‘Ah.’
‘See – I always think of you when I think of Stanley because of “Teresa”. And Jesse-Hughes.’
The crow surveyed Henry with appalled distaste: ‘Jesse-Hughes? The murderer?’
‘Oh I thought you’d have known … His last request – you must have known. I knew because of my dad but it was in the papers. Someone must have told you.’
A shake of the toppered head, a black gloved hand raised as if to silence Henry: ‘I’m sorry – I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’ He tried to put a laugh in his voice.
Henry grinned come off it, mock reproachfully, wagged a conspiratorial finger. He failed to recognise that the crow regarded him as a nuisance, or worse.
‘It’s all right,’ Henry assured him, ‘it’s just we don’t get so many celebrities here – it’s not Golders Green or Putney Vale.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I just wanted to tell you, when I saw you, tell you to your face how important “Teresa” has been in my life …’
The trade never reckoned crows to be anything more than vanity and fancy cuffs. Crows were not considered to be thoughtful mourners. Nor were they reckoned passionate. No tears, no throwing themselves into the oblong hole, lest they muddy their precious clothes (not hired).
The fourth time Henry mentioned “Teresa” this one, all cold corvine politesse, turned sibilant. Every S was a venomous dart. ‘This Teresa, this woman, who is this woman?’
Henry enjoyed a spot of the old joshing. Taking the Michael (thus) was the family way. It was the lime in the mortar that bound the Fowlers. Henry would normally have reckoned the crow to be a misogynist queen because of the way he uttered woman, with contempt. But Henry knew a piss-taking joker when he met one, and he respected the ruseful stratagem, admired the implicit knowledge of the game’s rules, warmed to the deadpan performance, resolved to play along with it but could not stem his giggling as he mocked: ‘So you don’t know the handbag shop on Holloway Road then?’
The crow’s jaw plummeted on puppeteer’s wires.
‘Erherch – you didn’t know I knew about it did you urchaf? Go on – tell me that Heinz is fifty-seven varieties.’
‘Heinz? Heinz … Holloway Road … hand, handbags?’
‘That’s you,’ Henry winked, archly.
‘That’s me?’ He grimaced, a first try at a grin.
Henry was getting through. He twinkled.
But the crow shook his head in pitiful incomprehension. He turned and strode with his metal heels clicking towards the cemetery chapel.
Henry caught up with him, grasped him by the upper arm: ‘Fair’s fair, I only wanted …’
The crow jerked his arm to secure its release. And then, in an eliding gesture, he briskly flicked at Henry’s face. Henry had not been slapped since haughty Miss Gordon had grown exasperated with his inability to memorise his three-times table when he was three times three, equals nine. The crow’s black glove stung. Henry clung to his hot jowl, gaped at his antagonist like a hurt animal.
After the ceremony whilst the mourners queued in the foggy late afternoon to shake the hands of the immediately bereaved, to kiss and hug them, Mr Fowler growled from a miserly slit at one end of his mouth: ‘I want to talk to you Henry. Later.’
Henry watched dusk crêpe the headstones and the balding branches. He looked out for the crow but didn’t see him among the people who by the time they reached the two weeping ashes had ceased to be mourners and were themselves again, free once more to exclude death from their quotidian routine, a freedom which Henry rarely enjoyed, he was born to death, it was his crust. It was death that paid for the ruggedly chunky gold earrings Naomi was wearing when she said: ‘You shouldn’t put up with him Henry. Why do you put up with him?’
Mr Fowler had just left.
‘He’s my father.’
‘So what. That doesn’t mean he can just talk to you like …’
Henry looked at her so angrily. She’d never seen that before, in all their months of marriage. Henry had never tried to make her cry and now here he was, doing it with his eyes and his tight jaw when all she wanted to do was to comfort him, cuddle him better after the protracted rebukes he had received. She’d heard every word through the thin walls of their first home where there were no secrets. They lived as one. They had lived as one till he made that face at her, till he told her it was none of her business, till he accused her of eavesdropping, of spying, of covert intrusion into a private matter. It was family business.
‘I am your family too.’
That is going too far, thought Henry. That is above and beyond. ‘In a different sense,’ he sneered.
Naomi sobbed. She spoke his name, lengthened it imploringly. ‘I’m your wife Henry – that’s family.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘And when someone speaks to you like that …’
‘Someone? Someone? You call my father someone … like, like he’d wandered in off the street. God.’
‘Henry you’re not a child. They may treat you like you’re still ten …’
‘He was right. That’s all there is to it. Nothing to do with being treated like a child. He was right. I fucked up. I am his son, and Fowler & Son does not fuck up. I was out of line. No question. He was right. So he gives me a bollocking and that’s that. I can take it. No big deal,’ he lied, stretching to save lost face with front rather than conviction. She had heard them. She had heard her husband repeat: ‘Bobby Camino … Bobby Camino … Bobby Camino …’
And she heard her father-in-law: ‘Even if he had been this Bob, Bobby … What sort of name’s that? Camino.’
‘Not his real name, Dad – Doug Truss s’matter of—’
‘I don’t care if he’s calling himself Dr Crippen and Ethel le Neve.’
‘Dad. You used to hum along to it. “Teresa, Tayrasor, Trasor, Tayrayayaysoar.” You used to sing along with me. I still got it – Top Rank.’
‘What? Henry – you’ve got to take control. He gave me his card. Norman Idmiston.’
‘It’s b’cause he was a one-hit wonder – he’s changed his name. Again.’
‘He’s a barrister. LLB, MA Oxon. Rope Court, Middle Temple.’
She heard nothing. Henry did not reply. He must have stood there with his mouth open.
‘We reflect society,’ Mr Fowler told him. ‘And I’m afraid my boy that the only section of society your behaviour this afternoon reflected was our friends the unwashed jackanapes, the great unwashed, the ingrates. The United States is our ally. You don’t burn your ally’s flag. We’d be speaking Germ—what I mean is we’ve got a lot to thank Uncle Sam for.’
‘I couldn’t agree more Dad.’
‘You’re not there as Henry Fowler, Henry. You’re there in a ritual role. Like the Queen … We have to preserve our mystery. That’ll be what shocked Mr Idmiston – not that you’d got him mixed up with this Bobby chap but that you broke the spell. That’s what it is – I’ve thought long and deep about our calling as you know Henry. And the one thing you cannot do under any circumstances is reveal what I like to call the human beneath the hat. If you were anyone else Henry you’d be looking at probation. And I’d dock your wages if you weren’t a newly married man. It’s not just Fowler & Son, it’s the whole profession –