It was a bad day for a funeral: the wind was high, the sun weak and the threat of rain too strong. Impossible to dress for. Impossible. The sun came out and one wilted under all those layers – the woollen greatcoat, the sober waistcoat, the top hat – and then a breeze took up and one’s fingers turned blue. Impossible.

Mr Radcliffe noted the sparse congregation. As the deceased’s solicitor, he was duty-bound to attend, but the vicar’s wife had had to practically coerce people from the parish to pay their respects, so she’d said. St Bartholomew’s was a crumbling relic of a church, so at least the small pews didn’t appear so vacant. Mrs Alma Chapman had insisted on being buried there, in ‘the real church’, next to her husband. The church proper was now in the main village; a bigger, better church, for a bigger, better England.

For each shovelful of earth, the gravedigger attempted to throw on top of the late Mrs Chapman, a gust of wind blew most of it across the faces of the people standing around the grave willing the whole torturous event to a conclusion. A last laugh, perhaps; an indication of the old woman’s feelings towards the congregation. It was not a dignified or elegant spot; the farm was in plain view, the donkey could be heard braying, and as the wind took up the gravedigger’s earth once again, the gathering finally gave up and started to move away. Even the vicar retreated…

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