Edmund Tyler upset his daughter Maisie when he began telling the world that he was going to honour his wife’s wishes and put her ashes into a deep hole in the middle of the garden.
‘Dad, no plaque, no casket, just a deep hole. How can you?’
‘Maisie, I will follow her down that fifty foot hole one day, then you can fill it in and no one will know we are there for eternity. Coffins and urns get dug up all the time. No one will disturb us if you do as I ask.’
‘Dad, I think Mum would like to be somewhere where we could go and see her; talk to her. Surely, you would like to do that too?’
Edmund was not about to shock his daughter with the truth; that her mother was alive and well in his head, forever twenty-two, with them doing what young twenty-somethings do all the time, and that, had he fgone first, Maisie would probably be having a similar conversation about the same hole at the bottom of the garden with her mother.
Then again, perhaps not. Doreen did have a boyfriend and he had done the decent thing and found his telephone number in his wife’s diary. It seemed to ring forever, but just as Edmund was about to give up, a voice answered. ‘Hello, Martin Kettlefish’.
Edmund took a deep breath. ‘I’m Edmund Tyler. I believe you and my wife are friends. I found your telephone number in Doreen’s diary, together with the initials M.K. I have some sad news. She died suddenly two days ago. In her sleep. We’ll know more when we get the pathology report and the Coroner’s Office can release Doreen’s body. I’m having her cremated privately, then buried in the garden. Just family and close friends. I’ll let you know when.’
The voice at the other end of the telephone line croaked ‘Thank you’.
Edmund didn’t wait. He put down the receiver without saying another word. ‘Poor bugger’ Edmund said to himself. He had spent a couple of decades with this man living out of sight whilst being very much part of his Doreen’s life.
Edmund had his suspicions from the off. She had gone to Edinburgh with Jacqui for a few days. It was not long after Graham left home. Well, more like didn’t return from university after announcing he had a job - in Morpeth. He and Doreen had had to look the place up on a map to be sure of where it was.
Not long afterwards Doreen and her friend Jacqui decided to go to Edinburgh for a few days. It was only after they had gone that Edmund realised he didn’t know where Jacqui and Doreen were staying. Jacqui had made the arrangements and he wanted to send them some flowers and a box of posh chocolates. In his head, Edmund had ‘Leith Walk’ from a part overheard conversation between the two women, so he had set about telephoning hotels in the vicinity and got lucky with his third call when he gave the receptionist both names and she also offered to get the flowers and chocolates for him. ‘We have a shop and a florist. I will invoice you’. In the end it was that simple and Edmund walked around the rest of the day very pleased with himself.
Edmund and the receptionist also arranged for the flowers and chocolates to be taken to ‘the suite’, as the receptionist called it, at five o’clock, when he would be talking to Doreen on the telephone. To him ‘suite’ sounded posher than a room, but then that was how it was meant to sound.
He rang a couple of minutes before five and the hotel reception put Edmund though immediately, no checking that the person in ‘the suite’ would accept the call. He knew enough about hotels to be surprised, but he had had a ten minute chat with Brenda, the woman on reception, six hours before and liked the sound of her voice, a little deep. He guessed she was middle-aged. Another ‘fantasy woman’ to add to his list and to write stories about. Doreen joked about his ‘women’.
Edmund was expecting Doreen or Jacqui to answer the telephone, then, if he was lucky, to hear a knock on the door, followed by an exclamation of surprise. After all the message on the card read ‘For Doreen and Jacqui. Enjoy your four days. Edmund xx’.
Instead a male voice answered ‘Yes’.
‘Oh, I must have the wrong room. Can you put me back to reception please’, then Edmund heard Jacqui’s voice shout ‘I’ll get it’. The male voice said ‘Sure’ and Edmund interrupted the man. ‘Hang on. Is that Jacqui Farrow’s voice I just heard?’
Again the male voice said ‘Yes’ but this time Edmund detected a hint of suspicion.
‘Is Doreen there. It’s Edmund tell her’.
‘Hang on’ and, for a moment, Edmund thought he heard muffled voices. He guessed the man had a hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Edmund darling, this is a surprise’
He was about to ask who the man was when he heard Doreen exclaim ‘Oh’ and Jacqui’s voice speaking down the telephone. ‘Edmund, they are lovely. I will have to find a way to say thank you properly when we get home. Here’s Rene’.
All his wife’s old friends from before Edmund met Doreen called her ‘Rene’. By chance he met Doreen’s mother the same day he met Doreen. She had been coming out of the Joe Lyon’s Tearoom as they walked across the town square together. They had met on a day long course about why the Town Council was ‘de-merging’ departments and services. Neither of them were convinced by the explanations offered and said as much. This set them apart from brown-nosing colleagues and they left at the end of the day walking to the Canal Arms for a drink and to learn a little more about one another. As they crossed the town square a voice bellowed ‘Doreen’.
Edmund felt the woman he had been calling ‘Rene’ since the introductions at the beginning of the day lean into him and take his right hand into her left hand. ‘That’s my mother. Call me Doreen and she’ll love you’.
He was about to ask why, but she stopped him. ‘Call me Doreen and I’ll go to bed with you’. Edmund didn’t argue and, as much as he loved her offer, he was going to ignore it. In the event, a few hours later, he had no say in the matter and they married three months later, Doreen pregnant with Maisie.
Jacqui was the first friend of Doreen’s Edmund met and when once asked to describe their own friendship used the word ‘tactile’ - in other words Jacqui treated Edmund like everyone else she liked. When asked on another occasion to describe Jacqui at her 40th birthday party to a room full of family and friends, he used the words ‘Hands on’, at which everyone laughed and nodded their agreement.
‘Sorry about that Darling. She got carried away and snatched the phone from my hand. This is a lovely surprise. I have my little camera with me, so I’ll take a picture before Jacqui eats all the chocolates’.
Edmund was too preoccupied with the man in the room to take in what his wife had been saying. ‘Who’s the man?’ He didn’t dress the question up.
‘Martin you mean? He’s a friend of Jacqui. He’s taking us to some gardens tomorrow called Little Sparta, opened a couple of years ago’.
Edmund was not about to interrogate Doreen over the telephone. Anyway, why start now? As far as he was concerned there were areas in a marriage you didn’t go if you wanted it to survive and this was one of them.
Doreen had looked after Edmund from day one and would go on doing so until one of them died. That first night she had straddled him and put two fingers on his lips after a deep kiss. ‘No questions. Just enjoy’ and he did. After Edinburgh, she took more care.
When Doreen got home, Edmund didn’t ask about Martin and she didn’t mentioned him. He was, after all, ‘Jacqui’s friend’ and one thing they never did was gossip.
To the outside world, their children and families, they were a perfect couple, and they were. Only Doreen knew with any certainty that there were three of them. Edmund, at best, guessed, whilst Martin knew but felt used, always the lover, never the husband. It was Edmund who thought of Doreen as a wife; a very attractive, intelligent woman who took his name, who had his children. Of one thing Edmund was sure. M.K. came after him.
Edmund decided to make up his mind after Doreen’s internment. He would know M.K. a little better by then. He loved Doreen enough to let the three of them share the same hole. Maybe there was a note by Doreen still be found…
Sharing a hole