43

The dead have many friends. Practically the whole of Birdie’s school has turned out for the funeral. From the car-park where father and I sit, having arrived far too early and almost gatecrashed the wrong service, we can see armies of girls and boys converging on the chapel. Nearly all of them are in black in spite of Valerie’s suggestion that people should wear normal, bright clothes. The older generation have complied, but the young are superstitious. Some of the boys don’t have mourning wear and are in their school uniform instead. A few of the girls are wiping their eyes already. I look away hurriedly: I can’t afford to cry now when there is so much worse to come. A ripple runs through the crowd as the hearse pulls up smothered with flowers like a carnival float, and when I see that box inside an icy drop of fear runs the length of my spine. To think of the lid just inches from her face. From the accompanying car Birdie’s mother emerges, tottering, on the arm of a friend. I remember her as being strong, athletic-looking, but now she appears shrunken – her skin like cloth on a wire frame; a cough could blow her away. Even the largest of the three assembly rooms at the cemetery isn’t big enough and it is standing room only at the back: father and I, the first to arrive, are the last to enter, and take our places by the doors which are then closed upon us. Even at a moment like this I catch myself looking out for Rad, and am filled with shame and self-loathing. But there he is, just a few rows in front of me, next to Frances and Mr Radley. He keeps his head down, as well he might.

Birdie’s mother has chosen a secular version of the traditional service. If she ever was a believer she certainly isn’t now. Meditations rather than prayers will be led by a man in grey trousers and a sports jacket with leather patches on the elbows, who looks like a schoolteacher. He gives himself away as a mere functionary as soon as he opens his mouth by welcoming us to what will be a time to recall and celebrate the life of Elizabeth Cromer. At the mention of the name Elizabeth the congregation stiffens as one. Birdie never, ever used her real name. Half the people present probably don’t even know what it was, but no one has the courage or presence of mind to correct him and he is allowed to compound this terrible blunder by referring throughout to a total stranger. Elizabeth wanted to be a lawyer; Elizabeth loved to discuss politics; Elizabeth’s friends are now going to read for us. All around I can sense people bracing themselves every time the name comes up. A schoolfriend of Birdie’s takes over the lectern to read a poem by Christina Rossetti, and another reads ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’ in a voice that never wavers. There is a constriction in my throat that swallowing cannot shift. The bravest performance of all comes from a girl of about fifteen who sings, unaccompanied, the aria ‘Ach ich fühl’s’ from The Magic Flute in a creamy soprano that finally springs the lock. The tap tap of her shoes on the tiles as she returns to her seat is accompanied by muffled sobs and choking sounds from every corner of the room. I can feel my eyes starting to sting, and a prickling sensation in the top of my nose that gives me a few seconds’ warning before the tears come, and once they’ve started nothing can stem the flow. In front of me Rad brushes his shirt cuff across his eyes and slumps even further forward; Frances’ shoulders are heaving. The heat in the hall is intense: during the minute of silent reflection there is some scuffling from the group in the corner alongside us: someone has fainted and is carried outside to be revived. The sudden gust of cool air from the open door seems to turn the salt water on my cheeks to acid and my skin flares.

Though we are among the first out, father and I hang back before following the procession to the plot chosen for the burial. It is a long walk through the cemetery and the crowd has strung out in a straggling line by the time the coffin has reached the graveside. Father offers me a large, white handkerchief – one of the ones I have painstakingly ironed as part of mother’s programme of occupational therapy. On the way I notice some of Birdie’s friends giving me sidelong glances, nonplussed by this unexplained resemblance. I keep my head up, bearing my likeness proudly. Let them wonder.

The crowd around the grave is five deep, so I am spared the sight of the coffin being lowered down. Instead I look up at the sky and watch the few clouds blowing across the sun. Where are you? I think. There has been no talk of the hereafter at the service. Only Birdie’s past is allowed to matter, which seems cruel to me. At a time like this surely even a nonbeliever can admit a whisper of hope? On the trimmed grass beside us are more flowers than I have ever seen: the individual wreaths and sprays have been packed close together to stop them overrunning the neighbouring plots; it looks as though the whole thing could be picked up by one corner and laid over the grave like a quilt.

I only realise it’s all over when the crowd starts to break up. There are small clusters of girls leaning on one another for support; their heads together like conspirators. White handkerchiefs flutter in the wind like flags of surrender. Father gives a great sigh and pulls at his beard; he is thinking the thoughts that lie too deep for tears. I have no more crying left in me, for the moment at least. I feel wrung out, like a used floorcloth. On the way back to the car we pass Frances and Rad, who nod at me, as someone they used to know.

That night I wake at about four in the morning with a dry mouth and pounding heart, a great slab of grief pressing down on my chest. I haven’t drawn the curtains properly and from my bed I can see the moon, a perfect semi-circle of brilliant white, and beyond it pinpricks of light from hundreds of stars that may no longer even exist. And for the briefest moment I experience with sudden clarity, and with every fibre of my being, the vastness of the universe and my own infinitesimal span on this tiny spinning ball of dirt and fire, and I understand at the profoundest level what it will mean not to exist throughout the rest of eternity. The vision, if that’s what it is, lasts only a moment or two, and I am me again, lying in bed, drenched in sweat and worrying about death in the regular, abstract way that can be managed and keeps us all from madness.

I don’t see the Radleys again. Lexi has gone, Rad goes back to Durham, presumably, and Frances to whatever institution has offered her a place, and the next time I pass the house there is a For Sale sign outside.

I start at the Royal College and move into an intercollegiate hall of residence in Kensington. From my window I can see the Natural History Museum and the roofs of red routemasters. The rooms are box-shaped with brown nylon carpets that cause such a build up of static that every time I touch the door handle I get a shock. The bathroom is a windowless cell of streaming white tiles with blooms of black mould on the ceiling and growing up the shower curtain.

My cell-mate is a girl called Eva who is studying at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has a boyfriend in Saint Albans, and is almost never around. She has a coffee machine which she forgets to turn off and which hisses and gasps in the corner and emits acrid fumes. On the same corridor is a Welsh lichenologist and a hard-rock geologist who plays heavy metal so loudly that it makes the posters fall off my wall. He hosts Dungeons and Dragons parties to which I am invited, but never bother to go. The invitations soon dry up. These are supposed to be the best years of my life.

After a month or so mother forwards a letter from Frances. She is doing drama at a northern polytechnic and having a wild time. She and Nicky have split up and Frances has a new boyfriend. I can’t help resenting the triumphal tone of her letter, which makes no allusion to or apology for the past. I take some trouble to compose a reply that doesn’t reek of reproach and self-pity. A much shorter note arrives in due course, and then nothing.

I work hard for want of better things to do, and my tutors are pleased with me. They praise my technique for its control. Mrs Suszansky, my new teacher, says in her overblown way that I make the cello sing with a voice full of tears.

What of my much-prized virginity? I lost it to a fellow student called Dave Watkins in his bedsit in Dalston after a party on 28 January 1986. I remember the occasion particularly because it was the same day Challenger exploded and the spirit of mourning was already in the air.

It so happened that I was in Rome in August 1996 with the orchestra, and on the day appointed by Mr Radley all those years ago for our meeting, in a spirit of curiosity and nostalgia, I found myself drawn to the Spanish Steps and Keats’s last lodgings. Mr Radley didn’t show up, of course, but I saw Keats’s writing desk, and his death mask, and the branch of McDonald’s a few yards from his doorway, and I thought how much that would have infuriated Mr Radley, so I went there for lunch and drank his health in yellow milkshake.