Brown hills rose round her with a blue road winding. The sky was clear and sheep were grazing between rocks where grass was kindly and green. Below was a stone bridge with a little hump. No car passed. She remembered that it was Sunday. She walked down the incline, keeping off the grass selvage which was peppered black with sheep shairn. A dog came running with his nose to the ground. He jumped the river and stood still when he saw her. She sat on the wall of the bridge, reluctant to move out of sight of the body. A grey van roared on the hill below. She waved her arms, willing it to stop. The effort was inhuman; now all depended on her alone. She was standing in the centre of the road. The driver caught her arm and she sank to her knees.
They put her to bed in her own room at the hotel. The doctor came and gave her a warm drink and two tablets. Then he pulled the curtains and told her that she would sleep.
Chapter 4
When she opened her eyes, she saw Gulban in a chair at the end of the room. The curtains of the west window were half-drawn. He was sitting in the light and the bed on which she lay was in shadow. Spiky tufts of unruly hair sprouted from the sides of his head, black clusters of blighted tops that obscured the outline of the tuberose skull. He looked hunched and rigid, his body alert for the unexpected. She had seen him as a sour dandelion of a man whose weapon was his genius for dispassionate belittlement. Now her heart went out to him. In less than twenty-four hours he had shrunk into the set of a tired old man.
‘Gulban,’ she whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’
He dragged his chair to the bed and took her hand.
‘Are you feeling better now?’
‘My side’s still sore but I’m not as weak as I was.’
‘The doctor said you were suffering from shock. You must try to remember what happened.’
She looked up at him, suddenly aware that she was the only witness.
‘We went to town for a meal. We were driving back. Jack felt sleepy, so we stopped at Undercliff for a swim. After that he seemed his usual chirpy self. There was a half-moon with patches of mist near the ground. I must have been tired because I nodded off. When I came round, the car was in the river and Jack was lying face down in the water. It was only the safety belt that kept me from being thrown.’
‘Wasn’t he wearing his?’
‘No.’
‘Did he have much to drink?’
‘We had a bottle of wine with dinner and a Scotch or two before. We were celebrating, you see. We had decided to get married in October.’
She turned to the wall as tears welled in her eyes.
‘It was my wish.’ Gulban took her hand. ‘I couldn’t understand why he waited so long.’
‘He was cautious in some things. He wanted us both to be sure.’
‘It was an odd thing to do, going swimming in the middle of the night.’
‘It was a special evening. We wanted to do things we’d always remember.’
She felt bound by circumstance. Half-heartedly, she raised a hand, but the truth was not within her grasp.
‘It’s a senseless death. He was the only man among them with the gift of common sense. Now I’m left with specialists who enjoy the sound of their own tongues wagging. Jack was not a talker, he just got on with it. If he had genius, he kept it under a bushel. I often think that the other three are only splinters of one fully rounded man. Why did he have to die, Pauline?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s wrecked your happiness and it will shorten what’s left of my life. I hope it was for his own sins he was taken.’
‘It was an accident. He ran into fog. It could have happened to any man.’
‘You’d better get some sleep now. The sergeant will be after you for a statement. There will be an inquest. You’ll have to give evidence to satisfy the manufacturers of red tape. No one knew him except you and me.’
After he’d gone, she lay on her back fighting tears. She had wanted to tell the truth, and now the truth was in abeyance. Jack was dead; no amount of truth-telling would bring him back. What she sought was peace of mind and an escape from useless recrimination. She wondered if in the act of deceiving she had taken on a burden too heavy to be borne. The coroner’s inquest was now irrelevant. The real inquest – the dispassionate examination of motive and behaviour – would be carried out by her alone. She herself would be defendant and prosecutor, judge and jury. It was a prospect she did not relish; she had never been given to self-indulgence or self-deception.
She stayed in bed throughout the evening and the following morning, enshrouded in a paralysing mist that seeped into her lungs, heart and stomach. Father Bosco, Cookie and Joey came up to see her. She elaborated on the story she had told their father, and as she repeated it to the Sergeant she noted that it had become more real with retelling. When he left, she dressed and crawled down the stairs with one shaky hand on the banisters. Father Bosco, Cookie and Joey were waiting in the corridor outside Gulban’s office, and Gulban spotted her as he opened the door.
‘You’d better come in, too, Pauline,’ he said. ‘It may be painful to talk but nothing is worse than solitary sorrowing.’
He sank into the chair behind his desk and the four of them sat on the high-backed chairs facing him. For a moment they all heard the dry ticking of the clock above the mantelpiece.
‘I’ve had word that the autopsy is over,’ he said. ‘We’ll get him back this evening. Now we must talk about the funeral. You’ll all agree that we owe him a good one.’
‘I’ll say the funeral Mass, of course,’ said Father Bosco.
‘It must be a High Mass with four priests concelebrating to represent my four sons and the four Red Men. The concelebrants will stretch out their hands at the Consecration. Nothing gives a greater sense of power, dignity and ceremonial.’
‘It gives me a sense of divine power being multiplied exponentially.’ Joey looked at Father Bosco who showed no awareness of the hint of blasphemy.
‘Can you lay on three other priests?’ Gulban asked.
‘I’m sure I can,’ Father Bosco replied.
‘They’ll expect payment, of course,’ said Gulban. ‘I’m aware of that.’
‘No, they won’t. Jack was my brother and they’re my brothers too.’
‘I’m not going to spare any expense. We want the largest turn-out ever.’
‘We can’t coerce people into coming,’ Joey reminded his father.
‘We can encourage them. We’ll have a proper organist and an undertaker from town with a big hearse, and we’ll have shiny black limousines for the family. People are curious. If they don’t come to pray, they’ll come to gawk. No one has ever seen an undertaker or a hearse on this headland before.’
‘I’d prefer a quiet funeral,’ said Father Bosco. ‘Just the family, a few neighbours and friends of Jack. It’s more becoming than a vulgar spectacle.’
‘Don’t think I don’t feel grief,’ said Gulban. ‘Jack was dear to me. He worked like a demon and never asked me for a penny. The debt I owe him must be repaid. It must be seen to be repaid.’
‘The best way to repay him is to have Requiem Masses said for his soul.’ Father Bosco blushed with the effort of speaking firmly.
‘An elaborate funeral will serve a real purpose. It will externalise our grief, it will give it a visible form and motion,’ said Joey with an ambiguous glance at his eldest brother.
‘What do you think?’ Gulban turned to Cookie.
‘Jack wasn’t religious. He’d vote for a quiet funeral with a Low Mass said by Father Bosco on his own.’
‘We’ll let Pauline decide,’ said Gulban.
For a moment she hesitated. She stared at the carpet beneath his desk, waiting for words to form a recognisable shape in her mind, aware of a transparent blankness, a square of thin glass held up against nothingness. She struggled for purchase, then breathed with relief as the gift of a sentence gave her a foothold on firm ground.
‘Jack was a straightforward man,’ she said slowly. ‘He had
a strong sense of family history. When he spoke of the Red Men, you could see that they were real to him. For our honeymoon he’d promised to take me to see their cities: Chicago, Peoria and Des Moines – I forget the fourth. He had a sense of occasion, too. He deserves the best send-off we can give him. We can only do it once, so we should do it well.’
She broke down and wept. Gulban and the others waited till she’d dried her eyes.
‘We’ll have all the trimmings, then,’ said Gulban, bringing the meeting to a close.
He was as good as his word. Jack was buried the following Wednesday with more solemn ceremonial than had ever been seen on the headland. The coffin was taken by hearse for two winding miles along the shore road to the church, and the family followed in two black chauffeur-driven limousines – Gulban and Pauline in the first and Cookie and Joey in the second. A red-nosed undertaker with a black moustache conducted Gulban and Pauline up the aisle to the front pew, where they sat alone. She was dressed in black from head to toe, and in her right hand she carried a single white lough-lily which Slash Gildea, who ran the hotel farm, had plucked for her that morning. Pale and drawn beneath her veil, she moved silently and mechanically with short steps, hardly aware of the already assembled congregation. All she knew was that Gulban was supporting her and that Jack lay on his back in the heavy, varnished coffin on wooden trestles before the altar. She felt unsteady on her feet; she had tasted nothing but orange juice and white grapes for three days. Glorious sunlight poured through the high window of the east transept, yet she felt no ray of heat or hope, only a sickening gripe of cold in the pit of her stomach.
Cookie and Joey occupied the seat behind her. The nave was crowded. The Mass servers were lighting candles. The postmistress, who normally took charge of the organ, sat censoriously in the west transept, her prim face raised to the choir where the organist from town rocked audaciously on her stool.
Mass began. Organ music tumbled in the empty spaces between the exposed couples of the roof. In the sanctuary the four concelebrating priests glided back and forth over the thick, red carpet, as she sought some kind of purchase on the smoothly worn words.
After the readings Father Bosco gave the address, looking down on the long, narrow coffin, speaking each word as if no other word mattered. He recalled Jack as man and boy, lifting him out of her reach into a far-off world of measureless time and imperturbability. Only at the end did he allow himself a little emotional flourish. With both hands stretched out towards the coffin below, he whispered in a voice that all could not but hear, ‘Dear brother and friend, dear Jack, farewell!’
The words had such an effect on her that she lost all awareness of the service. When the Communion bell recalled her, she realised that she’d missed the prayers for the living, the Consecration and the prayers for the dead. She went to the altar rails with Gulban, and Father Bosco gave them both the Eucharist with immaculate hands. After Communion the four priests sat side by side with their hands on their knees and their chasubles draped over the backs of their chairs. The organist played ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’, invoking harmony and peace on earth and grace falling with summer sunlight through high clerestory windows. On and on it flowed without an interrupting wave or ripple, yet all she could feel was rebellion and antagonism. Every cell in her body shook with a sense of wrongness and divine injustice. Her grief was not in her mind but in the infolding depths of her womb which was being tugged from her by every living thing that moved.
At the graveside she stood between Gulban and his sons, still holding the white lough-lily. On the far side of the cemetery wall was a slender ash tree with greenish sunlight dancing between its upreaching branches. Its shadow fell on the varnished wood of the coffin. She peered over the edge as it was lowered on ropes, leaning forward to catch the last glint of the plate. Above were pure, blue sky and living, dancing leaves. She threw the lough-lily into the open grave, then Gulban whisked her towards the waiting limousine. He hardly spoke on the way home. She sat upright in frozen rigidity, looking down on her black gloves with vacant incomprehension.
‘You ought to wear black,’ he had said the day before. ‘In black it’s easier to behave with dignity.’ Now he took her hand and said, ‘We’re closer than ever, Pauline. No one understood him except us.’
When they got back to the hotel, there were drinks and sandwiches in Gulban’s office for a few close neighbours and friends. Conversation was hushed and strained. There was plenty of whiskey, but no one had either the will or the wish to drink it. The rigor of death held them spellbound, until at last two strong-minded men got up and said that they were sorry to have to go so soon. Gradually, the other mourners took their leave. Then Gulban, Father Bosco, Cookie, Joey and herself were alone in the room.
‘We’ll have a bite to eat now,’ said Gulban. ‘And since we’re all together, I have something to say.’
They started with leek and potato soup which was smooth and creamy except for spiky bits of parsley floating greenly on the surface. Gulban stood up to carve the saddle of mutton and paused half-way through to resharpen. Silence was observed as the gravy-boat went round the table. Then, with a welcome clattering of spoons, they helped themselves to cauliflower, peas and roast potatoes.
‘I was right,’ Gulban said after the first mouthful. ‘People came to stare, not to pay offerings. For such a large funeral they hardly broke the record. If I hadn’t paid a hundred and fifty pounds for the family, the sum collected would have shamed us. Jack, I’m afraid, was too serious to be popular. Nevertheless, if he’s looking down, he has a right to be proud. The four priests filled the sanctuary; your sermon, Bosco, had just the right amount of feeling; and the organist got notes out of the old organ that must have surprised the postmistress. The whole service spelt one word: DIGNITY. What do you think, Bosco? Are you satisfied?’
Father Bosco considered for a moment.
‘Jack is dead. I trust he’s in heaven, but none of us must presume. He was taken while his capacity for sin was still unimpaired, so he may be suffering. We should pray for him, because prayer, not pomp, may be what he’d most appreciate.’
‘I know all that,’ said Gulban. ‘But we have the living to think about as well.’
He paused to look across at Pauline.
‘The living must somehow continue to live. A dignified funeral may be costly, but it’s a fitting end. It rounds things off. It closes a chapter for the deceased and helps those of us who are left to start another.’
Pauline clasped her hands and stared at the white knuckles.
‘You haven’t eaten one solid mouthful,’ Gulban reproved her. ‘All you’ve touched is the soup. Try the mint sauce, it might tempt you to eat a little of the meat.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be able to eat tomorrow.’
She longed for the solitude of her bedroom, away from words and gestures that only sharpened her sense of wrongness, of nakedness, of a life that had been smashed and mangled. She had lost her perception of order; all was chaos and disjunction. Words were treacherous, their truth leached away by over-long service in the causes of self-love and self-deception. The cooling gravy on her plate bound the mutton into paving slabs laid in concrete. She looked at Gulban, Bosco, Cookie and Joey with a sense of defilement and violation.
‘Today we’re grieving,’ Gulban resumed over the coffee. ‘We shall continue to grieve for a long time to come, especially when we’re alone or wake up in the middle of the night. Life, we know, must go on, and work is a cure for anguish. Tomorrow we must start again, if we want to escape suffocation. Work is external. You can see it being done, and you can measure it when it is done. It’s the bridge to sanity, to the world outside our thoughts. There must be no self-pity, no standing back to take stock. The best action is gut reaction, so tomorrow we won’t stop to think. You, Cookie, will take Jack’s place at the hotel. Joey will remain in the shop, and Bosco will pray for us all. Remember, Bosco, you too are in the running – provided y
our prayers get answered. You’re all in the running – you’ve nothing to lose but your shirts.’
‘I pray to be left out of the reckoning,’ Father Bosco smiled.
‘That’s a prayer that only I can answer. Pray a real prayer and see what happens.’
He looked round the table, seeking an eye that might dare to meet his own.
‘I want all of you to realize that I’m your judge, so don’t forget the Day of the Talents, because life itself is only the deployment of talents. Don’t bury them and don’t squander them. Sadly, Jack didn’t have his long enough to do either.’
He rose from his place at the head of the table and laid a hand on Pauline’s shoulder.
‘It’s been a testing day for you,’ he said. ‘You should try to rest now. We all need to be alone with ourselves on occasion.’
She rose slowly and stiffly and followed him out of the room.
Chapter 5
With Gulban’s departure, the quality of the light seemed to change. It became gentler and at the same time livelier, causing the brothers to subside in their chairs. Suddenly, a light-hearted witticism seemed a distinct possibility. Cookie lit a cigarette and Father Bosco a small cigar.
‘I wouldn’t have minded a glass of wine with my meal,’ Joey said.
‘Today a glass would hardly have registered,’ Cookie observed.
‘It wasn’t an occasion for self-indulgence,’ Father Bosco reminded them.
‘Let’s go up to my room,’ said Joey. ‘I’ve got half a bottle of brandy.’
‘I’m hearing confessions at six. I must get back.’ Father Bosco rose from the table.
‘Stay for a while,’ Cookie begged. ‘We see so little of you now. We never have time to talk.’
‘You haven’t seen my den,’ said Joey. ‘Come on, I’ll show you my collection of little beauties. You’ll love my oolites, Father Bosco, best of all. My oolites have got oomph, more oomph than Brother Jack.’
The Red Men Page 4