*
There was a midday train which stopped at Céligny, a small and pretty village about half an hour from Geneva. From the age of thirty, Richard Burton had chosen to make the village of Céligny his home. Not the Victorian Richard Burton, who recorded the stories of Mohammed the Shalabi and the Man of Al-Yaman, but Richard Burton the ill-fated actor from Wales.
Rifka had been waiting at Geneva station, eating a bagel beside some Russian buskers playing the balalaika. She had some tools wrapped in a canvas sack, but I liked to think I was fairly unshockable by the difference of other people’s lives. In one parish (Sewerby cum Merton and Grindale), an abandoned pensioner had been partially eaten by her King Charles spaniel before Dad discovered the body. In another (Stonegrave, Nunnington and Stockly), a verger who worked as an engineer on the cross-Channel ferry announced at weekly prayer that he would soon be living as a woman.
I took the tolerant Anglican view: it’d probably be fine. James Joyce was a Catholic, and hardly even that. Body-snatching wasn’t necessarily a bad or even wrong thing to do. Yes it was, sometimes; and no it wasn’t, at others. One mustn’t judge. It all depended; and anyway, we were only going to practise. Whatever that might mean.
In our seats beside the window, I discovered that Rifka’s presence was comforting. She had an easy and attractive manner, an inner serenity, and I was tempted to tell her about Dad, a strong fine man who thought deeply about luck, and stood up for goodness. Instead, because bragging wasn’t in my nature, I looked out at this year’s April from the calendar of beautiful Europe. The sun was chasing away high clouds split like ribs, and frosting the lake with a layer of mist. Far over on the other side, in black and snow above the haze, rose the peaks of huge French mountains.
I interlocked all my fingers, cracked the knuckles, then lifted a latticed double-fist to my mouth, as if boyishly about to blow the sound of a calling owl. Each movement was clearly reflected in the gleam of the speeding window.
‘Where are we going, exactly?’
‘Like I said yesterday. Practice.’
At Céligny, we walked steeply uphill past the lunch-time Café de la Gare. Behind the bar, photos of Richard Burton with the proprietor were occasionally admired by coachloads of Rhondda tourists who also, it was said, sang out loud at his graveside in Welsh. We passed in front of the house where Burton used to live. It was nothing special. One of his granite elder brothers, drunk, had tripped over by the gate and ended up paralysed. Burton’s first wife Sybil had attempted suicide here, with pills, but otherwise it was unpretentious.
I offered to carry Rifka’s tools, as Dad would certainly have done, and we carried on uphill as far as the village church, leaving the road at a path which levelled out at the new cemetery. We walked past the cemetery. A grass track brought us to a much prettier, much older cemetery, and the gravestone of Richard Burton (1925–1984). He was buried not far from Alastair Maclean (1922–1987), the Guns of Navarone man, and also Where Eagles Dare.
‘Keep going,’ Rifka said, ‘we’re not there yet.’
The path dropped away into trees, which sheltered and concealed the tributary of a mountain stream, and through the shifting cover of leaves the sunlight glimmered on the flow of water, bubbling and chattering over deadwood and stones. The path, which had once forked both ways, was blocked upstream by brambles and overgrowing branches. Rifka pushed through, and I followed. We heard a dog, but never actually saw it. We kept going.
Behind a matted break of copper beech, flat in an unexpected glade, Rifka stopped at a neat row of several small headstones.
‘This is it,’ she said, ‘let’s take a break.’
I laid down the tools, and went to inspect the gravestones. It took me a few moments, after clearing away ivy and dry leaves, to realise with some relief that these weren’t people. Rifka had brought me out to Céligny to practise on household pets.
‘Not just any pets,’ Rifka said, coming up behind me. From between the trees sunshine patterned the gladed stones in strips and spikes. ‘They’re all dogs. And not just any dogs. These are the former friends and companions of the actress Elizabeth Taylor.’
Mum would have loved this. Dad would have been polite, so as not to offend Rifka’s sensibilities. For the same reason, he wouldn’t have walked away. Probably, if they’d been together, Mum and Dad would have had a bicker, about how much enthusiasm it was appropriate to show.
Rifka knelt down and unrolled the canvas sack. Inside, there was a trowel, a chisel, a claw-hammer, a two-foot crowbar and a roll of black bin-liners. From her pocket, she added a small plastic pot.
‘Very important,’ she said, ‘In the pot there’s a paste, a mix of cement powder and wall-filler. I suggest you always prepare it in advance.’
‘Slow down,’ I said. ‘I’m just looking.’
‘In that case, remember it’s not as hard as it looks. The easiest are the straight earthworks, when they simply shovel the soil back over the coffin. Then it’s just gardening. The hardest are those with stone linings and insets, often made of granite, but we don’t have to learn everything at once. Elizabeth Taylor’s dogs are a good place to start. They’re similar in design to most celebrity graves, only on a smaller scale. Now. Take a closer look. They have an upright stone, the headstone, and also a recumbent stone which seals the actual grave. Our work is with the recumbent, and occasionally you’ll find one covered in soil, or gravel, and sometimes it carries an inscription. Ignore all that. The only thing that matters is a sound technique.’
Rifka cleared the climbing ivy off one of the stones. It was evidently from the period when Liz was wearing furs and hoarding gold and generally going native, and it belonged to Spätzli (1964–1973 Schreng au em Hemmel witer, Spätzli Bueb). Rifka started me off with the chisel, demonstrating the best method for chipping away at the mortar seal. It looked fairly harmless.
We took turns, and as I gradually improved my technique, Rifka told me that in the Middle Ages the sale of relics was quite an industry. There was buying, selling, cheating, stealing, just like industry as we know it today. Relics were like land, or silver. They were another asset to be managed, one among many.
‘The Medicis did relics,’ she said, ‘the Rothschilds and the Morgans did them. The Gettys are famous for it, and make larceny a full-time occupation and a virtue. It’s still the traditional pursuit of the seriously rich, and you know why?’
No, I said, I didn’t know why. I chipped away the last of the mortar and laid down the chisel.
‘Because very rich people earn the privilege of not having to want the obvious.’
Money. Money wasn’t important to rich people, which meant you could see what they really wanted, and what all people would really want, if they didn’t first get stuck on money.
‘Relics?’
‘Mortal remains which excite immortal longings.’
Once the mortar was gone, we moved on to the correct positioning of the crowbar, and how to work it in beneath the recumbent. It was most important to slide not prise. On my first attempt, with the crowbar well in under the recumbent stone of nine-year-old Spätzli, I heaved and the stone cracked, sounding off through the woods like a gunshot.
‘Bugger.’
Fortunately, Elizabeth Taylor was a serial dog-lover, and I could afford to make mistakes. Rifka handed me the chisel again, but this time she didn’t help me on Mr Woo (1968–1974 Small, Dumb, Adored).
‘They start with memorabilia,’ Rifka said, sometimes interrupting herself to correct my angles. ‘But they soon progress. They want to buy proximity to greatness, and then they’re seduced by the exclusivity. Relics are like brands in reverse. Not available in all good shops, nowhere near you. It’s exactly the kind of unique commodity the rich will buy when money’s no object. Bluntly, there’s a demand. And Moholy’s the supply.’
‘Not exactly,’ I said. I straightened up because my back was stiff, and as I stretched out I emphasised my point by waving the chisel. ‘Moholy showed m
e the catalogue. There were very few names in the index with red dots. Out of all those people, only a handful had found buyers.’
‘Don’t be so sure. The dots are the ones immediately available, as of now. The other ones are potentially available.’
‘Meaning?’
‘We haven’t dug them up yet. But the ones we’ve already got are being bought all the time. They’re priced on a sliding scale depending on celebrity and difficulty of extraction, but, once they’re out, Moholy doesn’t offer the whole skeleton. That wouldn’t make commercial sense. He sells them in bits, because however small the fragment, the power of the whole remains intact. With relics, that’s the way it is.’
I sat back on my heels, and put the chisel aside. I picked up the crowbar, but Rifka had reminded me what we were actually doing. Or not doing. But practising on animals to do.
‘What about the law?’
‘It’s against the law. But it’s a crime without victims.’
‘That’s what all criminals say.’
‘In this case it’s true. And if we acquire the relics in a way which is untraceable, and then sell them discreetly to private collectors, it’s in everybody’s interests to keep it quiet.’
‘What about the family?’
‘Anyone dead for more than a few years and family outrage is pure sentimentality. This isn’t murder. And it’s hardly even theft. It’s not as if the bones belong to anybody, and we’re meticulously discreet. That’s the secret. We’ve never damaged a grave, and the condition of the gravesites remains unchanged, as if untouched. Remember Davy in Geneva. You’d never have noticed. The bones are gone, but nobody ever knows. It’s a kind of secret resurrection. And theologically, it’s watertight.’
Yes, I knew that. I’d thought exactly the same thing only yesterday in the cemetery of kings, standing over Calvin and Davy. The soul was long gone. All that remained was the body. Not even the body, the bones.
‘Jesus, Rifka. How did you ever get involved in something like this?’
‘The crowbar, Jay. Have another go with the crowbar.’
‘Tell me.’
She shrugged. ‘Where I come from everybody gets buried. No choice. It’s a religion thing.’
‘So how can you be doing this?’
‘I know what you’re saying. My parents wouldn’t approve. But Anglicans aren’t the only ones whose God has let them down. Now. The crowbar.’
This time I worked much more slowly, finally sliding open the grave and keeping the recumbent intact. It took much longer than I expected.
‘Excellent,’ Rifka said, ‘now use the trowel. Dig into the goldmine.’
‘And why me? Why spend all this time on me?’
‘We need an expert. We can’t just hire East Germans and hand them discount sledgehammers. We take more care than that. It’s a question of courtesy.’
‘And good business sense. Yes, I understand all that. But why me?’
‘You’re the last of the Anglicans. You have nothing left to lose.’
‘Why not keep on doing it yourself?’
Rifka came over and squatted on the other side of the open grave of Mr Woo. She took something out of her bag, and palmed it in her hand. It was the white disc, tightly wrapped in clingfilm, which she’d first shown me on the altar at All Saints. This time I looked at it more closely, and it was like a flat sea-shell, a sand dollar. She tossed it over and it landed on the grass between my feet.
‘Jung’s knee-cap,’ she said. ‘Yup.’
Against the mud and grass, even inside clingfilm, it was whiter than both Becket’s toe and Davy’s foot, as if it had been scraped, or chalked. It had definitely not been verified by fire, at least not recently.
‘The patella of Carl Gustav Jung, the famous psychotherapist. The clingfilm helps, but it still does my head in.’
She took her pill-bottle from the pocket of her shirt, and threw back two or three of the pills. ‘Shot nerves,’ she said. ‘There’s a limit to how long anyone can do this. I’ve reached mine. It’s time to move on.’
‘So why would I agree to take over?’
‘Look at Jung’s knee. In fact, you can keep it.’
‘Maybe I don’t want it.’
‘A memento,’ Rifka said, ‘but don’t worry, I suspect it’s worthless. I haven’t even shown it to Moholy.’
‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t like the look of the man who brought it into the shop. People come into Moholy’s gallery all the time, promising the world. They bring in a statue of the jackal god Anubis, who’ll protect your dead. They have oracle bones from the Sheng dynasty, which offer guidance when addressing the spirits. My head’s had enough. Whereas you’re a deacon. You believe there’s something out there.’
‘I might do.’
‘Who did Moholy ask you to get?’
‘Joyce, James. James Joyce. That was the only name he mentioned.’
‘Really? Well, I suppose Joyce is a good enough place to start, but Moholy’s after someone much more important, even than that. I don’t know who. I don’t even know if Moholy knows, but lately he’s been preoccupied, as if he has something big on his mind, something foolish. The Holy Grail, or the Philosopher’s Stone, that scale of foolish. It’s because he has no instinct for the spiritual, and he hates that. He really feels the lack of religious urges, so he’s likely to go over the top.’
‘Very interesting,’ I said, ‘but none of my concern.’
‘I’d always hoped to be there when he finds it. Unfortunately…’ She tapped the side of her head with her finger. ‘A bone too far.’
Back on her feet, Rifka went over to Een So (1972–1978 My Darling Precious Sleep Thee Well, Een So). She patted the top of the headstone, a fine slab of white granite speckled with black crystals, and then decorated the miniature recumbent with sticks and stones to stand in for jam-jars and candles and letters. ‘Anyone who can do it discreetly,’ she said, staring neutrally at my right shoulder, ‘well, it’s a licence to print money.’
Like learning languages in retirement, I could appreciate the knowledge even if I never intended to use it. There was a method, which the son of an ex-soldier in me could appreciate. Before setting out, and this made sense to me, check all equipment is clean and in good order. Prepare paste of cement powder and ready-mixed wall-filler, if possible matching colour to original mortar.
Important: attempt in dry conditions only. Unwrap tools, and turn canvas sack inside-out. Lay sack beside recumbent stone. If recumbent overlaid with gravel or stones, remove and place on sack. Likewise turf. Chip away mortar securing recumbent to headstone and/or vault. Insert crowbar. Slide recumbent free, then turn topside down. Dig earth on to underside of stone, keeping clean its right-side-up. Locate bones. Transfer bones, still in mud or clay, to bin-liner. When backfilling, replace earth loosely. Turn and replace recumbent stone. Reseal using cement/filler compound, and re-lay all gravel or turf removed earlier. Collect original mortar-chippings, and disperse at distance.
As the afternoon wore on the temperature dropped, but I began to enjoy the physical challenge, and my own proficiency. It was good to be outside and working with my hands, sucking in lungfuls of fresh mountain air.
After only half a day of practice, I was doing a competent job of work on Elizabeth Taylor’s Een So. Sustained physical exertion cleared my head, and I could see there was something of the fanatic about me, a priest half bent on martyrdom. I was also simply curious, to see what the bones would look like.
The remains of Een So, dearly beloved of Elizabeth Taylor, turned out to be a skeleton about as long in bones as a two-litre bottle of water. Apart from a slight flattening of the surrounding grass, which would spring out overnight, no casual observer would ever suspect the disturbed peace of this small celebrity lap-dog. It made me feel very proud.
I applied the final touch of stonedust paste with my fingers, then dabbed with a stick to make it look pitted and weathered. ‘There,’ I said. I sat back on my heels a
nd surveyed my work. ‘What do you think?’
‘Not bad. But don’t leave the twig.’
All the way back to Geneva, every twenty minutes or so, Rifka swallowed a pill. She reminded me that the stones covering people were larger, and therefore heavier. Extra care was needed. She handed me a car key.
‘That’s for the van,’ she said.
‘What van?’
‘It’s a white Peugeot 305. I’m going to park it outside your apartment. You’ll need it for Zurich and James Joyce.’
She stopped me before I could say anything. ‘If you don’t want to do it, just drive the van back to Moholy’s shop. It’s not a problem.’
And I believed her, wanting to believe the best of people. I took the key, and dropped it into my pocket next to Jung sealed in clingfilm. My unequivocal intention was to return the van to Moholy first thing in the morning, of course it was. That is, until I reached the flat, where Dad’s good influence was cruelly overwhelmed.
The answer-machine, as always, was flashing. There was one new message, making a total of thirteen. Unlucky. I went through all the other messages first. They were the same as before. The thirteenth and newest message was from Helena. She thanked me for calling. She was relieved that I was coming to my senses. And she’d managed to reserve a ticket.
She’d see me tomorrow, then, at the airport. At a quarter past ten.
‘In the morning, Jay. Quarter past ten in the morning.’
I couldn’t believe it. Had I actually asked her to fly over? She said I had, so I suppose I must have done. I was the good-hearted but forgetful vicar, in a line of ditzy vicars. It must have been instinctive, involuntary, but, now I thought about it, Dad would have done the same. Especially in the haze of virtue after a service on a Sunday. He’d have phoned Helena and nicely proposed a reunion, because that was the decent thing to do, and what Helena would have wanted.
God. Just look where niceness and good manners could get you.
In a bout of self-recrimination I circled the flat, hid Jung at the back of a kitchen cupboard, sat down, circled again. How could I have been so foolish? Where was the famous free-will? In the bedroom I stopped, and found myself staring at the bed. And where was she going to sleep? I appealed to Dad for help, determined if at all possible to follow his example. I’d received a difficult phone-call, and Dad was out of the house.
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