I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write
Dear Auntie Gwen, thought Stephanie Windibanks' son, Rod Lomas, Mummy and I have come up to Yorkshire for your funeral which has been rather Low Church for my taste and rather low company for Mummys. You were quite right to keep these Hubys in their place, as dear Keechie puts it. They are the product of very unimaginative casting. Father John looks too like a bad-tempered Yorkshire publican to be true, and Goodwife Ruby (Ruby Huby! no scriptwriter would dare invent that!) is the big, blonde barmaid to the last brassy gleam. Younger daughter Jane is cast in the same jelly-mould and where this superfluity of flesh comes from is easy to see when you look at the elder girl, Lexie. In shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman, I swear she could enter an ill-fitting door by the joint. With those great round glasses and that solemn little face, she looks like a barn owl perched on a pogostick!
But all this you know, dear Auntie, and much else besides. What can I, who am here, tell you, who are there? Still, I must not shirk my familial obligations, unlike some I can think of. The weather here is fine, corn-yellow sun in a cornflower sky, just right for early September. Mummy is as well as can be expected in the tragic circumstances. As for me, suffice it to say that after my brilliant but brief run as Mercutio in the Salisbury Spring Festival, I am once more resting, and I will not conceal from you that a generous helping of the chinks would not have gone astray. Well, we must live in hope, mustnt we? Except for you, Auntie, who, if you do still exist, must now exist in certainty. Dont be too disappointed in our disappointment, will you? And do have the grace to blush when you find what a silly ass youve been making of yourself all these years.
Must sign off now. Almost time for the cold ham. Take care. Sorry youre not here. Love to Alexander. Your loving cousin a bit removed,
Rod.
Come ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you
I hope the preparations a bit better than yours was, Dad, thought Lexie Huby, sensitive, as she had learned to be from infancy, to the rumbles of volcanic rage emanating from her fathers rigid frame. She had giggled when Mr Thackeray had told her about Gruff-of-Greendale but she had not giggled when she broke the news to her father that night.
Two hundred pounds! hed exploded. Two hundred pounds and a stuffed dog!
You did used to make a fuss of it, Dad, Jane had piped up. Said it were one of the wonders of nature, it were so lifelike.
Lifelike! I hated that bloody tyke when it were alive, and I hated it even more when it were dead. At least, living, itd squeal when you kicked it! Gruff-of-sodding-Greendale! Youre not laking with me are you, Lexie?
Id not do that, Dad, she said calmly.
Whyd old Thackeray tell you all this and not me direct? he demanded suspiciously. Whyd he tell a mere girl when he couldve picked up the phone and spoken straight to me? Scared, was he?
He were trying to be kind, Dad, said Lexie. Besides, I were as entitled to hear it as you. Im a beneficiary too.
You? Hubys eyes had lit with new hope. What did you get, Lexie?
I got fifty pounds and all her opera records, said Lexie. Mam got a hundred pounds and her carriage clock, the brass one in the parlour, not the gold one in her bedroom. And Jane got fifty and the green damask tablecloth.
The old cow! The rotten old cow! Who got it, then? Not that cousin of hers, not old Windypants and her useless son?
No, Dad. She gets two hundred like you, and the silver teapot.
Thats worth a damn sight more than Gruff-of-sodding-Greendale! She always were a crook, that one, like that dead husband of hers. They shouldve both been locked up! But who does get it then? Is it Keech? That scheming old hag?
Miss Keech gets an allowance on condition she stays on at Troy House and looks after the animals, said Lexie.
Miss Keech gets an allowance on condition she stays on at Troy House and looks after the animals, said Lexie.
Thats a meal ticket for life, isnt it? said John Huby. But hold on. If she stays on, who gets the house? I mean, it has to belong to some bugger, doesnt it? Lexie, whos she left it all to? Not to some bloody charity, is it? I couldnt bear to be passed over for a bloody dogs home.
In a sense, said Lexie, taking a deep breath. But not directly. In the first place shes left everything to
To who? thundered John Huby as she hesitated.
And Lexie recalled Eden Thackerays quiet, dry voice the rest residue and remainder of my estate whatsoever whether real or personal I give unto my only son Second Lieutenant Alexander Lomas Huby present address unknown
Shes done what? Nay! Ill not credit it! Shes done what? Itll not stand up! Its that slimy bloody lawyer thats behind it, Ill warrant! Ill not sit down under this! Ill not!
It had been an irony unappreciated by John Huby that in the old church of St Wilfrid, what he had sat down under was a brass wall plaque reading In Loving Memory of Second Lieutenant Alexander Lomas Huby, missing in action in Italy, May 1944.
It was Sam Huby, the boys father, who had caused the plaque to be erected in 1947. For two years he had tolerated his wifes refusal to believe her son was dead, but there had to be an end. For him the installation of the plaque marked it. But not for Gwendoline Huby. Her conviction of Alexanders survival had gone underground for a decade and then re-emerged, bright-eyed and vigorous as ever, on her husbands death. She made no secret of her belief, and over the years in the eyes of most of her family and close acquaintances, this dottiness had become as unremarkable as, say, a wart on the chin, or a stutter.
To find at last that it was this disregarded eccentricity which had robbed him of his merited inheritance was almost more than John Huby could bear.
Lexie had continued, If he doesnt claim it by April 4th in the year 2015, which would be his ninetieth birthday, thats when it goes to charity. Theres three of them, by the way
But John Huby was not in the mood for charity.
2015? he groaned. Ill be ninety then too, if Im spared, which doesnt seem likely. Ill fight the will! She mustve been crazy, thats plain as the nose on your face. All that money How much is it, Lexie? Did Mr sodding Thackeray tell you that?
Lexie said, Its hard to be exact, Dad, what with share prices going up and down and all that
Dont try to blind me with science, girl. Just because I let you go and work in that buggers office instead of stopping at home and helping your mam in the pub doesnt make you cleverer than the rest of us, youd do well to remember that! So none of your airs, you dont understand all that stuff anyway! Just give us a figure.
All right, Dad, said Lexie Huby meekly. Mr Thackeray reckons that all told it should come to the best part of a million and a half pounds.
And for the first and perhaps the last time in her life, she had the satisfaction of reducing her father to silence.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
Ella Keechs gaze was not in fact focused on some beatific vision of an ascending soul, as Mrs Windibanks had theorized. Myopic she was, it was true, but her long sight was perfectly sound and she was staring over the clerical shoulder into the green shades of the churchyard beyond. Money and descendants being alike in short supply, most of the old graves were sadly neglected, though in the eyes of many, long grass and wild flowers became the lichened headstones rather more than razed turf and cellophaned wreaths could hope to. But it was no such elegiac meditation which occupied Miss Keechs mind.
She was looking to where a pair of elderly yews met over the old lychgate forming a tunnel of almost utter blackness in the bright sun. For several minutes past she had been aware of a vague lightness in that black tunnel. And now it was moving; now it was taking shape; now it was stepping out like an actor into the glare of the footlights.
It was a man. He advanced hesitantly, awkwardly, between the gravestones. He wore a crumpled, sky-blue, lightweight suit and he carried a straw hat before him in both hands, twisting it nervously. Around his left sleeve ran a crepe mourning band.
Miss Keech found that he became less clear the closer he got. He had thick grey hair, she could see that, and its lightness formed a striking contrast with his suntanned face. He was about the same age as John Huby, she guessed.
And now it occurred to her that the resemblance did not end there.
And it also occurred to her that perhaps she was the only one present who could see this approaching man
the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore. Amen.
As the respondent amens were returned (with the London Lomas party favouring a as in play and the Old Mill Huby set preferring ah as in father) it became clear that the fellowship of the newcomer was not so ghostly as to be visible only to Miss Keech. Others were looking at him with expressions ranging from open curiosity in the face of Eden Thackeray to vacuous benevolence on the face of the vicar.
But it took John Huby to voice the general puzzlement.
Whas yon bugger? he asked no one in particular.
The newcomer responded instantly and amazingly.
Sinking on his knees, he seized two handfuls of earth and, hurling them dramatically into the grave, threw back his head and cried, Mama!
There were several cries of astonishment and indignation; Mrs Windibanks looked at the newcomer as if hed whispered a vile suggestion in her ear, Miss Keech fainted slowly into the reluctant arms of Eden Thackeray, and John Huby, perhaps viewing this as a Judas kiss, cried, Nah then! Nah then! Whats all this? Whats all this? Is this another one of thy fancy tricks, lawyer? Is that what it is, eh? By God, its time someone gave thee a lesson in how decent folks behave at a funeral!
So saying, and full of selfless eagerness to administer this lesson, he began to advance on Eden Thackeray. The lawyer, finding himself in the Court of Last Resources, attempted to ward him off with the person of Miss Keech. Sidestepping to get at his proper prey, John Hubys foot found space where it looked for terra firma. For a second he teetered on one leg; then with a cry in which fear was now indistinguishable from rage, he plunged headlong into the open grave.