Read Online A Trick I Learned From Dead Men by Kitty Aldridge - Free Book Online Page A

Irene’s gone out for paracetamol.
    Derek’s an expert on pacemakers. He’s done loads, a boxful he’s got. They have made him famous. Derek and the Pacemakers. Someone wrote it on the workshop wall with permanent marker. It stuck. Derek wrote, Ho Ho Ho, underneath with a biro. Reckon he approves.
    Got to know what you’re doing with a pacemaker, removing one is like bomb disposal. It will throw a man across a room. Heavy they are, hold one in your hand you won’t believe it; steel padlocks running thick steel wires, two or four depending. Cut the wires one at a time, cut two and you’ll get a nasty kick. We get several a year, the doctor always mentions when there’s one fitted. He better had, else that’ll be the end of the crem. Kerboom. Derek cuts them out of the left shoulder, wrapped in plastic they are; no blood, just fat, very clean. He keeps them in a box on the workshop shelf. Batteries from all my broken hearts, he once said. That got me thinking. Where they will all go in the end who do know?
    I deliver two teas and a coffee, white with two sugars. On the settee is a man so thin you reckon you’re nodding buenos dias to a grasshopper. Beside him his giant wife has to stretch her legs out either side of the coffee table. I have a technique where I hold the door with my foot while I swing the tray through. Howard insists on the wooden tray even though it’s cumbersome to manoeuvre. He says the flowery tray is too flippant for the Relatives’ Room.
    Excuse the interruption. I always say that. Relatives have the opportunity to take a breather, sit back, think on.
    The wife has our music menu on her knee. Celine Dion and Whitney Houston are still reigning supreme after years at the top of the crematorium charts. Also up there are Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, the Three Tenors and Freddie Mercury. ‘Candle in the Wind’, since Diana died. The Commodores and Barry White for the romantics. Then you’ve got your more traditional ‘Abide With Me’, ‘Amazing Grace’, etc. and your show songs from
Les Misérables, Lion King
and
Pirates of the Caribbean
. The vast majority of dead individuals are over sixty. Our menu goes by genre: Popular, Easy Listening, Classic Rock, Country, Jazz. Most people like a bit of music. You do get the occasional Meat Loaf or Aerosmith.
    While I set out cups and enquire how many sugars, Howard uses the time to fan the catalogues, display examples. The Cloud Visions range, he says, can customise to a T. You name it they can produce it. They did a bespoke golf bag for a gentleman, he says, hand-crafted, with five-irons on the lid and his initials and a specially engraved plate, entirely unique. Cloud Visions are the last word in bespoke coffinry, they can do all sorts. A broad selection is available, all tastes catered for: football teams, horse racing, animal prints, the Lake District.
    There is a photo of the golf bag coffin in the bureau top drawer in case a relative expresses interest. About three out of ten relatives do express interest and Howard jumps to it. No one has, as yet, placed an order but never say never.
    The lack of a decent golf course in the area is the explanation according to Howard. Golfers tend to go to W. D. Brookes Funeral Services at the top of the High Street. This is a pity, Howard says. According to him W. D. Brookes is a rip-off, sheer snobbery, one-upmanship. Adam’s fireplaces and original cornicing turns people’s heads, he says; as in life in death. You get your money’s worth here, he says.
    True, but some would rather have the icing on the cake. It’s a status thing. Most people don’t want to go to Heaven in a bag, even if it is bespoke.
    Howard still dreams of the day we will get a full-blown affair, a proper ten- to fifteen-grander, customised everything, no holds barred. He is waiting for someone to push the boat out. You can’t blame him because this is his be-all and end-all – his first, his last, his everything, as Barry White likes