour before the last non-residents would ordinarily have been out of the place,
word of the death had spread and everything was quiet. Finally, the Mayburys
and Joyce and I stood at the doorway of the apartment.
    ‘Don’t
come down,’ said Jack. ‘Fred’ll let us out. Have a good long sleep—Joyce one