On Boxing Day, the day of the funeral, Carter Street residents came calling. They came not so much to pay their respects to Ronny, Grace thought, as to show their support for Mavis. Grace was stiff from sleeping on a mattress on the kitchen floor for a second night but she did her best to keep the teapot filled.
Mrs. Gibson arrived first, bringing newspaper screws of tea and sugar as gifts for Mavis “for to help out wi’ the funeral tea, hinney.” Removal of her coat revealed she was swathed in a green pinafore over a shabby black dress. “Shame about Ronny, hinney,” she said perfunctorily. “Give us your bread knife and I’ll start making sandwiches.” She slapped a loaf on the round wooden breadboard, took the saw-toothed knife, and started cutting thin slices from the loaf. “Don’t expect many, do you?”
Mavis shrugged. “Not really. Charlie, what about him?”
“Aye, he intends to be at the funeral, sorry to say.”
Grace was surprised to see Lily, the aspiring prostitute, arrive with her mother, who looked frail but had a powerful voice.
“Sorry about Ronny,” the woman began. “Me daughter here the same. Who’s going to follow the coffin, then? No men about the house to do it, are there?”
“They’re all hiding in me backyard, Mrs. Dixon,” Mavis said.
“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” came the reply.
Lily, considerably cleaned up and looking younger without her homemade makeup, dared send a few sulky glances in Grace’s direction as Mavis showed the two visitors to the bedroom.
More local residents arrived. Grace recognised a number, having interviewed them. Conversations filled the kitchen. She had trouble enough deciphering the local dialect while concentrating on a single speaker. Listening to the mingled voices she might as well have been sitting in the middle of a marketplace in Istanbul—although there she might have caught the conversation of an expatriate or two.
Sefton showed up again, closely followed by Charlie Gibson. Mrs. Gibson looked up from arranging sandwiches on a plate and frowned.
“Rotten cold weather to be standing about in a cemetery,” Sefton observed, warming his hands at the fire.
“Oh, Ronny’s toasty enough,” Charlie replied.
“Charlie, you know this is not the…” his wife began.
“Does it look to you as if the widow is upset?” he replied. “Not that I blame you, Mavis. I’ve nae doubt you’re glad to be shot of him. As for me, I reckon he got what he deserved.” His face reddened. “I just wish it was me what gave it him, the swine.”
“His marrers would say different,” Sefton put in.
Charlie swung round. “What marrers were these, then? A bunch of thieves and worse.” He was shouting.
Sefton matched his volume in defense of Ronny and the two started arguing.
There was a muffled thudding. Grace entertained the sudden thought the departed had risen from his coffin to warn them they were disturbing his rest, but then realised a neighbour was banging on the party wall to indicate they could hear the shouting and were not pleased about it.
Evidently the neighbours on the other side did not bother with a warning since, as the argument between the two men became more heated, Wallace arrived.
“Howay, lads, this is too much noise. Let’s have some respect for the dead,” he said.
“I was just saying Ronny got what he deserved, and—” Charlie snapped at him.
“There’s them who reckon you was the person who gave it to him,” an exasperated Wallace interrupted. “And others who hint you spend most of your air raid duty hours in the pub. Easy enough to slip out on the pretence of needing to use the netty, but go down the back lane somewhere else instead. Things go on in the blackout the light of day would blush at. My advice is to watch your step, Charlie, and gan canny. We all know you had an axe to grind with Ronny.”
“Better to be lounging in a pub with the entire street on fire than visiting tarts!” Sefton gave Wallace a wink.
“Why, you—” Charlie shouted, grabbing the other man by his lapels.
“If I have to I’ll arrest you, Charlie,” Wallace said. “Have some sense, man. It’ll be a hard enough day for Mavis as it is. Go outside and cool off a bit. It’s almost time.”
As the men left, Wallace turned toward Mavis. “I’ll go with them to make sure no riots break out. Don’t want the vicar to be upset.”
Mavis thanked him. “And come back for the tea, won’t you? We’ll have it ready by then.”
Mrs. Gibson sat down and started to cry. Had Wallace really had to air his suspicions of Charlie for everyone in the room to hear?
***
Wallace joined the party which followed Ronny to St. John’s Cemetery. Surrounded by monuments and gravestones, the handful of men—they could hardly be termed mourners—stood shivering in a cutting wind off the river. Two others stood at a distance behind them, flat-capped and patient, waiting to shovel earth back into the trench into which Ronny’s coffin had been lowered. Here and there dingy seagulls pecked forlornly at the grass. A thin drizzle fell from a grey sky.
A man who said he was the cemetery watchman stopped Wallace and asked for news about the matter of the vandalised statue.
“You’ll have to come round the station and talk to Constable Baxter about that.”
“I will, but women in the force, what good is that, I ask you?” The watchman pinched out his cigarette and lodged the stub behind his ear.
“Aye, that may be so,” remarked a member of the party, “but you got to admit they’re red hot workers when they get down to it.”
A gust of wind stirred dead flowers on a grave next to Ronny’s.
Wallace scanned those gathered at the grave. It’s your funeral when you find out who your friends are, he thought. Or your survivors found out. By the look of it Ronny didn’t have many, unless those living elsewhere couldn’t be bothered to come out into the cold to see him off.
Was Charlie Gibson there to make sure the man who should have been his son-in-law and given Veronica a name was buried with a final bitter, unspoken curse?
Sefton’s presence was not too surprising. They’d been marrers in the old days and it was only right he should show that much respect to Ronny, even if his departed friend had been a well-known swine.
Mr. Elliott read the funeral service, shoulders hunched, hair ruffled in the wind. Earlier at St Martha’s Church he had reminded his scanty congregation that they had all entered the world empty-handed and would leave it in the same state.
Was that true? Ronny had left with a mystery in his pocket, and the cleverest pickpocket could not get hold of it.
He glanced at two men who stood on the other side of the grave. Their faces were familiar. Both were involved in Ronny’s illegal activities before the war. He had attended the funeral in the hope such acquaintances would appear.
Now the minister declared that man did not have long to live, cut down flower-like, fleeing like a shadow.
Wallace found himself wondering at the local custom frowning on women attending funerals. Perhaps its roots were in Victorian ideas of protecting frail womanhood? Then there came the more practical notion: if everyone went to the funeral who would prepare the funeral tea awaiting mourners afterward?
He could just do with a nice hot cup of tea. He studied the two men across from him. Both looked like retired dockworkers. They were the Anderson brothers, now well into their seventies, with records as long as the funeral service seemed to be taking.
The oldest was Mike, whom Wallace had lately been told by Baines was involved in blackmail but unlikely to be prosecuted since the victim refused to press charges. The younger brother, Matthew, was notorious as the more violent of the pair. He had recently served time for severely coshing a Salvation Army lass, a crime that so disgusted the area the force had had several anonymous tips within days of the assault.
The blackout indeed covered a multitude of sins. Had the brothers seen something useful to the current dual investigations?
And now finally came the end of the service, a couple of handfuls of earth thrown into the grave, and Wallace was free to quickly step around its foot to address the men starting away.
“One moment, you two. I want a word.”