He moved to the armchair by the standard lamp, turning it to face the window, and sat down. Though he sat, the pain didn’t diminish. Her shawl was draped where it had always been, over the head-rest. He held his jacket in his lap. When she died she was waiting for me to come.
He looked out at the lilac and the sun-flecked garden.
I always liked gardening, Dorry. If I hadn’t been a shop-keeper I’d have been a gardener. Arranging the flower beds was like arranging the sweets in the shop window. I never knew if she liked gardens too. She wouldn’t come outside, because of her asthma. Though she used to sit watching me intently, from the window, mowing the grass, tending the flowers. But perhaps she preferred all those lifeless, lasting things: cut glass, willow-pattern plates, vases with pictures of flowers, not real flowers, on them. And she left them to me, as you can’t leave real flowers, as her memorial.
The clock chimed half-past seven. The pain rose in his chest so that his face, always so wooden, so expressionless, might have been convulsed and torn.
Memorials. They don’t matter. They don’t belong to us. They are only things we leave behind so we can vanish safely. Disguises to set us free. That’s why I built my own memorial so compliantly — the one she allotted me, down there in the High Street. A memorial of trifles, useless things. And what will you do with my memorial, Dorry?
Something caught in his throat like a stuck laugh. Not yet.
Spit on my memorial, Dorry, sell it up, forget it. That’s what memorials are for. You might have had the real thing. You got the money. And you didn’t have to extort it, for it would have been yours, anyway, in the end. That money was always meant to be passed on. It was never hers; it was only the token of something. She used it to buy useless bits of glass and china. And do you know where it really came from? It belonged to her uncles, your great-uncles; three of them. They were knocked down like pins in the First War, and now they have their own, bronze memorial, outside the town hall. That was long before I met her. She never talked about the past, but she told me about that money, in one of those letters, up there in the Oxo tin in the trunk. It never belonged to her. It belonged to the bronze soldiers. And what will you buy with it, Dorry? History?
He gripped the arm-rests. Metal pain was filling his limbs and welding him to the chair. Was all this happening in an instant or was it the effect of years, an age? Be still, look at the things that are fixed. Sunlight cascaded over the lilac and the flower beds. The garden beckoned, as things do which cannot be touched. She will not come. She will come. He clutched the jacket with the letter in it. Today is your birthday. The lilac swayed. Tomorrow rain would fall on it — the weather-man had said on the radio — patter through the dawn light onto the leaves. There would be a victory, but not his. She would come: he would be a cold statue. Can you capture the moment without it capturing you? His chest was transfixed. You stood on the edge of the diving-board. It seemed you might be poised there for ever. He couldn’t move. He was a powerless skittle towards which was hurtling an invisible ball. Not yet. You stood on your toes, raised your arms. She will not come. The lilac shimmered. The garden framed in the window was like a photograph.
All right. All right — now.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GRAHAM SWIFT was born in 1949 in London, where he still lives and works. He is the author of eight previous novels: The Sweet-Shop Owner; Shuttlecock, which received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; Waterland, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Award, the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour; Out of This World; Ever After, which won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; Last Orders, which was awarded the Booker Prize; The Light of Day; and, most recently, Tomorrow. He is also the author of Learning to Swim, a collection of short stories, and Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry, and reflections on his life in writing. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.