Little Bits of Baby (28 page)

They walked on, bemused. Around them old friends greeted one another in German, Italian, French and unfamiliar, Eastern-sounding tongues. The average age looked like sixty-five and everyone was in black. Andrea was wearing grey, ‘Because it suits me and after all I never met the man.'

Peter had donned an old City suit, rather loose in the waist after eight years without boardroom lunches.

When finally they were on pillowy grass and in sight of the river, they saw Faber standing in the portico. He waved and came towards them smiling.

‘At last some familiar faces!' he said.

‘Who are all these people?' Peter asked him.

‘Perhaps we double-booked?' suggested Andrea.

‘I've no idea,' sighed Faber, kissing her then shaking Peter's hand. ‘I've been standing there for nearly half an hour saying hello to people but none of them have the faintest idea who I am so it's fairly pointless. Besides, they're all having such a fabulous time. Listen!' It was true. The air was full of gaiety and release, as though the service were already over. ‘I was convinced it was going to be just we three and maybe Candida's godfather.'

‘Which is he?'

‘There he is. Uncle Heini!'

‘My dear boy!' A dapper old man in a well-cut suit black as night turned from another conversation and came towards them, beaming. He shook Faber's hand and patted his shoulder. ‘I'm so very sorry,' he said, still smiling but saddening his voice a little.

‘Heini, these are dear friends. Andrea Maitland, Heinrich Liebermann.'

‘How do you do?'

‘
Enchanté
.'

Uncle Heini all but kissed Andrea's hand.

‘And this is Andrea's husband, Peter.'

‘
Ja
, so it was you who visited dear Marcus all this time. We all owe you so much.' His pronunciation turned Marcus into something rich and rare, something from Ancient Rome. Embarrassed, Peter shrugged.

‘He left me the richer,' he told him and yet again Andrea wondered what he and the dying man had talked about all this time. Whenever she had asked him, Peter told her, ‘Nothing, really.'

‘Heini, you must tell me,' Faber urged. ‘Who are all these people?'

‘Oh,' Heini dismissed them with a scornful raising of eyebrows and a wave of a hand, ‘Acquaintance. Marcus had very few friends left alive, but he had an enormous acquaintance.'

‘But this is so embarrassing,' Faber said. ‘Shouldn't I be providing them all with food and drink or something? Some of them seem to have come miles.'

‘St Johns Wood,' Heini snorted. ‘Have they said hello to you?'

‘Not really.'

‘Then you needn't worry.'

The four of them had reached the church's elegant West end.

‘Shall we see you inside?' asked Andrea.

‘Oh no. I think I might as well come in with you now,' Faber said.

‘But what about Marcus?' asked Heini. ‘Shouldn't you be walking in with him?'

‘He's already in his place,' Faber said with a smile. ‘I'd have felt such an idiot walking up the aisle all on my own behind a load of bearers so I got them to come early and put him up at the front before anyone else got here. You can hardly find him for flowers. Come and see.'

He turned inside and they followed him, Andrea taking Peter's arm and Heini bringing up the rear. Peter saw with relief that the musicians were already in place and playing. Marcus had left him a letter in Miss Birch's care. It gave him strict instructions concerning the paying of musicians and some nurse together with advice concerning the handling of meddlesome priests.

The coffin was quite buried in flowers as were the trestles that supported it. Flowers dangled from the pulpit and someone, an anonymous donor, Faber muttered, had paid for green garlands to be draped around the length of the horseshoe gallery. The smell was delicious – rosemary, bay and late honeysuckle. The pews were already filled to bursting and the gallery creaked under an unaccustomed burden but the front pew had been left respectfully empty. It was clear to Andrea as they walked up the aisle, that no one there was quite sure exactly who the chief mourners would turn out to be. Not being in mourning herself, she felt no harm in enjoying the sense of attention on her as the one woman in the quartet that now took the principal places. She saw Peter bow to a tidy-looking creature on the other side. In answer to Andrea's questioning glance he whispered, ‘Miss Birch,' which left her none the wiser. She reached into her bag for the piece of paper on which she had typed out her Donne poem. It was all so exciting, like being in a school play or local pageant. Peter had told her that he really had very little idea what was going to happen. All he knew was that the form of the service would probably be ‘free' and that she was to go into the pulpit and read the poem ‘after the song'. Faber sat on her right, beside the aisle, as seemed proper, although he was to play no active part in the proceedings. She reached across to pat his arm. He smiled slightly but continued to stare at the heap of flowers on the coffin.

The music, something for string quartet, came to an end and a priest appeared in front of Marcus's coffin. He had a boyish face, although he must have been in his forties, and black hair so well-combed it looked almost false. He was not in robes, but he had a dark suit on and a shiny dog collar. Silence fell at once and they all stood.

‘Erm,' said the priest, ‘hello. We are here to mark the passing of our friend Marcus Carling. I confess I met Marcus only once, when his assistant Miss Birch asked if I would visit him in hospital. He was charming but business-like. He wanted my assurance that I would be prepared to be here in my legal capacity as priest rather than my spiritual one as Christian and I gave it him willingly. He struck me as a man of profound belief, if only in the importance of living fully and with grace. I can see from the wonderful number of you who have turned up this morning that he was popular and will be missed. I'm sure Marcus would not mind if I said that I trust, from the number of you here, that he will live on in your hearts. As requested, I shall refrain from blessing his departed soul but I see no reason for not saying bless
you
, all of you, for coming.' He smiled in benediction. ‘Please sit,' he said. Everyone sat and he walked to one side and sat too.

A nurse now climbed into the pulpit. She was pretty but looked hot and rather cross at having to be there.

‘Hello,' she said quietly.

‘Speak up,' some woman called in a thick accent.

‘Sorry,' muttered the nurse then continued more loudly. ‘Hello. I'm staff nurse Rosie Walsh. I nursed Marcus on and off throughout his long illness and was nursing him for his last three weeks. I can't say he was an easy patient, there's no reason why anyone that ill should make life easy for anyone, but we got on. He teased me, I teased him and he used to finish my crossword for me.'

‘
Ses mots croisées
,' a man behind Andrea explained firmly to his neighbour.

‘Towards the end he made me confirm that this time it was nearly over – there had been a lot of false alarms, you see – and then he made me promise that, when he died, I'd come along here and stand up and read you all a letter from him. I've not read it yet myself, I've only just been handed it, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't read it very well.'

‘
Ah, c'est chouette comme idée!
' exclaimed the Frenchman's female neighbour and was silenced.

The nurse tore open an envelope and drew out a single sheet of paper. She looked up at the congregation, then down again.

‘“Greetings from beyond the grave!”' she read and coughed. ‘“Thank you, whoever and however many you are, for bothering to come to what, after all, is a fairly spiritless occasion. Doubtless you would have been indignant had I summoned you all to a hired ‘function room' in some stuffy hotel and the English climate scarcely allows us to forgather in a field or park. I would have preferred the latter, for its lack of ambiguity, but this church will have to do. Blake came here, and his views were fairly unorthodox, so the precedent is honourable.

“I am, as you will have gathered, dead. This had been a bastard of a disease and any release from it, however undignified, will have been merciful. I have no hopes of a heaven and no fears of a hell so please don't insult my intelligence and waste your energies wishing me in either. If it's any comfort to you, however, I do have a profound sense that all is not over. When alive I was far too aware of the fact for it all just to stop at the flick of a switch. I shall continue as influence, as spirit, as memory, or something. This is not just the fear of death speaking. Death has become as companionable to me in the last few years as a plump fireside cat and no more awe-inspiring. If nothing else, I shall live on as my hard cash.”' (Here several people chuckled.)

‘“I would willingly leave my body to science, but what's left of it would be precious little use to anyone. Tombstones are a hypocritical expense and a burden to those who come after. I have accordingly arranged to be cremated in privacy. No friends, no family; just the priest the law in its infinite wisdom requires. You shan't have to climb any hills to watch the scattering of my ashes since I have no great love for any particular piece of England and every hope of finding my way anonymously onto some municipal flower-bed.

“Just before you leave, you will be read a poem. I don't hold with all the theology behind it, and I don't believe its author did either, but I do believe in its defiance. John Donne would no more have been an easy patient than I was. Yours sincerely, Marcus Carling”.'

The nurse looked up for these last words then folded the paper away somewhere and left the pulpit. She walked away down the aisle, her sensible shoes making muffled thumps all the way to the swing door by which she left. Someone was crying. Someone up in the gallery. Faber blew his nose heavily but otherwise seemed fine. His composure did not last, however. The next mystery item was a rather breathy performance of Britten's setting of Yeats's
Salley Gardens
by a small boy in school uniform. The melody and bittersweet words were touching enough even without the poignant contrast between the boy's youth and the poem's world-weariness. Faber pulled out a handkerchief and had to blow rather more. His tears were infectious, even though Andrea had never even met Marcus, and she had to breath deeply to keep herself under control.

‘Stage-fright,' she reminded herself. ‘Bank balances. Haemorrhoids. Evening classes.'

The song finished, causing a few people to clap. Peter tapped her arm to show it was time to stand up, which she already knew. She lost her nerve at the last moment and took the typed sheet of poetry with her. Faber stood with a sniff to let her out. She passed within inches of the coffin and climbed into the pulpit. Suddenly the sun was full in her eyes and she knew she had the poem by heart. Without bothering to glance down she rested her hands on the rail before her and faced the crowd of expectant strangers.

‘“Death be not proud,”' she told them and paused to muster a smile of triumph.

Thirty-Three

The children were going home.

‘Lots of egg-boxes? Wonderful!' said Andrea, taking an armful of cardboard from a collecting mother. ‘Oh, and a squeezy bottle too! What fun.' She tossed the useful offerings into the domestic junk-heap corner known as the Quarry. ‘I'm afraid they'll be back with you in another form in no time. Tabitha's getting so creative. Ah, hello Mrs Tang.' She looked round wildly for the little Chinese girl who had only started that week. ‘Louise? Anyone see Louise? Ah. There you are, dear. Your mum's here.' She turned back to Mrs Tang and whispered, ‘She's so bright!' with a smile.

The weather had suddenly changed gear. Autumn had stopped being golden and had turned wet. From now until the Spring there would be small Wellington boots to be retrieved and duffle-coats to be found. Something about bright winter clothes brought out envy in children, Andrea found, and much grabbing and weeping at going-home time.

‘Josie, don't cry dear. This is your mac. This pretty pink one. Very pretty. Much nicer really. Give Rupert back his Barbour.' She grinned at Josie's mother who was taking far too long getting her out of the room. Peter came running in from seeing the twins to their car.

‘Robert's panda,' he muttered. ‘Have you seen it?'

‘In the kitchen,' she told him. ‘Drying over the stove. He got soup all over it. Ah. There we are, Tony. See? Daddy's come for you today. Hang on. Don't forget your lovely spaceship you made. There we are. Careful, the glue's not quite dry. Oh dear. Well, leave it here and I'll fix it for you to take home tomorrow. All right? Bye bye.'

Peter ran out of the room again, clutching a still wet panda. She heard him explaining the mishap to the twins' mother and realised that the last child had gone. Bliss. She yawned, stretching, then set about pushing chairs and tables to the wall ready for the Señoritas Fernandez to do their mopping in the morning. Lentil soup seemed to have got everywhere, as had the hundreds-and-thousands Flora Cairns had been using to make a glue picture. She had set the children to making a new alphabet this morning, one letter each with a picture of something that began with it. She took down the old one from over the blackboard and began to pin the new one up in its place. She had reached F with its carnivorous-looking bluebottle when Peter came back in.

‘Have you seen Jasper, darling?' he asked.

‘He went home with that Australian nanny of theirs, didn't he?' she said, pinning up Flora's G for girl and Jasper's subversive H for Halo.

‘Er. No. I don't think he can have done.' He coughed. She turned round on her stool and saw that Candida was with him.

‘Hello,' said Candida, who for Candida looked awful.