The chauffeur stood to attention as Tom helped his grandmother into one of the Bentleys. Roberta followed dutifully after, but Antoinette hung back. “You go, Josh,” she said. “Tom and David will come with me.”
Joshua climbed into the front seat. One might have thought that his father’s death would unite the two women, but it seemed they were still as hostile as ever. He listened to his wife and grandmother chatting in the back and wondered why his mother couldn’t get along with Margaret as well as Roberta did.
“That woman is so trying,” Antoinette complained, dabbing her eyes carefully as the cars followed the hearse down the drive and through the iron gates adorned with the family crest of lion and rose. “Do I look awfully blotchy?” she asked Tom.
“You look fine, Mum. It wouldn’t be appropriate to look polished today.”
“I suppose not. Still, everyone’s going to be there.”
“And everyone is going to be coming back,” grumbled David from the front seat. He didn’t relish the idea of having to socialize.
“I think we’ll all need a stiff drink.” She patted Tom’s hand, wishing she hadn’t referred to alcohol. “Even you. Today of all days.”
Tom laughed. “Mum, you’ve got to stop worrying about me. A few drinks aren’t going to kill me.”
“I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I wonder who’s come,” she said, changing the subject.
“Perish the thought of having to chat to Dad’s dreadful aunts and all the boring relatives we’ve spent years avoiding,” David interjected. “I’m not in the mood for a party.”
“It’s not a party, darling,” his mother corrected. “People just want to show their respect.”
David stared miserably out of the window. He could barely see the hedgerows as they drove down the lane towards the town of Fairfield. “Can’t everyone just bugger off and go home afterwards?”
“Absolutely not. It’s polite to ask your father’s friends and relatives home after the funeral. It’ll cheer us all up.”
“Great,” David muttered glumly. “I can’t think of a better way of getting over Dad’s death than having a knees-up with a bunch of old codgers.”
His mother began to cry again. “Don’t make this any harder for me, David.”
David peered around the seat and softened. “I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just don’t feel like playing the glad game, that’s all.”
“None of us do, darling.”
“Right now, I just want to be alone to wallow in my sorrow.”
“I could kill for a cigarette,” said Tom. “Do you think I have time for a quick one round the back?”
The car drew up outside St. Peter’s medieval church. The chauffeur opened the passenger door, and Antoinette waited for Tom to come round to help her out. Her legs felt weak and unsure. She could see her mother-in-law walking up the stony path towards the entrance of the church where two of George’s cousins greeted her solemnly. She would never cry in public, Antoinette thought bitterly. Antoinette doubted whether she had ever cried in private. Margaret considered it very middle-class to show one’s feelings and turned up her aristocratic nose at the generation of young people for whom it was normal to whine, shed tears, and moan about their lot. She condemned them for their sense of entitlement and took great pleasure in telling her grandchildren that in her day people had had more dignity. Antoinette knew Margaret despised her for continuously sobbing, but she was unable to stop, even to satisfy her mother-in-law. But she dried her eyes before stepping out of the car and took a deep breath; the Dowager Lady Frampton had no patience with public displays of emotion.
Antoinette walked up the path between her two sons and thought how proud George would be of his boys. Tom, who was so handsome and wild, with his father’s thick blond hair and clear denim eyes, and David, who didn’t look like his father at all, but was tall and magnetic and more than capable of bearing his title and running the estate. Up ahead, Joshua disappeared into the church with Roberta. Their middle son was clever and ambitious, making a name for himself in the City, as well as a great deal of money. George had respected his drive, even if he hadn’t understood his unadventurous choice of career. George had been a man who loved natural, untamable landscapes; the concrete terrain of the Square Mile had turned his spirit to salt.
She swept her eyes over the flint walls of the church and remembered the many happy occasions they had enjoyed here. The boys’ christenings, Joshua’s marriage, his daughter Amber’s christening only a year before—she hadn’t expected to come for this. Not for at least another thirty years, anyway. George had been only fifty-eight.