Revealing Mark Martin
I watched the cortege inch its way to the front door of the chapel, listening to the crunch of slow moving tyres on frost encrusted gravel. I recognised the parents easily. The father’s shock of white hair and the mother’s green hat matched the vivid description I had heard so many times. We were there to say goodbye to Mark Martin.
As I watched the coffin carried through the arched door, tissues were transferred from purse to hand, from hand to bag, then back into the hand. Mark would be missed because outside the family, everyone there had the same experience of him, sharing a longing that could be satisfied only by others with the same obsession. Now this guilty pleasure would have to be taken with new partners.
Most mourners stood alone, scanning each other with curiosity. I briefly thought of picking someone at random to see how they would react to the elephantine question in the room:
So, you’re another one then.
Would they protest their ignorance? Swop stories? Beg me not to tell their secret? All these answers would send me into a conversational cul-de-sac of confidentiality, so I stayed silent.
During the service I counted them - there were thirty eight. Occasionally a family member caught my eye:
Who are you? Why are you here? How did you know Mark?
Each time I looked away in embarrassment, partly because I dreaded the bemused look becoming an overt challenge, but also because my anonymity associated me with the thirty eight. And that made me blush, because although I talked with Mark every week about this group that did not know each other, I was never one of them.
Looking at the flowers, it was heartening to see how a service full of words that few believed could change the atmosphere. The ritual over, the tension fell away and an unspoken agreement about what could not be said allowed people to talk, at last.
“Mark would have enjoyed the turnout.”
“Just look at this sunshine – that’s Mark looking down on us.”
“Well, I’ve got to get back to work now. Do you have far to go?”
The relief brought by this innocent chit-chat made me forget where I was.
“Not far, I work at the clinic round the corner.” Damn, I thought, where did that come from?
“Clinic?”
“Yes, the Addiction Clinic.” And that doesn’t help.
“So how do you know Mark?”
I searched frantically for my bland and carefully prepared answer but it was too late for all that.
“I used to see him at the clinic. Just once a week. I’m a counsellor there.”
“Mark was seeing an addiction counsellor? But he never drank. And he wasn’t into drugs. Was he?”
“Oh no, it was nothing like that.”
I waved my hand towards thirty eight Little Black Dresses, and thirty eight Little Black hats, and smiled with as much confidence as I could muster.
“There are other addictions you know.”
