He’s talking too quietly for his mother to hear, but he still doesn’t want to say the word stroke. She’s taken up with her trouble again, repeating “Yes, yes yes,” in a broken, yearning tone. It’s quite awful to hear.

We reach the house. “Shall I come and visit you, Mrs. Moore?”

“Yes, yes.” Vigorous and eager.

“Philip, do you need help getting your mother’s wheelchair into your car?”

“Thanks, but I left the car at Mum’s.”

We say goodbye and he wheels his mother carefully over the ledge of the French windows.

—

Nobody is left out in the garden now. I gather up a scattering of plastic cups and paper serviettes. By the time I reach the house the Moores have gone.

Of Ellen and Althea there’s no sign.

The last flushed-cheeked guests depart, the bustle of clearing up begins. I dig out the presents for my helpers, boxes of chocolates and tubes of Smarties according to age, and distribute them. In the kitchen I take my place at the sink and fill it with hot soapy water. “Let battle commence,” I announce, rolling up the sleeves of my new sweater as the first tray of glasses is brought in.

Finally they’re all gone. I’m quite overheated now, nearly as hot as I was earlier in the day. I pull the sweater over my head and stop, stock-still, while my head is still inside it. At last I recognize the smell. It’s familiar to me from the Middle East, an adjunct not of my youth but certainly of Tom’s. The rich, acrid stink of hashish.

So that’s what he does when he’s knitting.

“Tom!” I tear off the pullover, almost shouting, with outrage, mirth, or both, I don’t know. “Oh, seriously, Tom!”

—

That night when I close my eyes to pray, a vision of Pipehouse Wood fills my mind, the beech trunks and branches that are so limber even in great age. And the tough turf of Beacon Hill in the sunshine and under the clouds.

The Life. She held it up in front of me joyfully, this wondrous transformation that goes on and on, unfailing, abundant. How is it not everlasting? What can I say to her?

I’m a priest of the Church of England. I will be commended to Almighty God and my body committed to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. That is, a resurrection of the body, of all bodies. Of children, and of babies who died before they were born.