204

A Funeral at Clovie

For many years Archie Stevenson had felt that his cousin Hew’s wife, Veronica, was too much of a good thing: too good, signally too good for poor Hew, who would have done better with some ordinary sinner; and too much; too healthy, too majestic and too striking. Now here she was, the first thing to catch his eye as he entered the hotel in Edinburgh, the first thing to catch any eye; for she was dressed in white from head to foot, a white sombrero on her red hair, a white cloak flowing off her shoulders, a sky-blue enamel cross swinging on her bosom, and pinned elsewhere on the bosom various denominational insignias; got up, in short, as though for a religious Ascot. She saw his start of horror—there was little that Veronica did not see with her fine rolling blue eyes—and with her customary frankness she took up the challenge.

‘I’m afraid you don’t think me very suitably attired, Archie dear.’

‘No, no, not at all! It looks very nice. Cool. Most refreshing on a day like this. I’m afraid it’s going to be a scorcher. Was it as hot as this in London?’

Scorning his poor little red herring, she continued, ‘But I don’t feel quite as you do, perhaps, about funerals. To me, a funeral is something joyous. A beginning, not an ending.’205

‘Um’hm,’ said Archie, thinking of the bleak little affair that would take place at Clovie.

‘And Hew’s funeral … Poor Hew! I feel much more as though I were going to his christening. As his godmother, you know.’

Several people in the hotel entrance were pricking up ears. Courteously raising her voice for their benefit, Veronica continued, ‘Yes, now I feel that I can begin to do something for Hew, something really practical. Of course, I’ve always prayed for him, but now—’

Mark the pregnant aposiopesis. A book of his schooldays had adjured Archie, in a footnote to The Bacchae, to do this. He did it now, and replied, ‘Yes, of course.’

And in a sense, he agreed. A dead Hew could not be so demonstrably refractory to Veronica’s prayers. But the words that rose in his mind were, ‘hitting a man when you’ve got him down’. He suppressed this thought. It wouldn’t do. Veronica very trustingly had asked him to squire her to the funeral, and he must begin the day in a proper spirit, whatever might come later.

As she was finding so much to rejoice in, he too would be glad about something. ‘I’m glad the boy was there. Hew was very fond of Martin.’

‘Darling Martin! He was always so wonderfully loyal about his father. Thank you so much! Goodbye, goodbye!’

Thanks and farewell were addressed to the Head Porter and one might have supposed from the unction and the tip that Mrs Stevenson had been his only interest for a fortnight instead of someone who had arrived overnight. Hew’s 206voice sounded out of the past, observing, ‘Veronica’s doing her Angel’s Farewell. She does it to everyone in sight, and never less than five bob a time.’ Not wearing a buttonhole, not tipping anybody, Archie escorted her down the steps, put her into the car which was so sadly unworthy of her, and took the road for the north. He disliked driving in traffic, and there was something wrong with the radiator, for the car had boiled as he drove across the Lammermuir Hills to meet her at the hotel, and it would certainly boil again before they reached Clovie. He felt a strong reluctance to take her to Hew’s funeral (for that matter, he did not much want to go to Clovie himself: it had been the family place when he was a boy, and now it wasn’t). But every family has its factotum, and naturally Veronica, getting herself as far as Edinburgh by train, would expect him to drive her the rest of the way. Besides, being so totally English, she most likely could not credit that the railway system extended beyond the Firth of Forth.