DO IT YOURSELF

Once upon a time, there lived a very happy family. The parents were devoted to one another; the children – one boy, one girl – were perfect.

This family lived on the edge of an enchanted forest in a picture-postcard village in a beautiful Victorian house. They were blessed with good looks, intelligence, health and wit. They were wealthy: they skied at Christmas; they spent their summers in Provence. Ken was wont to whisk Samantha away for wildly romantic long weekends in European capitals.

In short, the Mitchells enjoyed all the finer things that life has to offer a certain clientele: beauty, success and harmony. We may be tempted into envy were it not for their kindness and compassion and their generous donations both of time and money to the less fortunate. The Mitchells were emotionally smart and politically astute: they were well aware of the privileges conferred upon them by nature, chance and endeavour.

And yet, it came to pass one day that Ken found himself alone and adrift in the perfect village and the perfect house on the edge of the enchanted forest. In fact, he was not so much on the edge of the forest as deep in the heart of it; and now he saw it was not enchanted at all, but dark, cold and terrifyingly senseless.

Now, it so happened that this day began like any other. Sylvie returned from her morning run and awakened the household with the jingle of radio, tinkle of shower, boil of kettle and chink of crockery. The Mitchells took up their customary places at the kitchen table and consumed a perfectly ordinary breakfast. They engaged in the ritual exchange of gentle pleasantries and reminders and confirmation of how the day was expected to unfold. Ken’s Audi left the driveway the routine ten minutes ahead of Sylvie’s Alpha. Life was as lovely as ever for Mr and Mrs Mitchell and family.

But fairy tales are cautionary, and the Wicked Fairy will sometimes have her way.

The End.

When the two young police officers were shown into his office some hours later, Ken’s first thought was – well, “thought” is too definite, because he had no thought as such, just a sense of falling, of weightlessness perhaps; a dream moment with no gravity, wherein he could have been under water, where vision was blurred and sounds were muffled. But if for convenience we may call it a “thought”, it was this: My God, these poor kids having to come here and tell me this. He buzzed Pam and asked her to bring them all some good strong tea.

Ken knows that this is the phenomenon known as shock. He knows it is a survival tactic, a trick of the traumatised mind.  He floats just beyond himself and observes with bewildered detachment his own mechanical manners. When the poor police officers have left him alone with his executive view over George Square, Ken takes care to shore himself up with all the banal components of normality. He attends to the more pressing files, he tidies his desk, packs some paperwork into his briefcase, replaces the tea things on the tray, checks his desk diary – he still uses the classic A4 burgundy faux-leather variety; doesn’t entirely trust technology – and buzzes Pam in, whereupon he confirms what she has already deduced.  He explains that he will take a few days’ leave. He hands her his white lawn handkerchief, pats her on the shoulder, and steels himself to absorb his loss.

We could wring our hands on his behalf. Indeed, we may exhort him to give way to his emotions; to scream, weep, throw things against walls and abuse at the Furies; prostrate himself and beat the cruel earth. But we may as well not, because Ken cannot permit himself to grieve. Not yet. And let’s face it, that is in itself a part of the bereavement process.

Two vehicles, five fatalities – one survivor, seriously injured. Just in that moment, a shameful hope had flared: perhaps from the wreckage he would salvage just one of them, however damaged, disfigured or disabled – but no, the back-seat passenger had been in the other car. Did he need a priest, minister, rabbi? No, he said. That’s very thoughtful, but I have no religion. No buoyancy aid of belief to bob him along: he would simply have to hold fast to the life raft of routine.

He telephones Natascha and tells her what has happened. She sobs so hard he has to raise his voice as he explains he will still require her to do the – his – laundry, but she must touch nothing else. Like a greedy curator, a crazed archaeologist, he will catalogue and preserve the last traces of his precious family.

In the no-man’s-land between the accident and the cremation, Ken drifts like ash and dust through his beautiful, still house. He wanders in and out of his children’s bedrooms, closing the doors quietly behind him as if fearful of disturbing their slumber. On that first night he curls into a ball on the floor by the Aga and whimpers like a wounded dog: the sound appalls him but he finds he cannot stop. After that he makes himself sleep in the bed he has shared for two decades with Sylvie. He swaps sides in an attempt to superimpose the imprint of himself on the memory of her body; holds her nightgown to his face, breathes her in.

Friends come bearing casseroles he cannot eat.  Mark telephones from London: I’ll be back by the end of this week, mate. Hang on in there.
Ken knows he has no choice. To kill himself would be unkind and cowardly.
His sister offers to stay with him, just for a bit. He declines, politely.
Neighbours and the postman push notes and cards through the letter-box: shock, sympathy, disbelief:
Anything you need. Anything at all.
Colleagues are wonderful: Get some rest. Take all the time you need.

In the huge fridge the perishables perish. The freezer is neatly ordered with containers of soft fruits and freeze-dried herbs from Waitrose, vacuum packed haunches of venison and beef, and countless bags of homemade soups and stews all neatly labelled and dated. He can’t bear to look at Sylvie’s handwriting.

Somehow, on the day, he pulls through. It helps that the humanist service is so personal. It helps that the church is crowded. It helps that he has love and support all around him. He repeats in his head a brave little mantra:
Better to have love and lost.  Better to have loved and lost.   Better to have loved and lost.
Only when the absurd golden velvet curtains are decorously drawn to signal respectful conclusion, only then does he falter:
Better to have loved. Better to have. Better to have.
He takes long slow breaths and grips the  back of the seat in front, recovers himself:
Better to have loved.

At the purvey afterwards he drinks only tea; he knows that if he has a drink now, he may never stop.  He excuses himself early and Mark drives him home:
Sure you’ll be all right by yourself, Ken?

Ken is not at all sure. However, he has widowers amongst his friends and associates, and he knows that he will just have to learn to adapt to it, this monstrous loss that manifests itself – the suffocating presence of an infinite absence – as a great boulder pressing down hard on his chest. He thinks of Colin, whose wife died only a few months back. At least Sylvie had not been ill. But Colin still had his daughters, and his wife had had time to leave things… well, tidy. She had bought the next year’s school uniforms, had sewn in the name tapes; she had written letters of farewell. Christ! When you thought about it, Colin was bloody lucky.

We may now find ourselves nodding slowly in approval: that’s the stuff, Ken! Be mad! You’re allowed! Ken, though, is ashamed. How could he even momentarily have had such a thought?  He wants to be worthy, for Sylvie and the kids. He wants to be courageous. Most of all, he wants to be dead.

Returning to work is a relief. He works harder than ever and puts in hours far longer than before, for there is, of course, no reason to go home. He avoids the weekends by working through them.

Consider counselling, hazards his sister.
Reading can take you out of yourself, blandishes his mother.
Come round, implore the neighbours, drop in, nothing fancy, very casual.
Come back to squash, mate.
Ever thought about golf?
You used to enjoy hill walking.
Join a club.

A half of a year goes by and he considers this a milestone. He has made it through Christmas and Sylvie’s birthday.  He is beginning to form a symbiotic relationship with the boulder on his chest. It’s here to stay, so there’s no point in fighting it. He barely notices the neon sign across his forehead that reads WIDOWED & BEREAVED. He hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol and he hasn’t taken sleeping tablets. He has imaginary conversations with Sylvie, with Abbie and Jake, tells them about his day, berates them for leaving him, beseeches them to return, begs their forgiveness that he is still here. He goes into the kids’ rooms and sits on their beds and looks around, carefully displacing nothing. He opens the closet and runs a hand, pointlessly, back and forth along the racks of Sylvie’s clothes.

A good night’s sleep remains beyond him and he cannot weep, but nor has he fallen apart. He has learned not to lean in too close to the wound. At times like this we have to dig deep, his father says. There are moments when Ken is in need of a bigger spade.

Beyond his office, Ken has no concentration. Evenings, he fidgets through the television channels every three minutes or so. The radio valiantly pits itself against the silence of the house but Ken’s not listening.  He mows the lawn but otherwise avoids the garden; he does not notice the growing air of neglect.

One morning, Pam brings him his cuppa and says, casually:  You didn’t happen to catch that wonderful programme last night, did you? Mind Over Marathon, BBC One?
I may have done, he replies ruefully. But you’ll have to remind me.
Oh, I think you’d like it, Mr Mitchell. Very moving – inspirational, really.  It’s a two-parter. Nick Whatsisname presents it – you know him off  that DIY SOS.
We used to watch DIY SOS, replies Ken: he finds the title bleakly resonant.

He goes home and fiddles inexpertly with Sylvie’s iPad. At length, he finds the programme on her BBC iPlayer app, and moreover he finds this makes him quite pleased with himself. He sets the device on the worktop, expecting not to pay much attention – he’ll just get the general idea, throw the Waitrose steak pie in the microwave and a pod in the Nespresso machine. But he’s hooked. He’s astonished not only that he sticks with it for the whole hour, but also that he’s impatient to be reunited with the cast – these real people sharing their sad and salutary stories, training for the London Marathon to combat their phobias and demons. Perspective, Ken, he says out loud, that’s what you’ve been missing. By the end of the episode he realises he is weeping – softly, gently and not for himself, not yet; but it’s a start.

When Pam brings him his cuppa the following morning, he volunteers: I looked up that programme you mentioned.
Ah! And what did you think?
Yes, very interesting, interesting. Food for thought, isn’t it?
Certainly is. Second part’s on tomorrow night, I think. Glad you found it worthwhile.
She waits until she is closing the door, so that he can’t catch her eye, then, dissembling, just-occurred-to- me: Mrs Mitchell was a keen runner, wasn’t she?

She was, she was. She had taken it up a few years earlier, after her mother died.  It was something she just did for herself, she used to say.  They made fun of her and her gear tracker, her nutrition guides and her training plans; called it her middle-aged crisis.  She knew that they were proud of her.

When Ken leaves the office that evening, he goes via Waitrose and buys some fresh fruit and vegetables, and a sirloin steak. When he returns home he reaches for the pile of running magazines still stacked on the side table in the snug, and he flicks through them as he eats his first real meal in a long time. It’s like a knife in his gut when he comes across Sylvie’s annotations here and there: a trail run that she has asterisked; a training chart she has completed with distances and times; kit against which she has scribbled comparative online prices. His right index finger grazes the arches and loops of her handwriting as if they were the curves and hollows of her body. He is afraid that he will forget what they looked like, Sylvie, Abbie and Jake; the shapes of their fingernails, the creases at their elbows, the exact colour of their irises. He fears he will forget the smell of them and the feel of them and the sounds of their voices.

This won’t do, as we all know, this picking round the edges of the scab. Ken knows it too, and takes action. Firstly, he rummages bravely and single-mindedly amongst the familial contents of the cloakroom cupboard for his old squash kit. He decides it’s dodgy but serviceable. Next, he browses idly, but lengthily, some of the websites mentioned in the running magazines. Then he tasks himself with downloading a running app to his iPhone – Map My Run, the one Sylvie used, he remembers. Finally he experiments, gingerly and surreptitiously, with a little jogging on the spot and a couple of runs up and down the stairs. The effect on his breathing and heart rate is unpromising, yet he goes to bed feeling oddly encouraged.

Ken ensures he is ready for Part Two of Mind Over Marathon: he cooks a simple supper of salmon fillet, boiled rice and green beans, and he eats this sitting down at the kitchen table. He announces to his wife and children that there’s something he wants to watch at nine o’clock: they do not demur.

He watches, he smiles, he laughs, he weeps – softly, gently and not for himself, not yet; but it is, as we’ve previously noted, a start.

He sets his alarm for six and in the pre-dawn half-light he sidles like a burglar out of his beautiful house. He skirts the picture-postcard village and slips into the enchanted forest and runs. He moves slowly, nervous of twisting an unaccustomed ankle on the uneven track. He concentrates on no more than the pound of his feet and the rhythm of his breathing, which he notices is laboured but manageable. There is a metronomic simplicity to this; he finds it soothing.

He runs until the voice in his pocket tells him Fifteen Minutes, at which point he turns back. He begins to see the trees, and the foxgloves. He inhales deeply; the air is heavy with pine, dew and approaching rain. Tomorrow, he decides, I’ll go five minutes further. On Saturday, he resolves, I’ll go to that sports shop on Great Western Road, get myself fitted with some proper running shoes.

What next? Well, for all we know, he may even join a club.