The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches Read Free

take my eyes off the thing.
    It was a coffin which, once clear of the shadows of the luggage van, gleamed cruelly in the harsh sunlight.
    In it was Harriet.
Harriet
.
    My mother.

TWO
    W HAT DID I THINK ? How did I feel?
    I wish I knew.
    Sadness, perhaps, that our hopes were dashed forever? Relief that Harriet had come home at last?
    It should have been dull black, her coffin. It should have had frosty silver fittings, with covered urns and cherubs with downcast eyes.
    But it did not. It was of rich oak, polished to such an obscene brilliance that it hurt my eyes. I found that I could not look at the thing.
    Oddly enough, the scene which popped into my mind was that one at the end of Mrs. Nesbit’s novel
The Railway Children
, in which Bobbie, on the station platform, flings herself into the arms of her wrongfully imprisoned daddy.
    But there was to be no such tender ending for me, or, for that matter, for Father or Feely or Daffy, either. No, there was to be no such happy conclusion.
    I glanced quickly at Father, as if he might give me a clue, but he, too, stood frozen in his own private glacier, beyond all grief and beyond all expression, as the coffin was draped with a Union Jack.
    Alf Mullet snapped a sharp salute and held it for a very long time.
    Daffy gave my ribs a dig with her elbow and pointed with the faintest inclination of her chin.
    At the south end of the platform, a rather stout old gentleman in a dark suit was standing apart from the others. I recognized him instantly.
    As the bearers moved slowly away from the train, bent under their sad burden, he removed his black hat in respect and lowered it to his side.
    It was Winston Churchill.
    Whatever could have brought the former Prime Minister to Bishop’s Lacey?
    He stood there alone, watching in the deadly hush as my mother was carried to the open doors of a motor hearse, which had appeared in uncanny silence as if from nowhere.
    Churchill watched as the coffin, preceded by an officer with a drawn sword, was borne gently past Father, past Feely, past Daffy, and past me, then placed himself shoulder to shoulder with Father.
    “She was England, damn it,” he growled.
    As if awakening from a dream, Father’s eyes lifted, came to rest, and focused on Churchill’s face.
    After a very long time, he said, “She was more than that, Prime Minister.”
    Churchill nodded and seized Father’s elbow. “We can ill afford to lose a de Luce, Haviland,” he said quietly.
    What did he mean by that?
    For a moment, they stood there together in the old sunshine, these two seemingly defeated men, brothers in something far beyond me: something I could not even begin to imagine.
    Then, having shaken hands with Father, with Feely, with Daffy, and even with Aunt Felicity, Mr. Churchill came over to where I was standing, a little apart from the others.
    “And have you, also, acquired a taste for pheasant sandwiches, young lady?”
    Those words! Those exact words!
    I had heard them before! No—not
heard
them—
seen
them!
    The roots of my hair were suddenly standing on tiptoe.
    Churchill’s blue eyes were piercing, as if he were staring into my soul.
    What did he mean? What on earth was he suggesting? What was he expecting me to say?
    I’m afraid I blushed. It was all I could manage.
    Mr. Churchill stared intently into my face, taking my hand and giving it a gentle squeeze with his remarkably long fingers.
    “Yes,” he said at last, almost as if to himself, “yes, I do believe you have.”
    And with that, he turned and walked away from me along the platform, acknowledging, with solemn nods to the left and to the right, the recognition of the villagers as he slowly made his way through them to his waiting car.
    Although he had been out of office for ages, there was still a remarkable air of greatness about this plump littleman with his bulldog face and the startling stare of his great blue eyes.
    Daffy was already whispering in my ear. “What did he say?” she