The Affair

The Affair

The day after the death, a large exotic insect was noticed in the sitting room of Parr’s, where members of the family had gathered to discuss funeral plans.

‘You might like to know, Mummy, there’s a socking great beetle on your picture.’ Robert sounded angry, but only because he was stressed and fearful. There was a list in front of him because his approach to any challenge was to reduce it to a series of columns. He’d got as far as ‘Hymns’. For the time being, grief had been marginalised.

His seven-year-old niece Bud, with her keener eyesight, corrected him. ‘It’s not a beetle. It’s a moth.’ She’d been stroking her grandmother’s limp hands, staring imploringly into her empty eyes. But now, as if giving up, she rose and approached the picture Robert had indicated.

‘Leave it,’ cautioned Sarah, as her daughter climbed on a chair. Her voice was very soft and careful. As she kept reminding everyone, just because Bud seemed fine, that didn’t mean anything. She’d been staying with her grandparents when her grandfather had suffered a fatal heart attack, soon after supper was served. It was she who’d telephoned her parents, even as the resident nurse was still absorbing the situation. ‘Grandpa has passed away,’ she’d announced in an astonishingly composed voice. (Nurse speak, of course, because nobody in Bud’s family referred to death like that). And now, as if all that hadn’t been traumatic enough, she was forced to witness the effect on her adored grandmother.

For all their efforts to behave normally, the family were frantic. For years they’d resented the costly invasion of nurses and carers; but now they’d have given any amount of money to see their mother, Celia, return to her former self. Why couldn’t she see the death as a mercy, like everyone else? She was only sixty-five - years younger than their father had been - but now seemed bent on following him to the grave. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t speak. But of course the marriage had been famously happy, and his long illness had only brought them closer.

Then Bud shocked them all by announcing, voice shrill with excitement: ‘It’s him! The moth’s him!’

‘Oh please!’ thought Margaret, closing her eyes. There was an unspoken agreement between the three siblings not to criticise each other’s children, but this was too much. Bud had behaved commendably in frightening circumstances but she should never have been allowed to sit in on the funeral discussion.

For all her usual indulgence, even Sarah seemed at a loss how to react. And before anyone could stop her, the child made things worse. Her attitude became conspiratorial, almost lover-like: ‘He’s come back because he’s really really worried about you, Gran!’ Suddenly she let out a shriek. ‘Look! He moved his wings! He heard me! He’s saying yes!’

From THE AFFAIR by Alicia Clifford, copyright © 2012 by the author, and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.