No, no, Aunt Augusta. I have more than enough.
Well, I suppose I was fumbling about a little too much and I must have accidentally touched a button. The coffin began to slide away, the doors opened, I could feel the hot air of the oven and hear the flap of the flames, the coffin went in and the doors closed, and at that very moment in walked the whole grand party, Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Shaw, Mr. H.G. Wells, Miss E. Nesbit (to use her maiden name), Doctor Havelock Ellis, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald[22], and the widower, while the clergyman (nondenominational of course) came through a door on the other side of the rail. Somebody began to play a humanist hymn by Edward Carpenter, Cosmos, O Cosmos, Cosmos shall we call Thee? But there was no coffin.
Whatever did you do, Aunt Augusta?
I buried my face in my handkerchief and simulated grief, but you know I dont think anyone (except, I suppose, the clergyman and he kept dumb about it) noticed that the coffin wasnt there. The widower certainly didnt, but then he hadnt noticed his wife for some years. Doctor Havelock Ellis made a very moving address (or so it seemed to me then: I hadnt finally plumped for Catholicism, though I was on the brink) about the dignity of a funeral service conducted without illusions or rhetoric. He could truthfully have said without a corpse too. Everybody was quite satisfied. You can understand why I was very careful this morning not to fumble.
I looked at my aunt surreptitiously over the whisky. I didnt know what to say. How sad seemed inappropriate. I wondered whether the funeral had ever really taken place, though in the months that followed I was to realize that my aunts stories were always basically true only minor details might sometimes be added to compose a picture. Wordsworth found the right words for me. He said, We must allays go careful careful at a funeral. He added, In Mendeland ma first wife she was Mende they go open deceased persons back an they go take out the spleen. If spleen be too big, then deceased person was a witch an everyone mock the whole family and left the funeral double quick. That happen to ma wifes pa. He dead of malaria, but these ignorant people they don know malaria make the spleen big. So ma wife and her ma they go right away from Mendeland and come to Freetown. They don wan to be mocked by the neighbours.
There must be a great many witches in Mendeland, my aunt said.
Yaas, sure thing there are. Plenty too many.
I said, I really think I must be going now, Aunt Augusta. I cant keep my mind off the mowing-machine. It will be quite rusted in this rain.
Will you miss your mother, Henry?
Oh yes yes, I said. I hadnt really thought about it, so occupied had I been with all the arrangements for the funeral, the interviews with her solicitor, with her bank manager, with an estate agent arranging for the sale of her little house in North London. It is difficult too for a single man to know how to dispose of all the female trappings. Furniture can be auctioned, but what can one do with all the unfashionable underclothes of an old lady, the half-empty pots of old-fashioned cream? I asked my aunt.
I am afraid I didnt share your mothers taste in clothes, or even in cold cream. I would give them to her daily maid on condition she takes everything everything.
It has made me so happy meeting you, Aunt Augusta. You are my only close relative now.
As far as you know, she said. Your father had spells of activity.
My poor stepmother I shall never be able to think of anyone else as my mother.
Better so.[23]
In a new block under construction my father was always very careful about furnishing the specimen flat. I used to think that sometimes he went to sleep in it in the afternoon. I suppose it might have been in one of those I was I checked the word conceived in deference to my aunt.
Better not to speculate, she said.
You will come one day and see my dahlias, wont you? They are in full bloom.
Of course, Henry, now that I have found you again I shant easily let you go. Do you enjoy travel?
Ive never had the opportunity.
With Wordsworth so occupied we might make a little trip or two together.
Gladly, Aunt Augusta. It never occurred to me that she meant farther than the seaside.
I will telephone you, my aunt said.
Wordsworth showed me to the door, and it was only outside, when I passed the Crown and Anchor, that I remembered I had left behind my little package. I wouldnt have remembered at all if the girl in the jodhpurs had not said angrily as I pushed past the open window, Peter can talk about nothing but cricket. All the summer it went on. Nothing but the fucking Ashes[24].
I dont like to hear such adjectives on the lips of an attractive young girl, but her words reminded me sharply that I had left all that remained of my mother in Aunt Augustas kitchen. I went back to the street door. There was a row of bells with a kind of microphone above each of them. I touched the right one and heard Wordsworths voice. Who be there?
I said, Its Henry Pulling.