It was a grey afternoon and there’d been a solemn and silent moment when the hearse departed, but then, someone had called out “Bye Daffy!!!” and the atmosphere was broken, it was almost like joyful liveliness. People started waving to each other, hand shaking, smiling, speaking. Everyone was freshly aware of being alive in the world and not dead in it.
The two friends spotted in the crowd who assisted to the funeral an old school friend, Karen, whom they both were in love with when they were students.
Karen turned up with her father, who was clearly a bit drunk, and her mother, who was wearing an outfit that was almost identical like his daughter, both were dressed in a vulgar and inappropriate way for a funeral, almost like whores. In Andy’s opinion, the mother “looks a right old baggage”.
These words bothered Sean, because, although deep down he agreed with Andy, he had an experience in the past that brought back him memories about Karen's mother, which were themselves embarrassing, but also pleasant, even exciting.
Sean remembered that, one day, while he was travelling on the bus where Karen was also, he noticed that she had forgotten her bag on the seat when she got off the bus. So he picked it up and decided to deliver it to her house, hoping to see her.
But she wasn't there, Sean found only her mother, who invited him to "come in and wait for her". Sean hesitated for a moment, but in the end he came in.
Suddenly, he found himself in Karen's mother arms and, without being able to avoid it, he lived his first sexual experience with her.
The author mixes several topics in his story:
Death: The atmosphere that usually surrounds funerals is contradictory, on the one hand people usually show sadness and pain for the deceased person but on the other hand, when the coffin is no longer present, they feel relieved and a great joy for the fact of being alive.
The loss of youth, reflected in Karen's mother: Sometimes, it's difficult to recognize the deterioration that the pass of time produces in our physique, and we insist on not accepting that reality, although we know that we cannot hide it even if we disguise ourselves as young people.
Memories: Over the years, when we think back to experiences that we lived in the past, many times they appear in our memory in a blurred way, in a form of sensations, smells, colours, music or phrases. Sometimes, we don't recall the events as they happened, but we can remember the emotions they produced in us. Sean keeps in his mind his first sexual experience, summarized in a sentence, which would stay with him until the day he dies.
QUESTIONS
Talk about the characters
Sean
Andy
Clive Davenport
Karen Shield
Do you have fond memories of your primary or secondary
school? Have your opinions changed, positively or negatively, in the course of
time?
Do you think unemployed people spend their time doing
things that when they were employed couldn’t do?
Graham Swift like to emphasize situations talking
about the weather. Did you find an instance of this in this story?
Why do you think a funeral is a good occasion for
gathering people?
What kind/class of people attended the funeral? How do
you know?
Why does the narrator describe their suits as
“interview suits”?
Do you think she had left her bag in the bus on
purpose?
Why do you imagine Karen and her friend did at Cheryl Hudson’s?
When the narrator says the “TV was on”, did he want to
mean something else?
There are some details to show us that Mrs Shield isn't drunk. What are these? Why does the writer insist on this?
“Had she done this before?” What’s your opinion?
Mrs Shield is very practical: how does the writer show
this?
What do you know about In Praise of Older Women,
by Stephen Vizinczey, or Elogio de la madrastra, by Vargas Llosa, or
about the film Ce que le jour doit à la nuit?
Would you have another point of view of the situation
in which the boy was involved, if instead of a boy it had been a girl, and
instead of a woman, a man?
After making love, he tried to work out his bearings.
Does this feeling have any relation to the saying “Post coitum omne animal
triste est, sive gallus et mulier”?
Was Sean a bit in love with Karen’s mother? How do you
know?
Can you imagine how the life would be going on for the mother, the
daughter, Sean and Andy?
Were those days for Sean the best days?
What is Sean’s moral lesson?
VOCABULARY
hearse, spillage, turnout, blustery, daffy, milling, makeshift,
grim, barn, craned, drag, stance, abuse, rebuke, outbreaks, drab, flouncy, headpiece,
tarty, fetching, sight, smothered, cutely, perky, unredeemed, scruff, blunt, cocky,
old baggage, curb, the big V, tugged, goody-goody, delve, primness, sternly, fluffy,
deed, ducking, cluttered, glow, bearings, peck, daubed, slab, goggling, prat, lovey-dovey,
preening, big-time, jump, get the hots