‘More rouge, madam,’ she said.
I shook my head.
‘And a little something around the eyes,’ she added.
‘Grant, it’s nine o’clock in the morning. I am not going to have a little anything around my eyes, nor more rouge.’
‘You can’t carry off all this black, madam,’ said Grant. ‘Not any more.’
‘I never could,’ I said. ‘And I’m not trying to carry it off. It’s a memorial service, practically a funeral. Anyway, I don’t foresee being able to get through the day without tears and then I should look like a panda. A panda with white streaks through its rouge.’
That swung it.
‘I wish you would learn to cry out of the corners of your eyes, madam, I do,’ said Grant and swept out. I was left feeling a lot less charitable after this prickly exchange and besides, Grant’s easy scorn of me and all my works made me want to prove to myself that I had talents, even if neat weeping was not one of them. I decided to swallow my scruples and use the day well.
‘Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble,’ intoned the minister and from my position halfway back in the church I could see a collective droop of shoulders in the pews in front of me. I have always thought that the jolly, celebratory funerals one comes across in Scotland (whose Church is fearfully Low) are more depressing than doleful High Anglicanism, but today of all days I should have welcomed a fat little man beaming as he spread the good news from behind the coffin, instead of this shockingly empty altar and the cadaverous individual before it telling us adenoidally that each of us was doomed. Beside me, Daisy inspected her nails surreptitiously, and on my other side I could feel Hugh remove himself mentally to the riverbank, or it might have been the stable yard. Curious, that sense one gets of the moods of one’s husband through the long years of habitual proximity, like the way one knows exactly the moment when he has fallen asleep and so will not be going back to his dressing room and leaving one in peace to read. I wondered idly if the flow of intuition went all one way or if Hugh could tell that I was busily thinking instead of praying like a good girl.
Still the minister droned. He was on to an appreciation of Cara’s life now, and far from giving voice to the howl of anger which would be any right-thinking person’s view when a young girl of twenty-two dies weeks before her wedding, he was tucking a blanket of euphemism over the whole sorry mess. I thought of what Hugh had told me about the native villagers in East Africa, how they sit on the ground screeching and wailing, none of this cloying acceptance. Or now I came to think of it, perhaps it was only the women who wailed. Hugh had not said what the menfolk got up to; presumably they blustered on just like this. Men. One good thing about speaking to Dr Milne had been that he told me what he knew in the straightest possible terms. ‘Clear signs of pregnancy’, he had said, and ‘miscarriage’, not like Alec gulping and stammering and only managing to say ‘with child’. Such a silly expression. Like the minister’s ‘born of woman’. Although to be fair Dr Milne had said it too, had he not? That a medical man could tell with one eye shut when a woman was with child.
I sat bolt upright in my pew and my prayer book fell to the floor, landing on the edge of its spine with a sharp crack. I am sure too that I said something, although I do not know what, because Daisy came out of her daydream with a jolt to stare at me and Hugh stiffened with instant embarrassment. Even the woman in front, although she would not crane round to look, was transfixed – I could tell by the sudden quivering attentiveness of the feathers on her hat.
Had I merely been drifting off to sleep? One often thinks one has had tremendous ideas then, ideas which turn out to be not only worthless, but barely expressible in anything but gibberish. But this time I was almost sure. I put my head back down again, concentrating on the wood grain to help me block out the voice of the minister, and started to think. Now, of course, I fell asleep for real and the next thing I knew was that Hugh had gripped my arm rather firmly and hauled me to my feet for the beginning of the final hymn.
Since I could do no more until the reception I turned my thoughts at last to the plain fact of Cara’s death and my real sorrow for it, ignoring the equal measure of indignation – moral indignation – at the lie and at the arrogance of those in this very church who were busily at work under their show of grief covering that lie up.
Old Mrs Marshall would have been relieved, I thought an hour later, that even without a coffin and the subsequent need for the ladies to retire delicately while the gentlemen went to the graveyard, the sexes were to be segregated. We were bundled into cars and carriages to be trundled back to the house, but the men seemed determined to walk. This meant that drinks and luncheon had to be stalled until they caught us up and, meanwhile, the ladies made do with coffee, sitting desolately around the huge double drawing room in our dowdy clothes and looking, I thought, like dead ducks on a mud bank. Mrs Duffy and Clemence were nowhere to be seen, moreover, leaving us quite without occupation. I saw Renée Gordon-Strathmurdle slop a great dollop of something into her coffee cup from a hip flask and wished I had not placed myself so carefully far away from her.
Sha-sha McIntosh was slumped opposite me, without the other members of the trinity for once and looking, in her enforced mourning, like a child who has been sent to sit in the corner for naughtiness. I caught her eye and smiled.
‘You saw Clemence’s charming pictures, I believe,’ was as good an opening as any. Sha-sha nodded and brightened. How very young she seemed to be cheered instantly by a kind word.
‘Poor darling,’ I went on. ‘You were to be bridesmaid?’
‘All three of us,’ said Sha-sha. ‘And now we simply can’t think what to do with the frocks. It seems wrong to throw them into the dustbin, but what are we to do with three frocks all the same? It’s too silly for words.’ A couple of elderly ladies, aunts perhaps, looked over their spectacles at her with reptilian severity, but I understood.
‘Cara would not have minded at all your thinking about them,’ I said, with a glare at the huffy aunts. ‘One can’t – if one’s being sincere – always make sure one has only suitable thoughts.’ I wondered suddenly if Sha-sha or the others were entertaining any thoughts even less suitable, thoughts along the same lines as those of Alec and me. I decided to dip the very tip of one toe into the water and try to find out.
‘Do you know what I couldn’t help thinking, Sha-sha darling? I tell you only to make you feel better in comparison and you must promise not to give me away.’ She mimed pressing her lips tight closed and I went on in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘When I looked at those lovely pictures of Cara, instead of thinking how lucky it was and how clever Clemence was, all I could think was what a nasty frock Cara was wearing and what a shame she wore it in all of them!’
Sha-sha was silent for a moment before she answered, and I thought perhaps I had overestimated her triviality, or rather underestimated my own, for I was sure that such thoughts might have been quite in character for me. However, she answered presently, and her answer was both a relief – she was not shocked – and a disappointment.