The Household Guide to Dying

Chris seemed to relax. He paused, took a sip of his drink, then added,

Beyond that, I’ll play just about anything. Swing, jazz, honky tonk, country, blues, you name it. Bach, Liberace, Mrs Mills, anyone you like.

Mitchell stopped polishing to ask, Trucking songs?

Sure, why not? I’ll work any nights you like, within reason of course. Might want the occasional night off for Christmas or something. But no days.

I don’t open much before four or five anyway, Mitchell said. Except for functions.

Yeah, well, that’s the other thing. No weddings, no engagements, no twenty-firsts, you know? I can’t stand those crowds. They expect you to know every tune on the planet and get the shits when you won’t play those Burt Bacharach numbers for hours at a time.

Mitchell shrugged and said, They usually bring their own sound. What about funerals, though? I get the occasional one. Usually small crowds. Except the Irish and Islander funerals tend to go on for a while.

Now, funerals I can do. Chopin, no problem. Drunken Irish songs, ‘Danny Boy’, that’s all fine by me. I love funerals. Chris rose, glancing at his watch. He eased into his jacket then held out his hand to Mitchell.

Tomorrow night, see you about…Mitchell began.

Around seven. Might manage it by then. Chris said goodbye to me and departed.

I raised my drink while gazing at Mitchell. A direct or indirect question to him was a certain way to complete and eternal ignorance. The only way people could find anything out was by waiting, listening, watching. Unfortunately, Mitchell being such a generous host, that also meant hours spent drinking many drinks, all of them pretty potent. I could sit on one of his margaritas for an hour now and then, but I couldn’t sustain the pace over the length of a night. If he noticed you drinking too slowly he simply reached out for the remains of your drink, tossed it into the sink, and made you something different and more solvent. A pineapple daiquiri, three times the normal strength. The only advantage was that these sessions had the effect of making your tongue numb but his loose, as if he was the one drinking, though I never saw him with anything other than a bitter lemon. So you got to hear information about all sorts of people, in and out of town. Fascinating, if you could remember any of it the next day.

It was a quiet evening, only half a dozen patrons clustered at a few tables over by the windows. On the bar a canary fluted sleepily in his cage. Behind Mitchell, on the back wall, the row of mirrors reflected the semi-precious gem colours of the exotic and rarely dispensed liqueurs and mixers – crème de menthe, grenadine, Galliano – while behind me on the open windows the gauzy curtains waved in the warm breeze, sucking and billowing out to embrace the potted palms then gently and noiselessly dropping again.

At times like this I could understand what had kept generations of men seated at bars sipping beers with only the drone of a television in the background. It was a sanctuary, where nothing was required of you, nothing asked. An enclosed and protective place that was also a public space with company and conversation should you require it. A place that made few demands, allowed a person to float without care or deadline, timetable or commitment. And drove their women mad with frustration.

I remained quiet, briefly catching Mitchell’s eye in the bar mirror as he turned to the shelf to stack glasses or smooth out towels. Then, after he served a beer to someone, I spoke.

So, what’s Chris’s story, where’s he from?

But Mitchell reached down to one of the fridges, then slowly stood up again before asking,

What brings you back after all these years?

He asked it in a way that implied he wasn’t interested in the answer, didn’t need an answer. He knew why I was back.

Have you been to the caravan? he continued.

Not yet. Going there tomorrow, I said.

About time, don’t you think?

I know that.

His curls had greyed beneath the Greek fisherman’s cap, and the lines in his face were deeper, but I still would have known him in an instant, anywhere.

Apart from sending on those boxes of yours, I haven’t known what to do about the place for bloody years. By the way, he added, you look like shit.

I know, I said. Bilateral mastectomy tends to do that to you. Especially followed up by secondaries. Liver. Tumours. The works, really. I’m just in the queue now for the upsized deal, the mega meal. You know, the one you can never finish eating.

Mitchell finally registered surprise. He put down the glass he was polishing, tossed aside the towel.

Oh, Delia. I always knew you’d return. Not with that, though.

Who would?

He gazed at me for a few moments, as if drawing out all the years in between.

And you’ve still never found Sonny’s father, I suppose?

No, never.

I became entranced by Van the night I first met him. He was playing guitar in a three-man band, singing and entertaining the small gathering with extemporised anecdotes and jokes. It was just an undergraduate trio – on reflection more audacious than sophisticated, making up in energy what it lacked in polish – but then, I was sixteen and suburban. He was twenty-two, and so much more charming and confident than the teenage boys I knew, who functioned via grunts and jerky movements, and who, if you went out with them, thought it was generous to buy you a bottle of Island Cooler then ignore you for the rest of the night.

It was a café and bar, where I shouldn’t have been, but I’d escaped from an evening football match that my school’s team was playing at the university grounds, and wandered up to Newtown. The venue was a dark place, with lava lamps on the bar and candles on the tables. I listened to the music for a set then ventured to the bar. I was ordering a glass of wine and handing over a dollar to the barman, who looked stoned, when someone whispered into my ear from behind,

Are you sure you’re eighteen?

I turned to see the guitarist. Up close he was all silky locks and neat beard: his eyes seemed to burn brighter among the dark blond hair. My first thought was that he looked like Jesus Christ, my second thought was how stupid that was, since no one knew how Jesus looked.

Of course, I lied.

I was delighted at the attention. He followed me back to my table with a drink and sat down uninvited while a thrill travelled through me. He introduced himself.

Van, I said. That’s an unusual name.

Oh, I changed it.

Changed it? Could one change one’s own name? Awesome.

My parents called me Ivan, so I just changed it to Van a few years ago. After Van Morrison. It reflects my personality more, you know.

Oh. Yeah, I said, pretending to know who Van Morrison was.

What are you drinking? he asked, although it was obvious.

Moselle. I took a sip. It was too sweet, but Jean drank Lindemans Ben Ean at home and it was all I could think of to order.

Old ladies’ drink, he said. You should try some of this.

He was drinking Jack Daniel’s and Coke. I watched him as he chatted, envious and far too admiring to notice that he talked only about himself. When he told me that he was a music student but had been dragging out his degree for several years, that he found the lecturers conservative and boring, the work a complete pain, and the program designed to stifle real talent, and when he confided that playing his own style of music was so much more creatively fulfilling, I couldn’t have agreed more.

I returned the next Friday night, and afterwards we went back to the terrace house he shared near the university. I didn’t go home for the rest of the weekend. Jean was furious.

Van’s mystique only deepened. He laughed at her job as a hairdresser, my vague ideas about becoming a teacher or librarian when I left school. His parents were circus performers, living up north in a town that had a personality of its own, a town that was famous for its circus. That sounded exotic to me, but he insisted that the place was just another small town. And he felt confined by the circus: he was a musician and singer, not a novelty performer. He’d left when he was sixteen.

My dull sense of inferiority, of having missed out – on something, I wasn’t sure what – only sharpened. I began to spend more time with him. I was too keen to be his girl. Too eager to embrace his creatively fulfilling world.

It took me years to understand that it had all been veils and mirrors, the stuff of tinsel and papier-mâché and smoke machines. What he’d come from, a circus background. What he did, pretending to be an artist of the calibre of Van Morrison. Illusions that were necessary for performing, dangerous in real life.