When the cardboard coffin was carried to the grave-side, some of the angel worshippers from the Bowling Green Road crowd joined the procession. At their head were Sandy Lake and her friend, the anarchist William Wainwright.
Sandy was carrying a single lily she had bought from Mr Barthi’s shop. He had not wanted to split a ready-made bouquet of six stems, but she had been so tenacious that he had eventually given up, telling his wife later that he was thinking of retiring and starting a new business where he wouldn’t have to interact with people.
His wife had scolded, ‘Ha! So, now you are playing with robots? You are going back to university to do a degree in electronics and then a masters in robotics? By then you will be seventy years old, you fat fool! And I will be dead of starvation, and our children will be sweeping the gutters!’
As he stacked the instant rice, Mr Barthi wished fervently that he had not spoken so openly to his wife. It was already a sad day for him. Mrs Yvonne Beaver was a good customer and an interesting conversationalist, unlike her son.
He also missed Mrs Eva Beaver. He used to buy a crate of Heinz tomato soup from the cash and carry especially for her. She ate a bowl for her lunch every day. Nobody else in her family liked it, they had their own favourites.
Back in Bowling Green Road, there were shouts and insults being traded by opposing groups in the crowd. The vampire worshippers were berating the Harry Potter faction.
In an attempt to block out the noise, Eva had set herself the task of remembering all her favourite songs from childhood to the present day. She had started with Max Bygraves, ‘I’m A Pink Toothbrush’, then moved on to the Walker Brothers, ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore)’, and was presently struggling to remember Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’. She knew she had a good voice, with perfect pitch. It offended her when professional singers strayed from a note.
Miss Bailey, her music teacher at school, had entered her into the County Music Festival. Eva was to perform a solo classic, Schubert’s ‘The Trout’, to a panel of weary judges. At the end, she had looked at their smiling faces, automatically assuming they were laughing at her, and had run from the platform, down long corridors and into a garden with benches where the other contestants were eating their packed lunches. They had all stared at her.
At school assembly on Monday morning, the headmistress, Miss Fosdyke, announced after prayers that Eva Brown-Bird had won the Gold Medal at the County Music Festival. Eva was shocked, and she found the thunderous applause unbearable. She had blushed and lowered her head. When Miss Fosdyke called for her to come up on the stage, she pushed her way along the rows of girls and escaped through the nearest door. As she walked towards the cloakroom, she heard loud laughter from the hall. Finding it impossible to stay in the school, she had collected her coat and satchel and walked in miserable drenching rain around the area where she lived, until it was the legitimate time to go home.
55
When the funeral party arrived back at the house, the crowd growled its displeasure at Brian and Titania. Then, after a gesture from Alexander, they grew silent. Photographs of Yvonne’s funeral had already been posted on the internet. Some of the regulars had twittered their worries that access to the lavatory would cease with her passing.
As soon as the mourners were gathered inside the hall, they heard Eva singing a familiar tune. ‘I stood upon the shore, And watched in sweet peace, The cheery fish’s bath, In the clear little brook.’
Titania whispered to Ruby, ‘It’s Schubert, “The Trout”.’
Ruby said, ‘Why are people always telling me things I already know?’
When Eva switched to German, Ruby joined in. ‘Ich stand an dem Gestade, Und sah in süβer Ruh, Des muntern Fischleins Bade, Im klaren Bächlein zu.’
The group looked at each other and smiled, and Brianne said, ‘Yeah, go G’ma.’
Ruby said, without modifying her voice, ‘She practised that bleddy song in English and German for weeks on end. It nearly drove me mad.’
Eva shouted down the stairs, ‘Yes, and where’s my gold medal now, Mum?’
‘Oh, not that bleddy medal again! Get over it, Eva!’
Ruby said to Stanley, ‘She knew I hated clutter. She should have put it away somewhere safe.’
Stanley smiled, he was a tidy man himself.
She hobbled to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up, ‘It weren’t real gold anyway!’
Much later, when Eva asked Brianne how the funeral had gone, she said, ‘Brian Junior made a dick of himself giving the eulogy, but it was OK. Nobody cried, except Dad.’
‘Couldn’t you have squeezed a tear out, Brianne? Surely it’s only good manners to cry at a funeral.’
Brianne said, ‘You’re such a hypocrite! I thought you were all for truth and beauty, and all that nineteenth century shit.’
Brianne was angry and disappointed that Alexander had paid her such little attention. He had spent no more time with her than he had with the rest of the family. OK, so he didn’t love her. But he ought to have acknowledged that they had a close bond. She had managed to sit next to him in the church, but she could have been a sack of old potatoes for all he cared.
He had disrespected her. She was upset. She needed to tell her online friends how she felt. She went into Brian Junior’s bedroom, and fired up her laptop.
He was already online, posting to Twitter. He typed:
Gran y = worm bait. She rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ towards non-existent Jesus.
He switched tabs to the Facebook group set up in honour of his mother. Using one of his troll accounts, he began to slag off the crowd outside his house, with particular reference to Sandy Lake. He ended his diatribe by updating the troll account status to ‘Anybody got a spare grenade?’
Brianne was on the same site, using her own name. She typed:
There’s a skanky black wasteman outside my front door. He thinks he’s a doorman, but he should impose a dress code on himself cos his locks are rank like dead donkey’s tails. Cut ‘em off, granddad.
Alexander was standing on the doorstep, illuminated by the porch light. He was wearing his navy-blue Crombie overcoat and smoking a cigarette.
There were several desperate cries, people begging to see Eva before the evening deadline. She had started to give an audience to five people each day. Who she saw was determined by Alexander, who picked a surprisingly varied bunch of representatives from the crowd.
This afternoon’s consultations had included a 5 7-year-old whose mother wanted to marry a man in his seventies – how could she stop her?
Eva had said, ‘You don’t stop her, you buy her a bottle of champagne and give them your blessing.’
The second was a feather enthusiast who believed that Eva was hiding a fine set of wings. Eva had turned round, pulled her T-shirt up to her neck and showed the enthusiast her unadorned back.
There was a teenage girl who told Eva that she wanted to die and join Kurt Cobain in his crib in heaven. And there was a super-obese American man who had flown from New Orleans, having paid for two Business Class seats, to tell Eva that she was a reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, and he would like to ‘conversate’ with her.
And, of course, there were the recently bereaved who could not bear the harsh reality that they would never see their loved ones again. They sent notes and photographs, asking Eva to speak to their dead and relay messages from them to the living. Eva worked hard to damp down the emotion in her room. She began to turn away if there were tears.
Alexander ground his cigarette out under his boot and threw it into the gutter. He spoke quietly to Sandy, saying, ‘That’s it for tonight. Listen to your good side. No shouting to Eva tonight. Have some respect. There’s been a funeral here today.’