MORNING SERIAL

“THAT’S nice talk, isn’t it?” she flared. “No respect for the dead, and the poor chap not even in his grave. I said I’d buy you a hat. I have to think of expense. Things like that come naturally to my mind, me being a mother with all the responsibilities for to look after. You mustn’t be so touchy, Ieuan. After all, it isn’t my fault the accident happened.”

“Millie, for God’s sake stop it!” her husband shouted. “Can’t you see the boy needs sympathy? Don’t you know what he’s been through? I’m shocked at you. Hats, hats — what have hats to do with it?”

“Plenty,” she snapped, “and don’t you go interfering, Dick Morgan. I come from a respectable family and I’ve brought my children up decent.

“Would you like the boy to be seen in a funeral without a hat on his head? P’raps you wouldn’t mind if he didn’t wear his black suit and went to the funeral in a pair of grey trousers like that old ruffian, Mostyn Probert, always does. Grey trousers in a funeral — no wonder people do talk about him. If a man can’t give proper respect to the dead, then how can he expect people who are alive to show respect to him? All this fuss now again — just because I mentioned buying a hat. Things like that have got to be mentioned when someone dies. And I—”

“Yes, yes, Millie, but another time, girl. Not now,” the father interrupted. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.” He relapsed into a silence which only goaded her to nag him further. And Ieuan sat in the kitchen, past caring. Hearing nothing, seeing nothing, thinking only of Frank and the tragic events that had fallen so swiftly on that bleak November afternoon.

Gone was a prince among men.

To Ieuan the sense of loss he sustained by Frank’s death was more acute on the Saturday after the funeral than at any other time since the accident. The lowering of the coffin into the grave was the final and complete severance with life.

“From ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” He recalled the funeral. The slow, winding procession up the hill. Frank’s coffin swaying on its last journey.