Madeleine (33 page)

Madeleine had never met Josette's daughter Nicole, who was born in the 1960s in Papua New Guinea, but in the previous couple of years she had talked regularly to her by phone, keen to know about her children. Nicole enjoyed the conversations and realised how important they were to her cousin. One day Madeleine sent £50 to Nicole so she could take the children to high tea at Betty's teashop—an old-fashioned, very English thing to do.
⁷
She suggested Nicole needed a nanny to help with the children and offered advice from her own ‘Australian nanny', presumably her carer Peta, about where to look for one.

With her will made, the tapes out of the way, and the biographical material collected, Madeleine decluttered her flat, giving away furniture, books and other possessions. She invited visitors to take something they wanted. A kitchen table went to Susannah, along with cookbooks. Madeleine put post-it notes on some objects specifying who should have them after her death. She purchased a new contact book and included only a handful of numbers, dumping a lifetime of friends and acquaintances. She kept only the numbers for local takeaway restaurants, for Tiger Lily's vet and a few friends—the chosen few.

Madeleine found 2005 a difficult year. In August, she wrote to Antony Minchin:

Thank you so much for your letter & pix of so many months ago—sorry for the delay but everything is v v difficult & takes forever. I seem to have missed several chapters in the story—the last news I had of you was a message you left on my answering machine when I was in hospital at the end of—?2003? it must be…Which I was far too preoccupied to chase up at the time…In any case—congratulations on all your good news. Great to have a grandchild—especially a girl. Hope the hens are laying—can you get hold of a kind called Old Cotswold Legbar? They lay the most exquisite pale blue eggs.
⁸

Madeleine was hospitalised twice, the doctors surprised each time that she rallied. Bruce Beresford visited her. He found her connected to all sorts of machines but uncomplaining and cheerfully lapping up the life stories of the nurses and other patients.
⁹

Then on 26 March 2006, Josette died in Adelaide. At the funeral service, her eulogist noted how the little girl who had arrived in Sydney in the 1930s without a word of English had excelled at friendship and family despite times of great difficulty in her life.
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Madeleine felt her aunt's death keenly. She began to telephone Josette's husband Ron Storer in Adelaide more frequently. Ron looked forward to the calls. Madeleine was entertaining and stimulating. She asked Ron to talk about his memories of Feiga and Jean Cargher, and she offered to send Ron her childhood impressions of Josette from when they both lived in Sydney. But she told him that she was having trouble completing the task: even writing exhausted her now.
¹¹

When Judith McCue visited again, Madeleine urged her to take the box of biographical material. Judith demurred. It seemed too final—a sign that her friend would soon die.
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But Madeleine knew her time was running out. She wanted to die at home, high up in the eyrie, with the church bells marking out her days as they had done for twenty years. Ever the organiser, she put together a palliative care team. She still hoped to finish her novel, but writing was almost impossible.
¹³

She had few visitors and only three people—Susannah Godman, Sarah Middleton and Jane Holdsworth—saw her regularly. Susannah took the load. As she put it later, she was the person who cut up the food for her. All three women drew on reserves of patience and generosity to help them manage their increasingly irascible friend. It was ‘so very easy to do the wrong thing around Madeleine'. Her taste was perfect and her manners were sublime, but she felt no shame in making others feel ill at ease about their own behaviour.

Madeleine was keen to talk but she did not say much to Susannah about her old life, the life of the ashram and Swami-ji and the friends who had been so important back then. She did not mention her aunt Florence or her cousin Felicity; Susannah was unaware Madeleine had family in London. There was little said about the St Johns back in Sydney, but Susannah was left in no doubt that Madeleine thought Colette, with whom she had no contact now, was ‘bonkers'. And Madeleine began telling Susannah that she wanted her, not Judith McCue, to look after her personal papers, contrary to the terms of her will.
¹⁴
Susannah resisted. She knew Madeleine was capable of suddenly changing her mind, lashing out against those close to her without reason.

On Thursday 15 June, around lunchtime, Madeleine had a serious respiratory attack and an ambulance was called. She refused to leave her flat until Susannah came to take care of Tiger Lily, but eventually she was admitted to St Mary's Hospital in Westminster.

When Susannah called in to see her that evening, Madeleine had perked up. Susannah saw her again on Friday evening. She was in a room of about six beds and was ‘quite jolly'.
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The friends talked about social class, Madeleine deciding that the man in the bed opposite was definitely ‘lower middle'. Madeleine spoke again in negative terms about Judith McCue and reiterated her wish for Susannah to hold on to the biographical material. Susannah was convinced Madeleine would soon be out of hospital and that the question of the will could be deferred. She was on her way out of London for the weekend to join her husband, writer Louis Barfe, at their house in Suffolk, and she felt relaxed about leaving Madeleine, certain that her friend would soon be back home again at Colville Gardens.

Then, on Sunday 18 June, the hospital rang Susannah in Suffolk. Madeleine was dead.

Susannah was devastated. Madeleine had died alone, without family or friends, in hospital, far from her beloved Tiger Lily. It seemed the loneliest of deaths.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
After Madeleine

Madeleine was gone. The Gauloises and the Golden Virginia roll-your-owns had extracted their revenge. By the end of her life, her circle had shrunk, her family had all but disappeared from her life and her books were largely out of print. Yet Madeleine continued to exert power over those she had known. Her death opened old wounds, created difficulties for her friends and saddened many of those who had seen, up close, her complicated passage through life. Susannah Godman missed Madeleine terribly. For almost a decade, she had been a weekly, sometimes daily, visitor to Colville Gardens. She had loved this intelligent, intense and vulnerable woman. But she faced the dilemma of whether to honour her friend's deathbed wishes or follow the will Madeleine had made in 2004.
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Susannah went to St Mary's Hospital and, as Madeleine's designated next of kin, signed the death certificate. It stated that Madeleine had died of respiratory failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Jane Holdsworth made most of the calls to tell people the sad news, using the little address book that Madeleine had left. The calls were very difficult—Florence Heller and Felicity Baker had seen nothing of Madeleine in the final years. Family in Sydney were informed—they too had long been estranged.

Susannah contacted Alex Hill, whom Madeleine had asked to conduct the funeral service. He had moved to another parish and had various commitments so the funeral was delayed till 4 July.

In Sydney, journalist Tony Stephens wrote an obituary for the
Sydney
Morning Herald
. It was published on 29 June and noted that Madeleine had been compared to Anton Chekhov, Muriel Spark and Anita Brookner.
²
On 1 July, at Val's request, Antony Minchin placed a death notice in the
Herald
:

ST JOHN, Madeleine—
Born Sydney November 12, 1941, died London June 18, 2006, daughter of Edward and Sylvette St John (both deceased), sister of Colette St John Lippincott and aunt of Aaron, fondly remembered by her aunts Florence Heller and Pamela St John, her friends, cousins and extended family. We were gladdened by her late career as a novelist.
The Women in Black
,
A Pure Clear Light
,
The Essence of the Thing
(shortlisted for the Booker Prize 1997) and
A Stairway to Paradise
. We were saddened by her long illness. Now she is at rest.
³

Antony checked the notice with Val and Colette. Val later asked him to add her name, but by the time he got the message, it was too late. Colette, who had been rung by the
Herald
to confirm the death notice, asked for Josette's name to be included but that too missed the deadline.
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About thirty people gathered at All Saints for the funeral. Madeleine had decreed there be no eulogy, but Alex Hill decided she had set him a test. Life was a cat-and-mouse game to Madeleine and Alex believed she would have appreciated his outwitting her by speaking about her life before the service.

He told the congregation that the fact they were at the funeral meant they mattered to Madeleine—even though they may have been through hard times with her. He said she often withdrew from people. He would use the
Book of Common Prayer
as she had stipulated; the book had been indispensable to her, he told the mourners.

Florence Heller was comforted by his words. She had found Madeleine very trying at times and it helped that those difficulties were acknowledged by the priest.
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Sarah Lutyens felt much the same: it was reassuring to realise there were so many others who had loved Madeleine but whom she had abandoned, without explanation, over the years.
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Madeleine's cousin, Nicole Richardson, came down from Yorkshire, but Felicity Baker did not attend the funeral. Bruce Beresford flew in from the States, and Christopher Potter was there, as were the Tooleys along with Teresa Ahern and Daniel Le Maire and his partner. Tina Date came dressed in leathers on a motorbike. Many of the mourners did not know each other because Madeleine had kept her friends so separate.

Judith McCue did not know Madeleine had died. This was not an oversight. Susannah and Jane had decided not to contact her. Their reasons were complicated: they were struggling to fulfil Madeleine's final wishes. Susannah felt burdened by the responsibility, and she ‘put an enormous amount of thought' into what Madeleine said to her at the end of her life. It was a terrible decision to make. Judith's number was in Madeleine's address book. When Madeleine had included it, she had wanted Judith to be told of her death. But the message Madeleine had sent towards the end of her life was quite different.
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At the funeral, Madeleine's coffin was placed in the main aisle. Someone brought a wreath but was asked to remove it, in accordance with Madeleine's wish that there be no flowers. There was no music either, even though Madeleine loved hymns. It was as if she did not want her mourners to be comforted by music. Florence Heller and Ron Storer had asked for inclusions in the service but the requests were declined.
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A priest from the church read Psalm 39:>

I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me.

And Psalm 90:

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Then Susannah read from St Paul's Letter to the Corinthians:

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

The body was taken to Kensal Green Crematorium, accompanied by several mourners.
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Madeleine had specified her body be donated for medical use but none of her organs were suitable for transplant.
¹⁰

Later, Bruce Beresford and Nicole Richardson went with Susannah Godman to Colville Gardens. Susannah had shouldered the burden of arrangements after Madeleine's death and, with Jane's help, had cleared the flat. The question of what to do with Madeleine's photographs and the biographical material weighed heavily on Susannah.
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She gave Nicole the photo albums, the Little Brown Book and a little wooden jewellery box with the initials MSJ carved on the lid. Inside the box were some inexpensive necklaces and other jewellery. Bruce admired a print on the wall—a sketch of the Sydney Conservatorium, where Madeleine had gone for piano lessons in the 1950s. When they looked behind it, there was a post-it note saying that Madeleine wanted him to have it.

Christopher Potter wrote a long obituary in the
Independent.
He had been commissioned to do a small piece and had wondered where he would find enough information. Madeleine had been so private, so discreet about her past. But he found there was a great deal to say about his author:

Language and a questioning faith are the two poles of St John's created world, as may also have been true of her domestic world…Beneath the sly and witty veneer of her writing, she explores questions that are basically theological: we must do the right thing, but how can we tell what the right thing is? This question is at the heart of all her novels…She lived by a strict moral code, the rules of which were only truly clear to herself.
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Control and the desire for anonymity, he wrote, were her typical characteristics. Potter enjoyed researching the obituary and felt, like Alex Hill, that Madeleine had set him a test—follow the clues and see what you can find.
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Florence Heller typed a summary of the funeral and sent it to Antony Minchin. In Sydney, Annabel organised the wake for Madeleine's Sydney friends and family at the London Tavern in Paddington. Only a handful of people attended—Antony and Eliza Minchin, Annabel and her two daughters Cecilia and Angela and Pamela St John's daughter Jane.