‘Mum, I can explain,’ he splutters. ‘I’ve literally just left a meeting. There’s been an absolute meltdown at work. My biggest client called threatening to withdraw their money. I’ve been locked in negotiations with them since three yesterday. We worked all through the night. I’ve not even been to bed.
‘I couldn’t. I had to be there. If I’d lost that account, I’d have lost my job.
‘I didn’t have any time. I was fighting to keep the client. I’ve not even had anything to eat.
‘I’m in a taxi now.
‘Work are paying. It’s driving me straight to the church. Can you text me the address please?’
Mark opens his wardrobe with his spare hand and throws a suit and a white shirt onto the bed. He thumbs through his tie collection. ‘I need to borrow a black tie. Has Dad got one? I couldn’t find mine.
‘Yes, I’m sure he is, but tell him it couldn’t be helped.
‘I’ll see you there. If the traffic’s bad, I’ll ring you and you can delay them.
‘Just tell them to do another lap of the block or something.
‘It starts at eleven, yeah?
‘I’ll see you later… oh and by the way, I’m still not talking to you.
‘You know why.’
Mark chucks his towel on the floor and stands over the toilet,
shaking
. He then goes back into the bedroom, dresses and leaves Craig an abusive voicemail for not waking him up.
‘That’s £239.40,’ the taxi driver says as he stops next to a hearse
outside
St Christopher’s. The village church – which is commemorating its three hundred and fiftieth anniversary - has scaffolding erected over the spire and is surrounded by rows of crooked headstones. The graveyard is immaculate, with trimmed grass and well-pruned bushes.
‘Do you need the money now or can you send an invoice to my office?’ Mark asks.
‘I need the cash now, mate. You need to book in advance and tell us which account to charge it to if you’re going to do that.’
‘Can’t you find out for me?’
Mark convinces the driver to call his head office and ask for the fare to be charged to the MenDax Wealth Management account.
The driver laughs and thanks the person on the other end of the line. ‘You haven’t got an account with us any more,’ he says. ‘Cancelled it in March. I’ll have to have the cash.’
Mark huffs, hands over the exact money and asks for a receipt. He slams the taxi door, runs through the churchyard and slips in between the weathered oak doors. The service is already in progress.
The vicar, a tall, slender man with a bushy white beard, is standing at the alter reading from the Bible. Behind him is a coffin, draped in a Union Jack. Mark’s family are sitting at the front.
The majority of the mourners are elderly and the pews are full. The rest of the congregation stand four-deep at the back.
Mark joins the standees and perches on the base of the stone font to get a better view. He gazes up at the beams which criss-cross the ceiling and at the vast stained glass windows that depict scenes from the Old Testament. A wooden statue of Christ on the cross is nailed high above the vicar’s head.
The congregation are asked to turn to page two of the order of
service
for the hymn
Abide with Me.
Mark doesn’t have one so peers over the shoulder of the woman in front of him.
At the conclusion of the hymn, a frail old man with a walking stick and Brylcreemed hair moves to the lectern. He picks a folded sheet of paper from his silver-buttoned blazer and puts on thick reading glasses. He coughs into a handkerchief and begins in a slow, melancholy tone:
‘Victor Archibald Hunter was born to George and May Hunter in Hastings in June 1921. Tragically his mother died during the birth,
leaving
his father to raise Victor and his elder sister Doris alone.
‘At the age of eleven, Victor won a scholarship to Hastings Royal Grammar School, where we first became friends. He excelled at school and shone on the athletics field but unfortunately his academic career was cut short after his father suffered a farming accident in which he lost both legs, forcing Vic to give up his scholarship aged thirteen to take a job as a delivery boy to feed the family.
‘He had worked his way up to the position of clerk by the outbreak of the war and was conscripted into the 6
th
Battalion of the Royal Wessex Regiment. When Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942,
Victor
, along with thousands of other Allied prisoners, was transported to Tamarkan prison camp in Thailand, where he spent three years working on the deadly Burma-Siam Railway.
‘Despite enduring cruelty that would be unimaginable to many
people
here today, when Victor spoke about his wartime experiences he said he always considered himself one of the lucky ones as so many of his friends never made it home.
‘He returned to Hastings in late 1945, and after time spent in
hospital
recovering from cholera, he married Frances in January 1946. A year later, Frances gave birth to their first son, Graham, who was followed by John in 1949.
‘Victor worked at Baxter’s department store in Hastings until his retirement in 1986 by which time he had risen to the position of director and he is very fondly remembered by everybody he worked with.
‘After the untimely death of Frances in 2002, Victor’s health sadly started to deteriorate and the trips to the pub that myself and our long-standing friends enjoyed became fewer and further between.’
The woman next to Mark wearing a large black hat starts crying.
‘Victor was a very loyal friend; a warm and generous man with a kind heart. He never had a bad word to say about anybody and I was proud to call him my friend and my best man. He will be sorely missed.’
He folds his eulogy back into his blazer and walks unsteadily back to his seat. There is a round of applause. The vicar asks everyone to stand to sing
Jerusalem
.
The crowd at the back of the church parts and the Hunter family file out. Mark shoves his way between two teenage boys and joins the sombre procession.
As they turn into the graveyard, the sun comes out and Mark jogs to the front to be alongside his parents. He taps his dad on the shoulder:
‘Have you got my tie?’
Patricia gives Mark a withering glance and hands him a black tie from her handbag.
‘Nice of you to turn up,’ Graham says, not looking at his son.
‘I had a meeting. Didn’t Mum tell you? I haven’t been to bed.’
‘Why don’t I believe you?’
Mark fastens the tie as they follow the vicar over the dewy grass to the first of a line of open graves at the back of the churchyard, which adjoins acres of barley fields. The vicar gives Graham and Pat a brief explanation of the burial ceremony as Mark shuffles away and stands next to Uncle John, who is dressed entirely in black.
‘Where were you last night?’ John asks.
‘Peppermint Pussy Cat. Work drinks. Don’t say anything.’
‘Don’t worry I won’t. I wish I’d been with you. I had to sit listening to your dad being miserable. What time did you get in?’
‘About five, I think. I feel terrible.’
John gives Mark a packet of mints. ‘Have a few of these. You reek of drink.’
Mark empties all of them into his mouth.
The four pall bearers align themselves on the green synthetic turf surrounding the grave and delicately lower Victor Hunter into his final resting place. The head of the group throws a handful of soil onto the coffin and steps away, head bowed.
There is another Bible reading and a prayer. The vicar then invites the family to scatter some earth. Graham, John and Mark’s older sister Annie, all edge forward, followed by Mark. He takes a handful of mud from the dug up pile, bends down and drops it into the hole. It lands with a hollow thump.
As he lifts his head, his face turns white and his cheeks inflate as he tries to swallow. He squeals, scampers past the vicar and flings himself onto his hands and knees on the edge of an adjacent hole. He makes a strained yelp and vomits ferociously. He growls again and more
transparent
liquid gushes from his mouth as he convulses. Patricia forcibly restrains Graham and the rest of the mourners look on in a mixture of horror and revulsion. Mark glances over his shoulder, his eyes
streaming
, and wipes his mouth with his tie.
Mark changes out of his muddy and sick-stained clothes and puts on a pair of jeans and a shirt he finds in his dad’s bag in his grandparents’ old spare room. The house smells of lemon air freshener. He breathes in and rises onto tiptoes as he tries to do the trousers up but the waist is two
inches too small. The shirt is on the verge of bursting.
The wake is in progress downstairs and there is the sound of cups and saucers chinking and restrained chatter. Annie, Mark’s sister, comes up the stairs carrying a pile of coats which she dumps in her grandad’s old room. She is slight with bright eyes, brown highlighted hair, and a deep sun tan. There is a silver piercing at the top of her left ear and she has beads around her wrists.
‘Why are you putting them in there?’ Mark asks, following her in.
‘Mum told me to. I wouldn’t start causing a fuss if I was you. Why weren’t you here last night?’
‘I had important business. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Is that why you threw up?’
‘I must have a virus or something.’
‘You’re a twat, Mark.’
He trots down the stairs into the living room where Patricia is
distributing
cups of tea. Someone has moved the dining room chairs into the living room so more people can sit down. She asks Mark to help her. He says that he shouldn’t after what she’s done but he’ll make an
exception
today. She tells him to stop being so pathetic.
Uncle John opens the drinks cabinet. He pours a generous drop of
whiskey
into his coffee and sidles up to Mark:
‘Keep out of your dad’s way. He’s on the warpath after your
performance
in the churchyard.’
‘I couldn’t help it.’
‘It was a bloody stupid thing to do.’
‘I’m ill.’
‘You didn’t have to get on your hands and knees. Someone behind me thought you were praying. They were burying someone in that hole this afternoon. I don’t think anyone wants their relative laid to rest in a pool of your sick. Wipe that smile off your face, Mark. Show some bloody respect.’ John drinks his coffee. ‘Your dad said he could smell alcohol on you. Why don’t you go and have a beer?’
‘I can’t. I’ll be sick again.’
‘Don’t be a girl, Mark. If you don’t have a beer, it’ll look odd. He’ll be expecting you to have a few drinks. If you don’t, he’ll know that you got shit-faced last night.’
‘Can’t you go and have a word with him for me? Tell him I’m working so hard it’s making me ill.’
‘Mark, he’s not stupid. I’m in his bad books as well. He said I haven’t given him any help with the funeral arrangements, even though your mum’s done most of it.’ He drinks more coffee. ‘And he wants me to say a few words about Dad, but I told him I’m not going to.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not keen on public speaking. What am I meant to say about him anyway? Tell everyone what a great father he was?’
‘I’m going to get some buffet,’ Mark says. ‘This is making me feel worse.’
The kitchen is full of elderly people wanting more to eat or their glasses refilled. Someone has dropped a sandwich on the lino. Mark is standing by the fridge with his sister, pouring a can of lager into a tankard.
‘When did you get back?’ he asks.
‘Yesterday. I flew in to Heathrow and got the train here. I got back about nine.’
‘Why didn’t you get picked up?’
‘Because I thought Mum and Dad would be busy organising
everything
for today, not that it would have occurred to you.’
‘How’s everything in Sydney?’
‘Pretty good. I’ve moved to a new hospital.’
‘Mum said something about that, but I wasn’t really listening. When do you think you’ll come home?’ Mark asks.
‘I was saying to Mum and Dad last night that my contract runs until March, so I’ll see how I feel then. I was thinking about going somewhere else for a year.’
‘Like where?’
‘South Africa perhaps.’
‘Why do you want to go there?’ Mark says with a mouthful of cake. ‘Hasn’t everyone got Aids?’
Annie sighs. ‘No Mark, not everyone. I’m going to go and talk to the adults next door if you’re incapable of having a sensible conversation.’
‘You can’t walk off. I’ll have to talk to one of these old people,’ he whispers. ‘Anyway you haven’t asked me about what I’m up to.’
‘I don’t need to. I know exactly what you do. You sit in an office all
day twiddling your thumbs and at night you go out and get pissed and annoy people.’
A man asks Annie where the toilet is. Mark helps himself to a mini pork pie and a few crisps from the kitchen table, stands by the window and stares out into the garden, where the vicar is having a cigarette.
‘Lastly, I’d like to thank Reverend Dawkins for conducting the service, which barring one hiccup went very well.’ Graham looks straight at Mark, who is cowering beside a bookcase. ‘So thank you. It was exactly what Dad wanted. There’s plenty more food and drink to be got through, so please help yourselves and you’re all welcome to stay as long as you like.’
Uncle John, holding a tumbler two-thirds full of whiskey, staggers into the room and stands next to Graham. He’s taken off his tie and is holding an unlit cigar.
‘I just want to say a few words,’ he whispers.
Graham glances at Patricia who mouths that Graham should let him. Graham steps away and stands next to his wife and daughter.
John puts down his drink and composes himself. There’s a nervous tension in the room.
‘As my brother has said,’ John begins in a strained voice, ‘thank you all for coming today.
‘I know there’s been a lot said about Dad, but I’d like to say a few words about the dad I knew. My dad.’ He takes a large swig of whiskey.