Gold by Gemini

Author:Jonathan Gash [Gash, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller, Adventure, Mystery
ISBN: 0451821858
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1977-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

HALF THE CHURCH was crowded. Half was bone-bare. We were all there. Helen holy without a cigarette. Jimmo with his asbestos cough. Ted the barman from the White Hart. Jill Jenkins with her poodle and a bewildered young uniformed navigator she’d somehow got off a coaster new in harbour that day. Harry Bateman and Jenny lighting candles for all they were worth because their new place opened in the morning. Patrick sobbing into a nasturtium hankie, Lily trying to comfort him and weeping worse. Big Frank from Suffolk trying to look as if he wasn’t reading a Sotheby’s catalogue of seventeenth-century German and French jewellery. Tinker Dill giving everybody a nasty turn having no cloth cap on and shaming us all to death by stubbing out his fag in our church’s exquisite thirteenth-century baptismal font (‘Well, what’s the bleeding water in it for, then?’ he whispered in an indignant stage bellow when Lily glared). A miscellany of shuffling barkers unrecognizable with washed heads and clean fingernails – one had even pressed his trousers. Margaret; the only one of us all who knows when to kneel down and which book has the right hymns – we all followed her example. Gimbert’s auctioneers had sent a ghoul or two by way of unmitigated grief. And Dig Mason in a morning suit for God’s sake, gear so posh we all knew the Rolls outside was waiting for him and not the coffin. And Algernon falling over twice moving along the pew. He’d brought his uncle, Blind Squaddie from the houseboat, who felt the hand-embroidered kneelers a little too long. I’d have to count them after he’d gone. And a few villagers on a day trip from across the road to get a kick out of life.

Oh, and Dandy Jack.

We’d got some flowers in wreaths, one lot shaped like a cross. I’d sold Big Frank my single display Spode plate, cracked and just about in one piece, and bought a lot of flowers. I could tell Janie thought they were the wrong colours but they were bright. Dandy Jack liked bright colours. By then I’d spent up. I got three lengths of wire from a neighbour’s lad and threaded the flower stems in and out with green stuff I’d taken from my hedge. It’s hard to make a circle. Try it. You don’t realize how much skill goes into making things till you do it yourself. It looked just like a real wreath when it was finished. Making it didn’t do my hands any good, but I was proud of it. Janie went off somewhere and came back with one of those cards. We wrote ‘In Remembrance’ and our names on it and tied it on with black cotton.

‘It looks great, doesn’t it?’ I asked Janie.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, which was a relief because Janie can be very critical sometimes. The trouble is I knew she’d have said the same if it hadn’t been right. Still.

The coffin was on a bier. I wasn’t to carry Dandy because of my hands.

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