by Alec Waugh
“Colonel Carson’s funeral is at four. That was G.H. ringing up. We’ll be going won’t we?”
“Of course.”
“We can tell Daddy at lunch.”
“He’ll probably hear about it at the club.”
“What about letting Maxwell know?”
“Would he want to come? Was Colonel Carson at all a friend of his?”
“If we don’t warn him he will feel aggrieved.”
“I’d forgotten.”
Maxwell was so touchy. Why should he be? Poor little boy indeed. “I’ll ring him up,” she said.
She went back to the telephone. She had to wait several minutes before she got an answer from the exchange.
“I’ll do my best but everyone’s ringing up this morning,” the operator said.
“You’ll do your best.”
“I sure will, Miss Jocelyn. I’ll call you back.”
Ten minutes passed, quarter of an hour, half an hour.
“I’ll try again,” Jocelyn told her mother. But there was the same delay, then the operator’s apologetic “I do my best, Miss Jocelyn. Every line’s engaged. I try three times. Everyone telephones this morning.”
“Don’t bother then. It’s not all that important.”
“It’s no good,” Jocelyn told her mother. “Everyone’s ringing everyone this morning.”
“They would be.”
“We can tell Maxwell that we’ve tried.”
That was all that mattered. Maxwell hadn’t been a particular friend of Colonel Carson’s. It was a long drive in. What should she wear that afternoon? Would that dark blue look dark enough?
Thirty miles away at Belfontaine, Maxwell fidgeted on the veranda. If only something would happen soon. The delay was maddening. If only the telephone would ring, a car swing round out of the road. Sylvia was sitting in a brooding silence, that tranquil smile upon her lips. He felt foiled and cheated. Today should have been the happiest of his life. She turned her head, her eyes met his and the smile deepened. If only he could put back the clock to yesterday.
“Would you like a punch?” she asked.
“I’d love one.”
Anything to calm his nerves. He strode impatiently back and forth while she mixed the drink. If only something would happen. This waiting, waiting, waiting. Unless something happened soon, he’d be driven to do something. And that was the one thing he mustn’t do. He must behave as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Chapter Sixteen
1
The Fleurys were among the first inside the church. That was Jocelyn’s doing. She did not want to have to meet people on the way in. Colonel Carson’s death had no doubt driven out of everybody’s mind the article in the paper yesterday. But the moment they saw her, they would be reminded of it: they would feel awkward and embararassed. She couldn’t bear that, yet, not today anyhow: not till she had seen Euan.
There were only a dozen people in the church when she arrived, but outside a crowd had gathered. They would stand there, waiting, watching the white folk and the notables arrive; then at the last moment, after the Governor’s arrival, they would swarm into the back pews and into the gallery and if there was not room they would perch themselves in the window sills.
The Fleurys’ family pew was in the front, immediately behind the Governor’s. Euan would be in sight of her all the time. What was he feeling, what was he thinking? It was worse for him than it was for her. What would he say to her, how would he put it? She must make it easy for him. She owed him that.
The coffin under its purple cloth was a bare four yards from her. It was strange to think that inside that wooden casket lay a man who twenty-four hours ago had been walking, laughing, drinking. How little Carson had suspected this time yesterday that within twenty-four hours’ time he would be lying in a coffin, high-piled with flowers, guarded by six uniformed policemen with their arms reversed. What had he been looking forward to, what had he been worrying over? How quickly those dreams, those fears, those causes of resentment had been dissolved. Euan would soon get over it.
From the windows in the vestry the Archdeacon watched the congregation arrive. He had rarely seen so many people in his church. The island was predominantly Roman Catholic. Everyone in Jamestown seemed to be here today. He noticed David Boyeur, very correctly dressed in black shoes, a dark blue suit and a black tie. His face wore an appropriate expression. He saw the Normans, the Kellaways, the Leischings, the Morrises. He looked at his watch; twenty to four. They were coming thickly now; another few minutes and there would be only stragglers. Then the G.H. party would arrive.
He glanced toward the choir. The trebles were whispering excitedly. He was himself a little nervous, as a colonel would be before a general’s inspection. Nothing should go wrong but he was afraid something might. He wished it could be a more impressive service; that the funeral could have taken place in the morning with a requiem mass and a long ornate ritual. That was what the islanders enjoyed. He was doing the best possible in the circumstances. He had arranged for several hymns and for two psalms, the ninetieth and thirty-ninth. It would be a thirty minutes service, but he wished it could have been postponed. Ah, here was the Governor.
The car with the Union Jack flying from its bonnet swung round the corner. The A.D.C. stood by the door. His Excellency followed in his full dress uniform, with his four rows of ribbons. Euan followed in a dark suit.
“We’ll give them three minutes,” he told his chaplain.
The music of the organ swelled and eddied. He watched the chaplain line up the choir. They looked very smart in their dark purple surplices and wide white collars, the candles held high before their faces. The voluntary ended. “Now,” he said. As the first file of choristers turned into the nave, the music swelled from the organ. The voices of the choir were raised in the Dies Irae. In that moment he was concerned only with the drill of it. As he himself came into the nave, the incense was swung high. Its thick, heavily sweet fumes were fragrant in the air. The sunlight gilded its thin smoke.
When the Judge his seat attaineth
And each hidden deed arraigneth
Nothing unavenged remaineth …
The music ceased. He stood beside the coffin. His voice rang through the church.
“We brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we can carry nothing out.”
Doris Kellaway bent her head low above her hands. All that day she had been in a trance; haunted by Carson’s last look as he left the club. What had he been saying in that look? She had never seen such an expression in a man’s face. Only a moment before she had been laughing with Mavis and the others at the ridiculous exhibition he had made; the fulsome compliments and then the broken glass: how they had laughed at him. Mavis had been mocking her about her conquest: then she had raised her eyes and she had seen him standing by the Archdeacon, about to leave, their eyes had met and there had been a startling eloquence in his look. What was he trying to say? To ask her forgiveness, to explain that it had not been mere alcoholic gallantry, that he had genuinely seen her with new eyes that evening? “I’ll explain next time we meet.” That was what he had seemed to be saying; and then he had turned away, had gone to meet—who knew what he had met, how, why, under what conditions. Perhaps she was the last thing he thought of. She laid her forehead against her hands. She’d never forget him, never, never….
“A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday.”
“Are but as yesterday.” David Boyeur rolled the phrase round his tongue. A noble phrase. As a Catholic, he only on special occasions attended an Anglican service. He wished his own services were in English, in this proud, rich language.
From halfway up the church he looked through latticed fingers to the left, to the right, then straight ahead. He did not move his head, only his eyes: no one should say that his attention had been wandering. Grainger’s sister Muriel was two rows in front of him at an angle of sixty degrees. He could see the curve of her cheek and
tip of her nose in profile. He had noticed her lately at the Aquatic. She swam well and had a pretty figure. She must be eighteen now. Had she a serious beau? She did not seem to have. She was always in a group of girls. He had talked to her once or twice. She had seemed friendly, ready to be more friendly. Why didn’t he cultivate her? It was time he married. “Marry fair,” that’s what his mother had always told him: if your children were whiter than yourself, people thought of you as going up the ladder.
Margot Seaton was sitting in the front, with the G.H. staff. She was wearing a white hat trimmed with black. It was set at an angle over her eye. What style she had. He felt nostalgic. He often missed her. It was better though the way it was. She wasn’t the wife he needed, too much the girl friend. He needed a solid marriage, something that would establish him; somebody with money for preference. The Morrises had money. He wasn’t in their class, but he had a future. The elder sister had not married. It was not too easy for that kind of girl to get the kind of husband that she wanted. Their own class wanted to marry someone with a “better skin.” Muriel would have the example of her sister as a warning. She’d be afraid of spinsterhood. She might jump at the first proposal; best get her young before she recognized her attractions. He’d speak to her coming out.
Now the laborer’s task is o’er
Now the battle day is past.
Another hymn. The congregation was on its feet. Colonel Whittingham, his eyes upon his policemen, noted their immobility with approval. They were good at this kind of thing, took a pride in their own performance. Everything was going well. What a day it had been. Since that hysterical servant had brought the news into the police station just as dawn was breaking. What luck that he had been there himself. He was not there as early as that once in a month; he had gone there to make a check-up, to ensure that his men were on the mark. By that lucky chance he had been there first. He had not had the clues interfered with by his well-meaning but muddled subordinates.
There was a shuffle of feet behind him. The congregation was seated. The lesson was being read. The Archdeacon’s voice was full and slow and rich.
“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
Archer at the Governor’s side, following his own thoughts, had his attention caught. So that’s where Richard Hilary had got his title. When had he seen Carson last? He could not remember. De Quincy had said something about never doing a thing consciously for the last time without sadness of heart, but how often did you know that it was the last time? He remembered a poem called “Close of Play” about a casual cricket match in August 1914, written by somebody called Kenneth Ashley of whom he knew nothing except that one poem. He had memorized the opening lines.
I wonder if Life is kind or callous,
When it fails to warn us of final things,
When we make an end, and no revelation
Informs the heart with forebodings.
How little had he himself guessed that last night at Oxford that he was seeing Ruth for the last time. How could he have guessed that fate would intervene within thirty hours, with so much unsaid. If only he had known.
From the pew behind he caught a whiff of mignonette. Was that how it would end with Margot, suddenly, out of a clear sky; a plane to be caught. The thought tore at his heart. Life without Margot. Mentally he turned his head away. He must waste no moment. Never run the risk of being forced afterwards to think he had been casual. “Look thy last on all things lovely.” Live in the moment fully. “This day as if thy last,” encompass eternity each fleeting moment.
No more the foe can harm
No more of leaguered camp
And cry of night alarm
And need of ready lamp.
The Governor had chosen that hymn personally. He had heard it for the first time at Sandhurst at the funeral of a cadet in his own company. He had heard it many times since by many graves, in France, in India, in the Western Desert. It was a soldier’s hymn. Carson might well have chosen it himself. Only twenty-four hours earlier he had been preparing himself for his talk with Carson. As he had planned his argument, he had found himself thinking of Carson as a war casualty. Carson’s life had been ruined by the war; his real life had ended in the war. The war had left him without the health and energy and faith to make a real thing of his life. When he had seen during the thirties what had happened to some of his brother officers who had survived the Somme and Passchendaele, he had envied on their account those who lay in Flanders beneath white crosses. Carson must have sometimes wished that the shell which wounded him at Alamein had pitched a yard further to the right.
Carson had been spared a lot. He began to phrase the report that he would send to Whitehall tomorrow.
What matters now grief’s darkest day
The King has wiped those tears away?
In a semitrance Mavis listened to the words. Twenty-four hours ago she and Doris had been laughing over the Colonel’s discomfiture and now he lay in that coffin, motionless, beyond ridicule and censure. How near to one’s elbow death always stood; one did not know the day or hour.
Grainger Morris was two pews in front of her. What must be think of her? How much did he know about her? Something certainly. Everyone knew about everyone in a place like this. Grainger had thought about her while he was in England. He remembered her as a child. It must have been a shock to him to discover into what manner of adult that child had grown. She’d changed since he’d arrived, but how could he know that? She must prove to him that she had changed. That coffin so close to them was a sign, a symbol, a warning. I will be different, she vowed, I will, I will.
“Man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain: he heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them.”
The Archdeacon, too, was remembering that last evening at the club. He had arrived as Carson was making himself ridiculous. He had not known what was happening. He had learnt the details later. What had transpired in Carson’s mind during those two minutes to make him pause beside him, to look at him in that way, say what he had said?
He had often heard it said that soldiers in wartime knew when they were starting on their last attack. Did God send a warning before sudden death, a summons to make one’s peace with him? Was that what that last gesture of Carson’s had meant, an equivalent of the Catholic’s need for extreme unction?
Death, he had seen it so often, in so many guises. He had prayed by so many deathbeds, delivered so many funeral addresses: the words had become automatic. It was like putting a record on a gramophone. What did he really believe, in his heart of hearts? When he assured the bereaved that they would meet their loved ones in heaven, did he actually believe in such a place? Once he had, he must have, or he could not have presented himself for ordination; he had surely believed then in a savior who took the sins of the world upon him; who made there by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice. He had believed that then: one believed in so much in youth; but how far had that faith survived the wear and tear of a long ministry, with all its parochial problems, its weighing of the politics of this and that, the conflict of personalities, the stage-management of a career.
There were moments when he did not dare to put himself in the confessional. Was he any more than a gramophone, repeating the same recordings? What did he believe, what was it possible to believe in face of the mounting tide of unbelief? Might not the Leninists be right; might not religion be no more than the opium of the working classes; an opium they had learnt to do without or rather that they had displaced with another opiate, the beneficence of the Welfare State?
He doubted sometimes. Then as a reminder, there came a moment such as this: that worldly, sensual man standing on the brink of a death, violent, unforeseen, unforeseeable, impelled in the last hour of his life to make his peace with God. What could this be but a sign of grace, of mercy, a proof that God existed?
“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.”
&nb
sp; The long service was at an end; the procession started, the troops leading the way, their arms reversed; the band playing the Dead March in Saul, the Archdeacon and the two chaplains following; then the coffin borne on the shoulders of the six policemen.
The Governor led the procession as chief mourner; it was a long, straggling silent group; they had only a hundred yards to walk, then the files broke and divided, forming up in a circle round the grave. The sun was low now in the sky and the trade wind was blowing gustily. The cemetery was on a slope and the choir stood above the grave, the dark purple of their surplices billowing in the wind in rich and somber contrast to the bright green background of the cane fields. The Archdeacon waited while the shuffling of the crowd was silenced, then he raised his voice.
“In the midst of life we are in death, to whom may we turn for succor….”
I wonder what everyone’s thinking, Archer thought, how I’d like to be inside their minds. Is Carson’s death the shock to them that it’s supposed to be. Are they frightened: thinking how near death may be to them; how any moment a car may skid, a plane spin into a nosedive, a wave overturn a canoe. Or are they following their own thoughts; just as I am doing. Or are they thinking of three things simultaneously: Carson and death and what they are going to do tomorrow? That’s what we all do, don’t we: think of three things simultaneously.
“Thou knowest, oh Lord, the secrets of our hearts…”
Jocelyn smiled wryly. The secrets of her heart. She felt cheated, robbed. Everything had been spoilt by that talk of marriage. What should have been an exquisite idyll that would have colored and warmed her memories had been dirtied and made dingy, becoming something that she wanted to forget. Why had Euan been so insistent about marriage? Why couldn’t they have been left alone. She thought of all the discussions and arguments that she would have to live through during the next weeks. Every time she left a room she would feel that when the door closed behind her people would start discussing her. If only she could go away for a few weeks, till it had all blown over. That was the worst of living on an island. You never could get away.