The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [41]
A few days after the service he had had dinner with a friend whose mother had also died of cancer. They agreed that funerals benefited only the deceased’s acquaintances and distant relatives, providing them with an opportunity to make a public display of grief and respect before returning home, where the sadness, in most cases, would quickly dissipate. For closer relatives - husbands, wives, sons, daughters - the sense of loss took far longer to kickin. Ben and Mark, who had watched in hospital as the life literally drained out of their mother, had mentally prepared themselves for a funeral. The hard part was to follow, pain like a slow puncture lasting months, years.
Yet their father’s funeral was quite different. At the service to commemorate the life of Christopher Keen, Ben felt like a stranger.
More than seventy people came to the crematorium outside Guildford, not one of whom he recognized. Ben met his uncle - Keen’s younger brother - for the first time since he had been a pageboy at his wedding in 1974. There were work colleagues from Divisar, old Foreign Office hands, distant cousins with second wives huddled in impenetrable groups. A man in his early sixties wearing spit-polished brogues and a Life Guards tie introduced himself to Ben as Mark’s godfather, an ‘old university chum’ of Keen’s.
‘I haven’t been all that good at keeping up,’ he explained, as if the broad, gutless smile which accompanied the remark would in some way make up for this. ‘Rather abnegated my godfatherly responsibilities, I’m afraid.’
The service had been arranged jointly by Jock McCreery, his father’s oldest friend from his days in MI6, and Mark, who had flown back from Moscow immediately. Ben had had little input: he had been too busy dealing with the police. This had left him with little opportunity to talk to his brother, and the two hours that it took them to drive against the morning rush hour to Guildford was the longest period of time they had spent together since Keen’s murder.
Alice sat in the back seat, fielding calls from the features desk on her mobile phone. To every member of staff she said the same thing - ‘I have to go to a funeral. Don’t worry. I’m meeting him this evening. I’ll ring you as soon as I get back’ - until Mark’s patience finally snapped and he told her to switch it off. For days they had existed in an atmosphere of stunned upheaval. In the hours leading up to Carolyn’s burial an odd kind of order had asserted itself, an innate knowledge of how to proceed. But this was quite different: there was no template for their situation.
The crematorium car park was already full, with only two or three spaces remaining by the time Mark pulled in. An elderly man and woman, dressed in what looked like their Sunday best, were eating sandwiches from the open boot of a Vauxhall Astra, blue plastic mugs of tea resting on the bumper. Ben held Alice’s hand as they walked slowly towards a low building with an emerald green roof surrounded by carefully tended lawns. McCreery, his black tie whipped up over his shoulder by a strong winter wind, strode out to meet them at a military clip.
‘Mark,’ he said, pumping his hand. He had an instantly forgettable face. ‘And you must be Benjamin. I’m so sorry about what’s happened. And Alice. How good to see you. They say it’ll just be a few minutes.’ There were two