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He returned the books to the shelf, locked the cabinet and restored the concealing volumes in front of it, scrupulously rinsed and dried the razor, and then began to dress in clothing suitable for the funeral of one’s only brother.
Chapter 55
A song thrush sat atop a tree growing at the corner of a cemetery. It was a large tree, and an old cemetery. Generation upon generation of Londoners had been laid here, their bones dug up and re-buried, their lichen-spangled stones lifted and placed to one side like substantial ghosts lined up to bear witness.
The thrush had fed well that morning; the weak sun was welcome; its young were long gone from the year’s nest. He was happy to perch and cock a bright eye at the curious comings and goings below.
Earlier in the day, the grave-diggers had come with their spades, making their casual way across the lawns to the scheduled resting place of this newest graveyard resident. Their orders were for a larger hole than usual: Having an oversized coffin stuck halfway down was humiliating to professional pride, and affected the generosity of the families.
So their shovels scraped longer than usual in the heavy London soil, and the hole they dug was as outsized as the man it was to contain.
At last, they were finished. The man in the hole tossed out his spade and raised a hand for the others to pull him up. They arranged the cloth over the raw soil mound, gentling reality for the mourners, then propped their tools across their shoulders and went to seek out their luncheons.
Two hours passed, in silence but for the bells of nearby churches. The thrush came and went, came and went and returned. Clouds gathered, then cleared. Three families came to lay flowers on gravestones; a courting couple lingered under the trees; a pack of neighbouring children ran through, their raucous joy not, oddly, entirely out of place.
Then silence.
When the sun was halfway to the horizon, a man came, dressed in formal black, though wearing a soft hat. He stood for a time at the edge of the hole, then turned to survey the surrounding trees, stones, and marble tombs. He walked up and down, taking up a position behind a large granite cross, then beneath the song thrush’s tree, and finally stepped into the shadows beneath a grand family vault. The toes of his polished shoes caught the light, then they, too, retreated into the gloom. The man might not have been there at all.
The hearse that eventually came was the old-fashioned sort: high, black, and pulled by black horses with black feathered top-knots. The priest walked before, his black cassock peeping out from under a lace-trimmed white surplice, head bent beneath a Canterbury cap, prayer book in hand.
The coffin, both large and heavy, was taken from the hearse by six men. They settled it cautiously upon their shoulders, then stepped into an even pace, transferring the body to its eternal home.
Step; pause. Step; pause. Step.
Clouds grew across the sun, and the afternoon went dull. The mourners glanced upwards and fingered their umbrellas. A person looking on, from the high branches, perhaps, or a family vault, might have noticed how the people deferred to two or three of their fellows: Clearly these were important men, at a solemn occasion. Too solemn, too important for the jostling, bumptious press to have been notified.
The bird, back now, noticed primarily that there was no sign of a picnic luncheon.
The coffin approached, paused in the air, was lowered, and came to rest beside the hole. The six men stepped back, surreptitiously easing their shoulders. The priest stepped forward.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.” The ancient words of grief and comfort rose up from the circle. One woman, tall and buxom, raised a handkerchief underneath her black veil. One man, his hair sandy and thin, his black suit slightly out of date, swayed infinitesimally, then regained control. Another man, this one with the nose of a boxer and a tie too gaudy for the occasion, looked intently around the neighbouring area, seemed not to find what he was searching for, and then raised his arm to pass his hand slowly over his greased hair, a gesture so deliberate it might almost have been intended to convey meaning.
The thrush atop the overlooking tree noticed motion at a distance. Men, perhaps a dozen in all, had taken up positions in a wide circle around the oblivious mourners. Now they began to move forward. These were large, hard-looking men; two of them had bruised faces, as if they had recently walked into a tree, or a rock; one limped. Several sparrows flew out from another tree, but the song thrush remained.
Then came another wave of motion. This, too, came from all over, but it had many more than a dozen sources. Along the cemetery’s paths, over the low hill, from under the scattering of ancient trees, small groups of men and women converged on the hole and its coffin. The men wore dark suits, some ill-fitting; the women wore dresses appropriate to mourning. The women’s hair was of all colours and lengths; two of the men were bald beneath their hats. All the men were at least six feet tall, all were thin, all were at least forty years of age; the women were uniformly tall, all were slim, none was over forty.
And all of the women wore spectacles.
Quiet and to all appearances solemn, the men and women closed in to insinuate themselves among the twenty-three mourners already gathered at the grave-side. The original group looked at the oddly similar newcomers with expressions ranging from surprise to outrage, but the men and women were polite, quiet, and patient.
The congregation now numbered almost ninety. The priest stared open-mouthed at the proceedings, then stirred back to his responsibilities. He found his place, and resumed. The shadow beneath the ornate vault remained still.
The narrowing circle of hard-looking men had stopped abruptly when the odd cohort of late-comers appeared, to let the men and women flow around them towards the grave. They consulted silently with their fellows, glanced at the burly man with the boxer’s nose, then gave mental shrugs and settled back where they were.
Again, the words of the psalm rose up. Again, the tall, buxom woman raised the scrap of white cloth to her veil. The sparrows returned to their tree.
And again, came an interruption. This time it was music, riding thinly on the fitful breeze: a brass band. The mourners shifted and glanced at one another, disapproving of this thoughtless levity. The priest glanced up briefly, then pushed on.
However, the band did not go away. In fact, the raucous music seemed to be growing, as if some horribly inappropriate Salvation Army band had chosen this place of dignity and sorrow to practice its thumping tunes. Closer it came, and closer, until the tune became clear: “Rock of Ages,” quickened to marching time. The priest raised his voice and speeded up a fraction. Some of the mourners exchanged glances, others hunched into themselves, determinedly oblivious. The sandy-haired man in the old-fashioned suit spoke to the younger man at his side, who put on his hat and stalked in the direction of the disturbance.
But before he had disappeared from view, those mourners unable to keep their eyes from following saw him jerk to a halt. He put out both hands, in a ma
And then it was upon them, a marching band of all the loudest, most discordant instruments in an orchestra: tubas, trombones, and French horns (all of them ever-so-slightly out of tune) tootled along with not one, but two large drums (beat nearly in rhythm), a phalanx of flutes, clarinets, and piccolos, and a short pot-bellied man dwarfed by an enormous pair of brass cymbals.