40. A POP SONG AT A FUNERAL

Preparations are being made for Cardew's funeral on top of disclosures about his affairs

“Thanks for coming, darling,” whispered Ursula to Primrose who had taken a day off work at the Academy to help her sort through the tangled mess that was Cardew’s affairs, and was sipping a cup of coffee whilst sifting through a pile of documents. They were at the small home in which Ursula had grown up and to which she had returned to call home again.

“Of course I’d come,” replied Primrose, smiling, “but I never guessed there would be so many cud-de-sacs in his affairs! And that series of books he used with the kids to generate interest in astronomy, they were good and popular with most of the boys, but they were self-published and he still owes a fortune to the printer!”

“I thought they were published in the regular way, with the author getting royalties for every copy sold,” sighed Ursula. “But it seems he tried, they got rejected and he took things into his own hands. Just like Cardew.”

“There doesn’t appear to have been much that was normal about your Cardew and his affairs. The positive side is the books are still selling and may well pay for themselves eventually,” suggested Primrose, “but to help them maybe we should do a bit of publicity? Try to get public libraries interested? Place them in book shops? He doesn’t seem to have done anything like that.”

“I suppose I’ll have to bend my mind in that direction,” sighed Ursula, “I didn’t want him to die but now that he’s gone I never dreamed I’d have so many headaches.”

“Even some of his qualifications were faked,” muttered Primrose, “but he did his job well, everyone said what a great Head he was and how his leadership was a force for good. I can’t help wondering how he got away with it, though.”

“I suppose it was a matter of things not being properly checked,” groaned Ursula. “I know he was a good man and that his intentions were the best. But somehow he wasn’t so good at the paperwork.”

“He was brilliant at faking some of the paperwork though,” said Primrose lightly. “Come on, mum it’s not the end of the world. You stay here and I’ll go back to the office and see what I can do there.”

“The vicar’s coming soon,” Ursula told her, “he wants to discuss details of the funeral and stuff like that.”

“Will you need me here, mum?”

Ursula shook her head. “No, darling, it’d be best if you bury the lies that need burying and I’ll see about what hymns we shall sing when we bury the man. All this has fair put me off men for good! But he was good in bed...”

“Mother!”

“Well he was, Primrose. Really good, and that wasn’t faked.”

“But mother!”

“A man dies and we’re allowed to point out his failings, his little indiscretions, his frailties, but when it comes to saying what he excelled at our daughters are shocked...”

“I’d best be off, mother, before you open more windows into your private life!”

“There are so few,” sighed Ursula, “windows to open, I mean...”

“Right. I’ll see what I can sort out. You bear up ... and don’t mention your sex life to the vicar!”

Left alone, Ursula washed the coffee cups and sat down.

Cardew’s affairs were in a pickle and he owed money left, right and centre, mostly small sums, true, but the unpaid printer’s account shocked her. Then there was the matter of his qualifications. Some of them were patently invented, yet the panel at the Academy that had selected him had either failed to notice or ignored their falsehood. Maybe they had judged him by reputation rather than invented University triumphs.

The door bell rang, and she sighed to herself.

The last thing she wanted to do was plan her husband’s funeral and yet that’s what she had to do.

The Reverend Jude Pernicle looked as sprightly as he’d looked days earlier, and his beard was every bit as mischievous.

“Come in,” she invited, “and would you like a coffee?”

“Or something spiritual,” he grinned pointing his Vandyke beard at an opened whiskey bottle perched in plain sight on a trolley in one corner of the room.

“Really?” she asked, pouring him a generous measure in a glass. The whiskey was years old and had belonged to her father Bert, who had taken the odd tot after work.

“Ah, tonic of the gods,” he sighed as he took a sip. “I have a weakness,” he confessed, “it helps compensate for the lonely life a single man needs must live.”

“You’re allowed to marry if you want to,” Ursula reminded him, for he didn’t represent any cult that considered female interference in a man’s life to be unheavenly.

“Oh, I know that,” he agreed, “but women willing to take on a middle-aged cleric are few and far between, and when I was a young man with virile limbs and a great deal of misplaced belief I spent my time in biblical study rather than secular pleasures. So I’m a lonely single old man enjoying a glass or two in the evening for my sins!”

“You can’t be a day older than me, and I’m not old,” said Ursula, smiling. She hadn’t done much smiling lately and it made her feel just a little bit better.

“So to the sad passing of dear Mr Pinkerton,” began the vicar.

“Neither of us had any faith,” Ursula said, almost defensively, “my parents were very religious, went to church just about every week when they could, though my mother was virtually a cripple towards the end. But I’ve lost any belief I ever had. As far as I’m concerned all gods are the creations of man and not the other way round.”

“Oh, I agree!” nodded the vicar, “since time immemorial clever men, and it has been almost always men, have claimed a special relationship with an invisible deity, and that gave them, in primitive times, a way out of the daily chore of work and drudgery! They philosophised in return for rations! Look at the Pope … when did he last go down a coal mine? I suppose I’m in that same brigade, but I do take my job seriously when it comes to the more caring side of my vocation. So I sit blessing the dying until they’re dead, sometimes for hours, give endless advice to those about to wed, advice based on absolutely no personal experience but a great deal of observation, and welcome babies into a faith I find it hard to believe in! And what have I given in return for that freedom from real honest toil? I sleep in a lonely bed, enjoy a glass of two of whiskey in the evening and let the natural instincts for reproduction pass me by!”

“And you’re going to bury my Jude?” asked Ursula.

“Of course I am! It’s my job, what they pay me for, that and giving voice to prayers that are as meaningless as the lives of saints and the shadows cast by the setting sun!”

“He would have liked that,” sighed Ursula, “it would have tickled him.”

“So let’s tickle him again,” urged the vicar, inscribing an impossible shape in the air with his beard, “let’s fill the air with joyous song and to hell with what it means!”

It seems that’s Cardew all over, thought Ursula, and “can we sing All things bright and beautiful?” she asked, “because that’s how he saw the world … as bright and beautiful?”

“And finish with Bohemian Rhapsody as people make their sorrowful ways out into the fresh air?” suggested Jude, “it’s enigmatic, but I bet he loved it...”

I don’t know whether he did or not… how little I really knew about him, except how good he was in bed…

“I’d like that,” murmured Ursula, “I heard Kenny Everett play it the other day on the radio, and it cheered me up even though you’d not exactly call it cheerful, and now I can’t shake it from my head...”

© Peter Rogerson 19.08.18

Author's Note

Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was released in 1975 so would have been well known by the autumn of 1976 when this episode is set, and it was famously played many times by the late Kenny Everett on his radio programme.