bit of a clatter and a muffled ‘Fuck’ from Dad, but I think only I heard. My father glanced round as he straightened up, unable to resist making eye contact, to suggest he’d done really rather well, under the circumstances.
I gave a small smile back as he puffed out his chest and stood respectfully a moment, head bowed over the coffin. The other pall-bearers had dispersed. That’ll do, Dad, I thought nervously, as the seconds ticked by. My father may be small, five foot seven in his socks, but he’s frightfully important-looking, as small men often are. In his youth, when he hadn’t been riding point-to-pointers or driving all over the country to do so, he’d done a lot of am-dram, and something in his manner suggested there was still a chance he’d sweep a cloak over his shoulder, hold Yorick’s skull aloft and proclaim to the gallery. When he’d milked his moment for all it was worth he turned on his heel and came, head bowed, to sit beside me, clearly relishing this particular performance.
The vicar meanwhile, after we’d sung the first hymn, manfully launched into the eulogy. Manfully because he’d never met Phil, so he was really quite at sea. I’d decided to leave it to him, though, despite his anxious ‘Really, Mrs Shilling? Sure there’s no one else?’ ‘Quite sure.’ And now he was telling us what a helluva guy Phil was, what a pillar of the community, what a loss to the village. All nonsense, of course, because Phil had never been involved in village life; had indeed never been inside this church before now, except to get married. But then the vicar said what a marvellous father he’d been and what a loss to the children, and that’s when I welled up. He hadn’t been marvellous, but any father is a loss. You only get one, and my children would never have another Christmas with him, another holiday with him, not that they’d necessarily want to cycle through the Pyrenees being yelled at constantly to keep up, or … OK, he’d never make speeches at their eighteenths, twenty-firsts, that sort of thing. Actually Phil had only ever made one speech to my knowledge, a best-man’s speech for a cycling crony, which had gone on for forty-six minutes, and been so turgidly dull that eventually, when everyone began coughing and nipping to the loo or the bar, the bride’s father, a bluff Yorkshireman, had got to his feet and said firmly: ‘That’ll do, laddie.’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.
I sighed. Still. My poor babies. Clemmie, in particular. Archie, at twenty months, was too young to understand, but Clemmie had listened soberly when I’d told her the bad news the following morning, sitting her down before nursery school, explaining carefully exactly what had happened. Her brown eyes had grown huge in her pale little face, knowing, by the tone of my voice, rather than the content, that this was bad.
‘So is he breathing?’
‘No, darling. He’s dead.’
‘Like Shameful?’
‘Yes, like Shameful.’
This, a ram in the field at the back of our house, who’d been found stiff and cold last month, and was so called because he rogered every ewe in the field before breakfast, which Phil had found offensive when he was eating his muesli.
‘It’s shameful!’ he’d roar, so Clemmie thought that was his name.
‘Where is Daddy?’
‘He’s … well …’ I hesitated. The morgue sounded horrible. ‘At the undertaker’s. It’s a special place where dead people go before they’re buried.’
‘Not in heaven?’
‘Oh, well, yes. Yes, his soul will go to heaven. It’s quite complicated, darling, but the point is, you won’t see him again. Do you understand?’
She nodded. ‘Will Shameful go to heaven?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Even though he had lots of girlfriends?’
‘Well … yes. I don’t see why not.’
She finished her cereal in silence. Got down from the table. But no tears, which worried me. But then, she was only four; it probably hadn’t quite filtered through. And the thing was, Phil never got home until they’d gone to bed in the week, and at the weekends he’d cycled all day, so how much more had she seen of him than of the ram at the back of the house? In the field where my children played most days, climbing on the logs, splashing in puddles?
When I collected her from nursery, though, Miss Hawkins had caught my eye, scuttled across.
‘May I have a word, Mrs Shilling?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
