6. FATES AND FUNERALS

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

A death in the family...

The Vicarage was unnaturally quiet one cool November day when Wallace Pratchett went down the stairs from his bedroom, taking the steps two at the time and sometimes needing to use his bottom in order to control his descent. It was a school day and despite his truly unhappy introduction to education courtesy of a bullying nun he had started to look forward to it.

He already had a few friends, a special one called Ricky with whom he shared all his secrets, especially those concerning his very clever cousin Maureen who still lived with them. He knew that she was very clever because she knew things, quite grown up things like how to get rid of a nasty headmistress and get her replaced with a nice smiling one.

“Wallace,” came his mother’s soothing voice from the shadows of the passage beneath the stairs, “is that you?”

“Yes, mummy,” he replied. He knew she liked him calling her mummy because Maureen had told him she did. It makes her feel wanted, she had told him, and that’s always nice…

“You’ll not be going to school today, darling,” she said, and her voice had the cobwebs of sadness clinging to them as if some huge sorrow had descended on her during the night, and things would never be the same again.

“But I want to, mummy,” he said, pausing his decent and sitting on a step five from the bottom. “I like school,” mummy,” he added, making sure he used the mummy word again.

“I know you do, darling,” she said, and her words were moistened somehow by the tears that were streaming down her face, “but your daddy died in the night...”

And that was that. The very end of stage one of his life. From birth to daddy dying. But what did dying actually mean? He wasn’t sure of that one.

“He’s gone to Jesus?” he asked, nervously, “to be with him and sitting on a golden throne, like Maureen says?”

“Maureen’s a little bit too fond of princesses and thrones,” replied mummy, “no, he’s not gone to anyone. Not to Jesus, not to God, not to the devil. He’s died, that’s all.”

“Not to Heaven?” queried Wallace, “he always says people go to Heaven if they’re good, and he was good, wasn’t he mummy?”

She noticed the past tense in his words. It proved he understood the finality of death, the limitations on life imposed by a beating heart ceasing its toil.

“Daddy was a good man,” agreed Helen, “and we’ll miss him sorely. But he’s gone and that has to be that. But it does mean that out of respect for his memory you won’t be going to school today.”

“You’ve told him,” came Auntie Amy’s voice from the kitchen.

Helen nodded and made a sound that might have been s distortion of “yes” or might have been something meaningfully indecipherable.

“Poor boy,” she said quietly. Maureen had been a poor girl when her own father had perished overseas during the blasted war that had ravaged Europe, so she understood the mourning of a child. It sometimes lacked logic and seemed to be suspect when it came to emotion, but it ran, like an underground river, deep down, and true.

“When it comes to the funeral...” began Amy, but it was too soon to talk of funerals, the dead flesh would still be warm and you don’t bury warm flesh in cold soil.

“We’ll have to move,” said Helen, changing the subject to one almost as painful. “The vicarage belongs to the church and the church will want it for the next incumbent...”

“What will you … we … do?” asked Amy, who hadn’t given much thought on how the death of one man might impact on the lives of herself and her daughter.

“The church will find us somewhere,” murmured Helen. “I’ve already spoken to the Bishop when it was certain that Jack’s time on Earth was limited, and he told me as such. We won’t be allowed to go homeless, on the streets, living hand to mouth...”

“We’re having another house, mummy?” put in Wallace, still struggling with the concept of death and aware that the conversation had soared way above his understanding.

Maureen came down the stairs behind him and paused, putting one hand on his tousled head.

“Wallace,” she said, “you can be with me today.”

“But where…?” He didn’t understand. “Daddy. Where is he?”

“Remember I told you that he was being looked after by doctors and nurses in a hospital?” asked Helen, “well, it was in that hospital that his heart stopped beating during the night. A policeman came to tell me. It’s a good job you didn’t hear him knocking the door or you might have woken up, and that would never have done, would it?”

“No, mummy.” But would it have been better to have been told when night’s black lay all around rather than have blessed daylight darkened by death’s shadows? Something in his mind suggested it might have been.

“Today,” said Maureen, “it’s a cold day and you must put on your coat, your warm winter coat, and we’ll go for a walk while your mummy does all the important things mummies do when nasty things happen.” She turned to her own mother. “That’ll be all right, won’t it?” she asked, daring her to refuse permission.

But she didn’t. It was, thought Amy, probably best for Maureen to miss a day’s schooling in order to help the little boy, who was still several days away from being five, come to terms with his loss. Maureen and he had always been like they were now, inseparable. From the day the boy had been born and throughout the nappy years Maureen had been there for him. And now, with the bereavement in the night, she would be important in a more grown up way.

Maureen fetched his coat for him. Wallace was lucky, having two coats, one for the warmer weather and one for when ice lay all around. She only had the one and it was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. But on an in-between day like this then the best kind of coat was an in-between one, like hers

Then she led him out, past the church where his father had been the vicar, and to the cemetery beyond it.

“This is where the dead people go,” she told him, and he did know that. He’d lived in the vicarage all his life and had seen funeral processions, wooden boxes on limousines being taken and lowered into holes dug for them.

“It’s where they’ll put daddy,” he told her, a little sadly perhaps, for one so young.

She nodded. “In a nice deep hole,” she agreed, “where the worms won’t reach him.”

Then she led him beyond the churchyard to a little path that wound between a row of houses to where the two of them had gone several times in the summer. There was a stream there, where they’d caught minnows, they’d eaten sandwiches, dry cheese sandwiches unless mummy had bought some tomatoes, and then they were lovely moist sandwiches. They’d taken orange juice and sipped it under the sun, and laughed and run and chased each other, she letting him win quite often.