One week later, I had the joy of attending Frisky Pensioner’s funeral. I had no intention of going until the Farrier asked me if I would accompany him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to pay my respects to a man who on many occasions tried to snog the face off me and who had stalked me for the best part of a year. On the other hand, seeing him buried deep in the ground with no chance of escape might help me to sleep better at night. The Farrier’s mother (Frisky Pensioner’s wife) had disappeared off the face of the earth, allegedly having taken a leaf out of Shirley Valentine’s book, to sun herself on a foreign beach somewhere, and had no idea that her randy husband was about to be entombed six feet under.
I agreed to go, not for my own sake but for that of the Farrier. We were becoming friends and the day ahead would no doubt be difficult for him. It was the end of an era. His wife, his father and his mother had all disappeared out of his life and he didn’t seem to have any other family or friends he could rely on. To be honest, I didn’t have any other commitments that day, Matilda and Daisy were at preschool and I wasn’t working. My part-time job that I’d started last year when I first arrived in the village, had unexpectedly ceased due to lack of funding in their budget.
Penelope was becoming a limpet again. Having initially been dumped for the wonderful Camilla Noland, now she’d done a runner, I had unfortunately, been promoted back to the top spot as Penelope’s number one best friend. The morning of the funeral I left the school playground very quickly, and rushed back home to grab a quick shower. The Farrier updated me with the funeral timing by text. The hearse would be leaving the house a little after ten, to start the procession.
I was all dressed and ready for the funeral with thirty minutes to spare when there was a knock on the door. I was hoping it would be the postman with my parcels that had gone astray during the Christmas period, but no such luck. I was amazed to find Penelope standing there, well not technically standing there; she was skipping. I don’t mean she was skipping from leg to leg like a child skips; she was actually throwing a rope over her head and counting. I had that horrible sinking feeling that I was about to be roped into another mad keep fit challenge just like last year when she had manoeuvred me into climbing a mountain with her. Penelope must be Tesco’s dream shopper at this time of year. In her matching shorts, T-shirt, and a white towelling head-band, she looked just like John McEnroe.
Watching her bounce up and down in front of me, I began to feel dizzy. It was worse than the motion sickness I had experienced on a ferry ride a couple of years ago when I thought I might take out shares in Joy-rider tables.
‘What are you doing Penelope?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? We are in training again.’
I was sure I had heard the word ‘we’. I stared at her; after last year’s mountain climb there was no way I would be talked into any madder, ridiculous ideas. I didn’t have time to argue with her.
‘Why are you dressed in black? You look like you are about to attend a funeral,’ she continued.
‘I am. I’m accompanying the Farrier to his father’s funeral in ten minutes,’ I replied, not amused.
‘Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me?’ She stopped skipping.
‘Don’t leave without me, I’ll run home and change quickly.’ And with that, she was gone, bounding up the path in freezing cold conditions in Tesco’s bargain flannel fitness shorts.
I hadn’t engaged in any sort of conversation with Penelope regarding Frisky Pensioner’s funeral. There was no need, they hadn’t been friends and I had no idea why she would even want to pay her last respects – or any respects come to that.
At that moment I received another update text from the Farrier; the hearse was about to leave.
Grabbing my coat and locking the front door behind me, I made my way down the path and headed towards the Farrier's house. Penelope must be the fastest dresser ever, because she was already hurrying back up the road, very hyper and shouting, ‘wait for me!’ She was dressed in a sort of tight-fitting yellow dress with a red blazer thrown over the top. There was only one thing that crossed my mind – a human rhubarb and custard. Don’t get me wrong I love clothes but who wears yellow and red to a funeral unless it’s for a departed cheerleader?
Tottering up the lane behind Penelope on the most ridiculous high heels ever, was BB. Even a clown in the local circus would have stilts lower than those heels. With the weight of her artificial boobs pulling her forward, on those heels, BB would be lucky if she spent any time upright today. Why was she here? To tout for more business among the assembled mourners? It would be like shooting fish in a barrel; there would be plenty of pensioners for her to befriend; those who would shortly be on their way to the pearly gates – those who would leave their small fortunes to the likes of her in exchange for one last night of passion. No doubt, she would be asking for payment up front, a cash advance from their life savings.
Unlike Penelope, she had the mourner attire down to a tee. She had draped a black veil over her face and her long black hair was smoothed down to the arch of her back. Her sunglasses were a hooker version of the type that wouldn’t look out of place on Joan Collins and the dress; well she was coming very close to spilling out over the top of her dress. Anyone would have thought she was the widow, not the tart that had finished him off. I wondered whether this was one of many funerals she had attended of those she had helped to shuffle off this mortal coil; she looked as if she was a dab hand in the role of the grieving funeral guest.
Thankfully, the Farrier was coping well although he probably thought he was in the middle of a pantomime. All we needed now was Widow Twanky bringing up the rear shouting, ‘he’s behind you’. He didn’t give the impression he was upset, but I suppose, as he had distanced himself from his father many years ago, he certainly wasn’t going to start bawling crocodile tears now, not like some we knew. I glanced over at BB who was currently dabbing away a tear from the corner of her eye with a hanky – like I said – bloody pantomime.
In no time at all a crowd of people had gathered outside to pay their last respects; they fell silent when the hearse drew up alongside them outside FP’s house. Then out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my neighbours, Don and Edna peering out of the upstairs window of their house after deciding to stay behind closed doors. I couldn’t blame them. They had fallen out with the Frisky Pensioner forty odd years ago when Edna caught him spying through a man-made hole in the fence when she was sunbathing topless. At least Edna could now sunbathe topless in her own garden if she so desired.
Outside the gate, BB stood licking her lips in a seductive manner trying to catch the eye of the funeral director. When this didn’t work, she started to wail; the same wailing sound she had made on the morning that Frisky Pensioner died, when she had dropped to her knees in the street with only the flea-ridden chinchilla to preserve her dignity. I looked round the crowd and wondered whether this was an outing from the local psychiatric hospital. The world was full of mad people and most of them appeared to be standing next to me in my lane. It gave a whole new meaning to the village people.
An unfamiliar car pulled up, and park a little further up the road. A tall lanky man opened the car door and sauntered towards the funeral director at the front of the hearse. There were a few perplexed looks from the crowd, as they waited to discover who this man was.
‘Who’s that?’ I whispered in the Farrier’s ear, genuinely curious.
‘Probably a long lost brother, or a love child of my father's, I’m sure there will be a few of them emerging from the woodwork hoping to claim his non-existent fortune,’ he joked half-heartedly.
The onlookers were soon to be disappointed as he was simply a passer-by who noticed the hearse had a flat tyre. The body of Frisky Pensioner would have to stay where it was until they got the wheel changed. BB wailed more intensely as the elderly man kindly touched her arm and softly said, ‘I am so sorry for your loss.’ This woman was unbelievable; she wasn’t even a relative of Frisky Pensioner.
My feet felt like blocks of ice from all the standing around. I began to shiver in the cold air so the Farrier kindly draped his arm around my shoulder and invited me back into the warmth of his house to wait while they fitted the spare wheel. Penelope followed us; she didn’t wait for the Farrier to ask her in, and as soon as she was over the threshold she plonked herself down in an armchair. The Farrier disappeared upstairs mumbling that he needed to find a scarf.
Inside, the house had a musty aroma about it, and the walls were covered with old photographs of buildings and houses. The fireplace was high, maybe original; I couldn’t tell as an ivy plant trailed down covering it and the brass ornaments adorning the hearth. The Farrier would have his work cut out trying to modernise the room to bring it into the twenty-first century. I wondered where Frisky Pensioner had died; I could be standing on the very spot. Shivering, I glanced out of the window to see the hearse balancing on a jack and two men struggling to change the tyre. Unfortunately, for the dead Frisky Pensioner, his flowers had slid down the coffin when the front of the car was lifted off the ground and now lay squashed and piled up in a heap against the corner of the window. Penelope wandered into the kitchen to admire the buffet, where we were out of earshot of the Farrier. ‘I’m only here for the buffet; I do love a good sausage roll and pork pie,’ she claimed. ‘Times are hard now that Rupert has left me; anything for a free feed.’
‘Forgive me Penelope, you left him. Now put the foil back over those sausage rolls, they are for the wake!’ I exclaimed.
The thought of eating a sausage roll at FP’s wake turned my stomach; all I could imagine was a sausage and a roll with the delightful BB, and my appetite had suddenly disappeared.
The Farrier appeared at the kitchen door; awkwardly, Penelope quickly re-covered the sausage rolls with the tin foil.
‘The cars are ready now. The tyre is fixed, but unfortunately, the flowers they look ... well ... dead just like my father.’
We followed him to the bottom of the path and noticed BB was still lurking on the edge of the curb. All of a sudden, it seemed to turn dark outside and I felt as if the temperature had dropped. It was as if there had just been an eclipse of the sun, I shivered, feeling as if someone had walked over my grave. It crossed my mind that maybe Frisky Pensioner had been refused entry into the good world up above, and I made a promise to myself, there and then, that I would never to participate in any form of ghost hunting or Ouija board antics in case he came back to haunt me. I hoped it wasn’t too late to add another New Year’s Resolution.
The rest of the mourners climbed into their vehicles; engines were running, doors slamming and the smoke from exhausts trailing behind as the procession started. BB was giving the idea she was the grief stricken widow – another person on track for an Oscar nomination. Sweeping her hand continuously across her forehead, she gave the impression she could faint at any moment. I was hoping she would – sooner rather than later – anything to stop that awful wailing.
The funeral director must have taken pity on her; for we watched him halt the hearse and flinging the door open, he waved his hand at her, gesturing for her to jump in and take a seat. She clambered in. The Farrier laughed and shook his head in disbelief; then he climbed into his car and invited me to join him. Penelope wasted no time at all and quickly jumped into the back and we drove away tailing the hearse.