CONSTANCE AND A FUNERAL

My stories of Constance and the library come to a swift end with this one...

The muted crowd in the ancient stone and stained glass room at the Brumpton Church of Saint Jessie shuffled and eyed the coffin with never a dry eye among them. Few in number, they had all respected the deceased. She had been a stalwart figure in their lives and had delivered wisdom and advice to young and old alike.

Now she was dead. Now was the time for her to be consumed by the cleansing fires of a borough cremation. But first the Man of God must have his words...

FIVE DAYS EARLIER

It’s my sodding birthday, and so what, thought Constance as she drove slowly through the Brumpton streets and back home at the end of a tiring day.

Home was a semi-detached residence in a middling area of the town. The streets were spaced sufficiently to provide the notion of privacy even though nobody could actually claim to live completely private lives.

Constance was about as private as they came. She lived alone to begin with, had always feared living any other way. A man in her life was out of the question, though on one terrifying night she had let the window cleaner share her home because the savage refusal of his wife to let him into theirs had been, she thought, partly her own fault, though she was only teaching him to read and not up to what the wretched woman had guessed she might be up to. And yes, he had shared her double bed, but she had made sure she was covered from top to toe by a fleecy nightie and never looked his way once. And they had slept as good as miles apart. But that was in the past.

Now she was thirty-three and growing older by the minute, and felt it.

That pie she’d had for lunch was stirring within her and made her belch a foully fragranced burp. She was starting to wish she’d never eaten the damned thing.

What is life for if we just get born, live relatively meaninglessly and die at the end of it? That was the thought that had tormented her for some time. I was born, her mind continued, and that was something that should never have happened, I suppose. My mother had experienced a lousy time with my father, and when she found herself pregnant with me she told me she had tried to self-abort me before I had time to breathe and suffer like she had. It would, she said, have been a kindness. Oh, she hated men with a vengeance, and quite a lot of that hatred dribbled into me as I grew up. Now look at me: thirty-three and on my own.

She parked her car next to the caravan that she kept on her small front garden and went into the house.

She lived comfortably, though there are many who would have called her style minimalist. True, she had shelves of books, but they were concealed behind a drape that echoed the simplicity of her furniture in a rather art-deco style.

She hung her jacket in the hallway and sat on her chair, facing a small (for the time) television screen, and sighed. She wasn’t feeling so well. Her stomach … maybe that wretched vegan pie she had munched her way through at lunch was repeating on her, she hadn’t liked it very much but the lady in the baker’s shop had enthusiastically praised everything about it until she had decided to try one.

The doorbell rang.

I’ve barely been in five minutes and someone wants to sell me double-glazing or a service that I wouldn’t dream of having, she muttered angrily to herself, needing as she did the space and silence to recover from a trying day at the public library where she worked " and that pie.

And it had been a trying day. For starters, a group of youngsters with nothing to do but make mischief had hung around until she had threatened them with the police whereupon they had moodily and in an ill-tempered way told her to keep her hair on before spitting their way back onto the street. Then the old charmer Angus McKinley had tried to chat her up in a lewd Scottish accent, making even lewder comments until she had told him to wash his mouth out or she’d do it for him … with carbolic. Then there had been that business of the misdirected post and an angry postman who thought it was her fault that this was the public book lending library and not the adult book store on the High Street where they sold all manner of publications that she knew nothing about but suspected were read by sleazy middle-aged men in raincoats.

And the doorbell rang a second time.

She opened it.

On the doorstep stood a clergyman. Dressed in black with the exception of his clerical collar, which was considerably too wide and probably threatened to cut into his neck, a balding head with a cyst on top, and wire-framed spectacles that gave the impression that the lenses had been provided courtesy of the bottom of a glass bottle, he smiled warmly at her.

She didn’t smile back.

“Miss Bingley?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Miss Constance Bingley?”

She nodded again.

“I thought I might introduce myself,” he said warmly, “especially as today because I do know that today is your birthday, so many happy returns of the day! I am the new vicar at Saint Jessie’s, the beautiful old church that serves this area, and I note that you are due to attend a service with us in a few days time...”

What on Earth does he mean? she thought angrily, and a bubble of something unpleasant rose up from the depths of her and soured her mouth, burning her throat as it did.

“I don’t have anything to do with churches,” she told him, swallowing whatever the vileness was and flinching as the acidic flavour burned its way back down. “I lost my faith in any god the day I was born,” she added, trying to be sufficiently firm that he would go away and leave her alone without her having to tell him to.

“That is so sad,” he murmured, “allow me to introduce myself anyway. I am the Reverend Barley Brownadder, and brand new to this parish...”

Barley Brownadder… what had the old woman yesterday, the one in the wheelchair who had tormented her with her own life story and who had called herself Constance Brownadder, said her husband was called… it had been an unusual name … surely it had been Barley, Barley Brownadder?

“An old woman...” she stammered, more bile threatening to rise from the pits of her being and engulf her with its toxicity. “yesterday …”

“Ah, so you met my good lady,” he smiled, “she said you had. She was pleased to tell me all about it. So sweet of her, really, to offer me as your guide...”

His good lady? She’d been ninety if she’d been a day...

“I feel...” maybe he’d go away if she explained how sick she felt. “awful,” she said.

And vomited.

He leapt back as the contents of her stomach, the strange pie and everything else she had consumed, cups of this or that for the afternoon break, spilled from her as if propelled by a force from Hell.

“So you really do need me,” he smiled, “I can see now … you need a guide and I will be that man...”

But she didn’t hear the last few words as they faded in her ears and her brain and became the silence only really enjoyed by the dead…

FIVE DAYS LATER

The Reverend Brownadder stood smiling at the congregation and they, to a man and a woman, smiled back.

“She was the best of souls,” he pronounced, “dear Constance, our light through the world of knowledge, and it is with true joy and happiness that I am guiding her to the light beyond the world of sight…

“Though, sadly, she didn’t do her proper job, the one we all must toil at.

“She died childless...”

And the congregation started wailing and gnashing their teeth and shivering and shaking with rage. Of all the things! The woman had been useless, pointless, a waste of good earthly breath.

The Reverend Brownadder stood smiling benevolently as the congregation flung wild curses in the direction of the deceased

And me a mother of ten, howled one old dear.

“Oh do be quiet,” said Constance irritably from within her box. “Anyone would think it was all about you lot!”

© Peter Rogerson 19.01.18

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A wonderful ending to this story. You create interesting situation and the ending. True to life. I liked the story line and honest tone. Thank you Peter for sharing the amazing chapter.
Coyote

[Peter Rogerson]

Thanks for the review, but ending? I'm too fond of the librarian for that just yet, even though she only lives in my head.

[Coyote Poetry]

You did well. All the characters are interesting. Their conversations keep my attention. You are welcome Peter.