Dark Undertakings

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Drew’s a funny name,’ said Big George, on his second day. ‘Where’s that from, then?’

  Drew made the mistake of a small sneer of contempt. ‘Andrew, of course,’ he said. From that moment on, Big George had called him Andy, with an air of innocent sincerity.

  ‘Lost your last job, then?’ Vince had queried. ‘What’d you been doing?’

  ‘Nursing,’ Drew replied readily, his story well prepared. ‘They cut the budget. Offered me permanent nights, but I knew I couldn’t take that. Worked for an agency for a bit, but it was too insecure. Never liked it much, anyway. Thought I’d find something new right away, but it took a bit longer than that.’

  ‘Nurse Drew,’ carolled Pat, a handsome Irishman who was normally the Conductor of the funerals; the widow’s darling. Too late, Drew realised that despite Casualty’s cast of hunky male nurses, the job had not yet achieved full credibility amongst coffin makers and pallbearers.

  Four weeks into the new job, he was slowly and painfully establishing himself as a good sport, a willing butt of jokes and teasing. He earned credit by cheerfully assisting Sid with mortuary work, putting in dentures, super-gluing lips together and removing pacemakers with a deftness never before witnessed by his new colleagues.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he told Karen. ‘It’s obvious that the newest and youngest one is going to get some stick.’

  ‘Well, don’t let them bully you,’ she said, running her fingers lightly the wrong way along the hairs of his arm. She had found to her surprise that living with a man who worked with the dead was seriously erotic. ‘As if I have to prove we’re both alive,’ she’d laughed. Every time she did that to his arm, he felt raw and naked. Nerve endings sprang to attention in all kinds of places.

  ‘That baby’s going to be here in no time at this rate,’ he’d said, pulling her to him. She was almost as tall as him, and slightly heavier. Her forebears had been Polish, and she had the shoulders and cheekbones to prove it. She made him feel safe and important and lucky.

  I must have a thing about shoulders, Drew said to himself, as he followed Vince out of the mortuary. The other man was working his upper arms in dramatic circles, a habit that Drew had noticed in his first week. Vince was due to carry a coffin later that morning, and had long ago established a routine in preparation. His shoulders were naturally built for the job, although he regularly remarked that pallbearing had further flattened them into neat shelves – ‘undertaker’s ledges’, he’d dubbed them.

  ‘Hey, Sid,’ Vince remembered, turning back for a moment. ‘We saw your Susie just now, having a right old ding-dong with some boy.’

  Drew felt a moment of anxiety. Maybe the girl didn’t want her father to know her business. Wasn’t Vince being thoughtless? It was a generation thing, he realised. He automatically identified with the girl, Vince with her father.

  ‘Must have been that Craig she’s seeing,’ shrugged Sid. ‘She says she’s packing him in. Who’d be young, eh.’

  Vince glanced at Drew with a smirk. ‘It has its compensations, I reckon.’ He worked his shoulders again, and swung his head from side to side. ‘You don’t get so stiff, for a start, after doing an early removal.’

  In Primrose Close, the news of Jim Lapsford’s death was rippling outwards by fits and starts. Over half the houses were empty on a workday morning, and few of the neighbours had been alerted by the arrival of first Dr Lloyd, then the Lapsford sons, and finally Vince and Drew. Neither had anyone witnessed the discreet and hurried removal of the body, swathed in black and smoothly rolled into the back of the undertaker’s vehicle in seconds.

  There had, however, been an interested witness to the arrival of Philip, the elder son, when he drove urgently up to the house. His mother had met him on the doorstep, flinging her arms around him as if finally rescued from some unendurable torment. This witness was Sarah Simpson from next door, who had hurried upstairs to tell Dottie, with whom she lived, that something very odd was going on in number 24. The two women, respectable widows both, wondered what emergency could have assembled no fewer than four vehicles along the street between seven and eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning. They soon came to the conclusion that something really serious had happened.

  ‘You don’t think Jim might have died, do you?’ Dottie whispered, eyes wide. ‘That did look awfully like an undertaker’s vehicle, now I come to think of it.’

  Sarah opened her mouth to dismiss the idea, but closed it again, the words unspoken. ‘We’ll have to wait till the sons have gone. Then we could pop round. If something terrible has happened, we should do what we can to help.’ Small and energetic, Sarah usually made the decisions for them both.

  ‘But wouldn’t there have been an ambulance? Police cars?’ Dottie pursued. She peered out of the window again, over Sarah’s head. Dottie was tall and tending to vagueness; she had a long face, and eyes which had somehow stretched with age, like a bloodhound’s. ‘When Arthur died,’ she went on, ‘we had the whole panoply of emergency services.’

  ‘But he did fall downstairs, dear,’ Sarah reminded her. ‘It’s different when it’s natural causes.’

  ‘How do you know? Sarah, how do you always know these things?’

  Sarah shrugged. ‘I just pay attention, I suppose. I never understand how it is you don’t know.’

  ‘Well, but Jim wasn’t ill. I saw him on Sunday, in the garden. Laughing and putting up that new trellis thing. The picture of health. And I saw him last night, when I was putting the milk bottle out. He waved to me, cheerful as can be. No, no. He can’t possibly be dead.’

  ‘It was probably a heart attack,’ pursued Sarah, as if Dottie had never spoken. ‘Isn’t that what they say? Never a day’s illness, and then dead in seconds.’ Sarah seemed to relish the idea. ‘Lovely way to go.’

  Dottie shuddered. ‘Not to my mind. Too much of a shock for everyone. Think of poor Monica.’

  Sarah frowned repressively. ‘Poor Monica has enough friends to see her through.’

  ‘Like us, you mean?’

  ‘I was thinking more of certain gentleman friends, certain very attentive gentleman friends.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah, how could you? That’s just gossip. And anyway, she works for him, if you’re talking about who I think you’re talking about. He probably comes round about business things.’

  Sarah swept across the living room to the kitchen, where she had a large bowl of blackberries waiting to be turned into jam. ‘I know what I know,’ she said eloquently.

  Dottie considered letting the matter drop, then decided against it. ‘Sarah, the woman’s at least forty-five, not some silly young thing at all. I really don’t think—’

  ‘That’s nonsense and you know it. She might be forty-five – more, I’d say, from the age of those sons of hers – but that means nothing. Goodness, Dottie, you seem to live in quite a different world from the rest of us.’

  ‘Well it’s no business of ours. And if something’s happened to Jim, then we have to be good neighbours and go and offer to help. We could take the little dog for a walk. I like that little dog.’

  ‘All right, all right. We’ll go when the moment is right, as I said. Now let me get on with this.’

  Philip and David had each entered the house in his own characteristic way. Philip, older by three years, stood tall and stiff in the hallway, before taking a deep breath and charging up the stairs. ‘Leave me with him for a few minutes,’ he said, before closing the bedroom door. When he came out, his hand was to his mouth, and his eyes were pink. Ushered into the living room by his mother, he glanced nervously at his father’s chair, and then seated himself with his back to it. ‘Oh, Mum,’ he said grimly.

  David had not even waited for his mother to open the door. He had used his own key and flung through the hall and into the living room as if pursued by demons. Finding his brother ahead of him, he glared angrily, visibly suspicious. ‘I came as fast as I could,’ he said defensively. ‘The car wouldn’t start.’

  Then
the last vestiges of control had left him, and he began to shake. He had not been to look at his father, and made no move to do so when the undertaker’s men arrived. The sight of them only increased his shivering, and he threw himself into a jerky circuit of the room. Monica watched him helplessly for a moment before following the men up to the bedroom. Philip stayed behind, trying to ignore his brother. When the muffled thumps on the stairs announced the imminent departure of the men, David put his hands over his ears.

  Monica came quickly into the room, carrying Cassie under her arm. ‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It just isn’t possible.’ She dropped the dog onto the floor as if it had become suddenly offensive to her.

  ‘Sit down, David,’ she commanded. ‘Stop pacing about. I’ll make us all some coffee in a minute.’ David flung himself onto a black pouffe close to the television, and she had a sudden sweet vision of him there, aged ten, twelve, even fifteen. The corners were still ragged where he’d picked at them, one edge misshapen where he’d curled a leg under himself, as he did again now, though too tall and heavy to fit properly into the old contours. Philip remained in the armchair he’d chosen. Monica sat alone, queenly on the sofa, marooned.

  Her gaze rested on her husband’s chair. An expensive recliner, it seemed to be waiting for him, inviting his ghost to return and use it. A bright blue coffee mug, left from the previous evening, still sat on the table beside it, with a pen he’d been using to do the crossword in the Sunday Express.

  ‘I didn’t hear him come to bed,’ she said quietly. ‘He must have stayed up late.’

  ‘Finished the crossword, I see,’ observed Philip, his voice refusing to match the forced casualness of the words. He took up the paper and rested it on his lap.

  ‘Made himself a nice hot drink, too,’ said Monica, looking at the mug. ‘That’s his favourite mug.’ Without warning, a brief storm of weeping overcame her. She smeared her eyes and nose with both hands, and forced a self-mocking smile. ‘Fancy crying about a cup.’

  ‘They say it’s the little things,’ Philip muttered. ‘Haven’t you got a hanky, Mum?’

  She rummaged in the pockets of her slacks, but produced nothing. ‘No,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I think there’s a box of tissues upstairs.’

  ‘I’ll get them,’ said David gruffly, and levered himself up. Although his voice was harsh, Monica knew he was becoming calmer. She smiled hesitantly at him as he thrust the box at her. He folded himself back onto the pouffe.

  ‘Do you think he felt ill? Had any pain? How will we ever know whether he suffered?’ She poured out the unanswerable questions.

  ‘Might have felt a bit off.’ Philip nodded agreement, conciliatory. ‘Nothing bad enough to wake you up for, but enough to make him sit up for a bit.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘But I don’t understand any of it. How the hell did he come to die?’

  Monica felt something loosen inside her, in the region of her upper chest. She drew an easier breath. ‘I feel like one of those Russian dolls, but without any of the little ones inside,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ snapped David. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Mum?’

  She turned her head to look at him. Her second son had the same energetic hair and long-fingered hands as Jim, though his other features were altogether different: eyes narrow and close together, the outer corners downward-sloping, giving him an appearance of permanent anxiety. Where Jim had been renowned for his reliable good cheer, David was never perceptibly happy. Trouble with David had been a perpetual current in the Lapsford family. He had been retrospectively diagnosed, after years of worry and hard work, as suffering from a condition labelled Attention Deficit Disorder. Jim had found it more amusing than worrying. ‘Stating the obvious, if you ask me,’ he’d laughed. Monica had silently wished they’d at least been able to put a name to the trouble in those early years when the boy had been so impossible. It would have reduced her feelings of guilt.

  More recently, David had caused the biggest trauma in their lives by disappearing for almost a year. Since his reappearance, he had been keen to make amends, with partial success. Monica and Philip had been pleased to see him; an angry Jim a lot less so.

  Monica sighed now and turned to her other son. ‘Phil, we’ll have to phone people. The printworks, for a start. They’ll be wondering where he is by now. I think he was supposed to be paying some outside calls this morning, which explains why nobody’s phoned. And one of the biddies from next door will be around in a minute. They’re sure to have noticed something. Do you think you could go and tell them?’

  Philip groaned. ‘Don’t the police usually do all this for people? It’s too much, leaving everything to us. Weren’t the police called, when you found him this morning?’

  Monica shook her head.

  ‘But why not?’ he pursued. ‘Isn’t it the law, when there’s a sudden death?’ He looked from face to face, bewildered. Monica felt sorry for him, at the same time as needing him to be strong. She never doubted that she could trust him; she knew the bond between them could withstand even this catastrophe. David, on the further edge of the triangle, clasped his quivering hands into fists, the knuckles standing out pathetically. She closed her eyes for a moment before explaining.

  ‘I phoned Dr Lloyd. He came right away.’

  David gave another grating laugh. ‘Typical! If Dad had been still alive, the doctor would probably have taken hours.’

  ‘If he’d been alive, I would have called an ambulance.’

  ‘So you knew he was dead?’ David said the word flatly, deliberately, refusing to skirt around it. He heard his brother take in a small breath of pain, and felt a mixture of impatience and satisfaction.

  ‘Yes,’ said Monica weightily, knowing it was important to emphasise this point. ‘It was obvious. His mouth was hanging open, with this nasty sort of froth on his lips, and there was no breath or pulse.’ The odd loosening in her chest increased. Almost forgetting her sons, she relived those minutes. ‘He was cold – or not so much cold as if he was made of clay. Sort of dense. It’s difficult to describe.’ She grimaced, and put both hands across her stomach. ‘It makes me feel so awful to think I was lying in bed with him dead beside me, and I never knew. Not until the radio turned itself on, and he never got up to make the tea. That’s when I knew something was wrong with him.’ A tear gathered itself, but never fell. ‘All I could think about was how Jim never got ill. He didn’t have one day in bed all our married life. I was the one to get flu and backache and sprained ankles. Jim was invincible – that’s what we used to say. But there he was, all sunk and flat – not him at all any more.’

  Philip shifted in the chair, his face white. ‘Mum – don’t.’

  ‘It’s all right, darling. I don’t mind talking about it.’ Philip bit his lip.

  She went on, compulsively, ‘And then I suppose I must have shaken him a bit, and said something. I did. I said, “Jim, are you all right?” Isn’t that stupid! But you don’t believe it, when it happens like that, out of the blue. I still don’t. At least,’ she corrected herself with an air of wonderment, ‘I suppose I do, now.’ She turned from one to the other, eyes wide, brows raised. ‘Where was I? Have I told you what the doctor said?’

  ‘Look, Mum—’ Philip tried again. ‘You really don’t have to go into every detail.’

  It was as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘In the end, I went to get a flannel, and washed his face – after I’d pushed Cassie off him and shut her in the kitchen. Poor little thing. Look at her.’ She nodded towards the dog, curled in the opposite corner of the sofa, ears limp and nose on both paws, the picture of misery. ‘She knows he’s not coming back.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said David. ‘She’s always like that when Dad goes out without her.’

  ‘No she isn’t. Not on an ordinary work day. She knows something different has happened. She watched those men carry him out, and she knew they were taking him away for ever. Dogs understand more than we think.’

  ‘Rubbish,’
repeated David rudely. ‘And since when have you cared, anyway?’

  She hugged her arms around herself, and pressed back into the sofa. ‘I wouldn’t want her to be miserable,’ she protested.

  ‘She’ll get over it.’ David hadn’t much liked the succession of West Highland terriers himself, and never played with the puppies when Jim periodically decided to have a go at breeding from one of the bitches.

  Philip got up then from his chair, as if to confirm the end of his mother’s reminiscing. He rambled aimlessly round the room, finishing at the table under the window, idly flipping through a small sheaf of letters, which had come in the morning’s post and been ignored.

  David, however, kept his eyes on his mother’s face, knowing there was more to come. Echoes of the morning’s phone calls thrummed between them: David’s impatience at being woken up, his refusal to believe what she was saying, something wrong and hurtful lying on both their chests.

  ‘You still haven’t told us what the doctor said,’ he reminded her.

  She resumed talking, the words strung together steadily, without pause. ‘He listened for a heartbeat, looked down his throat, made me help to roll him over so he could examine his back. He was quite thorough. Said it could only be a heart attack, very severe, probably without much pain. Asked me if I’d felt him moving about in the night.’

  ‘And had you?’ Philip looked over his shoulder at her.

  Monica shook her head. ‘You know how deeply I sleep. I didn’t even hear him come to bed.’ She looked down at her legs, curious to see them shaking. Philip came back to her and took her hands between his own.

  ‘Please, Mum. That’s enough. It must have been terrible for you.’

  ‘Let me finish, Phil. There isn’t much more, and I … well, it makes me feel better, somehow.’ He dropped her hands, and returned to his chair, perching on the edge, his forearms on his legs, wearily patient.

  Monica pressed on with the story she felt compelled to relate. ‘He said something about a note all the doctors had been sent from the Coroner’s Office, saying to try to cut down on post-mortems. There have been a few done needlessly, and it costs some enormous amount of money every time. He was very honest with me. Said there was scarcely so much as a tiny doubt in his mind, and we could safely assume it was his heart. I’m sure he was right. What else could it be? Even if it was a stroke, that’s still natural causes. What difference would it make to know for sure?’ She frowned, hearing herself, and glanced quickly at David. ‘It wouldn’t change anything, would it. Dead is dead, whatever causes it. That’s it, I suppose. You know it all now.’