by Neil Boyd
So I put on a purple stole and listened to Father Abe’s general confession. It took in his long life’s span. When it was over, I gave him absolution and kissed the top of his head as I would kiss a child.
‘I’ve eked myself out well enough, laddy,’ he whispered. ‘Now the hill is against me and I’ll likely not make it to the top this time.’
‘You will,’ I said, ‘if you hold on to the donkey’s tail.’
‘Send him in, then, laddy.’
Fr Duddleswell returned to complete the anointing and give the papal blessing. Afterwards, Father Abe, happy, said:
‘I am going off with myself, alone. We priests are used to that. But priests, I never knew this till now, die easiest of all.’ He cleared his throat. ‘When I took my vows as a young lad like Neil here, I never thought I was making an easy death for myself. Indeed, I did not. Strange it being easy, seeing I’ve always hated the frost.’
‘Forgive me,’ Fr Duddleswell said.
‘What is there to forgive, little Charlie?’
‘I asked the Bishop to come and see you.’
Father Abe managed a smile. ‘That is the sin against the Holy Ghost, all right.’
The Bishop visited us that same afternoon. Fr Duddleswell had gone back to bed and I was answering a telephone call at the time. When Mrs Pring opened the front door to the Bishop, I signalled to him from Fr Duddleswell’s study to go up on his own.
A few seconds later, I heard a tremendous crash upstairs and a cry of pain. The Bishop had opened the wrong door and Fr Duddleswell, next to it putting on his dressing gown, had been caught off balance and knocked flat. I quickly finished the phone call and rushed up to restore order.
When the Bishop emerged from Father Abe’s room he was upset and dabbing his eyes. ‘I’ll say Mass for him tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Apologize to Fr Duddleswell on my behalf.’
‘I will, my Lord.’
‘It’s about time, all the same, that someone other than myself suffered on my visits to St Jude’s. If Fr Duddleswell proves too much for you, Father Neil, let me know and I’ll see you are moved somewhere safer.’
‘Thank you, my Lord.’ I knew I would never volunteer to move from St Jude’s.
When I next saw Father Abe he was in a deep sleep. Under his bed was the small sack he had brought with him. What made me think I had a right to look inside it? I don’t know, there was no excuse. I untied the rope round the neck of the sack. It contained nothing but earth and a piece of paper on which was scrawled: ‘Over me the soil of my Isle shall be cast.’
He carried with him everywhere the earth of his native land to cover his bones until Resurrection day. Right, I thought, if Father Abe’s got to die somewhere, he’s come to the right place.
Don Martin popped over to see me. He had heard of Father Abe’s illness and pressed a pound on me to say Mass for his recovery.
‘Insurance, Father,’ he said. ‘He promised to pray for our Neil every day of his life, so we don’t want him pegging out too soon.’
Fr Duddleswell and I were in Father Abe’s room quietly saying the evening rosary when the old priest joined in. ‘Adsum,’ he said, like a child answering the roll-call in school, when we noticed him. He seemed to be rallying. Dr Daley confirmed that he might not be stretched this time, after all.
Twenty-four hours later, Father Abe was fumigating his room with cigar smoke and claiming to be as strong as Oscar.
‘A close-run thing,’ he piped. ‘I only beat death to the tape by an inch or two.’
‘You did,’ Fr Duddleswell said.
‘Now fetch me a glass of rum, little, Charlie, before I anoint each of your eyes with a hammer.’
Father Abe used me as his messenger to get Billy Buzzle. After his visit, Billy, wreathed in smiles, handed me a £5 note.
‘That old bloke’s all right,’ Billy said. ‘Give this flimsy to your Boss-man. Father Abe wanted me to put it on a gee-gee for him.’
When Fr Duddleswell saw the fiver, he snorted, ‘That is the proof that Father Abe is on the mend and that everything else around here is about to be broken.’
‘What damage,’ I asked, ‘can an old priest soon for the graveyard do?’
Billy Buzzle answered my question. He came in at tea-time and demanded to see Fr Duddleswell. I went up with him to Fr Duddleswell’s room, on tiptoe.
‘Well, Mr Buzzle?’
Billy put his finger to his lips. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid. Your little old priest’s horse came up in the 3.30.’
‘Jasus,’ Fr Duddleswell whistled. ‘Five quid but at what odds?’
Billy hesitated. ‘Um, fifty to one.’
I saw the door handle turning noiselessly and Father Abe, in his dressing gown and belching forth smoke, stepped into the room. ‘It seems, little Charlie, that you owe me £250.’
Fr Duddleswell put his arm over his eyes and turned his face to the wall.
THREE
The Deadly Rivals
‘There she was flat in her coffin, Father Boyd, and what do you think she had on?’
I wasn’t expecting to share in the secrets of the undertaker’s trade. ‘What, Mr Williams?’ I gulped.
Freddie Williams, Director of the Co-op’s Funeral Service, straightened out his long, sad face. He looked across to ensure that none of the mourners in the parlour after the funeral were in earshot before whispering, ‘A tattoo.’
‘A tattoo?’ I questioned hoarsely, hoping for enlightenment.
‘If her old man could have stripped that off I believe he would.’
‘Do you mean to say –?’ I began knowingly, breaking off as if I had grasped, as any old campaigner would, exactly what he was getting at.
‘Mean what, Father?’
No help there. ‘Do you mean,’ I repeated, taking the plunge, ‘that I have just buried Mrs Robins in nothing but a tattoo?’
Mr Williams nodded solemnly. ‘Naked came she into the world and naked, but for a little extra colouring, went she out of it again.’ For my benefit: The ‘Book of Job’.
‘Why?’ I spat the word out as if there was no fathoming the depths of modern depravity.
‘He sold the lot, Father. Everything.’ He swivelled his head back and forth in incredulity. ‘Now, rings, expensive jewellery, a watch – that I can understand. But to remove every stitch of his wife’s clothing, can you imagine?’
‘This tattoo,’ I said, foolishly thinking this might change the subject. ‘Was it –?’ I was going to say ‘professionally done’.
‘I can’t tell you about that, Father,’ he broke in, ‘either where it was or what it represented.’ He made it sound as if I was prying. ‘Undertaker’s etiquette, you know. All I can repeat is that when I arrived in that bedroom up there –’
‘To box her up?’
Mr Williams nodded. ‘I said to Mr Robins, “Sir, couldn’t we have a sheet for decency’s sake?” He said to me, “She never minded.” That was all. “She never minded.”’
‘Not very nice,’ I said, sympathizing.
Mr Williams graciously turned down an offer of cucumber sandwiches for both of us, waited till the server was out of hearing and confided, ‘It didn’t occur to him I might be particular.’ He made a face. ‘He could at least have turned her on her tummy.’
Having exhausted my stock of disgusted grunts and raised eyebrows, I said, ‘What difference would that make?’
‘Don’t you know?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ I said, to stop him bothering. ‘What did you do, Mr Williams?’
‘I folded her arms. That helped a bit. Added a few forget-me-nots where it mattered. Then I got the lid on quick.’
A priest has a lot to do with dying and death. Also, therefore, with undertakers. And after the unforgettable day on which Freddie Williams joined Fr Duddleswell and me for a burial at sea he seemed to take an interest in me. It showed itself in the small confidences he shared with me when, according to local custom, we were invited together to ‘partake’ in the parlou
rs of the bereaved.
‘It’s a raw time for the relatives, Father Boyd,’ he said to me at one such gathering, sipping his tea.
I acknowledged the obvious, a bit put out that this amiable pessimist had collared me again.
‘You have to be so tactful, you know. It’s not easy being an undertaker when you can’t even mention the word.’
‘“Undertaker?”’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘No, no, no.’
‘“Death”, Mr Williams?’
He shushed me as if I had just uttered an obscenity.
‘It’s part of my vocation,’ he went on, when he had recovered his composure, ‘to try to accede to the wishes and fancies of the bereaved.’ He eyed me gloomily. ‘You’d never believe what some people put in the coffins of their dear departed.’
I was learning not to hazard guesses in delicate personal matters.
Casting the occasional furtive glance over his shoulder, he itemised the luggage of corpses he had known.
‘Bottles of whiskey, love letters, stuffed parrots, Bibles, garters.’ He broke off momentarily. ‘I’ve had most things in my career. Stamp collections,’ he whispered on, ‘a stapler, four-leafed clover, a tea pot, a fire extinguisher, a jar of pickled onions.’
That I couldn’t resist. ‘What for?’
‘I didn’t think it was my business to ask, Father.’ Once more I felt properly put in my place. ‘Naturally,’ he added, ‘I made quite sure the jar lid was screwed on tight.’
I put on an expression which said that I, for one, never doubted his professional competence.
‘Death does funny things to people, Father Boyd.’
The speaker, on this occasion, was Mr Bottesford, owner of a private funeral parlour. Locally, he and Freddie Williams, of the Fairwater Co-op, were known as ‘The Deadly Rivals’.
I was trying, as it happened, to find an excuse to get out of Bottesford’s clutches in order to minister to the relatives. After all, I reflected, I don’t want to spend every funeral talking to undertakers.
‘Death does funny things to people,’ he repeated.
I only half heard him. ‘Apart from killing them, Mr Bottesford?’
‘I mean it does some odd things to those who remain behind. Only the other day, a chap comes to my place and says, “I’d like my wife to be buried in her wedding dress.”’
‘Very touching, Mr Bottesford.’
‘That’s what I thought till we tried getting it on her. She had put on a hundred pounds or so since her wedding.’
I was quite interested by now. ‘What did you do?’
‘I asked the husband to get a tailor to pop round, take her measurements and alter the dress accordingly.’
‘So that worked out all right, then.’
‘No it didn’t, Father. The husband must’ve forgot or was too embarrassed to mention that his wife had passed away. When the poor tailor saw her, he fainted, cracked his head on the coffin and was in hospital for ten days.’
I was spared comment as the undertaker took time off to hand a passing mourner one of his business cards. It said on it: ‘Go to the Lord With Bottesford.’
‘Advertising here?’ I said, somewhat shaken.
‘If not here, where?’ he answered. ‘This is the only place where people take death seriously. Besides,’ he eyed me wickedly, ‘there’s an awful lot of humbug at funerals.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Death isn’t always as black as it’s painted. There’s as much rejoicing at many a funeral as there is at some weddings.’ Before I could give him a piece of my mind, he added, ‘One man’s death is another man’s inheritance.’
He reached out a long black arm and grabbed a vol au vent.
‘People have no idea, Father Boyd, what skill we undertakers bring to our job.’
‘I’m sure that’s true,’ I said. ‘You’re thinking of big, heavy people, I presume.’
‘Even little ’uns,’ he said, munching away, ‘if they’re the wrong shape.’
I realized it’s not possible for undertakers to take every death personally but was it really necessary for Bottesford to wolf every edible in sight?
I asked him to explain this thing about shape.
‘Well, there was the case I had last year of a bloke who was electrocuted in his tin bath.’
‘Poor chap,’ I murmured instinctively.
‘The charlady found him six hours too late. Rigor mortis, to use the term favoured by the trade, had set in.’
‘He’d gone stiff,’ I said, horrified.
‘Dead people do, you know.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘It’s much worse than arthritis. They sort of-set, like cement. Anyway, this bloke was a big ’un, all right, and he was completely wedged in his tub. He died with his bath on, so to speak.’
‘How did you get him out?’
‘I wanted to put a lid on him just as he was,’ Bottesford said cheerily, ‘but that wouldn’t have been decent. No, we cut him out with a blow-lamp. That’s when our troubles really began.’
Bottesford paused to pounce on a chicken drumstick.
‘This part of the job, you see, Father Boyd, would’ve been bloody even if the corpse were a tiddler which he weren’t.’ He emptied his mouth to make his point more forcefully. ‘How to get the perisher to lie down, that was the poser. When his legs were down his head was up. When we laid him on his back his legs shot in the air.’
‘Rather like putting a non-folding chair in a box.’
‘You’ve got the picture, Father. That’s where the tricks of the trade come in, don’t they?’
I realized the scoundrel was intending to leave me guessing. ‘How did you flatten him out?’ I demanded to know.
He smiled enigmatically above his chomping jaws.
‘Did you use rubbing-oil? A crowbar? Blow-lamp?’
He wasn’t telling.
‘People who die of a heart attack sitting on the lav,’ he continued, ‘can be just as bloody.’
‘Your life isn’t easy, Mr Bottesford.’ It occurred to me that, in his funereal company, neither was mine.
‘Deadly,’ he responded heatedly, ‘and getting worse every year.’
‘How’s that?’
‘It’s these big apartment blocks they’re putting up all over the place, Father. Ten floors sometimes, lifts that don’t work, narrow winding staircases.’
‘I never thought of that,’ I admitted.
‘Neither do the ruddy architects. They have no consideration for us undertakers when they design those places. They never think that the people who live in them will one day die in them and some poor blighters’ll have to cart them out.’
‘A helicopter might help,’ I said.
‘The other day, I took my team up 220 steps to pick up this body who weighed 250 pounds. That was without his box. I tell you, Father, he had no right to drop dead all that way up.’
‘How did you manage, Mr Bottesford?’
‘Felt like chopping him up in little bits, I don’t deny, or lowering him out of the window. Took us twenty minutes to get him down to ground level.’
‘You should have hired furniture removal men.’
Bottesford nodded his ginger-wigged head to acknowledge the pleasantry. ‘To make matters worse, one of my blokes slipped a disc on the sixth floor and I had to lend a hand myself. Well, I’m a bit out of practice and on the last stretch, we lost our grip and the corpse got down before we did.’
I laughed.
‘It wasn’t funny, Father,’ Bottesford said sternly. ‘The lid was wrenched off and there was this big stiff lying spreadeagled on the pavement.’
‘Oh.’
‘Of course, the busybodies in the buildings got on the blower to the emergency services. Next thing I know, two police cars are screaming up. They took some convincing we weren’t trying to cover up a murder and then, when we weren’t looking, an ambulance took the body away. Took me two hours to find where it’d gone.’
With an effort I controlled myself. ‘Dreadful. And I suppose, Mr Bottesford, your firm got the blame.’
He heaved a deep, wounded sigh. ‘We’ve had no custom from that block since. And yet I guarantee you, Father Boyd, no one gives a better service in these parts than Bottesford’s.’
‘That is the key to it, Father Neil. Bottesford and Freddie Williams are touting for trade.’
This was Fr Duddleswell’s interpretation of why the Deadly Rivals kept buttonholing me at funeral receptions. It was reinforced at a Bottesford funeral.
I was assisting Fr Duddleswell at the Requiem of an old parishioner, Jesse Tobin. Fortunately, there weren’t many mourners present as Fr Duddleswell, at the head of the coffin, began reading the Epistle in English:
‘Brethren, Behold I tell you a mystery: we shall indeed rise again.’
From within the coffin, right on cue, came the sound of an alarm clock. If dear old Jesse had blown a trumpet in there she couldn’t have frightened us more.
In the sacristy Fr Duddleswell explained the happening. ‘’Tis not supernatural at all but Bottesford’s doing. He wants to convince us that he is no longer robbing the departed.’
Apparently, Jesse had asked to be buried with one or two keepsakes. Bottesford had included her old alarm clock and set it to go off during the Requiem.
Fr Duddleswell said to me, ‘I prefer the service given by Freddie Williams.’
I reminded him of the disastrous day of the burial at sea when Freddie had forgotten to weight the body down.
‘Freddie is generally reliable,’ he insisted. ‘He tries to give the dead their moneysworth.’
I agreed with him. ‘He does seem proud of his profession. In a melancholy sort of way.’
‘Proud, indeed,’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘At the Resurrection on the last day, Freddie will complain bitterly to the Almighty for undoing his life’s work.’
I didn’t really think there was a great deal to choose between the Deadly Rivals. One burial looked very much like another to me. But wanting to be fair, I decided to keep my eyes skinned to see which of them gave the better service. That way, I would perhaps be better able to whisper a word of advice in the ear of the bereaved and save them a bob or two.
