Coda

18 January-31 March, in the year of our Lord 2023

These weeks slow to pass, so I commit to my Journall a summary record of events. Two days after my father left this earth we did meet, it being a very cold day and Mr. Jones with me, at Mr. Porter & Son’s, they being directors of Funerals, where Mrs. Porter made all necessary arrangements. The day after, I went to Saint George Hall, where they did sign the Certificate pertayning to my father, and give it to me, and after, to the Hospitall to pick up what was left there that belonged to him. All the next week about very much business, so full of it that I feared it [might] over come me, the main businesses being with Mrs. Cohen from Special Services to discuss my mother’s position and what might become of her, with the Rev. Colmer, in person, and a printer, separate and by the Messenger, to discuss the Order of Service [for the funeral], and with Mr. Lee at the Abbey Inne, where we settled upon the victuals we eat and drank thereafter. On the Tuesday, I think it was, the Messenger being back and forth to Dr. Cunninghame, whom I find a fine man, with some very honest wisdom, by the magick screen met Mrs. Daveys from the Conservatoire and we did settle, to my great sadness, that my course in Musique be put off a year. And all the while at these responsibilities, also at an amount of papers that my father had kept, the like I never saw in my entire life, so that Mr. Jones went to the Exchange to buy a bigger shredder.
  Ten days after my fathers death I home again, Mr. Jones with me and to his own house, the Sitter once more with my mother; and in the streets nearby did visit three establishments who might be payed to take care of my mother, my father now being gone, who cared for her all these years, and one very quickly wrote to me that they would take care of her, this being the one, thanks be to God, in which I placed my greatest faith, and all done so quick, and removing such a weight from my mind, I wept a little that it done. Again with my mother, Mr. Jones did set with great gusto to cancell all that was no longer to my fathers need nor hers — the Coach Association, the coal merchant, the candle maker, and the woodsman amongst them. A very great task. Now finding myselfe to be Attorny for my mother, the Messenger sent in all directions with the Notifications thereof, and of bereavment, to Halifax in the north and young Miss Barclay on Thread Needle street, and by ship all the way to Santender, in Spayne, where my father kept his ducats.
  My father’s funeral took place the sixth day of February, it cold but a great sunshine, the month being very dry. And there came very many to it, more than I thought come to it, there being in the congregation my mother, Mr. M. Jones, my aunt from Redding and my cousen Benjamin, along with them a body of fine men with whom my father worked, all now very aged, and a number who shared his pursuit of clocks; and neighbours from the street, many of them, all worthy souls, and I was grateful that they came and made themselves known to me, those I did not know; and also come many friends dear to me, among them Mr. J. Thomas, Mr. Ben Jones, Mr. I. Jones and Mrs. Curly, the Abotts from the coast and my oldest friend Mr. Bowen, all the way from Aberryhitswithit, which I did think wholly admirable that he should come, and it touched me that he did it, so recent his own loss; and even, though I concede it may have been my imagination, I thought I saw in the shadows cast at the back of the church by the candles at the apse, some I did not expect at all — the Physician, a little more stooped than I remembered, Mr. Erchin, almost a man and smartened in his dress, and beside them a stout figure, no longer awkward and insecure but sitting upright with a quiet confidence, all self assured in his grey hat, bodice and skirt; and alone in the furthest and dimmest corner of all, face hidden by the wide brim of an exquisite hat, an elegant figure all in black, save for trade mark scarlet gloves and matching flaming scarf, and on her breast, I think, a brooch of rubies and black crystal; though they must all have quietly gone after the last prayer was said, for they were there no more when we came to leave the chapel. Rev. Colmer made a handsome service and Mr. Sharples played the organ and waved his fee, though he is a Catholique. I did read out a little eulogie that I had composed, not, I trust, of undue length, hoping thereby to summerise a life and the spirit of a man in the minutes allowed for the speaking of it all; and afterwards some of the people there were very kind, and did tell me it was well wrote and they were moved by it. After, gathered for victuals and much pleasant discourse, and payed Mr. Lee the reckoning, 18l 7s 6d, and then all parted.
  The next day came again Mrs. Cohen, by arrangement, another from Special Services with her, to visit my mother, I all the night a-fret that they will not let her go to her new home, perhaps by reason of some Regulation unknown to me, and so could not sleep. But all they wished was to say their goodbyes, which I thought it was a kind thing to do, and they stayed a quarter of an hour before they went, and after I felt foolish for my suspitions. The day after that momentous, as, Mr. Jones with me, we did take my mother in Mr. Jones’ coach, which we managed with some little difficulty and no more, which was to our great surprise, to be cared for on the first day in her new home, though she did not wish to go and said she would manage on her own; but all her distress I hoped to God short lived, and the main matter that she should be safe, which I think she will be, though a shadow of guilt and melancholy fell across me for the doing of it. That done, Mr. Jones and I to the White Fort Arms, on White Fort street, where dined, and a merry supper, and the most merry discourse these two months.
  The next weeks unsettled for our being between our own houses, Mr. Jones and myselfe, and my mother’s house, and Lord! the dispiriting effort of resolving all the contents of it. Not a week by that we not severall times by coach to sundry charitable Foundations, and to the waste pits by the River where must be thrown all that may be used again, that a new purpose may be found for it, and to the Exchange so many times for victuals to support us. All this being done, a great pile become a lesser pile, and the lesser pile a smaller pile, I hardening my mind to keep only some old portraits, those documents that confirmed achievements of importance in the lifes of my mother and father, certain items of a personall nature that have particular value, being imbued with the essence of some person important to me or my mother, and what memorabilia remained for the history of my family (which, now I see it wrote, seems still to be too much). I did take a last look at some things of my childhood that my mother had kept, in trunks here and drawers there, but did not allow the cloying frailty of sentiment to stay my hand, and come to realise that the pain of parting with such things lies in the very act of parting, and then, once parted, dies. And there settled upon us a routine, each day we were there, so that Mr. Jones took his poudle, newly clipped of his curley hair in a three-for-the-price-of-two deal by Petts at Home that saved him two guineas, to walk in the woods, where found many about the same, though with dogs, and met with them and did discourse merrily each day we were there with them; and many times we took an Ordinary at Zara’s Hubb on an avenue very close, which was owned, I think, by the Ottomans who held the barber shop next door, where I went to be cropped for the ease of wearing my periwigg. And took stock, and come to realise anew how pleasant is this part of the City where my parents had chose to live their lifes, and bring me up.
  Four weeks after my father’s death, rose betimes at my house, and took my coach, Mr. Jones with me, so as to meet my father’s Lawyer, at one a-clock by appointment. Only we did find no candles lit within, the door locked and a note in its window: ‘If this Door be Locked, be advised that you must send a Messenger to — ’, and a string of numbers, which instructions we followed but no avayle, which vexed me, that we should arrive on time yet none here to greet us. And so stood there in the cold, it beginning to rain, till eventually shambled a figure from within to unlock the door, which was Mr. Garland bearing a candle stick, who, humbler now than last we met, took us through a very Labyrynth of cluttered corridors to a dusty inner chamber where he bowed his head a little before a seated figure, begowned and with such a great mass of enormous frissy hair upon her head that it would frighten severely not merely any miscreant but any Judge of Court; and Mr. Garland did tell this figure with a grave seriousness that Mr. Pepys wished to meet with her against Probate. Introductions done, I felt I must disburden myselfe of a lingering point of order.
  ‘I understand from your clerk that you have been very busy with legal affaires more pressing than even mine,’ say I, non-confrontationally, ‘but I have to confess to a certain dismay at finding it so difficult to arrange a meeting.’
  ‘Ah, yes,’ says she, disarmingly, ‘it must have been the very definition of a disappointment, must it not? But I am afraid Mr. Garland was simply obeying my instructions. In fact, I was not in Chancery at all, nor anywhere at the Inns of Court. They were looking for someone to defend the former First Lord against more Party Gate charges so I took the grand-kids to Tenerife. Now, let us see what you have brought me.’
  Business done, we finding my father’s Lawyer not as entimidating as I, for one, had feared, but rather very able — and she praiseworthy of our efforts to present very reasonable accounts, which would lessen her endeavores, and thus the reckoning — we moved to some inconsequential discourse, in the course of which it transpired that Miss Mason was not only acquainted with my Lord Anglesey, but moreover had stayed many years ago with him on his island beyond the Marches, her two children with her, only it rained all the week and they vowed to never return. And so we parted on very good terms.
   ‘Well, she seems very nice,’ says Mr. Jones, as we saunter along the street. ‘But never before have I seen such a voluminous wig upon the head of a Lawyer!’
  ‘I admit that none could miss noticing the Big Hair,’ say I, ‘and she must cut a figure in the Bailey. But was it not all her own?’
  Mr. Jones considers this. ‘If that is the case, it must cost a bomb at the hair dresser,’ says he.
  ‘If it were a wig,’ say I, ‘she would likely save a guinea being cropped by my Ottoman barbers.’
  ‘If it were her own,’ counters he, ‘she would save two being clipped by Petts at Home.’
   The same week come Gareth, a man from Redding with a trayler to take away my father’s little coach, which my father willed must go to my aunt, and a kind man to take away the contrivance that carried my mother upstairs, who remembered my father for his clocks and his working upon the River. Only each visit took away also some little memories from the house, and from time to time I felt a shiver of sorrow, that I was removing my childhood and all that was familiar to my poor mother, and that once gone these things could no more be retrieved.
  March come in very cold, with snow, but all the business of these last months begun to settle, my mother at ease in her new home, the old slowly cleared, and all usual events coming once more into our lifes: again to the theatre, and to musique, and to dine with friends, as is customery. Even to the point of my thinking to go to Ireland, to see old friends who live in the city they now call Londonderry, and walk upon the great walls newly built there. And while sometimes comes a humour that pauses me for a moment, against my own health and ageing, I recall the lessons of my fathers life: to maintain an enquiring mind, to keep active, and to be conscientious. And I hope I am doing those things as he would wish.
  As I come to finish writing, by and by comes Banjo, for whom such matters are never of any great concern, which I think must be a great assett, and as he creeps on to my lap to try to prevent me writing more, I am struck by what a Conundrum a diary is, and who it is really for, with its seeming private thoughts vouchsafed for all to read.

 

  ‘I wrote this to put it all in order, to make sure one more time about the life I lived. […] And I’ve finally finished it. I’ve written everything I need to write.’
  […]
  ‘Writing things was important, wasn’t it?’ Nakata asked.
  ‘Yes, it was. The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is meaningless.’
  ‘I can’t read or write, so I can’t write things down. Nakata’s just like a cat.’

  — Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore.