The Mourner

The first person to make Claudia laugh at her father's funeral was Simon. It happened during the second eulogy, which was being delivered by a former governor who had known Gerald Crane for forty-three years and, in Claudia's experience, had spent at least thirty-five of them disagreeing with him. The governor had reached the part about Gerald's legendary memory for names. Beside Claudia, Simon shifted in the pew. He leaned a fraction closer without taking his eyes from the lectern. "He called him Walter for six years," he murmured. Claudia made the mistake of breathing in. The sound that came out was small enough to disappear beneath the governor's next sentence, but Rose heard it. Her mother turned her head. For half a second Claudia expected reproach. Instead Rose pressed her lips together and looked back toward the front, the movement very nearly a smile. Simon sat straight again. It was typical Simon. The joke mattered less than the timing; he hated solemnity when it began to feel dishonest. The church was full enough that people had been standing along the side aisles when Claudia came in. Some she knew well. Many she recognised from photographs, boards, campaign advertisements and the business pages. A senator occupied the end of the third pew. Two rows behind him sat the president of the university whose library carried Gerald's name. The Crane Foundation trustees had been grouped together by somebody with a seating plan. There were current and former employees of Crane companies, people from the hospital, museum people, lawyers, politicians, neighbours, and several men who had been described to Claudia that morning as old friends of her father's even though she could not remember seeing them at Alder House once in the last decade. There were other people too, which mattered more to her. A retired machinist from one of the old Crane plants had come with his wife. Claudia recognised a woman from a scholarship dinner three years ago and, further back, a couple who had once stopped Gerald outside a restaurant to tell him what the cardiac wing had meant to their family. Gerald had complained afterwards that they had thanked him as though he had personally performed surgery. He had also remembered the name of their daughter when he saw them again the following Christmas. The governor's story about Gerald's memory was exaggerated, then. It was not entirely false. Claudia had spent the last five days discovering that both things could be true at once. The minister spoke after the governor. Then Beatrice went to the lectern. Her sister had chosen not to wear black. The suit was dark blue, severe enough for the occasion without surrendering to it, and Claudia had watched her make the decision the previous evening in Rose's dressing room while three different people waited downstairs for her opinion on the order of service. Beatrice had said Gerald would have hated everybody dressed like undertakers. Rose had replied that Gerald would have hated being dead more. Nobody had laughed then. Beatrice was fifty-five and had been speaking in public for most of her adult life. She ran the Crane Foundation with the calm of someone who understood that every room contained people wanting incompatible things from the same pot of money. At the lectern she did not sound like that woman. Twice she stopped because her voice had moved somewhere she had not expected it to go. The second time Andrew, on Claudia's other side, lowered his eyes to the programme and kept them there until Beatrice continued. She spoke about their father teaching her to row badly on Great Bay, about his conviction that maps should be folded properly, about the time he had missed a foundation dinner because he had driven an elderly neighbour to the emergency room and then denied for years that this was why he had missed it. She did not speak about Crane Industries, or the buildings, or the endowments. Other people had taken care of Gerald Crane. Beatrice talked about Dad. Claudia was grateful to her for that. When Beatrice returned to the pew, Claudia caught her hand. Beatrice squeezed once and sat down. Andrew was on Claudia's left. He was broad through the shoulders like Gerald had been before age had pared him down, though there was little else in Andrew's face that resembled their father at first glance. He had their first mother's grey eyes, Beatrice had once told Claudia, and an expression that made strangers assume he was annoyed when he was usually only thinking. Since Monday he had acquired a permanent orbit of people who needed something signed, approved or answered. Even here his phone had vibrated twice against his thigh before he finally turned it off. Rose sat beyond Simon on the other side of the aisle, with Maxwell and Evelyn close behind her. Claudia's mother looked smaller than she had five days ago. Rose had spent nearly forty-five years beside Gerald, long enough that Claudia could not remember learning to distinguish one parent's footsteps from the other's; she simply had. Maxwell bent forward once to say something to Rose, and Evelyn touched his sleeve as he sat back. They had arrived early and stayed out of the way, which Claudia appreciated. Maxwell was thirty-six, close enough to Claudia's age that childhood family gatherings had placed them together by default. He had been the cousin who knew where the decent biscuits were hidden and how to get out of Alder House through the laundry entrance when adults had started talking about business. Evelyn had joined the family much later. She was quieter than Maxwell, dry when she chose to be funny, and had the useful ability to listen to Gerald's historical enthusiasms without encouraging all of them. The minister invited the congregation to stand. Claudia rose with everyone else and turned slightly to make room for the people behind her. That was when she saw the man at the back. At first there was nothing remarkable about him. There were at least two hundred men in dark suits in the church. He was perhaps in his fifties, perhaps older, standing near the rear wall rather than in a pew. His suit was charcoal, plain and well cut, his hands resting loosely in front of him. He was not looking around for somebody he knew. He was not holding a programme. Then Claudia noticed Rose, who had gone very still. Rose was looking past Claudia, not at the minister or the coffin, but toward the rear of the church. Simon followed her gaze. His face did not change much, although the humour that had been sitting at the corners of his mouth all morning disappeared. Andrew glanced back next. Beatrice did too, more quickly. Claudia turned fully then. The man wore a strip of black cloth around his left upper arm. It was a small thing. Matte black against charcoal. Nothing embroidered on it, no crest or symbol that Claudia could see. He might have been an usher from an organisation with customs she did not know, except he was not doing anything an usher would do. Maxwell had seen him now as well. Claudia watched her cousin's eyes narrow in recognition. Evelyn followed his line of sight. She looked at the man, then at Maxwell, then back toward the front of the church when the first notes of the hymn began. Claudia leaned toward Andrew. "Who is that?" He did not turn again. "Later." "You know him?" "Claudia." It was not sharp. Andrew rarely needed sharpness when a single use of her name would do. She faced the front with everyone else. The coffin stood beneath the pale stone arch at the end of the aisle. Gerald had chosen oak years ago, in the same practical conversation in which he had informed Rose that he wanted no elaborate funeral furniture and no one making decisions about varnish while upset. Claudia had been furious with him for discussing his own coffin over lunch. He had asked if she would prefer him to leave it to Andrew, who would probably buy something with shareholders. She had laughed then too. The memory arrived without warning and was so intact that for a moment she could hear Gerald's voice more clearly than the congregation around her. Claudia lowered her eyes to the hymn sheet. The words swam, settled, blurred again. She did not sing. Simon did. Quietly and badly. After the service, there was the careful confusion of people trying to move toward a family and away from a coffin at the same time. The minister guided Rose toward the vestibule. Andrew was intercepted before he had taken three steps. Beatrice hugged two women from the foundation one after another and forgot the second woman's name halfway through, which Claudia had never seen happen before. Simon found Claudia by the end of the second pew. "You all right?" She looked at him. "Stupid question," he said. "Sorry." "I'm functioning." "That's much more Crane of you." She almost smiled. Simon touched her elbow, a brief pressure, and looked past her toward Rose. "Your mother needs getting through the next ten minutes. After that she can be rude to everyone in private." "She's been looking forward to that part." "Runs in the family." A man Claudia vaguely recognised from Boston stepped forward and caught Simon by the shoulder. Simon turned to him with the automatic social competence of somebody who had spent decades standing at Gerald's side and cleaning up whatever followed. Claudia let herself be carried toward the vestibule. The man with the armband was still at the back. He had not joined the queue forming to speak to the family. Nobody approached him. There was a space around him that Claudia could not decide was deliberate or accidental. People passed within a few feet without looking twice. The senator brushed by him while checking something his aide had whispered. An elderly Crane cousin glanced directly at the black band and changed direction. That was the first thing Claudia had seen all morning that felt genuinely strange. Outside, the pavement in front of the church had filled with people who were not coming to the burial. Reporters had been kept across the street, though several cameras lifted when Rose emerged. Andrew stepped half a pace forward without seeming to. Beatrice moved to Rose's other side. The four of them had done some version of this in public photographs for years, and Claudia hated that her body knew where to stand. Someone called her name from behind the barrier. She did not look. The drive to the cemetery took less than fifteen minutes and felt much longer. Claudia sat beside Rose in the back of a car that smelled faintly of leather polish. Simon was in front with the driver because Andrew had been pulled into another vehicle at the last moment. Rose held her programme folded into quarters on her lap. Claudia waited until they had turned away from the centre of Portsmouth. "Who was the man at the back?" Rose looked out of the window. Simon shifted slightly in the front seat. "Not now," Rose said. "Andrew said later." "Then for once your brother and I agree." Claudia looked at Simon's reflection in the mirror. His eyes met hers for a moment and then moved away, toward the road ahead. "Do you know him?" she asked. Simon answered before Rose could. "No." He turned back toward the road. Claudia could not tell whether Rose was annoyed with him for answering or grateful that she had not needed to. At the cemetery, the family stood close enough to one another that Claudia could feel Andrew's sleeve against hers whenever he moved. Gerald was lowered into the ground while the minister spoke about dust and return, words Claudia had heard at funerals before and had never properly imagined applying to her father. She stopped thinking about the man with the armband. For a while there was only the raw practical fact of the coffin disappearing. Rose gripped Claudia's hand so tightly that their rings pressed painfully together. Simon stood behind them. Beatrice cried without trying to conceal it. Andrew did not, but his face had gone colourless. When it was done, the family remained while everyone else began to drift toward the waiting cars. Maxwell came over and put both arms around Claudia. They had not hugged properly since Monday because there had always been someone else in the room. "I keep thinking he's going to ring me," he said into her hair. Claudia understood. Gerald phoned people. He did not text unless forced, and even then his messages looked as though dictated by a solicitor in 1987. "He'll be furious nobody has sent him the newspaper coverage," she said. Maxwell stepped back. "He'll be furious about at least three of the photographs." "Four," Evelyn said beside him. "One of them caught him from below." That got a real laugh from Maxwell, short and helpless. Evelyn put her hand at the back of his coat. Claudia was glad to see it. There had been too many people touching one another ceremonially that day. This looked like something done without thought. Rose had already started toward the cars. Claudia glanced across the cemetery entrance before following her. She had half expected to see the stranger there, but the people near the cemetery gate were cousins, drivers and two men from the funeral home gathering folding chairs. Rose was already asking whether they had enough time to get back before the first guests reached Alder House. Claudia followed her toward the cars. There would be people waiting when they arrived, and food nobody wanted, and apparently a conversation everyone else had agreed could wait until later.