Pat Barker - Another World

Nick follows Geoffrey out to his car, then copes with the rush of people who are suddenly leaving, wondering, as he shakes hands and thanks them for coming, whether all the funerals they attend are as cheerful as this. Probably not. Geordie’s death has convinced these seventy- and eighty-year-olds that there’s life in the old dog yet. He’d been twenty years older than any of them, and so the pretence of grief was rapidly abandoned. This wasn’t mourning for somebody who’d died so much as a celebration of somebody who’d gone on cheating death for years. He turns, hand outstretched, and it’s Helen. Kissing her, he’s aware of the scent of Antaeus, fading. Not on his chin either — somehow he doubts if he’ll ever finish the bottle. He watches her walk away, sifts through his mind for a trace of guilt or regret, finds none. At last, his arm around Fran’s shoulders, he can stand in the doorway and wave the last of them goodbye.

Frieda’s playing with Jasper in the kitchen. They’ve become good friends in a short time, these two, and it’s just as well since she and Fran have arranged for her to move in at the time of the birth. Life’s sorting out, settling down, arranging itself into new patterns. Even Gareth seems happier, amazed to find that at his new school in York computers are on the timetable, in every classroom, one for each pupil.

But for Nick, among all the green shoots, there’s still the ache of loss. And so, when the dishwasher’s been loaded, the paper plates thrown away, leftovers wrapped in clingfilm and stored in the freezer, he says, if nobody minds, he thinks he’d like to go back to the church. He’s afraid Miranda might want to come with him, or Frieda, but Miranda’s got packing to do, and Frieda says she’s going to put her feet up and thinks Fran should do the same.

It’s not dark, or anywhere near dark, when he gets to the churchyard, but the sun’s moved round behind the church, and its shadow lies, thick and black, over the graveyard. Going straight to the grave, he’s surprised to find it already filled in, and wreaths piled on top to hide the raw earth. Damp moss, wrapped round the stalks of one bouquet, has dribbled wet through the cellophane of the dedication card, blurring the words: ‘In loving memory.’

Nick stands and looks down, then moves along to the grave, a few feet further on, where Grandad’s parents are buried, deriving some consolation from his family’s long attachment to this place. He finds himself looking for Harry’s name, and then remembers.

Restless, searching for some discharge of feeling, and not finding it, he goes into the church. He walks up to the altar steps, footsteps echoing across the marble floor, smelling dust, old hassocks, the odour of piety, but unable to feel anything except a kind of nostalgia for the certainties of faith, and even that’s false, for he never came any closer to faith than forced attendance at school assemblies, and those marred by an arrogant childish contempt for his father’s hypocrisy.

He goes to find the Fanshawe memorial.

In loving memory of Robert Fanshawe

Born October 11th 1893

Killed in action, July 1st 1916

Also of James Fanshawe

Born August 15th 1902

Died November 4th 1904

If any question why we died ,

Tell them, because our fathers lied

A bitter epitaph, though there’s nothing surprising about that. Fanshawe had lost two sons, why wouldn’t he be bitter? What’s strange is the determined linking of the two deaths, the conviction of guilt for both. Unless, of course, he’s reading too much into it, and Fanshawe merely intended to endorse Rudyard Kipling’s call for more and better arms.

Six weeks since they’d uncovered the picture. Six weeks since Miranda stepped back and said, in that soft murmur that had raised the hairs on the nape of his neck, ‘It’s us.’ Not true, he thinks, even as the covered-up figures rise once again to the surface of his mind. He doesn’t regret not telling the family about the Fanshawe murder, because even now he doesn’t see how the knowledge would have helped them. It’s easy to let oneself be dazzled by false analogies — the past never threatens anything as simple, or as avoidable, as repetition.

On his way out, by the west door, he finds the Fanshawe graves, and pauses to decipher the eroded names. William, Isobel, Muriel, James. He finds himself searching for Robert, but then remembers that Robert, like Harry, isn’t here.

He wanders off down the path that leads round the outer perimeter of the churchyard, taking the long route back to Geordie. Some of the graves, here under the trees, are so old the names are hidden by moss. They’re forgotten, and the people who stood beside their graves and mourned for them are dead and forgotten in their turn. He remembers the trip to France with Geordie, the rows upon rows upon rows of white headstones, ageless graves for those who were never permitted to grow old. He’d walked round them with Geordie, marvelling at the carefully tended grass, the devotion that kept the graves young. But now, looking round this churchyard, at the gently decaying stones that line the path, he sees that there’s wisdom too in this: to let the innocent and the guilty, the murderers and the victims, lie together beneath their half-erased names, side by side, under the obliterating grass.