Then she said crisply into the phone, 'I see. I'll tell him,'
then to me, with a sort of relish, 'You'll have to wait. The superintendent's on a late lunch, he won't be back till three.'
I said, 'I can wait,' thinking, I'm damn glad I didn't send Trev.
She scanned the forms again, as if they might have changed, then handed them back, looking at the next thing on her desk, like I was being dismissed. Then just at the point when she knew I was going to ask, she said with a little huff, as if I should know, 'Round the back of the main building and across the service yard.'
But I wouldVe known anyway. There's always an incinerator chimney. There's always a blank double door like the back exit of a cinema. If there's no one about and there's no other sign, you bang with your fist on the double door. Someone comes to a window and sees the Maria reversed up.
She said, 'Three o'clock.'
It's a sort of distaste. Stigma, that's the word. Like you don't want to know the man who takes away your rubbish. I'm used to it, it's natural. The old man used to say an undertaker's half lord, half leper. You shouldn't hold it against.
I thought of asking: Is there somewhere I could get a bite? Then reckoned better of it. Then I thought, for a mad moment: Twenty minutes - I could see June. Just see her. Out of plain curiosity, out of I don't know what. See what Jack never sees. I could find out and just go, a black jacket will take you most places. But then I thought, No, seeing June might not be so hard, might not be so bad, but first you had to get past this charmer.
I said, 'Three o'clock,' folding the forms back into my pocket.
But I looked towards where the corridors led off, thinking, So this is where. And this is where Amy comes twice a week, year in year out. I wonder if she says hello to this cow, I wonder if she gets a smile.
And it wasn't till then that I realized that today was Thursday. Thursday afternoons: it was one of Amy's afternoons. And I felt myself sort of bracing up, lifting my shoulders and tugging my lapel, the way you do when you might meet someone unplanned, the way an undertaker has to do most of the time. You never know who you might bump into, you never know whose toes you might tread on. It's not just a job, it's a place in the community. That's what the old man said. There's some who say I'm the next best thing to a vicar, and I say, "That's all right. Call me Vie.'
So I stopped being the humble pick-up man. I became the full-scale, knock-'em-dead funeral director, and she must've seen, because I made her eyes flick away from me.
I said, 'Nice out, I'll take a stroll.'
It was an airy, breezy day, the sunshine coming in quick splashes. I walked out on to the forecourt, checked the Maria was parked okay, then took one of the paths that fanned out across the lawns, feeling like a truant, feeling that I was enjoying this, the boss doing the hired man's job, this slipping in and out of a part like the sun dodging the clouds. Feeling that for twenty minutes I had a special angle on the world.
There were rose beds and trees. Patients were out exercising, taking the air too. What do you call them? Patients? Inmates? Residents? Some of them moving oddly or standing oddly still. A thin man came towards me, his lips and his fingers clenched round the stub of a cigarette as if he was trying to pull a long piece of string from his mouth, but it was pulling back. Others looked quite normal, only the old clothes gave them away. But even then. So if you weren't careful. And how would you explain'? So you think you're an undertaker, do you? You better come along with us.
I sat on one of the benches while the sun came out and went in, came out and went in again. The man with the cigarette turned and came back, as if I'd taken his bench, and as he passed me he snarled like a dog, dribbling, his teeth showing. I wasn't afraid. Have no fear. I wondered if Amy was afraid, whether she'd been afraid when she first came. But women aren't afraid, or not of the same things. I thought, You see all the dead, all the bent and broken or plain stretched-out dead, and you think, These people are strangers now, total strangers. But it's the living who are strangers, it's the living whose shapes you can't ever guess.
And that's when I saw them. There must be something that makes you look. Sitting on a bench, on a bench on another path, in front and to the left. I saw Amy's head of brown hair, the breeze stirring it, the sun putting colour into it, and that way she had of sitting, plain and straight and simple, as if she was waiting her turn. But not before I saw Ray> looking small beside her, almost like her kid. His little coconut-shy head, and that way of scratching his neck, I'd recognize that gesture anywhere, the fingers reaching right into his collar as if a whole mouse had dived in there. I thought, I wonder if he knows, he's definitely thinning on top, bit of pink showing through.
If I'd taken another path I might have walked straight past them. But now I slunk back, behind them, to the van, half thinking I should tread on tiptoe, and then I saw it, it must've been there all the time but you don't see what you don't expect to see: Ray's camper, on the far side of the car park, sludge-green and cream, that funny bit on top that opens up like an accordion for extra head-space.
I climbed back into the Maria. From the front of the van I could see them clearly, fifty yards, ten o'clock, Ray on the side of the bench nearest me. It seemed to me that though they made the shapes of two separate people sitting on the same bench, so you might have thought it was just a chance encounter, they also made a single shape that was the two of them together.
Ray leant forward and lit a cigarette, cupping his hands against the breeze. Then he took a puff, took the cigarette from his mouth and with the same hand, elbow on knee, stroked his bottom lip with his thumb. There was a paper bag wedged between them with the remains of something, because Amy dipped her hand into it and threw crumbs for the birds pecking near their feet, sparrows, pigeons. She did this quickly, with a jerk of her arm, as if she half wanted to shoo the birds away, not feed them, but the crumbs kept them coming back. Ray didn't feed the birds. He smoked and rubbed his lip and scratched his neck. Then he sat back and at that exact moment Amy leant forward as if they were a machine that worked like that. She stroked her leg just below the knee as if she had an ache there.
I looked at my watch: nigh on three. But the superintendent could wait. I'd waited for him. Though it's a serious transaction, release of the body. You need the signature and the verification and the date and time, and you shouldn't be late for the dead, just because they're dead. One of my rules. Don't dilly-dally with the deceased. I'd've given Tony a bollocking.
Five past three and they were still there on the bench, and nothing in the van to pass the time, save an old thumbed A to Z and the forms in my pocket. But I had them by heart. Jane Esther Patterson. Date of birth, date of death. She was eighty-seven. Cause of death: cerebral haemorrhage. Next of kin: John Reginald Patterson. Son. I must ask the superintendent, if he's not shirty with me, how long she'd been in for.