No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [14]
Joseph’s recollections continued as the service began, and he stared at all the long, familiar faces, sad and confused now in their hasty black. He found his throat too tight to sing the hymns.
Then it was time for him to speak, just briefly, as representative of the family. He did not wish to preach; it was not the time. Let someone else do that—Hallam Kerr, if he had a mind to. Joseph was here as a son to remember his parents. This was not about praise, but about love.
It was not easy to keep his voice from breaking, his thoughts in order, and his words clear and simple. But this, after all, was his skill. He knew bereavement intimately, and he had explored it over and over in his mind until it had no more black corners for him.
“We are met together in the heart of the village, perhaps the soul of it, to say goodbye for the moment to two of our number who were your friends, our parents—I speak for myself, and for my brother, Matthew, and my sisters, Hannah and Judith.”
He hesitated, struggling to maintain his composure. There was no movement or rustle of whispering among the upturned faces staring at him.
“You all knew them. You met in the street day by day, at the post office, at the shops, over the garden wall. And most of all you met here. They were good people, and we are hurt and diminished by their going.”
He stopped for a moment, then began again. “We shall miss my mother’s patience, her spirit of hope that was never just easy words, never denial of evil or suffering, but the quiet faith that they could be overcome, and the trust that the future would be bright. We must not fail her by forgetting what she taught us. We should be grateful for every life that has given us happiness, and gratitude is the treasuring of the gift, the nourishing of it, the use, and then to pass it on bright and whole to others.”
He saw a movement, a nodding, a hundred familiar faces turned toward him, somber and bruised with the suddenness of grief, each one hurt by its own private memory.
“My father was different,” he continued. “His mind was brilliant, but his heart was simple. He knew how to listen to others without leaping to conclusions. He could tell a longer, funnier, more rambling joke than anyone else I know, and they were never grubby or unkind. For him, unkindness was the great sin. You could be brave and honest, obedient and devout, but if you could not be kind, then you had failed.”
He found himself smiling as he spoke, even though his voice was so thick with tears it was hard to make his words clear. “He did not care for organized religion. I have known him to fall asleep in church and wake up applauding because he thought for an instant that he was in a theater. He could not bear intolerance, and he thought those who confessed religious faith could be among the worst at this. But he would have defended St. Paul with his own life for his words on love: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am nothing.’
“He was not perfect, but he was kind. He was gentle with others’ weaknesses. I would gladly labor all my life that you would be able to say the same of me when I, too, come to say goodbye—for the time being.”
He was shaking with relief as he returned to his seat beside Hannah and felt her hand close over his. But he knew that under her veil she was weeping and would not look at him.
Hallam Kerr took the pulpit, his words sonorous and sure but curiously lacking in conviction, as if he, too, had been swept out of his depth. He continued the service in the familiar way, the words and music woven like a bright thread through the