Thanks, but no thanks. We have plenty of chairs where we are. We listen to the silence, and the spring-loaded snap of the letter box, incoming, the latest flood of vellumed consolation to remind us that Nicky is dead. Many hundreds of people and especially Swindonians will be sharing deeply your sorrow. The people of Swindon mean well, intending to let us know we’re surrounded by caring hearts that will shield us from our ugly discovery: that we’re alone in the universe, exposed to terrible danger.
Those who were not at the beach that day feel drawn to speculate on the reasons why. A shock drowning flushes out the existential questions. One wonders why these things have to happen to a dear little innocent boy. In Swindon, in 1978, no one has the answer. Life seems very harsh. Yes, it does, life does seem harsh. It is too awful, and reading the letters once more I accept that most well-wishers are exactly as they claim: partners in a fellowship of suffering.
In Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, famously, the death of a child—any child—is offered as evidence against the benign providence of God. During the writing of the novel Dostoyevsky’s three-year-old son Alyosha died of epilepsy, making the notion of divine love appear hollow. In Swindon, though, not everyone reasons like Dostoyevsky, and several letters contain sly invitations at a vulnerable time: I belong to a small group of Christians…
This approach to comforting the bereaved seems odd, as do others. Several letters summon the ghost of a superpowered Nicky, with special gifts… so earnest and inquiring. Batman, Superman, Earnest and inquiring man. I understand the urge to offer solace, but don’t see how exaggeration helps—if anything, these clunky exaltations will exacerbate the sense of loss. The older generation sometimes references a harsher past: The loss of a child is not now a common experience, whereas once it was horribly familiar—“ other deaths, many babies.” 1978 was closer in time to World War II than I am now to 1978, but I question the value of reminding grieving parents that children have died before, and will surely die again.
Our sympathy goes also to Nicholas’s brothers, who must be very sad and wretched. Oh, they are, and I’m grateful whenever a letter draws attention to the living, not the dead. For they too must feel bewilderment and loss. They must, they do. Bewilderment and loss sound a fair enough guess, and I use it now as a basis for how we felt. In the week after the death we are bewildered, we are lost. So much so that of the days before the funeral I have no recollection whatsoever.
“I remember the phone going,” Jem says, “and Dad telling us not to answer it. The phone was in the dining room, and I remember the white door of the drinks cabinet.”
So do I, now that Jem mentions it, beneath the hatch through to the kitchen, a joinered white door with a dented brass knob. Open the door, and the top shelf is packed with soda siphons. The bottom shelf is whisky and gin, Teacher’s and Gordon’s, and behind the spirits some bitter lemon and ginger ale—adult tastes too dry to be worth stealing, even in mouthfuls from the bottle.
For the best part of a week we sank ourselves into the house, inanimate with loss, with bewilderment. We showed few signs of life, the electricity meter barely turning, nobody answering the phone and Jem memorizing the panels on the door of the drinks cupboard. I tried to ring but there was no reply. Just silence in our half of a semidetached house in a moneyed Swindon street. The double bell of the telephone rings, rings, keeps ringing, then stops. Outside, up in the trees, the pigeons woo a minor-key soundtrack to English grief. Listen to the pigeons, to the sad, insistent pigeons.
With Nicky’s death, the house shuts down. The stuff we usually do feels stupid, and carefree attitudes no longer apply. I can’t have felt old enough for this, or wise enough. I hadn’t prepared for grief, and wasn’t confident any previous experience could survive it. I’d have wanted grief to teach me something, but what? People die and disasters happen—bam, suddenly and without warning, just like that. If I knew this, did it mean that I was now grown-up? Was it an essential grown-up truth that suddenness worked one way only, and anything that happened this suddenly could only be bad? And what about Nicky? I might remember nothing about him but losing him.
We spent the week in chairs, refusing life. Meanwhile, time carried on as normal, and in real time Nicky’s dead body was still above ground. Where is the boy, the son, the brother? Where is Nicky now? To face the reality of death, it’s important to know.
From the handwritten notes of Hillier Funeral Service I can reconstruct the movements of the corpse. The instructions to Hillier’s were given by my dad’s older brother, who acts quickly and efficiently, because first contact with the undertaker is made on 18.8.78, the day of death. Why wait? Do something, anything. Wrest control away from fate.
Now that I have this information, I should add that phone call to the events of 18th August, late afternoon. The day-to-forget fills up. After returning from the hospital in Bude, while I was in the police car, Dad walked the footpath into the village and at a red roadside phone box he made this call to his brother.
Despite the prompt notification of Hillier’s, the process of transporting a body can’t be rushed. Nicholas Paul Beard (I imagine block capitals, biro, a luggage tag round his small bloodless toe) will be picked up (“removed”) from Stratton Hospital Bude on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Not Monday 21st August. Nicky’s body will be otherwise occupied on the Monday.
In the meantime, the letters keep arriving. I understand that Richard acted very bravely, which must be a great comfort to you, and thank heavens that Colin had arrived and was with you. Did I act bravely? Who passed on this judgment as fact? No one knows what happened except me, so perhaps I suggested I was brave. If Mum and Dad were salvaging the day by making the bravery of one son a balance for the death of another, then I’m sure I’d have played along.
Nearly all the letters, even those that express dismay, reference God.
You and I know that in due time all will be explained but I must say that while waiting it all seems very mysterious.
What a perfect expression of gentle English mystification this is. Of English mysticism. Life seems very mysterious, but it’s probably best to wait and see, while carrying on as stoutly as possible with 1978—I go to the shops most days.
The more fervent Christian correspondents appeal to a common faith in the life of the world to come, and to a hope that Nicky may continue in his new state of life to grow toward the perfection God intends for him. Nicky is in the care of the Great Comforter himself, who keeps an eye on those left behind: I have experienced how He can, longs to, and will heal such broken hearts.
On the existence of God, I’m open to offers, and always have been. I’ve personally experienced a sense of divine presence on five or six occasions, mostly outside—He appears to have a fondness for the sublime outdoors, does God. He’s into cliffs and white-water seas, and is transparently a fan of dramatic light, of cloudscapes and sunsets. The Atlantic coast of Cornwall is God’s kind of territory, but despite the written assurances of well-wishers and friends I don’t believe Nicky is a fixture in heaven, cricket bat at the ready, school cap pulled down low.
The day after Nicky died we chewed the bread and sipped the wine—God entered the story a day too late. I feel sure you will find comfort in your Christian belief, even though at times like these one wonders if there is a God of Love. We hoped God would be quick with the comfort, but He didn’t deliver on the Saturday or Sunday, or any time in the week that followed. Sitting in chairs, nothing to do, we may have wondered what God was for.
You have three other sons who need you so. Thank God.
God takes a child but, thinking ahead, He provides three more in advance as compensation. It seems a complicated way to proceed. The most ghoulish religious apology suggests that Nicky died as a recruitment strategy, to bring the survivors closer to faith: you can come to know the Lord so much more personally—Amazing, but true!
But basically no, I am not consoled by the Lord. If true, a divine creator would indeed be amazing, not least becaus
e He absolves us from blame, according to the condolence letters. The death of Nicky, like everything else, is a manifestation of divine will. I have a self-serving affinity for this kind of God.
Most of the letters have a fountain-penned answered in Mum’s writing (royal-blue washable ink), or a Replied from Dad (permanent black). The score is duly recorded: a 1–1 draw at letter-writing, think no more about it. Presumably the writers of unmarked letters didn’t merit a response, like the infuriating Father Donald, Catholic priest at St. Savior’s. How lucky Nicholas is, he writes, because dead children get to see Him as he really is, unlike us adults, they have never encountered the world of sin and evil. Nicky is an eternal child, never will he have the problems of becoming a man!
No answered, no Replied. Nor did he deserve any.
The Anglican vicar of St. Mary’s writes in an elderly hand as wavering but determined as his Church. The loss is so great and the distress of your other boys will be hard to bear—but at least you do not have to fear for Nicholas—he is your “safe” child now.
Tim had spent the afternoon of 18th August praying for Nicky to be safe, and less than a week later the Church is using the exact same word, as if divinely connected. Nicky is your safe child now. Tim feels his prayer has been answered. Nicky his little brother is safe, which is all he’d asked of God, a tenuous consolation but one which he grasped in the absence of any other.
When I tire of the sorrow in the letters, I simply count them. Months ago, when I drove to Liddington churchyard in search of a date, I took the first step in becoming an expert: subject Nicholas Beard, dead brother. I wanted to bring as much of Nicky back as anyone ever could, which has meant retrieving the day he died, collecting the available information about what happened then and afterward from every conceivable angle. I’d write it down, so we couldn’t forget again.
So I count the letters. An astonishing 171 individuals put pen to paper to express their deepest sympathy, their deep concern, their Christian love and feeling. Ten people sent flowers, of which the message cards have not all perished: Sorry to have missed you “again!” My thoughts have been with you.
The earliest are dated 18th August, from holidaymakers on the beach, witnesses who before the day is done have already turned to writing. Most are dated between 20th and 22nd August—please excuse the delay in writing—and reading these letters would have been a major activity in the week of the funeral, the sympathy as pain, as a pressure to acknowledge the deficient language of grief.
I wonder why fate is so unkind to some people?
Anyone who genuinely wants the answer can do the research, as I have done. Fate is unkind because my dad had cancer and couldn’t swim, and I was competitive and didn’t know when to stop, and because Jim and Bertie Watson offered too low a bid for The Mill. Fate is unkind because Nicky was cocky, and because ten minutes earlier Tregardock shelved more safely and ten minutes later the beach was gone.
I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do.
Life is life, it is what it is, and tragic circumstances or a tragic loss or a tragic accident can happen to anyone. The alternative of trying to somehow cocoon both the children and ourselves is impossible, and therefore one has to accept the risks involved.
The risk of being alive is death. I’m grateful to the level-headed builders of Swindon, and their candid assessment of the hazards of life. We can be a pragmatic species. I hope that both of you will have the strength to overcome this darkest passage in your lives, as life must carry on, and there are the others to think about.
Life does carry on, and quickly: by Monday 21st August, three days after the drowning, a letter arrives about plans for a memorial at Pinewood School. The afterlife without Nicky is looking for a shape, as if grief can be organized into submission. Letters must be written and donations arranged, because staying on top of the paperwork is also a response to chaos.
In Bude, on the Monday, the duty coroner is working office hours. While in Swindon we sat our grief down, silently, surrounded by letters, the Cornwall Coroner G. H. St. L. Northey (as he signs himself on the death certificate) scrubbed up, then assessed Nicky’s body. Nicky’s eternal soul may or may not have transcended to a better place, but his body was on a metal table in Bude.
The coroner opened him up with a hacksaw. He pulled out Nicky’s red heart and inspected it for stress. He dissected Nicky’s lungs, and seawater seeped across stainless-steel, dripped to the sterilized floor. He sliced open Nicky’s stomach. Northey was looking for evidence of eating before swimming, which in the Seventies almost counted as suicide.
Ted Childs said the body was unmarked. Northey pressed Nicky’s innards back inside the body cavity, then sewed up the flat stomach and narrow chest as best he could. He slotted the body with its stitched skin back into the hospital chiller.
The next day, on Tuesday, 22nd August, just before 2 p.m., a Series 3 BMW from Hillier Funeral Service in Swindon pulls up at Stratton Hospital, Bude. Hillier’s has sent an extra man to help with the lifting, at a cost for the day of £22, and the two men park the BMW in an ambulance bay. They carry an empty coffin into the hospital, size 66 × 20, which in 1978 means inches. I’ve measured that out and it’s longer but thinner than my small kitchen table. I can’t read in the Hillier notes the style of the coffin, but next to the paleness of Nicky’s drained flesh it will look solid and dark.
Inside the hospital mortuary the two men surely place the coffin on the floor. They remove the lid. They slide Nicky out from his refrigerated drawer. One man takes Nicky’s shoulders and the other the feet. They lift Nicky up and out and into the coffin. The senior man makes sure he isn’t touching the sides, out of respect, then together they screw down the lid. Stand, stretch, breathe. Screwdrivers in the pockets of pitch-black jackets. Wash hands.
Next, with an undertaker at each end of the coffin, they bend their knees, straighten their backs, lift. The coffin goes into the BMW through the back passenger door, across the seat. Not ideal, but the fuel economy on a hearse is dreadful, and no one wants to drive at 50 mph on an eleven-hour round-trip of 387 miles @ 23 pence per mile, as charged on the invoice.
Nicky spends the Tuesday afternoon on motorways seatbelted into the back of the BMW, as signed out for the day in the records. Personal Objects? is a reminder added by hand under Notes on the Hillier’s memo, then crossed out. Nicky has no personal objects. He died in his swimming trunks.
From Tuesday night until Thursday, Nicky lies in storage at Hillier Funeral Service on Victoria Road. The invoice doesn’t charge for visits, so I can’t say whether anyone went to see him on the Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, one day before the funeral, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was “offered for the intentions of Nicholas Beard and family” (JESU, by Thy broken heart, Knit ours to Thee). I doubt any of the family went to St. Savior’s to take part, not after the crassness of the message from Father Donald.
Up at the Anglican church in Liddington, the grave is being dug by Mr. Simon, or Mr. Simmonds. The name on the invoice begins with an S but is otherwise illegible. Mr. S. charged £19 to dig Nicky’s grave, but Hillier’s notes Fees Not Paid, until this reminder itself is scored through when Mr. S. (surely slow, fatalistic, with a dry sense of humor) finally received his money. He got the job done, even if no one was in a hurry to pay him.
Thursday morning, the day of the funeral, dawns onto an open grave that waits for Nicky in Liddington churchyard, the high-summer earth crumbled in a mound to one side. According to the undertaker’s notes, the coffin has to be inside the church before 9.45. So a 10 a.m. start, at a guess.
“I wore a gray silk blouse and a navy-blue skirt,” Mum says, fighting the black though arguably black would ultimately win. Not blank, black, Tim had said about everything that followed the death. “The church was full. I can’t remember what hymns we chose.”
Minister: Rev Powell. Hillier’s knows most of the ministers; they don’t need to record a first name, though the officiating priest could have been a
nyone. He just had to stand at the front in the collar and dare explain why children must die. Except the Reverend Powell wouldn’t have known the answer, as none of us did, and as I still don’t. The vicar that day would have done his best, refashioning some version of the Anglican piety that Nicky was safe. I doubt he’d have mentioned, during the service, that life is stupid and nobody understands what it’s for.
“I fainted as they lowered the coffin into the ground,” Mum says.
She tells me this more than once, as proof she felt strongly at the time, despite the emotional blackout we’d soon enforce. I take her word for it, because as Nicky descended in his coffin I was several roundabouts away in Swindon with my brothers and Mrs. Green, a very old lady who cleaned for my gran and of whom I have absolutely no memory.
“We didn’t want to put you through a funeral,” Mum says, “you were so young.”
I therefore can’t vouch for my own mother fainting at a freshly dug grave, nor for any other adult displays of irrepressible emotion. While feelings ran riot at the church, we sat in front-room silence with the ticking of the clock and old Mrs. Green. Perhaps she liked to knit.
“But what did we do, Mum? After the funeral we can’t have sat around until school started. That would have been at least a couple of weeks, too long for children to sit and mope.”
“Don’t you remember?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I did. Tell me.”
“I was busy all through the week before the funeral. I washed clothes and bought food. I had to get everything ready again.”
“For what?”
“After the burial we came straight to the house and picked you up. Then we drove to Cornwall.”
“Sorry?”
“Immediately afterward,” Mum says, “we didn’t stop at the church hall for a cup of tea. We got in the car, picked you up on the way, and drove until we reached Port Isaac.”
The Day That Went Missing Page 15