I arrived at the hilltop crematorium an hour early. The car park was empty and there wasn’t a soul about. Behind the low crematorium building the sky was black and threatening. I found the door to the gents’ lavatory to be unlocked, however, and the water in the tap above the hand basin unexpectedly hot. I used the facilities and as I washed my hands I leaned forward and stared at my face in the mirror.
I’d been to a party the night before. It was one of those depressing parties where the illegal drugs are taken secretly by a select few in a bedroom, and to be invited in is like being offered a seat in the House of Lords by a committee. I wasn’t invited in. My staple all night was lager. And because I was very tired, the lager had a soporific effect and I fell asleep in an armchair.
Most of the people at the party were half my age at most and I suppose I must have presented a drab picture of age and infirmity. And someone must have taken exception to it because they came up and punched me in the gob. Deeply asleep, I registered the blow, but took a second or two to resurface, by which time the deliverer had melted back into the crowd and all I saw was a tittering row of youthful faces.
I was drunk and tired, so tired, and immediately fell asleep again. And then this person, or another person, either then, or some time later, must have stood over me and shied a bunch of keys at my head, hard, like an in-fielder stumping a batsman out from a position close to the wicket. I felt the bunch of keys strike my nut, and heard the metallic jangle. However, this time I didn’t make it all the way back to the surface of consciousness and I sank back again into the depths of sleep.
In the crematorium gents, I looked in the mirror above the sink and fingered the half-inch-long scab on my scalp and felt the slight fatness in my lip. Looking at it objectively, whoever had punched me in the mouth had shown compassion. The damage was minimal, almost invisible, so the punch couldn’t have been a hard one. Perhaps it had been playful rather than intended to hurt. Likewise, whoever had thrown the keys had had the decency to aim for the top of my head, which is a very hard, almost cast-iron object, instead of at my face. So as I touched my lip and traced the small cut on my head, I was above all grateful to my youthful assailants for showing courtesy and respect for the elderly.
Outside in the crematorium car park, another car, a BMW 3-series, had turned up and parked. The driver’s chin was up and he was running a portable electric shaver over his throat. I went across to ask him if we’d come to see off the same person. He wound down his window and seemed glad to speak to somebody. We had indeed come to see off the same person. He offered his hand and I shook it warmly.
‘Not the least of the glories of the navy,’ said Joseph Conrad, ‘was that it understood Nelson.’ I felt the same way about those friends of Pete’s I was about to meet here for the first time this day. Anybody who had the good sense or fortune to come to know and love such a terrific bloke well enough to want to come to his funeral was going to be all right by me.
The chap in the car was in his early seventies. He had a London accent, recent haircut, crisp white shirt, black tie. He and Pete had grown up, ridden motorbikes, chased women together, he said. Then he’d married one they’d met at Wembley ice rink, and Pete had gone to sea, but they’d still managed to see one another once a year or so for the rest of their lives. He’d driven from one end of the country to the other this morning, but he just had to be here today for this. He and Pete had been in a gang of five close teenage pals. Now with Pete gone he was the only one left. ‘I just don’t understand it,’ he said angrily. ‘Why me?’
For the next five minutes I stood beside his car watching the tempestuous sky, and absently fingering the scab on my head, while he told me some of the things he and Pete got up to when they were younger. I wasn’t taking much in. It seemed fairly innocuous stuff by today’s standards. What I did take in, however, and very clearly, was that I really liked this childhood buddy of Pete, and his frank friendliness and sadness. But there again, I wasn’t
expecting anything different from any of them.
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