Night Music Read Free Page A

going.
    A few had come just for the do. Mrs Linnet, the local cleaning lady, made it her business never to miss a good funeral. She could rank them, in terms of turnout, choice of hymns, quality of sausage rolls and joints of ham all the way back to 1955. She had brought with her two of the old women she ‘did for’; while they hadn’t actually known Mr Pottisworth, they might enjoy the outing, she had told the vicar. Especially as the McCarthys were likely to lay on a good spread, what with Mrs McCarthy knowing how to do things properly. Her kind always did.
    And then, at the back, Asad and Henry were pressed close together as they pretended to read from the hymn book.
    ‘Look at them, all dressed up and sitting in the front row like they were family,’ said Henry, under his breath.
    ‘Whatever eases their sorrow,’ said Asad. A tall man, he had to stoop to ensure that they could both see the words. ‘She looks very nice today. I think that coat’s new.’ In bright red wool, cut in a military style, it glowed in the gloomy confines of the little church.
    ‘They must be expecting to come into some money. She was telling me yesterday he’s put down a deposit on one of those flash new four-wheel drives.’
    ‘She deserves it. All those years at the beck and call of that horrible man. I wouldn’t have done it.’ Asad shook his head. His features, betraying his Somalian heritage, were elegant and a little mournful. He managed in almost all circumstances to resemble a man of dignity, Henry said. Even in his Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas.
    ‘Which particular horrible man are you talking about?’ muttered Henry.
    The hymn ended. With a shuffle of bottoms on pews, and the soft thud of old hymn books hitting wood, the small congregation settled down for the last part of the service.
    ‘Samuel Pottisworth,’ said the vicar, ‘was . . . a man . . . who stayed true to himself throughout his life.’ He appeared to be stumbling. ‘He was one of the most . . . long-standing members of our parish.’
    ‘McCarthy’s had his eye on that house for years,’ said Henry, quietly. ‘Look at him standing there with her – like butter wouldn’t melt.’
    Asad glanced at him quizzically, and then at the couple several rows in front of them.
    ‘You know he was with that Theresa from the pub not half an hour before he got here? Ted Garner came in for some wine gums before I closed the shop. Said he’d seen his van parked outside her cottage.’ Henry pulled a face.
    ‘Perhaps she was having some work done,’ said Asad, optimistically.
    ‘I’ve heard she often gets a man in.’ Henry adjusted his reading glasses.
    ‘Perhaps she needed her pipes rodded.’
    ‘And he’s meant to be very good at banging things in . . .’
    The two men began to giggle and battled to straighten their faces as the vicar looked up from his notes, his eyebrows raised in a weary question. Come on, his expression said. Work with me here.
    Asad sat up. ‘Not that we’re ones to gossip,’ he murmured.
    ‘Nope. I was just saying so to Mrs Linnet when she came in for some headache pills. That’s the second lot the old girl’s gone through in three days. No, you won’t get gossip in our shop.’
    Even though it was a funeral, Matt McCarthy was having trouble ensuring that his face bore the required mournfulness. He wanted to smile. He wanted to sing. Earlier that morning one of the roofers had twice asked him what he was so bloody happy about. ‘Lottery numbers come up, have they?’ he had said.
    ‘Something like that,’ Matt had replied, and disappeared for the fifteenth time, rolled-up plans in hand, to eye the front of the house.
    It couldn’t have worked out better. Laura had reached the end of her tether with the old goat and, he had to admit, Matt had been worried that last evening. If she had refused to keep seeing to Pottisworth’s meals, he would have been done for. In fact, so wonderful had the news been when Laura