5 OPEN COFFIN

I never really knew Adrienne’s age. When John first introduced his then new girlfriend to us six years ago, I would have guessed she was a sweet-faced freshman half his age, but in private he told me she was an established businesswoman running a group of companies which dwarfed his own, even without including the family’s investment portfolio that looked like the financials of a medium sized first world country, so I guessed from that information that she was in her early thirties then, and now would be at the perfect age to be a mother for the first time.

If it was difficult to gauge the daughter’s age, her parents proved absolutely impossible. I could only guess that they were a decade younger than us, Pauline and I. Adrienne’s father, Gareth Eldrake, was probably half an inch shorter than his daughter, stockily built, with broad powerful shoulders, but with the narrow waist of one who exercised regularly and was extremely careful about what he ate. He had a full head of dark black hair, highlighted by a hint of distinguished-looking greying at the temples. But his face in repose was almost devoid of those usual signs of the ageing process, wrinkles. Only when he spoke animatedly, and laughed or smiled, lifting one or other eyebrow independently as he was wont to do in lively conversation, it was clear that there was no plastic surgery or injections of Botox involved here, he was simply an attractive man who took care of himself and his skin. I imagined that he probably moisturized, slept long and well and didn't allow the pressures of business to wear him down. Adrienne’s explanation of the spread of their investments clearly took away the stresses that might otherwise affect lesser resourced men. Of course, sharing a life with Sylvia, the raven-haired beauty who was always by his side, the incentive to keep up his strength, vitality and vigour was obvious.

If Adrienne was blessed with the looks of a girl, her mother was the glamorous epitome of the smoldering MILF of legend. She was six foot tall, I know because dancing with her in four-inch heels our eyes were in perfect alignment, and we had often enjoyed dancing together at family holidays in this very ballroom over the past six years. I was in no doubt that she must dye those raven tresses, the depth of colour, the absence of any grey and the way her hair shone as if her maids had brushed it a thousand times a day, framed her beautiful face perfectly. Her eyes were as dark as coal, her skin white and translucent as pure silk and, when we touched cheek to cheek in greeting, dancing or farewell, her skin felt as soft as a newborn baby. When she looked at you, looking down to most people, but level with me, she poured all her concentration on you, as if you were the only person in the world that mattered to her in that instance. My Lord, she was an inspiration.

Yes, Sylvia smouldered with an intense sexuality that could excite even a jaded and sexually frustrated old bishop who, even in that heightened sexual tension, knew that you could enjoy her attention, revel in her oozing desirability, but she only shared with you a hint of possible nirvana, she was unavailable to all but her one man. Her husband Gareth would observe all men reduced to quivering jelly, except for the one part that would never pass between an ordinary man and an extraordinary woman. Her fidelity was assured, and was apparent the instant she moved her eyes to the one object she openly desired, her husband. Immediately after appearing to seduce you to succumb to her eternal devotion, she would seek Gareth out, drape her arm around his powerful shoulders and almost dry hump him, leaving her latest quivering suitor bewitched but bereft.

Sylvia led me arm in arm, tucked in so close to me that we appeared as if born together joined at the hip, into the room and up to the open coffin containing John Sullivan, my son. Gareth holds Pauline in similar possessive vein. Their love and empathy towards us in our moment of confrontation with the facts of life and death was touching and I am sure we were both grateful. With Sylvia on my right and Gareth on Pauline’s left, we were guided to a pre-determined spot by the coffin side, so that Pauline and I stood side by side. I sought her hand and she grips mine tightly. Behind us, Adrienne squeezes our outside shoulders and molds her body against our backs in a mutuality of empathetic touching, resting her right cheek on my left shoulder, Pauline’s being too low for comfort.

We turn to look down at our dear departed boy. Beautiful doesn’t  even begin to describe him. He always had been, yet now even in death, he looks more beautiful than ever. Asleep, not dead, that is how he looks. It is with a jolt that I suddenly feel at one with the Ancient Egyptians, they loved their kings so much that seeing them perfect in their death masks, why would they not pour the effort of an entire kingdom into preserving that instance of utter beauty forever?

Pauline sniffs, l see a tear escape and run down her nose, hovering for an instance before making a bid for freedom to the floor below. At the same time, though, she smiles. She turns to look at me with those soft and moist green eyes and it was like turning the pages back to the day she brought John into the world, her face emerging from pain and fatigue to that of an invigorated angel. And she said exactly the same words she uttered forty-five years ago when John was first placed on her engorged breasts, “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”

“Yes, my dear,” I choke, “he is, he always was.”

“And in our hearts,” Adrienne breathes, her lips inches from our ears, “he always will be.”