“Look,” I heard myself saying then, “a visitor …”
“But, baby,” Fiona whispered, “he’s got a dog!”
I nodded, though Fiona had already turned to stare again toward the dark trees and tall approaching man and leaping dog, as had Hugh, whose fist was clenched, and Catherine who had climbed to her feet and was holding close her small and obviously frightened girls.
“He’s a shepherd,” I murmured. “And he may not be quite right in the head. You can tell by that odd angular gait of his.”
“We’ve got to get rid of him, boy. Send him off.”
“When he sees the coffin, he’ll want to help us mourn.”
“Oh, baby, how awful.”
“Be friendly, Fiona. That’s all we can do.”
“But that damn dog, boy. It’s just like ours.”
“Yes,” I said, “too bad for Meredith.”
“Tell him the party is private, baby. Please.”
“Can’t offend him, Fiona. Bad luck.”
He raised one long black-sleeved bony arm in innocent greeting. Carelessly he swung a long white slender crook in time to his steady but unrhythmical gait. He was fast approaching, and all the incongruous details were clear enough — the shapeless and once formal black coat and trousers, the absence of shirt or socks or shoes, the short black hair suggesting the artless conscientious work of the village barber, the stately and yet ungainly size, the slender crook. Yes, I told myself, hearing his sharp whistle and noting that the whistle had no effect on the fat and mangy black dog bearing down on us, in every way our approaching stranger exemplified the typical shepherd who was bound to keep an illiterate family in the village and yet spend his days and nights roaming from thorny field to secret watering spot with his nomadic sheep.
“Hugh, baby,” Fiona whispered then, apparently forgetting Catherine, Meredith, me, the funeral itself, “he looks like you.”
But before I could comment on this latest of Fiona’s aesthetic judgments, suddenly the appealing and yet repellent figure of the shepherd was standing a shadow’s length from the casket and frowning and crossing himself, while now his dog lay groveling and whimpering in the sand at Meredith’s feet.
“It’s a different dog, Meredith,” I said. “He’s a lot younger than yours. Besides, he’s got that white star on his chest. Listen, if you pat his head a few times he’ll leave you alone.”
“Never mind, baby, it’s all right. We’ll pat him together.”
With obvious disregard for everyone but Meredith, quickly Fiona stepped to the child’s side, knelt down, put a thin strong arm around her waist and firmly began to stroke the head of the dog. It was a small but totally absorbing example of Fiona’s swift feminine purpose, another one of Fiona’s golden pebbles dropped into her bottomless well of rose water. We heard that sound, we saw her move, we watched.
“Look at the way your shepherd is staring at Fiona, boy. I don’t like it.”
Had the circumstances been other than what they were, had there been no children, no coffin, no open grave on the beach, and had we four met the tall intruder while swimming or among the pines in some dense secluded grove where we might have sat with our spread white cloth and Fiona’s array of wicker baskets, then surely Fiona would have been her usual self and would have touched the man’s arm, paired him up with Hugh, would have softened to his fixed smile, his indifference to loneliness, his broad and crooked shoulders. But not now. She had made her decision. She was concentrating on Meredith and the shepherd’s dog. And did he know all this? Had he understood this much of my kneeling wife in that single frank sweep of his dark unfocused eyes? Had he caught the pretentious tone of Hugh’s remark and decided to heed that hostile sound? Was he more concerned with our funeral than with Fiona?
Slowly he stepped forward and offered his bony right hand first to Hugh and then to me, and in the grip of those cold and calloused fingers even Hugh must have begun to comprehend what our unwanted intruder meant to say: that he had slept in dark caves, that he had buried countless dead ewes, that he also knew what it was like to bury children, that only men could work together in the service of death, that death was for men, that now his only interest was in the one-armed man and bare-chested man and the coffin. The rest of it (our wives, our children) meant nothing to him. Only death mattered. He had joined us only because of the coffin.
“Meredith,” Hugh was saying then, abruptly, gruffly, “the shepherd is going to help Cyril and me. You better watch.”
Together Hugh and I lifted the coffin, moved in unison through the crab grass, and approached the wet hole where the mute and barefooted figure already stood waiting, shovel in hand. The flatness of the sea before us reflected the gloom and silence of the wall of trees at our backs. The hole, soon to be filled, was ringed, I saw, with the deep fresh impressions of the shepherd’s feet. No birdcall, no tolling bell. Only the sound of Hugh’s breath and the rising of the salty breeze and across the open grave the white face of the shepherd.
“You better gather around,” Hugh said. “All of you.”
“Meredith, baby. This is the way it is in real life. Don’t be sad.”
“Ready, boy?”
“Ready.”
At either end of the grave we knelt and took hold of the silver grips and swung the coffin over the open grave. Together we eased the small black heavy coffin down until it rested finally in the sea-smelling dark water that lay in the bottom of the hole. I was sure that behind us Fiona was restraining Meredith. And was Fiona thinking what I was thinking? Was she too recalling the old half-drowned animal in my wet arms? No, I thought, Fiona did not share my interest in coherence and full circles. For better or worse, Fiona lived free of the shades of memory.
But it was not at all a question of restraining Meredith. She was not struggling to plunge toward the grave, as I had expected, but instead was kneeling with her hands clasped gently and her thin white face raised happily toward the black-and-white figure of the shepherd who was now filling the grave. Sitting back on her heels, Meredith appeared to be quite unconscious of Fiona’s long fingers stroking her hair or of the dog’s head resting in her lap. Only the shepherd mattered for Meredith, and despite his concentration and violent labor, the tall man was obviously aware of the admiring child.
“I’m afraid of him,” Catherine whispered.
“No need to be,” I murmured, and brushed the sand from the hair on my chest, felt little Dolores encircling my tight and heavy thigh with a stealthy arm.
Bare foot raised to the edge of the black and pitted blade, coat open, chest and belly now and again exposed in both a poverty and pride of nakedness, broad and crooked shoulders twisting suddenly to the thrust of the long arm and invulnerable bare foot — all this was observed in silence as slowly the pile of sand went down and the shadows lengthened and the light of the afternoon grew still more pale. In this physical act of covering up forever what he assumed to be the small body of an infant dressed for death, the shepherd was providing Meredith with a performance which I, had it been me, would surely not have attempted. But even now I suspected that Meredith, so seldom treated to anything she herself desired, had probably forgotten the reason we were waiting at the edge of this grave. And yet if Meredith was having a little excitement, I thought, what did it matter if momentarily she had forgotten her old dog? After all, I thought, the afternoon really belonged to Hugh.
“Oh, baby, a flute …”
From a pocket in his open coat the shepherd had produced a short wooden pipe on which he now played his reedy tune for Meredith. The light faded, the rising wind blew through the open coat, his unfocused eyes were fixed on Meredith, the bony fingers rose and fell on the holes of the crude pipe. Had he known all along that he would stand here playing his shepherd’s pipe? Was this why he had joined us and taken up the shovel? Only to pipe his endless frail tune into the approaching night? At least Meredith would never forget those sounds, I told myself. Nor, for that matter, would Hugh.