The door at the back of the chapel opened with a squeak. I turned around. Detective Sergeant Murray came in and sat down two pews behind me. I nodded to him, and he responded in the same manner. I turned back to the minister, who then began.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
The clergyman droned on, rushing through the funeral rite as laid down in the Book of Common Prayer.
I didn’t really listen to the words.
Instead, I sat and stared at the simple wooden coffin and tried hard to remember what the man inside it looked like. I had seen him alive only briefly, for hardly more than an hour, yet his reappearance had dominated my life for the past two and a half weeks in a way it hadn’t done for the previous thirty-seven years.
It was difficult to describe my full feelings, but anger was uppermost amongst them. Anger that he had now gone forever and anger that he had been here at all.
Undeniably, he was my father. The DNA had proved that. But it didn’t feel like he had anything to do with me. But he, and his actions, had certainly been integral to the direction of my life, who I was and what I would become.
I wished I’d had longer to talk with him on the day he’d died, and the chance to talk to him again, even if it was to rant and rave at his conduct or to gather answers to so many unanswered questions: why did he kill my mother? why did he run away? why didn’t he take me with him? how could he have deserted me for so long? and, in particular, why did he come back?
I thought about his daughters, my sisters, so far away in Australia, who probably didn’t even know their father was dead. Should I say a prayer on their behalf?
The minister was nearing the end.
“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Peter, and we commit his body to the elements, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him, and keep him, and give him eternal peace. Amen.”
As he was saying the last few words, the minister pushed a button on the lectern, and I watched intently as my father’s coffin slowly disappeared from sight behind long red curtains that closed silently around it.
The whole funeral had taken precisely nine minutes. The cremation would take a little longer. And then that would be that. My father’s earthly body would exist no more.
If only his influence could be so easily and quickly eliminated.
“Lovely service,” I said to the minister on my way out. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he said, shaking my hand.
Everyone always says it’s been a lovely service at a funeral, I thought, even if it hadn’t. It was neither the time nor the place to criticize, however bad things had been. In this case, the service had been functional. And that was enough.
“Thank you for coming,” I said to Detective Sergeant Murray as we stood together outside afterwards.
“Chief Inspector Llewellyn apologizes for not being here himself,” he said.
“I hadn’t expected him to come,” I said. I hadn’t, in fact, expected anyone to be here, and especially not the detective chief inspector, and not least because I hadn’t told a soul about the arrangements.
“The coroner’s office let us know,” he said. I nodded. “The police always try to go to murder victims’ funerals if we can.”
“Just in case the killer turns up?” I asked.
“It has been known,” he said, smiling.
“No chance today,” I said. “Not without being noticed anyway.”
“No,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Not much of a crowd to hide among at this one.”
“How are things on the detective front?” I said. “Any suspects yet?”
“Only you,” he said, but he said it with another smile. “My chief really doesn’t like you, does he?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “The feeling’s mutual.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
“Has my e-fit been of any use?” I asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it has,” he said. “It’s been shown to some of the other witnesses, and they now generally tend to agree with you. So yours has now taken on the mantle as being the most accurate.”
I was pretty sure that shifty-eyed Kipper wouldn’t have been best pleased by that.
“But I haven’t seen it reproduced in any of the newspapers,” I said. “Or on the television.”
“It’s been in the Bracknell and Ascot Times, and in the Windsor and Eton Express,” he said. “But no one has yet come forward to say they recognize him.”
“Perhaps it would have been better to have put it in the Melbourne papers,” I said. “Or at least in the Racing Post.”
“Now, that’s a thought,” he said. “Maybe I’ll go and recommend it to the chief inspector.”
And, with that, the detective sergeant made his apologies and departed.
That just left me and the funeral director, who had been hovering to one side.
“Was everything in order, Mr. Talbot?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you,” I said. “It was fine.”
“Good,” he said. “And what would you like done with the ashes?”
“What are the choices?” I asked.
“You can have them, if you want,” he said. “They will be ready for collection tomorrow. Or we can collect them for you and hold them at our office, if you like. We’ll be coming here anyway. Funerals take place on Saturdays.”
“What’s the alternative?” I asked.
“They can be scattered here, in the Garden of Remembrance, if you would prefer,” he said. “That way, you wouldn’t need to provide for a container.”
“Container?” I asked.
“If you wanted to take the ashes away, you would have to provide or pay for a container. Perhaps a box or an urn.”
“Oh,” I said. “No. Just have them scattered here, then. I don’t want them.”
“Right,” he said. “That will be all, then. I’ll send you an itemized receipt in due course.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That will be fine.”
He nodded to me, it was almost a bow, and then he walked quickly across to his car and drove away. I wondered if funeral directors laughed more at home than other people to make up for the solemnness of their work or whether they are so conditioned to having a sad disposition that they have difficulty letting their hair down.
I was left standing alone in the crematorium parking lot with that strange feeling of having mislaid something but wasn’t quite sure what, like when you leave a shopping bag on the counter and get halfway home before realizing it.
Perhaps it was a childhood that I’d mislaid, with loving parents, family holidays and happy Christmases. But was it my childhood that I’d lost or those of my nonexistent children? I stood next to my car and wept.
A few early arrivals for the next funeral spilled out of their cars and made their somber way over towards the chapel. None of them bothered me. Weeping in a crematorium parking lot was not only acceptable, it was expected.
Early on Saturday morning I went to see my grandmother. I told myself it had nothing to do with having been to my father’s funeral the day before, but, of course, it did. I desperately wanted to ask her some more questions.
Sophie had come to the front door to see me off, still in her dressing gown and slippers. As far as she was concerned, I’d spent the previous afternoon at Warwick races. I would tell her the truth, I thought, eventually.
“Give her my love,” she’d said as I’d left.
“I will,” I had replied, but both of us knew that my grandmother almost certainly wouldn’t remember who Sophie was. She might not even remember who I was either, but I was going early in the day to give her the best chance. My grandmother was at her most lucid when she was not tired, and, very occasionally, she would actually telephone me around seven in the morning and sound almost normal. But each day varied, and the good days were getting fewer, shorter and less frequent. It was an ever-steepening downhill run towards total full-blown dementia, with just occasional small plateaus of normality to break the journey. Part of me hoped that she wouldn’t survive long enough to reach rock bottom.