Mr Ermey's Funeral Read online

  Like a faulty film projection – or a poorly drawn animation in the corner of a child’s exercise book – a figure flickered in and out of being against the beacon’s stone. The girl watched it slowly change from an outline to a sketchy and jagged silhouette.

  Sound exploded: the soaring crash of a million wings.

  Swallows swarmed around the summit, gathering at the beacon, dancing an insane dance. They collided, fluttered, twisted, vibrated, swooped, and collided again, making a stick figure that first looked around to see where it was, and then looked at its hands as if in disbelief.

  Eventually, the swarm reached its crescendo and all that remained was the constant, hollow breath on stone and grass. The stick figure was gone, replaced by a teenager, dressed in black, colour slowly blooming in his face. He sat, pulled his knees to his chest, and finally noticed the girl sitting against the beacon; she was dressed in a slim black dress with matching shoes.

  The girl followed a tiny pair of headlights as they travelled through the twilight; as they disappeared behind a hill, she finally decided to stow away a question that had been bugging her the last two days. With her newfound company – and the pattern it suggested – she understood that there would be more time for questions later. She got up, walked over to the boy, and spoke to him for the first time in five years:

  “So, was it your idea?”

  Mary sat beside him. Time stretched out.

  “Yes,” Tom said finally. “It seemed better to blame you. It made walking away easier.”

  “Not for me.”

  “No.” He started fiddling with his shoes, and then looked at her, as if slightly puzzled by what he saw. “No, not for you.”

  Somewhere, Mary thought she could hear seagulls.

  “So is this the afterlife?” He took a deep breath and looked at her. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s just that, if this is the afterlife, then I want to apologise to you.”

  A smile fluttered across Mary’s lips, and she bit down on it before it could take hold. She raised her eyebrows.

  “Okay, here goes: I, Thomas Edward Whyte, aged sixteen years old, do humbly apologise to Mary…Mary, what’s your middle name?”

  “Louise.”

  “Mary Louise Townsend. I apologise for the fact that I was the one who implied that you were mainly responsible for our rough handling of young David Hart-”

  “Don’t you want to know David’s middle name?”

  “Why, do you know it?”

  “I do.”

  “Well then?”

  “Harold.”

  “Harold?”

  “I looked into it.”

  Tom shook his head. “Harold. That’s so old fashioned. Do you remember Harold Lloyd? The guy in those black and white movies that was always hanging from window ledges?”

  Mary nodded. “I like the name Harold. One of my favourite Australian soaps has a Harold in it.”

  “Is that Neighbours, or Home And Away?”

  “Neighbours, although I watch both of course. Well, I used to watch them. From what I’ve seen, I’m not so sure I’ll be doing much soap watching anymore.” Mary adjusted her dress. “Anyway, what happened to this so-called apology?”

  “Yes. Sorry.” Tom cleared his throat. “I apologise for the fact that I suggested Mary Louise Townsend was mainly responsible for the old gang’s treatment of David Harold Hartman. That truly is an unfortunate name. Anyway. When in truth…” Tom stretched his legs out on the cool, wet grass, and clenched his hands together. “When in truth we all were. Saucy temptress you may have been, Mary, but ringleader? Never.”

  Mary unconsciously adjusted her posture to match Tom’s.

  “I also do solemnly apologise for coming up with the suggestion that we should evict you from the gang in that most impersonal way. My dear girl, it was cowardly and, as Alex James Turner pointed out long ago, terribly cold of us, and I’m sorry.”

  Mary turned to him. “We were only eleven years old, Tom. Eleven year olds are not the nicest things.”

  “Even so-”

  “Even so nothing. I was never really bothered by that part.”

  “Really?”

  She looked at her hands and thought. “Well, okay, I mean I was upset at first – who wouldn’t be? But I never held it against any of you: the gang was just communicating in its normal way, I knew that.” She leaned against Tom, letting her head rest lightly on his shoulder. “Mr Thomas Edward Whyte, if you’ll remember, our little gang never really discussed anything. And when we finally made a stab at some sort of democratic decision, it was already too late for that. Even Mr Richard Gregory Budden knew that.” She straightened up, suddenly uncomfortable. “And I don’t think it was any coincidence that the last time we all met up was to talk about what happened to poor little unfortunate-in-so-many-ways David. Maybe that was a sign, telling us all to go away and grow up.”

  To Tom’s surprise, Mary laughed. It was a giddy sound, free and light.

  “You blokes all seem to think that you left me – thanks to that, I’ve had five years of my three oldest friends avoiding eye contact. Of them treating me like some guilty little secret. The way I see it, the old gang just fell apart. It was all perfectly natural. But you know what? I think you already know that.” She rubbed a finger against the beacon. “Mr Thomas Edward Whyte, please excuse me for saying this so bluntly, but I think you’re full of it.”

  Slowly, Tom nodded. “Still,” he muttered, “I’m sorry I said David was your fault.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  Tom shut his eyes. After a moment, he folded his arms over his chest and gave a large sigh. He worked at staying still.

  Mary watched him. There was something curious about his posture, something that triggered an associative memory. She searched for it and, just as it seemed to slip from her grasp, it finally came to her. She recalled a classroom wall display of brown paper squares, each one daubed in primary colours, and a tall woman who wore thick, square glasses. Mary started to grin. It was Mrs Broughton’s class at St Lydia’s, her old primary school. She couldn’t remember what year Mrs Broughton taught, but she remembered her teacher’s dark blue suit and her untidy hair, and that seemed enough.

  One day, for some unknown reason, they had been discussing sleeping positions. Mrs Broughton had asked each class member how they slept, encouraging discussion over the most popular responses. Although the details of the discussion were now lost to her, one detail had stuck: when asked over her own preferred sleeping position, their teacher had told the class how she slept on her back with her arms folded across her chest ‘like an angel would’. She mimed the action and suggested that the children copy her, which they did. Several even declared they were going to sleep that way from now on.

  That night, Mary tried the position. She fluffed up her pillow, slipped beneath her duvet, and laid there, eyes tightly shut, arms folded neatly.

  Time passed very slowly.

  She found herself mentally tracing the walls of the classroom in a vain attempt to summon sleep: she located the Maths illustrations and charts at either side of the blackboard; the ‘seasons’ collage underneath the windows; a presentation identifying biodegradable and non-biodegradable litter; photographs for sale from the Ornithological Society, of which Mrs Broughton was an avid member; and the class’s wrapping paper artwork, with its primary splodges. Once she had worked her way back to the Maths illustrations, her fingers had pins and needles, and sleep seemed impossible. So she rolled over, burrowed her head beneath her pillow, drew up her knees, and fell immediately into a noisy slumber.

  She’d never tried Mrs Broughton’s suggestion again, but it crossed her mind every time she had trouble sleeping. Now, as she sat watching Tom go through the same motions she had gone through so many years ago, Mary pondered the real reason for remembering Mrs Broughton’s primary class, and for remembering it so vividly.

  As her teacher’s pe
rverse explanation behind her suggested sleeping position ran through her mind, her heart sank:

  The angelic pose is not only comfortable, Mrs Broughton had informed the class, but it also makes sure you go straight to heaven if you die. You see, by making the sign of the cross, you’re already praying to The Lord for His forgiveness.

  Mary watched Tom trying not to move. His legs were pressed tightly together, and his torso was upright and rigid against the beacon, still struggling to maintain Mrs Broughton’s angelic pose.

  After a while, however, the pose began to melt away: his arms repositioned themselves a little, then his legs, and then his whole body gave up the joke. Seemingly at a loss for a comfortable position, Tom pulled his feet into a full lotus, rubbed his eyes, and yawned. He turned to Mary, startled by her glare. “We are dead, aren’t we?” He said, shaking his head.

  “Last time I looked.”

  He yawned again and stretched. “Then what are we doing up here?”

  She shrugged and shook her head.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “This morning? I got here just before you. I find myself here when the sun rises. God’s romance, I guess.”

  “So you go to sleep and wake up here?”

  “More or less. I don’t think I actually sleep. I’ll be wandering around, doing whatever it is I’m doing, when things just start to…slow down. I’m afraid that’s the only way I can describe it. It’s actually quite nice, a bit like smoking used to be, the way things sort of stretched out. Anyway, then I find myself here, fresh and ready to start another day on Bracton Hill. You’ll find all this out for yourself.”

  Tom stood up and rubbed the small of his back.

  “Where are you going?” Mary said.

  “Home, of course. This is no place to be. Haven’t you been home?”

  “Sure, but it’s not particularly pleasant. My funeral’s on Thursday, and I don’t really want to involve myself in the preparations any more than I have to.”

  “Well, I’m going.”

  Mary got up. The wind blew her long, black hair around her shoulders, its strands dancing in her face. “Here.”

  “What?”

  “Take my hand.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it might be faster. Like Star Trek, or something.”

  A small smile spread across Tom’s face as he slid his palm into hers. Mary gently closed her grip and Angela Welch’s face rose in her mind, as clear as if she was right there with them. At that moment, she wanted to hug her old friend and tell him everything would be okay, but instead she swallowed the burning sensation in her throat and closed her eyes.

  And then they were gone.

  2

  Tom trudged down the steep drive and reflected briefly on his complete lack of surprise at meeting Mary before St Peter. Given that she had been haunting him all week, he guessed it made perfect sense. And even now, although he was only a few feet away from her – she was sitting on the wall, pretending to be interested in his mother’s garden – she was still on his mind, fraying his nerves. He felt a powerful urge to ask her to accompany him on this mini-pilgrimage. Would she come? He suspected not.

  Tom continued to place one unsteady foot in front of the other; as he drew closer to the house, his last actions here – the whiskey borrowing, the note writing – played out in his mind. Did I just lie there? he wondered. After I died, did I simply stay put, waiting for someone to come? Was waiting my first afterlife action? He pictured the scene in his mind: the dark room, the billowing yellow curtains, his neat furniture, everything in its place apart from the mess of pills and bubble strips on the sheets, the empty bottle of Jameson on the floor, and the dead body next to him. It took me a while to notice the body, didn’t it? In fact, I only realised it was a body after David had shown it to me. We’d climbed out onto the ledge, playing one of the old gang’s usual tricks, and then I woke up on Bracton Hill. Only there was a moment in-between, wasn’t there? A glimpse of my room, the curtains, the pills and things, and that strange mass beside me. Someone curled up in the sheets.

  Before he had a chance to wonder if he would have to walk through the back door like a movie ghost, Tom opened it and stepped inside the kitchen.

  Voices in the living room – Tom’s heart sank. Any conversation in the Whyte house meant something was wrong, which probably meant that they’d already found his body. He hesitated at the living room door, listening. A familiar voice spoke:

  “Well then, I guess we’d better go. That’s okay, we’ll let ourselves out.”

  The door opened and he hid behind it as Angela and her mother emerged. Mrs Welch’s hair poked out at odd angles. Tom watched as his clearly exhausted girlfriend surveyed the space between the dining room table and the kitchen unit. She acted as if she had forgotten something. Willing them to stay, he watched them go.

  From the living room came an awful whining and sobbing, desperate and raw – the sound grief makes when it thinks no one else is around to hear it. His parents sounded like trapped animals. Tom put his hand against the connecting door and felt its glossy surface; everything was too real, too ordinary. It was terrible.

  He tugged gently at the door and it gradually revealed the stone clad hearth with the decrepit record player that no one ever used anymore, the neglected collection of LPs, and the oil painting of a cowboy leading his horse back to the stable in some fictional old western town – a painting he had never really liked, but knew by heart. Tom braced himself and stepped through the door.

  They were locked together, sobbing into one another’s shoulders, their eyes squeezed shut.

  Tom waited for the expected emotional outburst to surge up within, for his muscles to go limp and crumble to the floor, for his body to explode into a million pieces, for it to self-combust, or simply dissolve – but none of that happened. What did happen felt strange yet somehow completely natural: he smiled, tiptoed towards the grieving couple, and stood beside them. Then he spread out his arms and leant forwards, pressing his body against theirs. And although the Whyte family stood like that for only a moment, that moment had smaller moments within it, and the spaces between them stretched out for an eternity. And Tom was glad he had come home. He stepped back, took a last look at the walls he had grown up in, and then left his parents to each other.

  *

  He found Mary on the opposite side of the road, sitting on the Robinsons’ wall and tapping her heels. She was singing to herself, but stopped when she saw him. Tom rubbed his eyes, then ran a hand through hair that felt clean and soft for the first time since starting high school. He yawned for the fiftieth time that morning. Had he ever felt so rested?

  “What now?” he said.

  Mary jumped off the wall. “Well I was hoping you might have some ideas about that. You always were good for that sort of thing. Besides, I’ve hardly done anything since Saturday. There doesn’t seem an awful lot to do, except follow people around and stuff.”

  Tom shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I really don’t feel like doing anything.”

  Mary nodded and put her hands in her pockets. In the cool, bright morning, Tom thought she looked pale. He thought of Angela, walking out of the door…then an idea occurred to him. “But I guess we should do something.”

  “We?”

  “Who else?”

  Mary smiled. “What have you got in mind?”

  3

  Nicola Welch brewed strong coffee for herself, and sweet tea for Angie. Her boss at Preamler’s Discount had been fine – pissed off, of course, even she knew the other girls still struggled with stock-taking – but fine all the same. She stirred in the sugar and listened to it grate on the spoon. Finding the silence suddenly unbearable, she flipped a switch on the ancient radio and a twitter of birds filled the air. Minnie Riperton began singing ‘Loving You’. Nicola turned it up, took a breath, and was about to sing along – with a little effort she could just about reach the high note – but then thought better
of it. Her daughter was curled up on her bed, hugging a pillow. They hadn’t talked much; she had just stroked her hair like she used to do when she was a baby and Angie had let her. Nicola turned the radio down a little, then snapped it off completely.

  She poured the coffee and filled a plate with plain chocolate digestives, and then loaded a tray and carried it into the living room, pausing at the foot of the stairs to collect the mail. A padded manila envelope addressed to MISS ANGELA ELIZABETH MARY WELCH lay at the foot of the front door, fanned between an electricity bill and a thin, plastic-wrapped mail order catalogue for a porcelain figurine manufacturer. She scooped these onto the tray and headed upstairs.

  Angela was no longer curled up, and no longer crying. A copy of Cosmopolitan lay open on her crossed legs, and she was toying with a shampoo sample, squishing the liquid up and down the sachet. Apart from the immediate flushed area around her bloodshot eyes, her face was very white. Nicola elbowed the door closed and set the tray down, placing Angela’s tea on the small, yellow bedside unit. She sat at her daughter’s feet and her thoughts dissolved into nothingness – then she remembered the manila envelope. Nicola handed the package to Angela, grateful that she had something useful to do, if not to say. She stared at the wall and took a large draught of hot coffee, completely missing the horror on her daughter’s face.

  Angela stared at the package in her hands.

  Time slowed down.

  Unable to stop herself, she glanced at her mum, and was relieved to see she was looking elsewhere.

  She placed the package on an article debunking the myth that there are physiological reasons why women can’t throw as well as men, and she waited for her mum to put down her cup.

  “I’ll open that later,” she said with a wobbly voice, and closed the magazine on the package. Angela balanced the bundle on the magazine stack at the side of her bed, where it immediately fell off, spilling the manila envelope and shampoo sachet. Angela reached for her tea. “Thanks for this.”