The Bad Book Affair

by Ian Sansom

  “‘Dear friends,’” said old Mr. Devine, “‘do not be surprised at the painful trial that ye are suffering as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ.’”

  “Granda!” said George.

  “1 Peter 4:12,” said old Mr. Devine, with a distinctly self-satisfied air.

  “Right. And that’s meant to be some sort of comfort, is it?”

  “It doesn’t do a Christian good to grieve,” said old Mr. Devine.

  “All right,” said George. “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear any more from you today. Do you understand?”

  Mr. Devine narrowed his eyes.

  “Let’s go,” said George. “Or we’ll be late.”

  So, Israel drove to Pearce Pyper’s funeral with George and old Mr. Devine, sitting on the backseat, in total silence, surrounded by sandwiches, and bread, and chicken liver pâté.

  Outside Tumdrum Presbyterian there were crowds of mourners. Men with white hair. Women in hats. Gray stone buildings all around, the sky an eggshell blue; it was as though Pearce himself had painted the scene. Israel saw Linda; said hello to Seamus Fitzgibbons, Green Party candidate; embraced Minnie; nodded to Zelda; shook hands with Mrs. Onions; avoided Maurice Morris and Lyndsay and Mrs. Morris; and greeted at least half of the mobile library’s regular clientele, who had turned out in force to say good-bye to Pearce. Veronica cut him dead. The talk was of the day’s election and the return of Lyndsay Morris; Israel and Ted were congratulated on having helped find her.

  At two thirty the organ music began, and Pearce’s coffin was taken into the church, Israel one of the pallbearers, along with Brownie-who’d made it back from university-and a group of Pearce’s friends, artists and aristocrats mostly, and some of them both, not the kind of people you saw every day around Tumdrum, people who wore hand-benched shoes and inherited clothes and novelty headgear. One man had a handlebar mustache; another sported a long gray ponytail and wore battered brown cowboy boots; another wore a tamo’-shanter and a kilt. The rich, it seems, wear fancy dress to a funeral. Tumdrum’s Presbyterians wear black.

  Israel had never carried a coffin before. He’d been too young when his father died, and at subsequent funerals there had always been others to take the burden. The coffin weighed more than he’d expected.

  “On my count, gents,” said the undertaker, and on his count they made their slow, steady procession into the church, laying Pearce on a bier at the front, and the congregation filed in behind and sat down, and the Reverend Roberts stood up and led them in prayer, and then he began to speak.

  “A Christian funeral,” he said, without any introduction or ado, “is a service of worship in which God’s people witness to their faith in the hope of the Gospel, the communion of saints, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”

  People gulped and shifted in their seats as they began to adjust to the tone and the rhythm of what they were a part of. Israel took a deep breath.

  “A funeral,” continued the Reverend Roberts, “is God’s way of bringing comfort to the hearts of those who mourn.” He paused. “At a funeral we read the Scriptures, and prayer is offered, and praises are sung.” Another pause. “And remembrance is cherished.” You could hear the sound of the cars outside the church, in the main square, with people going about their business, as if nothing had happened, as if life were going on as normal. “A funeral is an occasion when we, by the grace of God, bless the name of the One who gives and who takes away. Though today we mourn our loss and remember our loved one, our eyes remain fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of the faith.” Israel felt a tightness in his chest and his throat. He tried to concentrate on the Reverend Roberts’s oratorical swing-the alliteration, the contrasts, his little triads of phrases.

  Then they sang a hymn, “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended, the Darkness Falls at Thy Behest,” and Israel felt a prickling around his eyes, the early signs of tears. And then they prayed. And then there was a reading. An old friend of Pearce’s-an old, old man with a shaky voice. “A reading,” he wobbled, “from the Gospel of John, chapter fourteen.” It wasn’t the words. It was the pathos of the words being spoken, the ceremony. Israel felt himself on the brink.

  And then the Reverend Roberts stood up again to speak.

  “Pearce Aloysius Pyper,” began the Reverend Roberts in sonorous tones, pausing respectfully between each word-and Israel was crying now, without shame. “Our dear friend Pearce was born on the twenty-sixth of June 1918, in the last months of the First World War. He was the third child of the Reverend Julian and Margaret Pyper. They were a privileged family-Pearce’s mother, Margaret, being a descendant of the earls of Tyrone-who had a long history of serving the poor through good works. Margaret was a suffragette, and Pearce would often recall in later years his memories of the destitute and the homeless coming to his father for assistance at the rectory in Ballycastle. Pearce was sent to Sherborne preparatory school, in England, and then to Marlborough, and from there on to Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as he was always glad to report, he graduated with what he called the poet’s degree: a Third.” There was wry laughter among the university-educated in the congregation. “On coming down from university Pearce found work as a teacher before becoming a commissioned officer in the Second Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles. He was most proud in his life, he said, of having gained the Distinguished Conduct Medal-during the Second World War, for his bravery during some of the fiercest fighting following the invasion of Dunkirk.”

  The congregation was able to relax now into the flow of the Reverend Roberts’s narrative. Israel found himself breathing more easily.

  “After the war Pearce married Lillian Jabotinsky, the celebrated soprano, and they had two sons, both of whom, alas, predeceased their father. Pearce and Lillian’s elder son, Jacob, whom some of you will doubtless remember, became a surgeon and died aged only thirty-three, in a car crash, in 1983. Their younger son, Leon, was a conservator at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and he, alas, died of a brain hemorrhage in 1999. Pearce was enormously proud of his children, and their early and tragic deaths brought him a great sadness. We should perhaps remember today that this was a man”-and here the Reverend Roberts nodded toward Pearce’s coffin-“who was not himself unacquainted with grief.”

  Some among the congregation could be heard sniffing.

  “The young Pearce and his wife lived in London, where Pearce, who taught at Westminster School, turned increasingly toward art as a means of self-expression. He held a number of exhibitions of his work and was a friend of many of the great artistic figures of the day. He returned increasingly to his work as an artist after the death of his sons and seemed to find great consolation in it.”

  Israel thought of the telegraph totem poles, and the giant concrete heads, and the bright, childlike sculptures that adorned Pearce’s gardens, and for the first time they made sense.

  “After the death of his wife, in 1966, Pearce remarried and returned to live in Ireland with his second wife, Vivian Farrell, the actress. After Vivian’s death, Pearce was to marry and divorce twice more; the triumph, one might say, of hope over experience.” The congregation smiled.

  “It is perhaps worth recalling on a day such as today that Pearce stood for Parliament-unsuccessfully-on a number of occasions, and as well as being an artist and philanthropist, he was a keen yachtsman, a cyclist, and as many of you will know, a great letter writer. His was, by any means, a life well lived.”

  There was now a steady dabbing of eyes around the church.

  “You will all, of course, have your own memories of Pearce-a man distinguished not merely by his worldly achievements, but more importantly by his very self, by his magnanimity, his good humor, and, of course, his wisdom and generosity. Personally, I got to know Pearce only recently, and was lucky enough to witness how he bore the burden of years, and his final illness, with a resolve and with a verve and a style characteristically his o
wn. He was, of course, not always an easy man to get on with-none of us are saints-and we are here today to give thanks for the life of Pearce as he was, not as we might imagine him to have been. He was a man of great passions-and those of us who occasionally felt the lash of his tongue will know that those passions extended to a great dislike of those who he felt were foolish, ignorant, or pretentious, ‘stupid bloody bastards,’ as he called them.

  “In short, Pearce Pyper was a man who was fully human, who knew who he was, and who was prepared to share himself and his life with others. Gathered here today, in our grief, we should be mindful of what the Bible teaches us: that to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to laugh, and a time to mourn. As Christians, we believe in the life eternal, and the world to come. But we also believe in the good of this life, and that the lives of the good show us what it means to be truly human. And so today we should not only mourn, but we should celebrate the life of our brother, Pearce Pyper, born twenty-sixth of June 1918. Died twenty-ninth of September 2008.”

  More hymns followed-“Praise to the Holiest in the Height,” “Ye Holy Angels Bright.” Hopeless sobbing. Prayers. The blessing. And finally the escape outside.

  “Well,” said Ted, who stood smoking outside the church, waiting for Israel and the other pallbearers to load the coffin back into the hearse. “There we are, then. Another man down.”

  “Yep,” said Israel.

  “Can’t be all bad, if it’s got you in a shirt and tie, mind.”

  “Yeah.” Israel wiped at his eyes. Ted had teamed his usual black leather car coat with a black tie and shiny black slip-on shoes.

  “Ach, ye’re all beblubbered there, look. Here.” Ted thrust a crumpled, unironed handkerchief into Israel’s hands.

  “Thanks.”

  “Good elegy,” said Ted.

  “Eulogy,” said Israel. “Yes. It was good, wasn’t it?”

  “I tell you what he didn’t say about Pearce, though,” said Ted, crushing his cigarette butt under his heel, and bending over to pick it up and pocket it. “Ouch.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah. My back, just. You know what he didn’t say?”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t mention that the old fella was completely buck mad,” said Ted.

  Israel gave a little laugh.

  “Mind, takes all sorts, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” agreed Israel. “I suppose it does.”

  It was a private interment, so Israel drove with Ted back to Pearce’s for the wake. Cars were parked all along the driveway up to the house, and inside there was an atmosphere of unforced joviality, quite different to anything Israel had experienced at any funeral in England. Women were busy serving tea and coffee, and men stood around chatting, in their overcoats. Everyone who was anyone in Tumdrum-which is to say, just about everyone-was there. Sandwiches were piled into pyramids, and bottles of whiskey were being passed casually from hand to hand. Minnie was doing the rounds with a platter of sandwiches.

  “Och, Israel,” she said. “Sandwich?”

  “What are they?”

  “Ham. Ham and cheese. Ham and pickle.”

  “Erm. No thanks. I’m vegetarian.”

  “Oh, are you? I always forget. There’s crab paste somewhere.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  “Lovely service, wasn’t it? I might get him to do mine.”

  “Yes,” agreed Israel. “Very good.”

  Israel wandered among the crowds, from room to room. Linda Wei waylaid him in the library. She was wearing a man’s dinner jacket and trousers, with a corsage, a pillbox hat, and bright red glasses.

  “You’ve heard about the books, have you?” she said.

  “Pearce has bequeathed them to the library service?”

  “You knew?”

  “He mentioned it to me, yeah.”

  Linda raised her eyebrows in dissatisfaction.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do with all these,” said Linda, glancing around despairingly at the tens of thousands of leather volumes. “Sell them, probably.”

  “Right.”

  “Pay for some new computers.”

  “Uh-huh.” Israel couldn’t be bothered to take the bait.

  “You’re unusually quiet, Armstrong.”

  “Yeah, well, you know. Just thinking about Pearce.” He was staring at the space on one wall where a bookshelf had been removed: the shelves that had done for Pearce.

  “Have you voted yet?” said Linda.

  “No,” said Israel. “I don’t think I’m going to bother.”

  “If you don’t vote you’ve no right to complain about whoever gets in.”

  “That’s true,” said Israel. “That is very true.”

  He made his way out of the library, out onto the terrace, where he found George sitting on a bench, smoking, staring out across Pearce’s garden toward the farm in the distance.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” said Israel.

  “I don’t,” said George, stubbing out her cigarette. “I’ve something for you, actually.”

  “For me?”

  “For your birthday.”

  “Really?”

  “It is your birthday, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  She took a small package from her handbag.

  “It’s a book, I’m afraid,” she said, handing it over.

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Israel.

  “Thank you?”

  “Thanks. Shall I open it?”

  “Maybe save it for later,” said George.

  “OK.”

  They sat in silence together, shivering. Israel sighed.

  “Big sigh,” said George.

  “Was it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t belong here,” said Israel.

  George laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, what? What’s funny about that?”

  George took a deep breath.

  “Let me tell you a secret, Israel. No one belongs anywhere.”

  “But you’re from here. You were born here. You grew up. You’re going to-”

  “And you think I don’t ever wish I wasn’t?”

  “Well. I don’t know. I just…”

  “Everyone’s the same, Israel. We want what we can’t have. That’s the meaning of life, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, is it?”

  She turned and looked at him. He looked at her.

  His phone rang.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “I’ll maybe see you back inside,” said George.

  “Yeah. Sure. Fine.”

  It was Gloria.

  He thought. For a moment.

  He let it ring.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For previous acknowledgments see The Truth About Babies (Granta Books, 2002), Ring Road (Fourth Estate, 2004), A Mobile Library Mystery: The Case of the Missing Books (Harper Perennial, 2006), A Mobile Library Mystery: Mr. Dixon Disappears (Harper Perennial, 2006), A Mobile Library Mystery: The Book Stops Here (HarperCollins Publishers, 2008). These stand, with exceptions. In addition I would like to thank the following. (The previous terms and conditions apply: some of them are dead; most of them are strangers; the famous are not friends; none of them bears any responsibility.)

  Amy Adams, Thomas Adès, Ingeborg Bachmann, Korrena Bailie, Georges Bataille, H. E. Bates, Hector Berlioz, Ingrid Betancourt, Dirk Bogarde, W. E. Bowman, Susan Boyle, Max Bruch, Carla Bruni, John Burnside, Vince Cable, June Caldwell, Lucy Caldwell, Eric Cantona, Helen Carr, Nina Cassian, Steve Chamberlain, Stavroula Constantinou, Alan Coren, Simon Cowell, Curious Candy, Boris Cyrulnik, Charles D’Ambrosio, Edwidge Danticat, Jacobus de Voragine, Denis Diderot, William Donaldson, Ed Dorn, Scott Douglas, Gwyneth Dunwoody, Francine du Plessix Gray, Geoff Dyer, Mircea Eliade, George Ewart Evans, Harold Evans, Maureen Evans, J.
G. Farrell, Penelope Fitzgerald, F. S. Flint, Kinky Friedman, Elaine Gaston, Elizabeth Gilbert, Ben Goldacre, William Golding, Martin Green, Hannah Hagan, Patrick Hamilton, Salma Hayek, Geoff Hill, Tom Hodgkinson, Holywood Cricket Club, Steven Isserlis, Philippe Jaccottet, Stephen Kelly, Natalie Kirk, Janusz Korczak, Shane Leslie, Doris Lessing, Joshua Levine, Colm Liddy, Derek Lundy, Humphrey Lyttelton, James MacMillan, Marcel Marceau, Annie Martz, Simon Mawer, James McAvoy, David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, Rafael Nadal, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Barack Obama, Gina Ochsner, Jay Parini, William Parkhurst, Andrew Pepper, Grayson Perry, Richard Price, Elizabeth Reapy, Alasdair Reid, Derek A. Roberts, Robin Robertson, Eoghan Ryan, Julian Schnabel, Varlam Shalamov, Michael Shannon, Ammon Shea, Barrie Sherwood, Gary Shteyngart, Sixth Bangor Scouts, Rory Stewart, Parminder Summon, Joyce Sutphen, Tilda Swinton, Margaret Twohy, Fred Voss, Peter Wild, Sheena Wilkinson, Qian Zhongshu.

  About the Author

  IAN SANSOM is a regular contributor to The Guardian and the London Review of Books. He lives in Northern Ireland.

  www.iansansom.net

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