The 1970s flowers in the middle of the stair carpet were worn threadbare from forty years of shuffling feet. Boone’s heavy sheepskin winter coat still hung on the hatstand at the bottom of the stairs, as did his flat cap. Josh must have seen him in that hat and coat a thousand times. His tobacco tin and Rizla rolling papers would be stuffed deep into the right-hand pocket. There was something comfortably reassuring about knowing they’d be in there. Like everything was right with the world, even though it wasn’t.
He couldn’t look at the bottom of the stairs without imagining Boone lying there, broken.
Josh hurried up the stairs.
His suit was laid out on the bed. It was his interview suit. It was also his “posh” suit for whenever he had to dress up. Now it was his burying-his-grandfather suit. He wasn’t sure he’d ever wear it again after today. In a small voice, Josh mimicked the Wicked Witch of the West, “Help me, I’m melting…” and that was exactly how he felt.
He stripped off, showered quickly, and dressed, transferring the letter from his back pocket to the inside pocket of his jacket. As he struggled with the Windsor knot on his black tie he saw the hearse pull up outside the front door. There were already a number of somberly dressed people in the street; neighbors come to see Boone Raines on his way. Within half an hour there were more than five hundred people out there lining the street. There were people wearing brightly colored scarves declaring their love of Orient, people from his bowling team in their kits, people from the social club where he hid from the rest of the world with a quiet pint standing beside people he’d worked with down at the machine shop, even though he hadn’t worked there for the best part of forty years, and so many other people come to pay their respects.
“Have you looked outside?” Josh said, coming back downstairs in search of shoe polish.
His mum nodded. “A lot of people loved your grandfather.” She had put on her mourning dress, a high-necked black lace gown that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a Victorian funeral.
Josh towered a good six inches above her. He crushed her in a fierce embrace and said, “No one more than us.” And kissed her on the top of the head. He really wasn’t looking forward to the next few hours.
There was a soft knock at the front door.
The undertaker stood on the doorstep in his morning suit. He was a cadaverous soul, gaunt to the point of emaciation. Every bone of his skull protruded starkly from his pasty white skin and the pockmarks where his stubble grew through were deep with shadow. He held a top hat and bone-handled cane in his hands, and looked studiously down at his feet. “It’s time,” Father Death said.
Josh looked at his own shoes, and figured that Boone would let him off with a few scuffs. Without thinking about it, he grabbed his grandfather’s sheepskin coat off the coatrack and put it on.
“It’s a bit tight across the shoulders,” his mum said, ruffling his hair.
“Doesn’t matter,” Josh said and stepped outside.
Not sure what to do in the situation, he shook hands with the undertaker and waited for his mum to emerge from the house. He locked the door and walked arm in arm with her to the lead car. She leaned on him every step of the way. Josh opened the door and helped her in, then closed the door and walked around to the other side. He was incredibly conscious of everyone watching him.
The undertaker walked to the head of the two-car procession, put his hat on, and tapped the cane three times on the asphalt. Taking their cue the drivers started their engines, and followed the undertaker at walking pace through the streets of the Rothery Estate. As the cars pulled out of Albion Close the people on the side of the road began to clap. It was the strangest thing. At first it was only one or two of them, but by the time the hearse bearing Boone’s coffin had rounded the corner all five hundred were clapping. And they followed behind the cars forming a funeral procession that had over two thousand people in it by the time it reached the gates of the church with more people joining the cortege on every street.
The Rothery wasn’t the poorest neighborhood in the city, but it was a long way from middle class, forget any pretensions of polite society it might have had. It was working class to the core. On either side were red-brick terraces, but the estate itself was functional 1970s boxes, no frills, the streets all lined up in neat rows that had long since gone to rack and ruin. Down beyond the communal garages it was more like Beirut than Belgravia, and if you made it as far as the shops—four units squashed in side by side, a bookies, a florist, a newsagent, and a convenience store that doubled as a liquor store—you were taking your life in your hands. Back during the riots last year the worst parts of the Rothery had been torn apart brick by brick. There were still a dozen corpse cars down by the garages, burned-out shells up on bricks like some sort of postapocalyptic nightmare frontier. Back when Boone had moved in, the place had been so full of promise. The parallels with Isaiah’s memories of Friars Mount made Josh smile. He was right, the council men could try and pretty places up and pretend that they weren’t slums, but they’d find a way to slip back into their natural state soon enough. The Rothery had no delusions of grandeur. It was what it was, home to a few thousand Londoners and graveyard for a few thousand dreams.
Layers of inventive graffiti had been sprayed across the shutters of the shops. There was a colorful gang tag on the corner claiming the street for one bunch of thugs or another. No doubt they’d kill for it, too; a lousy street corner in a lousy housing estate. Hardly worth dying over, but people died for less every day.
The cars eased to a stop just inside the wrought-iron angels of the churchyard, tires crunching gravel chips. “Are you ready for this?” his mum asked, leaning over to pat Josh on the knee. He felt like he was ten again. He wasn’t okay, far from it, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. This was the part where he was supposed to be strong. That was just how it worked. He could be weak later, when he was on his own. It didn’t matter that it felt like an invisible vice was crushing his skull, grief applying another ounce of pressure every few heartbeats.
Four pallbearers waited by the church doors with the vicar. They were laughing and no doubt sharing larger-than-life Boone stories. There were plenty of them to share. That was just the kind of man he had been. One of them finished the cigarette in his hand and scuffed it out underfoot. Josh reached into his coat pocket. He had been right, his grandfather’s tobacco tin and rolling papers were stuffed deep inside. He closed his hand around it. The men nodded to him. He nodded back. All very formal.
“Rosie,” the vicar said to his mother, offering her his hand.
His mother sighed and inclined her head slightly. Sometimes there were no words.
“Well, gentlemen, shall we?” the vicar asked as Rosie Raines entered the church. The pallbearers gathered around the hearse as the undertaker opened the hatchback and together eased the coffin out and onto their shoulders. It was balanced unevenly, as one of them was a good five inches shorter than the others. Josh took a moment on the threshold to turn around and just take in the sheer amount of people who had come to pay their final respects, before he went inside.
The pallbearers carried Boone down the aisle behind him.
Josh walked down the aisle to the front row where Alexandra—Lexy—and his mum sat alone on the family bench. There was no more family to fill the row, but the rest of the pews were packed and people were standing at the back and along the sides. As Josh took his seat, the vicar climbed up to the pulpit, looked out at the congregation, breathed deeply, and said, “A lot of people I haven’t seen in here since they were christened. I wouldn’t have recognized some of you if you hadn’t lost your hair.” That earned a few chuckles. “The last time I talked to Boone he asked me if I thought there was a heaven. I told him I was sure of it. He looked me in the eye and asked, in all seriousness, how did it work? Would we be ghosts up there drifting about? Would he have to learn to play the harp? He seemed really worried about it, so I assured him his lack of musicality wouldn’t
be a problem and we are reunited with our bodies in the Hereafter. Never a man of many words he simply said, ‘Bugger.’” That earned a proper laugh from some of the men at the back, who obviously shared the sentiment. “That summed Boone Raines up for me,” the vicar said, looking toward Josh. “But I’d like to ask someone who knew him far better than I did to say a few words. Joshua?”
He eased his way out of the pew and walked up to the lectern.
Looking out at the sea of faces he wished he’d written something down. It was only when he was up there that he realized he hadn’t taken Boone’s coat off. He breathed deeply, inhaling his grandfather’s scent, and it was as though the old man was up there with him. That was magic. “As granddads went, Boone was pretty good,” he said, offering a slight smile. “Mainly, I must admit, because he was mine.” He saw a few smiles on the faces of the congregation. “I remember watching a film with him once, Four Weddings and a Funeral, you’ve probably seen it. When John Hannah read out W. H. Auden’s ‘Funeral Blues,’ he looked at me and said in all seriousness, ‘I don’t want any of that bollocks at my funeral, son. Promise me. I don’t want people crying. Make sure they play Israel Kama’—crap, I can’t pronounce his name. I must have practiced it a hundred times. Sorry, Boone. He asked for some dancing girls to put a smile on everyone’s face.” He let that last line linger, offering a slight smile of his own. “So, smile you miserable bastards. Knowing Pops, he’s watching right now wondering where the dancing girls are.”
And after that he had nothing.
The silence lasted five seconds. Those five seconds felt like they lasted five minutes.
Josh looked at them all, hoping he’d see someone familiar and that would make him remember a Boone story.
There were a couple of polite coughs from people worried he was about to break down. He had to remind himself they were all friends out there. No one wanted him to screw up.
The church door opened.
Two men were framed in the sunlight: one standing, the other in a wheelchair. People moved aside to let the newcomers in. It took Josh a moment to recognize the pair—Gideon Lockwood, the patriarch of the Lockwood family, in the chair, and a younger man, in his midtwenties pushing it. All heads turned as they came in. The old man raised a hand, as though giving Josh permission to carry on reminiscing. He didn’t. Not at first. His mind raced. Lockwood, here, at Boone’s funeral? The pair weren’t friends. In fact, until he’d found Isaiah’s letter, he would never have known there was anything to link the pair of them, let alone that they were cousins. Josh looked around the nave and realized that more of Lockwood’s people were in attendance. He had no idea what was going on apart from the fact that the silence was growing uncomfortable.
He saw the vicar begin to move toward him, like a comedian getting the hook to haul him offstage, though this was probably a crook, given the whole shepherd of men thing and the presence of the gangster in the congregation. He smiled at that.
“You can tell a lot about a man by the people who come to see him off. Some, probably just want to make sure he’s gone,” he was looking at Lockwood as he said this. “Take a look outside. The streets are lined with people. Some of them are from his bowling team—they gave us an honor guard as we drove here from the house. Then there’s about two hundred football fans out there wrapped up in their scarves and battling the chill. I recognized most of them from the terraces. Boone was part of more than one band of brothers. That says something about the man, doesn’t it? That he could fit in. That people wanted to be around him.
“I remember years ago some kid broke into his house and robbed him after Gran died. He never had much to begin with. They took everything he had apart from the radio. All of Gran’s jewelry. Everything he had of her. I could have only been ten or eleven at the time. We stayed up all through the night listening to the test match ball by ball, talking about Grandma, holidays we’d had down in Brighton, and day trips to Canvey Island. I learned more about my family and who I was in that night than I did over the rest of my life. I understood him. He never had insurance, no private pension, no savings; he lived pretty much hand-to-mouth, but he was a proud man. I remember him telling me how he had to carry sacks of coal home ten miles on his back when he was my age because they couldn’t afford to get it delivered. And how, when he was younger, he’d had trials with Orient, but had to go to work instead because no one paid footballers back then. He was always a giant to me. And that night and every night after he was frightened to be alone, but would never have admitted that to anyone. It was our secret.
“People say things like ‘he’d have given you the shirt off his back’ or ‘he was the salt of the earth’ or some other dreadful platitude that basically means they don’t know how to describe someone, but want to say something nice. I mean, here I am in my grandfather’s coat talking to a room full of people that loved him, and all I want to do is take his tobacco tin out of my pocket and roll a cigarette because that’s exactly what he would have done, but knowing my luck I’ll set off some sort of divine sprinkler system and get drenched in holy water,” he chuckled at that, no more than a little shrug of the shoulders. “But that’s the Boone I’ll remember. That’s my grandfather. The man who wanted dancing girls at his funeral and I think I should probably shut up now before I offend God or something and they end up keeping him out of heaven.” Josh looked across at the vicar, “Then again, if that means he gets a shot at a better body maybe he’d thank me for that?”
He wasn’t sure what he expected, applause, silence, a few muted mumbles and nods; what he didn’t expect was for Gideon Lockwood to call from the back of the church, “If I may say a few words about my cousin?”
The young man pushed Lockwood to the front when there were no objections. The old man rested a hand on Boone’s coffin on the way past. For Josh, looking at the younger man was like looking in the mirror at his darker, wicked twin. Or at least that was how he rationalized it. Where he was fair, the young man was dark, but they were clearly chiseled out of the same genetic building blocks. The young man, for his part, didn’t give Josh a second glance. He angled the wheelchair toward the pulpit, then turned him to face the front and locked the wheel brake in place. He offered a hand and helped the old man rise unsteadily to his feet. This was the king of East London, this frail old shrunken soul. It was hard to imagine him terrifying anyone, and yet even now Josh fancied he could see the steel in the old bastard’s spine and the flint in his eyes. In some people, age should never be mistaken for weakness. Gideon Lockwood was one of those people.
He leaned on the wooden pulpit, surveying his domain.
“The greatest regret of my life is that I never got to know Boone,” he said. “That probably surprises some of you—especially those of you who knew him. And those of you who know me. From what I understand of him, my cousin was a decent, honest, hardworking man when the world allowed it, and then just a decent, honest man when it didn’t.
“I doubt you even realized we were related, did you? I didn’t, until my own grandmother’s funeral, when the priest said ‘Miriam, beloved mother of Seth and Isaiah,’ and I thought, ‘Who the fuck is Isaiah?’ Not the best way to find out you’ve got an entire family you’ve never heard of, right? Burying your dear old gran. That was a long time ago, of course. Christ,” he looked over at the vicar. “Sorry, Father. Bad habit. It was 1963. Boone was already thirty by the time I tracked him down and his old man was already too far gone for help, in and out of Cane Hill Asylum, really not holding it together. We met two or three times that year, but it was hard for Boone. I tried to convince him his place was back with the family—you see, Raines wasn’t his real name; he was a Lockwood, just like me, just like my grandson here. I know, shocking, isn’t it? How can a good man like Boone be related to a sadistic old bugger like me? We could have ruled this place side by side. He could have been the brother I never had.
“Here’s the thing, and this is why I am here, to pay my respects to a rare man. With
all the bad blood between our families Boone found a way to stay out of it. He walked the line. He was an upright man. Ain’t many of those about in this world of ours, believe me. So I wanted to come here and say, in front of everyone, as God is my witness, as far as I am concerned it ends here. Our families are straight; the past is a different country. For the good of everyone, from this day forth and so on and so forth, what happened back then is dead and buried with the last good man in London. It’s for the best that it stays that way. Joshua, son,” Lockwood looked at him. There were no smiles. The threat was there in that last line—Don’t go digging around in stuff that doesn’t concern you. The rest of it was just talk for talk’s sake. “You have my word, the old debts are settled. They don’t carry over one generation to another.” He turned to face his own grandson then, the message he came here to deliver delivered. “If there’s any way for you and Josh here to find each other, then maybe something good can come out of this after all. It’d make this old man very happy if you two could become, well, if not family … then friends, at least.” Lockwood turned his attention back to the congregation. “And the rest of you, think on this when you walk out of here in a few minutes: the world is a lesser place today than it was yesterday. It is diminished by the loss of an upright man.” There was a tear on his cheek, and sentimentality aside, Josh couldn’t begin to believe it was genuine. Men like Gideon Lockwood didn’t show emotion in public. Emotion was weakness. They couldn’t afford to be seen as weak. Lockwood wanted the people here to mourn Boone to believe he was genuine. That was different. And that just made Josh all the more determined to find out what secrets the old man was so keen to bury. “Let’s make death a time of healing. I think he would have approved of that.” He nodded to himself. “Yes. I think he would have approved of that. Vale, Boone Raines.”
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