"I just want to get on with the funeral," she explained. "No red tape. No second opinions. I know what doctors are like. It could have been referred to the coroner. This way, we can give him his send-off, as planned, on Tuesday."
"Do you have a plot?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"A place in a cemetery."
"That plot. Yes. At Haycombe. I wouldn't want him in Fox-ford churchyard."
Jazz sessions can be found in most towns most weekends, but funeral gigs are something else. Foxford had seen nothing like it. Come to that, the whole of Wiltshire had seen nothing like it, and maybe the whole of England. From an early hour on Tuesday morning, people started claiming the prime positions along the village street. They stood about waiting, cheerful without being rowdy. Some sat or stood on the drystone walls and a few dropped cigarette packets and drink cans into village gardens, but no serious damage was done and the mood was respectful. The cars, minibuses and coaches were directed into one of Norman Gregor's fields at the approach to the village. Free, but compulsory parking, with a police barrier to enforce it.
In the two days since it was arranged, Gary's New-Orleans-style send-off had caught the public imagination to such an extent that jazz bands were being bussed in from as far away as Brixton to join the procession. The story had been in the Sunday tabloids, on television and radio. Camera crews were setting up at all the obvious vantage points along the street and above it on scaffolding. The service would be relayed on loudspeakers because there was no way everyone could crowd into the church.
Rachel was caught off guard by all the interest. Having suggested the street procession herself, she could hardly call it off, but she had no idea that the jazz community would find it such a draw. The phone had gone so often over the weekend that she'd had to have her calls redirected to a public relations agency. They made it clear she was not available for interviews.
Others in the village were happy to talk, and Gary got a better press than he deserved, because no one wanted to be heard speaking ill of the dead. In death, a pig of a man had become not just a Very Important Person but a great lad, popular all round, who loved his jazz, liked his pint in the local and had a good word for everyone. Never gave a hint of his heart problem. To be cut down at forty-two was cruel.
The organisation of the music was taken over by a black trumpeter from Bristol who called himself King Gumbo and had a sixteen-strong band. In keeping with New Orleans tradition, the shuffling progress to the church was to be solemn and plaintive, a slow blues march. Other bands would take their cue from King Gumbo's beat. Later, after the cremation, there would be another procession through Foxford, when the mood of the music would become playful and irreverent.
Not everyone in the village thought all this was a good idea. One or two called it a freak show and worse, but the majority were willing to keep an open mind and joined in cheerfully. Otis Joy had announced the arrangements in church on Sunday, urging everyone to respect Gary's love of jazz, move to the rhythm and rejoice in the Lord.
The main assembly point was in front of the Foxford Arms (not yet open for business). King Gumbo, magnificent in black tails with gold satin lapels and epaulettes, top hat, white gloves and a huge gold-fringed Gumbo Jazz Band sash across his chest, marshalled the marchers as well as anyone can marshal jazz musicians. Five bands and several solo players-totalling seventy or more-drew up in formation across the street, brass instruments gleaming in the pale October sun.
Hats were removed in respect when someone spotted the hearse approaching the village along the lane. What wreaths covered the big black Daimler! The roof rack was a mass of colour and the coffin hardly visible for floral tributes shaped into trumpets, saxophones, tubas and drums. Rachel's wreath was a huge music stave made of white Arum lilies. She arrived with two of Gary's jazz friends and took her position behind the hearse. She was in a new black coat with artificial fur trimming and a black straw hat. When she saw the crowds she had a moment of panic and thought of going straight to the church, but having suggested the whole thing she had no choice except to join in.
A whistle blast from King Gumbo at the head of the procession alerted everyone. The Gumbo band drummer began a slow beat. Responding to a plaintive note from King Gumbo's muted trumpet, the saxes took up the touching blues melody "Spider Crawl." Trumpet and clarinet combined and spoke to each other between the twelve-bar chord sequence. Further back in the line, other bands blended in. Swaying, taking tiny flat-footed steps, the leaders of this extraordinary cortege took the first steps up Foxford's street towards the church. The hearse crawled behind them and after the hearse came Rachel, walking alone at the head of; a column of mourners from the village.
The strains of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" took oven The crowd listened respectfully, many swaying to the music. Gary, everyone agreed, would have approved.
They took almost forty minutes to reach the church, only six hundred yards off. At regular intervals King Gumbo stopped and bobbed and swayed to the beat, and everyone was compelled to do the same. The hearse-driver quietly cursed and kept the engine running and thought about asking for a higher fee. But all along the route, the visitors enjoyed the music and the spectacle, following along and joining the end of the procession.
Otis Joy waited at the lychgate of St. Bartholomew's to receive the coffin, dressed simply in black cassock. Behind him, the church was full except for the places reserved for the principal mourners and the Gumbo Jazz Band. "I am the resurrection and the life…" he began, when the coffin was finally withdrawn from the hearse and borne towards him. Hundreds came to a halt, in the churchyard and a long way back along the street.
Inside the church, the coffin, with just Rachel's wreath resting on it, was lowered onto trestles. Rachel took her place in the front pew. She was the only family mourner, but she had Gary's jazz friends sitting beside her. They had helped choose the hymns, gospel numbers movingly sung by a choir that specialised in spirituals. That line of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"- coming for to carry me home-had a poignancy she had never been aware of before. She pressed a Kleenex to the corner of her eye.
And Otis was equal to the occasion when the time came, finding noble things to say about a man who had not had a noble thought in his life. " 'Behold, I show you a mystery,' " he began with a text from St. Paul. " 'We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.' "
He spread his hands, his voice subdued. "Never in its long history has our church echoed to such singing. Gary's devoted wife Rachel and his friends decided this was what he would have liked, and how right they were. He loved his jazz. It's a strong consolation in a time of great sadness that he managed to visit New Orleans shortly before his final heart attack. Gary was not specially religious by temperament, but he found spirituality in music, and he would rejoice that the music he loved has provided this marvellous send-off today. He was taken from us at only forty-two, gathered, very suddenly, on the evening of our harvest supper. He could have told you of great jazzmen who died young, like Bix Beiderbecke and Charlie Parker. I'm often asked for a reason why good men and women are sometimes taken from us prematurely. We have to accept it. In those words I spoke from the Prayer Book, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away." Our thoughts now must be with Rachel. May she come through the grief of the present days and find peace. For Gary, there is peace already. Like Mr. Valiant-for-Truth in The Pilgrim's Progress, 'So he passed over, and the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.' And today in our village they sounded for Gary on this side as well."