take the ashes back to Brickley Cemetery where Mum was cremated and scatter them in the Garden of Remembrance where Dad scattered Mum’s. He left no instructions about his funeral, needless to say, but I think that’s what he would have wanted.
I saw his body once more after he died, next day in the hospital’s chapel of rest, but I rather wish I hadn’t. There must have been some delay before his body was laid out, by which time rigor mortis had set in, and they obviously had trouble fitting his false teeth, because his mouth was open and his teeth bared in a ghastly grimace. I found it uncomfortable to look at him, and sat behind his head as I thought about his long life. I had spent the previous evening going through old photographs I found in his chaotic desk, and it was pleasanter to fill one’s mind with those creased and dog-eared images in sepia or black-and-white: youthful Dad with his tenor sax slung round his neck, posing with the other members of a five-piece band, the Dulwich Dixies, its name emblazoned on the bass drum; Dad and Mum together, young and good-looking, on holiday somewhere flat and sandy in Thirties beachwear; Dad in the back garden at Lime Avenue, with me aged three straddling his shoulders and holding on tightly to his upstretched hands; a studio portrait of Dad looking deceptively heroic in his RAF uniform and angled forage cap; Dad and Arthur Lane in their tropical shorts, sunburned and grinning into the camera; Dad’s agency photos for modelling and TV work, wearing various costumes and expressions - here a comic Cockney in a flat cap, there a sober businessman in a chalk-striped suit . . .
Afterwards I registered the death at the local registry office, a tedious process because the staff were in a tizzy about a new computerised system (I glimpsed ‘DEATH MENU’ on a monitor screen); then I locked up the house and came home to make arrangements for the funeral. Fred has got her parish priest to officiate at the service, which is nice of her - and of him, considering that Dad was barely a Christian, let alone a Catholic. But it seems that the Catholic clergy are fairly easy-going about such matters now, accepting, I presume, that their main function is to bring comfort to the bereaved, and if that involves a little prevarication about the beliefs of the departed, so be it. It will be a short service, since there are funerals every half-hour at the crematorium. Fr Michael has given us a free hand in filling in the basic Catholic template. Anne and Richard will do readings. I’m going to say a few words - eulogy seems too pompous a word - about Dad, and I’ve tape-recorded some of his favourite classical music for the service. I thought of playing a few bars of ‘The Night, the Stars and the Music’ too, but Fred vetoed that.
I have given very little thought to Alex Loom in the past few weeks, having other things on my mind. Fred told me she had left messages on the answerphone a couple of times when I was in London, wanting to speak to me, which I didn’t bother to follow up, and when I came back to Rectory Road I found several emails from her in my inbox, saying she was very sorry to hear that my father was ill, but she urgently needed to see me as soon as I could manage it, and was willing to travel down to London if necessary.Today when I came in from delivering the music tapes to the undertakers Fred said that Alex had called again, and she had told her of Dad’s death. ‘She said she was very sorry to hear it, and she’d like to come to the funeral.’
The information disturbed me. If she came to the funeral we could hardly avoid asking her back to the house afterwards. ‘I hope you didn’t invite her,’ I said. ‘It would be quite inappropriate. She never even met Dad - he was upstairs sleeping off the booze when she turned up on Boxing Day.’
‘No, I pretended the arrangements weren’t settled yet. I should put her off, if I were you. And while you’re about it, darling, you might tactfully remind her that she still owes us for her curtains.’
‘You mean the ones she bought from Décor?’ I said, surprised. ‘That was quite a long time ago.’