by Rachel Green
“David?” She shook his shoulder. “Time to get up.”
“Whaaa?” He took a long breath and let it out in a whoosh of air. “Five more minutes, I was having a lovely dream.”
“It’s a quarter to seven already. I have two funerals today and you have court.”
“Court? I don’t have court until Tuesday.”
“It is Tuesday.” Eden hoisted herself into a sitting position and leaned over to kiss his cheek. She felt under the covers, following the trail of chest hair over his stomach to his groin. “Oh! You’re up already.”
“Uhhh.” She couldn’t tell if it was a groan of pleasure or a longing for more sleep. “Morning wood, darling, you know that.”
“But morning wood can become so much more.” Eden lifted her leg over to straddle him, shifting him onto his back in the process. “After all, it’s my job to work with stiffies.” She spat on her hand and slipped it below, rubbing it over his cock as an ad-hoc lubricant.
“You generally cremate them, though.” He hissed as she lowered herself onto him. “Mind my foreskin.” A series of shallow breaths ended in one long one. “You temptress. I can never resist you.”
“Nor I you.” She began to rotate her hip, squeezing her vaginal muscles to coax him further into temptation. “How does that feel?”
“Like I’ve found my own little piece of heaven with an angel to look after it.”
“Please! I should stop right now to save the world from schmaltz.” Eden concentrated on manipulating his cock inside her. He’d always joked she could crack walnuts with her vagina.
“Nearly there.” David’s voice had gone up almost an octave. She could usually gauge how close he was to orgasm by the pitch of his moans. “Moan for me a bit?”
Eden obliged. He was funny like that. It was a vestige of his Catholic upbringing. He couldn’t orgasm unless he thought she was having one too. It would have been perfect if it mattered if she was faking or not. Despite knowing the moans were fake, it was enough to trick his mind into release.
“Ow-ow-ow.” David’s eyes snapped open, Despite the orgasm his penis was still hard. “Now it hurts because I need the bathroom.”
“Okay.” Eden reached to the bedside table for a handful of tissues and eased herself off his miniature flagpole, using her thumb and forefinger to guide his shaft out safely and allow his foreskin to flip over the ridge of the neck to protect his glans. He still yelped.
She rolled off, wadding the tissue between her legs to catch the semen as it dribbled out. The mess afterward was the only trouble with unprotected sex. She remembered her wilder youth with nostalgia. Condoms were so much more efficient.
David rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom. Eden gave him a couple of minutes before following him in. He’d already turned the shower on. He gave her a peck on the cheek. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes.”
“Fine.” She gave his naked bottom a playful swipe as he got in, forcing him to dance the last couple of steps to get away from her. “You didn’t flush.”
His apology was muffled by the sound of the shower, and then by a shriek as Eden flushed the toilet and diverted cold water from the shower to the cistern, leaving David dancing under the overheated water. She waved at his glare. “Sorry. Habit.”
When he returned to the water she brushed her teeth. It was now ten past and he had to leave by eight. She was luckier. She didn’t start until nine and her office was no further away than the front door. She pulled on a dressing gown, slipped her feet into warm slippers and headed down the hall.
In the kitchen she switched on the small television and tuned it to a news channel to catch the latest headlines. Terrorist attacks, war in some small middle-eastern country over potential holy sites, and the birth of a giant panda in Whipsnade Zoo. Nothing that would impact her day, at least. She bustled through the kitchen setting a pot of coffee to filter, bread to toast and a frying pan on to heat. From the fridge she pulled out eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and a spring onion and set them all on the counter next to a chopping board. She chopped the vegetables while the oil heated in the pan and tossed everything in, then agitated it several times before the lid went on to keep the ingredients moisture-rich.
Meanwhile the toast popped out and she buttered it and cut it into triangles, then set the kettle to boil for tea. By the time David came downstairs in his suit she had breakfast on the table ready for him with a cup of tea on the side.
“What’s the occasion?” He set his briefcase down and sat. “Do you know something I don’t? You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“I shouldn’t think so. I’ve been on the pill the last eight years.” She poured herself a black coffee and sat opposite him. “What’s your case today?”
“Nothing terribly interesting. Alan Davis arrested for smuggling drugs. Police have him bang to rights. Caught him with his trousers down literally and metaphorically seeing as he’d stuffed them up his bum. Not a lot I can do for him, unfortunately, except plead for leniency. He’s got a terminally ill mother at that rest home so I might be able to swing a non-custodial sentence.”
“Steeple Vale?”
“That’s the one. Why?”
“I’ve got a body coming from there this morning. One from there and one from the coroner’s office.”
“Ugh.” David put a forkful of food in his mouth. A lump of tomato fell from it and spattered onto the plate.”
Eden shrugged. “It depends who did the autopsy. Chambers is all right but the new chap could do with a bit of respect for the dead.”
David chased the last of the egg around the plate. “Perhaps it’ll surprise you.”
“Ever the optimist.”
“I live in a cryotorium. I have to be.” He swilled the last of his tea and stood. “Right, I must go.”
“Okay. “ She pulled her dressing gown closed and stood on tiptoe to kiss him goodbye. “Will you be late back?”
“Shouldn’t be.” He picked up his briefcase. “Unless I get stuck with public defender duty again, but I’ll call if so.”
“Right.” She went to swat his backside again but he stepped smartly to the left and wagged his finger as he opened the front door. She watched from the kitchen window as he went down the steps and ran to his car, his briefcase over his head to protect him from the rain.
She put the dishes in the sink, poured herself more coffee and took it with her to the bathroom. She showered without fear of the toilet being flushed or the washing machine turning on and dressed in her casual pinstripes. She had a client booked for nine thirty.
At a quarter-to she heard the main door being opened and went down to the cryotorium floor, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to switch on the main lights and disable the security system.
Emily was just putting on her lab coat and she went into the scrubbing room. “Morning, Eden.”
“Good morning, Emily. We’ve the Matthews funeral at eleven and the Peterson at two. We’ll use chapel one for both, I think. Saves heating both rooms. The Peterson is a burial so I hope the rain stops in plenty of time. Has Malcolm dug the grave yet, do you know?”
“It’s on his list for this morning. Did you put Mrs. Pilgrim through?”
“I ran her overnight. She should be ready for compression now.” Compression was the last stage of the cryomation process. Any bones which survived freeze-drying were crushed and added to the remains, then the whole was pressed into a single block for burial. There were a variety of shapes but without instruction to the contrary Eden generally preferred a twenty-four inch octagon for ease of storage, transportation and burial. The blocks would last indefinitely if kept dry but once buried would decompose completely within three to six months. It was elegant, from an ecological point of view.
“I’ll see to her first, then.”
“Thank you, Emily.” Eden left her to her work and went to her office. She spent a few moments checking the vases of flowers and removing any dead or wilting heads. Paperwork kept her occupied
until a little after nine, when the van from Steeple Vale pulled up to deliver Mrs. Claremont, who’d passed away peacefully the night before. She went out to sign for it and transferred the body to storage. Before she slid the old lady into a drawer she slipped on a pair of gloves and viewed the body. Patricia Claremont was in good shape for an eighty-seven year old, though scars on her chest indicated a pacemaker. In a crematorium she’d have to remove that personally, but the process she used here never reached the temperatures that would cause the battery to explode. Instead the unit would pass harmlessly through the process and be recovered with all the other metal at the end.
She’d no sooner slid the drawer closed when the coroner’s van turned up to deliver the second body. Francis Dibben was not in good shape. Fresh from an autopsy, his chest suffered from a large Y-incision casually closed with a loose basket stitch that allowed the unsecured internal organs to spill out. The top of the skull had been removed, replaced and held with surgical tape. Motion of the body had worked the tape loose and both skull cap and brain were detached. The body bag sloshed with purged fluids, blood and bile. She signed the paperwork. “This is disgusting.”
“Aye.” The driver hardly glanced at the body. “Shouldn’t have got himself killed, should he?”
“If only we all had the luxury of choosing how we wanted to die.” Eden tore off the top copy and returned the clipboard. “I think we’ll have a closed coffin for this one.”
“Ah.” The driver climbed back in, hardly waiting for Eden to get the body clear before roaring off. She shook her head. Some people had no respect for the dead.
She pushed him through to the cold room and gave him the drawer next to Patricia Claremont. “There you go, my friend. At least you’ll have a bit of company for a few days.” She stripped off her gloves and washed her hands with lightly scented soap and headed back to her office. She had time to pin her hair back and use a little eau de cologne before Emily knocked on the door.
“Mr. Claremont and Mrs. Johns to see you, Mrs. Maguire, and the flowers have arrived for the Matthews celebration.”
“Thank you, Emily. Please show them in.”
Eden rose and went to the door to greet her guests. She was always nervous about an initial meeting with the family of a deceased person in her care. At least she could be honest about how lovely Mrs. Claremont looked. She wouldn’t be able to say the same when she met the bereaved of Francis Dibben.
Chapter 5
Eden sat back. She’d explained the whole procedure and given the couple, the late Mrs. Claremont’s husband and daughter, the option of cryomation or traditional burial. “Would you like me to leave you alone to discuss it?”
“Mebbe.” The old man bent to confer with his daughter.
She spoke up. “What if we wanted a traditional cremation?”
Eden sighed. It was always a possibility. People were always afraid of the new. “Then you’re quite free to choose another funeral service. We’ll keep the late Mrs. Claremont here at no charge until the new company collects her. I could give you a list of names if you like. They’ll all take care of a cremation for you.”
“But not you?”
“I’m afraid not. Our results are more efficient and ecologically sound. But you can still end up with your loved one in a decorative urn, if that’s your wish.” She stood. “I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes. Can I offer you some refreshments at all?”
Mr. Claremont tapped the leaflet explaining the cryomation procedure. “It says here you press the…” He struggled with the word. “…remains into a one of a variety of shapes. Does that mean I’ll be able to take her home? Bury her in the garden, like?”
“Yes. That’s the beauty of the process, sir.” Eden smiled. She’d already spotted his fingernails worn down to the quick with dirt ingrained beneath them, a sure sign he was a keen gardener. “They’ll keep indefinitely if they’re kept dry but if buried they’ll rot away to nothing in three to six months. That’s why the process is loosely termed ‘composting’.”
Mrs. Johns gripped her father’s arm. “But there are plots here, aren’t there? If we wanted one.”
“Of course, both for composting and traditional funeral. Either way, we have a huge variety available as we’re so new.” She patted his arm. “Bury her in the garden by all means, Mr. Claremont. There’s no law against it. Plant something over the top of her, perhaps. Did she like roses?”
“She did, but she won’t be there to appreciate them. Besides, I want to grow potatoes there now. Would that be all right, do you think?”
“Dad!” Mrs. Johns let go of his arm as if he’d given her an electric shock. “Don’t be awful.”
“The remains are perfectly sterile.” Eden clasped both her hands in front of her. “However, for decency’s sake I’d suggest you avoid root vegetable for the first year.” She gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ll leave you to talk about it, shall I?”
She left through the staff-only door and cross the hall to the small kitchen. She poured herself a coffee from the pot and leaned back against the sink, inhaling the aroma while it cooled enough for her to sip.
The door opened and Emily stuck her head in. “Are you done with your clients?”
“Not yet. I’m just giving them five minutes to talk it over, why?”
“There’s a couple at reception asking about plots.”
“So?”
Emily fidgeted. “It’s a bit weird, to be honest. They want to buy plots for themselves.”
“So? A lot of people arrange their own funerals. We can accommodate them. We’re not even at ten percent capacity yet.”
“It’s just a bit odd. She’s a lot older than him and from the way he’s talking it sounds like he intends to do her in.”
Eden stifled a yawn. “Sorry. All right, I’ll have a word with them. Would you take a pot of tea in to the Claremont party and give them my apologies? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Thanks.” Emily showed such a degree of relief that Eden felt slightly guilty about leaving her to deal with the front-of-house guests to begin with. The number of staff was too small not to have everyone covering all the work but honestly, Emily was rubbish on the front desk. She was, however, an absolute genius with make-up and taxidermist’s putty.
She went through to reception where a young man of twenty-something was studying a plan of the cemetery while an older lady she assumed was his mother studied the paintings on the walls. Eden was pleased to see her smiling at the Portrait of a Suffocation. It really was one of her best pieces of the previous year. “Hello. I’m Eden Maguire, the owner of Eden Gardens. Can I help you?”
“Yes please.” The young man smiled at her. He was really rather handsome, in a Johnny Depp sort of way. “We want two burial plots and one burial plan.”
“Just one?” Eden pulled out her folder of burial options. “May I enquire what you were thinking of?”
“Nothing too expensive.” The young man pointed to the cemetery plan. “Which are the cheaper plots? The ones fathest from the amenities?”
“More or less. It also depends upon how long you want to rent the plot for. If you want to rent it in perpetuity it’s obviously more expensive than renting it for a few years.”
“Renting?” He turned up the corner of his mouth. “I though you bought plots in perpetuity. You know…in the ground for ever.”
“There’s certainly that option, sir.” Eden turned to the relevant page in her catalogue. “But many of our clients aren’t exceptionally wealthy and wish to only rent the space for as long as it’s needed. We encourage it, in fact. How many times have you walked through a cemetery and seen overgrown or broken graves? Often it’s no fault of the family of the deceased. It’s just the descendants have either moved away or died themselves. We prefer to make such plots available for re-use. It’s good for us, it’s good for the people visiting their loved ones and it’s good for the environment.” She leaned forward in a conspiratorial mann
er. “Did you know they’re building an underground necropolis in Mexico? There’s just isn’t enough land to bury the dead in a civilized manner. Do we want that happening in England?”
“Of course not.” The woman smiled at her. “You sound like a very sensible and shrewd woman, Miss Maguire.”
Eden pressed her hand. “It’s Mrs., but thank you.”
“How long does one generally rent a plot for?” The young man returned to the plan. “Presumably one would build in a redundancy for the length of time it takes a body to rot away plus a number of years. What if there are still descendants visiting when the lease runs out?”
“Then we offer an option to renew.” Eden found the page with the relevant information to show him. “The decomposition of a body can take anything from three months to twenty years, after which all that remains are the bones. We generally offer a lease of ten years, twenty being a maximum. Extensions are in ten-year increments.”
“After which time the body is disinterred and what?”
“This is only our first year of business but our projections are the dead will undergo a reduction to powdered remains.”
“Cremation?”
“Not exactly. We use a cold process that’s better for the environment.” She turned to the page showing a diagram of the procedure. It was no accident the diagram resembled the one illustrating the circle of life in all basic biology texts. “We envisage a return to the earth afterward.”
“And the grave site will then be available for re-use?”
“Theoretically, yes.”
“So if we bought one plot we could both use it?” He squeezed the older woman’s hand. “My wife and I would like to be together for as long as it matters.”
Eden swallowed her surprise at their relationship and hoped it hadn't shown on her face. “It’s impossible to say when a plot will be available for repeated use but you could always stipulate a re-burial later, if the earlier occupant hasn’t yet…”
