The Service
15:42 | 
Posted by
Tony Foster
The Service.
“Funerals aren’t for the dead. They’re for the living. Draw off some of that sap that’s at its highest in these moments.”
I didn’t know who the person was or what they meant. Nor did I want to look at them. The voice was a raspy hoot, somehow contained within a whisper. A smell of roses and stale tobacco glazed my cheek, like the breath of an old actress. And nothing can be entirely hidden from the eyes because of evolution, so there was a buzz of dark serge at the corner, a blur of wisteria in a pinhole. It wasn’t for me to engage anyone, and I thought it rude and shallow that they should either. Especially to a stranger, especially in the middle of the eulogy. I might have been the bereaved for all they knew.
“Ask them what they think of it and what will they say? Nothing. They’re dead. No feelings to dilute with rituals. We, on the other hand...”
This was definitely a cheek now. The priest was still talking. Heads about me, bowed in black, turned sneezes into sniffles. Where else were so many flowers worn and shown and scattered? Oh yes. Weddings. All in the same bargain basement.
“‘Course they come back, you know. Circle of life. Ever had a house mouse, or a bird that wouldn’t go away?”
The voice didn’t wait for a response. “Most likely be an insect at first. An attentive one, like a ladybird or wasp. Easy to spot cause they don’t quite act right. Watch when you go home. If they meant anything to you, that is. Don’t bother if not.”
Funerals were for the dead. They were about respect and payment. Closure. Life going on. I hoped the clench of my jaw and redness of cheek illustrated that. Told them exactly what it meant.
At the front, the soft-spoken man carried on speaking. He was solemn and articulate, as though the deceased had been a loved one of his own. A close personal friend who he had known so much about, and who had meant so much to him that he had been charged with the outpouring of grief on everyone’s behalf. Perhaps others had been close too, even blood close. But the man in white, you felt, felt his loss the most. You believed, in spite of his steady voice and lack of tears or perhaps because of them, that he was maintaining iron standards of will. This served both as inspiration and example for the knife-edge the rest of us were walking. He might easily collapse into hysteria at any moment, and you could be sure then we would follow. He didn’t though. He kept it all together, and you had to admire that; the way he gestured and said Latin. The way his smile and voice bounced off the walls and windows, like sun-rays that could tan our souls, not just the mortal, sticky-out parts.
“What they do is to ask the family lots of questions. How religious was he? Where did he go to school? Hobbies and best friends and so on. Then they whisk those gossipy eggs into a speechy custard. A Bit like those fortune tellers. They’ve got that way about them too, but it’s smoke and mirrors, just the same.”
I thought of home and the meringues Rita made with stiff peaks from frenzied whisking. She had big arms to do it with. I wouldn’t have been having these thoughts but for the voice. The voice, dwelt upon, carried scorn and simper along its discourse and I’ll tell you something else you might find funny. The voice sounded different each time it spoke. First it was Sid James, then Charles Hawtrey, the fey one, then Kenneth Williams, the posh one. I’ve seen all the Carry On movies several times, but this scared me. How curiously invasive it was. How dismissive of the occasion. Nobody breathed. It went on.
“Listen. It’s because we don’t like endings. Egypt buried its dead in Sarcophagi, writing deeds on stone tablets. Five thousand years later we’re still doing it. Afterlife beats void, no matter the facts. But everything is everything. Nothing is nothing.”
Why are you telling me this? I wanted to hiss. But nobody could hiss in the middle of a service. Nobody except maybe Sid or Kenneth. In spite of the fact that I shouldn’t and didn’t want to, I listened. My head felt like a bag of sand. As if in triumph, the voice became less intimate, tougher.
“Kings they were once. But muffled and weightless when raised to the sun; their eye-holes raw from the sleep of millennia. All that sleep and still godless. Flesh turned to dust; tools clean of soil.”
“Infamy, infamy,” I thought it might say. “They’ve all got it in for me.” But it didn’t. I remembered a poem: ‘Ozymandias’. Supposedly about one of the pharaohs.
“Their riches melted from coffins to coffers, back to the earth’s hollow pockets,” the voice went on, not quoting. “They all went West for glory, and confronted by these facts - these certainties - we follow.”
“Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair,” said the Priest, in that same scoured, hollow, Carry-On wheeze. He was Bernard Bresslaw, and the sweep of his wizard’s sleeve painted cream and gold on our pupils. Out and then back in, filtered through stained glass, vibrant as party jelly.
I tasted the air. We all saw it. Me, the voice, everyone. Beneath the cassock, dark hairs poked through the silk. Bernard was a hairy boy, his chest rising and falling. In a moment, a voice would come out that was surprisingly effeminate. Behind the tapestry, shapes may have been moving.
“Nothing beside remains,” reminded the voice, in a movie-spoiling tone.
“Amen,” the congregation said.
“Funerals aren’t for the dead. They’re for the living. Draw off some of that sap that’s at its highest in these moments.”
I didn’t know who the person was or what they meant. Nor did I want to look at them. The voice was a raspy hoot, somehow contained within a whisper. A smell of roses and stale tobacco glazed my cheek, like the breath of an old actress. And nothing can be entirely hidden from the eyes because of evolution, so there was a buzz of dark serge at the corner, a blur of wisteria in a pinhole. It wasn’t for me to engage anyone, and I thought it rude and shallow that they should either. Especially to a stranger, especially in the middle of the eulogy. I might have been the bereaved for all they knew.
“Ask them what they think of it and what will they say? Nothing. They’re dead. No feelings to dilute with rituals. We, on the other hand...”
This was definitely a cheek now. The priest was still talking. Heads about me, bowed in black, turned sneezes into sniffles. Where else were so many flowers worn and shown and scattered? Oh yes. Weddings. All in the same bargain basement.
“‘Course they come back, you know. Circle of life. Ever had a house mouse, or a bird that wouldn’t go away?”
The voice didn’t wait for a response. “Most likely be an insect at first. An attentive one, like a ladybird or wasp. Easy to spot cause they don’t quite act right. Watch when you go home. If they meant anything to you, that is. Don’t bother if not.”
Funerals were for the dead. They were about respect and payment. Closure. Life going on. I hoped the clench of my jaw and redness of cheek illustrated that. Told them exactly what it meant.
At the front, the soft-spoken man carried on speaking. He was solemn and articulate, as though the deceased had been a loved one of his own. A close personal friend who he had known so much about, and who had meant so much to him that he had been charged with the outpouring of grief on everyone’s behalf. Perhaps others had been close too, even blood close. But the man in white, you felt, felt his loss the most. You believed, in spite of his steady voice and lack of tears or perhaps because of them, that he was maintaining iron standards of will. This served both as inspiration and example for the knife-edge the rest of us were walking. He might easily collapse into hysteria at any moment, and you could be sure then we would follow. He didn’t though. He kept it all together, and you had to admire that; the way he gestured and said Latin. The way his smile and voice bounced off the walls and windows, like sun-rays that could tan our souls, not just the mortal, sticky-out parts.
“What they do is to ask the family lots of questions. How religious was he? Where did he go to school? Hobbies and best friends and so on. Then they whisk those gossipy eggs into a speechy custard. A Bit like those fortune tellers. They’ve got that way about them too, but it’s smoke and mirrors, just the same.”
I thought of home and the meringues Rita made with stiff peaks from frenzied whisking. She had big arms to do it with. I wouldn’t have been having these thoughts but for the voice. The voice, dwelt upon, carried scorn and simper along its discourse and I’ll tell you something else you might find funny. The voice sounded different each time it spoke. First it was Sid James, then Charles Hawtrey, the fey one, then Kenneth Williams, the posh one. I’ve seen all the Carry On movies several times, but this scared me. How curiously invasive it was. How dismissive of the occasion. Nobody breathed. It went on.
“Listen. It’s because we don’t like endings. Egypt buried its dead in Sarcophagi, writing deeds on stone tablets. Five thousand years later we’re still doing it. Afterlife beats void, no matter the facts. But everything is everything. Nothing is nothing.”
Why are you telling me this? I wanted to hiss. But nobody could hiss in the middle of a service. Nobody except maybe Sid or Kenneth. In spite of the fact that I shouldn’t and didn’t want to, I listened. My head felt like a bag of sand. As if in triumph, the voice became less intimate, tougher.
“Kings they were once. But muffled and weightless when raised to the sun; their eye-holes raw from the sleep of millennia. All that sleep and still godless. Flesh turned to dust; tools clean of soil.”
“Infamy, infamy,” I thought it might say. “They’ve all got it in for me.” But it didn’t. I remembered a poem: ‘Ozymandias’. Supposedly about one of the pharaohs.
“Their riches melted from coffins to coffers, back to the earth’s hollow pockets,” the voice went on, not quoting. “They all went West for glory, and confronted by these facts - these certainties - we follow.”
“Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair,” said the Priest, in that same scoured, hollow, Carry-On wheeze. He was Bernard Bresslaw, and the sweep of his wizard’s sleeve painted cream and gold on our pupils. Out and then back in, filtered through stained glass, vibrant as party jelly.
I tasted the air. We all saw it. Me, the voice, everyone. Beneath the cassock, dark hairs poked through the silk. Bernard was a hairy boy, his chest rising and falling. In a moment, a voice would come out that was surprisingly effeminate. Behind the tapestry, shapes may have been moving.
“Nothing beside remains,” reminded the voice, in a movie-spoiling tone.
“Amen,” the congregation said.
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