“Here they are.” Mr. Beck pushed open a set of heavy oak doors. “I’ll leave you alone.”
Glyn said, “That won’t be necessary.”
“But surely you’ll want to discuss-”
“No.” She moved past him into the showroom. There were no decorations or extraneous furnishings, just a few coffins lined up along the pearl-coloured walls, their lids gaping open upon velvet, satin, and crepe, their bodies standing on waist-high, translucent pedestals.
Anthony forced himself to follow Glyn from one to the next. Each had a discreet price tag, each bore the same declaration about the extent of protection guaranteed by the manufacturer, each had a ruched lining, a matching pillow, and a coverlet folded over the coffi n lid. Each had its own name: Neapolitan Blue, Windsor Poplar, Autumn Oak, Venetian Bronze. Each had an individually highlighted feature, a shell design, a set of barley sugar end posts, or delicate embroidery on the interior of the lid. Forcing himself to move along the display, Anthony tried not to visualise what Elena would look like when she fi nally lay in one of these coffins with her light hair spread out like silk threads on the pillow.
Glyn halted in front of a simple grey coffi n with a plain satin lining. She tapped her fi ngers against it. As if this gesture bade him to do so, Mr. Beck hurried to join them. His lips were pursed tightly. He was pulling at his chin.
“What is this?” Glyn asked. A small sign on the lid said Nonprotective exterior. Its price tag read £200.
“Pressed wood.” Mr. Beck made a nervous adjustment to his Pembroke tie and rapidly continued. “This is pressed wood beneath a flannel covering, a satin interior, which is quite nice, of course, but the exterior has no protection at all save for the flannel itself and to be frank if I may, considering our weather, I wouldn’t be at all comfortable recommending this particular coffin to you. We keep it for cases where there are diffi culties…Well, diffi culties with finances. I can’t think you’d want your daughter…” He let the drifting quality of his voice complete the thought.
Anthony began to say, “Of course,” but Glyn interrupted with, “This coffin will do.”
For a moment, Anthony did nothing more than stare at his former wife. Then he found the will to say, “You can’t think I’ll allow her to be buried in this.”
She said quite distinctly, “I don’t care what you intend to allow. I’ve not enough money for-”
“I’ll pay.”
She looked at him for the fi rst time since they’d arrived. “With your wife’s money? I think not.”
“This has nothing to do with Justine.”
Mr. Beck took a step away from them. He straightened out the small price sign on a coffin lid. He said, “I’ll leave you to talk.”
“There’s no need.” Glyn opened her large black handbag and began shoving articles this way and that. A set of keys clanked. A compact snapped open. A ballpoint pen slipped out onto the floor. “You’ll take a cheque, won’t you? It’ll have to be drawn on my bank in London. If that’s a problem, you can phone for some sort of guarantee. I’ve been doing business with them for years, so-”
“Glyn. I won’t have it.”
She swung to face him. Her hip hit the coffin, jarring it on its pedestal. The lid fell shut with a hollow thud. “You won’t have what?” she asked. “You have no rights here.”
“We’re talking about my daughter.”
Mr. Beck began to edge towards the door.
“Stay where you are.” Angry colour patched Glyn’s cheeks. “You walked out on your daughter, Anthony. Let’s not forget that. You wanted your career. Let’s not forget that. You wanted to chase skirts. Let’s not forget that. You got what you wanted. All of it. Every bit. You have no more rights here.” Chequebook in hand, she stooped to the floor for the pen. She began to write, using the pressed wood coffin lid as support.
Her hand was shaking. Anthony reached for the chequebook, saying, “Glyn. Please. For God’s sake.”
“No,” she said. “I’ll pay for this. I don’t want your money. You can’t buy me off.”
“I’m not trying to buy you off. I just want Elena-”
“Don’t say her name! Don’t you say it!”
Mr. Beck said, “Let me leave you,” and without acknowledging Glyn’s immediate “No!” he hurried from the room.
Glyn continued to write. She clutched the pen like a weapon in her hand. “He said two hundred pounds, didn’t he?”
“Don’t do this,” Anthony said. “Don’t make this another battle between us.”
“She’ll wear that blue dress Mum got her last birthday.”
“We can’t bury her like a pauper. I won’t let you do it. I can’t.”
Glyn ripped the cheque from the book. She said, “Where’d that man get off to? Here’s his money. Let’s go.” She headed for the door.
Anthony reached for her arm.
She jerked away. “You bastard,” she hissed. “Bastard! Who brought her up? Who spent years trying to give her some language? Who helped her with her schoolwork and dried her tears and washed her clothes and sat up with her at night when she was puling and sick? Not you, you bastard. And not your ice queen wife. This is my daughter, Anthony. My daughter. Mine. And I’ll bury her exactly as I see fit. Because unlike you, I’m not hot after some big poncey job, so I don’t have to give a damn what anyone thinks.”
He examined her with sudden, curious dispassion, realising that he saw no evidence of grief. He saw no mother’s devotion to her child and nothing that illustrated the magnitude of loss. “This has nothing to do with burying Elena,” he said in slow but complete understanding. “You’re still dealing with me. I’m not sure you even care much that she’s dead.”
“How dare you,” she whispered.
“Have you even cried, Glyn? Do you feel any grief? Do you feel anything at all beyond the need to use her murder for a bit more revenge? And how can anyone be surprised by that? After all, that’s how you used most of her life.”
He didn’t see the blow coming. She slammed her right hand across his face, knocking his spectacles to the fl oor.
“You filthy piece of-” She raised her arm to strike again.
He caught her wrist. “You’ve waited years to do that. I’m only sorry you didn’t have the audience you’d have liked.” He pushed her away. She fell against the grey coffi n. But she was not spent.
She spit out the words: “Don’t talk to me of grief. Don’t you ever-ever-talk to me of grief.”
She turned away from him, flinging her arms over the coffin lid as if she would embrace it. She began to weep.
“I have nothing. She’s gone. I can’t have her back. I can’t find her anywhere. And I can’t… I can never…” The fingers of one hand curled, pulling at the flannel that covered the coffi n. “But you can. You still can, Anthony. And I want you to die.”
Even through his outrage, he felt the sudden stirring of a horrified compassion. After the years of their enmity, after these moments in the funeral home, he wouldn’t have believed it possible that he should feel anything for her save outright loathing. But in those words you can, he saw the extent and the nature of his former wife’s grief. She was forty-six years old. She could never have another child.
No matter that the thought of bringing another child into the world to take Elena’s place was beyond unthinkable, that he’d lost his reason for living the moment he’d looked on his daughter’s corpse. He’d spend the rest of his life in a ceaseless involvement in academic affairs so that he would never again have a free moment in which he might have to remember the ruin of her face and the mark of the ligature round her neck, but that was no more than a point of indifference. He could still have another child, whatever the wilderness of his current grief. He still had that choice. But Glyn did not. Her sorrow was doubled by the incontrovertible fact of her age.