The plane was only half full, and the flight seemed incredibly short. Nevertheless, it gave me time to think through the security implications of my visit. Kath and I were married in Hereford; the wedding had never been reported in the Northern Ireland papers, and nobody over there knew that she had been associated with the British forces. In the list of bomb victims, her name had been given as Mrs Sharp, a Belfast housewife — again, there had been no mention of her husband. If anyone asked my profession, I would tell them I was an aircraft fitter, working in Bristol. Provided I didn’t stray into the hard areas of West Belfast there should be no trouble.
In forty minutes we had landed at Belfast City Airport, and I was walking out through the funny, old-fashioned building which looked as though it dated from the fifties. I grabbed a taxi and gave the driver the address, dreading the moment of arrival and yet wanting to be there quickly.
It was Tim who saved the day from being a disaster. Too young to know what had happened, he was carrying on as normal. When he saw me come in the door, he took one look and ran at me with a yell of ‘Dad!’ I held him up against me — a hefty, warm, live bundle, bigger than I remembered — and found that dealing with him defused the tension of seeing Kath’s parents again. All the same, I was upset by their appearance. They had both put on ten years. Meg in particular looked very frail, and when I went to kiss her on the cheek, she was all bones. She was still limping a little, but in a different way from before her operation, and claimed that her hip was now fine; it was just the leg muscles that needed strengthening.
Tim apart, the best thing was their attitude to me. They could easily have blamed me for the tragedy. In fact they went out of their way to show that they understood the problems our marriage had been through, and that they didn’t hold it against me for behaving as I had. Whenever I made attempts to apologize they brushed them gently aside.
In the evening, after tea, Den asked about Kath’s financial arrangements — whether she’d made a will or had any life insurance. I couldn’t answer his questions, because she had always been the family banker — and I’d been so stunned by the news of her death that I hadn’t had time to check.
That afternoon he and I went to Browns, the undertakers, to make arrangements. The middle-aged man on duty did his best to put us at our ease, but he threw me completely when he asked how we proposed to carry Kath’s coffin out of the church after the service. ‘I take it you’ll be one of the bearer party,’ he said.
‘What? Me? I thought your people took care of that.’
‘No, sir. It’s the custom here for the family to provide the bearers.’
‘That’s right,’ said Den gently. ‘Most people do that.’
‘Well…’ I was left struggling. I couldn’t face the thought of being so close to her, of carrying her remains. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’
‘It’s all right.’ Den raised a hand as if signalling to the undertaker that he would deal with the point in a moment, and went on to ask about the service at the crematorium. I felt terrible, burning with shame that I couldn’t do the decent, normal thing.
Then I heard the kindly voice asking if I would like to have a tree for her.
‘Where?’
‘In the cemetery at Roselawn. Many people do have trees as memorials, rather than a stone. We can arrange to have one for you.’
I thought for a moment. I’d never liked big, heavy gravestones. A living memorial seemed a better idea. So I said, ‘Yes, please.’
‘What kind of tree? We have beech and ash saplings newly planted.’
I was going to ask for an ash, but at the last moment I remembered the trees that she had loved in the spinney behind KC. ‘Could it be a rowan, a mountain ash?’
‘Yes, of course. We can arrange a rowan. And would you like to have a plaque at the foot?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘What wording would you like on the plaque?’
I closed my eyes to concentrate, and cleared my throat. ‘In loving memory of Kathleen Sharp. From George.’ Then I added hurriedly, ‘No: “From George and Tim.” ’
The day of the funeral was as tough as any I could remember. After breakfast I drove Meg and Tim to the playschool he’d been attending, and we dropped him there. All he’d been told about his mum, so far, was that she had gone away for a few days. At some point we would have to break the news to him, but it seemed better to wait until we had all had a chance to get hold of ourselves.
The church service was set for 11.30 in the morning, but members of the family began arriving at the house an hour before that. Meg and Kath’s younger sister Angela were busy in the kitchen, preparing sandwiches and rolls for the wake; and as they wouldn’t let other mourners come in there, I had to hold the fort with Den in the living room. Some of the people I knew, some I didn’t. I forced myself to make small talk with all of them. The saving grace was the picture window which took up most of one wall and looked straight down over the sea. Birds were busy about the rocks, and every now and then a boat would come into sight, providing a blessed distraction and a new subject for conversation. For a few wonderful moments a fishing trawler, on its way out, appeared to have caught fire. Black smoke poured from its funnel, and the little ship steamed round in a circle, and everyone became quite excited by its apparent distress; but then suddenly the smoke was doused and the boat went on its way.
At last it was time to go. Two big, black Daimlers took the main family party, with the rest following in vehicles of their own. At the church the coffin, covered with flowers, was already in place on trestles at the head of the aisle. I found myself consciously trying not to think of what lay inside it. Suddenly I saw the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot of the helicopter that came down in the Iraqi desert, their limbs twisted and ripped off. I told myself to remember what she’d been like, but I found that small things were irritating me: the church was much too big for a congregation this size, we filled only the middle of the first few pews; the minister was young and nervous and kept stumbling over his words; the first hymn was one I’d never heard of. But then, in what seemed like no time at all we’d sung ‘Oh God Our Help In Ages Past’, and the bearers were lifting the coffin on to their shoulders, to carry it down the aisle. To my shame, I didn’t even know them. Cousins? Friends of the family? Whoever they were, Den had recruited them, and they all looked fairly young. Along with everyone else, I stood and waited till they had cleared the church door. Then we were back into the funeral car and following the hearse out of the city, up to the Roselawn cemetery, high on a rounded hill. We drove through an impressive pair of gates and into the biggest graveyard I’d ever seen — hundreds upon hundreds of tombstones and other memorials, set in straight lines over the hillsides, with neatly mown grass all round, and the road sweeping back and forth between. There were also thousands of trees, mostly young, planted in copses and bigger stands, the ground beneath them covered in wood-chips to keep down the weeds. I saw several places where I would like Kath’s rowan to be.
At the top of the hill we came to the crematorium, a low, brick building set among sculpted grass banks and beds of flowers. The fact that everything was so perfectly kept seemed to make it more of an ordeal, rather than lessen it. There was a short delay while we waited for the party ahead of us to clear. Then it was our turn to file into the plain little chapel. As if from a great distance, I heard the priest say, ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.’ It was all I could do to endure until the end, the dreadful moment when the coffin descended through a hole in the floor and Kath was gone.