go I’ve always thought the one about whether our Lord’s feet actually walked in ancient times upon England’s mountains green to be not only rhetorical, but, if pressed, a resounding no. I was still thinking about it as we filed out of church a few moments later. Blake had clearly lobbed it up metaphysically, wryly, not to be taken literally, and yet hundreds of years later it was belted out by congregations across the land and embraced patriotically, the answer a resounding ‘Yes!’ from those who wanted Him to be an Englishman ten foot tall. Would it have amused Blake, I wondered, as I reached the gate on the lane, my eyes narrowed against the low sun which was dazzling, blinding almost, to hear it sung with such fervour? Did it amuse God?
‘Mrs Shilling!’
A voice cut through my reverie, scattering my thoughts. I turned, abstractedly, at the gate.
‘Mrs Shilling?’ There was a note of incredulity to it.
Back at the top of the path, in the grassy, undulating area to the left of the church, otherwise known as the cemetery, the vicar was waiting, prayer book open, cassock flapping, saucer-eyed, surrounded by the rest of the congregation. They appeared to be clustered around a huge gaping hole in the ground which … Shit. I’d forgotten to bury my husband.
Shock, naturally, Jennie and Angie both quickly consoled me, as I hastened to join them, to stand between them; that and nervous exhaustion. I nodded dumbly. Horrified and sweaty-palmed I bent my head, which was indeed very muddled, so that as I was passed some earth to throw onto the coffin and nervously did so, Angie, swathed in black mink, had to touch my arm and murmur: ‘Easy, tiger. Wait till the vicar gets to the earth-to-earth bit. Let’s not hurry this along too much, hm?’ She handed me some more in her suede-gloved hand.
Later, and it seemed like an eternity – so horrible, seeing him lowered in that dreadful box into the ground, so final – I was back at the church gate again with the vicar. I knew it had been part of the plan at some point, I’d just hastened there rather too quickly. One by one the villagers filed past to pay their respects, to say how sorry they were, pressing my hand and murmuring condolences. Yvonne, the post-mistress – whom Phil had once called an interfering busybody to her face when she complained about him leaning his bike against her shop window – said how much she’d miss his sunny smile. Sylvia Jardine at the Old Rectory, who considered herself the local nob and didn’t know Phil from Adam but clearly thought she’d done her homework, said, in a carrying, fruity voice that Philip had been an outstanding bell ringer, a misunderstanding courtesy of this month’s parish magazine, in which someone had complained about Phil ringing his bicycle bell at six in the morning as he waited impatiently for Bob Groves to drive his cattle through the village. Dan, Jennie’s husband, gave me a huge hug and whispered, ‘You’re doing brilliantly, girl,’ which made me well up, and Frankie, in a black minidress and matching nail varnish, who at sixteen had never been to a funeral and had come out of interest – she later confided she didn’t think there’d been nearly enough weeping or black veils – squeezed my hand and said I must be ‘properly pissed’.
Happily many of the condolences were for the children, whom I’d deemed too young to come for the whole service, and who were now with Peggy across the road. Peggy, who’d brought the children briefly and sat at the back, but who’d told me in her throaty drawl, as she dragged on her fourth cigarette of the morning, that she wasn’t a great one for funerals, and anyway, she’d never liked him. I smiled to myself. Just the one voice of truth ringing in our valley. How I loved Peggy.
She wasn’t an obvious role model, being widowed and childless, and cut an eccentric figure in her long flowing coats and beaded scarves, down which she dripped cigarette ash – the only time I’d seen Peggy cook, I’d watched fascinated as two inches of ash had fallen from her cigarette into the Bolognese: and she’d calmly stirred it in, muttering ‘Roughage’ – but she had a certain objective wisdom. Objective, perhaps because of a lack of blood ties with the world, which ensured impartiality. And a glorious irreverence for anything humbug. Those