by Neil Boyd
‘For me,’ Mr. Williams said. ‘She says when I go, she won’t spare any expense. She’s like that, my Doris is.’
‘It certainly looks expensive,’ I said.
‘Costs in general are going up every day, Father. Soon people won’t be able to afford to die.’
‘About this burial at sea, Freddie.’
‘To be honest with you, Father Duddleswell, the Fairwater Co-op’s had very little experience of burials at sea.’
‘Then you have had some.’
‘None at all.’
‘That is very little, indeed, Freddie.’
‘Mind you,’ Mr. Williams said with a solemn shake of his head, ‘we’re always willing to learn.’
‘Have you worked out the cost yet?’
‘I’ve got a quote here, Father, for £300.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Fr. Duddleswell whistled. ‘What do you intend hiring, The Queen Mary?’
‘No, Father, but not a rowing boat either. Need something reliable.’
‘It still sounds steep to me.’
Mr. Williams assured him the Co-op’s charge was a modest £40 for pallbearers and a hearse to transport the deceased to the docks.
‘What have you arranged, then, Freddie?’
The only vessel available at short notice was a Thames Barge Tug, the type that carried freight from the Port of London to the East India docks.
‘Lucky to get it,’ Mr. Williams said. ‘There’s a lull in cargo traffic at present because of heavy storms in the Channel and the North Sea.’
M.S.C. Edding, he assured us, was a sturdy ship of 85 tons. Anything bigger would have cost the earth and the sea. He read out its statistics:
‘Diesel and spray. 140 Brake Horse Power.’
‘What the divil does that mean?’
Mr. Willians sighed and looked up to Heaven as though he expected a downpour. ‘Don’t rightly know, Father, but it sounds reassuring.’
Fr. Duddleswell still hesitated to close the deal. ‘Surely, Freddie, you could have hired a pleasure steamer and saved me well over a hundred pounds. Why a tug just to cruise down the Thames?’
Mr. Williams jerked his head back in surprise. ‘A cruise down the Thames,’ he said. ‘But didn’t someone tell you, Father, he’s got to be buried outside the twelve-mile limit?’
Eight
ALL AT SEA
Wednesday morning began unpromisingly. It was dark, damp and wet.
Fr. Duddleswell and I were standing inside the church porch, vested, awaiting the hearse. The church was empty save for Mrs. Pring and a handful of regular Mass-goers.
‘What’s the weather forecast?’ I asked out of the corner of my mouth, in the best priestly manner.
‘I am not worried, Father Neil. God looks after His own.’
‘Whoever they are.’
‘You are coming on the boat trip afterwards, Father Neil?’
‘No, Father.’
‘You are a stiff-necked curate and no mistake.’
I rubbed my neck where it still hurt. ‘Put that down to your driving,’ I said.
‘Do you want me to think of you as a gutless coward?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Very well, lad,’ he sighed, ‘but do not say I didn’t ask you before I made you.’ He stamped his feet. ‘Now, where is the blessèd hearse?’
I told him I’d heard the car drive up a couple of minutes before.
Mr. Freddie Williams came into view, his top hat under his arm. He advanced in front of only two pallbearers who were carrying the Big Sack. On a stretcher.
‘What in the name of God …’ Fr. Duddleswell groaned. ‘Is that the body or a hundredweight of coal?’
Mr. Williams motioned his men to stop for the blessing and I handed Fr. Duddleswell the sprinkler.
‘I am not sure,’ he whispered, ‘if ’tis dead or merely wounded.’
He sprinkled the Sack with Holy Water in the form of a cross and while the pallbearers proceeded up the centre aisle he made signs to Mr. Williams that he wanted a word.
‘Why no coffin, Freddie?’
‘You know it’s not needed for a burial at sea, Father.’
‘Surely you could have boxed him up decent, like, for the Requiem Mass.’
‘Father,’ Mr. Williams pointed out, ‘you gave me strict orders to economize in every possible way.’
Fr. Duddleswell put on a grieved expression. ‘You could have loaned me a coffin for an hour or two.’
Mr. Williams looked shocked. ‘We don’t hire them out, Father. It’s not hygienic, you know. I mean to say, how would you like it?’
He followed his men up the centre aisle to where the catafalque, surrounded by six big yellow candles, stood in front of the High Altar.
‘Only two pallbearers, Father,’ I said softly, ‘and you don’t have to pay a grave-digger. That’s what I call economy.’
‘But what Christian was ever buried without a coffin, tell me that.’
‘Jesus, Father?’
He gave me one of his special looks. As we walked round the catafalque to begin the Mass, he said, ‘God Almighty, this one looks like something out of Tutankhamun’s tomb.’
We travelled in one hearse to the docks. The two pallbearers were in front. The rest of us sat in the back around the Sack.
‘Sorry it’s a bit cramped,’ Mr. Williams said.
‘There’ll be a bit more room on the way back,’ I said.
Mr. Williams appreciated that. ‘You are a cheerful lad, I like that happy approach. Do you know, I can’t recruit young chaps like you any more.’
‘No?’
He shook his head sadly. ‘They’ve got this funny idea that somehow the job is morbid. I can’t think why. I employed a lad once who even had ideas about jogging trade along.’
‘How exactly?’
‘Half-price for pensioners. I ask you, a hearse isn’t exactly a bus, is it?’
‘Your customers only travel one way, you mean.’
‘You are a cheerful lad.’
Fr. Duddleswell was sniffing suspiciously in the direction of the Sack. ‘What is this funny smell in here, Freddie?’
‘Only my shaving lotion, Father. My Doris bought it me for Christmas.’
‘’Tis a wonder your beard manages to grow again after a dose of that.’
‘It must help a lot in your job, Mr. Williams,’ I said.
He confirmed it with a nod. ‘Especially at cremations when the wind’s strong.’
‘Freddie,’ Fr. Duddleswell said, ‘I hope you have read up about burials at sea.’
‘I was in the Forces during the War, you know.’
‘The Navy, Mr. Williams?’
‘The Army Catering Corps.’
‘How does that help, Freddie?’ Fr. Duddleswell asked.
‘I don’t suppose it does, really.’ He lifted his eyebrows optimistically. ‘Anyway, dropping a body in the sea can’t be so different from dropping it in the ground, can it?’
‘He’ll get a bit wet, of course, Mr. Williams.’
‘I do like that happy approach,’ Mr. Williams said glumly.
The wharf was desolate. Cranes and derricks cobwebbed in mist. Overhead, gulls wheeling and crying in search of food. In the air, a sickening smell of diesel oil and dead fish.
M.S.C. Edding had a black hull and a red and black funnel. Its Captain was there to greet us with his two mates.
‘Welcome aboard, Padre,’ the Skipper said to Fr. Duddleswell.
‘Thank you kindly. ’Tis always a quiet sea for the funeral barge, or so they say.’
‘Oh, yes?’ The Skipper didn’t seem too sure. ‘No need for wreaths, at any rate. Plenty of white flowers in the fishermen’s garden today.’
‘Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen,’ one mate said.
He gave no indication how this could be done and there was no cover that I could see.
The Sack was placed on a kind of platform at the stern, strapped down with leather thongs and covered by a Union Ja
ck which rose and fell in the wind.
As soon as the pallbearers had disembarked, the Skipper said, ‘We’d better cast off if we want to be back by dark.’
There was barely a blink of sunshine all day. As soon as the boat moved off, we felt the cold steel of the wind run us through.
Fr. Duddleswell, understating the case, said, ‘’Tis not such a very soft day, after all. There is a little breeze of wind hereabouts, that’s for sure.’
The first part of the voyage was not too bad. Mr. Williams pointed out a few familiar landmarks. From then on, it was one long, lost battle with the elements.
The three of us huddled together at the rail for comfort. ‘It’s a bit chilly, you know,’ Mr. Williams commented unnecessarily.
‘Me nose,’ Fr. Duddleswell confessed, ‘is as icy as a marble altar.’
‘My teeth,’ I said, ‘are going like a sewing machine.’
Mr. Williams gulped in a heroic draught of ozone. ‘But the air’s nice.’ Another gulp that nearly drowned him. ‘Isn’t it nice?’
‘Better than your shaving lotion, Freddie, that’s for sure.’
A gust of wind blew Mr. Williams’ topper off and it went from him like a bullet. We watched the gulls inspect it before they squawked and lifted in disappointment.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ the undertaker said, as if he’d just lost a friend. ‘I’ll have to charge that up to St. Jude’s, you know.’
I shouted in sympathy but the wind rammed the words back down my throat.
‘My Doris was very fond of that hat. She often used it for a tea cosy. Very wrong of her, I realize that.’
The farther up the estuary we sailed, the shaggier the water, the more snarling the wind. A faint yellow glow in the clouds above was the only sign of where the sun was.
We reached the last of the docks at Tilbury, opposite Gravesend. By then, I had lost all sense of time. It was as if the clock inside my head had frozen up. Here the Thames was nearly half a mile across and still widening in the last northward reach.
Below Gravesend, I glimpsed factories and mills and, after them, tidal marshes flanking the river. The grey-brown estuary was opening even more alarmingly. Huge ships belching black smoke seemed to come too near us and waves from them pounded the hull of our pitifully small craft like blows from a huge hammer.
On high ground on the north shore, oil refineries, cement works, paper mills and power stations appeared out of the mist. No need now, I felt, to keep promising myself that one day I would read Dante’s Inferno.
At this point, only the cry of gulls, curlews and wild geese winging above us, and on our flanks mud flats, misty saltings and an old sea wall overlooked by an occasional wooden shack. Then the grey arms of the land ceased to shield us. Ahead was nothing but the North Sea. Next stop, Holland.
Almost at once, the prow of the boat took off like an aeroplane for about twenty feet before plummeting down. Sometimes I felt as though I was gazing down a thousand foot ravine and sometimes as though my head was craned to watch a high-wire artist, without a safety net, balancing crazily before a fall.
I leaned over the rail and started to heave, though at first nothing came.
I heard Fr. Duddleswell say, ‘I told him not to have any breakfast. What doesn’t go down, cannot come up. I told him.’ And I felt him pat my back.
‘My Doris,’ Mr. Williams said, ‘gave me a packed lunch but I couldn’t eat that even on land.’
‘The only time I ever tried eating on board boat, Freddie, there was more on me plate after than before.’
That was more than enough. I threw up. The centre of my spinning skull was anaesthetized. The rest of my anatomy became fluid. The geezer began in my toes, was swollen into a flood at my stomach and sped up me until it all gushed out. With each monumental heave, I wondered where all the stuff was coming from. I must have lost several pounds. Having parted with so much ballast, would the wind lift me off deck and deposit me in the deep? Not that I cared.
Eventually, my convulsions ceased. As I turned about, Mr. Williams said kindly, ‘How are you, lad?’
‘Inside-out.’
‘I do like that happy approach in adversity,’ he said. ‘Mind you, Driscoll’s the lucky one. He was dead when he came on board.’
Fr. Duddleswell came close to shout in my ear. ‘I am mightily afraid for the corpse, Father Neil.’ I nodded to show I’d heard. ‘In case ’tis sea-sick. Promise me one thing.’ I nodded again. ‘After the committal, drop me in the briny. No life-jacket, mind.’
The Skipper, seeing we were not dressed for the part, invited us to the bridge house.
We battled our way there with buckling knees. Across the deck, water seethed to and fro like driven snow.
My legs were like a baby’s, the water from my eyes had frozen so my cheeks were as brittle as glass. I now knew why the last book of the Bible promises the Blessèd that in Paradise there will be no more sea.
The bridge house was more like a chicken coop. Everything was in disarray: sextant, maps, weather charts. The radio was spluttering and the wind came whistling through large cracks in the woodwork. The Skipper’s pipe didn’t help. It was wedged in his mouth and the bowl of it gave off thick black smoke like a ship’s funnel.
The Skipper pointed through his home-made fog to a cupboard where oil skins were stored. ‘Get yourselves kitted out.’ he said.
We went through them till we found something that more or less fitted.
‘How do I look?’ Fr. Duddleswell wanted to know.
‘Like something out of the Wizard of Oz,’ I said.
Once, I went outside for a breath of fresh air. When I returned, Mr. Williams and Fr. Duddleswell were leaning against each other on a bench. When I opened the door and the wind struck him, Fr. Duddleswell lifted his cowelled head pathetically from between his knees.
‘I feel giddy-headed as a woman, Father Neil.’
‘Is it that bad?’
He nodded. ‘Me face must be white as a duck’s something or other.’
I patted his cheek for him.
‘I cannot be dying, Father Neil, because God has promised me a happy death.’ He tried to joke some more but his great spirit was not up to it. He ended by clasping my shaking hands in his. Then down with his head again.
The throb of the engines and the thud of the waves on the hull hurt my ears. The steep rise and fall of the rolling boat meant a continuously changing pattern of boat-sea, sea, sea—boat, boat—sky, sky. And then the same pattern in reverse as the stomach dropped in advance of the rest of the body which promptly raced to catch up.
There was nothing left but prayer and abandonment to divine providence, especially after I heard the Skipper curse and say, ‘A force 8 gale on the way. Christalmighty.’
Mr. Williams, too, had heard the message over the radio. ‘I don’t suppose I could contact my Doris,’ he asked.
The Skipper looked at him sympathetically. ‘Not unless you’ve got a very loud voice.’
I was beyond laughter and tears, time and space, good and evil, life and death. There was no God, no family or friends, no reality. Nirvana!
After incalculable ages, the Skipper tersely summed up the situation: ‘We’re beyond our limits.’ And he handed over to his mate.
Fr. Duddleswell rose to his feet and struggled to get his ritual out of his overcoat pocket. The three of us hung on to one another and, stung by the spray, staggered to the stern.
The Skipper cupped his hands and yelled, ‘We’ll make this short, shall we?’ He wrapped a rope around each of us and tied us to the white and rusted rail with a long lead to prevent us being whisked overboard.
Fr. Duddleswell, with frozen fingers, opened his book. The pages flapped wildly like birds in their last agony. Eventually, he found the scripture passage he had chosen: Mark’s Gospel, the end of chapter four.
His lips moved but no sound reached me. Looking over his shoulder, I saw the words:
‘And there arose a great storm of wind, and
the waves beat into the ship so that the ship was filled. And Jesus was in the hinder part of the ship, sleeping upon a pillow; and they awake him, and say to him: Master, doth it not concern thee that we perish? And rising up, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea: Pease be still.’
I glanced sideways at Fr. Duddleswell. We had topped a crest and were about to plunge to the depths. I could tell he had reached the words, ‘Peace be still.’ He lifted his head and said again, ‘Peace be still,’ as if it was an imprecation for now and he half-hoped his prayer would work a miracle. His head then dropped and I found he had placed the book in my hands. Looking like some animated garden gnome, he was en route to the rail to unload.
The Skipper gestured to the sky as if to say the light was fading fast and he volunteered to complete the ceremony for us. I declined the offer.
After five minutes, Fr. Duddleswell returned, trailing the umbilical cord that bound him to the rail, and finished the Gospel reading with the words, ‘Who is this (thinkest thou) that both the wind and sea obey him?’ The De Profundis followed and a brief committal prayer.
The Skipper and a member of the crew untied the leather straps. One end of the platform was tilted and the large canvas bag slipped under the flag and over the side as Fr. Duddleswell was saying, ‘I commit the body of Thy servant James unto the deep and his soul into Thy keeping, 0 merciful God.’
With a last envious glance in the direction of the corpse, I joined in praying, ‘May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.’
‘Now that ’tis all over,’ Fr. Duddleswell cried, ‘I am about to follow the example of Our Blessed Lord and get some shut-eye.’
The heavy stamping of the Skipper demonstrated that things were far from over. He was leaning widely across the rail shouting angrily at his mate and pointing towards the foam.
I looked over and saw that the canvas bag, instead of sinking, was floating like a wreath. I tugged Fr. Duddleswell to the side.
‘’Tis not fair,’ he groaned, ‘the departed is not living up to his name.’
‘Christ,’ the Skipper said to his mate, ‘the corpse looks as if it’s got water wings. Jack, tell Tony to start circling while I get the grappling hook.’ He turned on us landlubbers. ‘Who the hell weighted that body down?’