The Keeper of Lost Things(72)
He smiled superciliously at the photographer who was prowling up and down the aisle between the rows of seats snapping any of the “mourners” whom the public might recognize. Portia had sold the rights for the occasion to a glossy magazine that any intelligent woman would only ever admit to reading at the hairdressers. The seats were mostly filled with Portia’s own friends, associates, and hangers-on, with the occasional celebrity punctuating the populace like a sparse sequin on an otherwise dull dress. Bomber’s friends were gathered at the back around Eunice and Gavin, like theatergoers in the cheap seats.
At the front of the room, on a table festooned in yet more flowers, stood the urn. It was flanked on one side by an enormous framed photograph of Bomber (“He’d never have chosen that one,” whispered Gavin; “his hair’s a complete mess”) and on the other by a photograph of Bomber and Portia as children, with Portia on the crossbar of Bomber’s bike.
“She had to get her face in the frame, didn’t she!” fumed Gavin. “She can’t even let him be the star at his own bloody memorial! But at least I managed to persuade her to invite some of Bomber’s real friends and include something in this whole damn fiasco that Bomber might actually have liked.”
Eunice was impressed. “How on earth did you manage that?”
Gavin grinned. “Blackmail. I threatened to go to the press if she didn’t. ‘Selfish Sister Scorns Brother’s Dying Wishes’ wasn’t the kind of headline her publisher would want to see, and she knows it. Speaking of which, where is Bruce the Bouffant?” He scanned the rows of heads in front of him searching for the offending barnet.
“Oh, I expect he’ll come with Portia,” Eunice replied. “What exactly are you doing?”
Gavin looked very pleased with himself.
“It’s a surprise, but I’ll give you a clue. You remember the wedding at the beginning of Love Actually where members of the band are hidden in the congregation?”
Before he could go any further, the music changed and Portia and her entourage swept down the aisle to “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana. She was wearing a white Armani trouser suit and a hat with a brim the size of a tractor wheel swathed in black, spotted net.
“Jesus Christ!” spluttered Gavin, “You’d think she was marrying Mick Jagger!”
He clutched Eunice’s arm, barely able to contain his hysteria. Eunice’s eyes filled with tears. But they were tears of laughter. She only wished that Bomber was here to share the fun. In fact, she wished she knew where Bomber was at all. She hadn’t told Gavin about it yet. She was waiting for the right moment. The service itself was strangely entertaining. A children’s choir from a local school—private and very exclusive—sang “Over the Rainbow,” Bruce read a eulogy on Portia’s behalf as though he were delivering a soliloquy from Hamlet, and an actress from an minor soap opera read a poem by W. H. Auden. Prayers were said by a retired bishop whose daughter was apparently an old friend of Portia’s. They were short and rather difficult to decipher on account of the whiskey that he’d had with his breakfast. Or perhaps for his breakfast.
And then it was Gavin’s turn.
He rose from his chair and stood in the aisle. Using the microphone he had concealed under his seat, he addressed the gathering with a theatrical flourish.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this one’s for Bomber!”
He sat back down and a frisson of anticipation shivered through the assembly. Gavin looked at Eunice and winked.
“Showtime!” he whispered.
There was a single, thrilling chord and then from somewhere at the back of the room, a man’s voice singing softly, accompanied only by a piano. The voice came from a staggeringly handsome man wearing an immaculate dinner suit and a subtle sweep of eyeliner, who was indeed his own special creation. The opening bars of “I Am What I Am” from La Cage aux Folles floated up into the hushed air and Gavin rubbed his hands together in delight.
As the singer made his way down the center of the room and the tempo of the song picked up, he too picked up . . . six showgirls seated strategically at the end of rows nearest the aisle. Each one stood in turn and shed a respectable coat to reveal a risqué costume, lavish jewels, and astonishing tail feathers. Eunice was amazed that they had been able to sit on them. By the time the gorgeous creature and his extraordinary entourage had reached the front of the room, the song was approaching its climax. He turned in front of the urn to face his audience and belted out the final lines while his chorus line high-kicked in unison behind him. With the final, defiant note, all but one person in the room erupted into a spontaneous standing ovation. Portia simply passed out.
Gavin basked unashamedly in his triumph all the way to the country churchyard in Kent where the biscuits were to be buried next to Grace and Godfrey. Portia had provided a cavalcade of black stretch limousines to transport everyone, but Eunice and Gavin chose to travel independently, listening to show tunes and eating salt and vinegar crisps in Gavin’s Audi convertible. Eunice felt slightly guilty about Godfrey and Grace being forced to share their grave with an urn of assorted biscuits under false pretenses, but she was hopeful that, given the circumstances, they would understand that it had been unavoidable. As they pulled into the very churchyard where Eunice had promised to carry out Bomber’s final wishes, Eunice confessed everything to Gavin.