Several answers rose to his lips, all of them rational and scriptural, and none of them answering her need.
“It’s all right to hurt,” he said instead. “I don’t think God expects any of us to take it calmly.”
“Yes, He does!” She choked on the words. “ ‘Thy will be done’!” She shook her head fiercely. “Well, I can’t say that. It’s stupid and senseless and horrible. There’s nothing good in it.” She was fighting to make anger conquer the fearful, consuming grief. “Was anyone else killed?” she demanded. “The other car? There must have been another car. Father wouldn’t simply have driven off the road, whatever anyone says.”
“Nobody else was hurt, and there’s no evidence of another car.”
“What do you mean, evidence?” she said furiously, the color flooding her face. “Don’t be so pedantic! So obscenely reasonable! If nobody saw it, there wouldn’t be!”
He did not argue. She needed to rage at someone, and he let her go on until they were through the gates and had drawn up at the front door. She took several long, shuddering breaths, then blew her nose and said she was ready to go inside. She seemed on the edge of saying something more, something gentler, looking steadily at him through brimming eyes. Then she changed her mind and stepped out of the door as Albert held it for her and gave her his hand to steady her.
They ate supper quietly together. Now and again one of them spoke of small, practical things that had to be done, but nobody cared about them. Grief was like a fifth entity in the room, dominating the rest.
Afterward Joseph went to his father’s study again and made certain that all the letters had been written to friends to inform them of John and Alys’s death and tell them the time of the funeral. He noticed that Matthew had written the one letter he had considered most important, to Shanley Corcoran, his father’s closest friend. They had been at university together—Gonville and Caius. Corcoran would be one of the hardest to greet at the church because his pain would be so deep and the memories were so long, woven into so many of the best days right from the beginning.
And yet there were ways in which the sharing would also help. Perhaps afterward they would be able to talk about John in particular. It would keep some part of him alive. Corcoran would never become bored with it or let the memory sink into some pleasant region of the past where the sharpness did not matter anymore.
About half past nine the village constable came by. He was a young man of about Matthew’s age, but he looked tired and harassed.
“Oi’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head and pursing his lips. “We’ll all miss ’em terrible. I never knew better people.”
“Thank you,” Joseph said sincerely. It was good to hear, even though it twisted the pain. To have said nothing would be like denying they mattered.
“Sunday was a bad day all round,” the constable went on, standing uncomfortably in the hall. “Did you hear what happened in Sarajevo?”
“No, what?” Joseph did not care in the slightest, but he did not wish to be rude.
“Some madman shot the archduke of Austria—and the duchess, too.” The constable shook his head. “Both dead! Don’t suppose you’ve had time to look at the papers.”
“No.” Joseph was only half aware of what he was saying. He had not given the newspapers a thought. The rest of the world had seemed removed, not part of their lives. “I’m sorry.”
The constable shrugged. “Long way from here, sir. Probably won’t mean nothin’ for us.”
“No. Thank you for coming, Barker.”
The constable’s eyes flickered down. “I’m real sorry, Mr. Reavley. It won’t be the same without ’em.”
“Thank you.”
CHAPTER
TWO
The funeral of John and Alys Reavley was held on the morning of July 2, in the village church at Selborne St. Giles. It was another hot, still day, and the perfume of the honeysuckle over the lych-gate hung heavy in the air, making one drowsy even before noon. The yew trees in the graveyard looked dusty in the heat.
The cortege came in slowly, two coffins borne by young men from the village. Most of them had been to school with either Joseph or Matthew, at least for the first few years of their lives, played football with them or spent hours on the edge of the river fishing or generally dreaming away the summers. Now they shuffled one foot in front of the other, careful to look straight ahead and balance the weight without stumbling. The tilted stones of the path had been worn uneven by a thousand years of worshipers, mourners, and celebrants from Saxon times to the present day and the modern world of Victoria’s grandson, George V.
Joseph walked behind them, Hannah on his arm, barely keeping her composure. She had purchased a new black dress in Cambridge, and a black straw hat with a veil. She kept her chin high, but Joseph had a strong feeling that her eyes were almost closed and she was clinging to him to guide her. She had hated the days of waiting. Every room she went into reminded her of her loss. The kitchen was worst. It was full of memories: cloths Alys had stitched, plates with the wildflowers painted on them that she had loved, the flat basket she used to collect the dried heads from the roses, the corn dolly she had bought at the Madingley fair. The smell of food brought back memories of crumpets and lardy cakes, and hot, savory onion clangers with suet crust.
Alys had liked to buy the blue-veined Double Cottenham cheese and butter by the yard, instead of the modern weights. It was the smallest things that hurt Hannah the most, perhaps because they caught her unaware: Lettie arranging flowers in the wrong jug (one Alys would never have chosen); Horatio the cat sitting in the scullery, where Alys would not have permitted him; the fish delivery boy being cheeky and answering back where he would not have dared to before. All of these were the first marks of irrevocable change.
Matthew walked with Judith a few steps behind, both of them stiff and staring straight ahead. Judith, too, had a veiled hat and a new black dress with sleeves right down to the backs of her hands, and a skirt so slender it obliged her to walk daintily. She did not like it, but it was actually dramatically becoming to her.
Inside the church the air was cooler, musty with the smell of old books and stone and the heavy scent of flowers. Joseph noticed them immediately with a gulp of surprise. The women of the village must have stripped their gardens of every white bloom: roses, phlox, old-fashioned pinks, and bowers of daisies of every size, single and double. They were like a pale foam breaking over the ancient carved woodwork toward the altar, gleaming where the sunlight came in through the stained-glass windows. He knew they were for Alys. She had been all the village wanted her to be: modest, loyal, quick to smile, able to keep a secret, proud of her home and pleased to care for it. She was willing to exchange recipes with Mrs. Worth, garden cuttings with Tucky Spence even though she never stopped talking, patient with Miss Anthony’s endless stories about her niece in South Africa.
John had been more difficult for them to understand: a man of intellect who had studied deeply and often traveled abroad. But when he was here his pleasures had been simple enough: his family and his garden, old artifacts, watercolor pictures from the last century that he enjoyed cleaning and reframing. He had delighted in a bargain and searched through antique and curio shops, happy to listen to tales of quaint, ordinary people, and always ready to hear or pass on a joke—the longer and shaggier, the more he relished it.
Joseph’s recollections continued as the service began, and he stared at all the long, familiar faces, sad and confused now in their hasty black. He found his throat too tight to sing the hymns.
Then it was time for him to speak, just briefly, as representative of the family. He did not wish to preach; it was not the time. Let someone else do that—Hallam Kerr, if he had a mind to. Joseph was here as a son to remember his parents. This was not about praise, but about love.
It was not easy to keep his voice from breaking, his thoughts in order, and his words clear and simple. But this, after all, was his skill. He knew bereavement intimately, and he had explored it over and over in his mind until it had no more black corners for him.
“We are met together in the heart of the village, perhaps the soul of it, to say goodbye for the moment to two of our number who were your friends, our parents—I speak for myself, and for my brother, Matthew, and my sisters, Hannah and Judith.”
He hesitated, struggling to maintain his composure. There was no movement or rustle of whispering among the upturned faces staring at him.
