Talitha Brewer: The Outsider

Standing around the grave, the rain dripping of their coats and hats, running down noses, and making trousers and ankles wet and soggy, the mourners looked round at one another.  Each trying hard not to stare but trying to work out how each had known the deceased and why there were so many of them there.  It wasn’t even that the woman they were all there for had been a particularly nice person after all.   Miserable to the end many had said, but were they right?

Away from the crowd underneath the spreading boughs of the yew tree a man in a tweed jacket, deer stalker and dark corduroy trousers observed the mourners standing in the rain.  They really were a bunch of hypocrites he thought, all of them coming out of the woodwork to say goodbye to a woman they hardly knew having taken the word of a perfect stranger that she was in fact dead.  Was she really? Or was it all a ruse just to see who had really cared about her dead or alive?

The gentleman smiled to himself as he saw them all putting up their umbrellas as the rain started coming down even harder.  Some of them looking round to where their cars were parked obviously wondering how much longer this was going to go on for.  Slowly the priest mumbled his way through the comital.  “We can hardly hear what he’s saying” grumbled one of the mourners.  “Nothing worthwhile that’s for certain” another muttered in reply. 

And still the rain came down.  Now everyone was soaked right through, apart from the man standing under the tree who continued to smile to himself un-noticed. 

Eventually the priest fell silent and the pallbearers appeared from the shelter of the church porch and picking up the webbing under the casket lowered it into the hole which by now had a large puddle in the bottom.  “Well she always did like the water” one of the bystanders commented.  “I thought she wanted to be buried at sea like old whatisname” said another. 

As the casket hit the bottom of the hole with a splash an old woman who had been standing at the back of the crowd of mourners moved slowly towards the front.  With the aid of a walking stick, wearing an old coat that had seen better days and had obviously cost a few bob back in the day, wearing on her head a black tam o shanter onto which someone had attached netting to in order to cover her face , she hobbled towards the grave. The mourners stood back as the undertaker handed the old woman a shovel with some of the soil which she poured down onto the coffin which it hit with a resounding thud.

Once done she slowly turned round to face the mourners.  She dropped the stick and stood up right taking the hat off her head as she did so.  The assembled stepped back as one staring at the tall, elderly attractive lady standing in front of them.  “Well I never” she exclaimed.  “Look at you all, I never realised how big the family had got and how many of you are still around”.  She chuckled “amazing what they prospect of inheritance can do to make people come out of the woodwork”.

With that she turned and walked up the bank to the yew tree where the man was still standing.  “Bye for now” she called over her shoulder as they walked away together  “Perhaps between now and when I really do die you might make more of an effort to get to know me better”.