A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [55]
“Where’s that goddamn light? Excuse my French. Ah, here we are.”
And there is light. The light is blue, of all things, and faint. The chapel in the blue light is as squarely shaped and unhaunted as it would be at high noon. The pews are blonde wood, of an extreme sheen, and at the front there is a platform of the same sleek blonde, the right height for placing the burden without undue strain on the pallbearers. I am astonished that there is no handy trolley or conveyor belt, but I don’t mean this meanly. I would have once, but now I’m almost gay here. On low tables at either side are set candelabra as many-branched as trees, and the wax tapers in them are violet and peppermint green. The walls are done in simulated pine, paper printed with wood knots.
“I’d hate to tell you what it cost me,” Hector puffs, leading me like a bride up the aisle and taking a swig from his glass as he goes, “but it was worth every cent of it, if I do say so myself as shouldn’t. Look at that wood. Beautiful grain. Beautiful. Real veneer.”
We reach the front, and I collapse on to the hard mourners’ bench where the family is meant to sit.
“It’s lovely, Hector. I never knew you’d fixed it up so.”
“Not bad, eh?” he says, gratified. “Of course, not everyone wants the service here, but more and more do. Church funerals are going out.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“Too harrowing,” Hector says, sitting beside me. “Tend to bring up all kinds of things – heaven, hell, stuff like that. Great strain on the nerves of the bereaved. If you believe, it’s a great strain, and if you don’t believe, it’s even worse. However you look at it, it’s a real ordeal. That’s why people like this place. Tasteful, and the service is short.”
“Yes, I see.”
“I must show you,” Hector says, his voice now beaming, “I got a really super-dooper automatic organ.”
Daftly, horrifyingly, I want to say – how splendid for you, and I hope your wife appreciates it. Once at college I heard a joke about an angel who traded his harp for an upright organ. I’d like to tell this to Hector. Naturally I won’t. Rachel Cameron doesn’t talk that way.
“It’s there, see?”
He points, and now I see the giant out-fanned music pipes, extending in a vast screen along the front wall. Each pipe is a different height, and at the top they are painted to resemble Corinthian columns.
“It plays several things,” Hector explains. “We got Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring for – well, you know –”
“The carriage trade.”
“Yeh, that’s it. Some people wouldn’t know Bach from the Basin Street Blues. I wouldn’t, myself, matter of fact. But they think it’s very dignified and serious-minded, so we get quite a run on it. I won’t play that for you, though. I’ll play my favourite.”
“My God, Hector, you can’t play that thing at this hour of night!”
“Don’t you fret, Rachel,” he says. “It’s got three tones, and when it’s on Soft, it’s really soft and I don’t mean maybe. I can positively guarantee you it won’t be loud enough to wake the living, ha ha.”
With that, he’s off, searching for levers to press, magical buttons to touch. He darts back, stations himself again, and slides an arm around my shoulder. I don’t protest or move away. I don’t care. We sit together on the glossy bench in the bleak blue light, and it’s gone three in the morning. Then the music rises, slowly.
There is a happy land
Far far away –
“What d’you think of it, Rachel?”
“Marvellous. I think it’s the most marvellous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You mean it?”
“Every word. Truly.”
“My gosh,” Hector says. “Think of that.”
Where saints and angels stand
Bright, bright as day –
The blue light, and the chapel purged of all spirit, all spirits except the rye, and the sombre flashiness, and the terribly moving corniness of that hymn, and the hour, and the strangeness, and the plump well-meaning arm across my shoulders, and the