Read Online Nothing is Black by Deirdre Madden - Free Book Online Page B

complete annihilation, a view which remained unaltered even when she fell ill and was told that she was going to die. But when Claire talked to their mutual friend Tommy about it after Alice’s death, he said, ‘Don’t ever imagine it was easy for her. Of course she was frightened. She might have liked to think that things could be other than they were, but she didn’t believe that it could be so, and she couldn’t pretend, simply to comfort someone, least of all herself. What Alice believed was bleak and she felt the bleakness of it, every day, right up to the end.’
    What this had challenged in Claire was the thoughtless faithlessness that she had drifted into when she was at school, and the full consequences of which she had never properly thought through. She couldn’t fully accept Alice’s view of things, but she wasn’t clear what a valid alternative might be.
    When Alice died, she left strict instructions that shedidn’t want a religious funeral, even though it was difficult for her family to accept that. Claire was abroad when Alice died, and when she came back it was important for her to talk to friends like Tommy who had been there with her. He didn’t share her view that Alice’s integrity could only be admired.
    ‘You might not have thought that if you’d seen her mother at the funeral. It was in Dublin, it had to be, for she’d insisted on being cremated rather than buried, and they don’t have the facilities for that down the country. Her mother came to me after and she said, “I still can’t believe she’s gone, I don’t feel I’ve been to a proper funeral at all. I still haven’t had a chance to say goodbye .” It bothered her too, that she wouldn’t have a special place she could go to, to bring flowers and feel close to Alice. I just thought it was so wrong, Claire. You can be too pure, too high-minded, you know. Sometimes you have to compromise.’
    ‘I still don’t think it would have been right to have a Mass for her,’ Claire argued. ‘She was so at odds with that, so against it, that it just couldn’t be right.’
    ‘But Claire,’ Tommy replied, ‘funerals aren’t for the people who’ve died, they’re for the people who are left behind. Haven’t you grasped even that much?’
    She understood what he meant, but stubbornly refused to yield the point. She wanted to take the strict line on Alice’s behalf, and needed to do it for herself, to make what had happened bearable.
    Claire had been in Germany when Alice died. She’d been looking forward to seeing her again when she went back, for although she was ill, it was thought she would live for at least another six months. Then Tommy rang totell her Alice had got much worse quite unexpectedly. He rang again three days later to say it could only be a matter of days. Claire had been with Markus at the time. He encouraged her to go out, not to take her mind off Alice, but just because that was what had been planned for the day, that they would go walking in the mountains.
    That afternoon, they came across a tiny church, with a graveyard. Some of the tombs had photographs, from many years earlier. Looking at them, Claire had a creeping horror that Alice was right about death. Claire went into the church, and was aware of the different qualities of silence. Outside, the peace of the mountains was full and inhuman, the more complete for being broken by the sound of the wind and the cries of birds. The silence of the chapel was brittle, unnerving: she wanted to laugh, even while this appalled her. It struck her as a dreadful thing to do. She stayed only for a few moments, in a stillness so complete that she felt she had somehow moved outside time, and this intimation of eternity appalled her.
    As they walked back down the valley to the house where they were staying, dusk was falling, and she had never seen the valley look so beautiful. After the sun went down, the colours of the trees and the grass suddenly became more vivid