away.
She was my mother after all, and he’s my father. Why should he be treated like the sensitive plant and me chucked down to face this lot?
Because you can think like this at a moment like this, she admonished herself humorously and the shadow of a smile must have run over her face for she caught ‘Bruiser’ Dalziel eyeing her sharply as she stepped on to the car park.
Standing a little behind Dalziel she saw a tall young man, elegantly dressed, with a thin intelligent face - the kind of actor-type who played ambitious young Foreign Office men on the telly. She thought momentarily of Tony. He hadn’t had time to see him before she left, everything had happened in such a hurry. But no doubt Helen would have passed on the news to him. Perhaps even made a come-back in her original starring role.
Definitely her last appearance, thought Jenny, but didn’t find it particularly funny. She intended to make straight for the car and shut the door firmly on all condolences, sympathetic noises, keen-edged questionings probing for vicarious pain. But her arm was taken firmly and she was brought to a halt.
‘I just wanted to say that I shall miss your mother, Jenny,’ said Alice Fernie.
The annoyance that had tightened her lips for a moment eased away. She could not remember anyone else saying this. They were all ‘dreadfully sorry’, it had come as a terrible shock to them, but no one had really suggested that Mary Connon would be missed.
‘Yes, I shall too,’ she replied, then feeling this was a bit too cold she squeezed the gloved hand which still rested on her arm and went on, ‘I know how much she relied on you.’
This was nothing more than the simple truth, she realized, as the words came out. Mary Connon had rarely mentioned Alice Fernie to her except in faintly disparaging or patronizing terms. Her lack of taste; the unfairly large wage her husband earned on the factory floor; the excessive subsidization by the ratepayers of council-house rents. She was capable of blaming the Fernies (‘and all those like them,’ she would say inclusively) for the very existence of the Woodfield estate. It had only been a very few years previously that Jenny had realized that the council estate had been there already when her parents bought the house. She had come to accept a picture of rolling countryside being savaged before her mother’s eyes as the bulldozers rolled in, prompted by the Fernies and ‘all those like them’. But Alice Fernie had been, perhaps by the mere accident of proximity, the nearest thing to a real friend she had. And now Jenny felt real gratitude that this large handsome woman who could only be in her early thirties had thought enough of her mother to accept the condescension of manner and get closer to her.
Closer than me perhaps, she thought.
‘How did you get here, Mrs Fernie?’ she asked. ‘Can we give you a lift back?’
There were no funeral cars other than the hearse. ‘I will judge what is fitting,’ she had heard her father say to the oblique remonstrances of the man from the undertakers.
‘No, thank you, dear. You’ll want to be with your dad. And I’m not going straight back anyway. ‘Bye now.’
‘Goodbye. Please call round, won’t you? I shan’t be going back to college till next month.’
I’ll have to watch myself there, she thought as she watched Alice move away with long confident strides, I could become as patronizing as Mum.
As she got into the car, she glanced back and caught the eye of the young man who could have been from the Foreign Office. He took a step forward. She thought he was going to come across and talk to her. But a rumbling, phlegmy cough from Fat Dalziel caught both their attentions and the young man turned away.
Policemen, she thought, angry at her disappointment, and slammed the car door.
Connon watched Marcus walk away from him down the path through the rank and file of headstones.
The car park was nearly empty now. The Evanses’ car
She was my mother after all, and he’s my father. Why should he be treated like the sensitive plant and me chucked down to face this lot?
Because you can think like this at a moment like this, she admonished herself humorously and the shadow of a smile must have run over her face for she caught ‘Bruiser’ Dalziel eyeing her sharply as she stepped on to the car park.
Standing a little behind Dalziel she saw a tall young man, elegantly dressed, with a thin intelligent face - the kind of actor-type who played ambitious young Foreign Office men on the telly. She thought momentarily of Tony. He hadn’t had time to see him before she left, everything had happened in such a hurry. But no doubt Helen would have passed on the news to him. Perhaps even made a come-back in her original starring role.
Definitely her last appearance, thought Jenny, but didn’t find it particularly funny. She intended to make straight for the car and shut the door firmly on all condolences, sympathetic noises, keen-edged questionings probing for vicarious pain. But her arm was taken firmly and she was brought to a halt.
‘I just wanted to say that I shall miss your mother, Jenny,’ said Alice Fernie.
The annoyance that had tightened her lips for a moment eased away. She could not remember anyone else saying this. They were all ‘dreadfully sorry’, it had come as a terrible shock to them, but no one had really suggested that Mary Connon would be missed.
‘Yes, I shall too,’ she replied, then feeling this was a bit too cold she squeezed the gloved hand which still rested on her arm and went on, ‘I know how much she relied on you.’
This was nothing more than the simple truth, she realized, as the words came out. Mary Connon had rarely mentioned Alice Fernie to her except in faintly disparaging or patronizing terms. Her lack of taste; the unfairly large wage her husband earned on the factory floor; the excessive subsidization by the ratepayers of council-house rents. She was capable of blaming the Fernies (‘and all those like them,’ she would say inclusively) for the very existence of the Woodfield estate. It had only been a very few years previously that Jenny had realized that the council estate had been there already when her parents bought the house. She had come to accept a picture of rolling countryside being savaged before her mother’s eyes as the bulldozers rolled in, prompted by the Fernies and ‘all those like them’. But Alice Fernie had been, perhaps by the mere accident of proximity, the nearest thing to a real friend she had. And now Jenny felt real gratitude that this large handsome woman who could only be in her early thirties had thought enough of her mother to accept the condescension of manner and get closer to her.
Closer than me perhaps, she thought.
‘How did you get here, Mrs Fernie?’ she asked. ‘Can we give you a lift back?’
There were no funeral cars other than the hearse. ‘I will judge what is fitting,’ she had heard her father say to the oblique remonstrances of the man from the undertakers.
‘No, thank you, dear. You’ll want to be with your dad. And I’m not going straight back anyway. ‘Bye now.’
‘Goodbye. Please call round, won’t you? I shan’t be going back to college till next month.’
I’ll have to watch myself there, she thought as she watched Alice move away with long confident strides, I could become as patronizing as Mum.
As she got into the car, she glanced back and caught the eye of the young man who could have been from the Foreign Office. He took a step forward. She thought he was going to come across and talk to her. But a rumbling, phlegmy cough from Fat Dalziel caught both their attentions and the young man turned away.
Policemen, she thought, angry at her disappointment, and slammed the car door.
Connon watched Marcus walk away from him down the path through the rank and file of headstones.
The car park was nearly empty now. The Evanses’ car
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