help each other. And it's hardest for Alan and Martha. It's very important to them that you should be at the funeral tomorrow.' His voice went soft. 'Don't desert us, Janie. We're in this together. You'll be there tomorrow, won't you?'
'Yes.'
I rang Helen Auster at her Kirklow direct line but she was too busy to say much. She said she'd be down in London in a few days and we could meet. What would I have asked her anyway?
The coffin was slim and the sky was grey. There were no leaves on the trees but there were bright flowers on the shiny new gravestones with their synthetic green gravel and picture postcard inscriptions. The beautiful old worn stones had no flowers. I looked up at the church. Northern Romanesque, said a whisper in my ear. Claud, of course. If I had time afterwards, he told me, I must go and look at the Norman font. His voice was mercifully drowned out by bells.
Her grave was an open wound in the ground. Soon the parcel of bones would be lowered into it, the mud flung over it. In a year, grass would have grown over the scar. It would become a site to visit occasionally, to lay flowers upon. At Christmas we would come with holly, and in the spring we would gather daffodils and blossom. Eventually, the grave would no longer look new and livid. It would merge into the melancholy landscape and children would play beside it. The small band of Sunday worshippers would walk by it unseeing. One day, there would be no one left to visit the place where Natalie lay. Strangers would pause beside the gravestone and run their fingers along the gouged dates, and say : she died young.
When I saw Martha I thought my heart would break. She had aged ten years in the space of a few weeks. Her face was old with grief, her hair a colour beyond white. She stood quite straight in the icy wind and did not weep. I wondered if she had any tears left now. She didn't believe in God, but I knew she would come every week to sit by her daughter's grave. For the first time, I wondered how many years she had left. She'd always seemed immortal to me, and now she seemed frail and worn. Alan, too, looked ravaged. I thought he seemed suddenly smaller, hunched over in his greatcoat, clutching his stick. The four sons stood tall and still, handsome in their dark suits. The rest of us - wives and ex-wives, grandchildren and friends - stood back. Jerome ('Got a class') and Robert ('Nah, don't like funerals') had not come, but Hana, unexpectedly, had turned up at my door at seven in the morning, dressed in a long mauve skirt and clutching a bacon sandwich, a Thermos flask and a bunch of jewellike anemones.
'Just say, if you don't want me to come,' she'd said, but I did want her to come. I was glad that she stood beside me holding my hand, with the air turning her nose red and her absurd clothes flapping in the wind. A few feet away, a middle-aged man with a vaguely familiar face - beaky and intent - blew his nose loudly into a large handkerchief. There was no other sound. No birds sang.
Into the chill air, the vicar awkwardly delivered his words of death and resurrection. The coffin with its pitiful double burden was lowered into its space. Martha stepped forward very slowly and dropped a single yellow rose onto the top of it. There was a low sob from behind me. No one else made a sound. Martha moved back and took Alan's hand; they didn't look at each other but gazed steadily at the hole in the ground which even now was being filled in. Claud stepped forward with a bunch of flowers, and one by one we followed him. Soon the raw earth was quite hidden by a heap of vivid colours. The family's wound was exuberantly patched.
The Stead looked different to my aching, itchy eyes. When I was a child I thought it the most welcoming house in the world. I remembered it as a place one came home to after long walks in the dusk : glimmering stone, the glow from the windows, wisps of smoke from the chimney, all promising warmth inside. Now, I thought it looked
'Yes.'
I rang Helen Auster at her Kirklow direct line but she was too busy to say much. She said she'd be down in London in a few days and we could meet. What would I have asked her anyway?
The coffin was slim and the sky was grey. There were no leaves on the trees but there were bright flowers on the shiny new gravestones with their synthetic green gravel and picture postcard inscriptions. The beautiful old worn stones had no flowers. I looked up at the church. Northern Romanesque, said a whisper in my ear. Claud, of course. If I had time afterwards, he told me, I must go and look at the Norman font. His voice was mercifully drowned out by bells.
Her grave was an open wound in the ground. Soon the parcel of bones would be lowered into it, the mud flung over it. In a year, grass would have grown over the scar. It would become a site to visit occasionally, to lay flowers upon. At Christmas we would come with holly, and in the spring we would gather daffodils and blossom. Eventually, the grave would no longer look new and livid. It would merge into the melancholy landscape and children would play beside it. The small band of Sunday worshippers would walk by it unseeing. One day, there would be no one left to visit the place where Natalie lay. Strangers would pause beside the gravestone and run their fingers along the gouged dates, and say : she died young.
When I saw Martha I thought my heart would break. She had aged ten years in the space of a few weeks. Her face was old with grief, her hair a colour beyond white. She stood quite straight in the icy wind and did not weep. I wondered if she had any tears left now. She didn't believe in God, but I knew she would come every week to sit by her daughter's grave. For the first time, I wondered how many years she had left. She'd always seemed immortal to me, and now she seemed frail and worn. Alan, too, looked ravaged. I thought he seemed suddenly smaller, hunched over in his greatcoat, clutching his stick. The four sons stood tall and still, handsome in their dark suits. The rest of us - wives and ex-wives, grandchildren and friends - stood back. Jerome ('Got a class') and Robert ('Nah, don't like funerals') had not come, but Hana, unexpectedly, had turned up at my door at seven in the morning, dressed in a long mauve skirt and clutching a bacon sandwich, a Thermos flask and a bunch of jewellike anemones.
'Just say, if you don't want me to come,' she'd said, but I did want her to come. I was glad that she stood beside me holding my hand, with the air turning her nose red and her absurd clothes flapping in the wind. A few feet away, a middle-aged man with a vaguely familiar face - beaky and intent - blew his nose loudly into a large handkerchief. There was no other sound. No birds sang.
Into the chill air, the vicar awkwardly delivered his words of death and resurrection. The coffin with its pitiful double burden was lowered into its space. Martha stepped forward very slowly and dropped a single yellow rose onto the top of it. There was a low sob from behind me. No one else made a sound. Martha moved back and took Alan's hand; they didn't look at each other but gazed steadily at the hole in the ground which even now was being filled in. Claud stepped forward with a bunch of flowers, and one by one we followed him. Soon the raw earth was quite hidden by a heap of vivid colours. The family's wound was exuberantly patched.
The Stead looked different to my aching, itchy eyes. When I was a child I thought it the most welcoming house in the world. I remembered it as a place one came home to after long walks in the dusk : glimmering stone, the glow from the windows, wisps of smoke from the chimney, all promising warmth inside. Now, I thought it looked
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