Saturday
I
Every parking space in Church Row was taken by nine o’clock in the morning. Darkly clothed mourners moved, singly, in pairs and in groups, up and down the street, converging, like a stream of iron filings drawn to a magnet, on St Michael and All Saints. The path leading to the church doors became crowded, then overflowed; those who were displaced fanned out among the graves, seeking safe spots to stand between the headstones, fearful of trampling on the dead, yet unwilling to move too far from the church entrance. It was clear to everyone that there would not be enough pews for all the people who had come to say goodbye to Barry Fairbrother.
His co-workers from the bank, who were grouped around the most extravagant of the Sweetlove tombs, wished that the august representative from head office would move on and take his inane small-talk and his clumsy jokes with him. Lauren, Holly and Jennifer from the rowing team had separated from their parents to huddle together in the shade of a mossy-fingered yew. Parish councillors, a motley bunch, talked solemnly in the middle of the path: a clutch of balding heads and thick-lensed glasses; a smattering of black straw hats and cultured pearls. Men from the squash and golf clubs hailed each other in subdued fashion; old friends from university recognized each other from afar and edged together; and in between milled what seemed to be most of Pagford, in their smartest and most sombre-hued clothes. The air droned with quiet conversations; faces flickered, watching and waiting.
Tessa Wall’s best coat, which was of grey wool, was cut so tightly around the armholes that she could not raise her arms above chest height. Standing beside her son on one side of the church path, she was exchanging sad little smiles and waves with acquaintances, while continuing to argue with Fats through lips she was trying not to move too obviously.
‘For God’s sake, Stu. He was your father’s best friend. Just this once, show some consideration.’
‘No one told me it was going to go on this bloody long. You told me it’d be over by half-past eleven.’
‘Don’t swear. I said we’d leave St Michael’s at about half-past eleven—’
‘—so I thought it’d be over, didn’t I? So I arranged to meet Arf.’
‘But you’ve got to come to the burial, your father’s a pall-bearer! Ring Arf and tell him it’ll have to be tomorrow instead.’
‘He can’t do tomorrow. Anyway, I haven’t got my mobile on me. Cubby told me not to bring it to church.’
‘Don’t call your father Cubby! You can ring Arf on mine,’ said Tessa, burrowing in her pocket.
‘I don’t know his number by heart,’ lied Fats coldly.
She and Colin had eaten dinner without Fats the previous evening, because he had cycled up to Andrew’s place, where they were working on their English project together. That, at any rate, was the story Fats had given his mother, and Tessa had pretended to believe it. It suited her too well to have Fats out of the way, incapable of upsetting Colin.
At least he was wearing the new suit that Tessa had bought for him in Yarvil. She had lost her temper at him in the third shop, because he had looked like a scarecrow in everything he had tried on, gawky and graceless, and she had thought angrily that he was doing it on purpose; that he could have inflated the suit with a sense of fitness if he chose.
‘Shh!’ said Tessa pre-emptively. Fats was not speaking, but Colin was approaching them, leading the Jawandas; he seemed, in his overwrought state, to be confusing the role of pall-bearer with that of usher; hovering by the gates, welcoming people. Parminder looked grim and gaunt in her sari, with her children trailing behind her; Vikram, in his dark suit, looked like a film star.
A few yards from the church doors, Samantha Mollison was waiting beside her husband, looking up at the bright off-white sky and musing on all the wasted sunshine beating down on top of the high ceiling of cloud. She was refusing to be dislodged from the hard-surfaced path, no matter how many old ladies had to cool their ankles in the grass; her patent-leather high heels might sink into the soft earth, and become dirty and clogged.
When acquaintances hailed them, Miles and Samantha responded pleasantly, but they were not speaking to each other. They had had a row the previous evening. A few people had asked after Lexie and Libby, who usually came home at weekends, but both girls were staying over at friends’ houses. Samantha knew that Miles regretted their absence; he loved playing paterfamilias in public. Perhaps, she thought, with a most pleasurable leap of fury, he would ask her and the girls to pose with him for a picture on his election leaflets. She would enjoy telling him what she thought of that idea.
She could tell that he was surprised by the turnout. No doubt he was regretting that he did not have a starring role in the forthcoming service; it would have been an ideal opportunity to begin a surreptitious campaign for Barry’s seat on the council with this big audience of captive voters. Samantha made a mental note to drop a sarcastic allusion to the missed opportunity when a suitable occasion arose.
‘Gavin!’ called Miles, at the sight of a familiar, fair and narrow head.
‘Oh, hi, Miles. Hi, Sam.’
Gavin’s new black tie shone against his white shirt. There were violet bags under his light eyes. Samantha leaned in on tiptoes, so that he could not decently avoid kissing her on the cheek and inhaling her musky perfume.
‘Big turnout, isn’t it?’ Gavin said, gazing around.
‘Gavin’s a pall-bearer,’ Miles told his wife, in precisely the way that he would have announced that a small and unpromising child had been awarded a book token for effort. In truth, he had been a little surprised when Gavin had told him he had been accorded this honour. Miles had vaguely imagined that he and Samantha would be privileged guests, surrounded by a certain aura of mystery and importance, having been at the deathbed. It might have been a nice gesture if Mary, or somebody close to Mary, had asked him, Miles, to read a lesson, or say a few words to acknowledge the important part he had played in Barry’s final moments.
Samantha was deliberately unsurprised that Gavin had been singled out.
‘You and Barry were quite close, weren’t you, Gav?’
Gavin nodded. He felt jittery and a little sick. He had had a very bad night’s sleep, waking in the early hours from horrible dreams in which, first, he had dropped the coffin, so that Barry’s body spilt out onto the church floor; and, secondly, he had overslept, missed the funeral, and arrived at St Michael and All Saints to find Mary alone in the graveyard, white-faced and furious, screaming at him that he had ruined the whole thing.
‘I’m not sure where I ought to be,’ he said, looking around. ‘I’ve never done this before.’
‘Nothing to it, mate,’ said Miles. ‘There’s only one requirement, really. Don’t drop anything, hehehe.’
Miles’ girlish laugh contrasted oddly with his deep speaking voice. Neither Gavin nor Samantha smiled.
Colin Wall loomed out of the mass of bodies. Big and awkward-looking, with his high, knobbly forehead, he always made Samantha think of Frankenstein’s monster.
‘Gavin,’ he said. ‘There you are. I think we should probably stand out on the pavement, they’ll be here in a few minutes.’
‘Right-ho,’ said Gavin, relieved to be ordered around.
‘Colin,’ said Miles, with a nod.
‘Yes, hello,’ said Colin, flustered, before turning away and forcing his way back through the mass of mourners.
Then came another small flurry of movement, and Samantha heard Howard’s loud voice: ‘Excuse me… so sorry… trying to join our family…’ The crowd parted to avoid his belly, and Howard was revealed, immense in a velvet-faced overcoat. Shirley and Maureen bobbed in his wake, Shirley neat and composed in navy blue, Maureen scrawny as a carrion bird, in a hat with a small black veil.
‘Hello, hello,’ said Howard, kissing Samantha firmly on both cheeks. ‘And how’s Sammy?’
Her answer was swallowed up in a widespread, awkward shuffling, as everybody began retreating
