It was a church service.
I don't want it, had been her first thought when Harold suggested it.
Eustace Clarence would have wanted it, he had said, and she was glad she had not opened her mouth to voice her petulant thoughts. And your brother, and Helen- hell, even the kids, Alberta. They would have wanted it.
And so they sat within a dark and dingy church behind a brick wall, a gharish painted roof that whispered oppressively of that horrid war and nights of blackout, and they listened to words- words! Words designed to bring comfort and joy, perhaps, but they were only words.
Glancing down the pew, she saw her niece, the beautiful Susan Pevensie, her dark eyes shuttered behind long lashes, her hair pulled back in an elegant twist. Susan Pevensie, who had perhaps lost more than Alberta- mother and father, and three siblings, in one fell swoop (but not her son, she thought, achingly, not her only child).
Not my flesh, but partly my blood, she thought, and felt something almost imperceptible pulse, and die away. Then the thought fluttered away from her mind before she could grasp hold of it.
It was good that Susan could be here, at any rate. She was glad that Susan had made the funeral. She had almost missed seeing her family's faces again, had almost screamed her way into the mortuary at St Bartholomew's before they were placed in the caskets.
But perhaps it would be better to not have seen their faces. So deathly pale, so unnaturally still. And tinged with a dirty, rusty brown.
Rusty brown, blood like soil.
Rocky soil, your heart is rocky soil.
Where had that thought come from?
She glanced around wildly, but no one had spoken to her. She looked down to her niece once more.
Susan Pevensie did not look comforted, either. Her cheeks were pinched, and the powder sat in obvious contrast to the paleness of her face. And her hands; Alberta watched her fingers as they clutched almost too tightly at the order of service.
Words, she thought, words.
Now come, Alberta, she heard her mother say, and suddenly she was eight years old again, in a stiffly starched dress. They were waiting in that long line to eat the thin, dry wafer and everyone was oh so serious. Don't fidget, you're in a church!
But Mummy- what are they playing?
An impatient sigh of disappointment. Alberta, it is 'Abide with Me', with the setting by Monk- surely you must know it by now!
I don't like it.
Alberta!
"Alberta?" she turned her head dully to the side. It felt so heavy upon her neck. Harold was staring at her, and she could feel his tenderness, his concern.
If only it could touch me.
He reached out a hand to clasp hers. His grip was warm, firm, familiar; as though drowning she grasped at his fingers and swallowed, shuddering.
The organ began playing- a loud, booming instrument. Alberta didn't care much for the sound, it was nasal and loud and oh, it hurt, it hurt.
Eustace Clarence is lying beneath those pipes, she thought, Eustace Clarence is in that walnut box, with a bible and a candle and puddle, where the celebrant sprinkled the water. Eustace Clarence is lying there, with his shoulders squared, as I always told him to square them, and he is wearing the suit Harold bought him for Christmas.
Was that grief or pain pulling at her heart? Or, worse, was it her imagination? There were times she felt she must be a heartless woman, a horrible mother.
But now they were singing, and she glanced down at the pewsheet Harold was holding out for her.
"I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness;
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?" she whispered, and all the while the bile grew in her throat.
Where is death's sting? It's here! she wanted to scream, pointing at her heart. Where is grave's victory? It's lying there, with my son's body, with my brother's body, with his wife's body, with three of their children, my niece and nephews! There is its victory, can't you see?
But tears clouded her vision, and when she opened her mouth, only a feeble croak that might once have been a sob escaped.
Where is your just God now, Eustace Clarence? a distant part of her mind whispered. Where is your God?
And then he was standing there in front of her, hands in his pockets- how she had hated Peter Pevensie for contaminating her son with that trait!- face strangely solemn, like a strange mirror staring back at her.
"But I have to believe in God, Alberta," she heard him say, so seriously, "or I can't make any sense of suffering, or- or death."
It was the week after the bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she remembered, the week after that horrid and strange breakfast where Eustace Clarence had tried to defend war in spite of all its abominations. He had stopped at that breakfast, but the next week he had taken the conversation up again, and he had not stopped but continued talking, almost rapidly, as though afraid she would disappear into the wall and harden into stone.
"You see- if there is no God, then death is- normal. Meaningless. It's just- well, we're born to die. But because of God, death- death, it's got meaning. It's punishment. It's not- not normal, not the way things are meant to be. But because of God, again- because of Jesus- it doesn't have to be the end. There's a way out, a way to life- and that way's found in the Lord Jesus. Alberta, I wish you understood." Or maybe he had said, "I wish you knew."
Words, empty, meaningless words- and yet something in Alberta ached with (longing?)- she wasn't sure. She wished she remembered Eustace Clarence's words.
"It's our time to speak," Harold murmured in her ear, his hand warm against the small of her back.
Please don't move your hand, she thought, I think I'll fall, I don't know how I'll stand.
But somehow her legs remembered how to stand, and she was walking up to the pulpit, walking beside the covered coffins.
Trembling, she looked at the paper in her hands.
Words. Empty words.
Closing her eyes, she remembered holding Eustace Clarence, as a baby, watched him walk so proudly and confidently. She remembered that indefinite pulse, that glow of an invisible bond, so intangible it weighed on her heart till the pride almost hurt, it was so vivid. She remembered, and it glowed more brightly yet, almost as if-
Opening her eyes, she gripped the sides of the lectern.
"Eustace Clarence was my son," she said, and then her voice broke as her vision wavered, and the memories came flooding in.
A/N: No one has yet picked it up, or if they have they have been rather quiet, but if anyone did get the 'Sherlock' reference in the previous chapter then you should know that I am actually a huge fan of Molly Hooper.
Only two months ago I was assistant organist at a funeral at large high Anglican church in Sydney, and in the midst of it all I was struck by the thought, "This is what the Pevensies' funeral would have looked like". I guess you could extrapolate that this is the chapter I've been aiming to write for a while. I hope that the writing lives up to its backstory and 'raison d'être'!