She snapped her mouth shut.
“Good,” I said. “Now, let’s all have a drink.”
I went over to the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine and poured three glasses. I then sat down at the kitchen table and, in turn, the two girls joined me.
“Good,” I said again. “Now, we all know your father is an idiot.” Alice again opened her mouth to say something, but I held up my hand to stop her. “But he’s not such an idiot that he can’t set us all against one another.”
“But…” she started.
“Look,” I said, interrupting. “You’ve probably both said some things today you shouldn’t have. You both feel hurt. But it can stop here, right now, if you want it to. So have some wine and think for a minute.”
I lifted my glass in the manner of a toast, holding it aloft. Sophie picked up hers and did likewise. Slowly, Alice did the same.
“Cheers,” I said. Alice and I drank sizable mouthfuls, while Sophie had a little sip. “Now,” I said, “that’s better. Are we friends again?”
Neither of the girls replied but both of them had another drink.
Finally, the tension was broken by Alice, who laughed.
“Have you ever thought about taking up diplomacy?” she said to me. “I reckon you could make peace in the Middle East.”
“No chance,” I said. “The Arabs don’t drink.”
The three of us sat at the table, giggling uncontrollably at my tasteless joke.
Peace, it seemed, had been reestablished for the moment in Station Road, even if not quite in the Gaza Strip. I was glad. I really didn’t want Alice going home before Monday.
20
At three o’clock on Friday afternoon I sat alone in the chapel of Slough Crematorium as my father’s bare coffin was carried past me by four men from the funeral home and placed on the curtain-skirted catafalque at the front.
A clergyman in a white surplice over a black cassock came in and stood behind the lectern.
“Are you the son?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Are we waiting for anyone else?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you wish to say anything at any point?” he asked me.
“No,” I said again.
“Right, then. We’ll get started.”
The door at the back of the chapel opened with a squeak. I turned around. Detective Sergeant Murray came in and sat down two pews behind me. I nodded to him, and he responded in the same manner. I turned back to the minister, who then began.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
The clergyman droned on, rushing through the funeral rite as laid down in the Book of Common Prayer.
I didn’t really listen to the words.
Instead, I sat and stared at the simple wooden coffin and tried hard to remember what the man inside it looked like. I had seen him alive only briefly, for hardly more than an hour, yet his reappearance had dominated my life for the past two and a half weeks in a way it hadn’t done for the previous thirty-seven years.
It was difficult to describe my full feelings, but anger was uppermost amongst them. Anger that he had now gone forever and anger that he had been here at all.
Undeniably, he was my father. The DNA had proved that. But it didn’t feel like he had anything to do with me. But he, and his actions, had certainly been integral to the direction of my life, who I was and what I would become.
I wished I’d had longer to talk with him on the day he’d died, and the chance to talk to him again, even if it was to rant and rave at his conduct or to gather answers to so many unanswered questions: why did he kill my mother? why did he run away? why didn’t he take me with him? how could he have deserted me for so long? and, in particular, why did he come back?
I thought about his daughters, my sisters, so far away in Australia, who probably didn’t even know their father was dead. Should I say a prayer on their behalf?
The minister was nearing the end.
“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Peter, and we commit his body to the elements, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him, and keep him, and give him eternal peace. Amen.”
As he was saying the last few words, the minister pushed a button on the lectern, and I watched intently as my father’s coffin slowly disappeared from sight behind long red curtains that closed silently around it.
The whole funeral had taken precisely nine minutes. The cremation would take a little longer. And then that would be that. My father’s earthly body would exist no more.
If only his influence could be so easily and quickly eliminated.
“Lovely service,” I said to the minister on my way out. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he said, shaking my hand.
Everyone always says it’s been a lovely service at a funeral, I thought, even if it hadn’t. It was neither the time nor the place to criticize, however bad things had been. In this case, the service had been functional. And that was enough.
“Thank you for coming,” I said to Detective Sergeant Murray as we stood together outside afterwards.
“Chief Inspector Llewellyn apologizes for not being here himself,” he said.
“I hadn’t expected him to come,” I said. I hadn’t, in fact, expected anyone to be here, and especially not the detective chief inspector, and not least because I hadn’t told a soul about the arrangements.
“The coroner’s office let us know,” he said. I nodded. “The police always try to go to murder victims’ funerals if we can.”
“Just in case the killer turns up?” I asked.
“It has been known,” he said, smiling.
“No chance today,” I said. “Not without being noticed anyway.”
“No,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Not much of a crowd to hide among at this one.”
“How are things on the detective front?” I said. “Any suspects yet?”
“Only you,” he said, but he said it with another smile. “My chief really doesn’t like you, does he?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “The feeling’s mutual.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
“Has my e-fit been of any use?” I asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it has,” he said. “It’s been shown to some of the other witnesses, and they now generally tend to agree with you. So yours has now taken on the mantle as being the most accurate.”
I was pretty sure that shifty-eyed Kipper wouldn’t have been best pleased by that.
“But I haven’t seen it reproduced in any of the newspapers,” I said. “Or on the television.”
“It’s been in the Bracknell and Ascot Times, and in the Windsor and Eton Express,” he said. “But no one has yet come forward to say they recognize him.”
“Perhaps it would have been better to have put it in the Melbourne papers,” I said. “Or at least in the Racing Post.”
“Now, that’s a thought,” he said. “Maybe I’ll go and recommend it to the chief inspector.”
And, with that, the detective sergeant made his apologies and departed.
That just left me and the funeral director, who had been hovering to one side.
