A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [20]
“Behold I shew you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…”
The lesson ended and Bob was carried from the church. George and Jean moved outside with the rest of the congregation and reassembled around the grave in a muggy, gun-gray light that promised a storm before teatime. Susan stood on the far side of the hole looking puffy and broken, with her two sons on either side of her. Jack had his arm around his mother but was not tall enough to carry the gesture off with aplomb. Ben looked strangely bored.
“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.”
Bob was lowered into the ground on four sturdy hessian straps. Susan, Jack and Ben each threw a white rose onto the coffin and the peace was shattered by some buffoon driving past the churchyard with his car stereo turned up.
“…our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body that it may be like unto his glorious body…”
He looked at the pallbearers and realized he’d never seen one with a beard. He wondered if it was a rule, like pilots, so they got an airtight seal when the oxygen masks came down. Something about hygiene, perhaps.
And when their time came? Did working with all those corpses make them sanguine? Of course, they only saw people afterward. Becoming a corpse, that was the hard bit. Tim’s sister worked in a hospice for fifteen years and still went to sleep in the garage with the engine running when they found that growth in her brain.
The vicar asked them to say the Lord’s Prayer together. George said the passages he agreed with out loud (“Give us this day our daily bread…lead us not into temptation”) and mumbled through the references to God.
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen…And now, ladies and gentlemen.” A perky, scout-group tone entered the vicar’s voice. “I would like, on behalf of Susan and the rest of the Green family, to invite you to share some food and drink in the village hall which you will find across the road directly beside the car park.”
Jean shivered theatrically. “I do hate these things.”
They moved with the tide of darkly suited people, chatting quietly now, down the curved gravel path, through the lych-gate and across the road.
Jean touched his elbow and said, “I’ll catch you up in a few minutes.”
He turned to ask her where she was going but she was already retracing her steps in the direction of the church.
He turned back again and saw David Symmonds walking toward him, smiling, his hand extended.
“George.”
“David.”
David had left Shepherds four or five years ago. Jean had bumped into him on a couple of occasions but George had hardly seen him. It was not active dislike. Indeed, if everyone in the office had been like David the place would have run a great deal more smoothly. No jockeying for position. No passing the buck. Bright chap, too. Brains behind the whole sustainable forest stuff which got them Cornwall and Essex.
He dressed a little too well. That was probably the best way of putting it. Expensive aftershave. Opera cassettes in the car.
When he announced that he was retiring early everyone backed off. Sick animal in the herd. Everyone feeling a little insulted. As if he’d been doing it as a hobby, this thing to which they had devoted their lives. And no real plans, either. Photography. Holidays in France. Gold C gliding badge.
It all seemed rather different now that George had gone down the same route himself, and when he recalled John McLintock saying that David was never really “one of us” he could hear the sour grapes.
“Good to see you.” David squeezed George’s hand. “Even if the circumstances aren’t the cheeriest.”
“Susan didn’t seem good.”
“Oh, I think Susan will be all right.”
Today, for example, David was wearing a black suit and a gray roll-neck sweater. Other people might think it disrespectful, but George could see now that it was simply a different way of doing things. No longer being part of the crowd.