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The coffin was hoisted into position by the bearers and held there for a moment.
Suspended over the open grave.
Poised in the outside world.
And then the men lowered it, slowly, each of them gripping their tasselled rope and letting it pass through their hands until the coffin came to rest.
There was a soft muzzle of rain falling, there was a breathless silence in the air, and it was in that moment that I started thinking about it all over again.
About that last day of summer, three years before, the last day in that house.
The child, at the end of the day, and that moment of shocking inevitability.
The ropes were dropped into the grave, and the men returned to their places, and I tried to catch my father’s eye but he wouldn’t look at me.
It’s called taking the cord he said, the boy, when I asked him about it later.
It’s a real honour he said, a duty, and but it’s a shock as well though.
He said it’s a shock because a coffin with a body loaded inside, it’s a heavy thing you know?
Because even with the eight of you stood around that hole in the ground it’s a real effort to control the descent like it’s not just a symbolic thing he said, and I listened and he had a lovely voice.
And see this he said, see it takes a long time for the coffin to get to the bottom, and you suddenly realise how much of a weight of earth is going to press down upon it, upon this person you’re laying down you know?
He said, and then it really hits you, they’re in a box, they’re being buried and they’ll stay gone, like snug in this press of thick wet earth, and I nodded and found myself saying aye and he laughed and said you going native already?
He said when I put my granda in the ground, it felt like I left a part of me there, and brought a part of it away with me.
He said like the smell of the earth, like the burn of the rope against my hands, like the minister’s voice saying the things.
I said do you want to go for a walk?
I met him after the service, at the wake, in the lounge bar of a local hotel.
He was working there, serving out the food, and later on I got talking to him.
I was sat at a table on my own and he came over to empty an ashtray, and he said you alright there then?
I’d already noticed him, he had blond hair and big shoulders and a very still way of moving around the room.
I’d already smiled at him.
He sat down and said are you a relly then, I said granddaughter and he said oh, sorry, and I said no it’s okay.
I said aren’t you supposed to be working and he said ah they’ll be alright and he looked me in the eye while I lit his cigarette.
We talked about each other without really listening, I told him about my journey up, he told me about what he did when he wasn’t working there.
Quietly, when no one was looking, we left together.
He took me walking through his city.
We walked up past the railway station and the football ground, up past empty factories and rows of houses built from grey stone, up to where we could look at the city lights coming on and sit and talk.
I wanted him.
It was as simple as that, it was shocking and embarrassing and exciting.
