“Well put,” said I. “You go first, then.”
“Not me,” said Dave. “This is your big idea.”
“No, it’s not. My big idea was to dig him up later.”
“All right,” said Dave, pushing open the door. “Let’s risk it. Let’s mingle.” And he strode right into the withdrawing room.
I followed cautiously, trying to avoid the eyes of my father. They were rather red-rimmed and starey eyes, but they were his none the less. I could see my Uncle Jonny sitting over by one of the windows and I didn’t want to look at his horrible eyes.
“’Afternoon,” said Dave, to no one in particular. “Hello there, hi.”
We made our way across the richly carpeted floor towards the coffin. It’s funny how certain things stick in your mind and even now, all these many years later, I can remember that moment so very, very clearly. What happened next. And what was said. And what it meant.
I can recall the way my feet felt, inside my shoes, as they trod over the thick pile of that carpet. And the smell of the cigarette smoke and the way it coloured the light that fell in long shafts through the tall Georgian casement windows. And the dreamlike quality of it all. We weren’t supposed to be in this room, Dave and I: it was wrong, all wrong. But we were there. And it was real.
“Stop,” said a voice and a big hand fell on my shoulder. I turned my head round and up and found myself staring into the long, thin face of Caradoc Timms, Brentford’s leading funeral director.
Caradoc Timms leaned low his long, thin face and gave me a penetrating stare with his dark and hooded eyes. “You, boy,” he said in a nasal tone. “Can’t stay away from the dead, can you?”
I made sickly laughing sounds of the nervous variety. “I’ve just come to pay my respects,” I said. “Mr Penrose is my favourite author.”
Mr Timms shook his head. “And all those times you’ve come round to my funeral parlour, asking to be taken on as an apprentice?”
“I just wanted an after-school job, to earn money for sweeties,” I whispered.
“And all the funerals you follow, when you duck down behind the tombstones and watch?”
“Research?” I suggested. “I’d still like a job, if you have one going.”
“Unhealthy boy,” said Mr Timms. “Unspeakable boy.”
“Is that my boy?” I heard the Daddy’s voice. “Is that my Gary you have there?”
“Dave,” I said. “Let’s run.”
But Dave was suddenly nowhere to be seen.
“Gary?” My father rose unsteadily from his seat upon an overstuffed sofa. “It is my Gary. Smite him for me, Timms.” And my daddy sat down again, rather heavily, and took out his pipe.
“Shall I smite you?” Mr Timms asked.
“I’d rather you didn’t.” I prepared myself to run.
“So what should I do, then? Throw you out on your ear?”
“I’d rather you just let me stay, sir. I won’t be any trouble to anyone. I’ll just sit quietly in a corner.”
Mr Timms nodded his long, thin head. “I hope I live long enough to see it,” he said.
“What, me sitting quietly? I’m sure you will.”
“Not that,” said Mr Timms. “But you at the end of a hangman’s rope.”
“What?” said I, rather startled by this statement.
“You’re a bad’n,” said Mr Timms. “A bad’n from birth. I see’m come and I see’m go. The good’ns and the bad. I’ll tuck you into your coffin when your time comes, you see if I don’t.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I said, in the voice of one who felt he truly hadn’t.
“If you haven’t yet, then you will.” Mr Timms stared deeper still into my eyes. Right through my eyes, it seemed, and into my very brain.
I got the uncanny feeling that this man could somehow, not read, but see my thoughts. And not just my thoughts at this moment, but the thoughts that I would have at some time in the future. See things that I would do in the future. But how could anybody do that? It was impossible, surely? But it seemed to me that this man was doing it. That he really did know. Well, that’s how if felt. It was not just an uncanny feeling, it was a terrible feeling. A feeling of inner violation. It put the wind up me something terrible. And I was a very brave boy.
“You’ll hang,” said Mr Timms. “I know it.”
“No, I won’t,” I said. “I won’t.”
Mr Timms gazed down at me with his penetrating eyes. His long head went nod, nod, nod, and his voice said, “Yes, you will.”
I held my ground and stared right back at him and then, because I felt so absolutely sure that he could see my thoughts through my eyeballs, I turned those eyeballs down to the floor and studied the pattern on the carpet.
A number of options lay open to me and I pondered on which one to take.
I could run straight out of the door. That one was obvious, but that one would be to accept defeat.
I could burst into tears and tell my daddy what Mr Timms had said to me, in the hope that my daddy would smite him on the nose. But my daddy might well take Mr Timms’s side and smite me instead.
Or I could burst into tears and shout, “Get off me, you homo.” I’d seen Dave do this once to the owner of the sweetie shop who had caught him nicking Blackjacks. A crowd of young men had closed in about the shopkeeper and Dave had managed to make good his escape, taking the Black Jacks and a Mars Bar as well.
So I burst into tears, kicked Mr Timms in the ankle, shouted, “Get your hands off me, you homo. Help me, Daddy, please,” and ran straight out of the door.
6
Dave was in hiding across the street, behind a hedge in someone’s front garden. As I ran out of the front door he called me over and I joined him there.
“You’re crying,” said Dave.
So I told him what happened.
Dave put his arm around my shoulder. “You did brilliantly,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to see it.”
“You ran off and left me behind, you coward.”
“I wasn’t scared,” said Dave. “But I have a gyppy tummy and had to come outside to use the toilet. It’s this touch of Black Death I’ve got.”
“Don’t breathe on me, then,” I said. “I don’t want to catch it.”
Dave slid his arm from my shoulder and took to picking his nose.
“I suppose we might as well go home,” I said. “We’re not going to get back inside now, are we? This has all been a waste of time.”
“Seems a shame,” said Dave. “It would be so much easier to bring Mr Penrose back to life now, rather than go to all the trouble of digging him up later.”
I shrugged. “So you think we should wait some more?” I asked.
“It would be good practice,” said Dave.
“Practice for what?”
“For the future. It seems to me that adults spend most of their time waiting for something or other. A bus or a train or, for those who have a telephone, a telephone call. Or waiting for the postman or the milkman or the man to fix the broken pipe or their girlfriend to arrive. Or …”
“Stop it,” I said. “There must be more to being an adult than that. You can get into pubs and drink beer.”
“Waiting at the bar to get served,” said Dave. “Waiting for the cubical in the gents to be free so you can be sick in it. Waiting—”
“Stop!” I put my hands over my ears.
“Adults spend most of their time waiting,” said Dave, in a voice that was loud enough for me to hear. “Because all they’re really waiting for is death.”