. At the cemetery in Nunhead the undertakers brought a folding chair to the graveside so Michael could sit, his father’s long coffin before him. . I struck the board, and cried, No more! And there’d been, Kins thinks, cherry blossom — and a single magpie pinching a glittery remembrance card from an adjacent grave as he bent to scatter a few clods. . in the hole. Bumbly, Sirbert then Michael — all helped down into the ground by solid and unsmiling men who a generation or two ago would’ve seen themselves as artisans, planing their beech boards, but probably now regarded what they did as a service industry. There was the long, tawny cemetery wall, beyond it the red-brick superstructure of a block of thirties flats, with the spring sun warming its tiled roof. There was all this. . solidity, yet Kins had had the disagreeable sensation that Sirbert was being. . buried at sea, the long coffin pushed out from the ship’s side over the roiling waters and pausing there for a moment as its occupant struggled inside, shifting his weight so as to slide it back on to the deck of HMS Pinafore. Bumbly’s brother Martin had been a remittance man. Family lore had it that when he was dispatched to Canada before the First War, his ship had sailed up the St Lawrence, and on arrival Uncle Martin had seen at the dockside a large hoarding proclaiming canada dry. He hid in his cabin but was forcibly ejected by the stewards. In the late fifties Kins had travelled to America on a sabbatical. Responding to a plaintive postcard, he met Uncle Martin at that point on the Canadian border where it bisected the bridge over Niagara Falls. The bridge was beautifully engineered. . and tremendously stable. Uncle Martin shook terribly — he was shaggily bearded and several of his fly buttons were undone. Down below tons of water shattered on the rocks. . and then tons more. The remittance man uncorked one of the two bottles of bonded liquor Kins had brought him and drank down a quarter of it there and then, ignoring the tourists’ clucking disapproval. After that Kins never again. . entirely let myself go. — At Michael’s funeral the church had been packed. . Seldom has a man been so widely loved, said the principal eulogist, and Kins had cavilled: ’Though not especially deeply. . The man at the lectern was a prominent politician of liberal inclinations who drank heavily and dressed loudly, but for this occasion. . he wore a very sober suit. The flowers on the coffin and by the shallow step dividing the nave from the chancel looked to have been unloaded rather than arranged, while the mourners manifested a dutiful air — a response, Kins suspected, to his brother’s own loveless and faithless devotion. Michael had tried to extract a spirituality from diligent charity. . but transcendence is a by-product, Ape. Most of the congregation had been long-stay inmates of the Lincoln Homes — many were. . minus a leg or two. Taking his turn at the lectern — Un-der-neath the arrrr-ches! — staring out over their resolute and traumatised faces, at their maimed bodies folded and pinned into martial dress, a forty-year-old ejaculation rose unbidden to his lips — and he nearly cried, What the bloody hell have you got that on for? — Kins has borrowed several sheets of Maeve’s notepaper to write on — they’re the faintly unsettling pale yellow shared by early-spring crocuses. . and winceyette sheets in B&Bs. Each of these sheets is decorated in the top corner with a sprig of holly and a robin redbreast. He hopes Jeanie will find this stationery less antagonising than the stuff he normally uses — as an emeritus he’s still supplied with the University stock, with its offensively municipal shield. Pausing, it occurs to him, I really haven’t a clue: it could be Jeanie will magically divine the sort of thing Maeve usually writes on it. . O, Jesu, I feel thy spirit in that gull, That soared across the Sound of Mull . . She would certainly laugh bitterly and hard if she were exposed to this doggerel. . which would be unkind of her — and a mistake. Maeve’s faith is a deeply practical matter. . can-do, Americans would call it. Two nights a week she waits for the phone to ring. When it does she listens carefully to whoever’s on the line. If it’s appropriate, she’ll off er useful advice. . compassionately. Kins knows better than to ask her what the callers say. . she’s bounden to be silent — although when they were younger, and I was drunker, he felt the occasional urge to grab the receiver and shout into it: Kill yourself, for Christ’s sake! He also groundlessly resented the meals she cooked for ailing or elderly neighbours — as he’d once been jealous of the neglected children she’d added, on an ad hoc basis, to their own brood. That’s all changed now . . He understands — and approves of — her rooted existence, although he knows he could never have properly shared it. As for the kindness Maeve has shown him personally: he’s always appreciated it, but now. . at this late stage, as we bumble about the bungalow . . he reveres it. Such self-sacrifice. . she knew I never loved her passionately — she knew about Moira . . was of the same order of cliché as her verse. . nothing short of saintly. The sliding door that seals off Kins’s book-lined nook from the living room opens, and there, in one of the gaudy form-fitting tops she favours, is Maeve. . with her drooping belly and her pendulous udders. Kins sees her cast into a hungry slit-trench with others of her genteel kind, together with Brockleby’s beloved Friesians. . in an agglutination of hooves. Smoke billows over the jigsaw of their tops and hides while off to one side stands a bright-yellow digger, beside it donkey-jacketed workmen who smoke as well — part of a proletariat. . I once, laughably, believed I had some solidarity with. Maeve holds a serving spoon — this, and a small gold cross on a chain round her neck, catch the light. Her close cognate once said to Kins. . You never forget the smell of burning human flesh, which at the time he’d marked down as typical hyperbole. He hadn’t been to Moira’s funeral. He thought it best not to distress Debbie, who’s very highly strung . . a formulation that ill fits the truth. . she loathes me. Smelling the distinctive beefysoapiness of Maeve’s soup stock, Kins wonders if Moira smelt her own flesh as it burnt? — The continuity announcer in the kitchen says, Now the World at One. . and Maeve says, When you’re done with your letter, I’ll dish up. — During lunch she chats about a forthcoming jumble sale at the church hall, while a reporter speaks over her, saying it’s impossible to estimate the numbers of the slain, who lie all over the muddy-red lanes of Kigali and are strewn across the green hillsides. . fresh laundry scattered by the wind on a flappy-wappy day. Kins has seen the images on the television news — he says, That’s nice, and Maeve says, Do you like it? It being a china marmoset. . or perhaps a mongoose that shares the small table they sit at — along with the cruet stand, illustrated place mats she bought in Bridlington, a variety of china, their polished cedar-wood napkin rings, their painted glass tumblers. . there’s no end to it all — the stuff. He carefully cuts a section from a cold roast potato, topples it flat with the tip of his knife, puts a cucumber sliver on top of this. .