Edward watches the crows circling the fine black lines of leafless trees etched against the pewter sky. He hears the first thud of earth on wood and stares down at the coffin. The brass nameplate is already tarnished by the wet soil. He shivers, wishing he hadn’t come.
On the journey over he’d asked his mother how they were related to the dead woman. The train was pulling away from Huddersfield station. He’d waited for an answer, watching the station clock grow smaller and smaller. ‘She was a distant relative. Far too complicated to explain,’ was the only reply. He’d forgotten how his mother coveted secrets. He tried again, ‘So her name was Claudette Mason?’
He received a slight nod of the head, and noted that she was wearing her pewter pearls, the diamante clasp resting on the prominent vertebrae at the back of her neck as she turned to look out of the window. He persisted, ‘You ask me to take a day off work and come to a funeral with you, but I’m not to be furnished with any of the particulars?’
She turned then, she must have heard the pique in his voice, ‘I appreciate you coming, thank you.’ She spoke with a measured politeness, ‘I didn’t want to come on my own.’
He tries to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, ‘Unusual for you, Mother.’
‘I didn’t know her that well. We wrote mostly. She was an interesting woman.’
‘And we were related?’
‘Yes, but I don’t remember how. It’s not important anyway.’ She leans back in her seat, closing her eyes against the sun.
Edward smiles to himself. Surely at forty-nine he should have learnt how to handle his mother.
Edward digs his stick firmly into the mud and studies the faces of the other mourners. Across the grave is a girl in her early twenties. Her hair is dyed a garish purple and is scraped into a short ponytail at one side. Her skin, by stark contrast, has the luminous quality of white jade. She has her arm around the shoulders of an elderly woman who is dabbing her cheeks with a screwed up tissue. The girl, a frown furrowing her brow, is staring straight across the grave at his mother, who is unaware of the girl’s scrutiny.
Edward can feel his mother’s claw-like grip tighten on the inner crease of his elbow as they move away from the graveside. It occurs to him that, almost without him noticing, she has become frail. The closeness of her bothers him. He can smell her scent – Lily of the Valley. Fumbling for his handkerchief, he disengages his arm and moves aside to blow his nose. He hears a gasp and, turning, sees his mother, as if in slow motion, fold to the ground. Before he can react, Mr Cole the solicitor is there, grasping her elbows from behind, easing her gently to her feet.
‘Mother! Are you all right?’ His words sound polite, distant.
She examines the side of her camel coat, now streaked in mud. ‘Yes, no thanks to you.’
‘Maybe you should get a stick, Mother.’
‘I don’t think so.’
The solicitor interrupts, ‘Now, are you sure you’re all right?’ He takes his handkerchief out of his pocket, ‘Would you like me to wipe your coat down?’
Edward turns away towards the car. Let him look after her.
Rachel closes her eyes and listens to the soft purr of the limousine as it makes its way beyond the cemetery gates. Suddenly she feels so very tired. The fall has shaken her more than she cares to admit. All she wants to do now is go home and sit with her cat in the chair overlooking the garden. At this time of day the sun will be stealing into the back room. The cat will be sitting there now. She smiles to herself, realising how little she, like the cat, wants from life nowadays, but how differently she would do it if she had another chance. How she had envied Claudette her life with its veneer of culture, the paintings and books that mapped the history of her life. She gazes out of the car window and watches the sun shaft through a break in the clouds. It glances off the flat surface of a distant reservoir. Under that thin layer, had their lives turned out to be so very different?