Did the letter Lenny wrote you make it clear he intended to commit suicide?’
‘I never read it.’
‘You never read your son’s letter?’
There was a clatter as Nuala stood up, dropping a bag her sister hurried to pick up for her. ‘I was so angry. I burnt it. I never read it. I’m sorry.’ Nuala ran out through the swing doors and her sister jumped up with an apologetic glance at the coroner and followed her out.
The coroner checked that the clerk had noted Mrs Barnes’s brief testimony, then called for Amy to come up. Derek Hawker came forward instead and Barnaby was struck by the change in him. As a rule Amy’s father was maddeningly secure, arrogantly masculine. One of nature’s PE teachers, he was just the sort of man to relish being asked to stand up on his own and read the Intercessions. As he had a quiet word with the coroner, however, and handed over a letter, he seemed both nervous and diminished.
‘Ms Hawker is too upset to address me directly but she has asked her father to submit the letter she received from Lenny Barnes and is content that this be read out,’ the coroner said. She unfolded the letter and read it through in frowning silence before looking over her glasses at Amy. ‘You’re happy for me to read this out?’ Presumably Amy nodded. The coroner cleared her throat. Dear Amy , she read. By the time you read this. Well. You know what the end of this sentence is going to be. I can’t cope any more. Everybody is so kind but it’s not enough. I said when I broke up with you that I couldn’t have you spend your life with only half the man you thought you were marrying. It wouldn’t have been right and I stick by that. But please understand when I say that without you and without my legs, life isn’t worth my while. I love you and hope you’ll move on. Be happy with someone else, someone you deserve and who deserves you. For the record, I did this all on my own, with nobody’s help. I’m getting in Father Barnaby as a witness so there’s no misunderstanding afterwards. All my love. Len . She folded the letter back into its envelope and handed it back to Mr Hawker. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
She thanked the witnesses and composed her thoughts for a moment before standing to address the room. Her verdict was death by suicide and that Lenny’s body should be immediately released to his family.
Two days later was a Sunday, the third since Lenny’s death. Barnaby rose early as usual. He took Dot her tea then drafted a short sermon on the three resurrections that prefigured Christ’s own – those of Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter and the only son of the widow from Nain – and went on to write rather challengingly about mourning and how, along with married love, coping with loss was one of life’s fundamentals for which Christ left no helpful pattern. He may have wept with his friends at Lazarus’s tomb, but he negated that grief with a miraculous resurrection, as though death were no more than a misunderstanding and their grief a failure of faith. And Barnaby quoted Dorothy Sayers’s account of Lazarus describing life after death as being the moment of glimpsing the ‘beautiful and terrible’ front of the tapestry while the living must content themselves with seeing only the tangle of knotted threads at its rear.
Carrie had elected to experience her first Quaker meeting that morning with her new friends so he and Dot drove up alone. The church car park was full and the lane up to it crammed with cars as well, so Dot ended up dropping him off at the church door and driving back to park on the main road.
The robing servers were in a state of high excitement about the crowd and it was the youngest, most computer-savvy of them who explained. Barnaby’s testimony at the inquest had been recorded on somebody’s smart phone and uploaded to the Internet where it had already been viewed and copied thousands of times. Someone else who had been there, the lay leader of an
‘I never read it.’
‘You never read your son’s letter?’
There was a clatter as Nuala stood up, dropping a bag her sister hurried to pick up for her. ‘I was so angry. I burnt it. I never read it. I’m sorry.’ Nuala ran out through the swing doors and her sister jumped up with an apologetic glance at the coroner and followed her out.
The coroner checked that the clerk had noted Mrs Barnes’s brief testimony, then called for Amy to come up. Derek Hawker came forward instead and Barnaby was struck by the change in him. As a rule Amy’s father was maddeningly secure, arrogantly masculine. One of nature’s PE teachers, he was just the sort of man to relish being asked to stand up on his own and read the Intercessions. As he had a quiet word with the coroner, however, and handed over a letter, he seemed both nervous and diminished.
‘Ms Hawker is too upset to address me directly but she has asked her father to submit the letter she received from Lenny Barnes and is content that this be read out,’ the coroner said. She unfolded the letter and read it through in frowning silence before looking over her glasses at Amy. ‘You’re happy for me to read this out?’ Presumably Amy nodded. The coroner cleared her throat. Dear Amy , she read. By the time you read this. Well. You know what the end of this sentence is going to be. I can’t cope any more. Everybody is so kind but it’s not enough. I said when I broke up with you that I couldn’t have you spend your life with only half the man you thought you were marrying. It wouldn’t have been right and I stick by that. But please understand when I say that without you and without my legs, life isn’t worth my while. I love you and hope you’ll move on. Be happy with someone else, someone you deserve and who deserves you. For the record, I did this all on my own, with nobody’s help. I’m getting in Father Barnaby as a witness so there’s no misunderstanding afterwards. All my love. Len . She folded the letter back into its envelope and handed it back to Mr Hawker. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
She thanked the witnesses and composed her thoughts for a moment before standing to address the room. Her verdict was death by suicide and that Lenny’s body should be immediately released to his family.
Two days later was a Sunday, the third since Lenny’s death. Barnaby rose early as usual. He took Dot her tea then drafted a short sermon on the three resurrections that prefigured Christ’s own – those of Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter and the only son of the widow from Nain – and went on to write rather challengingly about mourning and how, along with married love, coping with loss was one of life’s fundamentals for which Christ left no helpful pattern. He may have wept with his friends at Lazarus’s tomb, but he negated that grief with a miraculous resurrection, as though death were no more than a misunderstanding and their grief a failure of faith. And Barnaby quoted Dorothy Sayers’s account of Lazarus describing life after death as being the moment of glimpsing the ‘beautiful and terrible’ front of the tapestry while the living must content themselves with seeing only the tangle of knotted threads at its rear.
Carrie had elected to experience her first Quaker meeting that morning with her new friends so he and Dot drove up alone. The church car park was full and the lane up to it crammed with cars as well, so Dot ended up dropping him off at the church door and driving back to park on the main road.
The robing servers were in a state of high excitement about the crowd and it was the youngest, most computer-savvy of them who explained. Barnaby’s testimony at the inquest had been recorded on somebody’s smart phone and uploaded to the Internet where it had already been viewed and copied thousands of times. Someone else who had been there, the lay leader of an
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