The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [49]
The sun shone brilliantly on the day of Angela’s funeral. The Major woke very late and by the time he had gone downstairs to breakfast dressed in a dark suit and black tie for the sombre occasion Edward had already left for the church. So had the twins, apparently. There was no sign of them. Only Ripon was left, looking pale and wretched, unable to find anything to say. He looked relieved when the Major refused his offer of a lift to the church, saying that he would prefer to walk.
“Angela had leukaemia,” Ripon told him in reply to his question. “We thought you knew.”
“Well, no, actually, I didn’t,” replied the Major, sounding rather cross. How typical of the Spencers to leave him to find out for himself!
He entered the churchyard by a side gate of wrought iron which at some time in the distant past had been left open so long that it had rusted that way and was now immovable, embroidered by thick green threads of grass into the bank behind it. In earlier days it had borne an inscription in Gothic letters so ornate that one could hardly read them...The Lord is...My shepherd? Rust had entirely dislodged the rest of the scroll. “My defence,” perhaps. Whatever it was it lay in dark flakes somewhere in the grass.
A little farther on he came to a pile of fresh, dark earth and it gave him a disagreeable shock when he realized that this was where Angela was to be interred. As he passed he was unable to resist a glance down into the neat oblong trench along the sides of which the white knuckles of roots showed like nuts in a slice of fruit-cake. Down there, in the course of a year or two, these slender white fingers would grow out again and wrap themselves round the wooden box imprisoning this unfortunate English lady (poor Angela, he was sure that her thoughts had always been returning like little lost dogs to such places as Epsom and Mayfair, Oxford and Cowes) for ever in Irish soil. He moved on now into the deep blue shadow cast by the tower of the church, a structure as modest as the headstones in the churchyard and made of the same grey, granitic stone quarried on the coast (Edward had once told him) ten or so miles away. The Roman Catholic chapel, as it happened, was also made of this stone.
The Major slipped into a pew at the back and, lulled by the organ’s soft piping and rumbling and creaking of pedals, fell into a pleasant and confused day dream about a hiking holiday he had taken before the war, remembering how he had lain on a hillside on a sunny day like this, the long grass combed flat by the wind. It was very peaceful here.
When he looked up at last he saw Edward. Although his face was stony and expressionless he must have been weeping a few moments earlier, for his normally bristling moustache had become sodden and was drooping towards his chin; a drop of water clinging to it caught a ray of sunlight as he passed and glittered like a diamond. With Edward were two slim girls in identical black dresses and black veils that scarcely dimmed their shining blonde curls. They stood there, tall and straight, one on each side of their father, their lovely faces sad and composed as they began to move up the aisle in step with Edward who had an arm over each of their shoulders and was lurching slightly, in the manner of a prize-fighter being helped from the ring. At the end of the aisle they neatly supported him into the front pew, even tilted him forward a little to pray, before kneeling themselves and bowing their shining heads.
The service took its course. The rector had begun to talk about Angela and was evidently having difficulty, not merely in marshalling the dead girl’s qualities, but even in thinking of anything to say about her at all. A shaft of blood-stained sunlight crept from the dusty hassock on to the gleaming toe of the Major’s shoe. The devoted sister, the rector was saying, of these two lovely children (and of...of this fine