8. THE BLOODY TOILET CHAIN

I guess we must have looked an odd little group at an unsavoury corner of the corporation cemetery, in a corner next to the Gentleman’s toilets.

There had been a funeral there, my first funeral, earlier in the day, but an error had been forced on officialdom by a weird admixture of circumstances resulting in my body not quite making it into its coffin whilst my ghost did.

I’ve never believed in ghosts.

But the coffin had been lowered into a six foot deep resting place and by hook or by crook had to be hauled back out.

The undertaker’s young apprentice was in charge. In an age when intelligence is often marked by a fellow’s skill at playing solitaire on a computer, setting himself against a machine in a titanic duel of no importance whatsoever, he was looked on as a bright lad. In other ages he might have been regarded in less glowing terms because he suffered from an ability to look reality in the eye and see it for what it was.

See most modern politicians.

I was quite comfortable in Jiminy Pandora’s coffin. After wondering if he’d actually existed but had in reality been no more than a figment of my lurid but dead imagination, I discovered that he, or rather his spirit, was sulking in a corner of the ancient casket because the pardon he’d been expecting on the death of Queen Victoria hadn’t materialised. Being an ex-person he hadn’t properly noticed the passing of time, being as dead as I was and oblivious to such human requirements as an awareness of self in time. They don’t allow for the winding of time-pieces in coffins, and not even those little batteries you put in watches last for ever.

See cobwebs on a stationary pendulum.

The crowd consisted of two of of my ex-wives, Kenny, the undertaker’s apprentice next to the policeman who was still there even though he was convinced that the time for his tea-break had long passed. There was also the gravedigger, a burly man who had long since sacrificed his brain in exchange for extra capacity when it came to his fondness for strong ale. But he was a game soul when it came to digging and it barely crossed his mind that he’d already dug a grave on the very spot where he was currently labouring. There were chinks in his mind, blurred shadows, that were never illuminated by memory.

“Better get a move on and get this dug!” screeched Marianne at him, “I’m waiting on my dinner!”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, largely because he was aware she had shrieked at him but had actually paid no attention whatsoever to the contents of that shriek.

“This is a phishing to-do,” growled Philomena, and she proceeded to illuminate the eccentric gathering with her personal observations. “Just like the barstable moron to end up in a fix like this,” she grumbled, “Phishing needing two phishing burials when the rest of us have to phishing make do with one!”

The burly gravedigger hacked away at already loosed earth, and it was probably just as well that he wasn’t given to thinking too often or he might have wondered what in the name of goodness he was doing.

The hole was almost dug when Kenny suddenly and quite out of the blue made an announcement.

He had turned green back at my place before I’d been unceremoniously dumped in my second coffin, and he’d actually dribbled as he cringed when his hands touched my cold, dead, flesh. And now that the green had toned down to be a pallid sort of sick colour he decided one important thing.

“That curry I had last night,” he muttered as if any further explanation was necessary, and he unable to say more because a wobbling sort of gurgling sound emanated from the depths of his immature frame and he cast a desperate look around him.

“The bog!” he almost shrieked, and running as though he suddenly imagined that for no reason he had morphed into an Olympic sprinter with the crowd roaring him on, he made a bee-line for the near-by toilet, which was as fragrant as ever and about to get more so.

This was probably the first time that particular toilet had been welcomed so heartily by visitors to the cemetery, and the sounds that emanated from it were sufficient to even turn my dead stomach.

I need go into no details because I’m sensitive of the gentle disposition of my readers, but minor explosions occurred, thankfully out of the sight of my two ex-wives, who were no so means gentle souls themselves. I was only glad that the remaining three exes who had plagued my younger years were not there. One, of course, had died way back, probably of bubonic plague but she described it as pneumonia caused by wedlock to me, but the other two would have been exceptionally critical of me, the policeman, the undertaker, the apprentice, the pathologist (who was probably consulting on important matters with his assistant by then) and the gravedigger.

Then, just when we were all getting impatient and about to report the gravedigger for wasting time, his spade hit something solid.

“What’s that?” asked everyone, suddenly alert to action.

“Must be wood. Must be a box. Maybe the one I put in here this morning,” grunted the gravedigger.”

“Where’s Kenny?” asked the policeman, not sure whether it was up to him to make decisions on such an important matter as burials.

The sounds from the gents answered his question. It must have been an excellent curry that had put the lad in such a way.

“I’ll tell you phishing what!” said Philomena out of the blue. She had always been good at interfering and even better at making wrong decisions.

“Yes?” asked the policeman, thirsty for tea he was sure he’d missed.

“Get it off your mind, you ugly crow,” screeched Marianne.

“Put the box in straight away. On top of t’other one. Then fill the hole in and let’s get off! When it’s done nobody’ll be the wiser and the dead moron’s in not state to complain”

“Good idea,” nodded the policeman through dry lips.

Between them they heaved the Victorian coffin, with me and the spirit of Jiminy Pandora in it, to the edge of the hole. I couldn’t feel it, being dead, but I had some instinct that I was on the move.

I want you to know that I in no way believe such instincts in the dead ever existed anywhere on the planet.

My coffin, the one that I was in, that is, teetered on the edge of the hole.

“Blow this for a lark,” grumbled Marianne, and she kicked the coffin with deliberate force before wincing with the pain.

See David Beckham.

And at the precise moment as my last resting place began its descent towards my penultimate resting place, Kenny tried to flush the toilet.

“Damn!” he cursed, and we heard him loud and clear, “the bloody chain’s broken!”

© Peter Rogerson 29.08.19