Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [132]
Characteristic late-twentieth-century squeamishness about bodily fluids.
Yellow stick-on note: I suppose it’s terrible to think about your husband that way, as though he’s a subject in an anthropological study. I seem to be thinking about this whole thing, Roz’s death, the funeral, everything, as though I’m observing from outside. I suppose I am. I wasn’t there when it was all going on, when she died or when they buried her. I left that kind of adventure behind a long time ago. Now I just watch recordings.
I put in the other playback lens and sat down in one of the beanbags in the lounge. I thought I’d be confused, try to walk into a wall or something, but I was still aware of the room around me even though I could see the funeral. Like watching television, I suppose, my brain had no trouble sorting out which image I was focusing on.
All those people, all that colour and noise… I wonder if Roz would have been proud, or annoyed, or faintly embarrassed. Of course, the funeral is more for the survivors than the deceased, a release of emotion, the chance to acknowledge death and move on.
The voice-over (it was only later I realized I was hearing it through my eyes) says that Roz was being buried near her nephew and niece. Sixteen and fourteen. That’s unspeakable. At least Roz chose to be part of the violence, instead of just being caught up in it and spat out again.
The end result is no different.
There’s a hole in the ground, in the middle of a patch of bare soil. Chris and the other pallbearers put the bier down in front of it.
Chris’s eulogy has me in tears. It doesn’t seem to affect the viewing lens.
306
Chris lifts Roz up from the bier, wrapped up in a prepared animal skin – the voice-over calls it a kaross. She looks tiny in his arms.
There’s a moment where he hesitates at the edge of the hole. I wonder what he’s thinking. That there must be some last-minute reprieve, that the woman in his arms will suddenly struggle and curse? Is he thinking about the augmented soil of the Reclamation Zone going to work on her, turning her into itself, the healthy grass growing out of her transformed body?
Maybe he’s thinking about the time he and Roz huddled together next to the fire, beside a Berkshire lake on a freezing winter night.
Maybe he’s thinking about how hot it is in his armour.
He looks up, suddenly. The POV swivels after a moment, following his alarmed gaze.
Chris warned me about the Doctor’s collapse, but it didn’t soften the shock. Even the last few days, getting used to the pale figure in the wheelchair, didn’t stop me from jumping out of my chair, ready to run to him as he folded up and fell to his knees.
Maybe my brain wasn’t as good at sorting out the real from the recording as I’d thought.
They’d edited in some close-ups from another POV, which only adds to my disorientation. Chris is trying to help him up, gripping one of his arms, while he clutches at his chest with the other hand and insists on talking to someone who isn’t there. You can’t make out what he’s saying, the POV couldn’t get close enough.
Some medical staff arrive after a couple of minutes. Chris lifts him up on to a stretcher, and follows as he’s carried out of shot.
He looks dead. The voice-over assures you that he later recovers.
After that, the funeral rolls on like a juggernaut. One of the pallbearers kneels down and puts Roz into the hole.
There’s a pile of loam next to the grave. The other pallbearers pick up shovels and fill in the hole.
The voice-over tells me that the area will be sown with seeds; within a week, Roz’s grave will be indistinguishable from the rest of the savanna, just like the graves of Somezi and Mantsebo. And 307
I wonder how she’d feel about that, and I realize I didn’t know her nearly as well as I thought I did.
I took out the playback lens, and decided that I needed a drink.
The Doctor and Chris have been here for a week,