Munichs by David Peace

Author:David Peace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 2024-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

Don, it seemed to Don, had fallen, stepped straight from the sky onto the ground, but where he walked now flowers sprung, it was strange, so very strange, the way the weather, the world was here, and made Don wonder, What was this Christian magic, this Lazarus spell, and if it worked for Don, had worked on Don, then I wonder, Would it work for little thee and little me? and with the flowers came the dawn, forever, always dawn, it seemed to Don, a soft pink, warm spring dawn, an eternal spring and always dawn which wrapped Don in a world of gentle storms of petal clouds, in a garden of wide-eyed, childhood wonder, even though the rain still fell, he knew, the cold outside it came, but Don could no longer feel the cold, the rain, in this garden, this world where all wounds were healed and all hearts loved, and only loved …

*

Even without the waiting hearse, the big black car for Mark Jones’s wife June, their young son Gary, you’d not miss the place, that house on Kings Road, not today with all the people gathered there, under umbrellas in the rain, all the flowers in their hands, snowdrops gleaming gently through the gloom, with winter irises, their violet splashed with yellow, splashed with white, beside daffodils that glimmered, too, in hands or laid upon the ground, against the wall, a carpet of flowers leading up to their door.

Inside the house, the smell of the damp, the rain upon their clothes, the smoke from too many cigarettes, but most of all the flowers, all the flowers and the wreaths. Jimmy knew none who lived that week, those days, that black week, those black days in that hushed, damp city of the Dead, none would forget that smell of grief, of loss.

In that house once filled with so much life, in its back room there, where Mark Jones had sat and had his breakfast, lunch and tea, talked, laughed and loved over every meal with his wife June, where he’d played with their young son Gary, his dog Rick and all the budgies and canaries which he treasured and he bred out back, or where, when the day was done, he’d sit and smoke that pipe of his, listening to the radio, a bit of music or the news, where the Dean of Manchester now said some kind and thoughtful words, ones of comfort, if not for now, perhaps then for later, then the Dean conducted a short service in that back room there, with the family, the friends, the neighbours of Mark Jones all gathered there with Jimmy, Joe, Bill and Arthur, too, Les, his wife Betty, Ken Ramsden and the members of the United board, some stood out in the hall, the kitchen, even on the stairs. Then, when this first, short service here was done, lifted in his mother’s arms their young son Gary, together with his mummy, they placed a wreath of red

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