The Secret History - Donna Tartt [201]
She paused dramatically, to observe their silent, stricken faces. “Your Uncle Bunny is dead and do you know what that means? It means that he is gone forever. You will never see him again as long as you live.” She glared at them. “Today is a very special day,” she said. “It is a day for remembering him. You ought to be sitting quietly somewhere thinking about all the nice things he used to do for you instead of running around and scuffing up this pretty new floor that Grandmother just had re-finished.”
There was a silence. Neale kicked sullenly at Brandon. “One time Uncle Bunny called me a bastard,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if she really didn’t hear him or if she chose not to; the fixed expression on her face made me think maybe the latter, but then the terrace doors slid open and Cloke came in with Charles and Bram and Rooney.
“Oh. So there you are,” said Mrs. Corcoran suspiciously. “What are you doing out there in the rain?”
“Fresh air,” said Cloke. He looked really stoned. The tip of a Visine bottle stuck out from the handkerchief pocket of his suit.
They all looked really stoned. Poor Charles was bug-eyed and sweating. This was probably more than he’d bargained for: bright lights, too high, having to deal with a hostile adult.
She looked at them. I wondered if she knew. For a moment I thought she’d say something, but instead she reached out and grabbed hold of Brandon’s arm. “Well, you should all get a move on,” she said curtly, leaning down to run a hand through his mussed hair. “It’s getting late and I’ve been led to expect that there might be a little problem with seating.”
The church had been built in seventeen-something, according to the National Register of Historic Places. It was an age-blacked, dungeonlike building with its own rickety little graveyard in the back, set on a rolling country lane. When we arrived, damp and uncomfortable from Francis’s sodden car seats, cars lined the road on both sides, as if for a rural dance or bingo night, sloping gently into the grassy ditch. A gray drizzle was falling. We parked near the country club, which was down a bit, and hiked the quarter-mile silently, in the mud.
The sanctuary was dim, and stepping inside I was blinded by a dazzle of candles. When my eyes cleared I saw iron lanterns, clammy stone floors, flowers everywhere. Startled, I noticed that one of the arrangements, quite near the altar, was wired in the shape of the number 27.
“I thought he was twenty-four,” I whispered to Camilla.
“No,” she said, “that’s his old football number.”
The church was packed. I looked for Henry but didn’t see him; saw someone I thought was Julian but realized it wasn’t when he turned around. For a moment we stood there in a knot, confused. There were metal folding chairs along the back wall to accommodate the crowd, but then someone spotted a half-empty pew and we headed for that: Francis and Sophie, the twins, and me. Charles, who stuck close to Camilla, was plainly freaking out. The doomy horrorhouse atmosphere of the church was not helping at all and he stared at his surroundings with frank terror, while Camilla took his arm and tried to nudge him down the row. Marion had disappeared to sit with some people who’d driven down from Hampden, and Cloke and Bram and Rooney had simply disappeared, somewhere between car and church.
It was a long service. The minister, who took his ecumenical and—some felt—slightly impersonal remarks from Saint Paul’s sermon on Love from First Corinthians, talked for about half an hour. (“Didn’t you feel that was a very inappropriate text?” said Julian, who had a pagan’s gloomy view of death coupled with a horror of the non-specific.) Next was Hugh Corcoran (“He was the best little brother a guy could have”); then Bunny’s old football coach, a dynamic Jaycee type who talked at length of Bunny’s team spirit, telling a rousing anecdote about how Bunny had once saved the day against a particularly tough team from “lower” Connecticut. (“That means black,” whispered Francis.) He wound up his