Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

So news of the cancellation must have come like a gift from God to Mirabelle.

Possibly in compensation for these uncharitable thoughts, and in despite of the shortness of notice and the fact that at ninety-three, old Mr. Tooley had outlived most of his two-legged friends, Mirabelle had managed to drum up a fair turnout, enough to fill both funeral cars, with Joe having to squeeze in the front seat of the hearse next to Lou Webster whom he’d known since school days.

“Okay, Lou?” he asked.

“Fine. Yourself, Joe?”

“Fine. Get a lot of cancellations in your line of business, do you?”

“Not a lot. In fact, it takes something unusual.”

Joe contemplated eternity for another dignified furlong. But his mind kept drifting back to the cancellation.

“So what was unusual about this one?” he asked.

“Mr. Tallas? For a start, he died abroad.”

“You say he was called ‘Dallas’?”

“Tallas. It’s Greek. That’s where he was, in Greece, visiting his family. But seems he’d been born here, had British nationality, and wanted to be buried here. The insurance company — guy called Smith — rang to say it had to be postponed. Family complications. I wasn’t best pleased, I tell you. One thing you can’t afford in our game is smell.”

Joe tried eternity again but it was no good.

“Smell?” he said.

“You know. Bad-meat smell. Mr. Tallas died in a car accident, probably all cut up and left out in the sun till they got round to shovelling him into a coffin, you know what these wops are like, all mañana out there.”

“Think that’s Spain, Lou,” Joe pointed out gently.

“Is it? Won’t fall out about a couple of miles. Anyway, first thing I noticed when I picked him up at the airport was the pong. You had to get up close but I’ve got a nose for it. I thought, hello. Don’t want you lying around in my parlour too long.”

Joe shuddered and looked behind him.

“No need to worry about Mr. Tooley. Time I’m finished with a client, you could sit him in your living room and keep him there for a month without anyone noticing, except he didn’t move much.”

“Got a girl on the cheese counter at the hyper like that,” said Joe. “So what did you tell this insurance guy, Smith?”

“Said nothing till he rang to cancel this morning. I mean, he’s paying. Has paid. Top dollar. But soon as he said there was a family travel problem and the funeral would have to be cancelled, I said, that’ll be extra for the inconvenience, and I’m not keeping him any longer than tomorrow else I’ll have the Health round. I didn’t tell him I’d already moved the coffin out of the Chapel of Rest and into my workshop.”

Joe said, “How’re you going to manage tomorrow? Not another cancellation?”

“No. We’re doing first of the day, parish job, some poor derelict. Push him through in five minutes flat, slip the cream soup a bung, and we can easily fit in another long as they don’t want no Friends-Romans and half the Messiah. Smith said fine, and if the family didn’t make it, go ahead anyway.”

Joe thought about this, slowly, as was his wont. It took him half a mile to work out that the cream soup was the crem supe, i.e. the crematorium superintendent. But there were other puzzles.

He said, “So if Smith’s not that worried about the family making it, why not go ahead today anyway?”

“Don’t ask me. All I know is, he’s paying. Also it gave me a chance to do your auntie a favour. Wise man doesn’t miss a chance like that.”

Joe took his point. Mirabelle blacking an undertaker in Luton was like the bailiffs moving in.

He sat back and looked forward to the service.

It was more entertaining than he anticipated.

First off the chaplain, due doubtless to a late rebriefing, seemed unsure whether he was bidding farewell to Daniel Tooley, retired car mechanic and greyhound enthusiast, who’d died in the fullness of years, or David Tallas, company director, who’d been cut off in his prime. In the end he settled for David Tooley, a.k.a. Daniel Tallas, who’d been good to his family, generous to his employees, loyal to his friends, and kind to dumb animals, by all of whom he would be deeply missed.

If employees covered bookies, it would do for old Mr. Tooley, thought Joe.

Old Miss Tooley certainly showed no unease until the moment approached for the final curtain. But now she prodded Mirabelle in the ribs and hissed, “When will we be having ‘Danny Boy,’ Bella?”

Mirabelle, who hated being called Bella, asked what she thought she was talking about? Old Miss Tooley said it was universally known that Daniel wanted “Danny Boy” sung at his funeral. Mirabelle said it was the first she’d heard. Old Miss Tooley said Daniel wouldn’t rest in his grave and she’d be laid low for weeks if the song wasn’t sung. And Mirabelle, feeling the implied threat and nobly resisting the temptation to point out that, as old Mr. Tooley had expressed a wish for his ashes to be scattered over Trap 3 at the Luton Dog Track, resting in his grave hardly applied, looked at Joe.

“No,” said Joe.

“You got no problem singing it down that hellhole drinking den you frequent, I see no reason for you to be shy in the House of the Lord,” said Mirabelle.

And two minutes later Joe found himself standing alongside Mr. Tooley’s basic-package coffin assuring its inmate that the pipes, the pipes were ca-alling.

In fact, it was no problem. As a longtime baritone in the famous Boyling Corner Chapel Choir and a popular contributor to karaoke night at The Glit, Joe could hold a tune and had performed before more interactive audiences than this. And sizewise, it wasn’t bad either. In fact, there seemed to be quite a lot more people in the congregation than the nine or ten Mirabelle had crowded into the funeral cars. Perhaps she’d sent out a three-line whip throughout her wider sphere of influence beyond the Rasselas Estate. But Joe doubted it. There were folk here who didn’t look like they belonged to Mirabelle’s flock. Men in sharp suits with fifty-quid haircuts. Women to match.

As the final words of the song faded away, one of the mystery mourners, a handsome redheaded woman of about forty whose elegant silk suit showed she’d kept her figure in a way which Mirabelle probably considered an affront to both Nature and God, began to applaud.

Mirabelle turned and glowered, but nothing abashed, she got in three or four more hearty claps and gave Joe a smile whose warmth he felt like a turned-up fan heater.

Beside him the coffin was on the move. He returned to his seat leaving the bemused chaplain to resume centre stage. A blessing, a few moments silent prayer, then they were filing out to the piped strains of some mournful Muzak.

“Was I all right, Auntie?”

“All right for your drunken friends, maybe. No place in church for them vibratos. If you can’t hit the note, you shouldn’t be singing,” she said sharply. Then, relenting, she said, “No, you were fine, Joe. I’m just mad at that person putting her hands together like she was at some pop concert.”

A hand tugged at Joe’s sleeve, a waft of powerfully musky perfume tugged at his nostrils, and he turned to find himself looking at that person. Behind her at the crem door he could see her male companion talking agitatedly to Lou.

“Looks like there’s been a real cock-up,” said the woman in a smoke-roughened voice which rubbed you up the right way. “Seems we’ve come to the wrong funeral, but it was worth it to hear you sing. Don’t do gigs, do you?”

“No,” said Joe, flattered by her implication and fluttered by her scented proximity. “Karaoke night down The Glit, and I’m in the Boyling Corner Choir.”