Part Seven Chapter 2

No problem, he muttered. He was glad. He could not imagine what they had left to talk about. This vogue he could sit with germanium.A petty(a) way pour down Church Row, Sa earththa Mollison was standing at her sitting-room window, safekeeping a coffee and watching mourners pass her house on their way to St Michael and All Saints. When she saw Tessa Wall(a), and what she belief was Fats, she let out a little gasp.Oh my God, hes discharge, she utter out loud, to nobody.Then she recognized Andrew, turned red, and backed hastily away from the glass.Samantha was supposed to be working from home. Her laptop lay give way behind her on the sofa, but that morning she had put on an erstwhile(a) black dress, half wondering whether she would att wipeout Krystal and Robbie Weedons funeral. She supposed that she had only a hardly a(prenominal) more minutes in which to make up her mind.She had neer spoken a kind word about Krystal Weedon, so sure enough it would be hypocritical to attend her funeral, purely because she had wept over the account of her end in the Yarvil and District Gazette, and because Krystals chubby face grinned out of every nonpareil of the class photographs that Lexie had brought home from St Thomass?Samantha set down her coffee, hurried to the teleph ace and rang Miles at work.Hello, babe, he said.(She had held him while he sobbed with relief beside the hospital bed, where Howard lay attached to machines, but alive.)Hi, she said. How are you?Not bad. Busy morning. Lovely to hear from you, he said. Are you all right?(They had made love the previous night, and she had not pretended that he was eachbody else.)The funerals about to start, said Samantha. People going by She had suppressed what she wanted to say for nearly three weeks, because of Howard, and the hospital, and not lacking(p) to remind Miles of their awful row, but she could not hold it back any longer. Miles, I saw that boy. Robbie Weedon. I saw him, Miles. She was panicky, ple ading. He was in the St Thomass vie field when I walked crossways it that morning.In the playing field?In the last three weeks, a desire to be absorbed in something bigger than herself had grown in Samantha. Day by day she had waited for the crazy new need to subside (this is how people go religious, she thought, trying to jest herself out of it) but it had, if anything, intensified.Miles, she said, you know the council with your dad and Parminder Jawanda resigning too youll want to elect a couple of people, wont you? She knew all the terminology she had listened to it for years. I mean, you wont want some separate election, after all this?Bloody hell, no.So Colin Wall could fill ane seat, she rushed on, and I was cogitateing, Ive got time now the business is all online I could do the other one.You? said Miles, astonished.Id like to last involved, said Samantha.Krystal Weedon, unawares at sixteen, barricaded inside the squalid little house on Foley Road Samantha had not drunk a glass of wine in two weeks. She thought that she might like to hear the arguments for Bellchapel Addiction Clinic.The recollect was ringing in number ten Hope Street. Kay and atomic number 32 were already late leaving for Krystals funeral. When Gaia asked who was speaking, her lovely face hardened she seemed frequently older.Its Gavin, she told her mother.I didnt call him whispered Kay, like a nervous schoolgirl as she took the phone.Hi, said Gavin. How are you?On my way out to a funeral, said Kay, with her eyes locked on her daughters. The Weedon childrens. So, not fabulous.Oh, said Gavin. Christ, yeah. Sorry. I didnt realize.He had espy the familiar surname in a Yarvil and District Gazette headline, and, vaguely interested at last, bought a copy. It had occurred to him that he might dumbfound walked finis by the place where the teenagers and the boy had been, but he had no real(a) memory of seeing Robbie Weedon.Gavin had had an odd couple of weeks. He was miss ing Barry badly. He did not understand himself when he should have been mired in mishap that Mary had turned him down, all he wanted was a beer with the man whose wife he had confided to take as his own (Muttering aloud as he had walked away from her house, he had said to himself, Thats what you get for trying to slue your best friends life, and failed to notice the slip of the tongue.)Listen, he said, I was wondering whether you conceive of a drink later?Kay almost laughed.Turn you down, did she?She pass oned Gaia the phone to hang up. They hurried out of the house and half jogged to the end of the street and up through the Square. For ten strides, as they passed the Black Canon, Gaia held her mothers hand.They arrived as the hearses appeared at the top of the road, and hurried into the graveyard while the pall-bearers were make out onto the pavement.(Get away from the window, Colin Wall commanded his son.But Fats, who had to live henceforth with the knowledge of his own cowa rdice, go forward, trying to prove that he could, at least, take this The coffins glided past in the big black-windowed cars the starting time was bright criticise, and the muss robbed him of breath, and the second was tiny and shiny white Colin placed himself in bm of Fats too late to protect him, but he drew the curtains anyway. In the gloomy, familiar sitting room, where Fats had confessed to his parents that he had exposed his fathers illness to the world where he had confessed to as much as he could think of, in the hope that they would conclude him to be mad and ill where he had tried to batch upon himself so much blame that they would beat him or stab him or do to him all those things that he knew he deserved, Colin put a hand gently on his sons back and steered him away, towards the sunlit kitchen.)Outside St Michael and All Saints, the pall-bearers were cooking themselves to take the coffins up the church path. Dane Tully was among them, with his earring and a self-i nked tattoo of a spiders clear on his neck, in a heavy black overcoat.The Jawandas waited with the Bawdens in the complete of the yew tree. Andrew Price hovered near them, and Tessa Wall stood at some distance, pale and stony-faced. The other mourners formed a separate phalanx around the church doors. nigh had a pinched and defiant air others looked resigned and defeated a few wore cheap black clothes, but most were in jeans or tracksuits, and one girl was sporting a cut-off T-shirt and a belly-ring that caught the sun when she moved. The coffins moved up the path, gleaming in the bright light.It was Sukhvinder Jawanda who had chosen the bright pink coffin for Krystal, as she was sure she would have wanted. It was Sukhvinder who had done nearly everything organizing, choosing and persuading. Parminder kept looking sideways at her daughter, and finding excuses to touch her brushing her pilus out of her eyes, smoothing her collar.Just as Robbie had come out of the river purified and regretted by Pagford, so Sukhvinder Jawanda, who had risked her life to try and save the boy, had emerged a heroine. From the article about her in the Yarvil and District Gazette to Maureen Lowes loud proclamations that she was recommending the girl for a special police force award to the speech her headmistress made about her from the lectern in assembly, Sukhvinder knew, for the startle time, what it was to eclipse her brother and sister.She had hated every minute of it. At night, she entangle again the dead boys weight in her coat of arms, dragging her towards the deep she remembered the lure to let go and save herself, and asked herself how long she would have resisted it. The deep stigmatise on her leg itched and ached, whether moving or stationary. The news of Krystal Weedons death had had such(prenominal) an alarming effect on her that her parents had arranged a counsellor, but she had not cut herself once since being pulled from the river her near drowning seemed t o have purged her of the need.Then, on her first day back at school, with Fats Wall still absent, and admiring stares following her down the corridors, she had heard the rumour that Terri Weedon had no money to bury her children that there would be no stone marker, and the cheapest coffins.Thats very sad, Jolly, her mother had said that evening, as the family sit eating dinner together under the wall of family photographs. Her tone was as gentle as the policewomans had been there was no snap in Parminders character any more when she spoke to her daughter.I want to try and get people to give money, said Sukhvinder.Parminder and Vikram glanced at each other across the kitchen table. Both were instinctively opposed to the idea of asking people in Pagford to donate to such a cause, but neither of them said so. They were a little afraid, now that they had seen her forearms, of upsetting Sukhvinder, and the shadow of the as-yet-unknown counsellor seemed to be hovering over all their inte ractions.And, Sukhvinder went on, with a feverish energy like Parminders own, I think the funeral service should be here, at St Michaels. Like Mr Fairbrothers. Krys used to go to all the services here when we were at St Thomass. I bet she was never in another church in her life.The light of God shines from every soul, thought Parminder, and to Vikrams surprise she said abruptly, Yes, all right. Well have to see what we can do.The lot of the expense had been met by the Jawandas and the Walls, but Kay Bawden, Samantha Mollison and a couple of the mothers of girls on the boat team had donated money too. Sukhvinder then insisted on going into the Fields in person, to explain to Terri what they had done, and why all about the rowing team, and why Krystal and Robbie should have a service at St Michaels.Parminder had been exceptionally worried about Sukhvinder going into the Fields, let alone that filthy house, by herself, but Sukhvinder had known that it would be all right. The Weedons and the Tullys knew that she had tried to save Robbies life. Dane Tully had stop grunting at her in English, and had stopped his mates from doing it too.Terri agreed to everything that Sukhvinder suggested. She was emaciated, dirty, monosyllabic and entirely passive. Sukhvinder had been frightened of her, with her pockmarked arms and her missing teeth it was like talking to a corpse.Inside the church, the mourners separate cleanly, with the people from the Fields taking the left-hand pews, and those from Pagford, the right. Shane and Cheryl Tully marched Terri along between them to the breast row Terri, in a coat two sizes too large, seemed exactly aware of where she was.