Inside the crematorium the rows were full of mourners. Hayden and Bram stood unobtrusively at the back. Hayden spent most of the funeral service thinking about his own mortality and putting faces to the backs of people’s heads. Did he know them? Had they aged? Was the back of his own head bald? And who was the statuesque, imposing woman in the last row? He certainly didn’t know her, and he wasn’t about to find out. As the celebrant droned to a halt and Eddie’s coffin trundled towards the incinerator, she stood up suddenly, turned and, with eyes obscured behind a half-veil, walked briskly towards the exit.
As she brushed past Hayden their eyes met – as much as eyes can be said to meet behind a half-veil. There was something unnerving about her. Hayden considered following her out and observing her from a discreet distance, but something stopped him. Possibly fear. His mouth was certainly dry and she didn’t look like the sort of woman you’d mess with. Contained. Assured-looking. Well-endowed shoulders. Doubly striking in funeral black. He chose to stay and deconstruct her where he was. The intellectual’s way out. Eddie, meanwhile, disappeared from view and the mourners stood up slowly and shuffled out. Hayden, lost in thought, shuffled with them.
Outside the crematorium were men with hands buried deep in trouser pockets and women checking their mobiles. The usual funeral banalities; until, that is, Hayden’s nonagenarian aunts doddered into view. Three tiny little heads bobbing about as if with one body, like a benevolent hydra.
‘Will you look who it is.’
‘Howaya, stranger.’
‘Haven’t seen you in yonks.’
‘Longer than yonks I’d say.’
‘Well that all depends how long a yonk is, Dodie.’
‘Dottie. Anyway, nice to see you back for the funerdle, Hayding.’
‘And will you look at young Abraham.’
‘Hasn’t he got very big?’
‘Plus, it hasn’t escaped our attention in spite of our great age and concomitant waning powers, he’s wearing longers.’
Bram gave them a puzzled look. He hadn’t worn short trousers for decades. And his name wasn’t Abraham.
‘So how are tings in Londinium, Hayding?’
‘That’s what it was called when we were over first. Young ladies in our prime.’
‘Awful sad though, isn’t it?’
Hayden was confused. ‘What is?’
‘Eddie. Our dear departed little brudder. To go like that, you know?’
‘In his prime.’
‘Eighty-six. So young. So young.’
One of them, possibly Florrie, poked Hayden on his hip bone.
‘Did you see the mysterious lady at the back, Hayding?’
‘His secret lover, you possibly surmise?’
They moved in closer.
‘All is not as it seems, Hayding.’
‘We’ll go furder. She’s not all she seems.’
‘How so?’ he said, humouring them. It was a funeral after all, and they weren’t long for this world themselves. Besides, he was very fond of them in his own undemonstrative way, so it was the least he could do.
‘Oh now. It’s more than our lives are wort.’
‘Our lips, Hayding, are permulently sealed.’
‘You should have seen him, dough.’
‘Him?’
‘Eddie, Hayding. He looked so peaceful.’
‘Beatific, almost.’
‘Oh, I don’t tink so, Dottie.’
‘Dodie.’
‘Isn’t beatific religious, Hayding?’
‘And he wasn’t religious, Hayding. Far from it.’
‘But he certingly looked very peaceful –’
‘– if not beatific –’
‘– at the end.’
‘All laid out in his open coffing.’
‘There, you’d have said, was a very –’
‘I took a picture,’ said Bram.
The three aunts stopped in mid-flow.
‘You what?’
‘On my mobile,’ said Bram. ‘You know. For Hayden, so he could –’
‘But… you can’t do that.’
‘It’s… what’s the word?’
‘Sacrilegious.’
‘But Eddie wasn’t religious, remember?’ said Hayden. ‘He wouldn’t have minded.’
‘Oh now. Oh now.’
‘There’s such a ting as respect for the dead.’
‘We’re not religious, Hayding, since we espoused existentialism in the mid-to-late forties –’
‘– but don’t go doing holiday snaps of us when we’re on the metaphorical slab.’
‘Even if we’re fully made up.’
Dodie, or was it Florrie or, indeed, Dottie, snapped her fingers.
‘Hand it over, young man.’
‘This instant.’
Bram, suddenly six again, did as he was told. All three aunts huddled round and peered at the image on his mobile. Click.
‘Deleted.’
They handed the mobile back with a distinct pursing of lips as if, by taking the image, Bram had defiled something sacred.
‘Maybe now the poor man can rest in peace.’
Bram, chastened, put the mobile back in his pocket. He was pretty sure they weren’t referring to him.