Last Rights (3 page)

She took some bread out of the larder then, with what little Stork margarine there was left.

‘Sit down, my son,’ she said to me, as she pulled Dad’s chair out from its place at the head of the table.

‘Duchess . . .’

She walked up to me, limping a bit like she does when her arthritis is bad, her long black skirts swishing against the lino
as she moved. The Duchess has never worn short dresses in her life or anything other than mourning since Dad died. Her dignity,
as well as what she always calls her ‘convent training’, just won’t allow it.

‘Sit down, Francis, and please do eat,’ she said, as she ran one knotted brown hand across my forehead. Her arthritis had
started young, when she was about thirty. Our doctor, O’Grady, said at the time that she needed to go back to the dry, hot
climate of India if she was to have any chance of beating it. But she didn’t even want to mention that to Dad. She didn’t
want to make him give up his business and she would never have left him or us children. But she suffers for that decision.
‘I wish you didn’t have to run all the time,’ the Duchess murmured, as she placed the bread and marge in front of me. ‘I wish
you could have your health back again.’

I didn’t answer her. What was there to say? Some time, sooner rather than later, the raids would start again and I would run.
Sure as night follows day. We both knew it.

I started on the bread and marge, more out of duty than hunger, but it made Mum smile, which was the object of the exercise.
Then Nancy, or Nan, as we all call her, came in from the yard and, frowning as she almost always is, took over the tea with
her usual well-meaning bossiness. ‘You’ve got to go and pick up Mr Evans at eleven,’ she
said to me as, unbidden, she refilled my cup with tea and sugar.

‘I know,’ I said, as patiently as lack of sleep would allow. As if I could forget to pick up the deceased who, if indirectly,
was paying for us all to go on existing.

‘You conducting?’

‘Yes.’ I always had, ever since Dad died, which is fifteen years ago now. Out in front of the hearse, my wand in my hand –
the conductor, the master of the final earthly ceremonies. The wand or cane, which is what it looks like to most people, doesn’t
serve any purpose these days. In the past it was used as a weapon to ward off grave robbers and as a sort of magical tool
to keep away evil spirits. Hence the dramatic and mysterious name.

But I knew what she was getting at and I knew that she meant well. These days there aren’t always enough men to carry a sizeable
coffin like Gordon Evans’s. Sometimes a funeral has to go without a conductor. But not this time.

‘Joe and Harry Evans are going to bear with Arthur and Walter,’ I said. ‘They want to do it for their dad.’

‘Yeah,’ Nan said acidly, ‘all very well as long as Walter don’t fall over.’

Mum and I looked at each other and smiled. Although never a part of the business, Nan has always taken what we do very seriously.
Ever since we’d lost our cousin Eric to the navy, she had been concerned about how we were managing. Eric had driven for us
for a number of years and was a strong, sure-footed pall-bearer. But he’d been called up so I’d done what I could, which was
to employ Walter Bridges, a single bloke with badly fitting teeth who,
though getting on a bit and, it must be said, partial to a drop or two, is a good enough driver and not too bad a bearer.
There is also Arthur, our boy, fifteen and nearly six foot tall in his stockinged feet. Dying to have a go at Jerry, Arthur
can put a good gloss on a coffin, provided he doesn’t drop fag ash over it afterwards. We also got Doris Rosen, our office
girl, as soon as Eric and another of our blokes, Jim, left for the services. Had she been well enough, the Duchess could have
managed the office and the bookwork, but most of the time now her arthritis is so bad she can’t do much. More often than not
Nan has to feed her, put her to bed, turn the pages of her book, take her to the privy … That’s Nan’s job, the Duchess – and
the cooking and cleaning. Apart from feeding the horses sometimes, she doesn’t have time for the shop and its doings, however
much she might want to be in there, however much I know she envies Doris – who, in spite of being married, is a lot freer
than Nan. In some ways, this war has freed a lot of women to do things other than look after men and kids.

Aggie came back in then and rolled herself a fag on the table. Nan watched her all the time, her hooded eyes, so brown they’re
almost black, scrutinising her younger sister for each and every sign of what she would call ‘coarseness’ – heavy makeup or
too much perfume.

‘I’m going to work,’ Aggie said. She was indeed heavily made up now and her hair was encased in one of those net snoods the
girls like so much. She looked, to me, as if she would be more at home in Hollywood than London. To my way of thinking, it
takes courage to make yourself so
bright outside when you feel so rotten within.

But as Aggie left, I could see the word form in Nan’s mind – ‘slut’: written all over her face it was. And what a face. Bitterness
is a horrible thing. It’s not her fault. Again, it’s to do with the way she looks. People made comments when she was a youngster
and she hid herself away, looking after first Dad, then Mum and me and Aggie’s two little ’uns when they were still at home.
Aggie might be glamorous now, but Nan, with her long black hair and tiny delicate features, had been beautiful. But that was
a long time ago. Now she’s a spinster, a bitter one, and although I’ve always loved her, her spite is difficult to bear. I
hate the way she disapproves of any fun Aggie might have. It’s not wrong for a girl to wear makeup or even like a drink once
in a while – especially not in these times.

‘Oh, well,’ I said, after I’d finished what I hoped was enough of the food to satisfy the Duchess, ‘I’d best get on.’

I went downstairs into the parlour and spent a bit of time knocking brick-dust off the black curtains in the front window.
A lot of windows had gone out opposite so there was a lot of glass all over the place. Doris, breathless and red-faced after
her walk over from her home in Stepney, said, ‘Looks like a bleedin’ snow scene out there.’

And it did. In fact, if you looked at the pub on the corner from the right angle, it almost looked like something you’d see
on a Christmas card.

Gordon Evans’s funeral was what has come, even in such
a short space of time, to pass for normal. Tired, hand-picked flowers, a coffin scarred by millions of tiny glass shards and
Walter, reeking of booze, swaying gently by the graveside. I suppose I should count myself lucky he sets off on the proper
foot, the left, when he’s bearing, even if he is three sheets to the wind. But it isn’t good. Dad would have died of shame
had he still been around. After all, when Hancock’s started, funerals were probably as elaborate as funerals had ever been
– with the exception of the Egyptians, Tutankhamun and all that. When old Francis died in 1913, Dad sent him off in a hearse
pulled by four black horses followed by mutes carrying ostrich feather wands and a procession of friends and family in the
deepest mourning imaginable. You used to see so many flowers at funerals before the Great War. But, then, during and what
seemed like for years afterwards, there were so many dead there weren’t enough flowers in the world for all of them.

Having said that, I did perform one big old-fashioned do back in late March. For an old bookies’ runner, it was, Sid Nye.
The bookie coughed up for the funeral – he could – but Sid had been popular with his many customers in and around the Abbey
Arms pub so a lot of people wanted to pay their respects with heavy mourning, flowers and what-have-you. Funny to think how
hot it was back then. Hard on the heels of that terrible winter, the diggers had a real problem getting old Sid’s grave dug
in time. Funny weather. But maybe that’s what you get around wars. In Flanders the locals used to say that they’d never seen
so much rain and mud, not in living memory.
Thinking about it now, Sid Nye’s funeral wasn’t just the last big do I’ve done, it was also the last normal one. Ever since
then there’ve been few flowers and much talk, not of the deceased but of war and how we all think we’re going to survive.

Still the widow Evans was grateful for what we did, and their two boys, both in reserved occupations, were generous to my
lads. But it was still a frightening and depressing way to send off a loved one. So many trophies of war all around. I could
see the shrapnel embedded in some of the trees and memorials, even if the bereaved could not. I could see a foot I remember
too – lying all white and lonely on top of a watering can. But no one else saw it so maybe it wasn’t really there. Maybe it
was just a foot left over from the Somme, still lodged in my mind like a splinter.

Aggie had only been home for five minutes from her shift down at Tate & Lyle’s sugar factory when the sirens went off. I’d
dropped Walter at his lodgings after the funeral, but Arthur was still with us so yet again he went down with Mum, the girls
and this time Doris too.

I went up on the roof. Something made me not go so far on this occasion. Perhaps I was afraid of meeting wild-eyed fighting
men again or maybe I just wanted to watch people doing something rather than sitting in a hole in the ground. There’s a fire-watching
post on the next roof, over the bank. Mr Deeks, the manager, is in charge. ‘Good evening, Mr Hancock,’ he said to me, as he
watched me lie down on the flat bit of roof over Aggie’s bedroom.

‘G-Good evening, Mr, er, D-Deeks,’ I replied.

I saw him smile briefly before he and his lads went on about their business. He must have thought I was mad, lying down on
a roof in a raid – no tin hat, no gas-mask, nothing. He must have thought I had some sort of death-wish. Depending on the
day, sometimes he’s on the money there.

As the throbbing drone of the bombers came ever closer, I shut my eyes. I’ve always thought that if I’m going to die, I don’t
want to have to watch myself do it. Sometimes people ask me whether or not I’m afraid of death and my answer always surprises
them. I am. Just because it’s familiar to me, just because sometimes I even want it, doesn’t mean I can’t fear it. How can
you not fear something you know nothing about?

But this time closing my eyes had a bad effect. I kept seeing that bloke I’d met the night before, the one who said he’d been
stabbed. I hadn’t thought about him much since, but now here he was in colour and detail like a frightening villain in a creepy
picture. Just his face, twisted in anger, playing over and over in my mind until I couldn’t bear it any more and had to open
my eyes. Even then, I think now, I was starting to feel guilty about him.

What I saw, the blackness of the night pierced by the searchlights picking out the even blacker ranks of bombers, was really
a lot more frightening than anything in my head. But I preferred it because it was real. When I was in the trenches, just
waiting as we could do for months sometimes before actually fighting, one of the worst things was not being able to see the
enemy. You know they’re there – you can hear them, feel the fear coming
from them, even smell them at times – but you can’t see them and gradually you build hideous pictures in your mind of things
more monster than human. When you go over the top you’re half mad with fear, which, maybe, was the whole point of all that.
After all, what sane person would climb over a mountain of mud, then throw himself willingly at thousands of men armed with
guns?

The noise was so loud it felt as if it was in your body. Explosion – like the sound of silk ripping across the sky – the crackling
of the fires, Mr Deeks’s lads shouting at each other. ‘Where the bloody hell are our guns?’ one asked. But no one could answer,
because no one knows. There’s only ‘taking it’, which we do every night and sometimes in the daytime too. The East End taking
it for the whole country, mopping up pain like a sponge. Christ, it’s only been a matter of weeks all this, but sometimes
I think that at the end there’ll be nothing left – only flatness, the whole place gone back to the marshes it grew out of
all those centuries ago. I’ve conducted funerals for people made flat by falling buildings. I’ve done funerals for a leg,
an arm and what’s left of a head thrown into a coffin and given a name – Alf, Edie, Ruth, Sammy. Some poor old dear crying
over what’s left of probably three different people. But for her it is Ruth or Sammy, and that person is dead as sure as eggs
is eggs. Some people, see, they vaporise: there isn’t anything left, not a thing.

I lay listening to and watching that hell for I don’t know how long. But some time I must have gone to sleep because the next
thing I really remember is the daylight shining on to all the glass shards that were covering my
body. As I sat up, I heard someone laugh and I looked down into the street where I could see Alfie Rosen, Doris’s husband.
With his cap stuck casual like on the back of his head and his ever-present fag on the go, the only way you’d ever think he
was a bus conductor and not a wide-boy was because of the ticket machine hung round his neck.

‘She down your Anderson, Mr H?’ he said, anxious through his laughter about his big, buxom Doris.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Stay there, Alfie, I’ll come and let you in.’

As I walked back down through the flat and into the shop, I wondered as I always did at how we’d survived another night. Mum
and Nan, I knew, would put it all down to the grace of God and the Blessed Virgin. Like Aggie, I just felt we’d been lucky,
got away with it again.

I unlocked the front door and looked into Alfie’s smiling, grimy face. Like his father, Herschel, Alfie Rosen is one of those
red-haired Jews with very pale, almost colourless, skin. But then as I moved aside to let him in, another person turned up
– big Fred Bryant, constable at the local nick. ‘Hello, Mr Hancock,’ he said, as he respectfully removed his helmet. ‘Can
I come in for a mo?’

I said yes, let him in and my life changed.

The police brought the body round about an hour later in a mortuary van. Fred said the morgue couldn’t take any more – not
that the morgue was the morgue any more. That couldn’t cope so other places had had to be pressed into service for the reception
of the dead. Poplar
swimming-baths was now used as the morgue, a nice big area with tiles you could wash down easily.