James McCure - The Steam Pig

For an undertaker George Henry Abbott was a sad man. He let his job get on top of him. He let it keep him awake nights. He made mistakes.

But business stayed good. It helped, having a name that had an alphabetical right to head the list of funeral directors in the Yellow Pages. And having a telephone number like 77007. Five digits-not a big city, even by South African standards, yet both populous and lethal enough to allow Mr Abbott and his competitors little time for the morning newspaper.

Straight after breakfast he got up and opened the refrigerator door. The night before Farthing, his young assistant, had seen to the morning job and left him the two on the right. With a sigh, he stooped and tugged at the bottom tray. It slid out silently before being arrested with a slight bump which set the toes quivering.

Mr Abbott found the sight of them caused a strange, pleasurable ticking on the roof of his stomach. He could tell a lot from toes. These were very neat with a suggestion of intelligence more like thumbs. And very feminine.

Using the Pollock adjustable-height trolley, he transferred the tray’s contents to the post-mortem slab. Two deft flicks removed the sheet and a third had it folded over his arm.

This time it got Mr Abbott in the pit of the stomach. The girl had been in the prime of life. And if there were such a thing, she was in the prime of death, too.

The startling beauty of the remains did not distress him. On the contrary, he had always held that his colleagues were being hypocritical when they declared themselves unmoved by any subject of their toil.

But he was right, damn them. Look at her. Like that poet had said: a thing of beauty was a joy for ever. The perfect figure, and bones good for years yet. The navel, a dainty dish, was especially fine.

His eyes felt none of the chill of the taut white skin. His fingertips rejoiced in the spring of the jet hair. Like the toes, the fingers were exquisitely shaped and well cared for. Not a mark or blemish anywhere.

He had left the face till last. Thank God, a young face. He had had his surprises. A practised pinch closed the mouth and showed its good humour. Above it a pert nose and alert unplucked eyebrows. The eyes had to be blue because the hair was blonde, real ash blonde. Yes, they were.

Beautiful. Minutes passed.

Then resentment caught him unawares and he found himself thinking of the wife. Mrs Priscilla Abbott, once the boss’s widow, who had allowed him to put his own name up outside in the expectation this would encourage them to live happily ever after.

He just might have if there had been such a body to soothe the sour wrinkles from his mind after a late call. An urgent, life-giving body with thighs that pressed forward even in repose. Not a carrot-haired, obese form that never stirred, never uttered a sound as he tiptoed in, and had feet so cold their touch caused a spinal reflex which jerked him awake horribly.

“George!” She filled the doorway.

He gave three clumsy flicks and succeeded in covering the girl. Then he turned with a cough.

“That must be the one for the post mortem,” Mrs Abbott said.

Cough.

“Then let Dr Strydom do his own preparation for once and get the other one ready for three o’clock. I’ve just had the crematorium on the line and they say it’s a heavy afternoon. We can’t be late again.”

Cough.

“It’s a Trinity job-get on with it!” Mrs Abbott snapped and went back to man the front office.

Her spouse hurried over for the second tray.

Three o’clock and all was going smoothly. Smoothly as grandad on castors, Farthing observed.

Mr Abbott frowned. Partly to discourage another laboured lapse of taste, partly because he always felt uneasy when there were no hitches to confirm the part he had played in making the arrangements. Gingerly, he began to review the proceedings.

To start with, it was an Arabella funeral, all inclusive at R128-or?64 sterling if you were dealing with one of the old families who still called the UK “home”. And had pictures of the Queen, Queen Victoria more often than not. How his mind wandered. He would pin it down with familiar fact.

Arabella was a code name used to spare relatives the added pain of mentioning money. They wandered at will around the showroom and made their choice from cards propped in little easels on each gleaming lid: Arabella, Doris, Daphne, Carson. Mrs Abbott had chosen the names. The cost was given discreetly small but in red.

Ah, not that there had been anyone to choose in this case. Or indeed any need for a stated preference. The Arabella, being a compromise between Doris (municipal pauper) and Daphne (genteely modest), was standard issue to members of the Trinity Burial Society.

Not that it was a burial either, but again he was right on this. An additional 20 cents on the weekly premium ensured cremation for the lonely old lady with that quite extraordinary tattoo few men could have seen. Or, God forbid, a great number.

Mr Abbott shuddered, dismissing his next thought.

Simultaneously a red light shone on the console in the crematorium superintendent’s hidden cubicle. His right index finger, stiff as a baton, dropped on the button marked Organ Finale. His left activated the conveyor belt.

The 3 p.m. Arabella, Ref. No. A44/TBS, began its ponderous exit towards the hatch. At the last second an automatic trip parted the velvet drapes and it was gone. Then the oven door clanged faintly. Gone for good.

“Same age as me, too,” Farthing muttered as the music stopped.

He added something that Mr Abbott failed to catch as “Abide With Me” ran back at full volume to its starting point on the tape. But what he had said was more than enough.

The Rev Wilfred Cooke, curiously subdued by having addressed a chapel empty save for the Almighty, stepped down and dried his pink palm ready for the cheque.

Farthing was waiting in the superintendent’s office to hand it over. Then he was to see to some plaques for the Garden of Remembrance. Maxwell amp; Flynn were due in at half-past for a society send-off and would give him a lift back to town.

For Mr Abbott had left very suddenly. The hearse once touched 58 mph-that was in Jacaranda Avenue.

From the street the premises of Abbott amp; Marcus Ltd appeared to have little to recommend them other than an old world matter-of-factness. But behind the coarse red-brick facade with its blue opaque windows and autumnal gold-leaf lettering, beyond the cream and brown office and showroom, was a mortuary few private concerns could equal.

It had been the realisation of a dream for Franklin Marcus, the first undertaker to reach what was then a frontier town. After an initial bit of bother with the carpenter, who resented losing a lucrative sideline, he secured a military contract on the eve of the first Zulu War and prospered exceedingly. Ploughing back his profits, Mr Marcus had two surgical tables shipped out and the walls of his new mortuary tiled to shoulder-height. A large cold room was then added which-as he said-made the place big enough for an army.

And in his early days, Mr Abbott had carried on the Marcus tradition by introducing a proper shadowless light and three wall cabinets of autopsy instruments. Although overt hostilities with the natives had ceased, a grossly inadequate State mortuary was often glad to have his facilities at its disposal. What was more, the State also found it expedient to have Mr Abbott attend to the rites after post mortem and this meant a handsome retainer, plus commission. He had always been very happy about this arrangement.

Until Farthing had uttered.

Mr Abbott swung the hearse into the yard gate and pulled up round the back beside the district surgeon’s Pontiac. Damn the man-was he never late for anything? Most doctors were occasionally delayed by emergency calls, but not Dr Christiaan Strydom. His patients either queued at stipulated times for travel shots or waited, cool and unhurried, forever if need be.