We turn from the wrong that we have thought and said and done…’ The Vicar’s familiar words echoed down the nave ‘God of mercy, we acknowledge that we are all sinners. As he walked back the few steps to his pew, he saw Victoria’s tear-filled eyes. He folded up the notes, his hands no longer trembling. The sound of his own voice, dispassionate, distant, reading out the prepared phrases, ‘loving mother…devoted wife…tragic illness…’ interspersed with a few anecdotes. There was a sudden urge to finish it there to draw a line, forget the past, not just his mother’s past, his past. She planned to go to university, but in 1957 fate intervened when she met my father at a regimental dance in Bodmin. She was, by all accounts, an excellent student. ‘After the war she went to the St Austell Grammar School for Girls. He glanced up and caught sight of his aunt looking directly at him, unsmiling, not hostile, but cool as if deep in thought. Michael paused, surprised by the echo of his voice. With her sister Emmeline and brother Davy, she grew up in St Austell where my grandfather was managing director of the clay works.’ ‘My mother, Judy, was the eldest daughter of Richard and Claire Pascoe. After all these years of insincerity, duplicity should come as naturally as it always had. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made. He took out his reading glasses and placed his hands on the eagle’s wings. Whatever the living thought about Judith Turner, they had turned out in force to see her buried. He took a last look at the assembled ranks of black suits, dresses and hats. He unfolded the paper and placed it on the antique eagle lectern the bird’s head slightly tilted as if pausing to listen to him, to mock him. He glanced across the pews full of familiar faces.

Odd that she looked so different to her sister. He had last seen her at his father’s funeral thirty-two years ago. Her bright copper brown eyes marked her out as a relative of his mother’s. In the pew behind them sat an elderly lady. In the family pew were his wife Jo, and his children, David and Victoria. For his Scottish Imperial Bank colleagues, it was just another duty appearance most would forget everything he said. These were friends and family for heaven’s sake. Ridiculous, he thought, a brief address to a few dozen people hardly compared to all those speaking engagements for the bank. Michael Turner reached into his jacket pocket for the eulogy and stepped forward.

The clack of the organ pedals stopped and the singing died away.

A Material Harvest by Paul Cranwell