A Crown of Lights

‘Bugger me, vicar,’ he said. ‘Catch a feller pokin’ round your churchyard at dead of night and you offers him a cup o’ tea?’

‘Listen, pal,’ Merrily said, echoing the asphalt tones of the verger of the Liverpool church where she’d served as a curate, ‘I’m a bloody Christian, me.’

Gomer grinned, a tired, white gash in the lamplight.

‘So... we went back to the vicarage.’ Merrily’s gaze was fixed on the shiny Bramley on Minnie’s coffin. ‘And there we were, Gomer and me, at six o’clock in the morning, sitting either side of the kitchen table, drinking tea. And for once I was at a bit of a loss...’

She heard light footsteps and saw a stocky figure tiptoeing up the central aisle; recognized young Eirion Lewis, in school uniform. He was looking hesitantly from side to side... looking for Jane. He must be extremely keen on the kid to drive straight from school to join her at the funeral of someone he hadn’t even known.

It was, you had to admit, a smart and subtle gesture. But Eirion had been raised to it; his old man ran Welsh Water or something. Eirion, though you wouldn’t know it from his English accent, had been raised among the Welsh-speaking Cardiff aristocracy: the crachach.

When he saw that Jane was in the front pew, a leading mourner, he quietly backed off and went to sit on his own in the northern aisle which was where, in the old days, the women had been obliged to sit – the ghetto aisle. Eirion was, in fact, a nice kid, so Jane would probably dump him in a couple of weeks.

Merrily looked up. ‘Then, after his second mug of tea, Gomer began to talk.’

‘All it was... just buryin’ a little box o’ stuff, ’fore my Min goes down there, like. So’s it’ll be underneath the big box, kind of thing. En’t no church rules against that, is there?’

‘If there are,’ Merrily had said, lighting a cigarette, ‘I can have them changed by this afternoon.’

‘Just bits o’ stuff, see. Couple o’ little wedding photos. Them white plastic earrings ’er insisted on wearing, ’cept for church. Nothing valuable – not even the watches.’

She had stared at him. He looked down at his tea, added more sugar. She noticed his wrist was bare.

‘Mine and Min’s, they both got new batteries. So’s they’d go on ticking for a year or so. Two year, mabbe.’

Don’t smile, Merrily told herself. Don’t cry. She remembered Gomer’s watch. It was years old, probably one of the first watches ever to work off a battery. And so it really did tick, loudly.

‘Dunno why I done it, really, vicar. Don’t make no sense, do it?’

‘I think, somehow...’ Merrily looked into the cigarette smoke, ‘it makes the kind of sense neither of us is clever enough to explain.’

‘And I’m not going to try too hard to explain it now,’ she said to the congregation. ‘I think people in this job can sometimes spend too long trying to explain too much.’

In the pew next to Gomer, Jane nodded firmly.

‘I mean, I could go on about those watches ticking day and night under the ground, symbolizing the life beyond death... but that’s not a great analogy when you start to think about it. In the end, it was Gomer making the point that he and Minnie had something together that can’t just be switched off by death.’

‘Way I sees it, vicar, by the time them ole watches d’stop ticking, we’ll both be over this – out the other side.’ Gomer had pushed both hands through his aggressive hair. ‘Gotter go on, see, ennit? Gotter bloody go on.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What was it like when your husband... when he died?’

‘A lot different,’ Merrily said. ‘If he hadn’t crashed his car we’d have got divorced. It was all a mistake. We were both too young – all that stuff.’

‘And we was too bloody old,’ Gomer said, ‘me and Min. Problem is, nothin’ in life’s ever quite... what’s that word? Synchronized. ’Cept for them ole watches. And you can bet one o’ them buggers is gonner run down ’fore the other.’

Gomer smoked in silence for a few moments. He’d been Minnie Seagrove’s second husband, she’d been Gomer’s second wife. She’d moved to rural Wales some years ago with Frank Seagrove, who’d retired and wanted to come out here for the fishing, but then had died, leaving her alone in a strange town. Merrily still wasn’t sure quite how Minnie and Gomer had first met.

Gomer’s mouth opened and shut a couple of times, as if there was something important he wanted to ask her but he wasn’t sure how.

‘Not seen your friend, Lol, round yere for a while,’ he said at last – which wasn’t it.

‘He’s over in Birmingham, on a course.’

‘Ar?’

‘Psychotherapy. Had to give up his flat, and then he got some money, unexpectedly, from his old record company and he’s spent it on this course. Half of him thinks he should become a full-time psychotherapist – like, what mental health needs is more ex-loonies. The other half thinks it’s all crap. But he’s doing the course, then he’s going to make a decision.’

‘Good boy,’ Gomer said.

‘Jane still insists she has hopes for Lol and me.’

Gomer nodded. Then he said quickly, ‘Dunno quite how to put this, see. I mean, it’s your job, ennit, to keep us all in hopes of the hereafter: ’E died so we could live on, kinder thing – which never made full sense to me, but I en’t too bright, see?’

Merrily put out her cigarette. Ethel, the cat, jumped onto her knees. She plunged both hands into Ethel’s black winter coat.

The big one?

‘Only, there’s gotter be times, see, vicar, when you wakes up cold in the middle of the night and you’re thinkin’ to youself, is it bloody true? Is anythin’ at all gonner happen when we gets to the end?’

From the graveside there came no audible ticking as Minnie’s coffin went in. Gomer had accepted that his nephew, Nev, should be the one to fill in the hole, on the grounds that Minnie would have been mad as hell watching Gomer getting red Herefordshire earth all over his best suit.

Walking away from the grave, he smiled wryly. He may also have wept earlier, briefly and silently; Merrily had noticed him tilt his head to the sky, his hands clasped behind his back. He was, in unexpected ways, a private person.

Down at the village hall, he nudged her, indicating several tea plates piled higher with food than you’d have thought possible without scaffolding.

‘Give ’em a funeral in the afternoon, some of them tight buggers goes without no bloody breakfast and lunch. ’Scuse me a minute, vicar, I oughter ’ave a word with Jack Preece.’ And he moved off towards a ravaged-looking old man, whose suit seemed several sizes too big for him.

Merrily nibbled at a slice of chocolate cake and eavesdropped a group of farmer-types who’d separated themselves from their wives and didn’t, for once, seem to be discussing dismal sheep prices.

‘Bloody what-d’you-call-its – pep pills, Ecstersee, wannit? Boy gets picked up by the police, see, with a pocketful o’ these bloody Ecstersee. Up in court at Llandod. Dennis says, “That’s it, boy, you stay under my roof you can change your bloody ways. We’re gonner go an’ see the bloody rector...” ’

‘OK, Mum?’

Merrily turned to find Jane holding a plate with just one small egg sandwich. Was this anorexia, or love?

‘What happened to Eirion, flower?’

‘He had to get home.’