‘Shall we continue?’ Margaret was at Lucille’s side. She was so relieved she hugged her almost-son-in-law tightly through her dislike.
‘Yes!’ He finished his wine and raised his glass for more, one arm reaching for Lucille, but she had shaken him off, and run out the door, down the front steps and across the churchyard, splattering mud up her boots and onto the silk dress, just in time to catch the celebrant at the door of his car. ‘We’re ready,’ she said, and handed him The Book of Common Prayer.
Virgin Bones
This early, the morning queue at the tap is not so long and when I get back Mrs D is setting out breakfast. She still does everything nice, even though we’ve got the move on. Bread crust mash, bacon rinds fried crisp just as I like them. The kids are already eating, Rusty sitting on top of Our Flower in Heaven, kicking his heels against the side panel. I chase him off. Kid has no respect.
‘But Mum’s packed up the cushions already,’ he says. So she has.
‘Mrs D, I know we have to get everything ready fast, but where do we sit for our breakfast today?’ She just shrugs, scraping the last of the mash onto my plate.
‘Sit on the step. It’s swept clean, all ready for that sluicing down now you got us that water.’ I sit on the step with Mirabelle.
‘Coffee?’ I say.
‘No coffee, hon,’ she says. ‘You know that.’
Always hopeful, that’s me. I was sure she’d have saved a bit, especially for today.
‘Anyway, I used the saucepan for the mash. Can’t do both.’
I bet she has got some coffee grounds squirrelled away there. Mrs D is the best wife a man could hope for, always has things super-clean, always puts a meal together out of next to nothing. Our kids might have no shoes and wear charity box clothes, but they are the neatest clothes you will ever see, on the cleanest kids ever. She cuts Rusty’s hair with the kitchen scissors I got from a swap. Mirabelle’s braids are always sleek and tight. Last night she set the two of them in the tub, washed them head to toe, one after the other in an inch of water practically, while I sat on top of Grandfather Benedict and held Emanuel, which she’d done first, him being so little. All over in minutes, the kids even dusted down with a tin of talcum powder she produced from god knows where, then put into clean shorts and T-shirts, all by dark and ready for today. She could have done a man a cup of coffee. Lester’s wife was up the cafe only last week emptying out the knock-box. She generally gives Mrs D some.
‘I’ll have some of that water for these breakfast things,’ she says, which is her way of getting me to eat faster, reminding me that we’ve still got lots to do.
I hand her my plate and she washes it, dries it and packs it into the milk crate, the blue one. The red one is for my cleaning cloths, trowels and spray bottles, plus I keep an electric cord there, just in case, and a set of screwdrivers which are rusted but still do the job. In the blue crate she keeps her saucepan, our plates and cups, her steel knife and wooden spoon, and underneath a packet of rice or corn or sometimes lentils, a packet of dried chillies, god knows why, no one but her likes them, plus a plastic box of salt. She always has salt, no matter what. And some coffee, twisted in a bit of foil, I’m sure. If you boil it long enough then let it settle, it tastes nearly as good as first brew. Always better with sugar though.
The rest of our stuff fits into three striped bags, and it’s lucky Rusty is big enough now to carry one on his own. Mirabelle sets to washing down the steps.
‘Don’t you get dirty, mind,’ says Mrs D, then to me, ‘Now we have to clear off all this stuff. I wish I could leave the gas ring, it’s so heavy.’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘And come back and find some low-life’s made off with it? Besides, the Family won’t like that.’
‘I suppose,’ she says. She knows I’m right.
First we do Grandfather Benedict. We take off the cotton blankets, shake them outside in the fresh air, and fold them neat. Mrs D stows them in the bottom of one bag while I whack the pillows to flatten them as much as I can. Then the mattress. Or that’s what she calls it. More like another blanket, but better than nothing. Then we do Our Flower in Heaven, where the kids sleep. Sleeping bags, blanket, Mirabelle’s knitted caterpillar which she’s promised to hand on to Emanuel. Mrs D’s already got the clothes and other things stacked and ready to go. Mirabelle hands me the empty bucket and Rusty wipes the steps with a cloth, so they’ll dry faster. The marble is grey and pink, nicely seamed. Some folks here have all black marble. Yes, it’s sober and respectful, but I don’t like it. And Mrs D says it shows every speck of dirt, even the dust, and there’s a lot of that. Next-doors are forever cleaning their place, plus I reckon it’s hotter in there in summer, colder in winter. Our place is just right.
Last night when I was sitting down in the Roses of Remembrance Garden having a smoke with Lester and some of the other men, Mrs D swept the place out. She would have done it twice, in the dark, just to be sure. When I got back she was sitting on the top step, the broom tucked under her chin. She’s not a tall woman, my Mrs D, but she still has to bend low to sweep. Lucky it’s not the size of a real house, the vault.
‘Remember when we moved here?’ she said.
As if I could forget. Lester had run all the way up to town to say he’d found us a spot, but we had to be quick. Mrs D needed some persuading, even though it was her own sister who’d just gone and got herself shot. ‘You want to stay here in the slum forever,’ I said, ‘and get us all killed too?’
‘Well?’ Lester said, still panting. ‘The Family won’t be there much longer.’
‘You run back and ask them to wait. We’ll be there,’ I said, giving Mrs D the look. Then I told Rusty to run and get those bags from round the corner. Connie wouldn’t be needing them any more. But then I went and held Mrs D because it was her sister.
‘It’ll be so much better there,’ I said. ‘Fresh air too. None of these crowds, people packed in like sardines. Think of it!’
‘But the dead,’ she said, crying onto my chest. ‘Living among the dead.’
‘Better than dying among the living.’ Which I thought was quite poetic. It was the violence that got Connie, just a random shot but that’s all it takes. She mopped her eyes and got Mirabelle and started putting our things into the bags.
The Family was about to leave but Lester had kept them there until we turned up, talking about this place and that place, showing them the work he’d been doing on the Avenue of Peace. Careful there, Lester, I thought, too much boasting and they’ll sell their place and buy another, a better one. Like the vaults in the Avenue, which were all marked out, with a sort of community garden thing happening already. Roses, of course. There are always roses, though at that time of the year they were just bare sticks in the ground. And lilies. The clients always want white lilies. Some developer was building a multistorey complex with cleaning, maintenance and gardening amenities that all the residents, or their relatives, could use. Sort of like an apartment block, except quieter. And no washing on the balconies. No disputes.
I liked the Family straight off. Father and Mother were good people, I could see that. They travelled two hours each way every other weekend to pay their respects. They were also rich. I already knew that by the pink marble and the brass plates. Father wore a Rolex, and they had arrived in an Audi, with tinted windows. Like so many rich women, Mother wore a well-cut but conservative suit, which I bet cost thousands, though I knew Mrs D wouldn’t have given you ten dollars for it. I made my offer straight up.
‘Me and my family, we’ll see things are right, you can count on that. I’ve worked here for the last six years, cleaning and such. It would be an honour to look after your folks.’
‘There’ll be more to come,’ Mother said, fixing me with a steely look. ‘Great-Aunt’s ashes. We’re going to relocate them from the Mortdale Centre.’
‘Good idea, ma’am,’ I said (‘ma’am’ – where did that come from!). ‘Mortdale is no place for a respectable family.’ Which
was true. We’d had to put Connie there just the week before, but there’s no choice for folks like us. Lester used to work there. According to him it’s always been full of ferals. And not just people. Some of the cats there, he says, are bigger than dogs. The places are always vandalised. People rip newly planted coffins out of the ground the minute the mourners leave, toss the bodies in the dump and resell the coffins. Connie’ll be safe. No one bothers with people like us. She shares a shelf in a wall of five hundred. You need a ladder to get to her and lucky Lester lends us his folding aluminium one, otherwise there’d be no cleaning, no flowers.
‘And Father’s own Grandmother Sweetapple. She’s ailing right now. It won’t be much longer before she’ll be joining the other residents.’
I’d noticed an empty niche, on the wall directly above Grandfather Benedict. That was one of the lovely features of the Family’s place. It had ground-level facilities, space for six residents in all, and then spaces on two walls above. Not too crowded, nice and roomy. Two whole shelves for urns. Classy.
I didn’t mention that I’d been eyeing their place on and off for ages. When Lester had first put the idea to me, months before Connie was killed, I’d even thought about moving in without the formalities. But two things stopped me. One being that the Family could appear at any time. You get lots of ratbags squatting in places out here, but the rules are strict. If you’re caught, the Trust has the right to confiscate all your belongings and take you to the dump out west, which makes the slum look like a paradise, it’s that overcrowded. The other being Mrs D herself.
Mother and Father conferred back beside the Audi while we waited next to the Family vault. Mirabelle and Rusty had run off to the Wishing Well.
Lester leaned close to me and muttered, ‘Catholics. Best landlords you could hope for, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘They might be uptight, but you can always count on them for doing the right thing, financially speaking, I mean. Flowers, fresh and plastic. Brasso, as much as you want. And if you play your cards right they might even pay you something for saying a few prayers.’
Lester was right. Not a penny spared when it came to looking after the dead, your Catholics. Down where I work, in General and Non-denominational, it is nothing short of disgraceful. If you ask me, the people living there should be paid by their families to live on those sites. I wouldn’t even call them tombs. Rusty is friends with a kid from The Meadows, a misnomer if ever there was one. Kid lives in a tumbledown hovel of old bricks and broken sandstone. It’s a hazard. The whole place is like that. And it’s the farthest from the facilities.
The Family came up to us.
‘We’ll need the place to be vacant every year on the Day of the Dead.’
‘Of course. We’ll move out, no problem.’
‘And we mean vacant, don’t we, Father?’ Father nodded. ‘None of your stuff, as we will be staying all night through.’
‘You won’t need to worry there, ma’am. And we’ll make sure we have the place all spotless and cosy for you, come the last day of October.’ I could feel Mrs D looking at me, thinking where on earth we’d be moving to, all of us with our stuff.
‘And one last thing,’ Mother said. ‘We’d like you to polish the bones.’
Now I felt Mrs D stiffen, hard as. I nudged her to stay quiet.
‘No problem. No problem at all.’ I wasn’t going to let this place go. Whatever polishing the bones involved, we’d be doing it to secure this place if it killed me. I’d heard of it. Lester would know the details.
‘Not Grandfather Benedict,’ put in Father. First time he spoke all meeting. ‘No need for that. Just Our Flower in Heaven. We want her kept nice and clean.’
Then Mother took out her hanky and sniffed and turned away and Mrs D, who has the softest heart in the world, patted her on the shoulder and they went and talked women’s talk, Mother sitting on the step of the vault, Mrs D respectful beside her, while Father and I scuffed our feet and looked at the sky and wondered about rain. He fished out the key from his top pocket and handed it over, looking even sadder. It transpired that Our Flower in Heaven was only twenty-one when she died, and a virgin.
In the end I reckon Mrs D was even looking forward to it. She had that look in her eye, mentally adjusting the fixtures and fittings. How to make the best of the light. Where to place the striped mat she’s had forever and puts out in all the places we’ve lived.
‘I could make sure the flowers are always fresh,’ she said. ‘Every day, I’ll fix that. And I’ll get some proper vases, not pickle jars or anything. Nice glass ones, or silver.’
‘Not gladioli,’ said Mother. ‘She’d hate them.’
‘No ma’am.’
‘Or carnations. Old ladies’ flowers. That’s what she’d say. Nice gerberas, or something fresh. Girlish.’
‘Gerberas. You got it.’
When they left I poked her in the side. ‘Where the hell we gonna get silver vases from?’
Mrs D poked me back. ‘Or flowers.’
I dig out the Brasso and do Grandfather Benedict while Mrs D takes care of Our Flower in Heaven. The plates are already clean but we both like to make an extra effort. Then I stand on the crate and do Grandmother Sweetapple. Her plate is a lot bigger than the other two even though it contains less wording, just two lines, but Mrs D says that’s because by then Mother and Father must have been even richer. Or they didn’t love her as much, I reckon, but feel guilty for it. By the time we finish they’re so shiny they look like silver, not brass, and Mrs D always makes sure to wash the residue off the marble. There are never any green outlines on our brass plates. I lift the urns down and wipe the shelves clean while she polishes Great-Aunt and another fella we’ve forgotten the name of. There’re two empty urns, waiting for whoever, and Mrs D gives them another clean and wipe dry just in case the Family think to look inside. We hardly ever use them but sometimes at night you can’t go dragging kids all the way off to the facilities. Especially in winter. Then it’s time for the bones. Shifting the slab is the worst. And I don’t just mean the weight, but that first wave of stale musty air. Mrs D retires behind her apron while I fan the air a bit. But Our Flower in Heaven is a sweet thing, and it doesn’t linger too long, the smell.
I’m bending over my crate for the trowel and the hand broom when Mrs D shrieks.
‘Oh my god, Dempster, oh my god. Look at this!’
And there in Our Flower in Heaven’s coffin is the weirdest of sights. The poor girl is missing one leg, knee down. A vacant pink ballet slipper sits like an abandoned puppy next to its mate.
Mrs D instinctively bends down and looks underneath, not that there is any underneath to the whole slab, which is cemented onto the floor of the vault. She looks around, up, as if the shinbone might have lodged itself on the shelf next to the urn with Great-Aunt, or be stuck to the ceiling.
‘How could this be?’ She whispers now, looking around, careful no one hears of this dreadful mishap. This calamity. It could be the end of us.
‘What are we gonna do?’ she demands. ‘Dempster. Say something.’
I shake my head. Lift my cap then scratch it. Shake it again. Mrs D crosses herself. She’s not even a Catholic but I understand. It’s that kind of moment.
‘I need a smoke.’ I sit on the top step and get out my zip-lock bag. I’ve only got five butts left but I pull all the shreds out and roll them into one good thick smoke for a change. I need it. Mrs D pushes me off.
‘Go away. I’ve cleaned in here, you know. Don’t want you stinking up the place.’
I walk round the block, past the Angel of Death and the row of broken pillars and the flat-roofed vaults where people have erected tents and annexes. I always watch myself here, these folks are prone to throwing out a bowl of dirty water, or worse, without bothering to see if anyone’s passing by. But it’s all quiet. Most have already left for the day, or they left last night. By the time I return I’ve got the solution.
‘Are you crazy?’
Mrs D says. ‘She’s always worn that miniskirt. Where would you get a long gown from anyway? And even if you could they’d poke around and feel her. They’d know.’
She’s right on all counts. And they’ll be here in less than an hour. Now she starts muttering about Rusty, saying she’ll tan his hide if she discovers it’s him who took it, even if it was only for a joke. I don’t know about that. Rusty couldn’t move the slab on his own, it’s almost too heavy for the both of us. Then there’s the question of motive. And where he’d put it. But if it’s not Rusty, then who? And why?
‘All right,’ I say. ‘How about this? You start the polishing. We’ve done the rest of the place anyway. And I’ll go find us another bone. It won’t matter if it’s not attached. They fall to bits anyway.’
‘Dempster. Are you planning to rob another corpse of its legs?’ She has her hands on her hips.
‘Leg. And only half. Just the shin.’
Mirabelle is across the way sitting on her favourite slab, the one with a picture of a pair of arms reaching out from a cloud down to a child dressed in robes. Emanuel is sitting on the grass beside her. He’s a placid baby. Just about ready to walk, but I don’t think we’ll have to watch ourselves like we did with the others. Rusty was born a runner. Used to dart here and there so fast it wore Mrs D out so much she swore she’d never have another. She must have forgot. Emanuel was conceived right on top of Our Flower in Heaven. Born right on top of Grandfather Benedict, after we shifted beds. I like to think he’s got his peaceful nature from those lovely folks, themselves at peace.
First I go to the facilities. Good place for thinking, apart from a man’s basic need. In the cubicle there’s even paper today. Someone must have done a train run recently because there’s a pile of Dailies and a few Examiners left, which I prefer as the cheap paper is softer.
Letter to George Clooney Page 5