The World is a Wedding (6 page)

‘I'm certain everything is very proper in Heaven,' replied Wilfred, who was unsure of the finer points of what happened to the souls of the recently deceased. Although he did often wonder if the dead climbed the ladder to Heaven cradling a piece of paper with the names of the people who had mattered to them in life. ‘Here,' one might say to St. Peter, ‘these I have loved.'

‘Best not speak ill of the dead,' continued Mrs. Willie the Post. ‘A tin of marrowfat peas, please. And a tin of Mock Turtle Soup—no, make that a tin of Thick Kidney Soup. Shame there is he didn't visit Mrs. Prout; she could have charmed him with her magic eye.'

‘Can you cure a heart attack with a charm?' asked Mrs. Annie Evans.

‘She cured John Jeremiah of liverandheartgrow. His liver and heart were stuck fast together. Packet of Lively Polly soap powder, please, while you're up there. And Mrs. Emlyn Jacobs told me that she is giving the deceased's false teeth to his brother because he needs a new pair. Is that right, Wilfred?'

Wilfred nodded.

‘There's kind. May his soul rest in peace,' commented Mrs. Willie the Post, batting away a big bluebottle. ‘Very warm weather still for the time of year. Hot as abroad.'

‘Yes,' agreed Wilfred anxiously, thinking of Mr. Emlyn Jacobs, who was sitting in the heat under the glass roof of the workshop.

 

Wilfred looked at the tarpaulin-covered lump stood in the middle of his workshop. Under the tarpaulin was Mr. Emlyn Jacobs, sitting on a chair—the same one on which Wilfred had carried him across Market Square. It was an ornate Chippendale-style chair that had been French-polished and looked rather like a throne. Its crimson velvet cushion might become slightly stained, but there was little Wilfred could do about that. Mr. Emlyn Jacobs had to sit somewhere until the rigor mortis left him. Indeed, he'd been sitting in Wilfred's workshop, like a deposed king, with a tarpaulin over him, for three days. Wilfred had put a vice and several heavy tins of varnish around the circumference of the material to hold it firmly in place and to keep the flies off. ‘Only one fly,' Mr. Auden used to warn ominously. ‘That's all it takes.'

‘Now then,' announced Wilfred, ‘are you comfortable there, Emlyn? I'm sorry about having to cover you up, but what with my wife and visitors coming past the workshop, I'm sure you can understand.' The air was beginning to smell a bit sweet. Wilfred put his hand briefly on the tarpaulin covering Mr. Jacobs's forearm. Stiff as a board.

‘Come on, Emlyn,' he said exasperatedly, ‘there's a good chap! You've got to settle yourself a bit. No good you sitting here stuffed up like a month of Sundays. Once you're dead, you have to lie down. I can't bury you on a chair. Nice chair, mind. Mahogany. Not less than two hundred years old, I expect.'

Mr. Emlyn Jacobs had his arm out as if he were resting on an invisible shelf; indeed, he had been leaning on the dado rail of the indoor water closet when he had popped his clogs. Rigor mortis had crept through his corpse and frozen him in death in the position of his last moments on earth. And that was all very well and good. Rigor mortis was terrific, the canary's tusks. Wilfred liked to see his customers rigid and was relieved when it came over them, tightening first their heads, then necks, hardening their spines and fingers, finally stiffening their whole bodies for a couple of days.

‘There was a to-do, Emlyn, getting you out of the house. Now, I'll call round and tell your wife later that you're not quite ready for a viewing yet.' Wilfred nodded at the rightness of his own comment and opened a tin of Lady Brand Varnish to begin varnishing Mr. Jacobs's coffin.

Rigor mortis was the sign of death in a way nothing else was. Not breathing was no good. All manner of folk could stop breathing—lie stock-still and turn white as a ghost—and it didn't mean they were dead, especially if they'd had a stroke or drowned. An undertaker could poke them and prick them, hold a mirror-glass to their lips to see if it misted, then listen with an ear-horn for a heartbeat and be certain that the person had kicked the bucket, only to later hear a cough, moan or fidget from inside the coffin, and—for those left behind—it was a miracle beyond miracles. Bit unsettling for the undertaker, mind. There was the deceased, who everyone thought had gone to the sphere of celestial rewards, suddenly waking and talking—and only sleeping all along. No, it was hard to know if death had come without rigor mortis.

Wilfred smoothed the pig bristles of the small brush he used for varnishing and said to Mr. Emlyn Jacobs, ‘Mind, your wife will give you a good send-off. “No life without a wife!” That's what my apprentice-master said to me.' Then Wilfred was reminded how that phrase had inspired his proposal, his impulsive and wrong-minded proposal to Grace at a picnic, how he had been drawn in by her yellow dress and what was underneath it. The memory sobered him, and he threw it from his mind. He turned to the hefty tarpaulin-covered mound in his middle of his workshop.

‘I'm varnishing the lid for you right now,' he said. ‘It's made of oak and fit for a king.' He dipped the bristles in the golden liquid. Mr. Auden had said to Wilfred early on in his apprenticeship: ‘Don't bury them until they're dead. Wilfred, are you listening? This is important.' It was good advice and he wouldn't want to contradict it. A fair few of his customers, the Dead Ringers they were called, asked in their last will and testament to be buried in a British Safety Coffin with a periscope to see above ground and a bell which the poor bugger could ring. It was less common these days, but he had to agree with the old-fashioned folk who requested it. It would be terrifying to be buried alive and to come round from the sleep of the dead to find you were six feet under with nothing to do but claw fervently at the lid of a coffin. You'd have to die all over again, as it were. No, not a pleasant way to go. On occasion, a coffin had been exhumed and the skeleton found curled up at one end and scratch-marks etched into the underside of the lid. At least there was no fear of that with Mr. Jacobs.

Wilfred varnished the smooth underside of the coffin lid carefully.

‘I've made your coffin slightly larger, so you should be comfy. I didn't want you crammed in: you'd have no room to breathe, as it were. We're getting you sorted, Emlyn—don't you worry. You'll soon be lying down. Better to be lying down for eternal rest, more comfortable. And your wife will be wanting her chair back.'

He would forewarn the pallbearers of the weight they would be forced to carry at the—what was that? He listened. Ruddy hell. Was that what he thought it was? Was that the sound of dripping? He lifted the rim of the tarpaulin covering Mr. Emlyn Jacobs. A pool of gluey, dark red liquid was growing alongside the corpse's black lace-up shoe.

Wilfred pulled the tarpaulin off. Mr. Jacobs's stomach was bloated with gas and his trousers were straining at the seam: his testicles were swelling by the looks of things. His lips were swollen, his tongue was beginning to poke out between his gums and there was froth on his lips. His brain was being eaten by germs and seeping out of his mouth. The brain was always first to decay. And his eyes had leeched away. As Mr. Auden said, ‘When you die, you eat yourself.' Wilfred didn't know about all this modern embalming, but it would have to be better than this.

What to do? Mr. Auden had taught him: ‘A superior undertaker looks calmly at all the different and unexpected faces of death. And God only knows, Wilfred,
boy bach
, death has many faces. It isn't just old ladies ascending to the celestial realms.' Well, this must be one of the faces Mr. Auden meant. There was something rotten in the centre of his workshop. Right. Wilfred must act. A good undertaker was decisive in the face of death. A purveyor of superior funerals knew exactly what to do when faced with the great unknown. And even if he didn't know what to do, he pretended he did.

‘Emlyn, you're getting in that coffin now! This is enough. No more of you lounging around in my workshop as if you're having a pint in the Conduit. Come on, in that coffin!' He put his hand on Mr. Emlyn Jacobs's rock-hard shoulder. ‘You're going to have to help me here; you're a portly chap. I'm not going to be able to do this on my own. Right. Wait here.'

Wilfred stood on the steps of the workshop and bellowed, ‘Da, give me a hand with Emlyn. Bugger weighs a ton. And he's not looking pretty. Hurry up, Da!' he yelled. ‘Got to get him in that ruddy coffin now.'

Hearing no answer he bounded down the four steps of the workshop, across the small yard and into the house.

‘Da, what are you—' His da was speechless and sitting as if glued to the kitchen chair. Then Wilfred noticed that Flora was at the kitchen table, quietly sewing a button on the cuff of his cambric shirt.

‘Oh, Flora,' said Wilfred. This was one of those instances when the way he used to talk and the way he spoke now that he was married was very different. ‘Da, would you be so kind as to assist me in the workshop?'

His da nodded his reply while Flora Myffanwy, seemingly thinking nothing and seeing little, continued to take the needle through the buttonholes. If she understood, and Wilfred suspected she did, she was contained enough to behave discreetly.

‘Good God Almighty,' his da uttered once they were in the workshop and the door closed.

‘He's dripping everywhere, Da. Got to put him in his coffin.'

‘How are we going to do that?'

‘We'll drag him on the chair till he's next to it, then lift him in.'

Wilfred's da looked at Wilfred with a lack of conviction but the two men started jerking the chair, which swerved indeterminately, its legs threatening to snap, across the floor. They shuffled slowly forward, Wilfred bending over and hugging Mr. Emlyn Jacobs around his bulging stomach so that the corpse didn't topple over. Wilfred kicked a tin of Kingston Varnish
 
out of the way. The accountant was eventually shunted, trailing rivulets of fluid, to beside the waiting coffin.

‘Right—you take his legs, I'll take the top half.' Wilfred got hold of Mr. Jacobs's hand but felt a sheet of skin begin to peel away. Mr. Jacobs was gloving: the skin from his hand was falling off.

‘Wait a moment,' Wilfred said, not explaining. He held Mr. Jacobs under the arms instead. ‘Don't strain yourself, Da. On the count of three: one, two—
three
,' and, with some grunting, they managed to raise the corpse and then near-drop him into the specially-widened coffin. Mr. Emlyn Jacobs sighed deeply with what sounded like satisfaction as the air left his lungs.

Wilfred put his hands on his broad hips, his face dripping with sweat. He and his da looked down at Mr. Emlyn Jacobs, who still had one arm sticking out and his knees bent. Wilfred would have to break that arm and both legs with a mallet; he had hoped not to have to do it. He took the gold-rimmed spectacles from Mr. Emlyn Jacobs's jacket pocket and put them on him.

‘I'll get a cloth and wash this . . . this . . . off our shoes,' he said.

‘Can't you bury some lighter buggers next time, Wilfred
bach
?'

W
ilfred ate his fried breakfast with a sense of satisfaction. The day was already bright and autumnal, and Mr. Emlyn Jacobs was finally in his grave. It had been a pleasant funeral yesterday, although it had not been entirely true when the Reverend Waldo Williams MA said that Mr. Emlyn Jacobs had been an honest Christian man who lived an upright Christian life—the reverend liked to say the word ‘Christian'.

And tomorrow, Wilfred decided, taking a bite of some fried bread, he would empty the front room of furniture, sweep the floor, put up a shelf and start making a counter. Then he would order the paint and wallpaper.

He noticed the tip of his necktie was resting in some egg yolk on his breakfast plate: he pushed the tie between the buttons on his shirt then looked down at the piece of bacon on his plate and said to his da and Flora Myffanwy, ‘Did you know “Baconian” doesn't mean a man who likes bacon. It means “pertaining to Francis Bacon”.'

‘You're not reading that ruddy dictionary again?' his da asked.

‘Indeed I am.' Wilfred put his knife and fork down. ‘Right!' he announced, adjusting his necktie. Now he was a husband and going to be a father, he must sound confident.

‘Right,' he repeated. Wilfred's da and his wife looked at him, slightly puzzled. ‘It is a glorious Saturday morning. Flora Myffanwy and I will be making an early start in the hearse for a day at the seaside.' Flora Myffanwy smiled: Wilfred was delighted. This being confident was the right thing to be doing. He stood up and put on his Harris Tweed jacket.

‘Tenby it is,' he declared. ‘We won't be needing anything apart from a sunhat.'

‘A sunhat in Tenby?' Wilfred's da asked. ‘You're optimistic.'

‘The sun always shines on the righteous.' Wilfred smiled self-consciously at his weak joke. Lines from the Bible never made very good jokes. ‘Let us go. Dear.'

‘I shall fetch my camera,' Flora replied.

He waited to pull out Flora's chair as she stood. That's what husbands did, although quite how they knew the perfect moment to do it was a mystery to Wilfred. If a husband's timing was wrong, his wife could end up on the floor—and that wouldn't do, to have your beloved splayed on the kitchen flagstones, all crumpled and bruised. Yet somehow husbands knew how to do these things. But he had only been married for eight weeks and would have time to learn, to the end of his life—
until death do us part
. Hopefully, that was plenty of time.

‘Let me help you. Dear,' he offered.

‘Thank you, Wilfred,' Flora replied politely.

The chair squeaked awkwardly as the spindly legs dragged across the slate flagstones and Wilfred reached out a hand to help Flora regain her balance. Perhaps he should have been wearing bedroom slippers instead of socks, then he wouldn't have stubbed his toe. Perhaps
husbands
wore bedroom slippers. They definitely wore dressing-gowns and pyjamas at breakfast, of that he was sure.