Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

In the afternoon PC Cox called to tell us that the post-mortem had been completed, and Robbie’s body would now be released for burial. She explained that a preliminary inquest, just a paperwork formality at this stage, she said, had already been opened and adjourned. Rather to my surprise, it seemed we would have to wait five or six months for the inquest proper.

‘’Fraid the coroner has a bit of a backlog,’ said PC Cox.

Not that an inquest was likely to make much difference to anything whenever it was held, I thought, judging from the lack of interest shown by the police.

Over the next two or three days we received a number of cards and notes of condolence, some of them from local people whose names I barely recognized. Dad phoned every evening. The headmaster of Kelly College also phoned, and so did Robbie’s swimming coach.

Tom Farley, the village’s capable jack of all trades, and the only man Robert had ever wanted to work with him on Highrise, called round to ask if there was anything he could do. He brought with him a large steak and kidney pie, made by his wife Ellen, he told us, adding by way of explanation: ‘Missus says you won’t want to cook, but you’m to make sure you keep your strength up.’

Our local weekly paper followed up the Western Morning News story about Robbie, publishing the same picture, and one of the nationals carried a thankfully quite small piece, focusing on an alleged increase in the number of unexplained suicides among young people.

We organized the funeral for the following Friday. Or to be honest, as Robert barely seemed capable of doing anything, I organized it with the help of the local undertaker and the vicar’s wife. I was glad to be busy. I didn’t want to think any more.

None of the three of us in our little family had ever had any religious beliefs at all. I certainly didn’t, Robert had always been an equally emphatic non-believer, and Robbie had seemed to embrace our lack or faith effortlessly. Indeed, just like us, he had sometimes expressed wonderment at how, in the modern world, anyone with a modicum of intelligence could accept the mumbo jumbo of any religion. I therefore did wonder if it was hypocritical to involve the church. But it meant that Robbie could be buried in Blackstone’s little churchyard at the foot of the Dartmoor hills, a place I knew he so loved.

The secular options seemed so bleak by comparison. I’d been to a humanist funeral of a school friend’s mother when I was a teenager. It had been most unusual, and considered really not quite the thing in those days. Even then I hadn’t cared about any of that, but I’d been aware, as I suspected my friend had been, of an added sense of emptiness about the occasion. A feeling that all was not as it should be. Whatever one thought about religious institutions, funerals were probably what they did best.

Robert just nodded everything through. He seemed numb. Also, almost pathetically afraid to offend me in any way. He agreed with everything I said.

I first attempted to contact our local vicar, who gloried in the name of Gerald Ponsonby Smythe, straight after getting the go-ahead from PC Cox. My call was diverted to an answering service, so I left a message.

Within the hour there was a knock on the front door. I was taken by surprise because I’d been at the back of the house and hadn’t heard a vehicle approach. Outside stood a woman I immediately recognized as the vicar’s wife, Gladys Ponsonby Smythe.

She was pretty unmistakable — a big woman, both in longitude and latitude, with ferocious grey hair apparently quite determined to defy her attempts to tie it back from her face. She was wearing no make-up except for a prominent and slightly askew streak of vermilion lipstick. Her clothes, which were more like robes, multicoloured and hippy-like, ebbed and flowed with every roll of her ample curves.

I hadn’t met her before, but I’d seen her photograph many times in the press. I’d always somewhat dismissed her, both from her demeanour and the nature of her press presence, as a somewhat flamboyant churchy do-gooder, intent on being a tower of strength, and probably rather bossy and pleased with herself.

She introduced herself and expressed her deepest sympathy over Robbie’s tragic death. The first surprise was the way she spoke. Gladys Ponsonby Smythe had a strong Liverpool accent.

‘We didn’t know anything about your awful news until you called,’ she said. ‘I just had to come straight away. I hope you don’t mind, Mrs Anderson.’

I did rather, but I could hardly turn her away. In any case I needed the woman.

The Reverend Gerald Ponsonby Smythe was old-school high church, and steeped in classical Latin. Again, something I’d learned from the local press. I’d also spotted him once or twice walking round the village in a long black frock. All right, a cassock. But I didn’t think it was very usual for clergy to wear that kind of garb any more, certainly not outside their churches.

I remembered when I’d first seen both their names in a local paper how I’d thought that nobody could really be called Ponsonby Smythe, and that at the very least they had to be clichés on legs. I still didn’t know about him. But she certainly wasn’t that. Gladys, as I was instructed to address her, swiftly proved to be not at all what I had expected. Except, of course, in the tower of strength department! More than anything else, Gladys Ponsonby Smythe was a Scouser with attitude.

I found myself apologizing for not having met her or her husband before, and for asking to arrange a funeral in their church when I’d previously never been inside it. The Church of England was surely well accustomed to that sort of behaviour, as for so many people churches were only for weddings, christenings and funerals. But it was somehow as if I needed to clear the territory ahead before burying my beloved son.

‘I hope you don’t think I’m a hypocrite,’ I said.

‘You don’t need to worry about that, chuck,’ Gladys responded swiftly. ‘Not half as hypocritical as a considerable number of our regular congregation at St Andrews, I can tell you. Only I never said that.’

She had me smiling in spite of myself. For a start I didn’t think anyone, from Liverpool or anywhere else, actually said ‘chuck’, except Cilla Black.

I invited her in, trying not to let my reluctance show. After all, I really did need her.

She stepped into the hall but made no attempt to move further into the house.

‘Look, I’m not staying, not this time,’ she said. ‘I just wanted you to know that I’m here to give you all the help I can with the funeral and anything else. I’ll come back to sort out the details.’

I thanked her and said I appreciated having a bit more time.

‘If you’d rather pop out for a bit and come to the vicarage or go to the pub or something, just let me know,’ she said as she left.

I didn’t believe in anything that she stood for, but I did feel very slightly less bereft after her visit.

Ultimately I called her the next day to say I was ready to talk about the details of the funeral, or as ready as I’d ever be, and I would like to meet at the vicarage. I just wanted a break from the sheer bloody misery of Highrise.

Blackstone Vicarage, built right next to the church, was an ugly Victorian pile in dire need of a major facelift outside and in. It boasted few of the comforts of life which I took for granted. The Reverend Gerald, a distracted man several years older than his wife, I thought, who wore wire-framed spectacles balanced crookedly on a large pointed nose, greeted me in the hall before retreating to his study, saying he would ‘leave Gladys to it, then’, which I somehow thought was his habit.

Gladys made instant coffee in an orange Formica kitchen dating back to the 1970s, I guessed. She sat me at the Formica-topped table, plonked half a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits before me, then got down to business. First she asked what hymns I would like. I didn’t think I knew any appropriate hymns, except ‘Abide with Me’, which I definitely didn’t want because it would be sure to cause me to totally break down. Other than that I had only a distant memory of hymns I used to sing at school and I couldn’t even remember what they were.