The Brave: A Novel by Nicholas Evans

Author:Nicholas Evans
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Family secrets, Fathers and sons, Family Life, Romance, Fantasy, Civilian war casualties, General, Soldiers, Fiction, Recollection (Psychology), Trials (Military offenses)
ISBN: 9780316033787
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-12T01:02:54+00:00

SIXTEEN

THE SNOW HAD BEEN FALLING since dawn. There was almost a foot of it by now, enough to deaden all sound except the shuffle of their feet as they followed the coffin out of the church and into the graveyard. There was no wind and the flakes settled fat and feathery on the bare heads and on the shoulders of the bearers in their black overcoats. The funeral director was at the door, handing out black umbrellas.

As the procession wove its way through the gravestones, one of the bearers slipped and the coffin lurched and for a moment Tommy thought it was going to crash to the ground and spill his grandmother’s body on to the snow. But the other bearers deftly braced and he righted himself and all that fell was one wreath of roses, a splash of red in a world of white and black.

It was the church where Tommy had been christened. It was six hundred years old and some of the gravestones tilted precariously and were so overgrown with moss and lichen that you couldn’t read what was written on them anymore. His grandmother had never believed in God. She used to say it was all stuff and nonsense and never came here with them at Christmas or Easter. But, for some reason, this was where she was to be buried. The grave that had been dug for her was close to an old yew tree, its sprawl of branches bending under the weight of the snow. Tommy remembered reading somewhere that yews were witches’ trees.

The bearers put the coffin down on some canvas straps that had been laid ready beside the grave and then, using these, they lifted it again and lowered it slowly between the sliced walls of frozen earth.

There had been no more than a dozen people at the service in the church and fewer still had stayed on for the burial. The only people Tommy recognized across the grave were Dr Henderson and Uncle Reggie and Auntie Vera, who’d cried loudly all through the church service and was still crying now. Nobody else was. But then they were mostly men and men weren’t supposed to cry. Tommy felt too empty and numb to cry. And much too cold. His feet felt like clumps of frozen rock. He was wearing his old Ashlawn school suit and wished he’d put on a thicker sweater.

Diane was still wearing her sunglasses. Perhaps she didn’t want people to see whether or not she was crying. Tommy was close enough to know she wasn’t. She was standing beside him, trying to shelter both him and her father under her umbrella which was difficult because the old man seemed to be off in a world of his own and kept swaying out to stare at the sky with a kind of weary surprise, blinking whenever a snowflake landed on his eyes.

The umbrellas looked like igloos. The old rector’s nose had gone purple with cold and his breath made clouds in the air as he hurried through what he had to say.

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