Ken McClure: Tangled Web

‘I saw some of it earlier,’ said Julie. ‘The confession is the problem. It’s given them free rein to go for the jugular. She sighed and said, ‘If you’ll take my advice you’ll stand back from it a little. You’ve made a lot of friends since you came here, Tom. I’d hate to see you lose them over this.’

‘Thanks for the warning.’

There was a short uncomfortable silence in the room while both of them reflected that they were not going to agree about this.

The funeral parlour of J. Prosser and Son had stood in Mould Street, Caernarfon for more than seventy-five years, its black-painted frontage and discreet gold lettering boasting its credentials for Care and Concern in times of Bereavement . It was the sort of place where local people tended to hush their voices in passing, intimidated by the open Bible lying in the window on a cushion of maroon velvet in front of matching, heavy curtains. Young children might ask what lay behind the curtains but were seldom graced with an answer. If they were, they were told that it didn’t concern them; it was nothing for them to worry their little heads over.

It was therefore something quite out of the ordinary when John Prosser was woken up in the flat above the parlour at seven in the morning by someone hammering on the front door and demanding that he open up shop.

Wrapping his plaid dressing gown around him and hastily perching his half-moon specs on his nose, he hurried downstairs to tip toe through the cold gloom of a March morning and open the door. A thickset man in his late twenties with dark curly hair and an anguished expression stood there. His breath smelt of whisky and the bags under his eyes spoke of a lack of sleep.

‘Martin Griffiths?’ exclaimed Prosser. ‘What are you doing here, man?’

‘You’re burying my girl today, Prosser,’ said Griffiths, his speech a little slurred but his gaze steady enough.

‘And right sorry I am too,’ replied Prosser.

‘I want her to have my mother’s ring in the box with her, see.’ Griffiths brought out a small, scuffed, blue leather ring box from his jacket pocket and waved it in front of Prosser’s face.

Prosser frowned then said kindly, ‘It’s a bit late for that, man, the casket’s been closed. We’re all ready for the funeral this morning. Look, you’re upset and who wouldn’t be after losing their baby? Come in man, we’ll have some tea and I’ll call your wife and tell her you’re here.’

‘Don’t want no tea,’ insisted Griffiths, shrugging off Prosser’s attempt to take his arm, ‘I want my baby to have this ring with her. I need her to know I cared. I wasn’t there when she died. I was on the Cornwall run, away for three days, I was.’

Prosser nodded. He knew Griffiths was a long-distance lorry driver and that he’d been away when his baby daughter had fallen victim to cot-death syndrome.

‘Christ, if only I’d been there,’ continued Griffiths, his voice breaking. ‘I might have heard her cry out in the night. I could have picked her up and cuddled her... told her her daddy was there and there was nothing to worry about... But I wasn’t, was I? I was hundreds of miles away and she just slipped away in the night, crept out of our house, she did, out of our lives.’

Prosser felt a lump come to his throat. He’d seen a lot of grief in his time and become hardened to it behind a sombre professional front but there was something raw and undiluted about Griffiths’ pain that got to him. ‘Come inside anyway, man. It’s cold.’

Prosser led the way through the partitioned interior of the parlour to a small dark office, equipped with only a desk and three chairs. This was where Prosser consulted the newly bereaved over their choice of funeral ‘accessories’. A large, spiral-bound book lay on the desk with illustrations of coffins and their furnishings. Prosser pushed it to one side with the palm of his hand and rested both arms on the desk. ‘Look, man,’ he said. ‘I know you mean to do what’s for the best but you’re so full of grief that you’re not thinking straight.’

Griffiths put the ring box on the desk and opened it clumsily with thick callused fingers to reveal an old engagement ring: it was an emerald mounted in a cluster of small diamonds. ‘It was my grandmother’s and then my mother’s. She told me to give it to my lass when she got married but she’s not getting married, not now, not ever, so if you’ll just open up the box I’ll give it to her now.’

Prosser moved uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I don’t think you should do this Martin,’ he said. ‘It’s better you should remember your little lass as she was, not as...’ Prosser’s voice trailed off.

Griffiths frowned. ‘What the hell are you on about?’ he demanded.

Prosser wrung his hands in discomfort. ‘People working in medical science have to find out just how and why awful things like Megan’s death happen,’ he began. ‘If the doctors are to have any hope of stopping other people going through what you’re going through they have to investigate things... thoroughly.’

‘What are you trying to say, Prosser?’ demanded Griffiths, now becoming suspicious about Prosser’s obvious agitation.

Prosser wriggled in his seat again before saying, ‘The pathologists at the hospital had to carry out certain examinations on Megan...’

Griffiths’ eyes opened wide. ‘Are you telling me they damaged my Megan?’ he asked in a low, harsh whisper.

‘A post-mortem examination has to be done in such cases,’ replied Prosser quietly. ‘It’s the law, see, and a certain amount of... damage, as you put it, is inevitable.’ In truth he wasn’t sure what the case was with Megan Griffiths. He hadn’t collected the body personally so he hadn’t seen it. It was usual for the people at the hospital to make the body as presentable as possible after PM examination but on the other hand, viewing of the body was usually carried out at the hospital chapel, aided by suitable drapings and a glass partition screen.

‘I want her to have my mother’s ring,’ said Griffiths, digging in his heels.

Prosser could see that further argument would be pointless. Griffiths had clearly made up his mind and his overwhelming sense of grief and guilt was preventing him from hearing any rational argument. ‘All right,’ he said resignedly. ‘If that’s what you really want, she’s lying downstairs.’

Prosser, still in his dressing gown and slippers led the way through to the back of the premises, a cold room with a large barred window letting in the early morning light above a big, crazed porcelain sink where a velvet cloth lay steeping in stagnant water. He clicked on a light switch to the right of the one, dark-panelled door in the room before opening it up to reveal an arch leading to cellar stairs.

Prosser descended in slippered silence; Griffiths’ heavy shoes clattered slowly and irregularly behind him on the wooden treads.

The small white coffin containing Megan Griffiths’ body lay on a wooden bench with a white record card carrying her name and funeral details temporarily Sellotaped to the lid.

‘I urge you to change your mind, man,’ said Prosser, making a last attempt at trying to dissuade Griffiths. ‘You and your wife are young. There will be other babies, I’m sure.’

‘Open it.’

Prosser shrugged and took down a red-handled ratchet screwdriver from its clip on the wall above the bench to start undoing the lid. The tortured noise of the screws turning seemed unnaturally loud in the early morning quiet. It was easy for Prosser to construe this as a kind of protest. He lingered over the last one, still hoping that Griffiths might change his mind at the last moment, but Griffiths said nothing, his features set like granite. Prosser removed the last screw and placed it in line with the others before sliding off the lid and deliberately angling his body so that he was standing between Griffiths and the open coffin. He hoped this might give him the chance to take a quick look inside and perhaps even make a slight cosmetic adjustment if required before Griffiths had a chance to look inside.