Yet it was more than that. That might account for the distortions he seemed to see, so that the tombs appeared more closely crowded and the chapel tower taller and darker, but not for his sensation that there had taken place in the cemetery since he had last seen it, some upheaval and some outrage. It was when these fancies grew so strong as to make him imagine some actual physical change, the positions of the slabs and stones altered, that he looked at his watch and told Marlon they could stop now for their midday meal.

The foreman said to bring down one truck-load of rubble from the chapel, and then they could knock off. The sky had lightened a little, becoming uniformly livid, but still they needed the headlights on. The pale misty shafts of light probed the undergrowth and died into blackness. They parked beside the tower.

‘Can you make an effort and come in?’ said John, ‘Or do I have to do it on my own?’

Marlon managed a sheepish, crafty smile. ‘You go first.’

The rubble was heaped against the furthest side of the octagon. He saw Gilly before he got there. Gilly was lying on his back among the muses and the virgins, his head, his face, a mass of black clotted blood to which fragments and crumbs of stone adhered. Clio, memento of love, had rolled from his grasp. His eyes still stared, as if they still saw those meters-out of vengeance.

‘Gilly, Gilly!’ John cried, and the eight walls called back, ‘Gilly, Gilly!’ – calling them to Marlon as he came through the tower and into the nave.

Marlon did not speak Gilly’s name. He gave a great cry.

‘The dead people came out! The dead people judged him! The day has come, the end of the world . . . the Day, the Day, the Day!’

From the eaves, out of the broken roof, the birds came, circling, cawing, a great rush of wings. And the echo roared like a knell. John stumbled out after Marlon, after the flying figure that cried like a prophet in the wilderness, into a whiteness that cleaned the world.

In great shaggy flakes, the snow had begun to fall.

A Glowing Future

SIX SHOULD BE enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll say six tea chests, then, and one trunk. If you’ll deliver them tomorrow, I’ll get the stuff all packed and maybe your people could pick them up Wednesday.’ He made a note on a bit of paper. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Round about lunchtime tomorrow.’

She hadn’t moved. She was still sitting in the big oak-armed chair at the far end of the room. He made himself look at her and he managed a kind of grin, pretending all was well.

‘No trouble,’ he said. ‘They’re very efficient.’

‘I couldn’t believe,’ she said, ‘that you’d really do it. Not until I heard you on the phone. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. You’ll really pack up all those things and have them sent off to her.’