The Road to Lichfield

by Penelope Lively

  The coffin has been placed at the top of the nave, just below the choir stalls. It looks lonely there, and smaller, somehow, than one would expect. There are flowers on it.

  They have all been given little leaflets with the order of the funeral service. You are not expected to know that, as you should know Mattins or Evensong. She and Graham, in worried collaboration, have chosen the hymns, trying to remember what father liked. It was not easy. Since, as Graham pointed out, they had both been lapsed C. of E. since an early age, they had not been to church with him nor discussed his tastes. He had accepted their abandonment of religion without comment or apparent distress. He went to church himself more or less regularly, but without fuss, as one might visit the public library or attend meetings of a local society: it was not possible to know what he felt about it. There had been a paragraph in the Will expressing his wish to be buried in this churchyard.

  They stand to sing, and sit to listen to the vicar, and stand again. The service is orderly, and tranquil, and although not lengthy somehow takes a long time: long enough for thoughts to roam from what the vicar is saying (‘ … whose neighbourly presence here in Starbridge so many of us are going to miss, a man whose natural modesty and reticence kept from many of us his past record as …’) to the incongruity of the War Memorial window in the chapel (bayonets and tin helmets in khaki-coloured glass) to the coffin under its canopy of dahlias and chrysanthemums, whose shape becomes less disturbing as the half hour passes. It is not possible to see the non-family part of the congregation, segregated on the other side of the aisle, without turning the head, which Anne does not do.

  It isn’t really sad at all, she thinks, not just at this moment, anyway. It is like time suspended, as though here and now had no precedent nor sequence but existed all on its own, for its own sake, which is quite painless.

  The sun shafts down through the Perp. north window (it must have stopped raining) and the congregation, uncertain in its small size which allows individual voices to be heard, sings and answers the vicar and sits and stands. Shirley Barron has a rather nice contralto; other voices are difficult to pin to persons. I understand, for once, Anne thinks, the solace of religion, not I think that it would ever have done me any good. And she wonders about her father: what did he find here, just a suspension of time and bother, or something larger?

  But the suspension of time, like much else, is illusory. All of a sudden the vicar is turning to the altar to say the final prayer and the frock-coated men who have sat so unobtrusively in a side pew have moved forward to take up the coffin. Graham looks at her to see that she is ready and again they walk after the coffin down the aisle, with Don a tactful step or two behind, and out into the sunny churchyard and up through the long grass among the graves to a place at the far corner where a canvas-covered hole is ready. There is purple vetch in the grass, and a foam of old-man’s-beard over the hedge at the end, and a robin singing in a bush. The vicar is already at the grave-side, and arranges them all with smile and gesture on the turf beyond, Anne and Graham in front, the rest somewhere about. A clump of blue crane’s-bill, profusely flowering, has been sliced in two by the spade when the grave was dug, which seems a pity. The vicar folds his hands on his surplice and prays, and while he prays the frock-coated men do what has to be done with long canvas straps, quietly and competently, and the coffin has gone almost before one realizes it. The sun is very warm on the back, like an affectionate hand, and the wind shaking the line of poplars beyond the churchyard wall creates a blink of green and silver that is almost distracting. The men are pulling up their straps now, and stooping to roll them, and the vicar is strewing some earth upon the coffin.

  Anne is amazed: she has never seen a burial before, except in films (Hamlet springs ridiculously to mind), and is surprised to find reality so close to pretence. This is how it is done, just as they said. The vicar stands for a moment in silent prayer, and then moves away over the grass, and after they have all stood for a moment or two they turn and move after him. The robin is still singing in the bush, and the wind ruffles the ivy on the older gravestones over there by the wall, the ones whose inscriptions are all but obliterated.

  It is finished. That is that. They are all by the church porch again now and the vicar is shaking them by the hand, but it is Don who murmurs thanks and appreciation, not Anne or Graham who seem as yet unequal to the moment. And then the local friends come up and say a few words before discreetly leaving. And Shirley Barron. Anne says, ‘It was very nice of you to come. This is my brother Graham,’ and Shirley and Graham smile at one another and talk for a moment, until there is an awkward pause and Shirley Barron says well, she must be getting along, she supposes, and does so.

  And now there is only David left. ‘Oh,’ Anne says, ‘this is David Fielding, Don, who used to live here near father. You’ve met Graham, haven’t you, David?’ And David says, yes, he has indeed, and they all four stand there and agree that the service was very nicely done. The churchyard is quiet now, quite still except for a blackbird rummaging among the leaves; one feels the place would prefer to be left to itself now. David is saying something about one of the neighbours who came to the funeral and as he puts his hand up to shade his eyes from the sun Anne sees that healed scar on his thumb, from the day he cut himself pulling out the rose-bush. The rose-bush, she noticed last week, has produced two very vigorous new shoots; the roots must have survived underground. She feels suddenly very tired, and wishes everyone would go away. They walk together to the churchyard gate, and say goodbye, and David gets into his car and drives off, and Anne, Don and Graham get into Don’s car. Don says he thinks they could all do with some lunch now, and what about that hotel in Lichfield?

  ‘You never told me you were moving, Annie?’ said Graham over lunch, and she replied guiltily that she must have forgotten, with everything else that had been going on.

  ‘Nice house?’ said Graham, and Don described the converted coach house with its two acres and its view of the downs and its scope for extension, should one want that. ‘I was a bit lucky there,’ he said. ‘Anne got a tip-off from someone she knows in the local planning office and I was able to buy it before it came properly on the market.’ And as he spoke Anne remembered that brown envelope she picked up off the mat as they left the house, stamped on the outside “Berkshire County Council”, she now saw, taking it from her bag, which accounted for the association of ideas.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I never read my letter this morning.’

  Reading, she began to smile. Oh no, she thought, this is absurd really, whatever will Sandra say … ‘What’s the joke?’ said Don.

  ‘I’m beińg offered a job. Would you believe it! By Mr Jewkes. They’re appointing someone called an adviser to the planning officer, apparently, whose job is to go round looking at buildings from a historical point of view – finding out about their origins and so forth – supplementing their information on listed buildings – so that the local planning office can keep one jump ahead, as it were, and have information ready on old buildings that aren’t listed but may become vulnerable to development or whatever.’

  ‘It sounds just up your street,’ said Don.

  ‘It’s a nice letter. Yes – yes, it does.’

  ‘Local government – much more lucrative than teaching.’

  ‘I’d get Grade III’ she said, looking again at the letter. ‘Whatever that may be.’

  ‘Never mind the money,’ said Graham. ‘It’s the job satisfaction that counts. You take it – next thing you know you’ll be Town Clerk.’

  ‘I think I will,’ she said. ‘You know I rather think I will take it.’

  They went back to Starbridge, after calling in at the town’s main estate agent. ‘Are you sure,’ Graham had said once more, coming out of the hotel, ‘sure we shouldn’t leave it for a few months?’, and she replied no, we might as well get it over with, no point in the house standing empty through the winter. And if we haven’t anything to make us we’ll never get
on with clearing things up there, will we? You’d better come out there now, if you’ve time, and decide what you want. We’re not going home till later, Don and I.

  She felt better. They were over now, both things; the funeral, seeing David. Time was on the move again. It will be all right, she thought, if it’s no worse than this. Let’s get on now, and do things. And I have a job; fancy that.

  They toured the house. ‘Oh Lord,’ said Graham helplessly. ‘What do we do with all this?’ ‘We see what we would like to keep,’ she said, ‘and give the rest away. Jumble sales and that.’ Graham opened a wardrobe, and they fell silent at the row of suits, shoes, shirts. ‘Look,’ said Don, ‘why don’t you two leave me to put all this in boxes and take it down to Oxfam or somewhere – then you could get on looking through the china and things.’ How tactful, she thought, how considerate. We seem all to be on our best behaviour today; perhaps it is the clothes that do it.

  It did not take long, disposing of objects; this for him, that for me. But I don’t need anything, Graham kept saying, the flat’s stuffed with rubbish I don’t use, anyway.

  ‘It’s not a case of needing. Here, I think you should have his desk. Do you remember how fascinating it used to seem, when one was a child – all those little drawers.’

  ‘That ink-stain was your doing, wasn’t it? I remember the commotion.’

  They stood side by side, watching Don through the window, getting out of the car after his excursion to Oxfam. He came back into the house and went into the cloakroom. Anne said, ‘We’d better get on – there’s all the china yet.’

  ‘It occurred to me,’ said Don, coming into the room, the fishing-rod in his hand, ‘that maybe this should go to that chap we were talking to this morning – didn’t you say he was a fishing friend of your father’s? And I suppose none of us has any use for it.’

  Her father’s desk, once before associated with the nauseous creep of guilt, heaves and plunges; the room is unstable for several seconds before she is able to say, ‘Oh, I don’t know … Maybe, but I expect he’s got one of his own and I believe they’re worth quite a bit.’

  ‘Just as you like,’ says Don, putting the rod in a corner, and Graham says, ‘How about I make us all a cup of tea?’

  ‘Lovely,’ Anne says in gratitude. ‘Yes, that’s just what we need.’

  ‘Haven’t we been here before once?’ she said, going into the hotel. ‘Or is it that all Red Lions and Black Swans or whatever look the same?’ The bar was lavishly beamed, aglow with brass and copper, the walls energetic with Regency hunting prints and racing scenes, unseasonal flowers spilling from the stone fireplace.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ said Don, ‘you may be right. I seem to remember some jaunt to Stratford – years ago. But we didn’t eat here; we tried to but it was full up. We bought stuff in the end and ate it by the river. Sherry?’

  ‘Of course’ she said, when he came back from the bar. ‘It was the time we went to Much Ado. And yes, you’re right, they turned us away and we had this picnic.’

  ‘Nice that we’ve made it at last, then. Hungry?’

  ‘So so. That was when we decided to have Judy.’

  ‘Well, that I don’t remember. I don’t have your kind of total recall when it comes to some things. How about fish? Trout with almonds?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Imagine if we’d decided differently. No Judy.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t, did we? So there she is, take it or leave it. I think I’m going to try the duck.’

  ‘Don’t you ever think,’ she said, ‘about things being otherwise? Or having been otherwise?’

  ‘It seems an unproductive line of thought.’

  ‘Oh, it’s unproductive all right, I suppose. But interesting. Anyway, I’m glad we decided to produce Judy. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course. She’s not so bad, by and large. Which reminds me, are we to allow this request for a pony? One trout,’ he said to the waiter, ‘and one duck. What about a starter, Anne?’

  ‘Melon. Or something. All right, a pony, I suppose. Remember I’m going to be working, though.’

  ‘So you are. And could you,’ he went on to the waiter, ‘ask them to hurry it a bit. We’ve got a longish drive ahead.’

  ‘Wasn’t it nice of my Mr Jewkes,’ she said, over the melon, ‘to think of asking. And I thought we’d crossed swords, in a way, at the start.’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘I’d like to think it was a kind of beginning. Like the new house – I’m really feeling quite keen on that, darling. I can’t think why I forgot to tell Graham about it. Beginning a different bit of life – I know you’ll think that sounds silly, but well, I just feel that would be a good idea. It fits in, somehow, with father dying. And it being autumn.’

  ‘Spring,’ said Don, ‘is surely the conventional time for new beginnings. But I daresay you’re right. Change never did anyone any harm.’

  ‘And you too. Taking over from Jim Thwaites. It’s a beginning for you, too.’

  ‘I suppose it is. Talking of which’ – he paused, studying, apparently, the layout of the cutlery – ‘talking of which, I ran into that young accountant we met with them that evening. Waiter … I think we could do with some rolls or something.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember vaguely.’

  ‘He seemed to remember you rather better than that. In fact he’d been out to your father’s house to see if you were there, on the off-chance you could do with some help clearing things out.’

  ‘Oh. I suppose I wasn’t there.’

  ‘You were there. But he didn’t, in the end, ring the bell. It was first thing in the morning, apparently – he was on his way to Derbyshire for a day’s fishing – he saw a car, two, in fact, he said, and …’

  The trout and duck, arriving, interrupted for a moment. ‘ … No, the fish is for my wife. And we asked for some salad, I think … Yes, we were somewhat at cross purposes at that point, he seemed to have been under the impression that I was up there, saw me, apparently, shaving at the bathroom window and decided that it was too early to intrude so …’

  ‘But,’ she said stupidly, ‘you weren’t.’

  ‘Quite.’

  The shock, the downward plummet of the stomach, is like, insofar as it is like anything, the realization that there is already another car on the crest of the road, coming hard at one. But there is no recession of the feeling as one brakes and swings back out of danger. Instead it lies there in the gullet, like a cold hard stone, and the hotel dining-room becomes very sharp and intense, like a dream landscape, and other people’s voices unnaturally loud. The man at the next table is saying that given the present situation he cannot but feel one should draw in one’s horns a bit, and a woman across the room thinks it is a mistake to use dahlias and michaelmas daisies together. The trout, which should be eaten, looks like plaster food, stage food on a set.

  ‘Quite,’ said Don. ‘Which put me in a slightly awkward position. But fortunately someone turned up at that point – it was a pub, one lunch-time – and the thing was dropped.’

  ‘Don,’ she said, ‘I …’

  ‘It was, I take it, that schoolmaster?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Everything all right, sir?’ said the dark presence looming behind Don’s right shoulder, and Don, taking an exploratory mouthful of duck, said everything seemed to be fine, thank you.

  ‘Madam?’

  She nodded.

  I feel sick, she thought, I can’t eat this. Opposite, Don ate steadily. The man at the next table thought a lot depended on the next election; the woman across the room did not much care for antirrhinums, herself.

  ‘How long?’ said Don. ‘If I may ask.’

  ‘Since April.’

  ‘And is he,’ he said, ‘married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Don. He glanced across the table at her. ‘You haven’t had any salad.’

  She took salad, arranged i
t on her plate, looked at it. ‘Don,’ she said, ‘I am so sorry.’

  Don said again ‘Ah …’ The waiter, pausing in flight between the tables, swooped up their bottle of wine, filled both glasses, passed on.

  ‘How long,’ she said, ‘have you …? No, I’ve no right to ask.’

  ‘Let me see. It must have been about June I met Sheldon in that pub. End of.’

  June. July. Scotland.

  Nothing said.

  All that time.

  ‘Aren’t you,’ said Don, ‘going to eat that trout?’

  She picked up the knife and fork.

  ‘Sheldon,’ said Don, ‘does a bit of work for us now and then, which made it the more potentially embarrassing.’

  Embarrassing?

  In former times, in some circles, the price of betrayal has been death, which seems reasonable enough.

  Embarrassing.

  ‘Why didn’t you,’ she said, ‘say?’

  ‘Say?’

  ‘Say you knew.’

  He looked at her now, over his plate, which was empty, and hers, which was not. ‘I assumed,’ he said, ‘That it would blow over.’

  Blow over?

  ‘And am I,’ he said after a minute or so, ‘right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. It’s blown over.’

  The waiter, hovering for plates, looked pointedly at the quarter-eaten trout.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not very hungry.’

  ‘A sweet, sir? Cheese?’

  ‘I think we’ll just have coffee.’

  They walk, Anne in front, Don behind, to the bar, which is also where coffee is taken. The other diners do not give them so much as a glance. They sit in the bar, amid the brass and copper and hounds in full cry, and drink coffee. Don scrutinizes the bill. There is an item which puzzles him, and which he queries with the waiter, but it is satisfactorily explained: Don takes ten pounds from his wallet, and the bill is paid. That was an expensive trout. ‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘we should be on our way?’