Last Rights Read Online Free

younger sister for each and every sign of what she would call ‘coarseness’ – heavy makeup or
     too much perfume.
    ‘I’m going to work,’ Aggie said. She was indeed heavily made up now and her hair was encased in one of those net snoods the
     girls like so much. She looked, to me, as if she would be more at home in Hollywood than London. To my way of thinking, it
     takes courage to make yourself sobright outside when you feel so rotten within.
    But as Aggie left, I could see the word form in Nan’s mind – ‘slut’: written all over her face it was. And what a face. Bitterness
     is a horrible thing. It’s not her fault. Again, it’s to do with the way she looks. People made comments when she was a youngster
     and she hid herself away, looking after first Dad, then Mum and me and Aggie’s two little ’uns when they were still at home.
     Aggie might be glamorous now, but Nan, with her long black hair and tiny delicate features, had been beautiful. But that was
     a long time ago. Now she’s a spinster, a bitter one, and although I’ve always loved her, her spite is difficult to bear. I
     hate the way she disapproves of any fun Aggie might have. It’s not wrong for a girl to wear makeup or even like a drink once
     in a while – especially not in these times.
    ‘Oh, well,’ I said, after I’d finished what I hoped was enough of the food to satisfy the Duchess, ‘I’d best get on.’
    I went downstairs into the parlour and spent a bit of time knocking brick-dust off the black curtains in the front window.
     A lot of windows had gone out opposite so there was a lot of glass all over the place. Doris, breathless and red-faced after
     her walk over from her home in Stepney, said, ‘Looks like a bleedin’ snow scene out there.’
    And it did. In fact, if you looked at the pub on the corner from the right angle, it almost looked like something you’d see
     on a Christmas card.
    Gordon Evans’s funeral was what has come, even in sucha short space of time, to pass for normal. Tired, hand-picked flowers, a coffin scarred by millions of tiny glass shards and
     Walter, reeking of booze, swaying gently by the graveside. I suppose I should count myself lucky he sets off on the proper
     foot, the left, when he’s bearing, even if he is three sheets to the wind. But it isn’t good. Dad would have died of shame
     had he still been around. After all, when Hancock’s started, funerals were probably as elaborate as funerals had ever been
     – with the exception of the Egyptians, Tutankhamun and all that. When old Francis died in 1913, Dad sent him off in a hearse
     pulled by four black horses followed by mutes carrying ostrich feather wands and a procession of friends and family in the
     deepest mourning imaginable. You used to see so many flowers at funerals before the Great War. But, then, during and what
     seemed like for years afterwards, there were so many dead there weren’t enough flowers in the world for all of them.
    Having said that, I did perform one big old-fashioned do back in late March. For an old bookies’ runner, it was, Sid Nye.
     The bookie coughed up for the funeral – he could – but Sid had been popular with his many customers in and around the Abbey
     Arms pub so a lot of people wanted to pay their respects with heavy mourning, flowers and what-have-you. Funny to think how
     hot it was back then. Hard on the heels of that terrible winter, the diggers had a real problem getting old Sid’s grave dug
     in time. Funny weather. But maybe that’s what you get around wars. In Flanders the locals used to say that they’d never seen
     so much rain and mud, not in living memory.Thinking about it now, Sid Nye’s funeral wasn’t just the last big do I’ve done, it was also the last normal one. Ever since
     then there’ve been few flowers and much talk, not of the deceased but of war and how we all think we’re going to survive.
    Still the widow Evans was grateful for what we did, and their two