Dark Undertakings (8 page)

She jumped when someone put a hand on her shoulder from behind. Turning, she relaxed and smiled at the sight of Pauline. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, inspecting the face which was now on a level with hers, across the small table. Pauline’s colouring was a striking contrast to her own ash-blonde and milky-pale tones. They had established the friendship at the school gates, when Monica’s David and Pauline’s Craig had been in the same class. Craig had been almost as troublesome as David in his own way, and their mothers had found plenty in common.

‘Have a coffee,’ she said. ‘There’s no rush – I’ve done the registration part. It’s kind of you to keep me company.’

‘Didn’t you ask Philip to come as well?’

‘He’s got something important on at work. And David—’

Pauline smiled. ‘David would be more of an impediment than a help. Tell me about it! Honestly, they never get any better do they? Craig’s in a dreadful state at the moment, because Susie’s trying to dump him. At least, I think that’s what’s happening. They never
tell
you anything, do they. But you don’t want to listen to me rabbiting on.’ She fetched coffee
from the counter, and they sat together, as they’d done a thousand times before.

‘You look as if you’re coping, anyway,’ Pauline commented. ‘Not that I ever doubted you would. But it’s hard to imagine life without him.’ She shook her head. ‘Jim was quite something.’

‘It still doesn’t feel as if he’s really gone. Not for ever. Death’s so weird. I suppose people always feel they’re the first ever to experience its effects. And yet it’s so ordinary. It comes to us all. Oh, I’m sorry – I’m talking drivel. I can’t put it into words at all. I tried yesterday, with the boys, and just made them cross.’

‘It must be nice to have a daughter,’ said Pauline wistfully. ‘They always seem so much more – I don’t know –
rewarding
, I suppose.’

‘Philip’s all right. He and I are very close. And poor David can’t help it. I still think it goes back to his early years. It was all so unsettled. Compared to Philip, poor Davey had an awful time.’

‘Craig was forceps. Great dents in his head. Then, when his dad walked out, he got terribly disturbed. We really messed him up, between us.’ They sighed in unison.

‘Well, this won’t do,’ Monica regained her morning briskness, and gathered up her bag. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

‘It’s cremation, then, is it?’ Pauline asked, as they walked side by side down the street. The undertaker’s office was situated in a side street at the far end of the main shopping area.

‘I think so,’ Monica said. ‘He did say once that he hated the thought of burial. I forgot to ask the boys what they thought we should do. I don’t suppose they care much, either way.’ She spoke in jerky sentences, matching the rhythm of her step. Pauline found the pace uncomfortably fast.

‘They’ll ask you about stuff like hymns and flowers,’ she remarked. ‘There’ll be all sorts of decisions. I remember when my dad died—’

‘It’s all right,’ Monica spoke impatiently. ‘You don’t have to try and prepare me. I don’t care what happens at the funeral, quite honestly. He’s dead anyway – what difference will it make?’

‘Right,’ panted Pauline placatingly. ‘Anything you say. It’s just down here, isn’t it?’ Monica increased her pace and pushed open the front door of the building without waiting to see if her friend was still at her shoulder.

After a short wait, the two women were sitting opposite Daphne Plant, who got straight down to business with very few preliminaries. The first question was the ‘burial or cremation’ one. Monica closed her eyes for a moment before
answering. ‘Cremation’s the norm these days, isn’t it? We’ll go for that.’ She shook her head, and fiddled unconsciously with an earlobe. ‘We never thought that this would happen, you see. That probably sounds pathetic to you, avoiding the inevitable. But he
was
only fifty-five, and he’d never been ill at all.’

Daphne had no comment. Many people complained that this was some kind of mistake, when death came suddenly. Only gradually would it emerge that Jim had been breathless recently, that his uncle was waiting for a triple bypass, that he’d been worrying about money, or adultery, or promotion. ‘Cremation, then,’ she said. Monica found the ensuing decisions came almost effortlessly as Daphne posed her questions. Until they reached the one about chapel visiting.

‘I have no idea,’ she said flatly, when asked if anyone would like to ‘view’ Jim. ‘What do people usually do?’

Pauline made a diffident contribution. ‘Oh, I think there’ll be people who would like to come and see him when he’s all nice and tidy in his coffin.’

Monica shuddered. A wave of icy water seemed to be flowing through her system. She didn’t think she’d ever seen an occupied coffin – surely she’d remember if she had?
Various good excuses had kept her away from funerals, all her life. Even her own father had managed to die when she was in hospital with appendicitis, and she’d insisted they carry on without her.

‘It seems awful,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll look like him.’

Daphne raised her eyebrows and tapped her lips with her pencil. ‘Most people say they’re glad they came,’ she said. ‘It’s a chance to say a last goodbye.’

‘It’d feel – I don’t know – strange,’ faltered Monica. She knew they didn’t understand her, that she wasn’t able to express the strong feeling that had gripped her at the prospect of visiting Jim in a strange impersonal ‘chapel of rest’.

‘I could just leave it open,’ Daphne offered. ‘You don’t have to decide now.’

But Monica was still wrestling with her emotions. ‘I
should
see him again,’ she went on. ‘I can’t just leave it like this. Everything happened so quickly yesterday, I didn’t have time to really think. Do you think – er – could we have him home again, in his coffin? That’s what used to happen, isn’t it? I think it would be nicer if people could come to see him at the house. I could give them a cup of tea. Yes,’ she looked up from the desk, where her gaze had been fixed while she worked out what she
wanted. ‘Yes! That would be much better.’

Daphne suppressed a sigh, and nodded accommodatingly. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you’d like. When would you want him to be brought home?’

‘Monday afternoon,’ said Monica decisively. ‘Then he can have one last night with me.’

And so it was arranged. The funeral would be at eleven-thirty on the following Tuesday. Daphne had suggested a vicar, whose name was dimly familiar to Monica, but no more than that. It was Pauline who pointed out that Tuesday would be the seventeenth, and that the following day was Monica’s fiftieth birthday.

‘Oh, my God,’ gasped Monica, half appalled, half amused. ‘We won’t be having the party, then.’

‘I’ll take you out somewhere,’ promised Pauline. ‘You mustn’t be alone. And the boys’ll want to do something. Life goes on.’

‘That’s true,’ echoed Daphne, looking from one to the other with some curiosity. Monica met her glance. She liked this odd businesslike undertaker, who didn’t flinch from reality. She liked the neat way that everything fitted onto the printed forms on the desk – names, dates, coffin style, newspaper announcement. There was a space for everything. She imagined a similar form waiting for herself, her name pencilled in
already.
It happens to us all
, she thought.
High or low, young or old, we all have to fill in our particulars and get ourselves disposed of in one way or another
.

‘I’d rather not think about my birthday,’ she said. ‘Jim would have been so upset to miss it. He loved organising celebrations. He was good at that sort of thing. We were all going to go to the King’s Head.’
I should cry now
, she thought, objectively.
It’s at moments like this that you’re supposed to be overcome
. But she didn’t feel like crying.

‘Just for a change,’ joked Pauline, before she could stop herself. She turned pink, and tried to control her expression. ‘I mean,’ she explained, ‘Jim was there so much anyway, it wouldn’t have been that different from being at home.’ She forced a laugh, which Monica did not echo.

Daphne waited dispassionately. Monica could feel the other woman’s creeping indifference beginning to intrude on her initial sympathy and patience. She must have seen all this so many times before; she must know by heart the whole range of irrational reactions to the death of a spouse.

‘Is that everything then?’ she asked.

‘Just about,’ Daphne confirmed. ‘Only one more form to fill in.’ She produced a second sheet of paper with a column of questions and spaces
for the replies. She asked Monica if everyone in the family knew there was to be a cremation, and whether anyone was likely to object. Then she asked whether Monica had any reason to suspect that the death was due directly or indirectly, to ‘violence, poison, privation or neglect’ – which she quickly diluted by tapping a finger on the green document supplied by the Registrar. ‘We assume everything’s above board, once we’ve got this,’ she reassured. ‘I’ll just put a “No” for that one.’

Violence, poison, privation or neglect
, Monica repeated to herself. The sinister mantra made her mouth go dry. Those, then, were the official ways in which a person could be unlawfully killed. Another neatness in this whole untidy business that was dying. ‘That’s right,’ she muttered. ‘The answer to that is no.’

She signed the form, and after some repetition of the main details, the last ones on the threshold of the building, she and Pauline departed.

‘Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it,’ Pauline said, on an exhalation of relief. ‘Could’ve been a lot worse, anyway. She’s a bit odd, but nice enough.’

Violence, poison, privation or neglect:
the words kept on running through Monica’s head.

Jim Lapsford’s printworks was in a state of suppressed panic. In effect, Jim had run the
place. He organised the schedule; monitored the quality of the output; kept track of paper, ink, toner, film. Three people worked under him, and nominally there was a Chief Executive, owner of this business and several others, who put in occasional whirlwind appearances to which nobody paid much attention. Jim had been the driving force and without him, they floundered.

‘Perhaps we should close for the day, as a mark of respect,’ said Jodie, designer and clerical officer. She wrote all the letters; filed orders, invoices, catalogues, plates; and advised customers on the appearance of their business cards or menus. Jodie was sensible and competent. Thin, tall and beaky-nosed, she kept herself firmly detached from her all-male colleagues. Her favourite pursuit was walking, alone on the hills or along the riverbank. Jodie used her legs as her means of transport, which was enough in itself to mark her out as different. Her lofty self-sufficiency only added to people’s wariness of her.

‘We can do that on the day of the funeral,’ argued Jack, his eyes glittering behind his heavy spectacles. ‘No sense in closing today, when we’re in the middle of this big calendar job.’

‘Right,’ chimed in Ajash, the gnomish typesetter. ‘That’s right. I’ve got to press on with these party invitations, regardless. Can’t say to
the customer, “Sorry, we missed your deadline because the boss died.”’ He laughed at the idea.

‘Well, I think you
can
,’ said Jodie. ‘I mean, what better reason could there be?’

‘Makes no sense,’ Ajash looked at her with resolution. ‘It’s a bad show about Jim, don’t get me wrong. But this work won’t wait. You know that. If we get on with it this week, work late, maybe, then we can make a proper gesture next week. We’ll all go to the funeral together.’

‘I still can’t believe it,’ Jodie said, for the tenth time. ‘Remember how cheerful he was on Monday afternoon? Laughing and joking. I thought he must have been high on something, he was in such a good mood.’

‘Probably been off with one of his lady friends,’ commented Jack, looking hard at her. ‘Better not go round saying that about taking stuff, either. Not even as a joke. Not now he’s dead.’ Jack had a hungry look about him, which Jodie had long ago realised meant nothing. He was habitually unsmiling, his features all inclined to turn downwards, and any shreds of humour he might possess were invariably couched in satire or personal jibes. Even when he tried to be kind, the most he could manage was a crooked kind of sympathy. Yet he and Jim had been good friends.

Jodie shrugged. ‘I’m not likely to, am I?’ She
returned his hard look, challenging him to say more.

‘Come on,’ urged Ajash. ‘There’s work to be done.’ Jodie jabbed him with a bony forefinger and he skipped backwards, with a muffled squeal.

‘Come on, you two!’ Jack growled. ‘This is no time for horseplay. You’re behaving like kids.’

‘When’s Justin going to honour us with his company?’ Ajash said. ‘Doesn’t he know when he’s needed?’

‘Don’t know what use you think he’s going to be,’ grumbled Jack. ‘All public relations and high-powered marketing, and can’t tell DocuTech from litho, half the time. This place’ll soon fall apart without Jim unless the management pull their finger out.’

Jodie looked down her nose at him. ‘Don’t give us that,’ she scorned. ‘They’ll put you in the hot seat, and take someone else on. Though we all know who it
won’t
be.’

Ajash gave a snorting laugh. ‘Young David, you mean,’ he said, nodding knowingly. ‘Jim put the kybosh on that idea, sure enough.’

Jack turned away, without replying. Jodie looked from him to Ajash, and back again. ‘More fool him,’ she said softly.

For a while, they worked in an uncomfortable silence, the whirring of Ajash’s printing press
a familiar presence. But Jodie couldn’t keep quiet for long. ‘I can’t just go on as if nothing’s happened,’ she burst out. ‘Jim’s
dead
.’ She stared wide-eyed at Jack.

‘Come on, Jode,’ he reproached her. ‘It’s not like you to lose your bottle.’

‘I haven’t lost my bottle. It’s just – oh, I can’t get it out of my mind. I mean, Jim’s the
last
person you’d expect to go like that.’

‘That’s rubbish,’ said Jack, fiercely. ‘Who would you expect it to happen to then? It isn’t something you ever
expect
. Things happen.’