The Dying Light by Henry Porter Read Free Book Online Page B

waste-baskets, and walked to the main door where two policemen stood with weapons undisguised. A woman police officer searched her bag and patted her down and she was handed an order of service with Eyam’s photograph and dates on the cover. She took a place halfway up the aisle. About two dozen people had already found places: Diana Kidd was at the front, fanning herself with the order of service. Kate read the short appreciation on the inside cover, recording Eyam’s time at Oxford with all its honours and awards, his work in think tanks and the civil service - the Home Office, the Research and Analysis Department at the Foreign Office, Number Ten and finally the Joint Intelligence Committee. It possessed no more feeling than an entry in Who’s Who.

    No mention of his two years in High Castle. No salutes to his intellectual distinction, the range of his interests, his flair, his largely hidden physical prowess. No colour, no observation, no humour. David Eyam was being sent on his way without love.

    Just before noon there was a respectful rush of mourners and by the time the bell fell silent well over a hundred people filled the pews around her. The clearing of throats and murmurs ceased; people stopped nodding to each other as the presence of the coffin - of death - imposed an awkward hush on the congregation. In the front row was the actress Ingrid Eyam, David’s stepmother and next of kin, who Kate concluded would inherit the entire fortune left by David’s father a few months before. She had gone the whole distance with a fitted black two-piece suit and pillbox hat with a springy black mesh veil, from which peeked a dubious tragic beauty. Behind her the mourners fell into three distinct groups: the people from the centre of government, who included two permanent secretaries, the home secretary Derek Glenny, a large man in his fifties with male-pattern baldness and narrow eyes, and one or two political faces she recognised from reading the English newspapers; Eyam’s friends from Oxford, most of whom Kate knew; and about thirty locals who, with unconscious respect for hierarchy, placed themselves in the pews at the rear. Mrs Kidd disrupted the pattern and was now looking anxiously about her, wondering if she was in a reserved seat.

    The vicar moved from consulting some musicians in front of the altar to the centre of the aisle, and began to address the mourners. ‘This is not to be a sad occasion,’ he said with a distinct whistle in his voice. ‘David’s instructions were clear - we are to rejoice in life and the living of it. The music and readings are all his choice, apart from the passage from Cymbeline , which will be read by Ingrid Eyam, David’s stepmother.’

    She thought it odd that someone in his forties and in perfect health would think of planning their own funeral. Eyam was an atheist, incurious about his own death, and as far as she knew had no reason to expect his life was about to end. But he was also more organised than anyone she had ever known and she could easily imagine him sitting down one Sunday night to put his wishes on paper. He had chosen well. A very good countertenor sang from Monteverdi’s The Legend of Orpheus , there were readings from Byron and Milton, and Ingrid Eyam read from Shakespeare - ‘Golden lads and lasses must/ as chimney sweepers, come to dust.’ It was all perfectly pleasant but none of it was moving, and no one got near Eyam. When the tributes followed from a professor of eonomics at Oxford and the home secretary Derek Glenny, they seemed to her to be going through the motions. Glenny puffed himself out, fiddled with his glasses, gazed with satisfaction around the church and told them as much about himself as Eyam. He ended with, ‘David had that essential gift for a government servant: he understood power and he knew how to use it. This was a rare and good man. He will be missed greatly.’

    Kate glanced at her watch and was just wishing the whole farce