When All Is Said

The time is 9:20 pm, the fourth toast is to Kevin, and the drink is a whiskey, Jefferson’s Presidential Select. This was Kevin’s last Christmas present to Maurice. Kevin always sends him nice whiskeys for his birthday; Maurice feels respect and comradery for their makers. After Sadie died, he found that she’d kept all the boxes and made the silk lining of one into a purse for her hairpins, which he has with him today. He is having the boxes turned into ladders for Kevin’s children’s bunks.

On his way to the toilet, Maurice sees a dent he remembers making in the wall by mistake when working as a child, distracted by the grandeur of the grandfather clock. Hugh Dollard was civil to him on this one occasion.

Back in the bar, Robert has dropped by for the awards event, which is now on dessert. He leaves, saying goodbye to Svetlana, whom he has helped in the past. She tells Maurice she likes working for Emily.

Maurice remembers watching Sadie bathing Kevin as a four-year-old, unseen. She encouraged him to love himself, which he found extraordinary. Growing up, Kevin hated working the land but loved books, which baffled Maurice. One day, at 15, he helped Maurice with work as a precursor to telling him he wanted to study journalism in college. He drank black coffee, imitating Carl Bernstein. Sadie was upset at the thought he would emigrate to England or America; Maurice was concerned he wouldn’t make any money.

When Kevin graduated and moved to the United States, Sadie was devastated to say farewell at the airport but got into the habit of flying to visit him every couple of years. Maurice went once, after Kevin’s wedding. He found America strange but notes that despite the odd accents, people are not so different in their core desires. Kevin and Rosaleen, his wife, took them to a big restaurant, which Maurice found overwhelming. Kevin introduced them to his boss at his paper, who praised him. Maurice let Sadie do most of the talking, though he now regrets his disengagement. However, he felt at home visiting the boss’s farmer friend, Chuck, whom he bonded with over agriculture. Kevin became interested in their discussion about the forced monopoly of seed supply, and two years later, he won an award for his reporting on the subject. He sent Maurice a photo to thank him, which they framed. Maurice has kept in touch with Chuck, whose wife also died recently.

Sadie was proud of Kevin, but Maurice couldn’t read his work. He found out 10 years ago that he has dyslexia but hid this from Sadie and Kevin. Instead, he avoided discussing Kevin’s work. Whenever Kevin visited him after Sadie’s death, Maurice resolved to talk with him more but always found he couldn’t. Despite Kevin’s attempts and Maurice’s yearning, they struggled to connect. Kevin made DIY lists to do for Maurice, despite being unskilled in this area, and they argued over who would buy dinner. Maurice loved watching him work on his laptop but felt inadequate.

Maurice remembers making his plan two years ago, creating lists of the tasks he needed to fulfill. One such task was to give the Edward VIII coin to Emily, despite feeling that it was his in many ways. When he stopped by the hotel to give her the coin, he noticed a photograph of a Dollard he couldn’t place. Emily said it was Thomas’s father, so he assumed it was Hugh, though he noted he looked different. He gave her the coin, and she felt betrayed that he kept it secret when she blamed its loss for all her and her family’s woes. Maurice defensively poured his grief onto the Dollards. He felt guilty and wanted to do right by Sadie. Emily didn’t know what to do with it because Thomas was very ill. She made them black coffee, and though he hated it, he felt as if Kevin was with him. He managed to apologize.

A few weeks later, Emily asked him to visit, as Thomas had died. He found it hard to reconcile the hotel with the old house. She told Maurice that she hoped that giving Thomas the coin would bring him peace, but instead, he was distressed and had a heart attack. She felt guilty. Maurice realized that though he hated Thomas, his death gave him no solace.

Maurice recalls how about a year ago, he’d seen a car scoping out his house. Later, it pulled in, and a young man started scouting the building. Maurice threatened him with his dog, Gearstick, and a shotgun, but it turns out, the man worked for a seniors club and wanted to invite Maurice to attend their events. Maurice had considered attending seniors’ events or a bereavement group but could never bring himself to go. He went along to bingo despite his qualms, imagining that Sadie sent David, the young man, to help him. David described how he got involved through his Da after his Ma died. He told Maurice that he spoke to his Da all the time, though he was now dead, and Maurice felt kinship with him. However, he snuck out, feeling distant from the other elderly people there and realizing he didn’t want to connect to them anyway—the only person he wanted to connect to was Sadie, who was dead. David visited a few times, and Maurice chatted with him about Kevin. However, he eventually stopped answering the door as David was trying to keep him connected to the living world, but Maurice only wants to go to Sadie.