Remains of the Dead Read online

  ‘Mr Byrne has offered me a job.’

  Chas’s jaw hung slack. ‘Not there. Especially not there. You Judas.’

  ‘I went round there to see Eddie on Saturday night,’ I said miserably. ‘Byrne just offered me part time hours. I didn’t ask him to.’

  But then, as bad luck would have it, the telephone rang, and we both heard Mr Byrne himself leave an urgent message for me to go round there as soon as I could because they were very short-staffed and someone had made an unusual request regarding a deceased.

  ‘A deceased what?’ asked Chas. ‘I needn’t tell you, Louise, if you go round there now, you don’t come back to my mortuary, ever.’ I could see that he was furious with me.

  ‘Chas, I might learn something.’

  ‘Like what? Like I haven’t taught you all you need to know about sewing cadavers’ bums? Or is there something you know that Byrne could teach me? I thought you and me were muckers. But then …’ he started.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I was going to say, then you and Eddie Kronenberg were muckers once too, weren’t you, until you sold him down the Swanee?’

  ‘I didn’t sell anyone. It was just that I couldn’t live with myself.’ And still can’t, I thought. I still can’t. I thought I would never bury what Eddie had been to me.

  ‘Maybe it’s Eddie Kronenberg,’ I said. ‘The deceased with the unusual request.’

  Chas gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  I watched him up the steps, waiting to see if he would turn, like Lot’s wife, so I could fix him there like a pillar of salt to season my flat and flavourless life. But he just fired up his bike and rode out of sight. It will be OK, I told myself. Chas and you will be OK. You will sort this thing out, you will, you will.

  With a heavy heart, I called back Mr Byrne. ‘Wear a black suit if you have one,’ he ordered. ‘Failing that, black stockings with a skirt. No trousers, please. And come as soon as you can. Mrs Jury has laryngitis.’

  ***

  Chapter Five

  As soon as I arrived, Mr Byrne hurried me into the viewing room to make the final adjustments to Eddie’s toilette. This meant tweezering a couple of blond-grey hairs from his left nostril and wiping a dot of rouge from his cheek which Mrs Jury, in her laryngitic state, had failed to blend properly with powder. Eddie looked truly horrible, grinning like the automaton he had in his drawing room, his mouth just as red. So much so, in fact, that I half expected him to go into some sort of laughing policeman routine. His eyelids were dusted with blue powder, suspiciously like the shade used by Mrs Jury herself. His nails were varnished with clear gloss. Mrs Jury had applied lemon juice to the nicotine stains on the fingers of his right hand, but they still, to my gratification, looked authentically Eddie’s. In fact, these yellow fingers were the only congruent thing about him.

  ‘So what is the unusual request?’ I asked.

  ‘Death mask,’ whispered Mr Byrne. ‘I’ve seen it done before, of course,’ he said authoritatively, ‘but we’ve never done one here. There’s an artist coming in to take the cast. He’ll need someone with him to move the deceased while he takes photographs. When he’s finished doing that, you’re to move the coffin back to the workroom to do the rest. I can’t have any mess in here.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We have another viewing scheduled for three o’clock this afternoon. I’m expecting a big family party, so try to get this over with as soon as you can.’

  ‘Photographs?’ I repeated, a little dazed.

  ‘That’s what the client wants. Maybe they do things differently in Sweden. Mrs Kronenberg is the film star, Gaia Malstrom.’ He smiled. ‘I had pin-ups of her in my locker when I was doing my National Service. That was years before your time, of course, Louise. What a figure she had. They don’t make them like that any more.’ He cocked his head as a discreet light winked above the door. ‘That’ll be the artist now. A friend of the deceased. A Mr Stockyard.’

  ‘Not August Stockyard?’ I said. It couldn’t be.

  ‘Yes. A friend of the deceased. Are you fit?’ asked Mr Byrne. ‘You’re not going down with laryngitis too, are you?’

  ‘I just need to call Dr Androssoff about my shift.’

  ‘Very well, but be quick about it.’

  Directed to a phone in the workroom, I called Chas and told him where I was.

  ‘Come away from that place,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t,’ I whispered. ‘They’ve got an artist coming in to take Eddie’s death mask. It’s August Stockyard. I know him of old. He’s the one who sold Eddie down the river. You know, Chas, paper bags.’

  ‘Louise …’ Chas started, but I hung up on him.

  August was dressed very conservatively in a black suit, as were Mr Byrne and I – as indeed was Eddie himself. I noticed that the number one haircut August had sported of old was fast becoming a number two, heralded by a firm red fuzz. His cheeks were a sandy colour as though he had been somewhere hot. He had gone to prison after Eddie’s disgrace, not because of his part in the paper bag exposé which caused it, but because of what August the artist called his anti-vivisectionist performances. He had changed his plea to guilty on a very minor count of some peripheral planning of the bomb which had crippled the vivisectionist’s wife, but had not admitted to planting it. No one had ever taken the fall for that. After the trial, Sir Anton Stockyard, August’s rich and influential father, had insisted the misguided boy spend some time in the prison detox unit. He was looking well on it now, and his smile told me he was prepared to be friendly. Where’s your loyalty, Eddie had shrieked as my history with August became all too clear. What price is loyalty?

  ‘Can you hold the light for me, Louise, while I take a few shots of Eddie here?’ August asked when Mr Byrne had left us together. ‘I won’t say fancy seeing you here, though you can say it to me if you like. Haven’t seen you down The Boho for some time now. So how are you doing?’

  ‘What’s all this in aid of?’

  ‘Didn’t your employer tell you I’m taking a death mask? Bet you had a shock when they brought old Eddie in for your attentions, didn’t you? How pennies do turn up.’ By now he was fitting up a tripod and attempting to put Eddie in the frame. ‘I want a few shots of the coffin, then a couple of close-ups of the face. That should do. The pictures are for my Endings show,’ he said. ‘By generous permission of The Widow Kronenberg. All proceeds to a children’s charity. Another pro life charity, in fact. You know the Assisis were disbanded? Still, a rose by any other name. How’s your rose, Louise, still red, I hope?’

  ‘Do me a favour.’

  ‘That’s just what he would have said.’ He patted Eddie’s folded hands. ‘Looks lovely, doesn’t he, a real stuffed shirt?’ The camera started flashing. I was instructed to reposition the light.

  ‘What’s in the show?’ I asked. ‘Is it an installation, or are you back on painting?’ After his pigs’ blood series, August had said he was all painted out.

  He took three or four pictures of Eddie full length, then moved the tripod in closer. ‘Yeah, it’s an installation,’ he said. ‘Body bags, a section table with a blank sheet of paper on it for people to lie down and get their friends to draw around them. Sculpted heads.’

  ‘What, dead heads?’

  ‘Now that would be telling.’

  ‘Were you abused as a child or were you just born this way? You know Eddie would turn in his grave if he knew you were doing this.’

  ‘He isn’t in his grave yet, is he? Don’t be premature.’ August winked at me. ‘I’m a serious artist, Louise. If people find my use of media upsetting, that’s their problem. In the midst of life we are in death. If you don’t get the point of death, you don’t get life. That’s the millennium angst for you: Materialist nothings. Dumb Domes. Who wants to be a fucking millionaire? Like my daddy-o. They just can’t face what’s coming to them all, unless it’s cling-wrapped on a supermarket shelf and smelling sweet. Or flushed neatly down the pan when it doesn’t smell so
sweet.’ He left off snapping Eddie. ‘Now for my next trick. We’ve got to move him into what your governor calls the workroom. Is this on wheels? – Christ, so it is,’ he giggled, lifting up the purple drapery beneath the coffin. ‘It’s like a tea trolley. One lump or two, Eduardo? So in which direction do we push him, left or right? Your starter for ten.’

  I opened the double doors in the faux panelling.

  ‘I love this death business,’ August said. ‘You too, I guess. You can’t be in it for the money.’ He stroked Eddie’s hair. ‘So cold, aren’t they? I think the dead are beautiful. This pathologist I know was telling me about the colours bodies go through: red to purple to yellow to black. This tint here’s quite unnatural.’ He pinched Eddie’s rosy cheek. ‘They should have used blue. That would have been only proper, wouldn’t it, Ed? All this commie red, it’s so vulgar. The Tibetans have it right about dead bodies. They cut them up from neck to base and leave them to the vultures. What a fucking crime to waste all that fuel in crematoria, and with the price of petrol too.’ He gave me a sly look. ‘It wasn’t you who laid him out, was it? I suppose you get used to it, like a doctor or a slaughterer. Sorry, meat plant operative.’

  ‘What pathologist was this?’ I queried.

  ‘Simon Fell, a friend of my father’s. They share an interest in puddings. The spotted dick club or something. Sick, isn’t it, eating a pudding made with fat from round a stuck pig’s kidneys?’

  ‘Eddie used to be a member.’

  ‘Well there you are then. Now, I suppose we’ve got to lift him onto this table. Sorry, section table.’ August reached into the coffin and took Eddie under the waist while I took his feet. ‘Jesus, he’s heavy. Too many spotted dicks, Eduardo. Can you straighten him up a little while I mix up the agar for the cast? I think there’s something in his mouth. Looks kind of constipated, doesn’t he?’

  While August ferreted in his Gladstone bag for materials, I forced myself to put on gloves and feel Eddie’s lips. They were plumped up unnaturally from the formaldehyde which Mrs Jury had used; but when I tried to insert a finger between them, I realised that something was preventing me. Unfamiliar as I was with the funeral parlour practice of inserting a hook behind the corpse’s nose to prevent the jaw from sagging open, I pulled a little too hard and tore the skin inside. This so upset me, I had to leave off.

  ‘Oh come on,’ said August. Then seeing my face, he added, ‘You know, you should talk to his wife. She hated his guts for the way he shat on her. In fact that’s why she wanted him embalmed. You know how strongly he felt about Comrade Lenin being put on display.’ He pressed Eddie’s mouth shut again and started smearing goo over his poor dead puppet’s face. I wished that Eddie would jerk up and hoot at him, the way that corpses do sometimes to expel all the gas in their stomach. But Eddie was without a stomach now. Mrs Jury had seen to that. He was just a bag of long-life chemicals. Those parts of him that were water had already entered the stream.

  ‘You should come back with me later and see Gaia,’ August said. ‘We’ll let this harden for a minute. This modern stuff doesn’t take long. I’ll be using the cast in the show. I think he’d appreciate that.’

  ‘Good job you’re not superstitious,’ I said.

  ‘Why? You think he’ll come back and haunt me?’

  I gazed at the drying plaster. Eddie was haunting me.

  ‘I’ll need someone to help me get him out of the van,’ August went on. ‘You should have seen your boss’s face when I told him it was going to be a do-it-yourself affair after I was through here. We’ll give you a big tip, though, Louise. I’ll make sure of that.’

  ‘You’re taking him home?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ August giggled. ‘But we’ll be paying a call there first. Can I smoke in here?’

  I pointed to the sign above the door.

  ‘See you in a couple of minutes then. Don’t go away, Eduardo.’

  Left alone with Eddie for the first time, I realised, since he had been brought to us, I gave full rein to my grief. Except it wasn’t grief exactly: it was still too early for grief, even had grief been appropriate in Eddie’s case which, strictly speaking, it was not. We had gone too far from each other for grief to be appropriate. Regret there was certainly, and pity and remorse, and sorrow at time passing, at the inexorable progress of the years. I wiped my nose on a paper towel and took Eddie’s cold, yellow fingers in mine, no longer surprised at the coldness for this was a cold I encountered each day of my working life. His face was lost under the smear of plaster or whatever it was that August was using. If August intended to remove him from this place, I couldn’t understand why he was taking the cast here. Convenience, I supposed, thinking of the photo-shoot. I squeezed the fingers tight, but there was no response. There had never been any response. Eddie was no more selfish in death than he had been in life.

  It dawned on me then that the part of him I was grieving for was the part that had been me.

  ***

  Chapter Six

  Mr Byrne himself pushed Eddie’s trolley up the ramp into the van. I recognised this vehicle as August’s movable surf-shack, now re-sprayed a patchy white and, from the sound of it, benefiting from a reconditioned engine. Where the old mattress had lain in the back were a few blank placards and a metal box advertising tattoo equipment. Some things haven’t changed, I thought as I helped Mr Byrne wedge the coffin between the box and the inside of the van. Then I got into the front seat next to August, who drove off without a word for my new employer.

  ‘There’s a pack of coffin nails in the glove box,’ he grinned. ‘Light one for us, will you?’

  We drove in silence past groups of suited city workers huddling into lines to bag a speedy lunch. Normal people with normal jobs, protected by the quotidian, unbothered by the slings and arrows of awful chance that rain on workers with the dead. I glanced across at August, so cheerfully self-centred in his habits and beliefs, and realised that the tepid intimacy I had quickly established with him in the bad old days had never gone away. If we weren’t exactly two of a kind, then at least we complemented each other. He made me feel like one of those ooh and ahing little girls you might see circling around some nasty windfall in the playground: a dead bird, or turd, or pool of vomit. Or, as was once the case at my school, a man manipulating an apoplectic worm between his legs. August may have been poorly endowed in the member stakes, but his subversive antics gave him a million brownie points in certain thrill-seeking circles. Meet August, Eddie had slurred as he propped up The Boho bar-top. A gentleman painter.

  Now Eddie, whose aesthetic preference was for the sort of eighteenth century landscapes you see hanging on the flock and ox blood walls of Commons club rooms, would have run a mile from Tracey Emin or Damien Hirst, or from anybody pissing in the snow, but August’s father, Sir Anton, owned a TV station, amongst other things, and was very useful to The Party. This is why, on Eddie’s instructions, I had gone alone to August’s studio on Eel Pie Island where he fed me a couple of cans of John Smith’s beer (Eddie had joked I was a beer and sawdust girl at heart) and tried to pull down my leggings – such a childish garment for a full grown woman, and I have never since worn pants with an elasticated waist. I remember also August’s pale pigeon chest and the needle scars on his arms and the cheers of The Grand National on the radio. He had placed an accumulator bet which came in big time. It was fixed, I guess, like everything else in what Eddie, reeling from the shock of his exposure, later referred to in court as Mr Stockyard’s meretricious little life.

  It was August who converted me to vegetarianism, August who had dared me to cross the final frontier of my own refusenik convictions. His studio was hung with posters he’d designed for the Assisi Brigade, an animal rights detachment which believed in blood for blood. But I drew the line at bombing the home of the vivisectionist, and was glad I had recanted when it turned out to be the professor’s wife who lost a leg, not the target himself. And I long regretted giving August so much ammunition against Eddie, althou
gh it was the increasingly right-leaning Party line I thought I was subverting.

  The van approached the towering Barbican development where Gaia Kronenberg had walled herself up after Eddie so callously dumped her for the younger and hotter Mafalda. Another van, the same dirty white shade and size of August’s, preceded us into the underground car-park, jack-knifing up in front to disgorge a gang of builder boys in dusty boots. They peered around at me, but didn’t whistle.

  ‘You hang on here,’ August said, ‘while I call Gaia on the entry-phone.’

  She lived in a penthouse. This I knew because Eddie had told me often enough how much the purchase of this apartment, with its view over the artificial lake, had set him back after his separation from his wife. In fact, he had used this purchase in his defence during the paper bag investigation, pleading that Gaia had forced him to borrow the money to make up her mortgage. I wondered what she was going to make of my presence at his side after all this time. The former Commons secretary stroke assistant stroke researcher: a whistle-blower by any other name still mawkishly tracking the husband like he was some kind of road-kill.

  ‘Right,’ said August, leaping back into the driver’s seat. ‘We drive to the service lift, over there. She’s coming down.’

  We got the trolley out of the van and waited for the lift to descend. The machinery clinked, the doors parted, and Gaia was uncovered, very much like Katherine Hepburn playing the devouring matriarch in Suddenly Last Summer. Mr Byrne was right about her physical charms. Women just don’t seem to come in Gaia’s size any more. Leading actresses now are nothing but skin and silicone. But Gaia filled the wide screen: big-boned, wide-hipped, Amazonian. She wasn’t, to my mind, beautiful, even in her 1960’s heyday when she splashed around in front of the camera with stars like Anthony Quinn. She was too big to rise from the sea in a cantilevered bikini like Ursula Andress. Her mouth was too large: she looked like a green-eyed man-eater. That termagant, Eddie used to say. He frequently wondered why he’d married her. A trophy, I suppose, like Mafalda was later to be. He said his ideal woman was small, a jolie-laide like Bette Davies. God forbid he meant me.