Last Rights Read online

  Tom Hancock, my dad, was a lovely chap. All the old wags round here used to call him ‘The Morgue’, but he always took it in good part. When I was a nipper at school you couldn’t count the number of lads whose dads took their belt off to them. Not my dad, though. He loved us: Mum, my sisters Nancy and Aggie and me. He didn’t care what people round here said and they’ve always said quite a lot about most things.

  Before Dad joined Francis in the business, he was a soldier and was posted out to India. He liked it there – partial to the heat Dad was – and when he met a local girl called Mary Fernandez, he liked it even better. They met in Calcutta, Mum and Dad – she was working at a convent that looked after orphans. Dad, Tom, wasn’t exactly honest when he told his parents about her in one of his letters. He used to say, ‘I wrote it like this: “I’ve met this smashing girl. She’s a good Christian but a little bit dark. I’m going to marry her.”’ Then he’d laugh. Gran and Grandad nearly died when they saw Mum for the first time. Nancy was a year old and Mum was pregnant with me when they first arrived in West Ham. Grandad was nice about it, but Gran always called us wogs – all except my younger sister Aggie, the only one of us who took Dad’s light hair and fair skin.

  All through my life I’ve been called ‘wog’. Not by everyone, and not always in bad spirit. I’ve had some very good mates in my time, still do. But some of these names and comments have hurt my sister Nancy who is the darkest and, in truth, the most Indian-looking of us all. I know this has held her back from maybe finding a bloke or bettering herself in some way and I must say it does make me angry at times. Although not that often now. There’s worse things than names in this world. I learned that on the Somme; I learned that when my mates dragged me kicking and screaming back to our trench that first time I lost what was left of my mind and made a run for it. At the time I hated those lads, called them every name a man can lay his tongue to. But they saved me – Ken White, Stanley Wheeler, Georgie Pepper and Izzy Weisz. The top brass would have done me for deserting as sure as eggs is eggs. Then I’d have been shot – not blown up like Stanley, not drowned in mud like Georgie and Izzy: shot.

  What none of them could have known, though, was that running was going to become a way of life for me. Loud noises, violence – it all makes me want to do it. The Great War started me doing it and I’ve never stopped running since. Ken, who was the only mate of mine to get out with me, knows. We talk about it on occasion. It’s as if my head, sometimes like that night at the knuckle fight in the graveyard, is bringing my body along with it – running. From life, from my own thoughts, now from bombs and guns, from women’s screams and men’s cries of despair – Mr H the undertaker runs and runs and then when he gets back to his shop he hides among any bodies he might have out the back. We’re one of the few firms who can take bodies on the premises round here. I even know a bloke up West who embalms for a price – not that there’s much call for that in West Ham. We’re a poor borough. People here, even before rationing, have never had much that wasn’t essential.

  Of course, where you’ve got poverty you’ve also got ignorance so quite a lot of people in the borough believe in ghosts and spirits and all that rubbish. But not me. The dead are gone and can’t harm anyone – perhaps that’s why I like to work with them. Innocent. I make sure the dead get where they want to be in spite of the actions of the living. I’ve seen it all. Widows digging in their old men’s pockets for every last farthing, drunks burying their kids in paupers’ graves, and now the Luftwaffe bombing the departed up into the light again, spinning their shredded grave clothes into the yew trees. The cruelty of the living is something that has no end.

  I was back in our parlour with a pot of tea almost brewed when Mum, my sisters – the girls, I call them – and our lad Arthur came up out of the Anderson the following morning. Nancy went straight away to look to our horses, who had bashed themselves silly against their stall again in the night. Poor creatures, there’s no knowing what they’ll do to themselves once a raid begins. Aggie, as usual, was more concerned about what she looked like. She has a pretty, heart-shaped face with big blue eyes, the image of Dad’s. Not that she’s satisfied with what she’s got. Stood in front of the fan-shaped glass in the parlour she pulled faces at herself, mucked about with her hair and went on about how ‘rotten’ everything was.

  ‘I hate this rotten war with its rotten food and rotten muck all over the place,’ she said. ‘Blimey, I look as if I’m about Mum’s age!’

  ‘What? That young?’ I said, trying to be playful.

  Aggie turned towards me and glared. Then, when I told her I’d made a rotten pot of tea, she stomped off into the kitchen, her harshly bleached-up hair, full of brick-dust, flapping behind her like a dull mat. Poor Aggie, with her husband gone off with another woman, her little ’uns evacuated away somewhere in Essex, all she wants is a little bit of fun, but every time she looks in a mirror she gets depressed. Little or no sleep doesn’t do a lot for anyone’s looks, including Aggie’s. There’s a shadow of loneliness that hangs around her lovely eyes sometimes too.

  Mum poured out for everyone into cups and saucers she’d come straight in and slowly washed up at the sink. You never know whether or not you’re going to have water on after a raid but on this occasion we did. Aggie carried her tea up to her room while Arthur took his own and Nancy’s out to the yard. Mum, her cup trembling on its saucer in her hand, looked at me as I stood against the door-post and said, ‘I’m going to make you something to eat, Francis.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘No, you’re not, you’re skin and bone!’ Her eyes started to fill then, but she held it back gamely. Mary Hancock, my mum, nearly seventy years old and still beautiful. Tall and slim, like me, she has the most amazing black hair – she uses no dyes to my knowledge – pleated up into a long, thick roll at the back of her head. Nicely spoken, with an Indian accent still, and a real lady. Like a duchess, my old dad used to say and he called her that too, just like I started doing after he passed away.

  She took some bread out of the larder then, with what little Stork margarine there was left.

  ‘Sit down, my son,’ she said to me, as she pulled Dad’s chair out from its place at the head of the table.

  ‘Duchess . . .’

  She walked up to me, limping a bit like she does when her arthritis is bad, her long black skirts swishing against the lino as she moved. The Duchess has never worn short dresses in her life or anything other than mourning since Dad died. Her dignity, as well as what she always calls her ‘convent training’, just won’t allow it.

  ‘Sit down, Francis, and please do eat,’ she said, as she ran one knotted brown hand across my forehead. Her arthritis had started young, when she was about thirty. Our doctor, O’Grady, said at the time that she needed to go back to the dry, hot climate of India if she was to have any chance of beating it. But she didn’t even want to mention that to Dad. She didn’t want to make him give up his business and she would never have left him or us children. But she suffers for that decision. ‘I wish you didn’t have to run all the time,’ the Duchess murmured, as she placed the bread and marge in front of me. ‘I wish you could have your health back again.’

  I didn’t answer her. What was there to say? Some time, sooner rather than later, the raids would start again and I would run. Sure as night follows day. We both knew it.

  I started on the bread and marge, more out of duty than hunger, but it made Mum smile, which was the object of the exercise. Then Nancy, or Nan, as we all call her, came in from the yard and, frowning as she almost always is, took over the tea with her usual well-meaning bossiness. ‘You’ve got to go and pick up Mr Evans at eleven,’ she said to me as, unbidden, she refilled my cup with tea and sugar.

  ‘I know,’ I said, as patiently as lack of sleep would allow. As if I could forget to pick up the deceased who, if indirectly, was paying for us all to go on existing.

  ‘You conducting?’

  ‘Yes.’ I always had, ever si
nce Dad died, which is fifteen years ago now. Out in front of the hearse, my wand in my hand – the conductor, the master of the final earthly ceremonies. The wand or cane, which is what it looks like to most people, doesn’t serve any purpose these days. In the past it was used as a weapon to ward off grave robbers and as a sort of magical tool to keep away evil spirits. Hence the dramatic and mysterious name.

  But I knew what she was getting at and I knew that she meant well. These days there aren’t always enough men to carry a sizeable coffin like Gordon Evans’s. Sometimes a funeral has to go without a conductor. But not this time.

  ‘Joe and Harry Evans are going to bear with Arthur and Walter,’ I said. ‘They want to do it for their dad.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nan said acidly, ‘all very well as long as Walter don’t fall over.’

  Mum and I looked at each other and smiled. Although never a part of the business, Nan has always taken what we do very seriously. Ever since we’d lost our cousin Eric to the navy, she had been concerned about how we were managing. Eric had driven for us for a number of years and was a strong, sure-footed pall-bearer. But he’d been called up so I’d done what I could, which was to employ Walter Bridges, a single bloke with badly fitting teeth who, though getting on a bit and, it must be said, partial to a drop or two, is a good enough driver and not too bad a bearer. There is also Arthur, our boy, fifteen and nearly six foot tall in his stockinged feet. Dying to have a go at Jerry, Arthur can put a good gloss on a coffin, provided he doesn’t drop fag ash over it afterwards. We also got Doris Rosen, our office girl, as soon as Eric and another of our blokes, Jim, left for the services. Had she been well enough, the Duchess could have managed the office and the bookwork, but most of the time now her arthritis is so bad she can’t do much. More often than not Nan has to feed her, put her to bed, turn the pages of her book, take her to the privy … That’s Nan’s job, the Duchess – and the cooking and cleaning. Apart from feeding the horses sometimes, she doesn’t have time for the shop and its doings, however much she might want to be in there, however much I know she envies Doris – who, in spite of being married, is a lot freer than Nan. In some ways, this war has freed a lot of women to do things other than look after men and kids.

  Aggie came back in then and rolled herself a fag on the table. Nan watched her all the time, her hooded eyes, so brown they’re almost black, scrutinising her younger sister for each and every sign of what she would call ‘coarseness’ – heavy makeup or too much perfume.

  ‘I’m going to work,’ Aggie said. She was indeed heavily made up now and her hair was encased in one of those net snoods the girls like so much. She looked, to me, as if she would be more at home in Hollywood than London. To my way of thinking, it takes courage to make yourself so bright outside when you feel so rotten within.

  But as Aggie left, I could see the word form in Nan’s mind – ‘slut’: written all over her face it was. And what a face. Bitterness is a horrible thing. It’s not her fault. Again, it’s to do with the way she looks. People made comments when she was a youngster and she hid herself away, looking after first Dad, then Mum and me and Aggie’s two little ’uns when they were still at home. Aggie might be glamorous now, but Nan, with her long black hair and tiny delicate features, had been beautiful. But that was a long time ago. Now she’s a spinster, a bitter one, and although I’ve always loved her, her spite is difficult to bear. I hate the way she disapproves of any fun Aggie might have. It’s not wrong for a girl to wear makeup or even like a drink once in a while – especially not in these times.

  ‘Oh, well,’ I said, after I’d finished what I hoped was enough of the food to satisfy the Duchess, ‘I’d best get on.’

  I went downstairs into the parlour and spent a bit of time knocking brick-dust off the black curtains in the front window. A lot of windows had gone out opposite so there was a lot of glass all over the place. Doris, breathless and red-faced after her walk over from her home in Stepney, said, ‘Looks like a bleedin’ snow scene out there.’

  And it did. In fact, if you looked at the pub on the corner from the right angle, it almost looked like something you’d see on a Christmas card.

  Gordon Evans’s funeral was what has come, even in such a short space of time, to pass for normal. Tired, hand-picked flowers, a coffin scarred by millions of tiny glass shards and Walter, reeking of booze, swaying gently by the graveside. I suppose I should count myself lucky he sets off on the proper foot, the left, when he’s bearing, even if he is three sheets to the wind. But it isn’t good. Dad would have died of shame had he still been around. After all, when Hancock’s started, funerals were probably as elaborate as funerals had ever been – with the exception of the Egyptians, Tutankhamun and all that. When old Francis died in 1913, Dad sent him off in a hearse pulled by four black horses followed by mutes carrying ostrich feather wands and a procession of friends and family in the deepest mourning imaginable. You used to see so many flowers at funerals before the Great War. But, then, during and what seemed like for years afterwards, there were so many dead there weren’t enough flowers in the world for all of them.

  Having said that, I did perform one big old-fashioned do back in late March. For an old bookies’ runner, it was, Sid Nye. The bookie coughed up for the funeral – he could – but Sid had been popular with his many customers in and around the Abbey Arms pub so a lot of people wanted to pay their respects with heavy mourning, flowers and what-have-you. Funny to think how hot it was back then. Hard on the heels of that terrible winter, the diggers had a real problem getting old Sid’s grave dug in time. Funny weather. But maybe that’s what you get around wars. In Flanders the locals used to say that they’d never seen so much rain and mud, not in living memory. Thinking about it now, Sid Nye’s funeral wasn’t just the last big do I’ve done, it was also the last normal one. Ever since then there’ve been few flowers and much talk, not of the deceased but of war and how we all think we’re going to survive.

  Still the widow Evans was grateful for what we did, and their two boys, both in reserved occupations, were generous to my lads. But it was still a frightening and depressing way to send off a loved one. So many trophies of war all around. I could see the shrapnel embedded in some of the trees and memorials, even if the bereaved could not. I could see a foot I remember too – lying all white and lonely on top of a watering can. But no one else saw it so maybe it wasn’t really there. Maybe it was just a foot left over from the Somme, still lodged in my mind like a splinter.

  Aggie had only been home for five minutes from her shift down at Tate & Lyle’s sugar factory when the sirens went off. I’d dropped Walter at his lodgings after the funeral, but Arthur was still with us so yet again he went down with Mum, the girls and this time Doris too.

  I went up on the roof. Something made me not go so far on this occasion. Perhaps I was afraid of meeting wild-eyed fighting men again or maybe I just wanted to watch people doing something rather than sitting in a hole in the ground. There’s a fire-watching post on the next roof, over the bank. Mr Deeks, the manager, is in charge. ‘Good evening, Mr Hancock,’ he said to me, as he watched me lie down on the flat bit of roof over Aggie’s bedroom.

  ‘G-Good evening, Mr, er, D-Deeks,’ I replied.

  I saw him smile briefly before he and his lads went on about their business. He must have thought I was mad, lying down on a roof in a raid – no tin hat, no gas-mask, nothing. He must have thought I had some sort of death-wish. Depending on the day, sometimes he’s on the money there.

  As the throbbing drone of the bombers came ever closer, I shut my eyes. I’ve always thought that if I’m going to die, I don’t want to have to watch myself do it. Sometimes people ask me whether or not I’m afraid of death and my answer always surprises them. I am. Just because it’s familiar to me, just because sometimes I even want it, doesn’t mean I can’t fear it. How can you not fear something you know nothing about?

  But this time closing my eyes had a bad effect. I kept seeing that bloke I’d met the n
ight before, the one who said he’d been stabbed. I hadn’t thought about him much since, but now here he was in colour and detail like a frightening villain in a creepy picture. Just his face, twisted in anger, playing over and over in my mind until I couldn’t bear it any more and had to open my eyes. Even then, I think now, I was starting to feel guilty about him.

  What I saw, the blackness of the night pierced by the searchlights picking out the even blacker ranks of bombers, was really a lot more frightening than anything in my head. But I preferred it because it was real. When I was in the trenches, just waiting as we could do for months sometimes before actually fighting, one of the worst things was not being able to see the enemy. You know they’re there – you can hear them, feel the fear coming from them, even smell them at times – but you can’t see them and gradually you build hideous pictures in your mind of things more monster than human. When you go over the top you’re half mad with fear, which, maybe, was the whole point of all that. After all, what sane person would climb over a mountain of mud, then throw himself willingly at thousands of men armed with guns?

  The noise was so loud it felt as if it was in your body. Explosion – like the sound of silk ripping across the sky – the crackling of the fires, Mr Deeks’s lads shouting at each other. ‘Where the bloody hell are our guns?’ one asked. But no one could answer, because no one knows. There’s only ‘taking it’, which we do every night and sometimes in the daytime too. The East End taking it for the whole country, mopping up pain like a sponge. Christ, it’s only been a matter of weeks all this, but sometimes I think that at the end there’ll be nothing left – only flatness, the whole place gone back to the marshes it grew out of all those centuries ago. I’ve conducted funerals for people made flat by falling buildings. I’ve done funerals for a leg, an arm and what’s left of a head thrown into a coffin and given a name – Alf, Edie, Ruth, Sammy. Some poor old dear crying over what’s left of probably three different people. But for her it is Ruth or Sammy, and that person is dead as sure as eggs is eggs. Some people, see, they vaporise: there isn’t anything left, not a thing.