Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [152]
Aunt Vespasia, dressed in deep lavender (she refused to wear black), stood next to Charlotte, her chin high, her shoulders square, her hand gripping fiercely her silver-handled cane. She loathed it, but she was obliged to lean on it for support as Clitheridge droned on about the inevitability of death and the frailty of man.
“Fool,” she said under her breath. “Why on earth do vicars imagine God cannot be spoken to in simple language and needs everything explained to Him in at least three different ways? I always imagine God as the last person to be impressed by long words or to be deceived by specious excuses. For heaven’s sake, He made us. He knows perfectly well that we are fragile, stupid, glorious, grubby and brave.” She poked her stick into the ground viciously. “And He certainly does not want these fanfaronades. Get on with it, man! Inter the poor creature and let us go and speak well of him in some comfort!”
Charlotte closed her eyes, wincing in case someone had heard. Vespasia’s voice was not loud, but it was piercingly clear with immaculate enunciation. She heard a very soft “Here, here” behind her and involuntarily turned. She met Stephen Shaw’s level blue eyes, bright with pain, and belying the smile on his lips.
She turned back to the grave again immediately, and saw Lally Clitheridge’s look of steel-hard jealousy, but it aroused more pity in her than anger. Had she been married to Hector Clitheridge there would certainly have been moments when she too might have dreamed wild, impermissible dreams, and hated anyone who broke their fantastic surface, however ridiculous or slight.
Clitheridge was still wittering on, as if he could not bear to let the moment go, as though delaying the final replacing of the earth somehow extended a part of Amos Lindsay.
Oliphant was restive, moving his weight from one foot to the other, conscious of the grief and the indignity of it.
At the far end of the grave Alfred Lutterworth stood bareheaded, the wind ruffling his ring of white hair, and close beside him, her hand on his arm, Flora looked young and very pretty. The wind had put a touch of color into her cheeks, and the anxiety seemed to have gone from her expression. Even while Charlotte watched she saw Lutterworth place his hand over hers and tighten it a fraction.
Over her shoulder to the left, at the edge of the graveyard, Constable Murdo stood as upright as a sentry on duty, his buttons shining in the sun. Presumably he was here to observe everyone, but Charlotte never saw his gaze waver from Flora. For all that he seemed to observe, she might have been the only person present.
She saw Pitt only for a moment, a lean shadow somewhere near the vestry, trailing the ends of a muffler in the breeze. He turned towards her and smiled. Perhaps he had known she would come. For the space of an instant the crowd disappeared and there was no one else there. It was as if he had touched her. Then he turned and went on towards the yew hedge and the shadows. She knew he would be watching everything, expressions, gestures, whose eyes met whose, who spoke, who avoided speaking. She wondered if anything she had learned and told him was any use at all.
Maude Dalgetty was standing near the head of the grave. She was a little plumper than in her heyday, and the lines were quite clear in her face, but were all upward, generous and marked by humor. She was still a beauty, and perhaps always would be. In repose, as she was now, there was nothing sour in her features, nothing that spoke of regret.
Beside her, John Dalgetty stood very straight, avoiding even the slightest glance to where Quinton Pascoe stood equally rigid, doing his duty by a man he had liked but quarreled with fiercely. It was the attitude of a soldier at the grave of a fallen enemy. Dalgetty’s was the pose of a soldier also, but he was mourning a warrior in a mutual cause. Never once in the service did they acknowledge each other.
Josiah Hatch was bareheaded,