Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

How old was I, when I first became puzzled by that last gnomic phrase? We had all listened to it, the whole line of us, life after life, so many lives, lost and untraceable now.

The vicar led the way out of church; following him, the bearers’ shoulders were firm under the coffin. Margaret and I walked behind, then Martin and Irene, then the grandchildren. As the coffin was slid into the hearse, windows so clear that there might have been no glass there, the undertaker stood by, rubicund, content that all was in order, holding his top hat in a black gloved hand. “Easy on,” muttered one of the bearers at the last shove.

Slowly the little procession of cars drove down the side street into the main road. On the pavement people passed casually along, but one old man stopped in his walk and took off his hat. The parish church, being so new, had never had a graveyard: and in fact all the parish graveyards in the town had been full for years. My mother had been buried in the big municipal cemetery, and it was there, along the sunny bus route, cars rushing towards us and the suburbs, that we were driving. But my mother, as she had died young, had not arranged to reserve a grave beside her: and that was a matter to which my father would not have given a thought. So his coffin was carried to the opposite side of the great cemetery, new headstones glaring in the sun, flower vases twinkling, angels, crosses, such a profusion of the signs of death that it gave an extra anonymity to death itself: as in one of the wartime collective graves, where all that one took in was that the victims of a siege were buried here.

In a far corner, a neat rectangle had been marked out, and below the edge of turf, one could see the fresh brown earth. Wreaths away, coffin lowered (again one of the bearers muttered), and we stood round.

There were no prayer books to follow now. Rich voice in the hot evening.

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.

In the midst of life we are in death.

I had noticed which of the bearers was holding bits of earth in hand. At the end of the appeal he was waiting to hear suffer us not, at our last hours, for any pains of death, to fall from them . Promptly he stepped forward and, with a couple of flicks, threw down the earth upon the coffin.

Opposite to me, across the grave, Charles’ mouth suddenly tightened. He had not heard that final sound before.

For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother Herbert Edward here departed: we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life …the voice went on, it was soon all over, the collect and the blessing.

We were very near one entrance to the cemetery, and before long were standing there, shaking hands. Our voices, which had been so subdued as we waited for the bell to toll and on the road to the cemetery, suddenly became loud. I heard Martin’s, usually quiet, sound hearty as he thanked the vicar. I shook hands with the undertaker and the bearers, one of whom kept rubbing his hand on his trousers, as though he couldn’t get rid of the last particle of earth. Margaret was telling the Sperrys, once again, how grateful we were for their kindness.

Thanks given and regiven, we stood about, not knowing what to do. No one wanted to make a move. Pat’s face, more labile than any of ours, was suiting itself to sadness, just as it did to a party. Charles, tall by his cousin’s side, politely answered questions from Mr Sperry. The truth was, we were at a loss. I had made a mistake, or forgotten something. After funerals such as this, my mother and her friends had always departed to a meal, spending on it often much more than they could afford. Singular meals, so far as I remembered — ham, chicken (bought for this special occasion), blancmanges, jellies, cakes. Port wine. When I was Charles’ age, that seemed to me as naïve as it would to him. Yet maybe it was wise. It made an end. As we stood about at the cemetery gate, this was no sort of end.

Glancing round with bright, apprehensive eyes (the same treacle-brown eyes that one could see in her son and daughter), Irene said: “Well, perhaps we ought to be thinking of—” her voice trailed off.

Martin, once more over-hearty, was saying to the Sperrys: “Now are you all right for transport? Are you sure you’re all right? Or else I can get you home—” The vicar and the undertaker assured him that they had room for the Sperrys.

More thanks. At last that party moved towards the hearse, and we to our own cars. My niece said to me, through the hair which obscured half her face: “That’s over, isn’t it, Uncle Lewis?” She might have said it by way of comfort. Charles, who was walking with her, flashed me a hard and searching look, as though I had mismanaged things.

WE were all staying at the hotel which Martin had used during the trial. There were too many of us to go to friends: and in fact, we shouldn’t have chosen to. Without a word passed between us, Martin and I hadn’t wanted to see a person we knew on this last family occasion in the town. Let it be as obscure as the old occasions. The local paper had printed a one-inch paragraph about our father’s death, and that was all.

As our party was walking past the reception desk towards the lifts, Martin hung behind.

“Get down before the rest, for a few minutes,” he said to me, very quietly.

“Where?”

“Oh, the old bar.”

It was the bar, aquarium-lit, in which he had spoken to me with pain and ruthlessness in the middle of the trial. I was down a little before him, and when he entered and we looked at each other, I hadn’t forgotten and knew that nor had he. This time the bar was emptier: it was later, the pre-dinner drinkers had sifted away. Just one single acquaintance called out to Martin: “You here again?” Here again, Martin, affably, impersonally, called back.

The alcove, where we had talked before, was vacant. We sat ourselves there, and I asked him what he would drink. No, he said, the drinks were on him. As he carried them to our table, I watched his face, set, controlled: yet somehow, as I had seen once or twice in his life, it was illuminated from within, like one of the turnip heads in which we used to place candles when we were boys.

“I have a bit of news,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Pat is going to get married.”

“Is he, by God?”

Then I asked, who to: but I thought I knew.

“Muriel. Roy Calvert’s Muriel.”

Martin was so happy that I had to be happy for him. I said, using our own cipher, well, Pat might have done worse.

“He might have done worse,” said Martin, all cautiousness gone. It would have seemed strange thirty years before, I said, to think of his son marrying Roy Calvert’s daughter. Actually (though I didn’t bring it back to mind) he and Roy had never been more than acquaintances. If Roy were alive now, he would have been fifty-three.

“It’s hard to imagine him like that, isn’t it?” said Martin.

“Anyway, you’re obviously glad.”

“I’m very glad.”

The engagement would be announced the following Monday, he said. He didn’t want any mention of it at dinner that night.

“Why ever not?”

He shook his head.

“Whatever could be more natural?” I meant, an old man dies, his grandson gets married: after all that we had said, and felt, in this alcove a few weeks before, we were back in the flow of things. It mightn’t be very grand: there was the splendid, of which we had seen a little, there was the hideous, of which we had seen enough: yet this was neither, it was what we lived in, in order to endure.