Gerald Seymour - Home Run

"So good to see you, Henry. Are you still…?"

"Alas, Mrs Furniss, no longer. I have a part-time job with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the mail-order section. I get the tea towels out, and the nesting boxes."

"Was anything achieved, Henry, that spring, by any of you?"

"Desperate question, Mrs Furniss. My opinion, it's better to believe that so much mayhem led to something positive, don't you think?"

And he was gone, before she could press him. He almost ran. They were almost all gone from the church now, and the music had stopped. There was a middle-aged man standing a few feet in front of her, making no move to come towards her. He wore an old raincoat that was too small for him and that was gathered in tight lines across his stomach, and the half moon of his hair blew untidily in the wind. He met her gaze, he stared back at her. He was an intruder, she was sure of that, but she could not place him. She straightened her back.

"Do I know you?"

"I'm Bill Parrish."

"Have we met?"

"I came once to your house, bit more than two years ago."

"You'll have to excuse me, I don't recall the occasion…"

"I'm fulfilling a promise to a friend, Mrs Furniss. He's abroad and can't be here. Me being here is closing a file, you might say that it's shutting up shop. A very nice service, Mrs Furniss."

She watched them all go. The old Director General was waving down a taxi, flourishing his umbrella at the driver. The new Director General was climbing into the black limousine Henry Carter was arguing down the street with a traffic warden across the bonnet of an old car. Bill Parrish was striding purposefully towards Whitehall. She let the girls link their arms through her elbows. Had anything been at achieved? Was there something positive? She hated them all. every last one of them who were now hurrying away to escape from the contact with the life and death of Maine Furniss.