THE BEREAVEMENT GAME

A weird little tale of the intentions a mother leaves to her twin offspring as she is dying

THE BEREAVEMENT GAME

The light at the end of the tunnel grew brighter by the second, and mere moments later the story would end. Finally. Like it always should have when Gwen departed from us in that hospital ward. She hadn’t left us with anything but a puzzle to be solved.

It was all too simple, really.

Gwen had been our mother for a long and fatherless childhood. It was a long time ago when he died, maybe fifteen years ago, when Sally and I were twelve. We were twins and devoted to each other because really we only had each other to depend on. We loved Gwen, of course we did, but love is no good when the object of that love is never around. But then, we had always been encouraged to use her Christian name, so we usually did. She wasn’t perfect, but she was all we had, and mum was Gwen.

They flipped a switch or pulled a plug or something like that in the hospital ward. They’d told us, of course, and asked what we thought. I was quietly in tears because even though our life had never been anything like normal she had been there. Not exactly a rod and staff, but a presence. Me in tears, and I was the boy.

Sally was the strong one. She could listen without glazing over and nod her head without flinching. My lovely, wonderful sister had taken the entire burden onto her own shoulders and turned to me and my tears and spoken quietly,

“It’s for the best, Danny.” And I had nodded. Of course it was for the best! In my mind Gwen had been dead for weeks, ever since that stroke had stolen the spirit from her, taken away her identity, left her, it seemed, like one of the walking dead.

So Sally went into the ward with a doctor and watched as the life support machine was switched off. I was too cowardly, I’m afraid, and anyway they only wanted one of us there.

Afterwards Sally and I went to Jinks and Jinks (solicitors) because we knew that mum had left instructions for us with Mr Jinks Junior. Kt turned out thatMr Jinks Senior was dead but it was with him she had discussed the future after her death. Just like her, of course, always needing to be in control even when she wasn’t around to see the results.

“She wants to be sent into the hereafter at Brumpton Crematorium,” he explained when we were sitting in front of his huge mahogany desk with its pristine white blotter, unmarked, ibefore him.

“We knew that,” I fought myself to say, “she always said the idea of spending eternity six feet down wasn’t her idea of Heaven.”

Mr Jinks (Junior) nodded. “Good,” he said, “and the ashes, the last remnants of her flesh, she has a plan for that, too.

“I didn’t know that,” I muttered,

“Neither did I,” Sally supported me. “We thought the back garden. She loved that garden, where she grew her herbs in a raised bed,” she added.

Mr Jinks (Junior) shook his head. “That isn’t her plan,” he said quietly, “and her plan is quite detailed. She liked everything to be organised.”

“I rather supposed she did,” I said, and Sally nodded, “she always had her own ideas about things,” she said.

“Gwen was a one off,” I concluded.

Mr Jinks (junior) coughed awkwardly. “What do you know about your father?” he asked.

Neither of us was expecting that question.

“He’s dead,” said Sally, “has been for an age, or that’s what it seems.”

“Yes,” he nodded, “but where is he?”

That question annoyed me. I have never had any religious faith so such concepts as the afterlife or Heaven or Hell meant little to me.

“In the ground I suppose,” I said, maybe a little sharply because Mr Jinks looked shocked.

“We were young,” explained Sally.

“Of course,” murmured the solicitor, “I understand. Then I’d better tell you.” he looked self-consciously at a sheet of paper that he slid onto his pristine white blotter.

“Your mother had him cremated, so he was never buried, and then she had his ashes scattered at the place where they met in the first place. I guess it was a romantic thing for her to do and I do know that it’s something quite a lot of grieving partners do when one of them passes away.”

“I see,” I muttered.“So where did they meet?” asked Sally, “I mean, we weren’t there and she never told us.”

“I can’t tell you, exactly,” he said uncomfortably.

“Then how can we follow her instruction?” I asked, confused, because if he didn’t know then how could anyone know.

“She has a tattoo,” he suggested, “she explained that she had a tattoo, and that will tell you.”

“I didn’t know she had one of those!” I protested, “she always said she hated the idea of tattoos!”

“She said that when a tattooed person grew old the tattoo itself would get to be even older,” smiled Sally, “but I know where it was.”

“Or is?” I asked.

She nodded. “Or is. It’s on,” she seemed to shrink as she tried to find the right words to describe something she found uncomfortable even thinking of, “on her left… buttock.”

“She did?” I was shocked. Gwen had always been such a proper person, so decent about her body, and imagining her, in life, going to a tattooist and revealing her backside to him and being tattooed like that, well, it threw me.

“How does it help, though?” asked Sally.

“Apparently it tells you where she met her late husband,” Mr Jinks (junior) was clearly just as embarrassed as I was.

“I saw it once,” murmured Sally, “I think it was a picture, but I can’t remember what it was.”

“May I suggest that, if you wish to follow your mother’s wishes to the letter, you pop down to the undertaker’s and see if they can help?” suggested Mr Jinks, so obviously out of his depth that I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

“You mean, look at her dead bottom?” I asked, scared of the reply and what it would mean I should do. I mean, my own mother! Even knowing she had a tattoo on her derrière scared me, but the whole idea of asking a stranger if I could take a peep went too much against the grain that there’s no way I could see me doing it.

“If that’s the only way,” he said. “And if I may add, she has quite a considerable sum to leave you, but only if you follow her instructions regarding the ashes of her body.”

“What do you mean, a considerable sum?” asked Sally, “all our lives she never seemed to have two pennies to rub together!”

I had to agree with that when I remembered the struggle she had finding money for school visits and the like.

“She never touched what she inherited from your father,” Mr Jinks told us, “that’s what she told me on one of her visits here, and that was quite a lot of money, and it has grown with interest since his death. If you, and I insist I promised I would ensure you disposed of her ashes as per her instructions, do as she intended you to do then you will both be reasonably well off. If you don’t, then the local retreat for alcoholic widows will benefit by the entire amount.”

“What? She didn’t even drink!” I gasped.

“Except for a small sherry at Christmas,” added Sally.

“Nevertheless, that was her instruction, and I always do my utmost to follow the instructions of those who are no longer around to check,” murmured Mr Jinks apologetically.

Sally and Danny left the Jinks office and made their way to the undertaker’s establishment.

Sally knew that Danny was uncomfortable when it came to the dead flesh of his mother. She rather suspected that he’d be just as awkward no matter whose dead flesh he was looking at. He might have been a man, but he had a genuine sentimentality when it came to death, so he was very relieved when she told him she’d go into the chapel where Gwen lay and check on the tattoo if they’d let her.

“Okay. Thanks,” he said, awkwardly, “I owe you big time, sis.”.

When she returned to him it was plain that she was confused.

“I saw it,” she said, “and it was a tree and the word here.”

“Oh,” he mumbled, then “what sort of tree?”

“It looked like an oak tree with a crown on it as if it was a king. The king of trees, I suppose, the’s what the oak is.” she replied thoughtfully.

“That’s it,”

“There’s a pub called the Royal Oak on the land known as Brumpton Bottoms near Swanspottle Road,” she added. “The tattoo was on her bottom. And the tattoo said here.” mused Sally, that must be it, surely. A double clue leading to a specific place.”

Danny frowned and thought about it, quite deeply. He wasn’t happy. It seemed to be too simple for the kind of thing he knew his mother would do. She’d always been into puzzles and making even simple things ridiculously obscure. She’d been one for avoiding the obvious when it came to being obscure.

“Was there nothing else on the tattoo?” he asked, beginning to wish he’d braved his fears and gone to see it with her.

“No. Just a sky with what were probably meant to be little birds flying in it, and a stream running by,” she replied.

“And a stream,” he whispered, “the River Grentle Runs next to the Royal Oak, cutting across the Bottoms… Now that you mention the stream on the tattoo it all fits. And I’ve got at the back of my mind that mum and dad did their courting in the garden of a pub. That must be it: the Royal Oak which is near a river!”

“We could always take a look,” she whispered, “come on, bro, we’ve got time now!”

Nothing in this story is very far from anything else, and after a short bus ride they were in the car park of the Royal Oak. The only problem was it had been a pub, a popular one, but all sorts of economic pressures had caused it to close down. The windows were boarded up and the gardens where the twins’ parents had one their courting was now an overgrown wasteland with a small stream running through it, mostly fighting against mud and litter as it struggled to find the nearby river.

“Look!” exclaimed Sally, pointing at what looked like a place where the stream, insignificant as it seemed to be, disappeared under a pathway, to reappear the other side of the road and cascade messily into the river Grentle.

“Let me see,” urged Danny, and knelt down to look.

After a while he sighed, “that’s clever… just like mum…” and he pushed one arm as far into the tunnel as it would go before withdrawing it, holding what looked like an old and worn cash box.

It was locked, but opened easily when he poked at the lock with a conveniently placed metal dining fork, probably a remnant of the days when the pub sold a range of hot meals.

And inside the box was a pair of clear plastic bags, still intact and labelled, and inside them could clearly be seen two knots of human hair. But more: there was also a sealed glass jar that contained what looked like soiled sand.

“This is Gwen’s doing,” almost wept Sally, “our precious mother and I don’t need to make out the name on the labels to know who they are.”

Danny picked one of them up and frowned. “I though this hair would be mum and dad’s, but it isn’t,” he said sadly, “this one’s hard to make out, but I’m pretty sure it says SALLY. Look: in capitals.”

Sally had picked the other little bag of hair up and afger staring at it for an age she modded. “And this says DANIEL. Not Danny, but DANIEL.”

“My proper name,” nodded Danny, “so the conundrum is solved. This box is for you and me, for us, and the jar, that must be all that’s left of our dad. We’ll scatter them together, the ashes in the jar and mum’s when we get them, and that will mean that winds might blow them here and there and everywhere, but they’ll still be together. Come on, sis, let’s take it to that Jinks fellow and he’ll tell us the rest of the story, if he knows it, and I’ll bet he does. He probably even has it written down in mum’s own hand!”

Sally nodded. “I’m glad we’re together, bro,” she said, and self-consciously kissed him lightly on the cheek.

© Peter Rogerson 24.04.23

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Reviews

[DIVYA]

Quite like a treasure hunt there. I liked the way you sketched Gwen's character. She had a touch of mystique and a very controlling mind of her own. People have their eccentricities and she had hers and they quite endeared themselves to this reader! I also liked the affection the twins had for their strange mother who wasn't so much there for them and lastly but the best, Gwen's intricate and complicated last wishes that showed how much she loved her man. Another beautiful story. Kudos!

[Peter Rogerson]

You've made me want to write a back story for Gwen,, and I may do just that one of these days.

[DIVYA]

Will certainly look forward to reading it!