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Authors: Susan Howatch
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but had spoilt this wise decision by sending the most vulgar wreath adorned with a revolting message. (“Dearest Aunt Bea—In undying gratitude for all your great kindness to Darling Alice—all my love, the memory of your goodness will never fade from my memory …” And so on and so on. It really is disgusting what sentimental depths people will plumb when driven by a guilty conscience.)
I myself had ordered a small bunch of cut flowers, since I knew Aunt would have disapproved of any tasteless floral extravagance, and on the ribbon encircling the stems I pinned a card inscribed: “In memory of a woman of integrity. A.” I felt no need to drivel on about love and gratitude. Aunt had hated people stating the obvious. Aunt had hated so many things, funny old bag, but she would have liked the quiet, brief, dignified little service which marked her death. In the end the Church of England didn’t let her down in delivering her precise version of the great British tribal rite which she valued so highly.
Nicholas read some sentences from St. John’s Gospel at the start of the service, and later he read a longer excerpt. He had picked the excerpt himself and I had approved the passage without bothering to read it because I’d felt sure he would make the right choice. That was why, when I was finally listening to him reading the passage, I received such a jolt. “ ‘Let not your hearts be troubled,’ ” he urged, “ ‘
neither let them be afraid
,’ ” and as those words rang out in the chapel I saw he was looking straight at me with his clear light eyes. Then I found I wasn’t afraid, even though I had no job and no money and would soon have no home; I wasn’t afraid of the future because Nicholas was there in my present, and as soon as I realised this I thought longingly: if only he could be in my future too! But that was just another of my futile romantic dreams, I knew it was, just as I knew I was only toying with such a fantasy because Nicholas was looking so attractive, so compelling, and I hardly knew how to bear the fact that soon I would see him no more.
He worked hard that day. He not only gave me a lift in his car to and from the crematorium but he also paused at the cottage afterwards to mingle with the mourners. On the outward journey we said almost nothing, but to my surprise I found the silence comfortableand I suffered no nervous urge to break it. On the way back I did speak, chattering inconsequentially as I savoured my relief that the ordeal was over, but finally I screwed up the nerve to stem my verbal diarrhoea by asking: “Is there really a life after death?”
“All my experience suggests the alternative is too implausible.”
“But if Aunt’s now ashes, how can one talk of a resurrection of the body?”
“ ‘Body’ in that context is probably a code-word for the whole person. When we say ‘anybody’ or ‘everybody’ or ‘somebody’ we’re not just talking about flesh and blood—we’re referring to the complex pattern of information which the medium of flesh and blood expresses.”
I struggled to wrap my mind around this. “So you’re saying that flesh and blood are more or less irrelevant?”
“No, not irrelevant. Our bodies have a big impact on our development as people—they contribute to the pattern of information, and in fact we wouldn’t be people without them. But once we’re no longer confined by time and space the flesh and blood become superfluous and the pattern can be downloaded elsewhere … Do you know anything about computers?”
“No.”
“Okay, forget that, think of Michelangelo instead. In the Sistine Chapel he expressed a vision by creating, through the medium of paint, patterns of colour. The paint is of vital importance but in the end it’s the pattern that matters and the pattern which can be reproduced in another medium such as a book or a film.”
I tried to work out how Aunt would have replied. She had always held that life
I myself had ordered a small bunch of cut flowers, since I knew Aunt would have disapproved of any tasteless floral extravagance, and on the ribbon encircling the stems I pinned a card inscribed: “In memory of a woman of integrity. A.” I felt no need to drivel on about love and gratitude. Aunt had hated people stating the obvious. Aunt had hated so many things, funny old bag, but she would have liked the quiet, brief, dignified little service which marked her death. In the end the Church of England didn’t let her down in delivering her precise version of the great British tribal rite which she valued so highly.
Nicholas read some sentences from St. John’s Gospel at the start of the service, and later he read a longer excerpt. He had picked the excerpt himself and I had approved the passage without bothering to read it because I’d felt sure he would make the right choice. That was why, when I was finally listening to him reading the passage, I received such a jolt. “ ‘Let not your hearts be troubled,’ ” he urged, “ ‘
neither let them be afraid
,’ ” and as those words rang out in the chapel I saw he was looking straight at me with his clear light eyes. Then I found I wasn’t afraid, even though I had no job and no money and would soon have no home; I wasn’t afraid of the future because Nicholas was there in my present, and as soon as I realised this I thought longingly: if only he could be in my future too! But that was just another of my futile romantic dreams, I knew it was, just as I knew I was only toying with such a fantasy because Nicholas was looking so attractive, so compelling, and I hardly knew how to bear the fact that soon I would see him no more.
He worked hard that day. He not only gave me a lift in his car to and from the crematorium but he also paused at the cottage afterwards to mingle with the mourners. On the outward journey we said almost nothing, but to my surprise I found the silence comfortableand I suffered no nervous urge to break it. On the way back I did speak, chattering inconsequentially as I savoured my relief that the ordeal was over, but finally I screwed up the nerve to stem my verbal diarrhoea by asking: “Is there really a life after death?”
“All my experience suggests the alternative is too implausible.”
“But if Aunt’s now ashes, how can one talk of a resurrection of the body?”
“ ‘Body’ in that context is probably a code-word for the whole person. When we say ‘anybody’ or ‘everybody’ or ‘somebody’ we’re not just talking about flesh and blood—we’re referring to the complex pattern of information which the medium of flesh and blood expresses.”
I struggled to wrap my mind around this. “So you’re saying that flesh and blood are more or less irrelevant?”
“No, not irrelevant. Our bodies have a big impact on our development as people—they contribute to the pattern of information, and in fact we wouldn’t be people without them. But once we’re no longer confined by time and space the flesh and blood become superfluous and the pattern can be downloaded elsewhere … Do you know anything about computers?”
“No.”
“Okay, forget that, think of Michelangelo instead. In the Sistine Chapel he expressed a vision by creating, through the medium of paint, patterns of colour. The paint is of vital importance but in the end it’s the pattern that matters and the pattern which can be reproduced in another medium such as a book or a film.”
I tried to work out how Aunt would have replied. She had always held that life
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