THE SNOW HAD BEEN FALLING since dawn. There was almost a foot of it by now, enough to deaden all sound except the shuffle of their feet as they followed the coffin out of the church and into the graveyard. There was no wind and the flakes settled fat and feathery on the bare heads and on the shoulders of the bearers in their black overcoats. The funeral director was at the door, handing out black umbrellas.
As the procession wove its way through the gravestones, one of the bearers slipped and the coffin lurched and for a moment Tommy thought it was going to crash to the ground and spill his grandmother's body on to the snow. But the other bearers deftly braced and he righted himself and all that fell was one wreath of roses, a splash of red in a world of white and black.
It was the church where Tommy had been christened. It was six hundred years old and some of the gravestones tilted precariously and were so overgrown with moss and lichen that you couldn't read what was written on them anymore. His grandmother had never believed in God. She used to say it was all stuff and nonsense and never came here with them at Christmas or Easter. But, for some reason, this was where she was to be buried. The grave that had been dug for her was close to an old yew tree, its sprawl of branches bending under the weight of the snow. Tommy remembered reading somewhere that yews were witches' trees.
The bearers put the coffin down on some canvas straps that had been laid ready beside the grave and then, using these, they lifted it again and lowered it slowly between the sliced walls of frozen earth.
There had been no more than a dozen people at the service in the church and fewer still had stayed on for the burial. The only people Tommy recognized across the grave were Dr Henderson and Uncle Reggie and Auntie Vera, who'd cried loudly all through the church service and was still crying now. Nobody else was. But then they were mostly men and men weren't supposed to cry. Tommy felt too empty and numb to cry. And much too cold. His feet felt like clumps of frozen rock. He was wearing his old Ashlawn school suit and wished he'd put on a thicker sweater.
Diane was still wearing her sunglasses. Perhaps she didn't want people to see whether or not she was crying. Tommy was close enough to know she wasn't. She was standing beside him, trying to shelter both him and her father under her umbrella which was difficult because the old man seemed to be off in a world of his own and kept swaying out to stare at the sky with a kind of weary surprise, blinking whenever a snowflake landed on his eyes.
The umbrellas looked like igloos. The old rector's nose had gone purple with cold and his breath made clouds in the air as he hurried through what he had to say. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. The handful of frozen soil rattled on the coffin lid.
The telegram had been delivered to the apartment in LA on Sunday morning, just over a week before Christmas, telling Diane to phone home urgently. It was Auntie Vera who answered. She said Joan had died of a massive heart attack. Arthur had found her lying on the kitchen floor when he came home from work.
Ray drove them out to the airport that same afternoon. They hardly saw him anymore though he still phoned every day. Tommy missed him a lot and felt sorry for him too because the studio was going to stop making Sliprock. Diane was still being horrible to him after their argument. She wouldn't tell Tommy what it had been about. She said he was too young to understand which was one of the most maddening things a grown-up could ever say. On the way to the airport, Ray was really sweet. He looked sad and sheepish and somehow smaller than he used to. Diane hardly spoke to him, just sat there, staring out of the window while Ray and Tommy did all the talking. On the plane, after they'd had supper and the lights had all been turned down, Tommy asked her why she had to go on being so unfriendly to Ray.
"He didn't tell me the truth about something. Something very important."
"What?"
Diane sighed.
"He didn't tell me that he'd been married before."
"Even I knew that."
"Twice."
"What's so bad about that?"
"And that he's not yet properly divorced from his last wife."
"Maybe he forgot."
She laughed.
"You don't forget about something like that."
Tommy thought for a while.
"What's different about him not telling you about that and you not telling me all those years that you were my real mother?"
Diane didn't reply for a moment, just looked at him with a sad smile.
"How come you're so darned clever? Come on, let's get some sleep."
The rector had stopped talking now and everyone piled back into their cars and drove home to eat all the food that Auntie Vera and Diane had prepared. Tommy helped hand out the sandwiches and soup and then walked around with a jug of steaming fruit punch into which Uncle Reggie had poured everything alcoholic he could find in the house. The cold seemed to have made everybody very thirsty. They all asked him about living in California and Uncle Reggie, who'd clearly already had too much punch, kept putting on an American accent and saying howdy, pardner whenever Tommy walked past.
It had been strange to see all his grandmother's things around the house when they arrived two days ago. It was as if she'd just nipped out to the shops. Her apron hanging by the kitchen door, her slippers on the floor by the doormat, her cigarettes and lighter on the sideboard where she always kept them. Diane had cleared a lot of it away and they had gone out and bought a Christmas tree and tried to make the house look a little more cheerful. But the decorations only seemed to make the place seem sadder still. There was another big difference which, for a long time, he couldn't put his finger on. Then he realized it was simply the silence. Joan had always had the radio on.
As the big bowl of rum punch slowly emptied, the voices got rowdier. And when he could do so without being noticed, Tommy slipped away upstairs. His old room had been redecorated as a guest room with green floral wallpaper and a sickly yellow carpet. He stood by the window, staring out at the back garden. The light was fading fast. He remembered how excited he always used to be when it snowed but today everything just looked flat and dull. It didn't seem like home anymore. He no longer knew where home was.
Diane thought they were never going to leave. And even when at last they did, Auntie Vera insisted on staying on to clear up. Tommy and Uncle Reggie were in the sitting room, watching TV. Diane's father had long ago quietly escaped to his little workshop.
"So, whatever happened to that film you were supposed to be doing with Gary Cooper? What was it called?"
Vera was at the kitchen sink, washing the last of the dishes. Diane was standing beside her drying them and longing to smash them over the woman's head. She hadn't stopped yakking all afternoon and everything she said was snide or scornful. Diane took a deep breath.