by Laline Paull
The priest was small and business-like, Sean doubted he had a clue what Tom was like. He had been agnostic, which hurt his devout mother, he’d said that once. Surely he’d rather have had a Viking burial on a burning ship, out in Midgardfjorden. Or remain lost in the depths of the glacier. That was as pure a burial as anyone could wish for.
The service went on, dreamlike, a lot of standing and sitting, the coffin filling his vision until he could see every screw in the plates of its handles, the grain of the wood, the details of the corners. Sean let the green clothbound covers of the hymnal fall open, because he could not open his mouth, let alone read or sing. He felt a tap on his arm – Gail – and he realised everyone had sat down. Quickly he did too, and as he did, looked directly into the eyes of Ruth Mott, getting up out of the pew and walking to the front to make a speech. Even in her funeral black, she looked vaguely hippyish. To his horror, she didn’t go up to the altar, but stood beside the coffin, resting her hand on it.
‘Tom, our truly beloved Tom’ – and she stopped for a moment – ‘is not really inside this box.’ Sean stared in amazement. Her eyes hurled him back as if by force.
‘Tom is still alive, in everyone’s heart who ever loved him, in the passion he communicated to us all about how to look after our world. Tom won’t die, while we continue his work. And I’m sorry, but this building is no closer to god than the Arctic that he loved. The natural world was his true cathedral, it’s mine and it’s everyone’s, it’s where we can all feel something sacred.’ She looked at the priest. ‘But what’s also true is that Tom’s family take great comfort in the Church, so I think he’d be happy to know they took comfort – in this ceremony.’
Ruth Mott gathered herself for a moment, and in the silence, Sean heard Gail make a sound, her eyes fixed on Ruth, as if urging her to be strong. Ruth met her eyes and nodded.
Friends again, Sean thought. And I wasn’t even asked to speak. He kept his eyes on Ruth Mott’s hand, its bitten nails, its firm contact with the coffin. She said Angela and the family would be organising a bigger memorial in London later this year, for all those who wanted to come today but could not. People could put their details in the book at the back of the church. Then she made her way to her seat, and her hand left an aura of moisture on the wood.
Sean sensed Gail weeping silently beside him. He felt paralysed. If she turned to him, he would have to put his arm round her, but she didn’t. The service finished, and the bearers took up the coffin. He got up first, but allowed Gail and Rosie out ahead. They walked arm in arm, and though both were civil to him – Rosie managing a tearful hello but keeping her distance – he let them go on. Tom’s family went out, comforting each other, Ruth Mott with them. It was like he did not exist.
It was a relief to be out in the fresh air and sunshine after the tomb-like church; and after the ponderous organ music, the birdsong was bright as jazz. The mourners became human beings wearing black, revived to conversation and mutual consolation. Sean watched them hugging each other in bursts of laughter and crying, but he remained alone, no one took his arm.
It hit him: no one wanted to be near him, and he had not been invited to speak because he was the reason Tom had died. His venture, that he had called Tom into. His fault. He wanted to laugh in sheer tension at how awful it all was – he wanted to shout at them to turn around, all of them, and acknowledge that he was Tom’s friend, he loved him too, the reason he’d kept himself away was that it hurt too much …
He caught up with the group and positioned himself closer to Angela and the family. They didn’t seem to notice him. He began to pulse with self-consciousness. He heard someone mention the wake – to which he had not been invited. The email from the funeral director only mentioned details of the service, and he had just presumed – he wished he’d let Martine come with him, as she’d first wanted. If this was how they were going to treat him, what did it matter what anyone thought?
The coffin was lowered into the pit. Sean watched the faces of the men who did it, not the pall-bearers, but gravediggers who had appeared from nowhere. No chance to see the body. No one speaking to him, though the priest included him in his gaze. He stood in his black linen suit, a force-field of repulsion around him. The mourners processed past, those who wanted to throwing handfuls of earth, flowers, messages on pieces of paper.
Sean walked away from the terrible sound of the mud on the coffin. That’s what it was, mud, on a wooden box, that held what was left of his friendship with Tom. They didn’t want him there. But he was Tom’s friend, he had a right to pay his respects. He watched Ruth Mott comforting Angela Harding, and went over.
‘Angela,’ he said, ‘Ruth. I’m am so, so, sorry.’
Angela Harding took his hand. Ruth Mott looked like she would shatter if someone touched her.
‘You mentioned a memorial,’ he said, ‘later in the year. If you haven’t already planned it, perhaps I could help? At our annual fund-raising dinner, we could make a new award in his name, we could come up with something together.’ Sean imagined it whole and complete: the huge bequest, the warmth of the big ballroom at the Carrington, hundreds of guests rising to applaud Tom’s memory, Angela and her family hosting their own table, restored, not broken like this.
‘Sean, thank you,’ said Angela. ‘We’ve missed you. Haven’t we?’ She turned to the small white-haired woman whose hand Ruth Mott was now holding.
‘Granny Ruby,’ Sean said. He was going to kiss her, but she held herself back. Her old blue eyes were wet, but she was no longer crying.
‘Sean,’ she said. ‘You’ve been a stranger.’
‘I thought I gave you more pain to see me.’
‘It’s as if you were hiding.’ The old lady turned away. ‘Excuse me.’
She went with her daughter to the embrace of other mourners. Sean and Ruth Mott stood stranded together. The thuds of earth on the casket fell slow and hard.
‘How’s Midgard?’ she asked. ‘Making you a fortune?’
‘Please, Ruth,’ he said. ‘Not now.’
‘Do you even know what’s happening in the Arctic any more?’
Even here, at Tom’s funeral, he thought, she’s ready for a fight. Especially here. Unless it was the way she coped with pain, like an animal.
‘It’s changing, we all know—’
‘Some of us know more than others though.’ Her eyes were very bright.
No, he thought, right the first time. She’s ready for a fight.
‘What are you talking about?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll say more at the inquest.’
‘Don’t wait. Say it to my face.’
‘All right, I will: Tom was the love of my life and you took him from me.’
Sean recoiled as if she’d physically hit him.
‘I didn’t. It was an accident.’
‘Then I wish it had been you instead of him.’
‘So do I!’ He didn’t realise he shouted it until he saw all the horrified faces turned towards him. Gail was coming to them, for a moment he thought to help him, but she went to Ruth and took her away, quieting her in the soft voice he remembered. He watched Ruth crumple into her arms, Gail held her, and he couldn’t hear what she said.
He felt a soft touch on his arm – it was Rosie. He looked at her in gratitude, but she went past and put her arms around her mother and Ruth. Sean watched transfixed as Ruth realised who it was, and held Rosie at arm’s length to admire her. He hadn’t seen his daughter’s smile in so long, and now he could see the beautiful pagan maiden she had grown into.
‘Forgive me,’ Ruth said to Gail. ‘Forgive my big stupid mouth.’
‘What’s to forgive?’ She and Ruth hugged fiercely, and then they laughed. Rosie laughed too, burrowing in between them and slipping back to childhood for a moment. Sean stood riven with pain and happiness at the sight. No one called him over.
He was in his car before he knew it, driving the blind green bends of the country lanes without really seeing a
nything, until the broad grey monotony of the M20 clicked into focus at ninety miles an hour. He slowed down. He did not remember leaving the funeral, but he was glad he had. The last hymn went round in his head like static.
All things bright and beau-ti-ful, all crea-tures great and sma-all …
It could only have been Angela’s choice. Tom would have gone for something like Joni Mitchell. They paved paradise blah blah. A cliché, but it would work at the Carrington fund-raiser, if he could persuade Angela to agree. It was the least he could do. And Martine would goad and seduce the business community into embracing its corporate social responsibility – they only ever scheduled those meetings at 5 p.m. on Fridays, they bloody knew it wasn’t enough.
All things wise and won-der-ful …
He switched on the radio, anything to rid his brain of the plodding infantile rhythm. Old Kylie, Newsbeat, Shostakovich, Gordon Busbridge Furniture will enhance your home – he clicked through the stations searching for anything with a decent signal. A scratchy white noise disrupted all of them.
It must be all the pylons. Wickton was a forgotten pocket of rural beauty in Kent, no longer en route to anywhere but itself, saved by its uselessness, but here on the M20, a swathe of industrial developments were broken by a few thistled fields, on which grazed scatterings of doomed sheep and occasionally, a few raw-boned shaggy horses. The miles of desolate development below either side of the sweeping motorway gave Sean an idea for the speech he would make at the benefit.
All around us is evidence. Greedy piecemeal interests. Now all anyone wants is investment in the US-Russian Arctic Agreement …
Sean put his foot down. Now was not the time to compose a speech. The radio hissed white noise from every station and he slammed the wheel in irritation. The CD player had broken too, the magazine whirring but refusing to load. And now the day which had been so bright and blue was whitely overcast. It looked like smoke from somewhere, drifting thick across the four lanes of traffic, forcing everything to a crawl. Probably from one of the industrial estates – Sean opened the window a crack to sniff for chemicals.
To his surprise, the air was freezing cold and damp, like sea fog. A hard wind whirled around the cabin and he pressed the button to close the window – but the electrics jammed and it stuck open an inch from the top. When he pressed the button again he heard a whining sound inside the door, and then a crack as if something broke. He switched on the seat heater and all the cabin heating, so that warm air whirled out from several ports. Then that too cut out.
Sean stared out, into what was now a mere fifteen feet of visibility. He could just make out the double red glows ahead of him as the traffic moved on into the fog. It was July – this was freezing fog. Shivering in his lightweight black suit he remembered the travel blanket in the boot, unused and still in its leather bands – but he couldn’t see to pull over.
The fog lights shone cones of swirling whiteness. Tiny pale specks formed on the windscreen – snow, or ash from some volcanic cloud? The lights ahead melted into the milky gloom and disappeared. Sean stared out into the pale shape-shifting glow, his muscles clenched in the cold. Some primal part of his brain took over. Pull over. Get the blanket. Get information. Something must have happened – maybe a factory accident at one of those massive complexes a couple of miles back. A fast-moving front from the North Sea.
He indicated and moved cautiously across what he judged to be one, two, three lanes. There was nothing to gauge where he was, no bumps in the road he could feel – but no collision either. Instead, he had a sense of vast space around him. Perhaps this part of the motorway had been newly widened, and he didn’t notice on the way down because he was so fixated on getting there in time. Perhaps he had strayed into a marked-off area. Perhaps there was a great drop he couldn’t see, and he was at the edge. He had that sense.
He stopped where he was, his heart going fast. There was no sound coming from outside, only the swirling white. He already knew before he looked at his phone that there would be no signal.
As he opened the door the wind yanked it back so that the heavy panel almost banged against the chassis. The wind was freezing cold as he climbed out, and there was something in it that stung his eyes. He had to almost close them as he felt his way around to the boot of his car. Too late he felt ice underfoot and slipped – and found the ground around him soft with snow. He touched it in amazement. The blizzard whirled around him as he stood back up, reaching for the car to steady himself.
It was gone.
Not possible. He had just got out of it, not taken two steps from it.
But there was something in the whiteness, a familiar sound: the ting-ting of metal traces jingling – the sound of a dog team in harness. He shouted, but the wind took the sound. He could feel the vibration, the distant rhythm of the dogs’ trot, too fast for a man to walk alongside, too slow for him to run. That funny pace you had to use – two steps run, one step walk. A big team, eight or ten pairs, coming closer – he tried to shout again but he couldn’t make a sound. The traces sounded wrong, a metronomic clicking, or some harsh drum. The drum took over.
Sean jerked awake to the sight of a police officer’s face outside his window. Blue lights flashed beyond the windscreen where two highway patrol cars were stopped. The repetitive clicking was the sound of his own hazard lights. The Vanquish was parked nose-first, inches from the concrete wall of the hard shoulder, at a crazed angle. His key was still in the ignition.
Sir, the officer was saying. Sir, please open the window.
Sean did. His head hurt, he felt pain in his chest and throat, where the seatbelt was tight against them. He looked around in dismay. Sunshine, motorway traffic, though it slowed to see what was going on. The police officers stared in at him.
‘I pulled over,’ he said hoarsely. ‘In the blizzard. Or whatever it was. Has there been an accident?’
‘Sir, have you been drinking?’
Sean hauled his mind back down to walking pace.
‘No,’ he said emphatically, giving himself more time to think. ‘Definitely not. I’ve been at a funeral, but I haven’t been drinking.’
They breathalysed him anyway, and he waited in silence, stunned by the hallucination. Surreptitiously, carefully, he looked around. Everything was dry. There was no sign of snow. He wanted to kneel down and check the ground, but instinct told him not to.
‘Mr Cawson,’ said the first officer. ‘You show no alcohol in your bloodstream, but could you tell us what happened? You mentioned a blizzard.’
Sean made himself stretch, so his watch came into view: 2.50 p.m., said the ice-blue face. The funeral was at 11 a.m., he must have left the churchyard by 1 p.m., and been on the M20 within half an hour. He put his fingers to his temples and massaged circles, thinking fast. Blizzard.
‘That’s the easiest way to describe how it feels,’ he said. ‘The migraines, they’re like a white-out in the snow. I was at a funeral in Wickton and I hadn’t eaten. Perfect storm: high stress, no food. I should have known. Usually I keep biscuits or something in the car, but—’
‘Tom Harding’s funeral?’ The young female officer’s face was ardent. ‘I heard it was today, I knew he came from round here.’ Her colleague gave her a disapproving look, but Sean seized his chance.
‘Yes he did. We were old friends.’
‘Oh, Mr Cawson, I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she said. ‘I read about it when it happened, and how you survived. He sounds such an amazing man.’
‘Yes,’ said Sean, ‘he was. Thank you. And I’m sorry to have caused you concern. I feel much better now, and I’ll stop at the next opportunity and get some food and drink.’
‘You’re lucky you didn’t have an accident,’ she said. ‘I mean, again.’
‘Yes. I am.’
They diverted the traffic to let him out, and followed for a mile, where he signalled off to the petrol station. Sean got a Diet Coke and a packet of chocolate peanuts for instant energy, and checked all the electronics.
Everything worked. He looked in the boot – the blanket, the hat and gloves, all still in their bag. He wanted it to be a migraine, very badly. But he knew it wasn’t. Tom was dead and he had survived. The inquest was moving towards him like a great cargo ship on the horizon, and he was locked in its path. When it hit, he would have to go under the ice again.
Two thousand six hundred and sixty-four miles away, on the top of the world, the blue cursors moved slowly across Danny Long’s screen as he looked in on what used to be the ice of the North Pole, now just water. It was getting busier, the cargo ships joined by tankers. He clicked on a few. Cosco was sending a lot over the top from Shanghai to Rotterdam, and Maersk went the other way. Some Russian vessels, minding their Ps and Qs. Nothing to report, just as he liked it. He fired off a quick email to his boss, to confirm it.
At supper this evening Peter told some of his remarkable Spitzbergen stories – about his comrade Andreas Bek. ‘Well, you see, it was up about Dutchman’s Island, or Amsterdam Island, that Andreas Bek and I were on shore and got in among all the graves. We thought we’d like to see what was in them, so we broke up some of the coffins, and there they lay. Some of them still had flesh on their jaws and noses, and some of them still had their caps on their heads. Andreas was a devil of a fellow, you see, and he broke up the coffins and got hold of the skulls, and rolled them about here and there. Some of them he set up for targets and shot at. Then he wanted to see if there was marrow left in their bones, so he took and broke a thigh-bone, and sure enough, there was marrow; he took and picked it out with a wooden pin.’
‘How could he do a thing like that?’
‘Oh, it was only a Dutchman, you know.’
