“The roofs in the rain are old as the hills. Rain is what makes this dump what it is. It is why we hate it.

We sit in silence and wait for the coming of the hearse. The noise of the rain on the roof of the car reminds me.

Tin roof, I say. Takes me back. Harry looks at me. I point up. The rain on the tin roof, I say. Old memories. The old man and long wet days in the cement shed. Trying to fathom a way out…

I laugh, a short bark of sound without conviction.

His eyes are fixed steadily on the hill. He says nothing. His hair is freshly cut and his white shirt immaculate. I turn to look at the hill; scrubby fields with neither sheep nor cattle grazing, rusty scabs of bracken, a dull blue scalp of ragged trees to scrape the sky. My voice speaks my thoughts: Sometimes I think that all our lives have been fucked up by the rain.

I turn to look at him. You think back, I say, over a lifetime… all the things it fucked up…

Harry stretches his arms, grits his teeth, but says nothing. He brings up his hand to cover a yawn.

This kid, I say. (What is there to say?) It is like being in a balloon. He is willing me to shut up.

So young, I say. The obvious. It is what we are. Words are fuck all. Nothing.

I can only manage a loose gesture, a movement of the hands. No more than a spasm to cover the hugeness of what is left out. The vast desert that separates father and son.

Fuck all, I say quietly, and a small wind moves the body of the yew.

The blackbird flies away. The dark portion of the sky is moving east. Like a lid sliding off. The west lightens. A brief white sun turns the wet twigs to streaks in the hedge. People are starting to get out of the cars. Harry raises his eyes to the rearview mirror.

Here they come, he says.

A strip of wet road that runs due west and ends abruptly at the grey iron fence. Beyond the fence lies the motorway. Cars hurtling north and south, glimpsed through the bare trees. The sky in the west is clearing. The Garth mountain is bare. Stony grey. The sky over it is palest blue. Cloudless and bare as bone."