A Funeral and a Fight

James crept into Christchurch cathedral and slid into a bench at the back, beside a group of townspeople who seemed to be there more out of curiosity than grief. At the front he could see the chief mourners: Miss Deakin – James would never call her anything else – arrayed in black like a rook, and beside her the man who must be his uncle. There was something strangely familiar about him; the dark cruel mouth, the straggly black hair, the way he stood, even here, as if he owned the cathedral and everything in it. Suddenly James felt his stomach lurching and his blood run cold. He recognised him: it was the man whose boots he had cleaned in Essex Street, who had cuffed him and abused him and thrown the coin to the ground as he marched off. This brute was his uncle? The knowledge sank into James’s bones so that he felt exhausted. Every so often the man turned his head around to scan the congregation, coolly assessing the mourners at his brother’s funeral. James ducked down into the pew when he saw the head move. He did not want to be seen by this strange new figure whose every gesture seemed calculated to arouse fear. He noticed Miss Deakin seemed very friendly with him, glancing and smiling in his direction at every opportunity.

At the side of the cathedral, some distance away from the proceedings, James saw a strange group of men. They were tall and loose-limbed and quite brutal in appearance, with rough, pocked faces and squashed noses that might have been broken several times. James half expected to see blood on their knuckles or a tear in the lapels of their coats, but if they had been engaged in fisticuffs lately there was no sign of it other than a flicker of malevolence in their eyes and the curl of their lips as they whispered and joked among themselves. No great respect for the dead had brought them here, that was sure. And why should they have respected my father? James thought. He was a cruel, careless man who lived for himself. And yet he was my father, and now he is dead. James felt a strange emptiness in the pit of his stomach. Part of him, part of his life, was gone forever. In spite of what his father had done, he felt grief tear at him. Who knows, maybe they would have been reconciled in the end, maybe they could one day have had a life together. As he looked at the coffin, he realised that now he was truly alone, now he truly belonged everywhere and nowhere.

His thoughts were disturbed by the whisperings beside him.

‘Who are those men?’ James nudged his neighbour.

‘You wouldn’t want to meet them on a dark night’ came the reply. ‘Them’s Richard Lovett’s “Uglies”, here to keep the creditors away now he’s the lord, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

Harry had been right: his uncle was a dangerous man with forces of violence at his command. He would have to be careful. Had his father spoken to Richard before he died? Did he explain that his son was not in fact dead but running around the city? James felt a sudden wave of anger sweep over him. He wanted to stand up in the aisle and call out his own name; he wanted to assert his rights, and one of his rights was to grieve for his father openly instead of crouching like an outcast in the shadows. James could feel his body move of its own accord, his hands on the rail of the pew, his knees beginning to rise from the kneeler. He was aware of the sudden interest of the people beside him, their glances curious and keen.

And then, as quickly as it had welled up, the impulse subsided and he sank down again. What was the point? He would only present an easy target for his uncle and his brutes, and the trouble would all be over. No one would mourn him. Had he not already been mourned in any case? He would be another homeless and entirely surplus boy to be heaped in the common pit.

He looked hard at his uncle as he shouldered his father’s coffin down the aisle with the other pallbearers, burning the image into his brain so that he would be able to recall it at any time in the future. As the coffin passed his pew he averted his eyes, not wanting the least flicker of himself to be visible to his uncle. The coffin passed by, and he felt a sharp pang of grief. The end of the procession from the cathedral was brought up by the Uglies, whose slovenly gait barely allowed the minimum of respect, and they glared at those in the aisles as if to challenge any man or woman who might think their attitude unsuitable for the occasion. James paled at the sight of them.

When the procession left the church James crept out as quietly as he had entered and made his way back to the college. There at least he would be safe for a while.

‘I’m sorry for you, James,’ McAllister said. ‘We don’t get to choose our fathers, but we only get one, no matter how bad they might be. Can you remember any good times with him at all?’

‘Yes,’ James said, after thinking about it a while. ‘Many years ago. I don’t know if I dreamed it or if it really happened. It was in Wexford, in Dunmain. I can see the garden, the sun pouring through the trees. And my father, laughing, throwing me up in the air and catching me. And I can hear myself squealing and laughing.’

‘Hold onto that, James,’ McAllister said. ‘Whenever you think of him, think of that.’

James settled with relief into the routines of college life. He fetched and carried and ate and slept and sometimes heard a lecture, hidden at the back of the hall. He learned a little Latin, a little French, a little Hebrew. It sometimes seemed to him that he would always be someone who got a little of everything: a little warmth, a little sustenance, a little life. One day, he told himself, there would be more than a little, and that was the day he must live for.