‘I don’t think it’s appropriate to have a party like that on a night after a funeral, do you, Nanny? Though I think Letitia might enjoy a little talk,’ she added.
‘She’s your chum, isn’t she? I would have thought you’d have had a little talk with her yourself.’
‘I did!’ Tiffany protested. ‘But I don’t think she believed me. And you’ve had at least three husbands, Nanny!’
Nanny Ogg stared at her for a moment and then said, ‘That’s quite a lot of conversation, I suppose. All right. But what about the young man? When’s his stag night going to be?’
‘Ah, I’ve heard of those! It’s where his friends get him drunk, take him a long way away, tie him to a tree and then … I think a bucket of paint and a brush is involved sometimes, but usually they throw him in the pigsty. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, the stag night is always much more interesting than the hen night,’ said Nanny, a look of mischief in her eye. ‘Has the lucky groom got any chums?’
‘Well, there are some nobby lads from other posh families, but the only people he really knows live here in the village. We all grew up together, you see? And none of them would dare throw the Baron in a pigsty!’
‘What about your young man over there?’ Nanny gestured towards Preston, who was standing nearby. He always seemed to be standing nearby.
‘Preston?’ said Tiffany. ‘I don’t think he knows the Baron very well. And in any case—’ She stopped and thought, Young man? She turned and looked at Nanny, who was standing with her hands behind her back and face turned towards the ceiling with the expression of an angel, although admittedly one who might have met a few demons in her time. And that was Nanny all over. When it came to affairs of the heart – or indeed, of any other parts – you couldn’t fool Nanny Ogg.
But he’s not my young man, she insisted to herself. He’s just a friend. Who is a boy.
Preston stepped forward and removed his helmet in front of Nanny. ‘I fear, madam, that it would be against the rules for me as a military man to lay a hand on my commanding officer,’ he said. ‘Were it not for that, I would do so with alacrity.’
Nanny nodded appreciatively at the polysyllabic response, and gave Tiffany a wink that made her blush to the soles of her boots. Nanny Ogg’s grin was now so wide you could fit it onto a pumpkin. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ she said. ‘I can see this place needs a little fun. Thank goodness I’m here!’
Nanny Ogg had a heart of gold, but if you were easily shocked then it was best to stick your fingers in your ears when she said anything. Yet there had to be common sense, didn’t there? ‘Nanny, we’re at a funeral !’
But her tone of voice would never make Nanny Ogg swerve. ‘Was he a good man?’
Tiffany hesitated only for a moment. ‘He grew into goodness.’
Nanny Ogg noticed everything. ‘Oh yes, your Granny Aching taught him his manners, I believe. But he died a good man, then? Good. Will he be remembered with fondness?’
Tiffany tried to ignore the lump in her throat, and managed to say, ‘Oh yes, by everybody.’
‘And you saw to it that he died well? Kept the pain away?’
‘Nanny, if I say it myself, he had a perfect death. The only better death would have been not to die.’
?
??Well done,’ said Nanny. ‘Did he have a favourite song, do you know?’
‘Oh yes! It’s “The Larks They Sang Melodious”,’ said Tiffany.
‘Ah, I reckon that’s the one we call “Pleasant and Delightful” back home. Just follow me, will you, and we’ll soon get them in the right mood.’
And with that Nanny Ogg grabbed a passing waiter by the shoulder, took a full flagon from his tray, jumped up onto a table, as lively as a girl, and shouted for silence in a voice as brisk as a sergeant-major. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! To celebrate the good life and easeful passing of our late friend and Baron, I have been asked to sing his favourite song. Do join in with me if you’ve got the breath!’
Tiffany listened, enthralled. Nanny Ogg was a one-woman masterclass, or rather mistressclass, in people. She treated perfect strangers as if she had known them for years, and somehow they acted as if she really had. Dragged along, as it were, by an extremely good singing voice for one old woman with one tooth, perplexed people were raising their voices beyond a mumble by the second line, and by the end of the first verse were harmonizing like a choir, and she had them in her hand. Tiffany wept, and saw through the tears a little boy in his new tweed jacket that smelled of wee, walking with his father under different stars.
And then she saw the glisten of tears on the faces, including the faces of Pastor Egg and even the Duchess. The echoes were of loss and remembrance, and the hall itself breathed.
I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people. I should have learned how not to sing like a turkey …
The song had finished, and people were looking around sheepishly at one another, but Nanny Ogg’s boot was already making the table rock. ‘Dance, dance, the shaking of the sheets. Dance, dance, when you hear the piper playing,’ she sang.
Tiffany thought, Is this the right song for a funeral? And then she thought, Of course it is! It’s a wonderful tune and it tells us that one day all of us will die but – and this is the important thing – we are not dead yet.
And now Nanny Ogg had jumped off the table, grabbed a hold of Pastor Egg, and as she spun him round, she sang, ‘Be assured no preacher can keep death away from any man,’ and he had the grace to smile and dance with her.