He had said her name, 'Viv… Vivienne…'
I squeezed my mother's hand.
She said, 'I loved him.'
'I know.'
A long pause. She had been very frightened. They had given Wilfred the night off because Ivan had been so much better. They had said they wouldn't need him much longer. He had left the box of heart-attack remedies at hand on Ivan's bedside table and my mother had run to fetch them. She had put one of the tiny nitroglycerine tablets under Ivan's tongue, and although he had tried to cling to her she had run to the telephone and had miraculously reached Keith Robbis-ton at his home, and he had said he would send an ambulance immediately.
She had put a second pill under Ivan's tongue, and then a third.
They hadn't stopped the pain.
She had sat on the stairs, holding him. When the front door bell had rung she had had to go down to answer it as there was no one else in the house. The ambulancemen had been very quick. They had carried a stretcher upstairs and had given him an injection and oxygen, and had put him on the stretcher and had fastened straps round him and carried him down.
She was wearing only her nightdress.
The men were kind to her. They said that they were taking him just along the road to the London Clinic, as he had been a patient there and Dr Robbiston had arranged it. They were a private firm. They gave my mother a card.
'A card,' she said blankly.
She had gone down the stairs with Ivan, holding his hand.
Keith Robbiston had arrived.
He had waited while she put some clothes on, and he had driven her to the Clinic.
A long, long pause.
'I wasn't with him when he died,' she said.
I squeezed her hand.
'Keith said they did everything possible.'
'I'm sure they did.'
'He died before they could get him to the operating theatre.'
I simply held her.
'What am I going to do?'
It was the unanswerable cry, I guessed, of all the bereaved. It wasn't until the next day, Monday, that Patsy swept in. She wasn't pleased to see me but seemed to realise my presence was inevitable.
She was brisk, decisive, the manager. Her grief for her father, and to be charitable one had to believe her own description of her feelings as 'distraught' (that excellent but over-used word) were chiefly expressed by a white tissue clutched valiantly ready for stemming tears.
'Darling Father,' she announced, 'will be cremated…' she applied the tissue gently to her nose, '… on Thursday at Cockfosters crematorium, where they have a slot at ten o'clock owing to someone else's postponement. It's so difficult to arrange this sort of thing, you would be appalled… but I agreed to that, so I hope, Vivienne, that you don't mind the early hour? And of course I've asked everyone to come here afterwards, and I've booked a caterer for drinks and a buffet lunch…'
She went on talking about the arrangements and the announcements in the papers and the seating in the chapel, and she'd notified the Jockey Club and invited Ivan's colleagues to the wake; and it seemed she had done most of all this that morning, while I had been seeing to breakfast. I had to admit to relief not to be doing it all myself, and my mother, who seemed mesmerised, simply said, 'Thank you, Patsy,' over and over.
'Do you want flowers?' Patsy demanded of her. 'I've put "no flowers" in the announcement to the papers. Just a wreath from you on the coffin, don't you think? And one from me, of course. Do you want me to arrange it? I've asked the caterers to bring flowers here for the buffet table, of course… And I'll just go down now and talk to Lois about cleaning the silver…'
My mother looked exhausted when Patsy left.
'She loved him,' she said weakly, as if defending her.
I nodded. 'All the activity is her way of showing it.'
'I don't know how you understand her, when she's always so beastly to you.'
I shrugged. No amount of understanding would make her a friend.
We struggled through the next few days somehow. I cooked for my mother; Edna tossed her head. When my mother asked forlornly if I thought she should wear a black hat to the funeral, because she couldn't face shopping, I went out and bought her one, and pinned a big white silk rose to its sweeping brim so that she looked good enough to paint, though I just refrained from saying so.
We went one afternoon to see Ivan in his coffin at the undertaker. He looked pale and peaceful; my mother kissed his forehead and said on the way home how icy cold he was; nothing like life; and I didn't tell her that it wasn't the chill of death but of efficient refrigeration.
For Thursday morning I engaged a car with a chauffeur to take the two of us to the crematorium and back again. I had personally asked a fair number of Ivan's friends and business people to turn up at Park Crescent even if they couldn't face the crematorium but, in the event, the old boy drew a full house at Cockfosters, an eloquent and moving tribute to a good man.
'All the brewery people are here,' my mother murmured. 'All the workpeople!'
They had come in a chartered bus, we found, and were working extra hours to make up.
The racing people had come. Many bigwigs and owners. Several lads from her yard accompanied Emily.
Himself came, with his countess. Jamie came, ever cheerful, with his pretty wife.
Patsy, with husband and daughter, received everyone graciously.
My mother looked ethereal and shed no tears.
Chris Young showed up at my shoulder, dressed as the secretary, light-hearted about his task of guarding my back against Surtees.
Patsy, at her administrative best, had briefed the presiding cleric thoroughly, so that he spoke knowledgeably and well about Ivan's life; and Himself, delivering a eulogy, quoted, to my surprise, from the translation of Bede's Death Song: 'No one is wiser in thought than he needs to be, in considering, before his departure, what will be adjudged to his soul, of good or evil, after his death-day,' he said, and declared that Ivan Westering had behaved on earth with such uprightness that only good would be adjudged to him now, after his death-day.
All in all, impressive.
The grand drawing-room at Park Crescent was packed afterwards with mourners, and I had to acknowledge that Patsy had been far more accurate in her estimation than I would have been. The caterers nevertheless sent their van away early for reinforcements.
Tobias Tollright came, and also Margaret Morden. I asked them both to linger for a while after the crush had cleared to discuss a brewery plan of action, and I was reminded triumphantly by Desmond Finch that all my powers of attorney had been cancelled by Ivan's death, and nothing I might say or do mattered any more in Ivan's or the brewery's affairs.
Oliver Grantchester made his large presence benevolently felt both at the crematorium and Park Crescent, behaving rather as if Ivan had been his own personal achievement; as if he, Oliver, had been responsible for all Ivan's good decisions and successes. 'Of course Ivan regularly took my advice,' I heard him saying, and he saw me listening and gave me a sideways Patsy-inspired glare of disapproval. I had no need to ask him to stay on for a conference; he showed every sign of wanting to conduct one.
I had invited Lois and Edna to join the gathering, but they stayed obstinately below stairs. Wilfred took a brief glass of farewell champagne, spoke a few words to Patsy and descended to join them. Wilfred thought I hadn't appreciated his services sufficiently: Edna had told me Wilfred thought it was my fault he hadn't been there when Ivan had needed him. The fact that I'd been in Scotland didn't excuse me.
Emily's lads ate and drank with an eye on the scales, made awkward but genuine little speeches to my mother, and left Emily behind when they departed.
Emily eyed Chris with obvious speculation, not doubting his/her gender but wondering if the tall leggy dark-haired presence in black tights, short inappropriate skirt and baggy black sweater, were a serious girlfriend, in view of the glue that kept her ever and only a short pace away from my side.