For the next couple of days he did very little: entropy had poured lead into his bowels. His thoughts were circular, almost obsessional. In the private cinema of his skull he ran the home movies he’d accrued; from those first, uncertain glimpses of the private life of power to his later memories-almost too sharp, too detailed-of the man alone in a glassfloored cage; the dogs; the dark. Through most, though not all, the face of Carys appeared, sometimes quizzical, sometimes careless: often sealed from him, peering up between the bars of her downcast lashes as if envying him. Late at night, when the baby had fallen asleep in the flat below, and the only sound was the traffic on the High Road, he’d rerun those most private moments between them, moments too precious to be conjured up indiscriminately for fear their power to revive him wane with repetition.
For a time he had tried to forget her: it was more convenient that way. Now he clung to thoughts of that face, bereft. He wondered if he would see her again.
The Sunday newspapers all carried further reports on the death. The Sunday Times gave over the front of its Review section to a thumbnail sketch Of BRITAIN’S MOST MYSTERIOUS MILLIONAIRE, written by Lawrence Dwoskin, “longtime associate and confidant of England’s Howard Hughes. ” Marty read the piece through twice, unable to scan the printed words without hearing Dwoskin’s insinuating tone in his ear . . . he was in many ways a paragon, ” it read, “. – . though the almost hermitlike history of his latter years gave rise, inevitably, to reams of gossip and tittle-tattle, much of it hurtful to a man of Joseph’s sensibilities. Through all his years in public life, exposed to the scrutiny of a press that was not always beneficent, he never hardened himself to criticism, implied or explicit. To we few who knew him well he revealed a nature more susceptible to barbs than his outward show of indifference would ever have suggested. When he found rumors of misconduct or excess being circulated about him, the criticism bit deeply, especially as, since his beloved wife Evangeline’s death in 1965, he had become the most fastidious of sexual and moral beings. ”
Marty read this simpering cant with a bitter taste in his throat. The canonization of the old man had already begun. Soon, presumably, would come the biographies, authorized-and then bowdlerized-by his estate, turning his life into a series of flattering fables by which he would be remembered. The process nauseated him. Reading the platitudes in Dwoskin’s text he found himself fiercely and unpredictably defensive of the old man’s foibles, as though everything that had made him unique-made him real-now stood in danger of being whitewashed away.
He read Dwoskin’s article to its maudlin end and put it down. The only detail in its length that was of interest was mention of the funeral service, which was to be held in a small church at Minster Lovell the following day. The body was then to be cremated. Dangerous though it might be, Marty felt the need to go and pay his last respects.
52
In fact the service attracted so many onlookers, from casual observers to diehard scandal-sniffers, Marty’s presence went entirely unnoticed. The whole event had an unreal air to it, as if contrived to have the entire world know that the great man was dead. There were correspondents and photographers from all over Europe in addition to the clan from Fleet Street; and among the mourners some of the most famous faces in public life: politicians, professional pundits, captains of industry; even a smattering of movie stars whose only claim to fame was fame itself. The presence of so many celebrities attracted dedicated Peeping Toms in their hundreds. The small church, the yard around it, and the road around that were overrun. The service itself was relayed to those outside the building via loudspeakers; a curious, dislocating detail. The voice of the presiding clergyman sounded tinny and theatrical through the sound system, his eulogy punctuated by an amplified percussion of coughs and shufflings.
Marty didn’t like hearing the service this way, any more than he liked the tourists, ill-dressed for a funeral, who lolled on the gravestones and littered the grass, waiting with barely suppressed impatience for this tiresome interruption in their stargazing to be concluded. Whitehead had encouraged a dormant misanthropy in Marty: it now had a permanent place in his worldview. Looking around the graveyard at this heat-flushed, dull-eyed congregation he felt contempt well up in him. He itched to turn his back on the farrago and slip away. But the desire to see this final scene played out overwhelmed the desire to leave, so he waited in the throng while wasps buzzed at children’s sticky heads and a woman with the physique of a stick insect flirted with him from the top of a tomb.