It was 1937 when I met her, and a funeral was the occasion.
The rain was smothering the air, fists full of water dribbling down from the high clouds like a wrung out rag. The sky was splattered with deep colours of grey and blue, blended together like water-colours on canvas as small groups of clouds struggled across the expansive sky, covering the quivering sun. I thought of the rain falling from above: was it a usual thing at funerals? Was it pathetic fallacy at its best, I wondered? It caused a shiver to run over me.
I was slowly walking up the gravel path with my cane grasped in my fingers, the chill of the wind biting through my heavy woolen coat and black suit. Shined black shoes made an echoed clicking sound as I made my way towards the church, my heart beating feverishly in my chest as I pushed on the wood on the door. There was a low hum of respectable talking and the background noise of dull organ music flooded through the small gap, leaking into the outside world. A little bit of colour, however grey, into the cold and dull outside.
The church was small but not crowded, and a hot gust of air hit me in the face as I entered. There were people, mostly young, sitting on the old mahogany pews and there was a vicar positioned near the altar where my friend’s coffin lay shut. I knew it was present, yet I could not bring myself to look at it; I could not bare to see its dark outline in the back of my head for ever more.
The vicar was reasonably old, with greying hair and a large, protruding nose which was rubbed red from a cold. He was nodding at some of the people, animated in probably miserable conversation which he seemed to enjoy, something in which I did not want to engage.
I limped over to a pew near the front and sat down, feeling the heat of my bad leg relax against the cold wood that I could feel through my trousers. The back of my neck was damp from the rain and my hair, thick but dishwater brown, was dripping cold raindrops onto my shirt collar. The respectable hum was dying down now and the vicar was clearing his throat. In the pew in front I could see my friend's family, clad in the black of deep mourning and feathered, extravagant hats flapping in the chilling wind that rattled through the church- the flamboyant hats were an ironic reminder of my dead friend's personality, rising above them all with their crippling words and harsh views, attempting to damped him, and I suppose the worst bit about the imagery was that his family would never realise. Not now.
I did not weep as the vicar began, like his mother did. Her howling tainted the drone of the vicar, who was spouting deep, religious words of comfort and acceptance that I doubt my friend would ever receive, buried six feet under, regardless of whether he was with the Lord or not, even if He was as forgiving as He's meant to be. I thought of death, like Jane Eyre thought of death out in the moors. It had been one of my friend’s favourite books, so it was not strange that I thought of it now. I thought of death and the rotting cold that followed it, wondering what happened after it. The gentle drone of the vicar accompanied my thoughts, lulling them into a rhythm, slow and steady; would these people also be at my funeral? Would there be jokes cracked when I was lowered into the ground? I had no mother, so would someone weep in her place, uncontrollable?
No one stood at the altar and spoke kind words after the vicar had finished. There was a gnawing feeling inside me which tinted my thoughts as we sat in respectful silence, watching his coffin travel down the aisle on the shoulders of his brother, his father, and two school colleagues: was it that no one spoke because they were ashamed of my dead friend, or were they ashamed of his actions?
As I glanced at his weeping lover, sitting alone at the back of the church, I guessed the later, my stomach knotting into angry, uncomfortable bulges. Suicide, intending to end one life, ended others. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Was it fair? Did he have to end his own life in such a way that there wasn't much left to bury? His mother had been distraught but also disgusted, I'd heard, when she'd learnt what her son had been doing. His liaison with a handsome young accountant had made him finally happy, until a work colleague had threatened to tell the police, making grotesque lies of rape and sodomy seem real and easy to accept. He could sleep with men, so he could sleep with children too. It'd been easy to slander and ruin a name that no one had heard of in the first place.
Though his mother was weeping openly, his lover shed tears silently at the back, head bent and body crumpled, clasping his hands and muttering under his breath. A snide remark from behind me shocked me from my thoughts.
S'pose he's praying for forgiveness, to correct his dirty sins?
I looked away, unable to watch such a sight of one man crumbling under the eyes of the judgmental and the Lord. I slowly joined a jumbled line of mourners as we all filed out of the church, my stick hitting the stones with disgruntled force. I accepted my place at the back of the crowd as the funeral party gathered around a freshly dug hole, the slush of new soil becoming brown soup as the rain drizzled down. I checked my watch- quarter to two- and looked up to the Heavens as his coffin was lowered into the ground. I could hear that snide comment nibbling away at my good sense, the very little I had: dirty sins were the cause of free will, but if the free-will induced decision made him happy, was it truly bad? I’d never thought so, yet the cold and bitter comments still haunted me as I turned them over in my mind. Why did God have to come into everything when someone died? The air around was stiff as I sucked it in, calming myself. I wanted to leave, but was it too soon? People would think me bad, leaving now, but there was a growing tension in my chest that made me sweat and panic and-
That's when I saw her.
Feminine wiles mixed with the dull black of a mourner punctuated my thoughts. Red hair. She had caught me attention, but she should she have? I was at a time of sadness, after all, but I couldn’t stop looking. Pale, white skin like the shining full moon, a black coat with tiny little red hairs. Delicate ankles, slender wrists on show when she adjusted her hat-
"Sebastian, are you coming?"
The lowering of the coffin was over, and many of the mourners were slowly ebbing away, walking back to the church or gradually talking and leaving, but I hadn't noticed. I shook my head a little and felt the stiff pain of my leg fire up. A friend from school, Cyril, his name was, stood near me, lighting a cigarette between his huge teeth.
"Yes, I'm coming."
"Said your goodbyes?"
I paused.
"I shall come back when no one else is here. He'll be sick of it when it's finally my turn."
"True, if he can hear ya, that is.” Satire was a strange thing. “Want a cigarette?"
Still pondering on whether I thought my dead friend could actually hear me, I declined, and followed Cyril out of the church yard. I pulled my coat collar up against the wind and dug my free hand into my pocket, desperate for warmth. After a short walk down the lane, we came to Cyril's Ford Tudor Deluxe Touring Sudan that he'd fondly named Hilda last year, and got in, me leaning heavily on my stick as I hauled myself into the leather seat.
"Light me another before I go, would ya?" Cyril asked, handing me a silver lighter. He placed a cigarette in his lips and I lit it with shaking, pale hands that struggled with the flame. "Shake'll go soon, just ya wait. Bet it's just the shock of the funeral, y'know? You'll be good as new in no time."
Yet as he pulled out of the parked spot and drove down the lane, I couldn't help but wonder whether it was just my friend's passing, or something more. But as we drove back, one thing occupied my raving mind above all else-
The woman.
