The Laying on of Hands - Alan Bennett [23]
‘And that cook who slags people off? He was here too.’
‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It was a good turn-out.’ Then, feeling he ought to be getting on. ‘They’re all outside.’
The youth did not notice the hint still less take it. ‘You said you knew Clive?’
‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey, then added, ‘but not well.’
‘I’d never seen anybody die before. It was depressing?’
Geoffrey smiled sadly and nodded as if this were an aspect of death that had not occurred to him. The youth was a fool.
‘Can I show you something?’ The student rooted in his pack then put it on the floor so that the priest could sit beside him. ‘I had to go through his stuff after he died. There wasn’t much. He was travelling light. Only there was this.’
It was a maroon notebook, long, cloth-covered and meant to fit easily into a pocket. Geoffrey thought he remembered it and ran his hand over the smooth, soft cover.
‘Is it a diary?’ the priest said.
‘Not exactly.’
IN THE CHURCHYARD the party was beginning to break up. One group had arranged to lunch at the Garrick and were moving round saying their farewells while someone looked for a cab. Others were going off to investigate a new restaurant that had opened in a converted public lavatory and of which they’d heard good reports, though tempted to join forces with yet another party who were venturing into one of the last genuine cafés patronised by the porters at Smithfield where the tripe was said to be delicious.
Most of the big stars had left pretty promptly, their cars handily waiting nearby to shield them from too much unmediated attention. The pop star’s limo dropped him first then called at the bank so that the security guard could redeposit the clasp and then took him on to a laboratory in Hounslow where, as a change from Catherine the Great, he was mounting vigil over some hamsters testing lip-gloss. Meanwhile, the autograph hunters moved among what was left of the congregation, picking up what dregs of celebrity that remained.
‘Are you anybody?’ a woman said to the partner of a soap-star, ‘or are you just with him?’
‘He was my nephew,’ said Miss Wishart to anyone who would listen.
‘Who, dear?’ said one of the photographers, which of course Miss Wishart didn’t hear, but she looked so forlorn he took her picture anyway, which was fortunate, as he was later able to submit it to the National Portrait Gallery where it duly featured in an exhibition alongside the stage doorman of the Haymarket and the maitre d’ of the Ivy as one of ‘The Faces of London’.
Soon, though, it began to spit with rain and within a few minutes the churchyard was empty and after its brief bout of celebrity, back to looking as dingy and desolate as it generally did.
‘NO IT ISN’T A DIARY,’ said Hopkins. ‘It’s more of an account book.’
It was divided into columns across the page, each column numbered, possibly indicating a week or a month, the broad left-hand column a list of initials, and in the other columns figures, possibly amounts. The figures were closely packed and as neat as the work of a professional accountant.
‘Can you make it out?’ said the young man, running his finger down the left-hand column. ‘These are people, I take it.’
‘They might be,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I don’t quite know.’ Having just spotted his own initials, Geoffrey knew only too well, though he noted that the spaces opposite his own name were only occasionally filled in. This was because Clive came round quite spasmodically and wasn’t often available when Geoffrey called (now, seeing the number of people on his list, he could see why). When he did come round the visit did not always involve sex (‘No funny business’ is how Clive put it). Geoffrey told himself that this was because he was a clergyman and that he thus enjoyed a relationship with Clive that was pastoral as well as physical. More often than not this meant he found himself making Clive scrambled eggs, while Clive lay on the sofa watching TV in his underpants, which was about as close to domesticity as Geoffrey