Poppy Fields

I remember driving down to the funeral. Mum spent the whole journey with her head against the window, trying to jolt some form of energy back into her body. We were all half-dead, zombies with beating hearts. I remember my Dad wanted to stop for food, and we pulled up at a Little Chef just outside of Cambridge. No-one left the car. I remember my sister kept rambling about some boy or other, I wasn't really listening to the words, but I let her voice rush over me and keep me sane.

I remember when we arrived, everything was white. The ground was white. The trees were white. It was a perfect snow, little ice and the perfect compaction for snowballs.

We all arrived in different cars, mostly blue or black, stark against the winter backdrop. It wasn't winter really, we were well into March and the calender that decorated our kitchen wall showed Wordsworth country, but the weather seemed to sense that this was no time for daffodils and golden chicks.

 

There were people there that I hadn't seen since I was still in dresses, and to say that it had been a fair few years would have been an understatement. Mum had scoffed at me for choosing skinny jeans and a hoody instead of a demure maxi-dress and sombre pearls, but he would never have wanted that. Be who you want to be. The best advice he ever gave me. We weren't all clothed in black, my three year old niece was wearing a burgundy party dress, and dancing around everyone's feet like a sly little kitten. I expect she didn't have a clue what was going on, but she seemed to sense she should be quiet during the service, though this was probably helped by the giant lollipop lodged in her mouth.

 

Everybody did their bit, sang the hymns and wiped away their forced tears �" the men with rented handkerchiefs, the women with screwed up tissue. The children wiped their noses on their sleeves. I doubted very many would be grief-stricken by tomorrow; they'd probably just slip straight back into their nine to five lives. We hadn't been zombies since the death of course, there were shops to run and school-work to do, but sadness had fermented in our guts, threatening to make us wailing drunkards. There was a stain on the pew in front of us shaped just like Australia. Strange the things you notice.

 

My brother, grown and flown for several years already, was set to make the closing speech. He couldn't afford the rented suits, and I recognised the dark corduroy as his 'cattle gear' that he used on the farm sometimes. He hadn't tried to catch his tears, so he looked a little like he'd been out in the rain. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember him leaning across and whispering in my ear. He smelled just like always, that earthy smell, like mud under fingernails, it lingered on him, in his clothes, in his car. He was just the right amount of scruffy. I'm not sure how the priest knew, but he read the speech for my brother, who ended up slumped haphazardly against a pillar.

 

There was no burial, no open coffin, our last goodbyes seemed almost pointless, more thoughts and prayers than awkward glances. Besides, he wouldn't have wanted to be remembered dead. He would have wanted us to remember him with a full head of hair, trips to the zoo, going for a country drive just because he was bored. Cremations really are quite strange ceremonies, sailing away on a conveyor belt, like some prize the game-show contestant hadn't won. They must have removed the flowers some time further down the line, because by the time we had all regained a sense of balance �" only just �" and stumbled outside to reminisce, they were carefully placed along the wall.

 

I think some old relatives, or friends of friends, had tried to start a conversation with me, but I just recall staring out across the field, past the memorial benches and trees, to the site where the poppies used to grow when I was here aged five or six. It had been replaced by a housing estate, of course, the city rapidly expanding with students and tourists, but I could still see the bright red and feel the dried grass between my fingers. We all trudged back to our cars when our toes started going numb; the car radio was playing Bob Dylan. I remember thinking that it didn't matter how many roads we walked down, or how many years a mountain exists. It just didn't matter. The tears we had previously thought to be exhausted made another unwelcome appearance as we drove to the big hotel for the get-together.

 

I don't think he would have liked it much, horrendously over-priced, furnished with replicas, and waiters glaring contemptuously at the downtrodden few, making small talk with the other guests, all tarted up like this was some high-end party. The served crab salad, prawn cocktail, tuna sandwiches. I don't even like fish. Eventually I managed to find some peace, everyone had taken to ignoring me like I was some naughty child in the corner, except my brother, who came and held my hand and let me re-soak his t-shirt.

 

I can't remember who's idea it was, but we were in his car, playing Oasis at full volume, doing fifty or sixty in a thirty zone. Not too hardcore, but we felt like rebels. We pulled up on a random street, and my thoughts drifted back to poppies. Nothing special about them particularly, he hadn't died in battle, they weren't his favourite flower. But the summers we'd had together, the picnics in the park, pulling up flowers to take home to Mum. I swivelled round in my seat as my brother lit a cigarette. He knew it was a horrible habit, he always opened the window and made me face the other way. I stared out blankly, peering through the uncurtained windows of the nearby houses, singing a few bars of the song blasting out of the speakers.

 

 Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was providence. Maybe I had just wished it from my imagination. But there in the house, bright as day, was a giant flower painted on the wall. A giant red flower. A poppy.

 

I had never done anything illegal. Not even stolen penny sweets from the corner shop. But this was different. I wasn't stealing for money, or even just to mess around. I just had a feeling that I had to be in that house, had to stand in front of that painting. I pointed it out to my brother. He nodded. I don't know how he understood, I don't know why he agreed. We could have gone to prison. But he switched off the music and opened the car door, all without saying a word.

 

The street was pretty much empty. I can only assume that we tried the front door, tried to get round the back, but somehow or other I had managed to climb halfway up a plastic drainpipe and shimmy myself through a bathroom window. I climbed down, careful not to leave a mark on the toilet seat with my Converse trainers, and walked through the house in someone else's body. I didn't touch the TV or the stereo; I left all the food in the fridge. There was a cat sprawled across a dining room chair, who raised an eyebrow (if cats can be said to do so) but didn't bother getting up when I walked in.

 

I turned a corner and came face to face with the wall. Close up it wasn't as good; there were some crude smudges and the artist hadn't quite gotten the seeds just right. I glanced sideways out the window, and I could see the back of an old man, with a fishing vest and a picnic basket held at his side. He was talking to my brother, who leant back on his car, arms crossed and smiling. I waited for the man to move on, before leaving the same way I had entered, stopping only to feel the smooth, cool curves of the handrail on the stairs under my hands.

 

When we returned to the hotel, things were much as we had left them. I found my family sat mutely around a table with the remains of the seafood buffet. Nobody asked me where I had been. Two weeks later my brother rang me, covering his own back. No I hadn't told anyone. Yes I know it was a stupid thing to do. No I wasn't blaming him. Eventually I turned the conversation to the old man he had been laughing with.

 

He told me no-one even walked by when I was in the house.

Reviews

[Sammi]

I miss Dumpa :'(