Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [9]
‘Yes, he was.’
I supposed that, back in his schooldays, my father would have gone through the usual rituals. There was no need to tell this clergyman about his frequently expressed view that the poets talked more sense about heaven and hell than the preachers ever did.
‘Half past three,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I shall arrange the interment for half past three. The Protestant chapel is at the far side of the burial ground. The total cost will be five pounds, sixteen shillings and four pence.’ Apparently mistaking my expression, he added impatiently, ‘That is the standard charge. There are the bearers and the gravediggers to be paid, as well as my own small emolument. I assume you would wish me to make all the arrangements?’
‘Yes, please.’
I took my purse out of my reticule and counted the money on to the faded crochet mat in the middle of the table: five bright sovereigns, sixteen shillings, four penny pieces. It left the little purse as floppy as the udder of a newly milked goat. I’d had to sell a gold locket belonging to my mother and my grandmother’s silver watch to pay for my journey. It had been a nightmare within a nightmare, going round the streets of Dover trying to find a jeweller to give anything like a fair price for them, with the steam packet whistling from the harbour for last passengers. In normal times I’d have cried bitterly at parting with them but, turned hard by grief and need, I’d bargained like an old dame at market. As I stowed the purse away the clergyman asked, with just a touch of sympathy in his voice, ‘Have you no male relatives?’
‘A younger brother. He is in Bombay with the East India Company.’
I had a suspicion he intended to pray over me, so moved hastily on to the other thing I needed.
‘You must know the English community in Calais well.’ (He did not look as if he knew anything well, but a little flattery never hurts.) ‘Can you tell me if there are any particular places where they gather.’
‘The better sort come to the Protestant Church on Sunday mornings. For the ladies, the Misses Besswell run a charity knitting circle on Wednesday afternoons and there are also a series of evening subscription concerts organised by …’
I let him run on. I could not imagine my father or his friends at any event known to the Reverend Bateman.
I left the house, filling my lungs with the better smells outside – seaweed and fish, fresh baked bread and coffee. This reminded me that I had eaten and drunk nothing since the message had arrived, back in Dover. I was almost scared of doing either. That message had divided my life into before and after, like a guillotine blade coming down. Everything I did now – eating, drinking, sleeping – was taking me further away from the time when my father had been living. I still couldn’t think of eating, not even a crumb, but the smell of coffee was seductive. I followed it round the corner and on to a small quay. It wasn’t part of the larger harbour where the channel packet came and went, more of a local affair for the fishermen. There were nets spread out on the pebbles, an old man sitting on a boulder and mending one of them, his bent bare toes twined in the net to keep it stretched, needle flashing through the meshes like a tiny agile fish. The coffee shop was no more than a booth with a counter made of driftwood planks, a stove behind it and a small skinny woman with a coffee