In early June of the following year, on our first trip to London, Elsa and I met my sister at Vauxhall railway station. It was a weekday. After hurried introductions, we all took the train to Richmond, where Elsa got off to do some shopping, while my sister and I stayed on a stop further to St Margaret’s, whence we walked to Marble Hill Park, crossed the broad grass lawns to the river and ordered ourselves cappuccinos in the cafeteria. As soon as we were settled, my sister opened the zip of the large shopping bag she was carrying and pulled out a tall black cardboard cylinder, perhaps twice the size good whisky comes in. The weather was bright and we were sitting outside with young mothers and their children, pensioners, amorous couples. There was a general hum of contentment. My sister placed the cylinder on the table between us and sipped her coffee as I fiddled with the lid. It was difficult to see how it opened. My sister explained something the lady in the crematorium had said to her: that you had to be careful with your nails because the seal was tight. In fact I had already torn a nail.
‘Damn!’
‘I hope,’ my sister eventually said, watching me carefully as the lid finally came loose, ‘that you’re not going to get emotional, Tom.’
I was taken aback.
‘Because I couldn’t handle it,’ she said.
She explained that Uncle Harry had begged her to join him at a hospice memorial service for those who had died the previous November. And some people had simply howled. After a while she had had to get up and go.
I assured my sister that I had done my crying at the funeral and expected this little event to be a breeze. ‘A nice day out,’ I said. ‘No worries.’ We finished our coffees and walked to the landing stage.
‘Mum hated the water,’ my brother had emailed me the day before, ‘except for baptisms, of course.’
‘She let Dad row her on the Thames,’ I replied.
‘Only because she was in love.’
Later he wrote, ‘I suppose she’s more likely to rejoin him in the river than in Paradise.’
The boatman untied a skiff and pushed us off. My sister sat in the stern with the tiller and I rowed us out into the stream, then along with the ebb tide down towards Richmond. After a few hundred yards I shipped the oars, removed the lid again and looked inside.
‘It seems an awful lot, if we’re really ninety-eight per cent water.’
‘Because of the coffin,’ my sister said. ‘It’s mostly wood ash.’
I held the cylinder over the side and began to tip it up. A grey grit slid out and spread in a slick on the water. I hadn’t realised it would float. It looked dirty on the glassy surface of the river, as if we were polluting. I glanced round to see if anyone was watching, and rowed on a few strokes. Then I emptied the rest. This time I held the cylinder with my right hand and let the ash fall through the fingers of my left. It took about a minute. I dipped my hand in the river to wash the ash off, then rowed on to Richmond, where we picked up Elsa at the bottom of the steps by the bridge. She had bought avocado wraps and cold Corona. She and my sister clinked bottles and munched as I rowed back to Marble Hill. Fortunately, the tide was turning, the water was slack and there was a steady breeze to keep me cool. Sitting in the stern together, my sister and Elsa seemed to be getting on fine. There was no embarrassment between them as we rowed across the water where Mother’s ashes must still be floating, or had sunk perhaps. In any event, I saw no trace of them. The slick had gone. Afterwards, Elsa and I drank the last Corona in the cab back to our hotel, where we made love on starched sheets, before heading out to enjoy the town.