The Distant Dead, Lesley Thomson [simple e reader .TXT] 📗

an auctioneer’s office on the High Street, then a couple of domestic visits, before ending with deep-cleaning a probate house for sale that was opposite the secondary school.

This last, a favourite activity, raised Stella’s spirits and, having resolved not to return to the Death Café – last night had been worse than her worst fears – Stella changed her mind. The session had hardly started so she hadn’t yet kept her promise to try out a Death Café. Remembering Joy was allergic to dogs, and in case there was cake, Stella went without Stanley.

The clock struck five fifty-five. She sheltered from the rain beneath the vast flying buttress on the abbey’s south wall. Pale light from the tearoom tinged the grass. Through steamed up windows Stella could see several figures and felt mild relief; not just her then.

It was like a repeat of the night before. Again, Stella hesitated outside the door and was startled as it was flung open. Although the man who ushered her in was not Clive.

‘Twice in two days, we can’t go on meeting like this, Beverly.’ Collar of his combat jacket up, Roddy March flicked back tumbling locks of ebullient blond locks and, raising an Abbey Gardens mug to Stella, tossed the rest of a piece of cake into his mouth. ‘Thank God you’re here, these others are dodo dead.’

It was the man from the tomb of the starved monk. The man in the beanie to whom she had said that her name was Beverly.

‘Have you come about cadaver tombs?’ In confusion, Stella said the first thing that came into her head.

‘You remembered.’ March looked pleased as he shut the tearoom door. ‘That’s what I told that Felicity, she was already antsy that I’ve started on the nosh.’ He gestured to the table where Stella saw a coffee and walnut cake, a large chunk missing, had been placed on the stand. Irrelevantly, she wondered what had happened to the rest of the sponge from the previous night. ‘And for God’s sake don’t ask for biscuits, Clive said he was in the dog house last night.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Stella snapped. Although, seeing the cake, she realized that she was.

‘Is March your friend?’ Felicity asked when Stella went to fetch her coffee.

‘No. I don’t know him.’ While this was strictly true, Stella felt she had lied.

‘He’s a gatecrasher, come for the free cake.’ Felicity looked furious. ‘I had to say he could stay.’

‘That was nice of you,’ Stella said for something to say. She wondered why anyone would gatecrash a Death Café for any reason. Roddy March had sat next to what last night was her chair. She would move.

But when she brought her coffee to the table, Stella found that Gladys had saved the seat for her. Irritated to have March beside her, Stella was nevertheless touched that Gladys had done so. Everyone had placed themselves in the same chairs as the night before. Joy was opposite Stella with Clive to her left, on his left was Andrea then Gladys, Stella, Roddy and finally Felicity.

‘I never said what I hate yesterday.’ Joy had swapped her tunic for a thick knitted cardigan which, Stella saw, depicted more deer and rabbits.

‘I never actually asked you to—’ said Felicity.

‘What do I hate? Well,’ Joy held up a fragment of walnut, ‘I utterly loathe that ghastly euphemism for death, “passed on”. As if life is a conveyor belt. We do not “pass on”, we die.’ A hunter swooping on its prey, Joy snatched up a morsel of cake and popped it in her mouth.

‘Joy, who encouraged you to feel this hate?’ Roddy was smoothing out a new page in a notebook.

‘We are avoiding the personal, please stick to death,’ Felicity cautioned him. ‘Joy, your point about euphemisms for mortality is cogent. We’re here tonight to stare death in the face.’

‘Are we?’ Gladys gave a nervous laugh. ‘I’m not dressed for that.’

‘Waves roll in and level the sand until there’s nothing to show you were ever there.’ Clive tapped his fob watch pocket. Stella saw he was wearing the same tie as last night. The same shirt too. ‘We kill time, we waste time and we fill in time. Beware, we cannot defy time.’

‘Nice.’ Roddy March wrote it down. Felicity’s expression darkened. Stella supposed taking notes was discouraged.

‘It was my turn when our host received a text from an admirer who couldn’t wait.’ Clive sucked in his cheeks. Stella felt for Felicity – yet again the evening was slipping from her grasp.

‘It wasn’t a… Oh never mind, go ahead. Introduce yourself.’ Felicity pulled out her Death Café crib sheet from a leather doctor’s bag.

‘I am an horologist.’ Clive rolled the r. ‘Should you suppose I can read your stars, don’t. I can’t tell me Virgo from me Piss-cees. My vocation is to serve Old Father Time. I construct clocks, watches, automatons, those that tell the time and those with no face, the pendulum swings, but we are none the wiser. The secret keepers of time.’ He was flicking a brown plastic thing along his fingers, back and forth. ‘For me, as the big hand approaches eighty-two, time ain’t on me side. However, time is a construct, hours and minutes are the petty invention of man.’ He produced his fob watch from its pocket in his waistcoat and, tapping the face as if, like a barometer, this would tell him, said, ‘I will live for ever.’

Everyone laughed except Stella who suspected Clive wasn’t joking, and Joy who hadn’t yet smiled.

‘Secret keeper of time, love it.’ Roddy March was writing.

‘Children are our legacy, new life to replace old.’ Felicity was back on script.

‘Not if you don’t have kids,’ Andrea said.

‘“Flesh perishes, I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon”,’ Clive intoned, then, in his ordinary voice, ‘Never married. My family face dies with me.’

From where she sat, Stella noticed his fob watch was an hour slow. It was a month since the clocks had gone back; in his business