‘Leave the bwai alone, Clasford,’ his mother interjected. ‘Mi know say yuh proud like lion fer im. We both are, Stanley,’ she shouted out as Stanley slammed his bedroom door.

‘I shoulda let him roam street. Woulda end up in the clink by now,’ added Clasford, topping Pearline in volume.

Now, when Clasford turned over in his sleep towards the heavenly body of Pearline, who had preceded him underground, when he reached out to caress her ample, blue-nylon softness, she would not respond warmly to him with a cajoling ‘You tink yu can manage it, Ole Bwai?’ or resist with sleepy irritation: ‘Mi not in the mood, Clasford!’

Pearline, who was lying peacefully beside him, had turned into an unappetizing arrangement of celibate bones. Nor would he sweat at night, as he had done all his married life, drenching the sheets, so that Pearline would complain that he’d give her rheumatism ‘one-a these days’.

Storm clouds had been rallying forces all morning on this windswept east London plateau. Its sprawling perimeter was overhung by trees with wrinkled brown, rust and golden leaves that floated to the ground. In the distance were tower blocks, which rendered an otherwise pastoral scene inescapably urban. The city fathers converged, broke off into splinter groups and flaunted their double-breasted chests, puffed up with the arrogance of knowing that a few dobs of well-aimed spittle were enough to warn the mourners below of their omnipotence.

Stanley wished the sky would split open into a terrible storm, wished for hailstones and lightning, for weather so dramatic that the feelings raging inside him would be matched, indeed dwarfed, indeed erased, by the roaring elements. He wore a specially bought new black suit purchased the day before, and his long legs were astride the heap of earth beside the hole into which the coffin had been lowered; inside was the man he had last seen in the mortuary’s viewing room, who had made him feel, for the first time in his life, infernally mortal.

He had entered the small, pine-panelled room with the atmospheric mood lighting of a chapel. Its background music was the hum of an air conditioner, and there was a flashing red light on the wall, specially designed for dead bodies on display. In the far corner was a vase containing a spray of violet lilacs and white lilies on an elegant metal plinth.

As he crossed the threshold, his body shrank like a cartoon figure’s, losing two thirds of its height and bulk, disappearing into too-big clothes and shuffling in grown-up shoes. Unthinkingly, the unbroken voice of his childhood squeaked, ‘Hello, Daddy’, accompanied by a wild deluge of tears.

Stanley was immediately immersed in the most intimate communion with the man before whom he would never, ever cry.