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‘I’ve always wanted children,’ Tim is saying. ‘People talk about women feeling broody but never about men.’ Time to bring the conversation to an end if Tim’s going to start one of those ‘men have feelings too’ speeches.
They all miss Clough: his stream of un-PC consciousness accompanied by hearty snacks allows little time for introspection or boredom.
‘So the writing was aimed at you? But you’re not a foreigner.’ Angelo shrugs. ‘Round here, people from the next village are foreigners.’ Ruth understands this. It’s the same in Norfolk. ‘I thought your grandfather was a war hero,’ she says. ‘He had a state funeral. I would have thought that would make you popular.’ This time she thinks there’s something almost demonic about Angelo’s smile. Like the water, it has a whiff of sulphur. ‘Being a hero doesn’t make you popular,’ he says. ‘Not in Italy anyway.’
The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures . . . Nothing will come of nothing.
‘I was scared to face you,’ says Micky. ‘That’s why I’m glad God sent you here today.’ This, Nelson remembers, is what he has always disliked about evangelicals. The way they talk about God as if he’s God Smith who lives next door. At least Catholics have a bit of awe and respect.
‘It’s not about good and bad,’ says Derek. ‘It’s opportunity and environment that creates criminals.
Strictly speaking, dogs aren’t allowed on the beach during the summer months, but Cathbad views rules as guidance only, and guidance for other people at that.
‘All the best people are mad,’ says Cathbad. ‘It’s a good sign that you’re becoming more in touch with your emotions.’
Saints cause a lot of trouble for the rest of us. Elsa has described Don Tomaso as a saint. Had Don Tomaso been causing trouble and was that why he had been killed?
‘What’s this about?’ says Micky, echoing his wife. He’s an insignificant looking man, balding, bespectacled. But Judy isn’t fooled. Often the most inoffensive looking people are the most deadly, because they go through life unnoticed.
Yes, they were good at engineering, but so are all fascists. She should have known that it was a bad sign, in Italy, to wear a black shirt.
‘Tim was a good man,’ Cathbad had said earlier. ‘A peaceful soul.’ But Ruth isn’t sure whether Tim really was all that peaceful. She remembers him firing a gun once, and now he has flung himself in front of a bullet to save the woman he loved. She thinks of him more as an errant knight, a gallant figure unsuited to the modern world. What had Tennyson’s Galahad said? ‘My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.’
Tim’s body has been placed in a wooden coffin, which will soon lie in the earth, marked by a stone cross. ‘The burial is a journey,’ Erik used to say, ‘from flesh to wood to stone.’ But flesh and wood will decay; even stone will crumble. They will change, but they won’t disappear. Everything changes, but nothing is destroyed.