The sky is heavy with rain. Purple and grey clouds darkly lower over the skyscraper called Centrepoint, and dull light reflects from high windows. Grey compounds grey, relieved only by gleams of a chalky whiteness. Stephen Cox’s middle brother, Jeremy, the delinquent ex-jailbird, cannot find his way into the church. He has arrived early, for fear of being late, and now he cannot get in. There is a garden behind the church, with worn, flaking table tombs, and dingy beds of roses. Humble purple weeds flourish. An old armchair lurks in the shrubbery. Cans of Carlsberg Special Brew lie beneath the tangled jasmine. Bedraggled pigeons strut and pick.

Jeremy Cox stares at them with distaste. He smells dossers, though he cannot yet see them. He wanders on, and spots their encampment. An ark of an upturned settee, covered in wet bedspreads, like a children’s garden hideout. A sodden cardboard box. This is no weather for sleeping rough. Jeremy Cox has tried it, and he knows.

He kicks at the litter of ring pulls from beer cans, and reads the label on a wet crisp packet. Prawn Cocktail Flavour. Just what you need for a night in the open.

A white light beats back from the grey stone of the building. Tufts of grass sprout from a cracked comice. Plane-trees toss in torment.

Jeremy dreads seeing his brothers. He has avoided them for years, but now is drawn into their presence. He thinks of Stephen, baby Stephen. He hardly knew him. He has never read his books. Dead, now, and Francis, Andrew and himself all in their sixties. It hardly seems possible. How has it all come to pass?

Shall he turn and make his escape? Where the hell is the entrance? Are these more funeral guests?

He follows Esther and Robert Oxenholme into the church, is handed a programme, finds himself a seat at the back.

Slowly the pews fill. People whisper and wave and smile, then look solemn. They peruse their programmes, inspect the choice of hymns, the texts of the readings. They shake drops of water from their umbrellas.

Liz had wanted to include the crumpled passage on communism from John Stuart Mill in the programme, but had been overruled. She has, however, been permitted to select some Rimbaud. She has chosen the ‘Chanson de la plus haute tour’, and it is to be sung in a setting by Vinteuil. Liz has never heard it, but Aaron, who recommended the counter-tenor, tells her it is just fine, and she believes him. And as the words are in French, no one will understand them, and no one will object.

Alix, atheist connoisseur of hymns, is responsible for the choice of Clifford Bax’s ‘Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways’. She knows that Stephen liked it, for he told her so. And anyway, she likes it.