Dave bunked off school at lunchtime and came round to my house. I slipped quietly out of my bed of feigned pain and joined him across the street.
“The Daddy is getting all dressed up,” I said to Dave. “He’s getting ready for the wake.”
“Then we’ll follow him, commando-fashion.”
“What is commando-fashion?” I asked.
“Mostly camouflage,” said Dave. “Green is the new black this year.”
We hid behind a dustbin.
At a little after two, the Daddy left our house and swaggered up the street wearing his Sunday suit. My mother wasn’t with him. “Wakes are men’s business,” my father had said.
The Daddy swaggered up our street, turned left into Albany Road, right into Moby Dick Terrace, swaggered past the hut of Mother Demdike, then past the Memorial Park, turned right at the Memorial Library and eventually swaggered into the Butts Estate, where all the posh people of Brentford lived. Dave and I occasionally went into the Butts to throw stones at rich people’s windows and get chased away by their manservants, but we didn’t really know much about the place.
It had been built in Regency times with the money earned from the slave trade and the importation of tea and carpets and strange drugs. The houses were big and well dug in. There was that feeling of permanence that only comes with wealth. The poor might appear to be settled right where they are. But they’re only waiting to be moved on.
The Daddy swaggered up to a particularly fine-looking house, one with a Grimshaw-style front door and Fotheringay window staunchions, and knocked heartily upon the Basilicanesque knocker.
I was very impressed when the door was opened and he was actually let inside. It confirmed, I suppose, that he actually had known Mr Penrose.
“What now, then?” I asked Dave.
“Why are you asking me?”
“How do you think we’re going to get in?”
“We’re not,” said Dave. “Well, not yet at least.”
“Not yet?”
Dave shook his head. “It’s a wake. Which is to say, as you know, a party. For a dead man. But a party. People will drink lots of booze. And then they’ll get drunk and then they’ll come and go. And they’ll leave the front door open and we can sneak in.”
“You are wise,” I said to Dave. “We’ll wait, then.”
So we waited.
And we waited.
And then we waited some more.
“I’m getting fed up with all this waiting,” said Dave. “Hang on, someone’s coming out.”
But they weren’t.
So we waited some more, some more.
“Do you think they’re drunk by now?” I asked.
“Must be,” said Dave.
“Then let’s just knock. They’ll let us in.”
“Yes, of course they will.”
We knocked.
A pinch-faced woman opened the door. “What do you want?” she asked.
“My daddy’s inside,” said Dave. “At the wake. I’ve a message for him from my mummy.”
“Tell it to me,” said the pinch-faced woman. “I’ll pass it on.”
“It’s in Dutch,” said Dave. “You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it properly.”
“Wah!” went the pinch-faced woman.
“Not even close,” said Dave.
“No! Wah!” The pinch-faced woman turned away and the distinctive sound of a hand smacking a face was to be heard.
“That’s a bit harsh,” said a man’s voice. “I didn’t mean to touch your bum – I tripped on the door mat.”
“Rapist!” screamed the pinch-faced woman, leaving the door ajar.
“Let’s slip in,” said Dave.
And so the two of us slipped in.
It was a very big house. Much bigger on the inside than on the outside. But so many houses are. The big ones anyway. Estate agents refer to the phenomenon as “deceptively spacious”. But I don’t think that it’s fully scientifically understood.
“This is a very big hall,” said Dave. “It stretches away right into the distance.”
“Well, at least as far as that door at the end,” I said. “Which is the door where all the noise is coming from.”
“There’s quite a lot of noise here,” Dave obsessed. “And quite a lot of violence too.” The pinch-faced woman struggled on the floor, punching at a fat man who lay on his back. He wasn’t putting up much of a fight. In fact, he seemed to be smiling.
“Come on,” said Dave. “Follow me.”
We went along the hall, then stuck our heads round the door at the end of it. And then we viewed the wake that was going on beyond.
Having never seen a wake before I didn’t know what to expect, so I suppose that I was neither surprised nor disappointed. Nor even bewildered nor bemused. Nor was I amazed.
But I was interested.
The room that lay beyond the door was a withdrawing room. The room to which rich men of yesteryear withdrew after the completion of their feasting at the dining table, where they left the womenfolk to chat about things that womenfolk love to chat about. Particularly fashion. Such as, what particular colour commandos would be wearing that year.
The rich men withdrew to the drawing room and talked about manly things. Like port and cigars and football and shagging servant women and stuff like that. They probably talked about commandos too, but only about what colour their guns would be. It seemed pretty clear to me that if we were having good times now, and we were, those rich men of yesteryear had had better.
The room was tall and square with frescoed walls in the Copulanion style. There were over-stuffed sofas all around and about and these were crowded with red-faced men who held glasses, and all, it seemed, talked together. They talked, as far as I could hear them, mostly of P.P. Penrose. Of what a great sportsman he’d been. And of his love of sportsmanship. And of his skills as a writer. And of how amazing his Lazlo Woodbine thrillers were. And of what rubbish the Adam Earth science-fiction series was.
Although I understood their words, the manner in which they spoke them was queer to my ears. They all talked in up-and-down ways. Beginning a sentence softly, then getting louder, then all fading away once more.
“They’re all drunk,” said Dave. “They’ll all be singing shortly.”
“How does ‘shortly’ go?” I asked. Which I thought was funny, but Dave did not.
“Look there,” Dave said and he pointed.
I followed the direction of Dave’s pointing. “The coffin,” I said.
In the middle of the room, with the over-stuffed sofas and the men sat upon them with the glasses in their hands, talking queerly and on the verge of singing, lay the coffin.
Up upon a pair of wooden trestles, it was a handsome casket affair, constructed of Abarti pine in the Margrave design with Humbilian brass coffin furniture and rilled mouldings of the Hampton-Stanbrick persuasion. And it was open and from where we were standing we could see the nose of the dead Mr Penrose rising from it like a pink shark’s fin or an isosceles triangle of flesh, or in fact numerous other things of approximately the same shape.
But it was definitely a nose.
“Cool,” went Dave. “I can see his dead hooter.”
“Here’s the plan,” I said to Dave. “You create a diversion, while I perform the complicated ritual and feed him the magic herbs.”
Dave turned towards me and the expression on his face was one that I still feel unable adequately to describe. Expressing, as it did, so many mixed emotions.
I smiled encouragingly at Dave.
Dave didn’t smile back at all.
“Not a happening thing, then?” I asked.
“Speak English,” said Dave.
“I mean, you don’t think you can do it?”
“No,” said Dave. “I don’t. Why don’t we just try to mingle amongst the drunken men – bide our time, as they say, await the moment.”