8. ONE FOR THE GRAVE

In a moment of grief Angela does the unexpected

There was nothing we could do, yet it was equally clear that we must do something. We all knew that. After all, it’s hardly a good advertisement for a folksy reunion if two dead bodies litter up the scene when everything’s meant to be alive and vital. Apart from that, the presence of death has always made me feel queasy, even dead creatures who have shuffled off their tiny mortal coils in my presence. I have never enjoyed it and mostly certainly didn’t now.

“We’ll have to get them both out of sight,” decided Jed firmly. Jed was always the decisive one and we had often depended of him in our callow years of feeble youth. And more than once he had steered us on the right path to musical failure.

Then my heart gave a lurch, a sort of premonition grabbing it, as I noticed, between a jagged gap in a group of trees, the church we had explored when we had been there in the sixties and had nothing better to do that ramble around and find old buildings. Well, one old building anyway. The church. It had probably been deconsecrated at around the time its roof had fallen in, probably a century ago, but it still had what looked from the distance a sturdy enough tower and I had heard they couldn’t demolish it for legal reasons.

And back then, in the romantic way we teenagers had when we, let’s say, had partaken of this or that drop of something or other, we told each other tales about what might have caused its ruin ... and nothing simple like there being nobody for miles in any direction to form a congregation and give its rector a living. No, we detected in the air and the silence of the place a home for spooks and ghouls and all manner of evil forces. And it was more than mere fun: it was borderline belief.

“We could take them to the church,” I suggested, pointing at the ruined tower, “better than burying them as if they were Robin Hood and his girlfriend.”

“Good idea, Josh,” muttered Jed, generously, “but first let’s get them out of sight in the back of Crin’s van.”

“Then what?” I asked, dreading the idea that the dead flesh of Crin and Angela might actually have to be touched by yours truly.

“Then we can take them to church,” grinned Jed in the macabre way he sometimes had, “and find a crypt for them, maybe, or an empty coffin….”

“Don’t be daft, love,” smiled Joanie, “we’d never get the two of them in any coffin I’ve ever seen...”

“Just let’s get them out of sight!” I urged, “that Cratchet fellow could come back any moment with a television crew all looking for a scoop! And don’t forget the Robin Hoods...”

“Then stop giving us orders and lend a hand,” snapped Jed, and there was nothing I could do that would stop me handling the cold and bloodied body of poor old Crin, me at one end pulling and Jed at the other end pushing, with Joanie urging us on, and somehow, without getting too much of a macabre contact with our late drummer’s flesh I managed to push my half into the van, with Jed gasping and croaking as he heaved the rest.

“He was quite a weight,” observed Jed, wiping something that looked suspiciously like cold Crin poo onto his own jeans.

“There’s still Angela,” pointed out Joanie.

I looked despairingly at Crin’s better half and resigned myself to a second round of heave-the-corpse. Swallowing just about everything I had that could be described as being related to pride I grabbed the woman under her armpits and heaved with as much power as I had left to me.

“Here! What the … what the hell do you think you’re doing to me body?” squawked the female corpse, and I released her as promptly as I could, which was very promptly indeed.

“I thought you said she was dead!” ejaculated Joanie.

“He did. He did say she was dead...” muttered Jed.

“I never said anything of the sort!” I exploded, “though I thought she must be. Whoever heard of a woman sitting in a puddle of rain water and not objecting?”

The female corpse opened her eyes and stared furiously about her. She was still holding the viciously cruel knife in one hand, and when she saw it there she let go of it as if it was an unsuspected alien intrusion into her happy life.

“I’ve been stabbed!” she complained, indicating the red stain that lay where she had tried to plunge the blade into herself.

I wanted to point out that she’d stabbed herself in a fit of unbearable grief, but I somehow don’t think the language contains quite the right set of words, and if it did I didn’t know them.

“I thought … we thought...” I stammered.

“Josh was sure you’d killed yourself,” put in Jed.

“So did Jed,” added Joanie. Have I said that I like Joanie? That I’ve always liked her for her honesty and sense of decency as well as the way her eyes sparkle and her bosom heaves? Maybe not, and with a distraught Angela still seeping small quantities of blood, now was not the right time to do so.

“I wanted to die...” wept Angela, “poor Crin … what have you done with my Crin? He was in that chair so still and cold? I couldn’t bear it… the whole idea, it’s monstrous, life without my Crin… And such a journey he’s on, such a voyage beyond the world of living folks and into the dark reachedsof … of … I’ve forgotten.”

“Unfinity?” I suggested.

“There, and other places,” she wept. “Where is my big man?”

“Robin Hood wants to bury him in the woods,” I began.

“What?” she exploded, “a fairy story comes to life and you want me to believe...”

“We don’t want to,” sighed Jed, “but Josh has a better idea, don’t you Josh?”

Did I? Did I have any ideas, better or worse? What was Jed up to now? Oh, I understood: he was being Jed and passing the buck in its entirety to the one person least qualified to grab hold of it and use it. That was Jed all over, Jed in the old days and Jed now. I should have known better than to turn up for a reunion with a bunch of clowns who never really gelled, though Joanie did have the voice of an angel back then.

“There’s the old church,” my mouth said without my brain having any input at all, “over there … you can just see it through the trees. We could take Crin there. It’s deserted, so no-one will mind. And it can be really nice.”

“Really nice?” groaned Jed, “Crin’s dead you muppet! How can anything be really nice when the drummer’s actually dead and decomposing?”

“But it’s a beautiful idea,” beamed Angela, rubbing the wound she had inflicted on herself and threatening to open it again, “let’s go there! Let’s give Crin his own piece of Mother Earth, his own piece of land in which he can lie for ever without worrying about immigration and all that twaddle.”

“Good idea,” said Jed, eyeing me suspiciously, “a really good idea.”

© Peter Rogerson 24.06.18