They go with the family to the pub on the Ridge, The Harrow, where the son orders sherries and bags of nuts, and raises his glass to the ten or so of them at the bar. Andy steps in with his orange juice aloft. ‘To John Hickmott!’ The family give him grateful looks.
‘May he rest in peace,’ adds Ken, swallowing his thimble of sherry back as though it’s a whiskey that burns. ‘Your health.’
Roger and Audrey exchange looks.
Andy takes his opportunity to continue where he left off in the crem about how when Jesus broke the bread with the men on their way to Emmaus, he was really breaking Himself and how in that moment they knew Him and it was when they knew Him that he disappeared. He has the mourners in the palm of his hand, hemmed in as they are between bar and bar stools. There’s a lot to the passage but he hopes one point will fall hard and true.
‘Jesus comes to us in our hour of need in many guises to comfort us. We may not recognize Him. He may come as a friend or a stranger.’
He inhales the yolk-like line of orange juice from the bottom of his glass, swallows, licks his lips and smiles down at the short-legged Hickmott family. Furtively, the family exchange appalled looks.
Ken’s cheeks glow after the third sherry and he says to Audrey,
‘Nice in ’ere. Nice, innit?’ He looks about himself and sniffs with satisfaction.
There are brass horseplates and dusty bunches of hops about the place, and a horror of a carpet with a geometric pattern worn into being less of a visual nuisance than it once was. Taxi cards are stapled to the beams. These cards bring to mind June, so he accepts another sherry when it’s offered, and repeats himself.
‘Nice to get out. Your health.’ He raises his glass again. ‘’Ere, Audrey, how do you fancy being wined and dined tonight? I’ll take you to The Italian Way, if you like. Buy you a meal out.’
Audrey flashes a look at Roger. He’s standing there as if the music’s stopped, clasping his shandy tight to his chest, eyes high and distant, looking sufficiently embarrassed for all three of them.
Driving back, with Ken in the passenger seat of the hearse, leaning in towards her, she is reminded of a holiday she took to Mexico as a young girl, and how, late at night, after dancing at a bar on a beach until the early hours and losing sight of her mates, she’d taken a taxi back to the hostel and it had seemed to her that the driver was going the long way, or the wrong way, with his eyes betwixt her pedal pushers. So she took him through the details of the embalming process. He’d dropped her off smartish.
‘Penny for ’em,’ says Ken.
‘I was just wondering, Ken, whether you’ve finished your research, so to speak?’
‘How do you mean? Ree-search?’
‘Into the matter of death?’
‘Well, you see, the big question’s still not answered.’ He clears his throat, eyes on the road (the back of a truck looms with its finger-written plea in the dust of the rear window: ‘Wash me, you tosser’), and goes on, ‘Careful, love!’ He feels a nervous tic break out under his right eye. ‘See, I had a mate whose last words were “I’m not pegging out yet”.’ So, what I’m wondering is, how do you know you’re going and what does it feel like and what ’appens?’
‘Oh, don’t ask me.’
‘Well, who else can I ask? I ask June and she just starts laughing. Nobody will tell ya straight.’
‘Because they don’t know for sure.’
‘Yes but you know, don’t you?’
‘I haven’t passed on yet, Ken!’
‘I know, I know,’ he says. ‘I know that, Audrey, but of anyone you must have an idea.’
‘I wouldn’t like to say.’
‘Well, let me put it like this. I take it you believe in Jesus Christ, and what I’m asking is, is it Him that comes for you, direct like, or does He send someone else, like someone from your family, and does He take their body, does He look like them when He comes so as not to scare you, or does He stand behind them, or what? Because this fellow I knew, we was in the TA together, he said to me when he had a heart attack that he’d seen Jesus sitting on a tree stump, just sitting there, and he said to me, Don’t you worry, Ken, about dying; it’s beautiful. I don’t know what he meant, but he was very certain of it. See, will He be there or will it be a disciple, or something? Will I know who it is? Which one, I mean.’
‘Well, I don’t know, Ken, like I said. As it happens, I’m not conventionally religious.’
She slams on the brakes as the car in front stops unexpectedly at an amber light. Ken slams his right foot down harder. They come up right behind the car in front, nose to tail with not an inch between them.
‘Cor dear. I say. Puts it into perspective, don’t it? Whew.’ He loosens his tie. ‘Not conventionally religious? How’s that then?’
She keeps her face on the windscreen, her eyes blank.
‘You’re not one of them atheist lot, are you?’
‘No. I believe in Him all right . . .’
Ken nods and looks past her out of her side window, then looks again. He claps a hand on the side of his neck. Standing in the bus shelter, is his June. Transparent rain hat on, tied under her chin, she’s got a suitcase on wheels with her that he’s never seen before. Coat’s all done up, but not as buttoned up as her face. Lips are tight, eyes narrowed, and she’s waiting for a bus.
‘I believe he’s a bit of a creep, to be honest. Ken. Sending floods, and pandemics and all that. If he can make a paradise, why make us put up with this? Because we’re bad? Where’s the sense? He made us and he made the world. Either unmake us or put things right. Right?’
Ken looks back over his shoulder and watches the figure of June grow smaller. Soon a bus swoops down on her and she’s first in the queue – he knows that, but he can’t see any more as they go round the corner towards the next lights. He nods and nods as they move forwards through Silverhill.
Two elderly nuns cross in front of them, all toothy chat and grins, each with a carrier bag, cross-swinging.
Audrey’s passion grows. ‘Look, this God of ours in the Bible, either he’s not the big “I am” or there’s been a right royal fuck-up. ’Scuse my French. Look at the weather! So many people die miserable and broken and alone. When you see what people’s dreams are reduced to . . .’
He nods. June’s left him. She’s gone and left him! That ain’t no shopping trip, unless she’s gone and bought the suitcase in Lidl on special. She bought some waders in there once. What the bleeding hell for? he asked her. They was four ninety-nine. We could go into the sea with them on. What the bleeding hell for? She probably paid a small fortune for that case.
‘I don’t get into talking about it often, Ken. It’s very personal, isn’t it? Religion.’
‘Oh yes.’ He gives her an avuncular smile.
They always have a fish supper on a Friday.
She’s lost her marbles, daft cow. Going off with a suitcase on a Friday evening.
‘When you see what we see every day, you count your blessings. It’s not like it’s one thing in particular which makes me think this God fellow’s no wiser than you or me; it’s the day-to-day suffering. How little people have, how little they want, how little they give. Like I said, if that’s God’s image then I’m not interested. No. Look at us!’ She gestured to the next batch of shoppers at the crossing, zipped up and browbeaten, giving the green man wary looks. ‘Grubbing about for a quid here and there, and then we die.’
Christ Almighty! The carrier bag under the mattress with the forty grand in it! Christ! He’s got to get home, get in that bedroom and get it!
‘Lights have changed, dear,’ he says to her, grinding his teeth.
‘Go on, you’ll get through the next one if you step on it. Take the outside lane,’ he says to her hoarsely. He’s clutching his chest, head slammed back against the headrest, mouth open, spittle stretched like a spider’s web.
She glances at him. ‘See, that’s why it’s not good to talk about it,’ she says. ‘Now I’ve gone and upset you.’