A Dirty Death

by Rebecca Tope

  They walked up the slope behind the farm buildings, where the fields rapidly became steep and less fertile. The hill rose to thick woodland, belonging to the neighbouring farm – a large estate owned by Jonathan Mabberley. Though only a mile from the centre of the village, Redstone felt isolated in its folds of hills crossed by crooked narrow lanes. Farmhouses seemed to rise at random from the ground, some on hillsides, some hidden deep in natural hollows. Redstone was one of the latter, its buildings and yard fitted snugly into the bottom of a shallow bowl, with all the land around it sloping uphill. It was an ancient land, barely scratched by humankind: the nearest major road was six miles away, and the sound of traffic was no more that an occasional swoosh as a single vehicle used one of the lanes. Lilah had not yet even tried to escape from this rural life into a faster, more exciting, more urban setting. One day, she told herself, she might give it a try. But the necessary courage was a long time coming.

  As he strode unseeingly in a straight line up the hillside, Roddy fought his tears, choosing rage over grief. He smacked one fist into his palm, over and over, emitting tight phrases of fury. ‘It’s stupid, Lilah. A stupid way to die. Why wasn’t he more careful? What are we supposed to do now? Everything’s ruined. What a mess. Oh sod it. Fucking sod the stupid fool.’ A few hot tears shook themselves free, but he viciously swept them away without acknowledgement. He hardly seemed the same boy who had slept so safely in the embrace of his sheet that morning.

  Lilah was shocked by his anger. Somehow, it seemed almost wicked, and entirely inappropriate. Then she remembered Tamsin, the half-breed collie they’d had when she was younger. She had been prone to chasing cars, and finally one had come too close and run over her leg. Lilah had witnessed the whole incident. As the tyre had cracked Tamsin’s bone, the dog had bitten and snarled furiously at it, fighting the enemy that was hurting her. Bravely she had tried to take on the thing that was so much bigger and stronger than herself. Roddy seemed to Lilah like Tamsin, now – snarling at Death, shaking his fist defiantly at the most powerful adversary of them all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Father Edmund Larkin was hot in his black clothes. He hated summer funerals for making him stand out in the sun with too much on. He hated this funeral more than most.

  ‘In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to come’ were hollow words when spoken on behalf of a man like Guy Beardon. If anyone deserved to lie rotting and forgotten forever, it was him. The vicar had disliked Guy almost from their very first meeting, six years earlier. Burying a person you disliked might naturally be expected to bring a small twinge of satisfaction – but when you were God’s spokesman and a minister of the Church you were forbidden such pleasures. Common human antipathies were out of order: you were supposed to pray for their extermination from your sinful breast.

  The vicar knew with near certainty that Guy was damned – if such old-fashioned notions could still apply. Selfish, rude and domineering were the words he mentally used about him, when preparing his oration for the funeral. Intolerant, secretive and hypocritical also came to mind. Something of an amateur psychologist, Father Edmund believed that Guy had a lot to hide. He had seen it in the farmer’s shadowed eyes.

  He had a host of excellent reasons for his intense dislike of the man. The open personal slights which Guy had directed at him had been infuriating; the contempt for the particular brand of Anglicanism Father Edmund practised had been uncomfortable; moreover the admiration Guy attracted from the majority of the villagers had incensed the vicar, who was only too well aware of his own fading popularity. And there were other reasons; reasons he didn’t even want to acknowledge.

  Guy’s end had, of course, rocked the village. Not since near-blind Joe Thrussle had fallen head-first into his butterwell, long before Father Edmund had come here, had there been such drama. Speculation ran rife. Had Guy been drinking? Did a cow or dog nudge him in? Some even sniggeringly suggested that ol’ Sam might have done it, to get himself a bit of peace. Everyone had heard the way Guy had mocked Sam, day in and day out for decades now. Everyone had also heard – though none could say where – that Sam had many an illicit encounter with Miranda, while Guy was safely ploughing the farthest fields, or spending a day at Newton Abbot races. The rumours seemed self-generated; no one had any concrete evidence for them. Perhaps, thought Father Edmund sourly, it just stood to reason that any man and woman in a house together would make the most natural use of the opportunity.

  The vicar himself tried subtly to propound the theory that Guy’s death was suicide. He had his own good reasons for this, though even without them, his innate sense of mischief might have led him to the same course. Suicide was a subject Father Edmund knew a good deal about. Hadn’t he once found himself poised on the edge of just such a slurry pit, looking down at the deep dark stuff, thinking blackly of immersing himself in it? A devilish kind of baptism that would be, he’d said to himself. And much of the devil’s best work had an insidious appeal for this particular man of the church. In the quietest stretches of the night, when the owl or the fox in his garden woke him with their predatory howls, he could not prevent his thoughts from turning to practices that were agreed by any community to be beyond the pale. Practices which were forever barred to him. Dirty practices, which would horrify any decent-minded person. Activities which he knew would bring the most intense of pleasures and the deepest of shame.

  Perhaps, he surmised, Guy had been free in his indulgences. Living on a farm, he had opportunities in abundance for many of the shocking imaginings of that lonely vicarage bedroom. Father Edmund had slowly convinced himself that Guy Beardon lived a life of debauchery, for which he ought to be severely punished. Wasn’t it obvious from his uncouth language? Wouldn’t any amateur psychologist come to the same conclusion? A man whose expletives were all ‘shit’ and ‘bugger’ and ‘sod’ had to have a tendency in a certain familiar and forbidden direction.

  And now the man was dead. The vicar had had considerable difficulty in constructing his funeral peroration without explicitly mentioning how he had died. His main motive was to avoid, if possible, inducing tears in the women of the family. Crying women were yet another repellant aspect of his work. More than once, when a weeping parishioner had come to pour out her troubles, he had needed to fix his hands rigidly around the seat of his chair in order to prevent himself from rushing from the room. He had learnt, from long experience, that there were certain phrases at a funeral which could almost guarantee that the waterworks would start. ‘Sadly missed’ was one. Almost anything nice about the dead person’s character was taboo, too. The trick was to be very subtly annoying; to get small details wrong, to hint that this person may be better off dead, and best of all, to try and work in some just-perceptible element of farce. His favourite was to get the coffin positioned too close to the lectern, so that he had to squeeze his generous girth painfully between the two, before he could say his piece. This almost always set any young mourners giggling, which forced the adults to shush them, and thus took their minds off their grief for a blessed minute or two.

  But this funeral did not readily lend itself to any of these gambits. He scanned the full pews in the small church, noting with some irritation that people who had openly loathed the man had nonetheless shown up for his funeral. There were his neighbours – the Mabberleys and the Grimsdales – with whom Guy had scarcely exchanged a civil word; and there were Tim and Sarah Rickworth, the affluent young incomers, who could surely have little reason to regret Guy’s passing. Father Edmund presumed that they thought it was village etiquette to come to all the funerals held at the church. Not that there were many – this was only the second one since Christmas.

  Carefully, the vicar launched into his well-prepared address. ‘We are here today to perform a melancholy necessity. Farmer Guy Beardon has been taken from us by the most tragic accident. The whole community has been deeply shocked by the sudden and unkind way in which he lost his life, and our profound sympathies go out to his family. G
uy was a well-known figure in the village, having farmed here for sixteen years …’ (The one deliberate error he permitted himself. He noted with satisfaction that Miranda and Lilah simultaneously looked up with a new attention.) ‘He took an active part in all our local proceedings. An involved member of the Parish Council and other organisations, there will be many areas where his shoes will be hard to fill …’ (Why can’t he just say, ‘He’ll be sadly missed’? wondered Lilah). ‘Very often the quality of a life will compensate for an untimely end, and this may be some small consolation. Guy Beardon had a loving family around him, he made a success of Redstone Farm – some say against serious odds; he led a healthy outdoor life. His devotion to the ideal of organic farming was beyond doubt, and forced him to be outspoken on the subject on many occasions. There are those who might envy him, despite his shocking end. Now, let us sing the hymn chosen by his family, “Abide With Me”.’

  The deep soulful eyes of the lovely Lilah had been fixed intently on him since the mistake about the time they’d been at the farm. He had acted up accordingly, giving the best performance he could manage. Like a Madonna, the girl was, Father Edmund thought sadly. An intelligent modern Madonna, remote and serene. A woman to dream about, if you were the type to dream about women. No need to worry about her breaking down. It was the widow, Miranda, who bothered Father Edmund more. Throughout the service, the woman had kept up a constant irritating sniff, dabbing endlessly at her nose with a man’s large white hanky. She held onto her daughter’s arm like a drowning person, virtually ignoring the wretched young Roddy on her other side.

  Father Edmund could identify only too well with Roddy. Grimly, the boy had set his jaw against any unseemly weaknesses. He sat as if alone in the world, suffering in that hidden, brave British way which makes some unworthy souls yearn to keep jabbing until the pain becomes apparent.

  Finally they got to the graveside. The late May sun blazed down, the air was filled with smells of newly cut grass, honeysuckle, privet flowers. Not so much as a hint of the malodorous slurry which still filled everyone’s mental nostrils, and remained clinging to the walls of Guy Beardon’s bronchial passages. The four black-suited bearers – one of them, Lilah noted, the very man whose shoe had been splashed with slurry when Guy was taken away – sweated masochistically, preparing to lower the stout coffin deep into the ground. Nobody bothered to scatter soil or flowers on the lid, as Father Edmund intoned the final words. Miranda had never been to a funeral before, and presumably knew nothing of the procedure. With a small shrug, the vicar let it go. What did it signify anyway?

  Lilah couldn’t watch at the last moment, when the coffin was lowered ceremoniously into the hole lined with violently coloured artificial grass. She turned her head away and was immediately distracted by the sight of a young woman watching from beyond the hedge bordering the churchyard. The woman was standing completely still, her gaze fixed intently on the proceedings. Almost everyone who had been in the church was now hovering awkwardly between the church door and the lychgate, but this observer was not just another villager, come to join the party. This was Elvira, who lived in the old stone cottage opposite the churchyard with Phoebe, her mother. Elvira had been born damaged in some way, so that she stared at everything with the same unrelenting hunger. Her stare was legendary; few could meet her gaze for long. She must have seen funerals before, living as she did so close to the church; Lilah could imagine that they made a welcome diversion for her, as would the weddings and the carol services. All the same, it was unsettling to see her there, and Lilah turned her attention quickly back to the coffin, out of sight now unless you leant over the edge, and this was something she had no desire to do.

  The Beardons were forced to run the gauntlet as they walked away from the grave, passing a line of villagers, each keen to convey condolences and make their presence felt. It was, after all, something of an effort to attend a funeral and they did not intend that their generous gesture should go unmarked. One by one, people took Miranda by the hand. Mrs Axford from the shop; the gentlemanly and forbearing Wing Commander Stradling; Martha Cattermole – ‘Oh, I didn’t see you in the church,’ said Lilah in surprise. ‘How nice of you to come.’

  Martha was another familiar face from school, but unlike Den Cooper, she had been on the staff and Lilah a favourite pupil of hers. They had kept in touch after Lilah left. Martha and her sisters were so well born that they almost qualified as aristocracy; they lived in a huge and beautiful house outside a larger village, four or five miles away. Today Martha wore a long cotton skirt and an embroidered waistcoat, her frizzy hair – the colour of apricots in the bright sunshine – tied back, showing the sharp definition of her jaw. She stood out in the line of so-called mourners like a Siamese cat in a row of tabbies.

  ‘I was so sorry when I heard,’ she said. ‘It must have been such a shock. And I liked your father. He was an original.’

  Lilah couldn’t reply. This was the first time anybody had paid tribute to Guy as if they really meant it. It highlighted the deficiency of regret amongst Guy’s acquaintances and Lilah had to blink hard for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  She and Martha had talked before about the similarities between their families. Although from different social classes, they were both misfits in the rooted community. The Cattermoles were bohemian, with exotic, well-connected friends. Martha had adopted teaching as a profession out of a passionate sense of commitment. ‘And the money comes in useful,’ she said, more than once. ‘We’re nothing like as rich as we look.’ She was in her mid-thirties and her friendship with Lilah was yet another topic for local gossip.

  The line continued. Miss Trott and Miss Singleton, who lived in adjacent cottages in the main street and felt they somehow represented the village as a whole by virtue of the geography of their homes: they shook hands with all three Beardons, and nodded solemnly in acknowledgement of Miranda’s mumbled thanks. Next came Mr Spencer, the family’s solicitor. He bent forward and murmured to Miranda, ‘If I might make an appointment to see you within the next few days?’

  She widened her eyes. ‘You’d better phone me,’ she said. ‘I can’t think about it now.’ Next came Amos and Isaac Grimsdale, brothers and close neighbours to the Beardons. ‘You must come back to the house with us,’ said Miranda. ‘You’ve known us such a long time, you’re almost family.’ Lilah gasped inwardly at the gross exaggeration. But it was beginning to look as if the funeral gathering would be uncomfortably sparse if some reinforcements weren’t found, and the Grimsdales did have some claim to be included.

  Finally there was Den Cooper. Lilah had seen him as she followed the coffin out of the church, and had hoped he would wait long enough for her to speak to him. But now she had the chance, she couldn’t think what to say.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind me coming?’ he said to Miranda, who had automatically shaken his hand. She looked at him in some confusion; he was not in uniform.

  ‘It’s Den, Mum. The policeman who came—’

  ‘I know who he is,’ lied Miranda. ‘I just wondered why—’

  ‘Mum!’ Lilah felt a clenching embarrassment. Would her mother never learn to guard her tongue – or would she herself never learn to mind what was said? She turned to Den. ‘It was very kind of you to come,’ she said firmly.

  Den cleared his throat. ‘Well, it’s not so much kind,’ he demurred.

  ‘You mean it’s all part of the job?’ Miranda asked. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it necessary for you to turn up at the funeral of every accidental death you come across.’

  ‘Well—’ He looked to Lilah for rescue.

  ‘Mum, you’re being very rude. Go and talk to the vicar.’ She looked into Den’s eyes, remembered again, with a rush of vivid images, how friendly they had always seemed when she’d met his reflection in that bus mirror.

  ‘It wasn’t just duty,’ he started to explain. ‘I felt – well, connected. Having been there so soon after it happened.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter why yo
u’re here. It’s just nice to see you,’ she said. ‘It’s interesting, who’s here and who’s not. Mum’s best friend is away on holiday. Both lots of neighbours showed up …’ She indicated Amos and Isaac with a little tilt of her head. ‘… but the Mabberleys seem to have rushed off already.’

  ‘Interesting,’ he agreed blandly. ‘Now you should go. I’ll be seeing you.’

  Now for Father Edmund. As they straggled back to the cars waiting outside the church gate, Lilah laid a hand on his arm. ‘Thank you, Mr Larkin,’ she said. ‘You did it very nicely.’

  Two emotions fought within the vicar. Gratitude that she had acknowledged him wrestled with annoyance at the ‘Mr Larkin’. Nobody ever called him that. The influence of the heathenish Guy was at work here, he realised. The man had been obsessed with removing people’s formal titles, like some crackpot Quaker, and ‘Mr’ was as far as he would ever go. The chief victim in the village had been Wing Commander Stradling. Guy made an elaborate ritual of always addressing him as ‘Mr Stradling’. He would call to him in a loud voice across the hall at the Parish Council meetings, or refer to him in ringing tones within the man’s hearing. The fact that Father Edmund himself had some sympathy with the principle only made it more maddening. He knew he would never have had Guy’s courage when face-to-face with the long-retired airman.

  He smiled thinly at Lilah, automatically switching into his occupational demeanour. He bowed his head slightly, and patted her upper arm with a limp hand. ‘I’m glad to be of service to you at such a difficult time,’ he whispered. ‘Look after your poor mother, won’t you. Come and see me, if there’s anything at all I can do.’ The words flowed spontaneously, without conscious thought. Once in a while, he almost caught himself adopting an Irish inflection. True priestliness was somehow done best by the Irish, he believed. It was perhaps bad luck that he’d been so firmly entrenched in Anglicanism from his earliest days. Much of the passion and the acceptance, the hypocrisy and the good cheer of the Romans appealed to him in his more whimsical moments.