Here Lies Gloria Mundy

‘Rest in peace. Wotton doesn’t think so. She is to be dealt with tonight. She threatened to haunt him. We can’t allow that.’

‘Surely you don’t believe that sort of rubbish?’ I said.

‘I don’t altogether disbelieve it. Anyway, I have everything ready, but we need your help.’

‘To do what?’

‘Well, never mind that now. We’ll discuss it when the others turn up.’

‘Others? But they are here, Anthony and the rest.’

‘Anthony is bringing a young, tough chap named William Underedge. You and I met him at Beeches Lawn on the day the storm set in. There really ought to be six of us, but the fewer who know of this business the better. What shall we carve on the headstone?’

‘You are at your old game of collecting epitaphs, then. Not in the best of taste on the present occasion, I would have thought,’ I said with grave disapproval.

He took no notice. He took me along to his dining-room. There was food laid out and wine on the table.

‘I’ve given the servants the evening off,’ he said. Then he added, ‘I’m serious, Corin, and your guess is perfectly correct. Don’t you know some rhyme or other about six pall-bearers? Sit down and let’s tuck in. We shall need our strength for this night’s work.’

‘Aren’t we going to wait for the others?’

‘No. They will have something on the road. Spout away.’

I told him that I thought I could oblige him with a couple of verses. I recited,

‘ “Tell me, thou bonny bird,

When shall I marry me?

When six braw gentlemen

Kirkward shall carry ye.” ’

He had brought a notebook to the table, but he did not use it. He wrote the lines on the table-cloth which I now realised had been Gloria’s winding-sheet.

‘Any more?’ he asked. ‘You said a couple.’

‘The only other one I can think of concerns a man. It won’t do for Gloria.’

‘Perhaps it will do for me myself later on.’

‘Hardie,’ I said, ‘did you really love that girl?’

‘Difficult to remember. I suppose I must have done. But come! Your epitaph, for your question needs some excuse.’

‘A very nice derangement of Shakespeare! All right, but I shall alter it a bit from the original. It’s really a cowboy song, but, as you are a Scot, here goes:

‘ “Find six lusty clansmen to carry me kirkward,

And six sonsie lassies to greet on my pall,

And on my black coffin strew handfuls of heather

To deaden the sound of the sods as they fall.” ’

‘I wish there could have been six of us,’ said McMaster, ‘but she is only a lightweight, so perhaps we can manage.’

‘There are six of us,’ I said, and there we all were.

Anthony said to McMaster, ‘Is everything ready?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I cut and sharpened the stake of holly this morning and there is a box. It will be lighter to carry than the coffin. Besides, we mustn’t risk damaging that. The other funeral is to be tomorrow and everything must be in order, because you are a churchwarden.’

Then we were back in the hearse. I had no idea where we were going. Anthony and Hardie had carried out a long narrow box with a fitted lid and I knew it had come from the room which had been a chapel. The box was put on to the back seat of Anthony’s car. William Underedge squatted on the floor to keep the box from sliding off the seat and Hardie and I took the lead in the hearse with Coberley and the gardener sitting on the empty coffin.

It was when we got to Cirencester, with its unmistakable church porch, that I began to have some idea of what our destination was to be. As we headed for Cheltenham, Hardie said, ‘Belas Knap is what we want. You’ll have to guide me. In fact, you’d better drive.’

‘Pull up,’ said William Underedge, who suddenly appeared beside me. ‘I want to change places. For one thing I’m stiff and cramped and for another I expect I know the route better than you do in the dark.’ So they changed over and for the last few miles of the drive William and I were in charge of all that remained of Gloria Mundy, for she was in the coffin again.

Our progress was slower once we were on the byroads, but the journey was finished at last. We waited for Anthony to pull in behind us and then he and McMaster lifted, not the coffin, after all, but the long box, out of Anthony’s car and we began the steep climb up the shoulder of Cleeve Cloud. The moon had risen and the cold night was clear.

Anthony and Hardie carried the box, occasionally relieved by William and myself. Coberley and the gardener followed behind with spade and pickaxe. We slipped and stumbled. I thought of the cowpats and hoped I would not measure my length among them. Hardie swore now and then, but Anthony and William plodded on. I thought of some caving I had done in Derbyshire, and of how I was once lost in the Sahara. I have explored caverns in the Carpathians and I have visited the Callanish stones at midnight on Midsummer Eve, but I have never made so extraordinary a journey as on the long and difficult ascent of Cleeve Cloud in my dream. For every step we took upwards we seemed to slip back two.