Two days later Norah rang to say she was telephoning for Elizabeth: Stephen had killed himself, making it seem an accident while shooting rabbits. The rabbits are very bad again, you know. They got into the new garden — the Elizabethan garden — and ate everything to the ground.'
Sarah went down for the funeral service, which was in the local church. Several hundred people crowded church and churchyard. It occurred to her that Stephen and she had never discussed what they did or did not believe, or what he felt about religion, but this scene was certainly in key with what he was: the old church — eleventh century, some of it — the Church of England funeral service, these country-living people, some of whose names were on the church walls and the gravestones.
She went back to the house for the usual drinks and sandwiches. Every room she went into was crammed, including the kitchen, where Shirley and Alison were at work, both tear-stained. She glimpsed the three boys — pale and sick- looking — across a room, with Norah, but otherwise did not see one face she knew. There was a heavy, gloomy, and even irritable atmosphere. Let's get this over with. Condemnation. These people had passed judgement on Stephen and found him guilty. Sarah was accusing them of letting him down. She did not like them, or what she saw of them today. These are people — that is, the English upper classes — at their best at balls, formal occasions, festivals, when dressed in ball gowns and tiaras, the men handsome in their uniforms and their rows of medals and orders. But funerals are not their talent. They wore clumsy dark clothes and were graceless and uncomfortable in them.
When the crowds began to thin, Elizabeth asked Sarah into a gloomy room that had a billiard table in it and, on the walls, every kind of weapon, from pikes and arquebuses to World War I revolvers. Elizabeth stood with her back to racks holding shotguns and rifles, with a glass of whisky in her hand. She looked heavy and commonplace in her black. She probably kept it at the back of a cupboard just for funerals.
She was blazing with anger, her cheeks scarlet, her swollen eyes glittering.
'Do sit down, Sarah,' she commanded, sitting down herself and at once getting up again. 'I really am sorry. You are such a cool and collected person… ' She did not say this as if she thought these were qualities to be admired.
'Well, actually I am not.'
'I'm not saying you're not upset about Stephen. I know you were fond of each other. Oh, don't think I mind. No, I don't mind about all that. I never did. What I mind is — it's the utter damnable irresponsibility of it.' Here she collapsed into a chair and energetically blew her nose, wiped her eyes and then her cheeks. But it was no good; the drops that scattered everywhere were distillations of pure rage. 'While the boys are young they'll believe it was an accident. But they are already wondering, I'm sure. It's very bad for children, this kind of thing.' Again she blew her nose. 'Oh, damn it.' She took out a comb, a compact, lipstick, from a black leather handbag as solid as a saddle and good for many funerals yet. She began to make up her face, but tears oozed again, and she gave up. 'We had an agreement. We made promises to each other. This place is a partnership.'
While it did not seem that Elizabeth needed more than a listener, Sarah attempted, 'But, Elizabeth, don't you see? He wasn't himself.'
'Of course I see it, but… ' Here she sat silent, sighing, contemplating (for the first time in this commonsensical life of hers?) the possibility that people could be in states of mind where they were not themselves: it was not a mere figure of speech.
From outside came the sound of cars driving away, the slamming of car doors, the gravel crunching under feet, loud and cheerful voices. 'See you next week.' 'Will you be at Dolly's?'
'What am I going to do now? Oh yes, I know what you are thinking — that I have Norah. Yes, I do have Norah, and thank God for that. But I can't run this place all by myself, I can't.' And now, overtaken by what sounded like incredulity, she let out a yelp, and down flooded the tears. 'I'm not saying I am going to give up; I don't believe in reneging on responsibility. Oh bloody hell, I can't stop crying. I'm so angry, Sarah, I'm so angry I could… '
Sarah carefully asked, 'Have you never found it all too much of a good thing?' Meaning our old friend life, and so Elizabeth understood her.
'Of course I have. Who doesn't? Who doesn't think it's just a bloody farce sometimes? But you simply don't renege. And he did.' And with this, putting behind her the possibility — at least for this time — of understanding the country where pain is so much a cruel king that his subjects would do anything at all to escape, she jumped up, saying, 'This isn't doing any good. What I wanted to say is that I'll keep on all Stephen's commitments — financial, I mean. I am sure he liked your lot more than the other things we do. I'm not sure his preoccupation with Julie — you know, as a person — was always healthy. I don't know if you knew it, but he was really obsessed with the story. I believe that suicides should simply be ignored, not made a fuss of in operas and plays and all that kind of thing. They are a bad example to everyone. Most people are really very weak-minded. One should remember that.' Here she pulled a comb through her hair and then with both hands tried to push the lank — because soaked with tears — locks into place. She gave up and wiped her face with fresh tissues. This time the tears did not spring forth again. 'Sorry about all this, Sarah. I'll send you Stephen's Julie stuff when I've sorted everything out. I suppose that museum should have it. But you decide. And there's something he left for you. No, I haven't looked at it. I saw the first page and that was enough. I don't have much time for that morbid kind of thing.' She handed Sarah a red exercise book, of the kind children use, and strode purposefully out of the room.
The exercise book had stuck on it a white label, and on that was a pencil scribble: This is for Sarah Durham.
The first entry was the date of the first performance of Julie's music at Queen's Gift in June. Day after day there were entries of single comments, thus: 'I didn't know it was possible to feel like this.' 'This longing is like a poison.' 'I think I must be very ill.' 'My heart is so heavy I can hardly carry it around.' 'Surely the word longing isn't right for this degree of longing.' 'I understand what it means to be ill with love.' 'My heart hurts, it hurts.'
The handwriting grew progressively worse. Some entries were nearly illegible. The last entries were scribbled in formless writing, the end of the words straight lines, like the graphs of brain waves, spiky and full of life, but then, as life runs out, a long line going on and on.
The cries from the country of grief are impersonal. I am lonely. I am so unhappy. I love you. I want you. I am sick with love. I am dying of a broken heart. I can't endure this non-life. I can't endure this desert.
They are like bird calls: this is a blackbird, a gull, a crow, a thrush. Or like the songs of Anon:
In November, Benjamin came to London on business, making it clear that he was staying for longer than necessary, so as to see Sarah. This was when she hit the peak, or the gulfs, of grief and did not have much energy for anything but a struggle with an enemy so strong she was tempted to do as Stephen had done, simply because she couldn't stand the pain of it. 'I'm not good at pain,' he had said. Well, she wasn't good at it either. She didn't believe in it. What was it for? She read entries in his red exercise book again, those banal words, because her own diary was too dangerous, and asked, with him: What is it that aches? Why should one's physical heart ache? What is this burden I am carrying? It feels like a heavy stone on my heart. Why does it? Oh God.