works and heavy traffic on the motorway. Bernard sat in the front, silent all the way. Sometimes he put his hands over his face for a second or two. Mostly he stared ahead. He did not seem to be crying. Jenny sat in the back with the baby on her lap. At her sidethe children discussed the death. We sat listening helplessly, unable to steer the conversation away. Alexander, our four-year-old, was aghast that we were planning to put his granny, of whom he was very fond, in a wooden box and lower her into a hole in the ground and cover her with earth.
‘She doesn’t like that,’ he said confidently.
Harry, his seven-year-old cousin, had the facts. ‘She’s dead, stupid. Stone cold dead. She doesn’t know anything about it.’
‘When is she coming back?’
‘Never. You don’t come back when you’re dead.’
‘But when is she?’
‘Never ever ever ever. She’s in heaven, stupid.’
‘When is she coming back? Grandad? When is she, Grandad?’
It was a relief that in such a remote place the crowd was so large. Along the road from the Norman church dozens of cars were tilted at angles on the grass verges. The air above their hot roofs rippled. I was only just beginning to attend funerals regularly, so far exclusively secular affairs for three friends who had died of AIDS . The Anglican service today was more familiar to me from movies. Like one of the great Shakespeare speeches, the graveside oration, studded in fragments in the memory, was a succession of brilliant phrases, book titles, dying cadences that breathed life, pure alertness, along the spine. I was watching Bernard. He stood on the vicar’s right, hands straight down at his sides, staring forward, as he had in the car, keeping himself well under control.
After the service I saw him detach himself from June’s old friends and wander off among the headstones, stopping here and there to read one, and go towards a yew tree. He stood in its shade, resting his elbows on the graveyard wall.I was going towards him to say the few clumsy sentences I had half-prepared when I heard him call June’s name over the wall. I went closer and saw he was sobbing. He leaned his long thin body forwards, then straightened again. Up and down he bobbed in the shade as he cried. I turned away, guilty at my intrusion, and hurried back, passing two men filling in the grave, to catch up with the chattering crowd, its sadness fading in the summery air as it wound its way out of the graveyard, along the road, past the parked cars, towards the entrance to a field of unmowed grass in the centre of which stood a creamy marquee, its sides rolled up for the heat. Behind me, dry earth and stones chinked against the sextons’ shovels. Ahead, this was how June must have imagined it: children playing in and out of the guy ropes, waiters in starched white jackets serving drinks from behind trestles draped in sheets and, already, the first of the guests, a young couple, lolling on the green.
Part Two
Berlin
A LITTLE MORE than two years later, six-thirty on a November morning, I woke to discover Jenny in the bed beside me. She had been away ten days in Strasbourg and Brussels and had returned late in the night. We rolled into a sleepy embrace. Minor reunions like this are one of the more exquisite domestic pleasures. She felt both familiar and novel – how easily one gets used to sleeping alone. Her eyes were closed and she half-smiled as she fitted her cheek into the space below my collar bone that seemed to have formed itself over the years to her shape. We had at most an hour, probably less, before the children woke to discover her – all the more of a thrill for them because I had been vague about her return in case she did not make the last plane. I reached down and squeezed her buttocks. Her hand moved lightly across my belly. I felt for the homely bump at the base of her pinkie where a sixth finger was amputated shortly after her birth. As many fingers, her mother used to
‘She doesn’t like that,’ he said confidently.
Harry, his seven-year-old cousin, had the facts. ‘She’s dead, stupid. Stone cold dead. She doesn’t know anything about it.’
‘When is she coming back?’
‘Never. You don’t come back when you’re dead.’
‘But when is she?’
‘Never ever ever ever. She’s in heaven, stupid.’
‘When is she coming back? Grandad? When is she, Grandad?’
It was a relief that in such a remote place the crowd was so large. Along the road from the Norman church dozens of cars were tilted at angles on the grass verges. The air above their hot roofs rippled. I was only just beginning to attend funerals regularly, so far exclusively secular affairs for three friends who had died of AIDS . The Anglican service today was more familiar to me from movies. Like one of the great Shakespeare speeches, the graveside oration, studded in fragments in the memory, was a succession of brilliant phrases, book titles, dying cadences that breathed life, pure alertness, along the spine. I was watching Bernard. He stood on the vicar’s right, hands straight down at his sides, staring forward, as he had in the car, keeping himself well under control.
After the service I saw him detach himself from June’s old friends and wander off among the headstones, stopping here and there to read one, and go towards a yew tree. He stood in its shade, resting his elbows on the graveyard wall.I was going towards him to say the few clumsy sentences I had half-prepared when I heard him call June’s name over the wall. I went closer and saw he was sobbing. He leaned his long thin body forwards, then straightened again. Up and down he bobbed in the shade as he cried. I turned away, guilty at my intrusion, and hurried back, passing two men filling in the grave, to catch up with the chattering crowd, its sadness fading in the summery air as it wound its way out of the graveyard, along the road, past the parked cars, towards the entrance to a field of unmowed grass in the centre of which stood a creamy marquee, its sides rolled up for the heat. Behind me, dry earth and stones chinked against the sextons’ shovels. Ahead, this was how June must have imagined it: children playing in and out of the guy ropes, waiters in starched white jackets serving drinks from behind trestles draped in sheets and, already, the first of the guests, a young couple, lolling on the green.
Part Two
Berlin
A LITTLE MORE than two years later, six-thirty on a November morning, I woke to discover Jenny in the bed beside me. She had been away ten days in Strasbourg and Brussels and had returned late in the night. We rolled into a sleepy embrace. Minor reunions like this are one of the more exquisite domestic pleasures. She felt both familiar and novel – how easily one gets used to sleeping alone. Her eyes were closed and she half-smiled as she fitted her cheek into the space below my collar bone that seemed to have formed itself over the years to her shape. We had at most an hour, probably less, before the children woke to discover her – all the more of a thrill for them because I had been vague about her return in case she did not make the last plane. I reached down and squeezed her buttocks. Her hand moved lightly across my belly. I felt for the homely bump at the base of her pinkie where a sixth finger was amputated shortly after her birth. As many fingers, her mother used to
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