7. HANGED FOR A LAMB

On his way to the cemetery...

After the sort of debate that shouldn’t be held anywhere on the planet when the subject is my own interment, I became aware of a general consensus. It seemed that nobody wanted to admit to anyone more important than a smiling sunflower that one of them had possibly done something wrong. The Pathologist knew all about his weakness for his assistant and the Undertaker was well aware of his preference for the funerals of the gentry.

“That’s agreed then,” growled the pathologist, “it’s been a simple mistake and its up to us to put things right. No need for form-filling in triplicate or any nonsense like that. We can put things right as if nothing had ever gone wrong, and avoid any pesky enquiry that might come along if we go through channels.”

“I’d best get another box for this fellow then,” growled the Undertaker. “There’s an old one in the yard, second hand, but this bugger ain’t choosing. I’ll send my apprentice with it. About time he learned a bit about maggots!”

“This is no time to risk our reputations by using a boy when it’s a man’s job!” protested the Pathologist.

“He’s good, is our Kenny. You’ll be all right with Kenny. Now if you’ll excuse me but I’m supposed to be burying his Lordship and I’m already running too late to get away with simple excuses.”

“Then tell them about this stiff,” muttered the policeman who was wondering if it was time for his tea-break.

“We’ll be off now, then,” mumbled one of the two paramedics, wiping a considerable trail of noxious vomit off his chin with an already soaking and aromatic handkerchief, “I’m changing professions,” he added, “and joining a monastery, for my sins.”

“Me too,” burbled his partner, and the two rushed through the battered front door of my lovely little living room with no more ado, inadvertently kicking the sunflower as they raced past it.

“Do you mind!” screeched that lovely flower. Nobody heard it except me.

That’s odd, that is. I’d never heard a word from that bloom before my accident, and now it won’t shut up.

A second coffin duly arrived in a plain van.

“You’re in charge,” the undertaker hissed at the apparently twelve year-old who arrived with what looked like a very second-hand coffin with mud stains on it and a tarnished brass plaque suggesting it was the last resting place of Jiminy Pandora who passed away by choking on December 25^th 1862.

“Some Christmas,” screeched Marianne, who hadn’t been able to tear herself away from the gathering.

“Some phishing coffin,” sniffed Philomena, “It stinks.”

I couldn’t smell anything and when they lowered me with extreme care into its plain wooden interior I couldn’t help thinking how snug it felt. I’d have told them had I still the gift of speech.

“Best keep quiet,” a something whispered into my decomposing ears.

“Who are you?” I tried to ask, shocked. Somehow my question must have penetrated the ether and reached the ears of someone I couldn’t see. Or if not ears, something else that made sense of my scrambled and very deceased thoughts.

Something else that I didn’t believe existed.

“The name’s Jiminy, and when her Majesty pegs it they reckon I might be forgiven,” the something assured me.

“Forgiven?” I asked, “what have you done that needs forgiveness?”

“You’ve heard the saying, as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb?” it communicated to me in the ethereal way I was becoming accustomed to interpreting, “meaning that stealing a sheep’s a whole lot more meat than a baaing little lamb? Well, I’m the soft sod as stole the lamb...”

“And they hanged you for it?”

“It’s the law and I went to my grave defending it,” came the reply. “I knew what I was doing, and no messing. But I had the choice. Feed my little ones or bury them when they starve to death. The law said they should starve, but that went against my gut feeling, so I nicked a lamb and my missus made a nice pan of lamb stew with herbs, or if not herbs, grass. Delicious, it was, and I even found a couple of wrinkled turnips to thicken it up a bit. I can still taste it, or at least my shadow can. Even as I tell you all about my sins my mouth’s sort of watering, though there’s not really any mouth nor water involved, if you get my meaning...”

“And you were hanged?” I couldn’t help asking the question.

“Shurrup! They might hear!” the presence snapped at me, a tad unkindly I thought. “There are peelers everywhere, all ready and waiting to pounce on a person and haul him before the beak. And then there’s the queen, her wonderful Majesty. I’ve been in this here casket for a tidy time … she is still alive, isn’t she? I’ve not had my sentence commuted, or I would have heard.”

“She’s alive and kicking,” I assured him, wondering how come a hanged criminal should be worthy of a brass plaque on his coffin. Maybe things were different back then. 1862 is a long time ago. “Both her and her husband,” I added helpfully.

“Why? Now I know you’re a lying son of a rodent!” the voice (if voice it was) spat at me, “Prince Albert, bless him, died the very year before I was put to the rope!”

“Albert?” I thought, though at a guess it wasn’t proper thinking seeing that the cellular structure of my brain had undergone the sort of metamorphosis that guaranteed that not another thought would ever pass through it.

“Wrong queen,” I communicated, “and wrong husband. You’ve skipped a few decades, old son. We’re in the twenty-first century, and I got knocked off my bike!”

“You mean I’ve not been forgiven? I’ve not had a royal pardon like he promised when he was the Prince of Wales?” he shuddered, “you mean I’ve been sleeping the years away in this box waiting for nothing? Royalty! You can’t trust them, not one ounce of them! Well, at least my little ones didn’t starve. And, sod it, I’m off!”

I became aware of a lightening of the air around me as the coffin, old, probably partly rotten, jostled along, and to think of it, Id wanted to ask him why he’d been hanged on Christmas day. It seemed a most unlikely date for an execution, though I know they did things differently back then.

But then, did they? What did I know? And had Jiminy Pandora ever been real?

I’d probably have been confused had I the mental apparatus to experience such a thing as confusion…

© Peter Rogerson 28.08.19