Poppy – pee on this today. You’re day 14.

I sighed but peed on it nevertheless, thinking it was the last thing I would ever do for him. Then I watched the blue line darken, and realized I was pregnant.

As I slowly went back into the kitchen, the telephone rang.

‘Poppy? Did you ring?’

‘Hm? Oh. Yes, hi, Jennie.’

‘You OK? You sound a bit down.’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

‘D’you want to come round for a quick coffee? I’ve got literally twenty minutes before I pick Jamie up from school.’

‘Er, no. Better not. I’ve got the ironing to finish.’

‘This afternoon? Cup of tea?’

‘Actually, Jennie, I think I’m going to have my hair cut.’




3

The funeral took place a week later and was indeed dreadful. Much worse than I’d imagined or even Jennie had prophesied, but perhaps for different reasons. The brightness of the day and the pure blue sky didn’t help, adding poignancy somehow, throwing the occasion into relief. Ancient yews cast long dramatic shadows across the churchyard and villagers were silhouetted starkly as they left their cottages, one by one or in hushed groups, following the haunting relentless toll of the bell, wreaths in hand ready to lay at the church door. Inside a sorrowful aroma of dank stone, polish and candle wax prevailed. Our tiny church was full, as Jennie had also grimly predicted, the respectful silence broken only by the odd hushed whisper or rustle of skirts as people took their seats, casting me sympathetic glances the while as I swallowed hard in the front pew, biting my lip. One week on and I felt utterly drained and exhausted. A small part of me was relieved at that. How awful would it have been to stand here at my husband’s funeral singing ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’ and not to have a lump in my throat? Not to have to count to ten and dig my nails hard in my hand as the organ struck a mournful chord, everyone got to their feet, and the coffin processed up the aisle?

Three of Phil’s cycling cronies were pall-bearers: tall, skinny and anaemic-looking to a man. Each what my dad would call a long streak of piss. The fourth was my father himself, who’s tiny, so that the coffin, I realized in horror, leaned precariously his way. And his shoulders sloped at the best of times. The congregation collectively held its breath as the coffin made its way, at quite an alarming angle, to the front, Dad’s knees seeming to buckle under the strain with every step. The cyclists had to stop more than once to let him get more of a grip, but finally the altar was achieved. I shut my eyes as the coffin was lowered. There was, admittedly, a bit of a clatter and a muffled ‘Fuck’ from Dad, but I think only I heard. My father glanced round as he straightened up, unable to resist making eye contact, to suggest he’d done really rather well, under the circumstances.

I gave a small smile back as he puffed out his chest and stood respectfully a moment, head bowed over the coffin. The other pall-bearers had dispersed. That’ll do, Dad, I thought nervously, as the seconds ticked by. My father may be small, five foot seven in his socks, but he’s frightfully important-looking, as small men often are. In his youth, when he hadn’t been riding point-to-pointers or driving all over the country to do so, he’d done a lot of am-dram, and something in his manner suggested there was still a chance he’d sweep a cloak over his shoulder, hold Yorick’s skull aloft and proclaim to the gallery. When he’d milked his moment for all it was worth he turned on his heel and came, head bowed, to sit beside me, clearly relishing this particular performance.

The vicar meanwhile, after we’d sung the first hymn, manfully launched into the eulogy. Manfully because he’d never met Phil, so he was really quite at sea. I’d decided to leave it to him, though, despite his anxious ‘Really, Mrs Shilling? Sure there’s no one else?’ ‘Quite sure.’ And now he was telling us what a helluva guy Phil was, what a pillar of the community, what a loss to the village. All nonsense, of course, because Phil had never been involved in village life; had indeed never been inside this church before now, except to get married. But then the vicar said what a marvellous father he’d been and what a loss to the children, and that’s when I welled up. He hadn’t been marvellous, but any father is a loss. You only get one, and my children would never have another Christmas with him, another holiday with him, not that they’d necessarily want to cycle through the Pyrenees being yelled at constantly to keep up, or … OK, he’d never make speeches at their eighteenths, twenty-firsts, that sort of thing. Actually Phil had only ever made one speech to my knowledge, a best-man’s speech for a cycling crony, which had gone on for forty-six minutes, and been so turgidly dull that eventually, when everyone began coughing and nipping to the loo or the bar, the bride’s father, a bluff Yorkshireman, had got to his feet and said firmly: ‘That’ll do, laddie.’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.

I sighed. Still. My poor babies. Clemmie, in particular. Archie, at twenty months, was too young to understand, but Clemmie had listened soberly when I’d told her the bad news the following morning, sitting her down before nursery school, explaining carefully exactly what had happened. Her brown eyes had grown huge in her pale little face, knowing, by the tone of my voice, rather than the content, that this was bad.

‘So is he breathing?’

‘No, darling. He’s dead.’

‘Like Shameful?’

‘Yes, like Shameful.’

This, a ram in the field at the back of our house, who’d been found stiff and cold last month, and was so called because he rogered every ewe in the field before breakfast, which Phil had found offensive when he was eating his muesli.

‘It’s shameful!’ he’d roar, so Clemmie thought that was his name.

‘Where is Daddy?’

‘He’s … well …’ I hesitated. The morgue sounded horrible. ‘At the undertaker’s. It’s a special place where dead people go before they’re buried.’

‘Not in heaven?’

‘Oh, well, yes. Yes, his soul will go to heaven. It’s quite complicated, darling, but the point is, you won’t see him again. Do you understand?’

She nodded. ‘Will Shameful go to heaven?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure.’

‘Even though he had lots of girlfriends?’

‘Well … yes. I don’t see why not.’

She finished her cereal in silence. Got down from the table. But no tears, which worried me. But then, she was only four; it probably hadn’t quite filtered through. And the thing was, Phil never got home until they’d gone to bed in the week, and at the weekends he’d cycled all day, so how much more had she seen of him than of the ram at the back of the house? In the field where my children played most days, climbing on the logs, splashing in puddles?

When I collected her from nursery, though, Miss Hawkins had caught my eye, scuttled across.

‘May I have a word, Mrs Shilling?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I just thought you should know that Clemmie says her daddy was hit by a plane.’

‘True, in a way.’

‘And that he’s died and gone to heaven.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that anyone can go, even if they’ve had lots of girlfriends. Even if they’re shameful.’

I blinked.

‘Right. Thank you … Miss Hawkins.’

She was already hastening away before I could put her straight. I sighed. Oh, so be it, I thought as I watched her departing back. Let the entire village think he was the local lothario. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Unless it was in the interests of conception, which appealed to Phil’s competitive nature, he regarded sex as … a bit of a chore. A box to be ticked by a workaholic who’d rather be on his Black-Berry. There hadn’t been much since Archie had been born, which, Jennie told me darkly, I should thank my lucky stars about. Dan hadn’t even let her get to her six-week check after Jamie, and when she was up on the ramp having her overhaul, she hadn’t liked to tell the nice young doctor who’d coyly told her she could start giving herself back to her husband, that he’d been helping himself for weeks.

But no, Phil hadn’t been much of a bedroom man; indeed the idea of him putting himself about locally was almost as fanciful as him putting his goodwill about, being a stalwart of this parish, where, thankfully, the vicar was winding up now, his material being quite thin. He cleared his throat and enjoined us to stand and sing the final hymn, number one hundred and seventy two: ‘Jerusalem’. We all got gratefully to our feet.

As questions go I’ve always thought the one about whether our Lord’s feet actually walked in ancient times upon England’s mountains green to be not only rhetorical, but, if pressed, a resounding no. I was still thinking about it as we filed out of church a few moments later. Blake had clearly lobbed it up metaphysically, wryly, not to be taken literally, and yet hundreds of years later it was belted out by congregations across the land and embraced patriotically, the answer a resounding ‘Yes!’ from those who wanted Him to be an Englishman ten foot tall. Would it have amused Blake, I wondered, as I reached the gate on the lane, my eyes narrowed against the low sun which was dazzling, blinding almost, to hear it sung with such fervour? Did it amuse God?

‘Mrs Shilling!’

A voice cut through my reverie, scattering my thoughts. I turned, abstractedly, at the gate.

‘Mrs Shilling?’ There was a note of incredulity to it.

Back at the top of the path, in the grassy, undulating area to the left of the church, otherwise known as the cemetery, the vicar was waiting, prayer book open, cassock flapping, saucer-eyed, surrounded by the rest of the congregation. They appeared to be clustered around a huge gaping hole in the ground which … Shit. I’d forgotten to bury my husband.

Shock, naturally, Jennie and Angie both quickly consoled me, as I hastened to join them, to stand between them; that and nervous exhaustion. I nodded dumbly. Horrified and sweaty-palmed I bent my head, which was indeed very muddled, so that as I was passed some earth to throw onto the coffin and nervously did so, Angie, swathed in black mink, had to touch my arm and murmur: ‘Easy, tiger. Wait till the vicar gets to the earth-to-earth bit. Let’s not hurry this along too much, hm?’ She handed me some more in her suede-gloved hand.

Later, and it seemed like an eternity – so horrible, seeing him lowered in that dreadful box into the ground, so final – I was back at the church gate again with the vicar. I knew it had been part of the plan at some point, I’d just hastened there rather too quickly. One by one the villagers filed past to pay their respects, to say how sorry they were, pressing my hand and murmuring condolences. Yvonne, the post-mistress – whom Phil had once called an interfering busybody to her face when she complained about him leaning his bike against her shop window – said how much she’d miss his sunny smile. Sylvia Jardine at the Old Rectory, who considered herself the local nob and didn’t know Phil from Adam but clearly thought she’d done her homework, said, in a carrying, fruity voice that Philip had been an outstanding bell ringer, a misunderstanding courtesy of this month’s parish magazine, in which someone had complained about Phil ringing his bicycle bell at six in the morning as he waited impatiently for Bob Groves to drive his cattle through the village. Dan, Jennie’s husband, gave me a huge hug and whispered, ‘You’re doing brilliantly, girl,’ which made me well up, and Frankie, in a black minidress and matching nail varnish, who at sixteen had never been to a funeral and had come out of interest – she later confided she didn’t think there’d been nearly enough weeping or black veils – squeezed my hand and said I must be ‘properly pissed’.

Happily many of the condolences were for the children, whom I’d deemed too young to come for the whole service, and who were now with Peggy across the road. Peggy, who’d brought the children briefly and sat at the back, but who’d told me in her throaty drawl, as she dragged on her fourth cigarette of the morning, that she wasn’t a great one for funerals, and anyway, she’d never liked him. I smiled to myself. Just the one voice of truth ringing in our valley. How I loved Peggy.