Chapter 1

As I stand looking out of the kitchen window a grey haired man emerges from the chapel next door pushing an antiquated black trolley with a coffin perched on top.    The trolley moves reluctantly across the bumpy stone surface as the man thrusts it towards the pavement seemingly intent on going in another direction.   Wearing a black suit and top hat the man looks like something out of a film.   Perhaps he’s an actor.   I glance up and down the road.

The man jostles the trolley onto the pavement and turns his head back towards the chapel as a line of darkly clad mourners materialises in his wake.    Nodding to them to follow he trudges off along the pavement past my house heading in the direction of the church.   Maybe it’s real after all.   There’s no sign of a film crew.   

I dart to follow his trundling progress past the line of windows fronting the house, the coffin so close I could reach out and touch it.   The elderly pall bearer bends forward as he pushes his
load with the funeral procession filing past the windows behind him and I wonder fleetingly what will happen if the coffin falls off.   Will the body roll out or is the lid fixed down in some way?   I have images of a white shrouded body toppling into the road, the black suited man looking suitably aghast.   What a bizarre burial custom.

The recalcitrant trolley and trail of mourners disappear from view at the end of the house only to reappear again several moments later as they cross the road, the traffic drawn to a halt.   The procession reaches the other side and moves slowly up the lane to the church and then is abruptly gone from sight.

As the afternoon lengthens Barnie my Labrador cross sidles up to me and I realise it’s time for his afternoon walk.   Taking up his lead I fasten his collar and put on anorak and boots and making my way out of the house I cross the road, drawn to the burial scene.

Hesitantly I approach the group of mourners gathered at the graveside at the far end of the churchyard, Barnie a pale shadow at my side.   Standing in the background I watch whilst each of the figures silhouetted in the darkening afternoon takes a handful of earth in turn and throws it gently on top of the coffin, the stony earth making a sharp clattering sound as it lands on the shiny wood.

The cameo seems etched in time as I draw back into the long grass.   And then as the darkness wraps itself around them the mourners move silently round the grave peering down at the coffin and murmuring softly to one another.   The procession moves slowly away, back round the side of the church towards the lane and I notice a small boy clutching a cuddly toy to his chest as he struggles to keep up with his mother.  

Am I imagining it or is there someone over behind the chestnut trees, I sense someone watching me.   Turning I catch a glimpse of a shadowy figure in the clump of trees, is it a lingering mourner I wonder?  The figure moves behind the trees and is gone.