Asima

Asima is Bernard Cottle’s wife and the absent but defining presence in his grief. Her wish to have her ashes scattered on the Ganges becomes the point at which his inability to let her go clashes with the wishes of their daughter, Sufi; years later, a tiger-shaped tea caddy allows Bernard and Asima to be brought together again in death.

Marriage and the Meaning of the Ganges

Asima and Bernard had moved to Coopers Chase before her death. In her later years, she gradually left behind her religious faith, but she had long wanted her ashes scattered on the Ganges, a wish their daughter Sufi had grown up hearing. Two days after the funeral, Sufi and her husband, Majid, travelled to Varanasi and scattered what they believed were Asima’s ashes in the river. Bernard had secretly replaced them, unable to bear the thought of his wife being carried away from him so soon after their goodbye.

Bernard’s letter makes clear that his grief did not erase his awareness of Asima’s place in her daughter’s life. He knew the deception had betrayed Sufi, even as he explained that he had been overwhelmed by the prospect of losing the person he loved. His choice preserves Asima’s physical remains close to him but denies Sufi the farewell she believed she had given her mother.

The Tiger Tea Caddy

The caddy that becomes Asima’s hiding place began as a shared joke between the couple. Years earlier, while browsing in an antique shop, Asima picked up a tea caddy shaped like a tiger. Bernard called her Little Tiger, and she called him Big Tiger. He returned a week later hoping to buy it for her as a Christmas surprise, only to find it had already been sold. At Christmas, he discovered that Asima had gone back and bought it for him instead.

After her funeral, Bernard transferred Asima’s real ashes from the urn into the caddy and put it back in a cupboard. He filled the urn with sawdust and bonemeal, which he found convincingly resembled ashes, and sealed it before Sufi and Majid took it to Varanasi. The following night, he carried the caddy up the hill with a spade from the allotment shed, lifted the turf beneath the bench where he and Asima had sat, and buried it there. He later returned to the bench to sit, greet passers-by, and speak to Asima when they were gone. Their private names and exchanged gift thus become part of a secret burial, joining his daily remembrance to the object that had embodied their affection.

Reunion in Death

After Bernard’s death, Joyce reveals the secret in his final letter. Later, she uses proper scales and transfers half of Asima’s ashes and half of Bernard’s from their separate containers into the tiger caddy. The remaining halves go into a simple wooden urn. The caddy is buried again beneath the bench, and Matthew Mackie blesses the site; Sufi and Majid, unaware of the exchange, take the mixed ashes in the urn to Fairhaven so Asima can finally be released.

The arrangement gives the caddy and urn distinct purposes: one keeps Bernard and Asima together beneath the place where Bernard had remembered her, while the other lets Asima’s ashes travel with her daughter and son-in-law. The final reunion also completes the caddy’s history as an exchanged Christmas gift. What began as a playful token of their mutual affection becomes the means of keeping them together, without canceling Asima’s own wish to be released.