to get married. But then the vicar said what a marvellous father he’d been and what a loss to the children, and that’s when I welled up. He hadn’t been marvellous, but any father is a loss. You only get one, and my children would never have another Christmas with him, another holiday with him, not that they’d necessarily want to cycle through the Pyrenees being yelled at constantly to keep up, or … OK, he’d never make speeches at their eighteenths, twenty-firsts, that sort of thing. Actually Phil had only ever made one speech to my knowledge, a best-man’s speech for a cycling crony, which had gone on for forty-six minutes, and been so turgidly dull that eventually, when everyone began coughing and nipping to the loo or the bar, the bride’s father, a bluff Yorkshireman, had got to his feet and said firmly: ‘That’ll do, laddie.’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.
I sighed. Still. My poor babies. Clemmie, in particular. Archie, at twenty months, was too young to understand, but Clemmie had listened soberly when I’d told her the bad news the following morning, sitting her down before nursery school, explaining carefully exactly what had happened. Her brown eyes had grown huge in her pale little face, knowing, by the tone of my voice, rather than the content, that this was bad.
‘So is he breathing?’
‘No, darling. He’s dead.’
‘Like Shameful?’
‘Yes, like Shameful.’
This, a ram in the field at the back of our house, who’d been found stiff and cold last month, and was so called because he rogered every ewe in the field before breakfast, which Phil had found offensive when he was eating his muesli.
‘It’s shameful!’ he’d roar, so Clemmie thought that was his name.
‘Where is Daddy?’
‘He’s … well …’ I hesitated. The morgue sounded horrible. ‘At the undertaker’s. It’s a special place where dead people go before they’re buried.’
‘Not in heaven?’
‘Oh, well, yes. Yes, his soul will go to heaven. It’s quite complicated, darling, but the point is, you won’t see him again. Do you understand?’
She nodded. ‘Will Shameful go to heaven?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Even though he had lots of girlfriends?’
‘Well … yes. I don’t see why not.’
She finished her cereal in silence. Got down from the table. But no tears, which worried me. But then, she was only four; it probably hadn’t quite filtered through. And the thing was, Phil never got home until they’d gone to bed in the week, and at the weekends he’d cycled all day, so how much more had she seen of him than of the ram at the back of the house? In the field where my children played most days, climbing on the logs, splashing in puddles?
When I collected her from nursery, though, Miss Hawkins had caught my eye, scuttled across.
‘May I have a word, Mrs Shilling?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I just thought you should know that Clemmie says her daddy was hit by a plane.’
‘True, in a way.’
‘And that he’s died and gone to heaven.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that anyone can go, even if they’ve had lots of girlfriends. Even if they’re shameful.’
I blinked.
‘Right. Thank you … Miss Hawkins.’
She was already hastening away before I could put her straight. I sighed. Oh, so be it, I thought as I watched her departing back. Let the entire village think he was the local lothario. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Unless it was in the interests of conception, which appealed to Phil’s competitive nature, he regarded sex as … a bit of a chore. A box to be ticked by a workaholic who’d rather be on his Black-Berry. There hadn’t been much since Archie had been born, which, Jennie told me darkly, I should thank my lucky stars about. Dan hadn’t even let her get to her six-week check after Jamie, and when she was up on the ramp having her overhaul, she hadn’t liked to tell the nice young doctor who’d coyly told her she could start giving herself back to her husband, that he’d been helping himself for weeks.
But no, Phil hadn’t been much of a bedroom man; indeed the idea of him putting himself about locally was almost as fanciful as him putting his goodwill about, being a stalwart of this parish, where, thankfully, the vicar was winding up now, his material being quite thin. He cleared his throat and enjoined us to stand and sing the final hymn, number one hundred and seventy two: ‘Jerusalem’. We all got gratefully to our feet.