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By Root 1486 0

made little difference. On Tuesday the minister of Mrs. Thaw’s church conducted a short service in the living room while the coffin was screwed tight and taken deftly downstairs to the hearse. The living room was crowded with neighbours and old friends and relatives whom Thaw had heard his parents speak of but hardly ever met. Twice or thrice during the service the door was furtively opened and those beside it shifted to admit a stealthily breathing old man or woman. Thaw stood by the sideboard wearing his newest suit. It struck him that the minister had not visited his mother during the last weeks, and this not through failure of duty (he was a young earnest nervous man) but because his presence would have been an intrusion. To Mrs. Thaw and her friends the church had been a gathering place. They went to a service on Sunday, and on Thursday to a social club in the church hall, but none could have been accused of piety. Mrs. Thaw had been shocked when, some years before, Thaw called himself an atheist, but no more shocked than when, shortly afterward, he called himself a Christian and started turning the other cheek in his fights with Ruth. A phrase came into his head: “The consolations of religion.” As far as he could see, his mother had lived and died without consolations of any kind at all.

The service ended and he went down to the cars with his father, the minister and a few others. The cars were shining black Rolls-Royces with silent engines and as they sped through the streets of the northern suburbs he looked out of the window feeling comfortable and privileged. It was a grey day, a lid of grey sky had shut down on Glasgow and thin smirr fell from it. They came to a municipal cemetery so precisely on the edge of the city that on three sides it was surrounded by open fields. There was a delay at the gate. The cars halted in a line behind the cars of a funeral party ahead. After a while the cars in front disappeared and they went up a curving drive between dripping rhododendrons and stopped outside a miniature Victorian-gothic church with a smokestack behind. More neighbours and relatives were waiting at the porch and followed Thaw and his father inside. They stood in the front row of pews and everyone else crowded into the pews behind. Just before them was a tall pulpit, and to the right of it a low platform with the coffin on top. Coffin and platform were covered by a heavy red cloth. After a moment of silence Thaw began to wonder why nobody sat down. The same thought must have struck his father, for he sat down and everyone followed his example. The minister, in the black gown and white bands of a doctor of divinity, climbed into the pulpit, said a prayer and announced a hymn. Everyone stood and sang and sat down again. The minister produced a sheet of paper and said, “Before we proceed with the service I have been asked—er, to read this to you:

“During the last few months of her illness Mary Thaw was completely confined to her bed. I would like to thank those many good friends and neighbours who made these months as pleasant for her as they could. They brought gifts of fruit and of cake, and the even more precious gift of their company. I would like to tell them on her behalf how very much she appreciated their attentions, and to extend to them the thanks that she herself is unable to extend today.”

In the pews behind somebody sniffed and blew their nose. Thaw looked sideways at his father and whispered, “That was very good.” The service continued. At the words “Dust to dust and ashes to ashes,” there began a lumbering rumbling sound and the red cloth began to sag as the coffin was drawn down under it. For a second it bulged up again with a rush of air from below, then flopped so that a rectangular depression appeared where the coffin had been. Thaw was struck by a poignant sense of loss neutralized at once by a memory of a conjuror who had made a scone disappear from under a handkerchief.

Outside the church people squared their shoulders and began talking in loud cheerful voices.

“Well, that didn’t go too