Питер Ловси - On the Edge

Antonia frowned and opened her handbag. ‘No, what’s that?’

‘If you left it at home, it doesn’t matter at this stage. Doesn’t matter in the least as long as you bring it tomorrow.’

Rose tensed and crossed her legs. ‘What is this piece of paper? She gave you the certificate.’

He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a form and held it up briefly for their scrutiny. ‘It looks like this. This one relates to a burial last week. The registrar will have issued a similar one with your copy of the registration certificate. You see, I don’t actually require the document you handed me. That is for your use. I require the other—’ He coughed behind his hand. ‘—the disposal certificate, as it’s known.’

‘The what?’ Antonia raised her voice in a manner hardly fitting a just-bereaved widow.

‘It’s the certificate that authorizes me as the funeral director — or whoever you should honour with the arrangements — to conduct the burial. Without it, I am unable to proceed.’

Antonia shot a horrified glance at Rose. ‘I didn’t bring it with me.’

Greely smiled reassuringly. ‘Not to worry. Not to worry at all. It isn’t the first time. People get confused, and understandably in the circumstances. Why don’t you see if it’s at home, and if it isn’t, if you’ve mislaid it, I can apply to the registrar for a duplicate.’

‘No, you will not.’

‘Oh, there’s no extra fee. I’ll tell you what I suggest. You ladies go back to the house and see if this elusive little form is lying about somewhere. In the meantime I’ll drive over with one of my colleagues to collect — that is to say, take care of — your late husband, and if for any reason the certificate is lost—’

‘No.’ Antonia cut him off in mid-sentence. She stood up and snatched the registration certificate from his desk. ‘I’ve never been treated with such callous and pettifogging disregard. I came here looking for sympathy and understanding and you talk to me about disposal , as if my Hector is unwanted rubbish. After this I couldn’t bear to put him in your hands. We’ll get someone with a modicum of respect for the departed to do it. Come on, Rose, before I say something I regret.’

‘Madam, I apologize most sincerely. I assure you I was merely trying to explain the formalities. Upsetting you like this is the very last thing I wanted.’

Rose wasted no sympathy on him either as she followed Antonia out. ‘It’s the last you’ll hear from us, anyway.’

Out in the street Antonia stood tight-lipped beside the car. Although Rose felt in a state of panic too, she offered to drive. In the WAAF she’d driven everything from staff cars to two-ton lorries.

Antonia’s voice was bleak. ‘What on earth do we do now?’

‘Better go somewhere quiet where we can think. Round the Park.’

Rose started up and swung the Bentley into Baker Street and across Park Road to join the traffic on the Outer Circle. For all she cared now, they could drive round and round Regent’s Park until the petrol ran out, a sort of limbo. Hell wasn’t far away.

Eventually Antonia spoke in a flat, embittered voice. ‘What did he call it?’

‘A disposal certificate. God, what a laugh! After all our trouble he didn’t need the death certificate at all.’

Antonia was white with shock. ‘I’m devastated. Why did I walk out of there? Now that it’s too bloody late I can see what we should have done. We should have let him collect the body. He wanted the job. He would have overlooked the wretched form. He could have stretched a point. He kept saying it wasn’t important.’

‘I don’t think so, Antonia. Once he’d seen the body he’d quietly ask the registrar’s office for one, and that would be curtains for you and me.’

‘It’s curtains anyway.’

They passed the Zoo entrance and Gloucester Gate before either spoke again. This time Antonia’s anger switched to Rose. ‘You knew about this all along, didn’t you?’

‘What?’

‘The bloody disposal certificate. What else? You must have had one for Barry. So why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Dry up, Antonia! I didn’t even look at the wretched forms. I just handed them over to the bank. They acted as executors, so they did everything. For God’s sake get it out of your head that I tried to undermine the plan. We wouldn’t be in this mess if I could have avoided it and that’s the truth.’

The force of this reasoning evidently impressed Antonia, because she took a more positive line. ‘Is there any way we can get hold of one of those damned forms?’

‘Only from the registry office.’

‘By reporting Hector’s death, you mean? That’s out. We’d have to get a doctor to look at the body first and write out a certificate.’

‘Do you think a doctor could tell what happened?’

‘He’d order a postmortem for sure. Perfectly healthy men don’t drop dead without some reason.’

‘Was Hector fit?’

‘He never had a day off work that I can remember.’

‘So he never saw a doctor. We could ask any doctor to look at him.’

‘Duckie, even the most pea-brained, superannuated, gin-sodden GP in the world knows bloody well that sudden death has to be reported to the coroner.’

Rose wasted no more words. Her mind was made up. She spun the wheel and turned sharp left into Albany Street, raced through the gears and stamped on the accelerator.

‘Christ! Where the heck are we going?’

‘You’ll see.’

As Rose reversed the car into a space in Lowndes Square she admitted that they wouldn’t be working to a plan. In Air Force parlance it was chocks away and let us pray.

The entrance to the Stationery Office depot was manned by a burly ex-serviceman with two rows of ribbons and a seen-it-all-before look. He said nobody was ever allowed inside without an appointment and then stared over their heads as if that were the end of it. Rose kept talking. And when she told him she was Barry Bell’s widow it worked like a password. He beamed and grasped her hand. Wing Commander Bell have been a particular pal of his with a wicked sense of humour just like his own and the depot could do with a few more like him.

It was a long time since Rose had found cause to be thankful to Barry.

She explained that she had been asked by Mr Gascoigne to collect some of her husband’s things and since she was still not coping very well alone she had brought her friend.

The doorman wrote out a pass for them and ordered a messenger boy to take the two ladies to Gascoigne’s office. They were led through swing doors and along a corridor painted in institutional green and cream. A second set of doors opened into a place of a size and scale they were unprepared for, a warehouse as long as the nave of St Paul’s, with rank upon rank of metal storage racks where the pews would have been.

Rose’s nerve faltered. She glanced Antonia’s way and rolled her eyes upwards.

Antonia shook her head and gave the V-sign.

Gascoigne’s office was higher than everything else, mounted on struts like a watchtower. They climbed an iron staircase, and had to be let into the office to wait because he wasn’t inside. Through windows the length of each wall they could see brown-coated civil servants between the racks collecting packets of stationery and loading them on to hand-trolleys.

While the boy went to look for Gascoigne the two women stared out at the scene. Antonia asked if Barry had been one of the trolley-pushers.

‘He must have been.’

‘Can’t imagine it.’

Rose could, without difficulty. She wasn’t a believer in the occult, yet she had a disturbing sense of his presence here. Listening to the doorman she had sharply visualized the wisecracking clever dick who was her husband striding through that entrance with some fresh quip to brighten the day. All along the corridor she had been conscious of him, into the warehouse and up the stairs and now if she turned her head he would be just behind her in one of those brown overalls, grinning all over his face at what had happened to her and what she was desperate enough to be planning now.