Reginald Hill: Child's Play

It had been an irony unappreciated by John Huby that in the old church of St Wilfrid, what he had sat down under was a brass wall plaque reading In Loving Memory of Second Lieutenant Alexander Lomas Huby, missing in action in Italy, May 1944.

It was Sam Huby, the boy’s father, who had caused the plaque to be erected in 1947. For two years he had tolerated his wife’s refusal to believe her son was dead, but there had to be an end. For him the installation of the plaque marked it. But not for Gwendoline Huby. Her conviction of Alexander’s survival had gone underground for a decade and then re-emerged, bright-eyed and vigorous as ever, on her husband’s death. She made no secret of her belief, and over the years in the eyes of most of her family and close acquaintances, this dottiness had become as unremarkable as, say, a wart on the chin, or a stutter.

To find at last that it was this disregarded eccentricity which had robbed him of his merited inheritance was almost more than John Huby could bear.

Lexie had continued, ‘If he doesn’t claim it by April 4th in the year 2015, which would be his ninetieth birthday, that’s when it goes to charity. There’s three of them, by the way …’

But John Huby was not in the mood for charity.

‘2015?’ he groaned. ‘I’ll be ninety then too, if I’m spared, which doesn’t seem likely. I’ll fight the will! She must’ve been crazy, that’s plain as the nose on your face. All that money … How much is it, Lexie? Did Mr sodding Thackeray tell you that?’

Lexie said, ‘It’s hard to be exact, Dad, what with share prices going up and down and all that …’

‘Don’t try to blind me with science, girl. Just because I let you go and work in that bugger’s office instead of stopping at home and helping your mam in the pub doesn’t make you cleverer than the rest of us, you’d do well to remember that! So none of your airs, you don’t understand all that stuff anyway! Just give us a figure.’

‘All right, Dad,’ said Lexie Huby meekly. ‘Mr Thackeray reckons that all told it should come to the best part of a million and a half pounds.’

And for the first and perhaps the last time in her life, she had the satisfaction of reducing her father to silence.

‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ …’

Ella Keech’s gaze was not in fact focused on some beatific vision of an ascending soul, as Mrs Windibanks had theorized. Myopic she was, it was true, but her long sight was perfectly sound and she was staring over the clerical shoulder into the green shades of the churchyard beyond. Money and descendants being alike in short supply, most of the old graves were sadly neglected, though in the eyes of many, long grass and wild flowers became the lichened headstones rather more than razed turf and cellophaned wreaths could hope to. But it was no such elegiac meditation which occupied Miss Keech’s mind.

She was looking to where a pair of elderly yews met over the old lychgate forming a tunnel of almost utter blackness in the bright sun. For several minutes past she had been aware of a vague lightness in that black tunnel. And now it was moving; now it was taking shape; now it was stepping out like an actor into the glare of the footlights.

It was a man. He advanced hesitantly, awkwardly, between the gravestones. He wore a crumpled, sky-blue, lightweight suit and he carried a straw hat before him in both hands, twisting it nervously. Around his left sleeve ran a crepe mourning band.

Miss Keech found that he became less clear the closer he got. He had thick grey hair, she could see that, and its lightness formed a striking contrast with his suntanned face. He was about the same age as John Huby, she guessed.

And now it occurred to her that the resemblance did not end there.

And it also occurred to her that perhaps she was the only one present who could see this approaching man…

‘… the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore. Amen.’

As the respondent amens were returned (with the London Lomas party favouring a as in ‘play’ and the Old Mill Huby set preferring ah as in ‘father’) it became clear that the fellowship of the newcomer was not so ghostly as to be visible only to Miss Keech. Others were looking at him with expressions ranging from open curiosity in the face of Eden Thackeray to vacuous benevolence on the face of the vicar.

But it took John Huby to voice the general puzzlement.

‘Wha’s yon bugger?’ he asked no one in particular.

The newcomer responded instantly and amazingly.

Sinking on his knees, he seized two handfuls of earth and, hurling them dramatically into the grave, threw back his head and cried, ‘Mama!’

There were several cries of astonishment and indignation; Mrs Windibanks looked at the newcomer as if he’d whispered a vile suggestion in her ear, Miss Keech fainted slowly into the reluctant arms of Eden Thackeray, and John Huby, perhaps viewing this as a Judas kiss, cried, ‘Nah then! Nah then! What’s all this? What’s all this? Is this another one of thy fancy tricks, lawyer? Is that what it is, eh? By God, it’s time someone gave thee a lesson in how decent folks behave at a funeral!’

So saying, and full of selfless eagerness to administer this lesson, he began to advance on Eden Thackeray. The lawyer, finding himself in the Court of Last Resources, attempted to ward him off with the person of Miss Keech. Sidestepping to get at his proper prey, John Huby’s foot found space where it looked for terra firma. For a second he teetered on one leg; then with a cry in which fear was now indistinguishable from rage, he plunged headlong into the open grave.

Everyone froze, then everyone moved. Some pressed forward to offer assistance, some pressed back to summon it. Ruby Huby leapt into the grave to succour her husband and landed with both knees in his kidneys. Eden Thackeray, no longer needing Miss Keech for aegis, released her and was then constrained to grab her again as she too started the easy descent into the pit. The vicar stopped smiling comfortingly and Rod Lomas looked across the grave, caught Lexie Huby’s eye, and laughed aloud.

Gradually order was restored and the unquiet grave emptied of all but its proper inmate. It was only now that most of those present realized that at some point in the confusion the catalystic stranger had vanished. Once it was ascertained that the only permanent damage was to John Huby’s blue serge, Miss Keech, still leaning heavily on the arm of Eden Thackeray, signalled that the obsequies were back on course by announcing that a cold collation awaited those who cared to return with her to Troy House.

Walking away from the graveside, Rod Lomas found himself alongside Lexie Huby. Stooping to her ear, he murmured, ‘Nothing in Aunt Gwen’s life, or her fortune for that matter, became her like the leaving of it, wouldn’t you say?’

She looked at him in alarmed bewilderment. He smiled. She frowned and hurried on to join her sister who glanced back, caught the young man’s eye, and blushed beneath her blusher at his merry respondent wink.

The façade of the Kemble was a mess. To rescue the old theatre from bingo in these hard times; to renovate, refurbish and restore it; to divert public money and extort private sponsorship to finance it; these had been acts of faith or of lunacy depending on where you stood, and the division in the local council had not been on straight party lines.

But the will had been great and the work had been done. Creamy grey stone had emerged from beneath a century of grime and Shakespeare’s numbers had triumphed over the bingo-caller’s.

But now the huge eye catching posters which advertised the Grand Opening Production of Romeo and Juliet had been ripped down, and what caught the eye now were aerosoled letters in primary colours taking stone, glass and woodwork in their obscene stride.