Dark Undertakings

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Nobody broke any regulations,’ Sid interposed. ‘What’re you talking about?’

  ‘That doctor ought never to have written up a death certificate,’ Drew insisted doggedly. Even to himself, he was beginning to sound like a cracked record.

  ‘Just give it a rest, boy, or you’ll have us all down on you,’ advised Vince. ‘Enough’s enough, now. The funeral’s arranged by this time, and you’d only upset everyone if they could hear you going on this way. If you’re going to be like this every time there’s a dodgy doctor’s paper, you’ll be in the doghouse with a whole lot of people, just see if you’re not.’

  Drew gave this some thought. ‘You make it sound like a – well, like some sort of mafia.’

  He looked round at the others, wondering whether they’d laugh. He rather hoped they would. But all the faces were serious.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Vince. ‘It’s not like that at all. Nobody’s out to break the law. They just want an easy life, save some time. I don’t know what’s got into you, but whatever it is, you’d best get rid of it, quick. Right?’

  Drew scowled, but said no more. Vince had a point. It was what everyone was saying. He could see there was sense in it. And yet – nobody could be certain that Jim Lapsford had died of a heart attack. And that was not right. Especially when he was to be cremated; there’d never be any hope of putting things straight once that was done with. He was both glad and scared at the thought of the little bag of stomach contents tucked in his jacket pocket, back in the changing room. The prospect of finding it full of some unmistakable toxin, which he could flourish with a triumphant ‘I told you so!’ was appealing, despite the implications.

  It seemed a good idea to change the subject. ‘Hey, Sid,’ he threw over his shoulder, twisting to glimpse the other man’s face, ‘what happened about your Susie? Did you hear what the problem was yesterday?’

  Sid stared antagonistically at him. ‘You know,’ Drew insisted. ‘The boyfriend trouble.’ He watched the other man’s frown, and gradual comprehension.

  ‘Oh, that,’ he said dismissively. ‘She hasn’t said anything about it.’

  Drew pressed on. ‘But you don’t like the boyfriend, do you?’

  ‘She could do better. She’s wasted there.’ The tight lips made it clear that there was nothing more to say.

  Pauline finally left Monica on her own halfway through the afternoon. ‘I’ll be all right,’ the new widow assured her friend. ‘I’ll give Phil a call and tell him what we’ve decided. He can help me choose a hymn.’

  Pauline hugged her, in a long squeeze that stopped Monica’s breath. ‘Anything I can do – just shout,’ she said. ‘That’s what friends are for. If you’re sure you’ll be okay, then there are a few things I’m supposed to be doing. Always somebody to see …’ She stopped herself.

  ‘Thanks again for coming with me. You’re being a real friend.’

  ‘I was glad to do it,’ Pauline reassured her. ‘I’ll see you soon, then.’

  When she’d gone, Monica sat for a few minutes in the lounge, thinking about her friend. It was a lopsided relationship. Pauline was always the one giving time, attention, a listening ear, and Monica had always been the taker, the one who needed help; the one who was flawed. There was something slightly demeaning in the way her friend always went straight for the weak points in her life: the trouble with David, the hollowness of her marriage, the sheer awfulness of being fifty. All year she had moaned to Pauline about the oncoming birthday and its ghastly implications. In vain had Pauline pointed out the multitude of glamorous fifty-year-old women at every turn, the sixties’ generation matured but not grown dull. Pauline, at forty-six, had done her very best to insist that fifty was nothing. Even sixty was young these days, she said.

  It wasn’t as if Pauline had no troubles of her own, either. Her son Craig was almost as difficult in his way as Monica’s David had been. Sometimes it seemed that the two boys had been a decidedly bad influence on each other, plunging together into gloom and nihilism, no doubt making use of illegal substances to further confuse their muddled minds. It was a relief to both mothers that they’d survived to twenty-four without serious medical problems. David now had a job as a car mechanic, and Craig was half-heartedly training to be a computer operator. Slowly, and with many setbacks, they seemed to be dragging themselves into some semblance of adulthood.

  But Pauline had been kind today, a friend in a time of need, and much appreciated. What had she said about having someone else to see? That was Pauline all over – only happy if she was ministering to as many people as possible. So I’m really doing her the favour, thought Monica, with a little smile.

  A whining noise brought her back to reality. Looking round, she remembered with a shock that she had shut the dog outside early that morning, and never let the wretched thing back in again. With a stab of guilt, she rushed through the kitchen to the back door, and flung it open. The animal was quivering on the mat, the picture of misery. Its coat was flat and the head drooped. ‘Oh, Cassie, I’m sorry,’ Monica apologised. ‘Come in and have some dinner.’

  She tipped a whole tinful of Butcher’s Tripe into a dish, and offered it to the dog. But Cassie ignored it, turning her head away as if it offended her. ‘Come on, you fool,’ said Monica. ‘You must be hungry.’ But the dog would not be persuaded. Instead, it went to its basket, and flopped down on the cushion, as if unspeakably weary. ‘You look a bit off colour to me,’ Monica observed. ‘I hope it’s just that you’re missing Jim. I can’t cope with you being poorly, not right now.’ Cassie moved her small stump of a tail a few millimetres to left and right, as acknowledgment that she’d heard herself addressed, but could manage no more than that. ‘I’ll give you a bath when you’re better,’ Monica promised. ‘Your coat doesn’t look its best.’

  Then she went to phone Philip.

  She could tell from his abrupt, overly businesslike tone that he was in the middle of something important. He’d been in this job for nearly two years, and Monica had the impression that he was still struggling to keep up with its demands. She hadn’t really tried to understand what it was he did, beyond knowing that success or failure rested on sales figures and product development, and that each month he dreaded the latest statistics. But he had never allowed her to share his worries. As a boy he had maintained a relentlessly cheerful demeanour with her and Jim, until they had come to believe in it. ‘Philip’s never been any trouble,’ they would boast. She did her best to forget the occasions when a teacher or schoolfriend would let drop some story about Philip hurting himself, or crying over poor exam marks or in despair about a difficult girlfriend.

  She had looked forward to depending more and more on her capable elder son, as their roles gradually reversed. His failure to accompany her to the undertaker’s had caused a small pang of disappointment which slowly matured to a substantial lump of resentment lodged in her chest. If he dismissed her now in favour of some stupid office meeting, she might not be able to conceal her umbrage.

  ‘I’m just back from Plant’s,’ she said, with deliberate lack of emphasis. ‘We’ve got a date for the funeral.’

  She could hear the quality of his attention improving, and sighed with relief. ‘Oh, good,’ he said. ‘I mean—’

  ‘It’s on Tuesday next week, at eleven-thirty. At the crematorium. Pauline came with me.’ She couldn’t resist this slight prick to his conscience.

  He murmured ‘Eleven-thirty,’ and she knew he was writing it down in a diary.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she added brightly, ‘and I’m having him back here to the house on Monday evening, for the night. I thought you and David should come and say goodbye to him then.’

  A strangled coughing sound came down the airwaves. ‘Christ, Mum – what do you want to do that for?’

  ‘For Jim,’ she said coldly. ‘It’s what he would have wanted.’

  ‘Couldn’t we just have gone to see him in the chapel of rest? Like other people do.’

  ‘I don�
�t care what other people do. I want what’s right for Jim. I couldn’t just let him be burnt without some sort of – I don’t know – wake, I suppose. Jim’s grandfather was a strong Catholic, after all. It was their family tradition for generations. It’s a nice idea, Phil. Don’t go and spoil it.’ She could hear herself whining, and clamped her lips together.

  ‘Well, I suppose I might just bear it, but you’re never going to get David to something like that. He’ll go ape at the very thought. Don’t you think your first duty is to the living, Mum?’

  Monica’s anger told her that she was not yet ready for the role reversal which she thought she’d enjoy. How dare he refer to her duty? What did he know about her responsibilites to Jim? ‘I think I’m the best judge of that,’ she told him stiffly.

  ‘Okay,’ he retreated. ‘It’s up to you. Now, is there anything else?’ His impatience had returned, and the sense of being peripheral to his life added to the bleakness of the empty house.

  ‘No, that’s all. Except the dratted dog’s not very well. I left her outside all morning, by mistake, and now she’s in a real state. She probably ought to see a vet.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Mum, but there’s no chance that it’ll be me that takes her. Try one of the old dears next door, why don’t you?’

  Monica felt herself rebuffed. ‘Bye, then. I’ll keep in touch.’

  ‘Bye, Mum.’

  Odd, she reflected, what a crisis did to your relationships. Phil had only occasionally been impatient with her, embarrassed by her as an adolescent. Since setting up home with Nerina, he’d been a less frequent visitor, making sporadic phone calls, but not inviting her into his life. The death of his father didn’t seem to have made much difference. His manner was more prickly than usual, yet she felt she could trust him. Underneath, he was rock-solid reliable. Philip was a plodder; he spoke his mind and followed the rules. ‘He’s just like you,’ Jim had often told her.

  Monica had hated this assessment. Perhaps that was the main reason she had done what she did – to discover her own hidden depths and break a few constricting rules.

  Cassie seemed to be sleeping quite peacefully in her basket, and Monica decided to leave her to recover in her own way. Grief wasn’t something a vet could cure. After all, the animal was ten years old. That was seventy in dog years – she probably just needed a nice long rest. Monica knew how she felt.

  Daphne greeted Doctor Lloyd with a friendly smile. ‘Jim Lapsford? His wife was here earlier on. I’ve typed out a form for you. Oh, you’ve done it already. I should have known. You won’t need to see him again, then?’

  ‘Nope. He got the thorough once-over yesterday, and I’m happy to stick to what I found then. Ginnie Parton’s coming in sometime, and then it’s all clear. When’s the cremation?’

  ‘Not till next Tuesday.’

  ‘The wife seemed a nice woman, from what I saw of her. She’s not one of my patients, and I don’t remember coming across her before. Nice little dog, too. All over the body, it was, licking him. Pathetic. Made me quite choked for a minute. Funny, the things that get to you. Shows we’re human, I guess. I could cheerfully have adopted that little dog on the spot. Specially as Lapsford’s wife doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. I like dogs.’ He tailed off, staring at the road beyond Daphne’s window.

  ‘Dogs are good company,’ she replied, after a moment. ‘So it’s Dr Parton. Better have her fee ready. She usually doesn’t stay more than about fifty seconds.’

  ‘Don’t tell me … Now, the burning question for me is, shall I go and visit Mrs Sinclair with the bad foot?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Oh, what the hell. It’ll make me feel virtuous. Cheer the old bird up, too, if Susie can be believed.’

  ‘And maybe she’ll remember you in her will,’ said Daphne, pertly.

  ‘Maybe she will,’ he laughed. ‘Now wouldn’t that be a turn-up for the book!’

  Pauline made the trek across Roxanne’s field that afternoon, as promised, following the ribbonlike path which her sister had trodden out during the years of living there. A gate in the diagonally opposite corner from the caravan opened onto a small country lane, with a passing place just big enough to park a car. A few Hereford bullocks shared the field with Roxanne: big friendly beasts, with broad, benign brows, and rich mahogany coats. They followed Pauline curiously, and she ignored them. Only when she had to step off the path into a patch of thistles to avoid one of their circular deposits of manure did she turn to scowl at them. ‘Darned nuisances,’ she mumbled.

  Roxanne was sitting on the caravan steps and had seen her coming. She made no move of welcome, simply sat and observed the walk across the field. It took perhaps four minutes. Her thoughts ranged across a number of related topics: how the two of them had always been uneasy together from early infancy; how strange it was that they still lived in the same locality; how much she knew about Pauline, things that Pauline didn’t know she knew; how she and Jim had actually come together through Pauline; and how she might yet come out of this encounter with her dignity intact and some sisterly points scored in the eternal contest that raged between them.

  ‘All right?’ said Pauline, when she was still fifty yards away. ‘Got nothing to do?’

  ‘Plenty. Just don’t feel like it. Day like today, Jim would likely have come by for a quickie. Would have phoned me, anyway. It’s going to be weird without him. Don’t suppose I’ll even be able to go to his funeral. Awkward questions if I did.’ She lit a cigarette from a pack in her lap, and blew smoke upwards, her head tilted back. Pauline searched for somewhere to sit, and found an old wooden box, which threatened to barely hold up under her weight. She brushed it several times with her hand before sitting down.

  ‘Well, you won’t be able to see him at the undertaker’s. She’s having the wake at home, Monday night, in the old-fashioned way. I shouldn’t think even you would have the nerve to turn up there.’ Self-righteousness oiled her words and enraged her sister.

  ‘I might,’ she said, with narrowed eyes. ‘I just bloody might. What have I got to lose, after all? And how come you know so much already?’

  ‘I went with her to organise it all. Those useless sons of hers didn’t want to know. Wouldn’t like to do it again in a hurry. Bit depressing, talking about hearses and coffins.’

  ‘I imagine it is. I’ve no intention of ever putting myself through it.’

  ‘Who’s going to do Mum, then?’

  ‘Mum will outlive us all.’ They laughed at one of the few things they shared – an impatient amused reverence for their mother, who had suffered from a confusing array of ailments for fifty years or more and still possessed more energy at seventy-five than anyone else they knew.

  ‘How is she, anyway? Monica, I mean?’ Roxanne returned to the unavoidable subject. Pauline noticed her sister’s hand was shaking as she put the cigarette to her mouth again.

  ‘She keeps on about Jim never being ill, and it all being a tremendous shock. She is shocked, obviously. But I get a funny feeling that she isn’t actually terribly surprised. I mean – that would be my main feeling, in her position. She’s numb, like people usually are, but there’s something else. This business of having him back to the house. It seemed to me as if she was trying to make up for something.’

  ‘What – make up to Jim? Do you mean she feels guilty?’

  ‘Sort of, yes. I thought you’d have a better idea than me about why that might be.’

  ‘Well, I certainly never got the impression that she starved him of sex. He wasn’t one of those husbands who bleat on about their wife being frigid and driving them away. Jim didn’t play that sort of game. He was just into sex, and took it anywhere he could find it. With as many variations as he could get.’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ said Pauline primly.

  ‘Listen, duckie, there is only one thing to know about Jim Lapsford, and that’s his addiction to sex. Okay, he had his job, and he enjoyed his pint with the lads at the pub, and playing with that creepy Jack on the com
puter, but basically, sex was his thing. If Monica’s feeling guilty about something, you can bet your last fag it’s got something to do with sex.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I believe you,’ Pauline conceded. ‘And it’s true, I presume, about that little bimbo – what’s her name?’

  ‘Lorraine. Poor little cow. He was out of order there. Turned her inside out, so she won’t know how to cope without him. He used to talk to me about her, proud as you like.’

  Pauline pulled a face. ‘That’s perverted. How could you let him?’

  Roxanne shrugged. ‘Didn’t bother me. But don’t you go saying anything about her. There’ll be hell to pay if her Frank finds out what she was up to.’

  ‘Just tell me this, then. Weren’t you ever jealous? Not of Monica – that’s all part of the package if you take up with a married man. But surely you weren’t best pleased about Lorraine? Apart from anything else, she’s twenty years younger than you.’

  ‘Sixteen, actually. I’ve no time for jealousy. I wasn’t in love with Jim, you know. He was just satisfying my urges, same as I was for him. I’m going to miss the bugger, all the same.’

  Roxanne drew deeply on the last inch of the cigarette. Her thick hair was in a tangle round her face, one or two grass seeds lodged in it; her big bare feet were muddy, resting on the bottom step. The only obvious similarity between the sisters was the shape of their faces and the hazel eyes under black brows. Pauline was slighter, neater in every way, although her hair was similarly difficult to control.

  ‘He was the sort of chap you couldn’t really ignore,’ Pauline contributed weakly, feeling more than a little out of her depth. She’d come to offer Roxanne sympathy and information; she was unprepared for the confidences that were spilling out.

  ‘You said yesterday that secrets always come out when a person dies,’ Roxanne remembered. ‘Are you sure Monica doesn’t know about me and the bimbo, and the others over the years? Surely she can’t be completely blind?’