And then the Reverend Roberts stood up again to speak.

“Pearce Aloysius Pyper,” began the Reverend Roberts in sonorous tones, pausing respectfully between each word-and Israel was crying now, without shame. “Our dear friend Pearce was born on the twenty-sixth of June 1918, in the last months of the First World War. He was the third child of the Reverend Julian and Margaret Pyper. They were a privileged family-Pearce’s mother, Margaret, being a descendant of the earls of Tyrone-who had a long history of serving the poor through good works. Margaret was a suffragette, and Pearce would often recall in later years his memories of the destitute and the homeless coming to his father for assistance at the rectory in Ballycastle. Pearce was sent to Sherborne preparatory school, in England, and then to Marlborough, and from there on to Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as he was always glad to report, he graduated with what he called the poet’s degree: a Third.” There was wry laughter among the university-educated in the congregation. “On coming down from university Pearce found work as a teacher before becoming a commissioned officer in the Second Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles. He was most proud in his life, he said, of having gained the Distinguished Conduct Medal-during the Second World War, for his bravery during some of the fiercest fighting following the invasion of Dunkirk.”

The congregation was able to relax now into the flow of the Reverend Roberts’s narrative. Israel found himself breathing more easily.

“After the war Pearce married Lillian Jabotinsky, the celebrated soprano, and they had two sons, both of whom, alas, predeceased their father. Pearce and Lillian’s elder son, Jacob, whom some of you will doubtless remember, became a surgeon and died aged only thirty-three, in a car crash, in 1983. Their younger son, Leon, was a conservator at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and he, alas, died of a brain hemorrhage in 1999. Pearce was enormously proud of his children, and their early and tragic deaths brought him a great sadness. We should perhaps remember today that this was a man”-and here the Reverend Roberts nodded toward Pearce’s coffin-“who was not himself unacquainted with grief.”

Some among the congregation could be heard sniffing.

“The young Pearce and his wife lived in London, where Pearce, who taught at Westminster School, turned increasingly toward art as a means of self-expression. He held a number of exhibitions of his work and was a friend of many of the great artistic figures of the day. He returned increasingly to his work as an artist after the death of his sons and seemed to find great consolation in it.”

Israel thought of the telegraph totem poles, and the giant concrete heads, and the bright, childlike sculptures that adorned Pearce’s gardens, and for the first time they made sense.

“After the death of his wife, in 1966, Pearce remarried and returned to live in Ireland with his second wife, Vivian Farrell, the actress. After Vivian’s death, Pearce was to marry and divorce twice more; the triumph, one might say, of hope over experience.” The congregation smiled.

“It is perhaps worth recalling on a day such as today that Pearce stood for Parliament-unsuccessfully-on a number of occasions, and as well as being an artist and philanthropist, he was a keen yachtsman, a cyclist, and as many of you will know, a great letter writer. His was, by any means, a life well lived.”

There was now a steady dabbing of eyes around the church.

“You will all, of course, have your own memories of Pearce-a man distinguished not merely by his worldly achievements, but more importantly by his very self, by his magnanimity, his good humor, and, of course, his wisdom and generosity. Personally, I got to know Pearce only recently, and was lucky enough to witness how he bore the burden of years, and his final illness, with a resolve and with a verve and a style characteristically his own. He was, of course, not always an easy man to get on with-none of us are saints-and we are here today to give thanks for the life of Pearce as he was, not as we might imagine him to have been. He was a man of great passions-and those of us who occasionally felt the lash of his tongue will know that those passions extended to a great dislike of those who he felt were foolish, ignorant, or pretentious, ‘stupid bloody bastards,’ as he called them.

“In short, Pearce Pyper was a man who was fully human, who knew who he was, and who was prepared to share himself and his life with others. Gathered here today, in our grief, we should be mindful of what the Bible teaches us: that to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to laugh, and a time to mourn. As Christians, we believe in the life eternal, and the world to come. But we also believe in the good of this life, and that the lives of the good show us what it means to be truly human. And so today we should not only mourn, but we should celebrate the life of our brother, Pearce Pyper, born twenty-sixth of June 1918. Died twenty-ninth of September 2008.”

More hymns followed-“Praise to the Holiest in the Height,” “Ye Holy Angels Bright.” Hopeless sobbing. Prayers. The blessing. And finally the escape outside.

“Well,” said Ted, who stood smoking outside the church, waiting for Israel and the other pallbearers to load the coffin back into the hearse. “There we are, then. Another man down.”

“Yep,” said Israel.

“Can’t be all bad, if it’s got you in a shirt and tie, mind.”

“Yeah.” Israel wiped at his eyes. Ted had teamed his usual black leather car coat with a black tie and shiny black slip-on shoes.

“Ach, ye’re all beblubbered there, look. Here.” Ted thrust a crumpled, unironed handkerchief into Israel’s hands.

“Thanks.”

“Good elegy,” said Ted.

“Eulogy,” said Israel. “Yes. It was good, wasn’t it?”

“I tell you what he didn’t say about Pearce, though,” said Ted, crushing his cigarette butt under his heel, and bending over to pick it up and pocket it. “Ouch.”

“You all right?”

“Yeah. My back, just. You know what he didn’t say?”

“What?”

“He didn’t mention that the old fella was completely buck mad,” said Ted.

Israel gave a little laugh.

“Mind, takes all sorts, I suppose.”

“Yes,” agreed Israel. “I suppose it does.”

It was a private interment, so Israel drove with Ted back to Pearce’s for the wake. Cars were parked all along the driveway up to the house, and inside there was an atmosphere of unforced joviality, quite different to anything Israel had experienced at any funeral in England. Women were busy serving tea and coffee, and men stood around chatting, in their overcoats. Everyone who was anyone in Tumdrum-which is to say, just about everyone-was there. Sandwiches were piled into pyramids, and bottles of whiskey were being passed casually from hand to hand. Minnie was doing the rounds with a platter of sandwiches.

“Och, Israel,” she said. “Sandwich?”

“What are they?”

“Ham. Ham and cheese. Ham and pickle.”

“Erm. No thanks. I’m vegetarian.”

“Oh, are you? I always forget. There’s crab paste somewhere.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“Lovely service, wasn’t it? I might get him to do mine.”

“Yes,” agreed Israel. “Very good.”

Israel wandered among the crowds, from room to room. Linda Wei waylaid him in the library. She was wearing a man’s dinner jacket and trousers, with a corsage, a pillbox hat, and bright red glasses.

“You’ve heard about the books, have you?” she said.

“Pearce has bequeathed them to the library service?”

“You knew?”

“He mentioned it to me, yeah.”

Linda raised her eyebrows in dissatisfaction.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do with all these,” said Linda, glancing around despairingly at the tens of thousands of leather volumes. “Sell them, probably.”