by Bev Spicer
THE UNDERTAKER’S SON
by
B. A. Spicer
cover design
by
Sue Michniewicz
Second edition copyright © 2015 B. A. Spicer
Original copyright © 2013 B. A. Spicer
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission, in writing, from the author.
Other titles by B. A. Spicer:
‘My Grandfather’s Eyes’ (dark, psychological drama)
‘A Good Day for Jumping’ (mystery and suspense on the island of Crete)
‘The Undertaker’s Son’ (mystery and suspense in France)
‘Angels’ (a metaphysical short story)
'Strings' (science fiction short story)
‘Peaches in the Attic’ (a rather disturbing short story)
‘Flying’ (literary fiction short story)
‘Thirteen’ (a collection of odd tales)
Titles by Bev Spicer:
‘One Summer in France’: two girls in a tent (a Bev and Carol adventure Book 1)
‘Bunny on a Bike’: Playboy croupiers in 80s London (a Bev and Carol adventure Book 2)
‘Stranded in the Seychelles’: teachers in paradise (a Bev and Carol adventure Book 3)
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
With special thanks to Carrie for her careful editing, to Sue for her insightful cover design, to Barbara, Karenne, and Jude for their support and honest comments, and to my wonderful husband, Al, who provides constant support, wisdom and encouragement.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
Fifty-one
Fifty-two
Fifty-three
Fifty-four
Fifty-five
Fifty-six
Fifty-seven
Fifty-eight
Fifty-nine
Sixty
Sixty-one
Sixty-two
Sixty-three
Sixty-four
Sixty-five
Sixty-six
Sixty-seven
Sixty-eight
Sixty-nine
Seventy
Seventy-one
Seventy-two
Seventy-three
Seventy-four
One
The man who stood on the coastal path was unremarkable. He was of average height and build, with thin mousy hair and a longish pointed nose. People put him at forty, but he was in fact thirty-four. He was considered plain by those who knew him, quiet to the point of alienating, and had never been in love. Now, he stared out to sea but watched instead a scene from his past, when he had been a boy; the kind of boy who stood alone in the school playground, who lacked friends but attracted enemies.
This present memory came to him with a clarity that stirred a kind of nostalgia inside him that troubled him. He was not accustomed to pleasant reminiscing:
The body lay under a thin white sheet. In the corner of a large, sparsely furnished room Claude watched his father putting on clear plastic gloves. It was cold, and the bright lights made it seem colder. He wished he had put on an extra sweater.
When his father was ready, Claude stood back a little, waiting for the first glimpse. He knew that it was a man, a tourist from the south, killed in a traffic accident.
‘Are you ready?’ asked his father, smiling.
‘Yes, father.’
‘Very well.’ He pulled back the sheet.
The man’s hair was dark and slicked back, apart from a strand that fell forward, partially adhering to a sticky-looking wound above his left eye. His complexion was already bluish, lacking lustre. He was wearing casual but expensive clothes and, where his skin was exposed, he was tanned with the honey glow that you saw on television advertisements. His shoes had leather soles with lettering around the edges and fine stitching.
As Claude helped his father to undress the corpse, he imagined the accident, the screeching of tyres and the explosion of metal; the look on the man’s face before the brutal impact that had left him suddenly lifeless.
When the man lay naked, Claude’s father said what he always said, ‘In death we are all equal, rich or poor, old or young.’
Claude liked the way the murmured words reached inside his mind, like a prayer or a blessing.
‘Pass me the scalpel, will you?’ his father asked. ‘Unless you would like to try?’
Claude was timid and shook his head.
‘No matter.’ His father’s eyes were full of kindness. ‘Another time, another time.’
Then, he took the instrument and made an incision in the dead man’s neck. Deftly, he inserted a tube and attached the other end to a large container of embalming fluid.
Claude did not ask questions. He understood the process, although it was not what held his interest.
He shivered violently in the cold, wishing again that he had dressed more warmly. He didn’t usually forget, but this time he had been in the garden playing, and in the sunshine it had been pleasantly warm.
‘You can run and fetch a sweater,’ said his father. ‘I will do the face when you get back. Tell mother we will be ready for dinner at the usual time.’
Inside the house, there was the warm moist smell of washing, vying with the meaty aroma of the pasta sauce, and, on the sideboard, shone a fresh green salad with small ripe tomatoes and pale flakes of parmesan cheese. Claude felt the first stirrings of hunger.
In his room, he quickly found what he was looking for and ran back through the kitchen, his soft shoes making hardly a sound.
‘Where are you going?’
He did not like to tell his mother. ‘Outside! We will be in for dinner at the usual time!’ he called, realising that she would know from the ‘we’ that he was going to help his father, and cursing under his breath.
Back inside the one-storey building, which stood in the deep, cool shadows at the bottom of the garden of his mother’s house, there was a buzz from the lights overhead as he entered, and he saw his father from the back this time, bent over the body, his white coat luminous.
‘Have you started yet, father?’
‘I said that I would wait, and I have. Come to the other side and we can begin. Put on your gloves.’
Claude pulled on the smaller glov
es, bought specially for him, taking longer than he should because of his haste, grinning and jumping up and down a little on the spot. At last they were on.
After his father had supervised the washing of the man’s face, he allowed his son to lather and shave it – delighting in the care and attention the boy took. The corpse’s lips were cracked and a little dehydrated so, after the usual moisturising, Claude applied a little soft wax to even out the surface. The lips were firm and moved like rubber, displaying pale gums and a good set of teeth. When Claude had finished, his father helped him insert the plastic discs, which kept the shape of the eyes, under the eyelids, and then he mixed up glue to seal the eyes and mouth shut.
The body already looked healthier, more lifelike and yet not alive. Working from a photograph, it would be simple to render the man as fresh-faced in death as he had been before the accident.
With his index finger, Claude took a little foundation and began to dab it gently on the bruised flesh around the wound, which soon began to take on a natural fleshy tone. His father had cleaned out the dirt and used tape to close it.
They worked closely together, their arms brushing one against the other, making them smile momentarily. Claude listened to his father’s breathing and caught the smell of garlic from his mouth.
By the time they had finished, the man looked as though he had a small, almost invisible scar on an otherwise flawless complexion.
‘He was a handsome man,’ said Signor Cousteau, holding up the photograph they had worked from. ‘More handsome in death than in life, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, father,’ replied Claude, sincerely.
In the room, there was a perfect silence that brought out the clarity of the father and son’s voices.
‘Put a little rouge on the cheeks. That’s right, and a little on the nose. Yes. Now, on the forehead, and just a little on the chin. Perfect!’
‘Shall I put the lipstick on now, father?’
‘Do you think he needs it?’
‘Maybe a little,’ said the boy, more because he wanted to finish the job, not leaving anything out.
‘Very well. Just a little.’
The body was bruised where the seatbelt had been, but the family and friends would not see the torso of the deceased. His hands would need some attention, though, when he had been dressed.
A church bell rang in the distance.
‘Is it time?’ asked his father.
‘We have ten minutes more.’
It was too late for a wedding.
‘We will finish after dinner in that case. It is always better not to rush. Do you have homework tonight?’
The boy hung his head a little. ‘Yes, father.’
‘Then I will come alone. Thank you for your assistance, my son.’
Claude looked up quickly and smiled at his father, who pretended to be busy clearing away the instruments he’d finished using.
The lights buzzed and flickered. But neither Claude nor his father paid them any attention.
After taking off their gloves and washing their hands with antiseptic soap, they left the building and went up towards the main house in order to take a shower and be ready for their meal. Claude put an arm around his father’s waist and felt the weight and warmth of a large hand on his shoulder.
The garden was cooler now that the sun had gone below the tops of the trees. It was different out in the fresh air, where people lived and moved. More complicated thoughts invaded Claude’s head and he wished he could go back and finish the work they had started, so that he could avoid the distractions that now assaulted his mind.
His mother was draining pasta when they entered the large traditional kitchen where she herself had grown up. She was still a beauty, it was said, and could have married into a grand Italian family. Instead, she had fallen in love with a Frenchman, who had never quite managed to make the required transition from one culture to another. He had come to Italy, for her, but his heart had never left France. So the story went. Claude knew the fairytale had not quite come true, but he was too young to understand why. His wife’s house. That was what his father called it, even after all the years he had lived in it.
Involuntarily, an idea came to Claude: he wondered what it would be like to see his mother on the long, narrow table, covered by a thin white sheet. Drawing it back, he would do his best to take away the harshness in her face, to soften her expression and make her look happy.
‘Be quick! The pasta will be ruined. Why can you never be on time!’
Neither father nor son replied, but hurried upstairs to wash.
On the coastal path, Claude allowed a smile to spread across his face. Exactly which memory was the author of such a pleasant reaction, was impossible to surmise.
Two
It had never been Martha’s choice to live alone. After seven years of marriage and just before her thirtieth birthday, her husband had fled with a sixteen-year-old Spanish girl he had met in a bar while they were on holiday in Barcelona. Her balding, flatulent, grumbling husband had deserted her. Martha considered herself a very fortunate woman indeed! The realisation that he had left her for his own reasons, she had chosen to ignore.
It was just after nine, and she turned to see the back of her neighbour’s head with a mixture of surprise and indignation. Although they had known each other several months, somehow it was a little shocking to see another head on the pillow next to hers when she awoke. A part of her still expected a vision of chins and jowls, gently wobbling in time with the soft grunting she had become used to over the years she had spent with Marcus. At times like these she missed the familiarity of her faithless husband and recalled with affection his enigmatic style, his quirky sense of humour. But such nostalgic indulgences were shrinking day by day, replaced by a mounting and increasingly fierce independence. She would not allow a second person into her life in any permanent capacity, for the moment, at least.
While Michel was there, she would enjoy him on her own terms. She slid a hand onto his stomach and gently kissed his neck. She liked the smell of him and the relative firmness of his body; it was wonderful to wake up to a man who stirred her blood.
‘Good morning, my darling,’ murmured Michel, extravagantly.
‘Good morning.’ Martha wished that he would not use such excessive terms of endearment.
She held him loosely and wondered whether to move her body a little closer to his. Outside, the sky was blue and the sun shone into the bedroom, illuminating the wall she had painted in ‘dusky pink’ and glinting on the frame of her large Art Deco mirror, a rare find. It would be another perfect day in Charente-Maritime.
Michel left her panting and uncomfortably hot, before going down to the kitchen to make coffee. She heard the front door open and close as he went out to the boulangerie. He stopped whistling to say ‘bonjour’ to Madame Bonnard, who would be gratified to have caught him leaving the Englishwoman’s house at such an hour. Martha imagined the tightness of her neighbour’s jaw and the clicking of her tongue, her small eyes narrowing with delight. No doubt the whole village would be informed of the goings on in the square before lunchtime.
Michel didn’t care. He didn’t give a damn. ‘Je m’en fou!’ he had said. And she had loved the way that he said it, because it made her feel like a teenager again. Now, however, she wondered whether she should be concerned, just a little, about her reputation. It was all very well for Michel, after all, he was a man and men were not judged for their romantic entanglements. Martha frowned and decided that she didn’t know what she should or shouldn’t do and couldn’t be bothered to think about it anyway. Let them gossip!
She was roused again a little later by Michel moving around in the kitchen. Her kitchen. She had not heard him come back. Time had slipped by and she had not noticed. She listened as he filled her kettle (with too much water), lit the gas on her stove (leaving the dead match on the top, no doubt), spooned in the ground coffee (spilling it on the sideboard) and, not warming the cups, added milk
from the fridge to her coffee. The bedroom curtains moved lightly in the breeze and Martha wished that he would go home, so that she could have the day to herself.
A child called to its mother in the square.
Would she ever have children of her own? Martha looked into the future and pictured a small girl clutching a schoolbag, or skipping, or singing nursery rhymes.
‘Coffee! Cherie, tu viens?’
The image vanished.
Overcoming the delicious indolence that had settled upon her, she threw back the covers and put on her robe.
In the bathroom, with its beautiful exposed stone walls, its original beams and slate floor tiles, she washed her face and ran her fingers through her hair, coveting a newfound satisfaction that came from owning such an exquisite home.
She went downstairs and out into the garden, bypassing the kitchen. It was early in the year, and she looked forward to seeing the daily changes, as the healthy plants grew and spread.
It was not always easy to remember what was what in the flowerbeds or where she had put things the previous year. But sometimes the surprises were better than knowing.
Next to the climbing rose, with its delicate new growth, the wood store stood, depleted now. Logs would need to be ordered, but not yet. The chimney would need sweeping, too.
As gentle thoughts like these ran through her mind, never lingering long, Martha watched the bees sipping nectar from her spring flowers, disproportionately pleased with their presence in her garden.
‘What’s new?’ Michel arrived with the coffee and a big smile.
‘Oh, I think I might have too many tomatoes again this year.’ She took the cup, kissed him and felt the warmth of the sun on her face.
‘Not possible. Tomatoes are never too many!’ he laughed.
‘I can make chutney, I suppose.’
‘My God! No more chutney. What is wrong with you English? You want to put sugar in everything, and chilli. Why?’
He was always laughing at her English habits, but at the same time, she knew that he hated the chutney, stacked and labelled in the pantry, spicy and tangy-sweet.
