Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death (The Grantchester Mysteries)

coming next month.’
    Sidney sighed. As midnight chimed over Soho he realised that it was going to take a long time to convert Amanda to the wonders of jazz.
     
    The day of Claudette’s funeral was one of heat and impending storm. Sidney had been informed that there would be a procession from the Johnson household to the crematorium and was surprised to see not only the mourners waiting outside, but also a brass band and half the jazz community of London. As the white coffin emerged from the house, held by pallbearers who had taken off their hats, the band struck up the old spiritual ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee.’
    Three men led from the front with snare drums followed by trombones, saxophone and tuba; then the clarinets, and trumpets, and a bass drummer bringing up the rear.
    Sidney’s brother Matt came over and spoke directly into Sidney’s ear over the volume of the music. ‘It’s a jazz funeral, New Orleans style. We’re all here. Three-line whip.’
    ‘Whose idea was this?’ Sidney asked.
    ‘It was mine. We’ve even persuaded Gloria Dee to sing at the service.’
    ‘That must have taken some doing.’
    ‘I used charm. Apparently it runs in the family.’
    Sidney felt suddenly nervous about his ability to say a few appropriate words at the ceremony. He was used to speaking at country funerals and in churches where the congregation were expecting the traditions of the Anglican Communion. A jazz funeral was altogether different.
    He wondered what Martha Headley would make of all this. She was the Grantchester blacksmith’s wife who sometimes helped out on the organ at funerals but was only confident of her ability to play two tunes, seeing the coffin into the church with Mendelssohn’s ‘Song without Words’, and out with ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’.
    Phil Johnson, Johnny and Jennifer led the mourners. Behind them, three women were holding a large floral tribute that spelled out the name CLAUDETTE. As the procession made its way through the south London streets, passers-by took off their hats as a sign of respect to the dead, remembering those they had lost themselves.
    Gloria Dee had been waiting in the crematorium. She stood next to a baby grand piano and sang ‘Amazing Grace’ as the coffin was brought in. She sang unaccompanied, with such poise and intensity that at one point Sidney thought he could hear the timbers in the roof vibrate in response to the force of her voice.
    Once the congregation had settled, he read the opening prayer.
    ‘Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.’
    Jennifer sat between Johnny and his father, with Matt Chambers just behind her. Sidney found it disorientating to see his brother and sister as members of a different family. A few rows behind them he noticed the rest of Gloria Dee’s Quartet: Jay Jay Lion, Milo Masters and Tony Sanders with his girlfriend Liza. Justin the driver sat behind them at the end of a row on his own.
    After the prayers, the congregation gave a full rendition of ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’. It felt a long way from the hymn singing of Grantchester.
    Sidney climbed the three steps into the pulpit to give his address. He preached about the sin and darkness of the world and the need for light in that darkness. Claudie Johnson had been one such light.
    ‘Amen,’ a man called out.
    Sidney told them how Claudette was a girl who carried her goodness into the lives of others; and that this was the task of all us, no matter how weak or strong our faith. We needed to try and leave a better world than the one into which we were born.
    This was a moment for reflection, he said; for patience and silence and time. We must be ready not only to offer words of comfort but also to listen to words of grief. Not even the firmest faith was enough to insulate us from the pain of loss, or from the sense that, with the death of someone dear to us, our own life had lost its meaning. Time had to take its course, and in that time we should recognise that where there is sorrow there is holy ground.
    Claudette was too soon returned to earth, he continued, but she would live on both as a memory and as an example to all who had known her. There is always a future for our deepest loves.
    He ended by quoting Byron’s poem ‘To Thyrza’:
     
    ‘I know not if I could have borne
    To see thy beauties