Page 101 of Husband Material
“‘If you can keep your head,’” he began with palpable resentment, “‘when all about you are losing theirs…’”
"MOTHER IS NEVER GOING TOforgive 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 totelleverybody.” 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 markedExtemporaneous 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 readJulius 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.”
“You’re that convinced you’ll predecease me?”
“You do all the bullshit stuff you’re supposed to do to take care of yourself like flossing and taking exercise and eating vegetables without being forced.”
“True.” He lifted his brows at me. “On the other hand, I now have a family history of sudden heart failure.”
