I walked alone yesterday afternoon as he was too tired after the usual Monday morning shopping. It was strange to stride out alone and at that time. I expected the dark, and though it wasn’t sunny it was light, though a melancholy, heavy kind. I walked to the harbour only to encounter a line of RNLI volunteers in uniform, one holding a flag lined up outside the boat shed. Others stood on the steps, some not uniformed but in dark winter coats. I sidled past them up the steps eager to get out of the way of something (I couldn’t work out what) that was clearly about to happen. One of the boats was out of the shed, as was the tractor that they use to tow it to the water. I walked towards South Marine noticing people standing by their cars and a couple peering through a window of a downstairs flat. Then I saw the black car. I should say cars, for following the hearse, with its coffin inside draped in an RNLI flag, were three limousines. So that was it. Were they going to bury him (should I assume it is, was a man?) at sea? It was a moving, almost sensational sight. It sobered me. It sobered us all who saw it.
I walked back through town and saw its shabbiness. One of the waiters from the Shilam with a long, inappropriate name that I cannot now remember walk swiftly with a sideways glance into the betting shop. He is usually smiling, he wasn’t then. I told him about it afterwards. Oh, that’s quite common, he said, unmoved. I remembered an Italian waiter we used to see regularly on a Friday night, he too was a gambler, with him it was the horses, I think. I suppose its about dreams. I’m not judging, I feel compassion, and an awareness that perhaps they do not see the sordidness that I see.
