A Spot Of Bother

15

“Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days: that I may be certified how long I have to live.”

Bob lay just below the altar steps in a polished black coffin which looked like a grand piano from this angle.

“For a man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.”

There were occasions when George envied these people (the forty-eight hours between trying on the trousers in Allders and visiting Dr. Barghoutian, for example). Not these people specifically, but the regulars, the ones you saw up at the front during carol services.

But you either had faith or you didn’t. No reentry, no refunds. Like when his father told him how magicians sawed ladies in half. You couldn’t give the knowledge back however much you wanted to.

He looked round at the stained-glass lambs and the scale model of the crucified Christ and thought how ridiculous it all was, this desert religion transported wholesale to the English shires. Bank managers and PE teachers listening to stories about zithers and smiting and barley bread as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence and be no more seen.”

The vicar made his way to the pulpit and delivered his eulogy. “A businessman, a sportsman, a family man. ‘Work hard, play hard.’ That was his motto.” He clearly knew nothing about Bob.

On the other hand if you never set foot in a church when you were alive you could hardly expect them to pull out all the stops when you were dead. And no one wanted the truth (“He was a man incapable of seeing a large-breasted woman without making some infantile remark. In later years his breath was not good”).

“Robert and Susan would have been married for forty years this coming September. They were childhood sweethearts who met when they were both pupils at St. Botolph’s secondary school…”

He remembered his own thirtieth wedding anniversary. Bob staggering across the lawn, slapping a drunken arm around his shoulder and saying, “The funny thing is, if you’d killed her you’d have been out by now.”

“Behold I shew you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…”

The lesson ended and Bob was carried from the church. George and Jean moved outside with the rest of the congregation and reassembled around the grave in a muggy, gun-gray light that promised a storm before teatime. Susan stood on the far side of the hole looking puffy and broken, with her two sons on either side of her. Jack had his arm around his mother but was not tall enough to carry the gesture off with aplomb. Ben looked strangely bored.

“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.”

Bob was lowered into the ground on four sturdy hessian straps. Susan, Jack and Ben each threw a white rose onto the coffin and the peace was shattered by some buffoon driving past the churchyard with his car stereo turned up.

“…our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body that it may be like unto his glorious body…”

He looked at the pallbearers and realized he’d never seen one with a beard. He wondered if it was a rule, like pilots, so they got an airtight seal when the oxygen masks came down. Something about hygiene, perhaps.

And when their time came? Did working with all those corpses make them sanguine? Of course, they only saw people afterward. Becoming a corpse, that was the hard bit. Tim’s sister worked in a hospice for fifteen years and still went to sleep in the garage with the engine running when they found that growth in her brain.

The vicar asked them to say the Lord’s Prayer together. George said the passages he agreed with out loud (“Give us this day our daily bread…lead us not into temptation”) and mumbled through the references to God.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen…And now, ladies and gentlemen.” A perky, scout-group tone entered the vicar’s voice. “I would like, on behalf of Susan and the rest of the Green family, to invite you to share some food and drink in the village hall which you will find across the road directly beside the car park.”

Jean shivered theatrically. “I do hate these things.”

They moved with the tide of darkly suited people, chatting quietly now, down the curved gravel path, through the lych-gate and across the road.

Jean touched his elbow and said, “I’ll catch you up in a few minutes.”

He turned to ask her where she was going but she was already retracing her steps in the direction of the church.

He turned back again and saw David Symmonds walking toward him, smiling, his hand extended.

“George.”

“David.”

David had left Shepherds four or five years ago. Jean had bumped into him on a couple of occasions but George had hardly seen him. It was not active dislike. Indeed, if everyone in the office had been like David the place would have run a great deal more smoothly. No jockeying for position. No passing the buck. Bright chap, too. Brains behind the whole sustainable forest stuff which got them Cornwall and Essex.

He dressed a little too well. That was probably the best way of putting it. Expensive aftershave. Opera cassettes in the car.

When he announced that he was retiring early everyone backed off. Sick animal in the herd. Everyone feeling a little insulted. As if he’d been doing it as a hobby, this thing to which they had devoted their lives. And no real plans, either. Photography. Holidays in France. Gold C gliding badge.

It all seemed rather different now that George had gone down the same route himself, and when he recalled John McLintock saying that David was never really “one of us” he could hear the sour grapes.

“Good to see you.” David squeezed George’s hand. “Even if the circumstances aren’t the cheeriest.”

“Susan didn’t seem good.”

“Oh, I think Susan will be all right.”

Today, for example, David was wearing a black suit and a gray roll-neck sweater. Other people might think it disrespectful, but George could see now that it was simply a different way of doing things. No longer being part of the crowd.

“Keeping busy?” asked George.

David laughed. “I thought the point of retiring was that we no longer had to be busy.”

George laughed. “I guess so.”

“Well, I suppose we’d better do our duty.” David turned toward the door of the village hall.

George rarely felt the desire to prolong a conversation with anyone, but David, he realized, was in the same boat as himself, and it was good to be chatting with someone in the same boat. Better certainly than eating sausage rolls and talking about death.

“Got through the World’s Hundred Best Novels?”

“You have a frighteningly good memory.” David laughed again. “Gave up at Proust. Too much like hard work. Doing Dickens instead. Seven down, eight to go.”

George talked about the studio. David talked about his recent walking holiday in the Pyrenees (“Three thousand meters above sea level and there’s butterflies everywhere”). They congratulated themselves on leaving Shepherds before Jim Bowman subcontracted the maintenance and that girl from Stevenage lost her foot.

“Come on,” said David, ushering George toward the double doors. “We’re going to be in trouble if we’re found enjoying ourselves out here.”

There were footsteps on the gravel and George turned to see Jean approaching.

“Forgot my handbag.”

George said, “I bumped into David.”

Jean seemed a little flustered. “David. Hello.”

“Jean,” said David, holding out his hand. “How nice to see you.”

“I was thinking,” said George, “it would be a nice idea to invite David round for dinner sometime.”

Jean and David looked a little startled and he realized that clapping his hands together and broaching the idea so gleefully was perhaps inappropriate on such a solemn occasion.

“Oh,” said David, “I don’t want Jean slaving over a hot stove on my account.”

“I’m sure Jean would enjoy some relief from my company.” George put his hands into his trouser pockets. “And if you’re willing to take your life in your hands I can run up a passable risotto myself.”

“Well…”

“How about the weekend after next? Saturday night?”

Jean threw George a glance which made him wonder briefly whether there was some important fact about David which he had overlooked in his enthusiasm, that he was vegetarian, for example, or had not flushed the toilet on a previous visit.

But she took a deep breath and smiled and said, “OK.”

“I’m not sure I’m free on Saturday,” said David. “It’s a lovely idea…”

“Sunday, then,” said George.

David pursed his lips and nodded. “Sunday it is, then.”

“Good. I’ll look forward to it.” George held open the double doors. “Let’s mingle.”