Family and Friends by Emma Page

Author:Emma Page
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-02-18T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

The day of Walter Pierson’s funeral was brilliantly clear and cold. As David Cottrell drove through the streets he glanced out at the pavements, hoping he might catch sight again of the woman he now habitually thought of as the blonde goddess. But there was no sign of her. Was it conceivable she might be at the service, might be acquainted with the Piersons? He blinked away the thought, a little ashamed of such speculations at a time like this.

Several hundred yards ahead of Cottrell’s car Arnold and Sarah were driving to the church. Arnold turned his head and looked out at the tail-end of the lunchtime crowds. An ordinary day for them, returning from the shops, going back to work, setting off for the cinema. He saw suddenly a man walking along, facing the car, pausing to look in a shop window, a tall, middle-aged man inclined to heaviness. The face–he couldn’t place it but it teased at his mind as if he ought to have been able to recognize it. It was the walk though, the swing of the shoulders, the movement of the arms, that really pricked at recollection. Already the car had moved past, the man was lost to view. Someone from the factory perhaps? A buyer–a salesman? A local shopkeeper, unfamiliar out in the streets?

But they were drawing near the church. Other cars appeared from side roads, turning towards the gates. He had many details to attend to now, the face and figure dropped away from his mind.

Emily Bond walked into the church with an air of assurance as of one who had every right to be there. She took her place in a pew at the back, watching with lively curiosity everyone who came in, noting their clothes, the depth of grief expressed on each countenance. All her life she had been an ardent devotee of christenings, weddings and funerals, the primitive landmarks of existence. And the greatest of these was funerals.

She had laid out a good part of Owen Yorke’s two pounds on a wreath. Not that she had known the dead man, not even to nod to in the street. But he had been the father of her rescuer and it was a feeling of intense loyalty to Arnold that had made her part with the money, brought her to the church and would despatch her to the graveside to stand in the bitter weather with the rest of the mourners. The least she could do by way of gratitude was to see Mr Pierson’s father respectfully on his way.

‘What on earth made you bring that old woman back to the house?’ The last of the funeral guests had departed; Sarah was worn out at the end of the afternoon, inclined to asperity. She knew Mrs Bond of course from her own business visits to The Sycamores; she had never cared much for the creature, slovenly, unmannerly, argumentative. What Arnold could have been thinking of–naturally Mrs Bond had leapt at the chance of a free spread, she’d jumped into the back of the car with surprising agility.

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