‘Yes, I was.’
‘And so was she to you, old thing.’ The distance between Bob’s waist and chin grew sharply, as if a taxi-driver or possibly a racing tipster had flung himself down full length behind Alec’s seat. ‘She was always on about you, you know. Talking about you.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes. You had a lot of brains, according to her. Looked up to you, so she said. I’d like a miniature of brandy, please,’ he added over Alec’s shoulder. ‘Wait a minute. Better make it two.’
Alec began wondering how to decline the offer of a miniature of brandy. He need not have worried, because when they came Bob put them both carefully away in the pockets of the woven-soup suit. He then tried to pay for Alec’s coffee, but Alec prevented him.
‘Ah, we’re just coming in,’ Bob said: ‘there’s that pickle-factory place. Appalling stink when the wind’s in the right direction, makes you wonder what they put in the blessed stuff. How are you feeling, old chap?’
‘Me? I’m perfectly all right.’ The barrier in Alec’s head had given no sign of breaking down in the last five minutes, which meant it might just possibly stay in position for the next three hours, or however long it was going to be before he could decently leave. If he could hold out until then, the truth about him and Betty would never be known to any outsider, especially Bob. The thought of their secret being turned over by that parvenu mind, frivolous, hard-headed and puritanical in turn, and never the right one at the right time, was unendurable.
Bob had got up and was looking at his watch. ‘Good for you, Mac. Mm, late as per usual. I think we’d better go straight to the church. It might be the best thing in some ways.’
‘Will you sit, please,’ the clergyman directed. He was a bulky man of about fifty-five with white hair carefully combed and set. He had a thick voice, as if his throat were swollen. It went down a tone or two each time he told the congregation to change its posture. His way of doing this even when it was clearly unnecessary, and of giving every such syllable its full value, made up a good substitute for quite a long sentence about the decline of church-going, the consequent uncertainty and uneasiness felt by many people on such occasions as did bring them into the house of God, his own determination that there should be no confusion in his church about what some might think were small points of procedure, and the decline of church-going. Now, after making absolutely certain that everyone had done his bidding, he pronounced the dead woman’s name in the manner of an operator beginning to read back a telegram.
‘Elizabeth… Duerden,’ he said, ‘has brought us together here today by virtue of the fact that she has recently died. I need not tell you that the death of someone we love, or even the death of any human being, is the most serious and important event with which this life can confront us. I want for a short time, if I may, to look into this business of death, to suggest a little of what it is, and of what it is not. I believe that the loss which her… family has suffered is not absolute, that that thing exists which we so frequently name and seek and offer, so rarely define and obtain and give, that there is consolation, if only we know where to look for it. Where, then, are we to look?’
By now the man sounded as if he had been going on for hours and had more hours ahead of him. Some of the thickness, however, had left his voice when he continued: ‘In another age than ours, we should find it natural to look in the first place to the thought that to be separated from the ones we love by the death of the body is not final. We should derive our consolation from knowing that no parting is for ever, that all losses will, in God’s good time, be restored. But that would hardly do today, would it, thinking along those lines? It wouldn’t do much for most of us today.’
Something so close to vigour had entered the speaker’s tone in the last couple of sentences that they were like an interruption, from which he himself took a moment to recover. Then he went on as thickly as ever: ‘But God’s mercy has seen to it that we need not depend for our consolation upon any such belief. We find this out as soon as we can put aside something of our agony and shock and begin to ask ourselves what has happened. What has happened is manifestly that somebody has been taken from us and nothing will ever be the same again. But what has not happened? That person has not been eradicated from our hearts and minds, that person’s life has not been cancelled out like a row of figures in a sum, that person’s identity is not lost, and can never be lost… Elizabeth Duerden lives in those who knew her and loved her. The fact that she lived, and was Elizabeth Duerden and no one else, had a profound effect upon a number of people, a considerable effect upon many more people, a slight but never imperceptible effect upon innumerable people. There is nobody, there never has been anybody, of whom it can be said that the world would have been the same if they had never lived.’
He can string words together, Alec thought. Or whoever had written the stuff could. He looked round the church, anxious to impress on his memory this part, at least, of today. But it was a modern building, thirty years old at the most, with bright stained glass, a tiled floor, and woodwork that reminded him of the dining-room suites he saw in suburban shop windows: none of the air of antiquity that had always appealed to Betty.
The Gioberti family occupied the pew in front. The farthest away from him was Annette Gioberti, who turned her head now and gave him a faint smile. The bearer of this exotic name looked like a soberly but becomingly dressed English housewife in her middle thirties, which, as the daughter of Jim and Betty, was much what might have been expected of her. Jim had been against the marriage at first, saying among other things that, while he had no objection to Italians or half-Italians as such, he did not fancy having his grandchildren brought up as Roman Catholics. But Betty had soon laughed him out of that by asking him when he had last had anything to do with the Church of England, and had added that Frank Gioberti was a decent, hard-working lad who was obviously going to do everything in his power to make Annette happy — what more could they ask?
Alec had never known Betty to err in her judgements of people, and in this case she had turned out to be almost too literally accurate. From what she told Alec, whose direct contacts with the Giobertis were rare, there was plenty of money around in that household, and no shortage of affection, especially if you counted the more obvious kind of show of it — expensive presents on anniversaries as well as birthdays, and bunches of flowers being delivered unexpectedly. But as regards the finer things of life (Alec always wanted to smile at this favourite phrase of Betty’s, so characteristic of her in its naïve sincerity) there was a complete gap: no books apart from trashy thrillers, no music except what the wireless and gramophone churned out, and no pictures at all; in fact Betty had given them a Medici print of a medieval Virgin and Child one Christmas, thinking it would appeal to Frank, and had come across it months later in a drawer in one of the children’s bedrooms.
The part of Frank that could be seen above the back of the pew seemed to Alec to offer a good deal of information. The thick black hair was heavily greased; the neck bulged in a way that promised a roll of fat there in due course; the snowily white shirt-collar and the charcoal-grey suit material did somehow or other manage to suggest, not lack of taste exactly, but the attitude that money was more interesting. Still, one had to be tolerant. A man who owned however many laundries it was in the Deptford area could hardly be expected to have the time or the inclination to take up the French horn. It was only the children who might be the losers, especially since, in a materialistic age like the present one, the parent had a special responsibility for suggesting that there were some worthwhile things which nobody could be seen eating or drinking or smoking or wearing or driving or washing dishes in on TV commercials. And then people wondered why there was all this…