There was a band playing, a group of four, more young people, softly they played but no music I recognised, mournful, tuneless: guitars, double bass, keyboard. The officiating clergyman was not young, he had a cheerful air that seemed to bristle forth from a large and curiously old-fashioned red moustache, and he did not appear to see the knots he tied himself in, endeavouring to recognise the tragedy of this young death at the same time as proclaiming the young life as a source of celebration, and all without much mention of God or an afterlife. I wondered if he was what used to be called a muscular Christian. He clearly knew Laurel, and I supposed this to be her church, and he knew a lot about Oscar; at least he didn’t get his name wrong.
But the kids were astonishing.
We were each given a booklet. Its cover was some handsome gold foil-like material, printed with an image of Oscar that shimmered. The photograph was smiling slightly and the shimmering gave the smile a shifting enigmatic quality. Inside were endpapers marbled in shades of yellow, and the pages were heavy cream linen paper with deckle edges. There was a biography of Oscar, with more photographs, an order of service, several hymns, a number of poems, some rather secular prayers, and various tributes from friends. It was quite a gorgeous little production, the work of Raoul, who had also organised the ceremony.
One of the poems was some verses from ‘The Hollow Men’, T.S. Eliot, I mean, read by a vibrant young woman called Phoebe, with black spiky hair and red lips. Read very well, the repeated line, Falls the shadow, having a shivery power. Another young woman, a pale girl called Katharine, with a deep voice, read her own poem on the lad’s death, not evidently quite in the league of ‘The Hollow Men’ but very strong, in its simple admiration for Oscar as friend, artist, genius, a man of dreams and desires now snatched away, as his existence is snatched away.
He is gone through the portal
And we are left
Shivering, alone
Bereft.
His is the glory, now.
Tears ran down her cheeks as she read; another girl went up and stood beside her and held her, waited in silence till the last words died, then led her away. A boy called Matthew with a high pure voice sang ‘Ave Maria’, which made the tears start from my eyes. A statuesque girl in a red feather boa and a tiara read a litany of Oscar’s achievements. An older man who had taught him spoke in more measured but still glowing terms. All this is in the book before me, this elegant labour of love and loss. I had not imagined Oscar so beloved, so revered. Maybe they had not, until now. Their theme was his brilliance, his intellectual and creative powers, his love of life and his generosity in sharing this. A young man called Hanif told how he helped his friends learn self-love and self-control.
Funny what death does, muttered a man beside me, dressed in a three-piece pinstriped suit. It’s certainly handed out rose–coloured spectacles to this lot.
And without being specific, all the young people made it clear that the taking of heroin was not an act of suicide. That it was a bold attempt to know more. The portal idea kept recurring.
Finally Raoul stood up. Oscar was a philosopher prince, he said. He was a man who would have been at home in the days of the Renaissance. He towered over his time, his intellect went beyond petty rules. Raoul talked about Oscar’s beliefs in the idea of Pangaea, an ancient hypothetical precursor of Gondwanaland and Laurasia, a mythical place where transcendence would be possible, a world of bodiless consciousness where the soul could communicate with other consciousnesses without the burden of ego … he finished by saying, Oscar died with a smile on his face. I think he found Pangaea.
I did not want to agree with the pinstripe man; I was for believing in Oscar, his genius, his Pangaea. While these bright children invoked them for me, anyway.
At the end the sweet-voiced Matthew sang a song called ‘Love Holds Me Yet’, with the band playing a melancholy muted accompaniment. My eyes were burning with tears, my chest clamorous with emotion. Beside me Flora wiped her eyes with her fingers and sniffed her breath in deep sighs. Hostages to fortune, she murmured in my ear, I can’t bear it. The pinstripe man muttered, They didn’t see the mess on my bathroom floor. This made me suppose him to be the father of Hamish, who wasn’t out of hospital yet.
I think this is quite brilliant, I said.
Oh, brilliant, said the man. A waste of time. They all are. Fucking dopeheads. Nitrousing out into philosophy – it’s just gibberish, you know.
In the file past at the door I kissed Laurel’s soft dry cheek. A dazzling boy, I said. You’ve lost him, but you had him.
She laughed, a little throaty sobbing sound. Oh, I don’t think I ever had him.
There was a man standing beside her in a brown suit that he did not seem to be in the habit of wearing – I see I am reading this funeral by its suits – whose face showed him to be Oscar’s father, with the ruins of a similar beauty. They stood together, their shoulders touching, but withdrawn. You could see that this would be the end for them. They were already parted so far, with Oscar the only connection. Not enough, but a connection, and this the last fraying thread of it. On Laurel’s side stood an older woman, very like her but rather square: the sister from Wagga.
As we left the church we were given each a lighted candle; little eddies of wind in the passage sent drops of hot wax on to our hands. There was a bell tolling a single note. We stuck the candles in the earth of the gardens, little flames burning bright and even more evanescent than the flowers around them.
There were cups of tea out of urns, and plates of sandwiches and solid cakes, lamingtons and Anzac biscuits and sausage rolls and asparagus rolls, set out on trestle tables covered with butcher’s paper. A church tea. The young didn’t pay much attention but the oldies were in for their cuppas.
I was surprised to see Clovis there, and Gwyneth. She was looking with bright sharp eyes all about her. Clovis said: The old should not have to bury the young.
It’s not the contract, I said. Our parents, and some of us our partners, we agree to bury them, but not our children.
There are no contracts, said Flora. No bargains. That would imply rules.
It seemed that he wanted too much, I said. All that portal stuff.
How can you want too much, cried Gwyneth. You have to want things, he was lucky he could. He couldn’t help the heroin not being cut.
There’s punishment for the wrong kind of wanting, said Flora. Or maybe it’s wanting the wrong kinds of thing. You aren’t allowed.
I said we should all go and have a drink; there must be a pub nearby. We need a wake for Oscar, I said.
They will have one, said Flora, gesturing at all the young people with their shining tear-stained faces, their soft lips and luminous eyes, their entwining arms. They looked painfully beautiful.
They’re already drunk on grief, said Clovis.
There will be other substances, said Flora.
She wouldn’t have a drink. I offered Clovis and Gwyneth a lift back, but she said they were okay.
It was wrong, I think. There should be a wake after a funeral, a real one, with the liberating potations of alcohol, so we can let grief go. We should not make bearing too hard for ourselves. Flora was morose, keen to get back to work, we had another of our arguments, silly little sizzling spats they were, but they filled me with gloom and foreboding. You work too hard, I said to Flora. My work is what I am, she replied.
Even when all the emotion of the funeral leaked away I was inclined to believe that Oscar’s overdose was accidental. I wanted to, because it would mean that his hacking into my computers had nothing to do with it. That the events were coincidental. It didn’t mean he hadn’t done it, I just hoped he hadn’t. The ache of grief in my chest, for the waste of his young life, for his mother’s sorrow, I wanted to feel that quite purely, not have to worry about any neverthelesses. I almost hoped the hacking would happen again and then I could be sure it wasn’t him. Well, of course I didn’t, but I did hope we would find out who it was. So the dazzling
boy would be touched only by hubris, not by crime.
36
We should have had that drink, said Clovis to Jerome the day after Oscar’s funeral. Do you know why Gwyneth refused your offer of a lift home? We’d gone in a taxi and she wanted to come back in one. She’s a girl of simple pleasures, is Gwyneth.
The air had a spring coolness in it, while the sun was hot. The kind of weather that makes people say it’s too good to stay inside. Clovis and Jerome were walking along the lake, which was as blue as it ever gets. The colour of slate, with faint metallic sparkles.
I still feel gloomy, said Clovis. Never set eyes on the lad, but still. I guess I keep thinking, we should not have to bury our children.
He seems to have been a brilliant boy. Of course he was a hacker, and I find that hard to forgive, but you wouldn’t want it punished by death.
He really was as clever as all that?
I think so, yes, his hacking was genius. Not sure about his, what would you call it, his metaphysics.
The portal stuff? It’s all that Internet business, isn’t it. Means young people can think they know everything there is to know, but there’s no strictness in it, no sense somehow.
Exactly, said Jerome. All that grazing. Give me a book any day. I mean, to educate the young.
I want to ask you, said Clovis, the temptations of Christ. You know, where the devil takes him up on to a high mountain …
And shows him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment in time?
That’d be it. What are they?
Well, there’s turning stones into bread – Christ’s hungry, he’s been fasting for forty days. But he says, Man shall not live by bread alone. Meaning, of course, he won’t do it.
I see. And?
The second is that he should cast himself down, and be saved by angels. That would be tempting God, you’re not supposed to do that.
Always supposing God allowed himself to be tempted. Doesn’t have a good record. People jumping off high buildings – when did he ever save them?
I suppose the idea is that he would save his only begotten son …
He might have let him crash down to the rocks below. We don’t know. It is the devil’s offer, not God’s.
You’ve got a positively medieval habit of disputation.
Angels dancing on a pin?
Nobody ever said that. It’s a furphy.
That’s a pity, rather. And the third temptation?
The third is being shown all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. Christ can be master of all of them if he worships the devil. Why do you ask?
I was thinking of Oscar. Of Flora. You. Me. Clovis was staring at the lake, his eyes squinting.
You think we’re all tempted? All falling into temptation?
It’s the World, the Flesh and the Devil, isn’t it, those temptations. I tried to get the World, you could say I took the devil’s route …
So, what went wrong?
Surely the point is, the devil. He never keeps his bargains, he always cheats. You never get what he promises.
And you think Flora is trying to turn stones into bread?
Clovis is silent.
And what about Oscar?
I was thinking about Faustian temptations. The portal … believing there was some way of entering … everything would open out, everything would be clear … and instead it’s the end, the finish, the cutting off. Like a solid portcullis coming down, and him crushed by it. The devil at his cheating ways.
Do you believe in the devil?
I think he’s a good story, that makes sense of a whole lot of things. He doesn’t have to be a literal creature with horns and goat’s feet and a long pointy tail.
It was my namesake who called him Lucifer, son of the morning, the brightest angel in heaven before he fell. And the most beloved.
His sin was pride, too, wasn’t it? Wanting to supplant God.
They walk in silence for a moment. Jerome breaks it. The World, the Flesh and the Devil … So where does that leave me?
Clovis shrugs. It’s not really my business …
The World, says Jerome. What about the Word?
Isn’t the Word God? In the beginning …
Jesus, Clovis, I thought I was leaving all this behind with the Franciscans.
Really?
I suppose not.
They turn back along the lake. The late afternoon light is hazy and yellow, long shadows fall across the ground. A number of the staff from The Point have come out on to its terrace and are sprawled on the ground, the cooks in their check trousers and white jackets, the waiters in black trousers. Flora feeds them, though strictly speaking given her hours she doesn’t have to, but she thinks they should eat the restaurant’s food, develop a critical familiarity with it, so she says, and that is important, but she’s kind too. Most of them are lazily smoking, their heads tipped back to the sun. The smoke drifts in the still air. The windows are opaque, the building lightless.
The world is always with us, says Clovis.
Why do young people in the cooking business smoke so much, asks Jerome. You’d think it would ruin their palates.
There’s something rather archaic about it, isn’t there. The smoke drifting, the languid gestures … it’s another era, when smoking was a glamorous act.
Maybe for them it still is.
The young taking no notice again.
When they get close to The Point Jerome says, Hang on, and goes in, coming out some minutes later with an opened bottle of red wine and two glasses. Here’s that drink, he says.
They sit in the ferry pavilion, where no ferry ever stops. Across the slope of grass, partly hidden by bushes, are Gwyneth and Joe, their heads close together, talking.
There, says Clovis, there’s an innocent person.
Gwyneth? Untempted?
Not untempted. And fallen, in certain ways. But not in the way of those terrible temptations. They’re all intellectual, aren’t they, they’re all about usurping the role of God. Whereas Gwyneth does her bit to get by in a world that has been viciously cruel to her. She sells her body, but not her soul.
Is this what you do with yourself? The big questions?
I don’t have any books, you see. Clovis smiles apologetically.
I have to get by with what’s in my brain. It’s pretty basic.
Or, maybe you should say, archetypal.
Jerome gets up to go before the bottle is finished. Keep it, he says. Keep the glasses.
Kate and Martin have left the group on the terrace and are walking along the lake, having a passionate conversation, not an argument, not at all, they may not be entirely in agreement but they are very pleased with themselves. They do not see Clovis until they are almost upon him. Hello, they say, and turn back, still talking volubly. We’ll have … and what about … and we must … oh no, not … he imagines they are planning their own restaurant, that they will have, one day.
The sun is setting, there are bands of orange and pink light over the hills, striped with shreds of indigo cloud. The lake at his feet is pale grey and very quiet, curled like a cat sleeping with one eye open.
Wine, says Gwyneth.
Good grief, says Clovis. It’s like Piccadilly Circus round here.
Have some. There’s another glass, which you can wash if you are fussy.
I’ve never been to the circus, says Gwyneth. Those trapeze artists, flying through the air, I’d love to see them. I mean you get them in films, but it’s not the real thing. Not like in the flesh. Do they ever fall? They do in films, but in real life?
He doesn’t tell her that Piccadilly Circus is a place, just a big roundabout with a great many cars. He recites:
They fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
Those daring young men on the flying trapeze.
What’s that?
Dunno. Just some of the baggage in my head.
Joe’s doing Laurel’s job.
Yeah?
I saw him, last night.
Through the windows. And he told me about it today. He likes it.
I suppose it’s better than washing dishes.
It’s his ambition, he says.
You’re still looking through the windows?
Yeah, all the time. Now I’ve been inside and had a look. I watch what’s going on. Maybe I’ll be a waitress one day.
Gwyneth is wearing a dark-red ribbed jumper, close fitting, with a high neck. Clovis admires it, tells her it makes her look pretty. She smiles. He wonders where it came from. He tells himself it is none of his business. But he knows he’s started worrying about Gwyneth. She seems happier these days, he seems to be more upset by the rape than she is, she appears to regard it rather pragmatically, like an occupational hazard. And she’s somehow less scatty in her head.
Jerome dined quite early that night. He was eating his main course, a roasted saddle of rabbit, tender and almost creamy, with a puree of potato and celeriac and some sort of primitive young asparagus, tied into bundles with threads of prosciutto, when Anabel and Nigel came into the restaurant. He heard her booming voice say, Come to try some of m’vegetables, and turned to see Joe bowing in his courtly manner and gesturing to be followed to the table reserved. But Anabel had seen Jerome.
Well, I’ll be buggered, she said, there’s Jerome. And eating my sparrowgrass, what’s more. How are you, my dear? That sparrowgrass is good stuff, hey?
Anabel was wearing a splendid purple garment, a species of caftan, with floating chiffon panels in different shades of the purple colour. Its neck was cut quite low so her extraordinary creamy flesh and the swell of her abundant breasts were offered for admiration, and she wore jewellery consisting of enormous chunks of milky amber set in intricate loops and lumps of silver. Her black hair hung in long curls. She looked magnificent, barbaric, hieratic. Jerome hadn’t talked to her since acrimoniously she left him – no, his was the acrimony, she had gone with he thought a vulgar stupid misprising of what love was, but also with a careless sort of taking-and-leaving indifferent good humour that had enraged him. Growing vegetables clearly suited her. He could see she was happy, in herself and with herself, in ways that she had never been with him. She wasn’t an earth mother, she was an earth goddess.
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