‘Perhaps, father, you jump a little too quickly to conclusions. People can be interested in your faith, ask questions about it, without necessarily wishing to become Catholics.’ I went quickly on to Henry, ‘It would be absurd to alter everything now. Directions have been given. Friends have been invited. Sarah was never a fanatic. She would be the last to want any inconvenience caused for the sake of a whim. After all,’ I drove on, fixing my eyes on Henry, ‘it will be a perfectly Christian ceremony. Not that Sarah was even a Christian. We saw no signs of it anyway. But you could always give Father Crompton money for a Mass.’
‘It isn’t necessary. I said one this morning.’ He made a movement with his hands in his lap, the first break in his rigidity: it was like watching a strong wall shift and lean after a bomb had fallen. ‘I shall remember her every day in my Mass,’ he said.
Henry said with relief as though that settled matters, ‘Very good of you, father,’ and moved a cigarette-box.
‘It seems an odd and impertinent thing to say to you, Mr Miles, but I don’t think you realize what a good woman your wife was.’
‘She was everything to me,’ Henry said.
‘A great many people loved her,’ I said.
Father Crompton turned his eyes on me like a headmaster who hears an interruption at the back of the class from some snotty youngster.
‘Perhaps not enough,’ he said.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘to go back to what we were discussing. I don’t think we can alter things now, father. It would cause a great deal of talk too. You wouldn’t like talk, would you, Henry?’
‘No. Oh no.’
‘There’s the insertion in The Times. We should have to put in a correction. People notice that kind of thing. It would cause comment. After all you aren’t unknown, Henry. Then telegrams would have to be sent. A lot of people will have had wreaths delivered already to the crematorium. You see what I mean, father.’
‘I can’t say that I do.’
‘What you ask is not reasonable.’
‘You seem to have a very strange set of values, Mr Bendrix.’
‘But surely you don’t believe cremation affects the resurrection of the body, father?’
‘Of course I don’t. I’ve told you my reasons already. If they don’t seem strong enough to Mr Miles, there’s no more to be said.’ He got up from his chair, and what an ugly man he was. Sitting down he had at least the appearance of power, but his legs were too short for his body, and he rose, unexpectedly small. It was as if he had suddenly moved a long way off.
Henry said, ‘If you’d come a little sooner, father. Please don’t think… ‘
‘I don’t think anything wrong of you, Mr Miles.’
‘Of me perhaps, father?’ I asked with deliberate impertinence.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Mr Bendrix. Nothing you can do will affect her now.’ I suppose the Confessional teaches a man to recognize hate. He held his hand out to Henry and turned his back on me. I wanted to say to him, You’re wrong about me. It’s not Sarah I hate. And you are wrong about Henry too. He is the corrupter, not me. I wanted to defend myself, ‘I loved her’, for surely in the Confessional they learn to recognize that emotion too.
4
‘Hampstead’s the next stop,’ Sylvia said.
‘You’ve got to get out to see your mother?’
‘I could come on to Golders Green and show you the way. I don’t usually see her today.’
‘It would be an act of charity,’ I said.
‘I think you’ll have to take a taxi if you are to be on time.’
‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter missing the opening lines ‘
She saw me to the courtyard of the station, and then she wanted to go back. It seemed strange to me that she had taken so much trouble. I have never seen any qualities in me for a woman to like, and now less than ever. Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too. I had nothing to give Sylvia: I would never be one of her teachers, but because I was afraid of the next half hour, the faces that would be spying on my loneliness, trying to detect from my manner what my relations with Sarah had been, who had left whom, I needed her beauty to support me.
‘But I can’t come in these clothes,’ she protested when I begged for her company. I could tell how pleased she was that I wanted her with me. I knew I could have taken her from Waterbury there and then. His sands had already run out. If I chose he would listen to Bartok alone.
‘We’ll stand at the back,’ I said. ‘You might be just a stranger walking round.’
‘At least they are black,’ she said, referring to her trousers. In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise. The crematorium tower was smoking, and the water lay in half-frozen puddles on the gravel walks. A lot of strangers came by - from a previous cremation, I supposed: they had the brisk cheerful air of people who have left a dull party and can now ‘go on’.
‘It’s this way,’ Sylvia said.
‘You know the place very well.’
‘Daddy was done here two years ago.’
As we reached the chapel everyone was leaving. Waterbury’s questions about the stream of consciousness had delayed me just too long. I had an odd conventional stab of grief - I hadn’t after all seen the last of Sarah, and I thought dully, so it was her smoke that was blowing over the suburban gardens. Henry came blindly out alone: he had been crying and he didn’t see me. I knew nobody else, except Sir William Mallock, who wore a top hat. He gave me a look of disapproval and hurried on. There were half a dozen men with the air of civil servants. Was Dunstan there? It wasn’t very important. Some wives had accompanied their husbands. They at least were satisfied with the ceremony - you could almost tell it from their hats. The extinction of Sarah had left every wife safer.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sylvia said.
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
I thought, if we could have embalmed her, they would never have been safe. Even her dead body would have provided a standard to judge them by.
Smythe came out and splashed quickly away among the puddles, speaking to nobody. I heard a woman say, ‘The Carters have asked us for the week-end of the tenth.’
‘Would you like me to go?’ Sylvia asked.
‘No, no,’ I said, ‘I like having you around.’
I went to the door of the chapel and looked in. The runway to the furnace was empty for the moment, but as the old wreaths were being carried out, new ones were being carried in. An elderly woman was kneeling incongruously in prayer like an actor from another scene caught by the unexpected raising of a curtain. A familiar voice behind me said, ‘It’s a sad pleasure to see you here, sir, where bygones are always bygones.’
‘You’ve come, Parkis,’ I exclaimed.
‘I saw the announcement in The Times, sir, so I asked Mr Savage’s permission to take the afternoon off.’
‘Do you always follow your people as far as this?’
‘She was a very fine lady, sir,’ he said, reproachfully. ‘She asked me the way once in the street, not knowing, of course, my reason for being around. And at the cocktail party she handed me a glass of sherry.’
‘South African sherry?’ I asked him miserably.
‘I wouldn’t know, sir, but the way she did it - oh, there weren’t many like her. My boy too… He’s always speaking about her.’
‘How is your boy, Parkis?’
‘Not well, sir. Not at all well. Very violent stomach aches.’
‘You’ve seen a doctor?’
‘Not yet, sir. I believe in leaving things to nature. Up to a point’
I looked round at the groups of strangers who had all known Sarah. I said, ‘Who are these people, Parkis?’
‘The young lady I don’t know, sir.’
‘She’s with me.’
‘I beg your pardon. Sir William Mallock is the one on the horizon, sir.’