And next there had been a day and then another and then longer of feeling filthy, somehow, of Meg having this ugliness under her skin and a restless inclination towards darkness.
So she had gone to the funeral, Margaret Hilda’s funeral. It was on a Wednesday.
Crazy idea.
And it let her get me in the end.
Meg had anticipated crowds and set out far too early, emerging from Westminster Underground into drizzle and a chill, the pavements mainly empty. Policemen wandered the quiet and quarantined roads, sipping plastic cups of tea, swinging bags of Mars bars and soft drinks. Barriers were in place for the not-there-yet crowd and a camera boom and its tower were set ready at the corner of Whitehall so that a swooping shot could follow the hearse as it passed by.
And there were so many flags, straggling limply at half mast.
The press assembled a nest for themselves: aluminium ladders and long lenses, the ache for an exclusive view — nothing to snap at yet, beyond a trickle of grey-haired tailcoat-wearers heading up from the Tube, along with young men in black suits and white shirts, looking like cut-price schoolboys with carefully shiny shoes.
Coaches began to swing past, filled with apparently dozing men in dress uniform. And there were minibuses — bizarre minibuses, windows filled with hats and fascinators, sparky make-up, gentlemen’s well-smoothed hair and brushed lapels, officers’ uniforms.
As if it was a wedding they were off to. A society occasion in unfortunate weather.
Which it was, naturally — no more and no less and no more than that.
Occasional soldiers walked from here to there, polished to an unnatural tension. Meg had been surprised by how foolish their thick-soled boots looked — something glam rock about them — and how broad and short the trousers. They were dressed like armed clowns in aggressive hats. This was apparently how Whitehall and the forces displayed official grief — these were its various manners of mourning, as prescribed. And, here and there, a knot of civilians gathered in sensible outdoor greens and tweeds. There was chatter, vehement chatter, the kind of pre-emptive outrage Meg had to suppose was often heard in the drawing-room conversations of those to whom Thatcher was dear. It was the tone of a successful headline: all risen hackles and crazy swings between self-importance and self-loathing, with more loathing for everyone else.
Curious tourists leaned on the barriers and took pictures while a German film crew cruised back and forth, attempting to find anybody who would willingly offer comment to a German.
And there was a scatter of those who loved their country — their idea of their country — in more personal types of fancy dress: the Union Jack coats and handmade badges, the top hats with the photos attached. They straggled around and paced, anticipating. The nation was set out in bitter, brittle pieces — in sparse and crazy pieces.
It was like staring at the essence of all I would rather not be.
It made me sad.
And the cameraman climbed his tower and started to practise lazy dips with the camera boom. And the drizzle drizzled. And the police in the road — being all there was to watch — acted out their cold for everyone’s entertainment: taking little dancing steps, clapping their gloved hands together, puffing out their cheeks.
A man in the crowd who had come all the way from Manchester that morning, announced the fact: ‘I was at Churchill’s funeral, too.’ Meg listened while he told her this, uninvited, in the same way he had told a number of other people and would presumably tell more. But not the Germans.
Meg was shivering by the time the gun carriage rattled by, heading for the transfer point — bright metal and black gloss. She turned away from it, turned her back, because that seemed appropriate — this helpless spin of 180 degrees about which nobody could surely care.
And then she wound herself back round again to wait for the actual body of a human being, now deceased, defeated by the end of all power, and soon to be limousined along, much as it might have been in life.
Here would be the satisfaction Meg had wished for.
But there was no satisfaction. Naturally.
The hearse lashed around the bend from Parliament Square, as if in flight from a disreputable public.
Someone threw flowers — and again — as what had been the Baroness pelted past. The blooms landed very short and hit the tarmac: they were something with a dingy green flower, a hellebore. They must have been from a garden and perhaps had some personal significance. The hellebore is poisonous. The flowers are meant to drive out discord and bring in tranquillity.
It all has a double meaning now — what any politician says … Where there is hatred, let me sow love …
Whatever they tell you, exactly reverse it and you’ll be right. Meg — having shown disrespect to the gun carriage — had found herself absurdly and unpleasantly flanked by police. They oozed through the crowd towards her and then stuck — two coppers in tall helmets.
As if I would do what? Leap over the barrier and somersault on to the bonnet of the hearse?
Why be afraid of me?
I didn’t matter.
Nothing I did mattered.
And nor did their intervention matter.
Meg discovered a third uniform standing close behind her when she turned her back, this time against the limousine. The uniform belonged to a policewoman who wore a name badge which said she was called Debbie. Debbie shouted, ‘Bless her.’ She aimed this past Meg’s ear with educative fervour as the illustrious corpse shot by in its glossy transportation — propelled at unstately pace.
And that was it.
No more.
There was only cold after, deep cold.
The crowd frittered itself away.
There was a type of shock that nothing was different, even now — that it never would be. The grey and the chill would stay grey and chill.
There was a great disappointment, closing in.
You find yourself disgusting, because you often do and because this time you have wished an old woman to death. Or at least wished that you could.
You are staring at others and seeing they are inexplicable …
You see and see and see and you can’t stop …
You have come to watch and be a friend of death, to love it — and, now that you’re here, you can feel it take an interest. You feel its scrutiny, digging in sharp — like the attention of the worst kind of police.
Your current police have melted back from you and gone, they are swinging along the pavement somewhere — you can’t see them.
Maggie’s funeral — it pushes you completely away …
You take yourself away.
You walk through the damp air and find the nearest pub and you ask the lady who’s working the optics to set up a double whisky and then another, because you have fallen behind. You ask very politely but inside you are fierce.
You drink among people you cannot agree with — faithful mourners, coddling wine glasses in chilled hands — and yet you don’t mind this at all.