Between Two Funerals

By Ben Lister

A story of obsessional love.

David returns from his grandfather’s funeral in Yorkshire to his home in London to find a letter that proves to be the beginning of a significant relationship with Hedley, a colleague with whom David has had little previous contact.

After a few years, the relationship ends abruptly leaving David emotionally adrift. Unable to accept the fact that the relationship is over, David waits for Hedley’s return.

Despite advice from friends and an extended period of counselling, David’s single-minded resolve to stoically set his sights on Hedley’s eventual return leads to a shocking development and another funeral.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398440326

Ben Lister

Ben Lister spent the majority of his life as a teacher. Now happily retired, he spends his time composing and arranging choral music, working as a volunteer dog walker and writing all manner of things. He lives in Surrey with his husband and together they travel, wine and dine, and cultivate their garden.

Book preview

Chapter 1

August 1987

He just sat there disbelieving. There was a silence all around and within him as well, a silence so profound that it frightened him. Knowing that what he had just done was the most wicked action imaginable, he was paralysed with fear. Indeed, the shock was so deep that all his senses had closed down to protect his inner defences from crumbling completely.

Wrapped in this state of inertia he continued to sit by the path leaning against a large sandstone rock for such a time as he couldn’t determine when he thought about it later. He had stopped functioning and so time was rendered irrelevant. He was suspended between the action that he had perpetrated and the consequences to come.

What these consequences would be didn’t bear thinking about but, as he eventually began to step into reality again, he knew nevertheless that he would have to contact the police. Shock would have to be put aside because what mattered now was his freedom and survival and already, with self-preservation elbowing its way to the front of his mind, he was constructing a feasible narrative that would hide the damning truth.

How could this have happened? Had all these years of wanting come to this? It was not how it was meant to be. His dreaming had told a different story.

Panic began to gnaw its way into his thinking. It flickered at first and then became a dark shadow that completely engulfed him. The reality of what he had done thrashed around in his brain and put an end to his thinking because he was frightened to have anything in his mind. He thought he might vomit.

Slowly he got up on very unsteady legs, aware that his whole body was shaking. Keeping well away from any position where he might see over the cliff edge, he walked slowly back to the cottage. He saw no one. The only movement came from the occasional gull that rose up the cliff side and then disappeared down again out of his sight. It was mid-afternoon and there was a stillness to the day that made him feel even more alone.

When he arrived at the cottage, he unlocked the door with trembling hands, went inside and slumped into a chair and wept.

He wept as he had never wept before.

Chapter 2

October 1976

It was cold, the early morning cold that lingers before the day gets brighter. The autumn starlings that nested in the heavy Victorian ironwork of Kings Cross had already begun their day by weaving through the geometry of the crusty girders displaying their aeronautical brilliance.

David walked quickly down the empty platform to escape the chill and to make sure that he found a private place on the train. His desire to find an empty compartment was dominating his thinking and he kept glancing to see if any fellow passengers might be following him. But he was alone at this early hour on a Saturday though he walked quickly all the same. He found a seat and sat quite still for a moment, glad that it wasn’t a working day when the train would have been full of commuters with their battered morning looks and rolled newspapers.

A private journey. No conversations. No exchanged smiles with strangers. No social effort, not even an exchanged smile. He wanted to be left alone. David’s mood sank as he contemplated travelling north to his grandfather’s funeral which meant being with members of his family for the day, not a prospect that he looked forward to.

Just over five years ago, he had left a life that was difficult, where he couldn’t be himself and he’d found freedom far away in London and discovered a new rewarding life. Going back into his previous world again, he would have to be somebody that he had left behind and, even for only a day, this was a depressing prospect. David did not want to be reminded of a lonely and confused upbringing that he’d been glad to put behind him. There wasn’t a single relative that he was looking forward to seeing again. His relationship with his grandmother, now newly widowed, was distant and awkward. There should have been a feeling of gratitude within him for what she had done for him but he couldn’t summon a trace of it. David’s view was that adolescence was a difficult period for any youth but her seeming resentment that he lived with her and his grandfather was something that David became increasingly conscious of as he made that transition from boy to man. The atmosphere in the house, he never thought of it as home, had become suffocatingly claustrophobic and aged nearly 19 he had gladly stepped on the train taking him to London to live far away from them.

The other fly in the ointment was his aunt Annie. She had lost her husband to cancer early in her marriage and she had seemed to take out her bitterness in her dealings with her nephew which were usually short-tempered and acrimonious. Annie seemed to relish her confrontations with David. She knew how to prod and poke until David’s temper snapped. She had always been proudly wedded to her working-class identity and scoffed at David’s intention to go to university. Once, in a particularly tetchy exchange, she had asked him why on earth he wanted to go to London, which she described as ‘down there’ as if London had a bad odour about it.

A few other passengers boarded but sat a few seats away from him. David waited for the train to move and in the silence, he became aware of his own growing anxiety.

Through the window, David saw that the clock, so big and heavy and out of proportion, hanging above the entrance to a waiting room, showed three minutes to departure. He also saw his own reflection in the glass and studied his face for a while. David was tall and slim, a fact that pleased him and although he had never regarded himself as handsome, he thought that he just about scraped into the ‘good-looking’ category. It was a pity that his hair was fine and not thick. Crew cuts had been all the fashion when he was 12 or 13 but David’s hair had stubbornly refused to remain upright because it lacked thickness and body. Instead, it had dropped to a 45-degree angle, much to David’s annoyance. Other boys in his class had laughed at his attempt to join the crew cut club and so he had abandoned it and reverted to his previous conventional look.

As soon as David had arrived at university in 1971, moustaches were fashionable. David had grown one and he had kept it and looking at it now he felt that it suited him. Many of his contemporaries had let their hair grow long but David had resisted this trend. In his outlook, David was essentially conservative. He was a shirt and tie man. Long hair would have been totally out of character.

Another passenger entered David’s carriage but walked past him. No one else sat anywhere near him and soon, with apparently no effort at all, the huge weight of the train silently began to move through the escarpments and tunnels worming its way north. In a matter of minutes, the city was lost to sight and David began to relax a little knowing that the journey would take a few hours.

David had never been to a funeral before. The prospect of the disposal of his grandfather’s body lacked all emotion for him. He knew he would just be a passive spectator. Although his grandparents had looked after him for the majority of his childhood following his parents’ death, when a motorbike had smashed head-on into the car David’s father George had been driving round a blind corner, David wasn’t close to them. He had been so glad to secure his escape by gaining a university place on a full grant five years ago and put that first period of his life behind him.

It had taken him some months to adjust to his new life in London. At first, he had felt overwhelmed by the huge city in general as well as the academic demands of his university course. Through his first term though he gradually adjusted, found his feet and developed enough confidence to persevere. He had returned to his hometown that first Christmas but had felt such a heightened awareness of his lack of connection there that thereafter he found means of staying elsewhere in subsequent holidays with the help of various student friends, especially Ian, throughout his university years. There was no burden of guilt in his mind caused by him staying away from his family. They had been less than sincere in their care for his happiness and now bitterness had replaced any guilt.

One friend, in particular, helped him achieve a measure of independence by being lucky enough to be the son of fairly affluent parents who had a second home in Dorset. Ian invited David there for the Easter holiday of his first year at university and not only provided him with a useful practical escape but also led David to know himself better when Ian seduced him. Subsequently, they had a casual relationship that lasted until they both left to begin their careers, Ian taking up a post in Bermuda. David had felt adrift on a sea of confusion from the moment puberty set in but now he was clear about himself and, having grasped his independence he was reconciled with his true identity.

David discovered that there were so many aspects of London to enjoy. His love of history often drew him to the regal landmarks but there was also the sheer energy of the West End, the wide pavements of Oxford Street to accommodate the hordes of shoppers, the friendly nightlife of Soho streets and the quiet oases of the Georgian squares. A native of a quiet small provincial town, it had been a revelation when he arrived in the city and even now David still walked around London in the garb of a tourist, gazing at the kaleidoscopic wonder of the place.

The train began to lose some speed. There was a jolt as it manoeuvred its way across a succession of points that varied the rhythm of the rails. This disturbed David’s thoughts and returned him to the present. Through the window was the empty monotony of Bedfordshire with its endless flat featureless landscape. Looking at the fields that had little activity save for the odd tractor or mindless cows incessantly chewing the cud there was a pervading scene of inactivity.

Only the train had movement and life as it sped north. The other passengers in David’s carriage were either asleep or intently reading. An unmemorable hour passed. David felt his stomach tighten the nearer the train got to his destination.

Feeling tired from his early morning start, David closed his eyes. He thought more about his past. There had been glimmers of light in his boyhood when the relationship between his grandparents and himself had gelled for a short time and his sense of emptiness had been papered over. David was unclear as to why the equilibrium hadn’t been maintained. He could only presume that his grandparents grew tired with this imposed second child-rearing and eventually abandoned him to the storms of his adolescence and he had to admit to himself that he hadn’t been the easiest of people to live with during his teenage years.

Lulled by the chatter of the rails again, David began to feel real unease at the thought of seeing his grandmother in a few hours. Would her widowhood change their lapsed relationship back into something that resembled that brief early warmth during his early childhood? David contemplated whether in fact he actually wanted anything to change. He began to feel a little guilty and compounded this by realising that he didn’t really want to go to the funeral at all. He wanted to be in London.

The relationship with his grandfather had been better. He knew that his grandfather had watched the gathering tension in the house with concern but he had remained detached, allowing the situation to worsen simply because he didn’t know how to stop it. His wife had assumed a controlling dominance over her husband after he retired and there was little probability that his grandfather would ever have stood up for him when David and his grandmother’s arguments worsened. The lingering handshake that he had given David when he left to go to London had reassured them both that any fragile bond between them had not been extinguished but merely relegated to the shadows. As his grandfather aged through his all too brief retirement, the man had become very introverted. In the last couple of years, hardly a word was spoken by his grandfather to anyone. All too often David had been conscious of being watched by him, increasingly so as he prepared to leave his hometown. It wasn’t a censorial look, more as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t, maybe even daren’t.

Now the shadows had turned into total darkness and there would be no more handshakes, no more looks. David glanced at the world outside. The heavy bulk of Peterborough Cathedral slipped slowly right and out of sight and David felt the north near and the nervous ache in his stomach tightened again.

___________________________

It was lunchtime when he arrived. He stood on the steps of the station entrance and absorbed the familiar view of the town’s main square for a couple of minutes, registering everything and assuring himself that nothing had changed. Although he didn’t want to be there anymore there was a strange comfort and reassurance that things were still the same as they had been throughout his life. The heavy stone buildings that formed the perimeter of the square spoke of mid-Victorian confidence. In his childhood, David remembered them being black with years of soot from the many mill chimneys in the town, but now they were cleaned and they were probably as handsome as when they had been built. He headed for the main bus station and within 10 minutes he got off the bus at the stop just a short way from his grandparents’ house.

The drawn curtains reminded him why he was here. His grandfather was dead. He was going to attend his first funeral. When he went inside the house his private thoughts would stop and he would have to play his part. His whole body tensed as he opened the door and entered the house.

There they were, virtually the whole of his extended family, uncles and aunts, a few cousins and, of course, his grandmother. The silence in the house seemed to intensify as he entered the room.

Everyone looked at him but no one spoke. Everyone was just standing around or sitting suspended in silence, patiently waiting for the cortege to arrive and David’s entrance had disturbed the stillness of the room. They all looked towards him and then looked away and resumed their statuary poses. There wasn’t a single smile from anyone. He was literally the black sheep, the one who had left his roots and gone ‘down there’. The one who’d gone to university. The one who didn’t belong there anymore.

David focused his attention on his grandmother sitting impassively in the centre of the room and was about to say something, anything, when his aunt Annie, who came into the room from the kitchen, spoke loudly, disturbing the silence and the stillness.

It’s David, mother, come up from London. David felt repelled by the tone of her voice. It was too loud and he spoke to her mother as if she were deaf, rather than in sad mourning.

Hello, Grandma. It was all he could think to say. Annie responded instead of his grandmother.

You’ve managed to get the day off then? It’s good of you to bother coming up all that way. Annie arranged her face in as contemptuous a fashion as she could.

David determined that he wasn’t going to rise to his aunt’s goading. He knew that Annie, as the eldest child of the marriage, would see herself as the chief mourner. She would now possess her mother and dictate all the terms of his grandmother’s life. David would be no part of it, of course. He would be far away uninvolved. No point then, in being intimidated by his aunt. He only had to retain his dignity today and then he could return to his other life. No, he would not take the bait, he would not allow the brittle character of his aunt to have her day at his expense.

Of course I’m here, David responded with as much confidence as he could muster. He didn’t look directly at his aunt as he spoke and he looked around to find someone else to start a conversation with. Not one single person gave him eye contact. Remembering why he was here he approached his grandmother and bent to kiss her on the cheek, something that David hadn’t done since he was a child. Later, on the train taking him back home, he would wonder why he had kissed her. It was an instinctive act, perhaps an assertion to all the others who looked on that he was by blood a member of this family. His grandmother hadn’t reacted in any way to this seeming affection. She had just continued to sit impassively and David could not at the time fathom what was in her mind after the kiss.

They’ll stop your pay, lad. His aunt continued her volley. They never miss a trick. Even teachers get their money docked if they’re not there earning it. Annie had left the room and gone into the kitchen delivering her comment unseen.

David burned with a mixture of indignation and embarrassment. No one else spoke and no one’s face looked remotely warm or sympathetic. He was a grandson, a nephew and a cousin but he might as well have been an alien. The only face that might have smiled affectionately at him was cold and still and hadn’t arrived yet. David stood alongside everyone else and mostly looked down at the floor to avoid seeing these impassive faces.

There must have been about 20 people in the room, not many family and friends for a lifetime, David thought. Frank, Kenneth and John, his uncles, sat with their wives. David felt no bond with them at all. They were his father’s brothers rather than his uncles. He was their nephew, the son of their late brother and yet they scarcely paid any attention to him at all. They had been distant uncles even though they all lived locally and David had formed the suspicion that none of them had been close to his father. Not one of them had offered him a home when their brother and his wife died.

It was only a short time before it was time to leave the house and he found himself in the cortege with two of his uncles and their wives in the third car. No one spoke during the journey.

The cortege moved off slowly, death leading the slow processional line through the living, interrupting their living pulse beat, compelling them all to notice this small fleet of black vehicles that would one day be their own procession. As he sat in the car, noticing the many people who stood respectfully still as they slowly passed, with one or two men even taking their caps off, David became conscious of his own breathing, of the effort needed to fill his own lungs with life-giving air. To