Husband Material (London Calling #2)(98)

“So often, I think, when a person dies—when a complicated person dies, even when an unambiguously awful person dies, not that I believe there are any truly unambiguously awful people—it’s for those of us left behind to pick over ourselves and ask, ‘Am I this way in spite of this person or because of them?’ And so often the answer is simply yes.

“I am sorry that my father is dead. I am sorry that we will never get to finish the conversation that began when I told him to go fuck himself. I will miss him, as I know we all will. But for all that I will miss him, for all that I loved him and for all that I believed, without question, that he loved me, I still find myself standing in front of you now and this is the only thing I feel able to say with confidence. The only thing I know to be true and fair about someone who is no longer able to speak for himself: David Blackwood was a complicated man.

“Now, assuming there is still time, I rather mean-spiritly assigned Christopher to read ‘If.’ It was Dad’s favourite poem because of fucking course it was.”

Stepping away from the lectern, Oliver walked slightly unsteadily back to his seat. Then he put his head in his hands and, very quietly, started to cry. I wrapped my arms around him and drew him close while Christopher took his place.

“‘If you can keep your head,’” he began with palpable resentment, “‘when all about you are losing theirs…’”





"MOTHER IS NEVER GOING TO forgive me,” said Oliver.

We were sitting on the wall outside the crematorium while the rest of the mourners trickled past on the way to the wake, which was being held at the Blackwoods’ house. And I wanted to say something supportive, but he was probably right. “I mean…people surprise you?”

“I think I just surprised her in the worst possible way.” Blinking, he wiped his eyes, which were still a little red. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Well…I suppose it was sort of a combination of grief, frustration, and confusion, which is pretty par for the course for funerals.”

“Yes, but I didn’t have to tell everybody.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I mean, who does that? Who goes to his own father’s funeral and gives a rather incoherent speech about how he wasn’t a very nice person actually?”

“Would you have preferred,” I asked, in a vain attempt to lighten the mood, “to have made a coherent speech about how he wasn’t a very nice person?”

He glanced up. “Obviously, I’m a lawyer.”

“Barrister,” I corrected. And that, at least, won a tiny smile.

It didn’t last, though. Oliver lowered his head back into his hands. “I feel like such a fool.”

“You shouldn’t,” I told him. “It was really brave of you. I mean, there was me, thinking the options were eulogy or no eulogy. But, dark horse that you are, you went through the door marked Extemporaneous monologue about fatherhood and loss.”

Oliver made a mortified groaning noise into his hands. “You’re not going to be able to make me laugh about this, Lucien. I’ve done a terrible thing.”

“Okay. One”—I put up a finger—“you know when you say I won’t be able to make you laugh, I take that as a challenge, even at a funeral. Two, you haven’t done a terrible thing. You’ve just done…a thing. And, yes, it was a slightly unconventional thing and I don’t think it’s going to become a Blackwood family tradition. But you needed to say it, and at least some people in that room needed to hear it.”

He lifted his head again. “I have a therapist for exactly this reason.”

“And,” I said, “you can talk to her about it on Tuesday.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to live with myself. I mean,” he went on quickly, “not in a suicidal ideation kind of way. In an I’m-not-sure-how-I-can-continue-to-have-self-respect kind of way.”

I put an arm across his shoulders. “Hey, I did without self-respect for ages. It’s very overrated.”

He gave in and laughed at that.

And because it was his father’s funeral and he’d just gone through something intense and traumatic, I didn’t shout, Boom, challenge defeated. Instead, I went on. “Look, maybe think of it like this. Yes, you could have gone up there and delivered the eulogy your mum wanted, but would that have meant anything? Except that the last thing you said about your father was a lie.”

“Is that better or worse than the last thing I said about my father being a string of criticism?”

“You said yourself, he had it coming.”

“Yes, but that was a rhetorical device.”

I gave him a squeeze. “Well, I suppose we did come to bury David Blackwood, not to praise him.”

“Lucien”—he looked unflatteringly surprised—“was that a Shakespeare reference?”

“Hey, I did English A-level. Admittedly because I thought it would be a dossy subject. But I have read Julius Caesar. Or rather, I’ve read that specific speech because I expected it to come up on the exam.”

Laughing, he turned my face towards his and kissed me gently with closed lips. “I do love you. I love you very much.”

“I love you too,” I told him. “And I’m very proud of you. I think you did something that…you had to do. And fuck whatever anyone else thinks.” I paused. “But, just to be clear, when I die, I want the full he-was-the-best-person-ever-and-definitely-had-no-faults treatment.”