Mr Toppit (17 page)

The odd thing was that it could have been anybody’s funeral. Of course, there’s something quite tear-jerking about hearing a lot of people singing hymns in a sad way—the moment the first one started Rachel took up residence in Laurie’s arms—but none of it felt specific to Arthur. That was why I was looking forward to Terry Tringham’s address because at least that would be about him. Terry was sitting in the pew behind us. He was an old friend but I didn’t know him very well. All I remembered were things Martha and Arthur had said to us about him, or things I had overheard them say to each other when they thought we weren’t listening, stories that tended to start with a small crisis involving one of a set of interchangeable but consistent elements—money, drink, wives, unfeasibly large restaurant bills, troublesome children, bank managers, films that had run out of money mid-production, girls who might or might not have been under age, bailiffs—and ended with a bigger crisis that brought into play several of the other elements. Our favorite story involved one of his wives throwing his false teeth out of a porthole during a row on a Mediterranean cruise.

When Terry’s moment came, there was a lot of coughing and shuffling as everybody sat down and tried to get comfortable. Terry eased himself out of his pew and headed towards the pulpit. I hadn’t realized he would be climbing into it, and he handled the stairs rather awkwardly. It made me think of someone scrambling up to a tree house. In the Rule Book for Death, someone should point out that black is not a good color unless you’re scrupulously clean: Terry’s black tie had a number of milky stains on it and the shoulders of his crumpled suit were speckled with dandruff. “I hope he’s up to this,” Martha whispered portentously.

“My name is Terence Tringham,” he began confidently. “If I were a drinking man”—he gave an ironic guffaw—“and we were not in a holy place, I would ask everyone to charge their glasses and toast the late great Arthur Hayman. I first met Arthur when he was eighteen. You should have seen him then, fresh up from the country, shining like a flaming torch, waiting to taste everything life had to offer.” He paused. “So different from his later years.” I wasn’t absolutely sure that hit quite the right note for a funeral address, but Terry plowed on, shuffling bits of paper and, once in a while, patting his pocket uncertainly to check if some part of his speech had gone astray.

“We were the envy of the world, those of us privileged to be part of the British film industry in the early years. A volcano of talent was erupting on our doorstep! Elstree Studios, where Arthur and I started our careers, was like Paddington station in the rush hour. How lucky we were! Our lives intersected with those of the truly great—the Hitchcocks, the Michael Powells, the Wally Carters. Of course, our lives did not all have the same trajectory as Wally’s. It was a tragedy that Arthur’s magnificent little film
Love’s Captive
had problems with the studio and did not get wider distribution. Made for the masses, seen by the privileged few: how painful Arthur found that. In the fifties, some of us became the forgotten men of celluloid but, happily for Arthur, he managed to use his talents in his lovely children’s books. And by then, of course, he had found Martha, who was not just a wife but a woman with the strength of ten men, an ally, a friend, a fellow intellectual. It was Wally, of course, who brought her into Arthur’s life when he whisked her away from the groves of academe. Silver-tongued devil that he is, he got her to interrupt her PhD to research his crusader film, and do you know what? She’s
still working on the PhD! It’s never too late, that’s what I say!” I could feel Martha stiffen beside me.

Terry was a bit tearful now. There were long pauses. He was scrunching his handkerchief in his palm and blowing his nose with increasing frequency. He wanted to “spool back,” he told us. He wanted to talk about “the early days” when he and Arthur and Wally Carter were “the Three Musketeers of the Elstree sound stages.” People were getting restless, but he seemed oblivious.

“Anyone could have guessed that if Lady Luck’s light was to shine on one of us, it would be on Wally, our loyal
compadre
. What a talent! And still working! Which is why he can’t be with us today. But, typically generous, he’s always acknowledged the inspiration we gave him in those heady days when everything seemed possible. It wasn’t enough for him to scale the Chiltern Hills of Pinewood, he had his sights set on the Everest of the film world: the Hills of Beverly.”

As Terry was rambling on, a strange thing happened: Martha stood up and moved out of the pew into the aisle. I knew, because I was sitting next to her, of course, but it took the rest of the congregation longer to realize that something was going on. Her face was expressionless, and she walked in slow, measured steps. Terry slowed to a halt and he looked around him in a panicky way, as if a fire might have broken out that he hadn’t noticed. Martha headed towards the pulpit. She didn’t attempt to climb into, but waited patiently, looking up at Terry. There was a moment’s silence. Finally, he began to descend the stairs. When he reached the bottom, Martha whispered something in his ear, then retraced her steps back to our pew.

Terry scuttled up into the pulpit again and rustled through bits of paper on its ledge. He took several sheets off the top,
stuffed them into his pocket and began to speak again, rather quicker than before. “In later years, many of his old friends did not see him as often as we would have liked. What an extraordinary talent! What an extraordinary man! All of us here were privileged to know him and love him. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Almost immediately, the organ began the next hymn and everybody was on their feet. Terry rattled down the aisle past our pew, his eyes firmly on the ground. When the hymn was over and everyone had fallen to their knees for a prayer, I asked Martha in a whisper what had happened.

“I told him that if he went on
spooling back
and mentioned Wally Carter
one more time
I was going to slit my throat and drink my own blood,” she said, and turned back to her prayer book.

At the end of the service, the pallbearers reappeared to take the coffin out of the church to the graveyard where Arthur was to be buried. We followed it, Martha hanging on to me and Rachel hanging on to Laurie. The big double doors at the end had been opened and a wide shaft of sunlight streamed in. A figure was standing there, silhouetted against the light. It took me a moment to realize it was Lila.

She wore a nervous smile and was holding a stack of pamphlets. By her feet there was a large pile. “Please don’t be cross with me, Martha,” she said. “This is my surprise.” Printed on the front, there was a pastiche of a Victorian playbill she had drawn. In bold, blocky lettering it said:
A SELECTION FROM MR. ARTHUR HAYMAN’S FAMOUS HAYSEED BOOKS
, and, in smaller lettering underneath,
WITH THE ILLUSTRATIVE ASSISTANCE OF MISS LILA LÖWENSTEIN
. There was a bizarre little caricature of Arthur and Lila in the bottom right-hand corner: he was dressed in a
cape and a top hat, taking a bow; she was next to him in a ballgown, doing a curtsy.

“I had two hundred printed,” Lila said. “You never know how many people will turn up to a funeral.” I had rarely seen Martha lost for words. She was flicking through the pamphlet. “I hope you approve of the selection. So many bits I could have included.”

Tears were rolling down Martha’s cheeks. “But why?” she said.

“For
you
, Martha. And for my poor Arthur,” Lila said. “And for the children, of course.” She handed one to me and one to Rachel.

Laurie took one from her. “Oh, this is beautiful,” she said. “It’s like a collector’s item. Could I have another?”

Lila moved the pile of pamphlets under her arm. “I’m afraid there’s only a limited number.”

“But, Lila, this must have been so expensive,” Martha said.

“The only thing it cost was my time. That I was happy to give. We have a little printing press at the school. My girls helped me.”

“You shouldn’t have done it.”

“It’s my gift to you, Martha.”

Martha glanced over her shoulder. By now, a mass of people was in the aisle behind us, waiting to get out of the church. “We’ve got to get on,” she said desperately, and almost dragged us after her in the direction the coffin had gone.

What was meant to happen was that everyone would come out of the church and go straight to the grave. Because Lila had positioned herself so that nobody could get past her without being given a pamphlet, it took them about fifteen minutes to get there. The pallbearers stood by the hole as people straggled
round the side of the church in dribs and drabs. Martha moved to the head of the grave and stood there on her own with her back to us. Finally, when everyone was there, Lila came slowly round the corner and called, in a ringing tone, “The church is empty now! I think we can start.”

Earlier, I had worried that the funeral could have been anyone’s. Now, the lowering of a wooden box containing Arthur’s dead body into a large hole in the ground was so terrifyingly specific to him that I longed for something more general—perhaps the funeral equivalent of a firing squad when all the rifles except one contain blanks: a mass burial in which there are twelve coffins, but only one has a body in it.

You can imagine what Rachel was like as the coffin went into the ground. The truth is, that’s what I was like, too, but I felt it was allowed. Only Martha and Laurie retained some gravitas. Martha’s face was tilted up to the sky, and whatever she was feeling inside she managed at least to appear dignified. Laurie had a different sort of look: the tears made her eyes shine and her expression was radiant, which made her seem strangely far away. She reminded me of one of those paintings of Christian martyrs whose uplifted faces are focusing on their eventual arrival in heaven, rather than the immediate inconvenience of being eaten by lions.

Terry was standing in the background, tears trailing down his cheeks. Behind me, I heard someone whisper, “Isn’t Martha remarkable? Terry’s too emotional to get through his speech so—
at her own husband’s funeral
—she strides up to the pulpit and tells him he doesn’t have to go on with it. So generous. Amazing!”

Everyone was standing very still. Suddenly there was a rustle and some movement, as if an animal was moving along the
ground through a field of wheat. Lila was heading through the rows to the front. She hobbled forward, leaning on her stick, until she reached the edge of the grave. She opened her bag and produced a bunch of white flowers, which she threw into the hole, then retreated backwards until the crowd had swallowed her again.

Unlike the drive to the funeral, Martha was quite happy for Laurie, Rachel, and me to go home in the second car. Terry was looking rather forlorn on the sidelines of the crowd so she had insisted he go with her. I would have asked Lila to come in our car if I’d had to, but I could see her hanging on to Graham Carter’s arm. She had obviously persuaded him to take her. In our car, although there was room in the front, Laurie, Rachel, and I still sat huddled together in the back.

“What a perfect service,” Laurie said dreamily. “Just beautiful.”

“I wish Claude had been here.” Rachel sniffed. “Now I think I’d like to get really drunk.”

“Oh, I’m so dumb,” Laurie said, banging the side of her head with her hand. “Margaritas—that’s what I should have done.”

As it was, there was more than enough to drink. By the time we got back Jack had set himself up in the hall behind a makeshift bar, a long refectory table with a white cloth on it. There were glasses of red and white wine already poured, as well as bottles of gin, vodka, and whisky next to a large ice-bucket.

Martha positioned herself at the door into the hall, greeting people as they came in. When Lila arrived she grasped Martha’s arm. “My dear, tell me you liked my pamphlet. I think people
were pleased. I hope so.” Graham was behind Lila. He was carrying a box with more pamphlets. “I’ve brought more just in case I missed anyone,” Lila said. “Graham’s been my beast of burden. So kind.”

Martha caught his eye. “You must find a chair, Lila,” she said. Lila was leaning heavily on her stick. “Baby, will you take Lila somewhere she can sit down?”

“Thank you, no. I will just hold on to Graham’s arm for a little while and circulate.” She gave her tinkling laugh. “He is my publisher, after all.”

Graham had an air of doom about him. He embraced Martha. “I talked to Wally last night. He sends his love. He wanted to come so badly, but he’s starting a film next week.”

“Dear Wally,” she murmured insincerely, then turned to the people behind Graham while I took the opportunity to escape. I passed the table in the middle of the room where people were hovering round the food that had been laid out. An old woman I’d never seen before tapped my shoulder. I think she thought I was one of the bar staff. “You couldn’t get me a small gin, could you?” she said. She popped something into her mouth. “These are delicious! What are they called?”

“Chimichangas, I think.”

“Jimmy-whats?”

“They’re Mexican.”

“Well done,” she said, and handed me her empty glass to refill.

One of the surprises of the day was how successful Laurie’s food turned out to be. The only problem area was the salted almonds, which were so oversalted that they made everybody drink more than they should have done. The way Jack was sloshing out the drink probably didn’t help.

After a while the atmosphere in the room became looser. The acoustics seemed to have softened. At the beginning, the noise was bouncing off the hall’s high ceiling. Now it had settled like a low fog just above everyone’s heads. They had relaxed into themselves and I felt almost invisible: I could move around without anyone noticing.

In the kitchen, where I had gone to fill a jug with water, I came across Lila. She had been in there with the door closed. When I came in she jumped. “Oh, it’s you, Luke,” she said, her hand at her throat. “You gave me such a fright.” She was doing something odd—easing a side of smoked salmon out of her bag. She seemed rather shifty. I was going to wait: I felt some explanation was called for.