15
Mild with strong winds, gradually easing throughout the day
TAP TAP. I knock and enter. Good morning, Mrs Evesham. Not the finest of days, I’m afraid. Rain just now, but brightening later, I hear. Mrs Evesham died in her sleep. Nice and easy. No fuss or fanfare. She has no idea she’s even gone. No clue. Not to worry, Mrs Evesham. Things may look different but to be perfectly frank it’s the same old same old. I bet you can’t honestly say you even noticed. Am I right?
Derek is in the back, on coffins. I can hear his radio. Howard is at a crem funeral with the others. Nice and peaceful here. Just Irene front of house; now and then you can hear her voice asking, Now why’s that happened? Looking at her screen.
Last June Reen said, Lee, you remind me of an attending angel. Everyone laughed. I felt like a knob but I took it as a compliment. She was referring to my presence, my walk. Because there is a style of walk and talk in my line of work that you must perfect if you want to get on. The talk is one thing, slow and soft, as if someone has died, which they have. The walk is another kettle of fish. The walk must be supervisory, sober, but light-footed. Eggshells we call it. Remember, you are not Dracula, Derek says. You learn to walk on eggshells without coming across as a ponce. Egg-shelling is my speciality, hence Irene’s comment. If you want to make it to funeral director you have to be the last word in this skill. Then you have to get the voice right. If you are not posh by birth, and no funeral directors are, then you have to learn to speak toffee, like Howard, a few plums in the mouth. People want death to be posh, nice and smart, even though, of all the things we do, it is the most common.
*
OUTSIDE THE SKY is flat blue. I drink instant coffee standing up. The clock doesn’t tick at all. All I hear is my breathing. Then a wood pigeon, starting his list and forgetting. I sit and look across the field at the mast. I wait for a thought, a feeling. Nothing comes. My mind is blank as, empty as the woods.
* * *
I sit in the room. I’m supposed to be hoovering, but. Here she died. Here Lester lay. Facts unfit for airing in the presence of prospective house buyers, under the rug they must be brushed, pronto.
Framed photographs. Us when we were young. I stare at us. Me and Ned with freckles, gaps in our teeth. Mum and Les, leaning, laughing up at the camera, surprised, sun-kissed. We seem alive, more than we are now. Who are these people and what are they doing? And where have they gone? I lie on the bed.
I wonder if I lie here long enough whether I might slope off too. I close my eyes. I don’t mind, make a change. Buenos noches. Adios. Not that it’s easy of course. It isn’t. Death: the most natural thing in the world is unnaturally tough to do if you’re trying too hard. And certainly not if you are clocking it before it’s had a chance to clock you. A watched pot, etcetera. Stare death in the face and watch it paralyse. Death would rather take you by surprise, creep up sideways and bosh.