A December to Remember (7)
“But not enough for you to be with me in public.” Joe’s expression was one of genuine puzzlement.
“It isn’t you . . .” she started. I am saving you from yourself!
“Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s not me, it’s you.”
“But that’s the truth! Please don’t be cross with me.”
Joe rubbed his hand through his hair and sighed, then pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry, I’m being a selfish idiot. This isn’t the right time. I didn’t mean to make today even harder for you. I guess I let the whole ‘life is short’ thing overwhelm me.”
Maggie buried her head in his chest. “Funerals can have that effect.” Her voice was muffled by the knitted jumper he wore under his jacket.
“You looked so lost in the church. I wanted to comfort you, my arms were literally aching to hold you, but I knew I couldn’t. Why are we wasting time? We could die tomorrow!”
“Morbid.”
“I don’t want to have regrets. I want to build a life with you.”
“You want to commit to a woman who wears elephant dungarees to a funeral?”
“I wouldn’t be seen dead with a woman who didn’t wear elephant dungarees to a funeral.”
Maggie breathed in the smell of him. He smelled like line-dried washing and fabric softener. Oh god, what was she going to do? Dearest lovely Joe. If only he was ten years older, or she was ten years younger. It couldn’t work. It simply couldn’t. And her brain was too damn full to take on extra complications. Why couldn’t they just stay as they were? She nestled in further, feeling his warmth envelop her.
“There’s such a lot happening at the moment, what with my impending homelessness and unemployment. And dad dying. My world feels like it’s imploding. I just . . .”
“Shhhh,” he soothed, kissing her head. “I’m sorry. Forget I mentioned it. I am here for you, however you need me. No conditions.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“I’m not that good.”
“You are, you know.” She felt him smiling. When Joe smiled, it was like the very air around him changed and the world became a little warmer. She allowed herself to bask for one more moment. “We’d better join the throng; I need to be there when he’s interred.”
They left their quiet alcove and fell in with the crowd.
“Will you tell your sisters about the eviction?” Joe asked.
“Why would I?”
He changed the subject.
“Belinda did well to keep God out of the service,” he said as they followed the slow procession. “No mean feat for a vicar.”
Belinda was vicar for the parish of Rowan Thorp: a gregarious woman of ample cleavage with a ring through her nose and a laugh like Sid James. She was rumored to wear leather trousers beneath her cassock in winter.
“She’s been brilliant. It’s not easy to write a eulogy for a father more devoted to the open road than his children.” There was no malice in her voice, only a sad resignation.
Joe reached for her hand. She felt his warm fingers lace through hers and squeeze. She smiled up at him, gently freed her fingers, and drove her hand deep into her coat pocket. The flicker of hurt across his face sliced through her, but it was better this way; she wouldn’t give him false hope.
The grass was spongy and slick with mud as they trampled the rest of the way in silence. The hole in the earth ahead of them yawned black and hungry, and neither the muddied Astroturf sheets around the opening nor the flowers strewn atop it lessened the ugliness.
* * *
Star had never seen so many velvet cloaks in one place, which was really saying something. The little churchyard at St. Swithun’s resembled a wizarding convention as the funeralgoers clustered to watch Augustus’s environmentally friendly cardboard coffin being lowered. Despite her sadness, she was relieved when it touched down in one piece; she had been worried that the heavy rain would break down the cardboard’s integrity.
Though technically surrounded by her family, Star felt very alone. Perdita hung on to a man in a Viking costume, complete with horned helmet. For all her histrionics, she knew her mother was enjoying herself. Simone still wasn’t speaking to her, and if she couldn’t put her grievances aside on today of all days, then Star held out little hope of a reconciliation in the future. And Maggie was being Maggie, organizing her corner of the world and everyone in it. She had greeted Star with a hug and checked on her several times since, but it felt perfunctory, as though she was yet another item to be ticked off Maggie’s to-do list.
“You all right there, Star, love?” asked Betty, stepping forward and throwing a clod of earth from the pile onto the coffin before turning to look at her. Betty was a keen member of the Women’s Institute and a doyenne of Rowan Thorp and was never so formidable as in a crisis. She’d known the sisters all their lives.
“I think so. Why do you think he never stuck around?”
Betty sucked in a breath as she deliberated. “Ants in his pants, I suppose. You ought to know all about those. Of the three of you, you’re the most like him.”
“My roams are more circumstantial than Dad’s were.”
“Well, I suppose that’s to be expected. You’ve never had the chance to let your roots grow.”