Manor of Convenience

'Til Death Do us Part

The day of the funeral was a dreary, rainy day in January. Black skies loomed gloomily overhead as a sea of people in black clothing gathered outside the church. Under the earth of the graveyard lay the departed souls of history, interred, resting peacefully for eternity...well hopefully anyway. One didn't wish to think of them resting quite unpeacefully down there with us all walking above them without a single care for their peace.

I suppose you're wondering who'd shuffled off this mortal coil and I'm glad to inform you that it was not one of us, or anybody at the manor and thankfully not a relative or close friend. No, ironically the latest to die in our village was the one who performed many of the funeral services— the vicar himself—the honourable Reverend Silk. He had been suffering a bout of ill-health for weeks which one would've suspected of killing him except it wasn't and it was a very unsuspecting incident of him falling out of a tree that did it. Nothing at all to do with the nasty chest infection he'd been suffering.

"I heard he was up there rescuing a cat," Sophia said to George as she linked her arm through his as we all walked toward the church doors together.

"I don't believe it. He didn't look like a cat person," he replied.

"Need he be a cat person to not want it to fall out of a tree?" I said from behind him, walking arm in arm with Meg.

"Well I heard it was bird-watching," Meg added.

"That doesn't surprise me," George said quietly. "He always enjoyed spying on things from that tree. Probably saw a couple of tits he admired...blue ones maybe."

"But how did he fall out?" Meg asked.

"Branch gave way, he was not as trim as he used to be," a voice said to which we turned to see the local barmaid— the rather lively Miss. Schofield— walking behind, smiling at us. "He always came in the pub for a snifter and showed me all these pictures of his birds. If I'd have known it was gonna be the last time, I'd have paid more attention to the old sod, maybe shown him my own tits."

We all stared at her, unsure of the implication.

"My Dad has an aviary! Well, better go, my Dan will be wondering where I've got to. Always going on at me for chatting." Miss Schofield was still talking as she left us and made her way to her husband's side.

Turning back to resume our walk, George sighed. "What a way to go though, staring at a couple of tits and then...thud."

I couldn't help but giggle. "Well it won't be how you go, that's for sure," I whispered, glad in the knowledge the bubbly barmaid hadn't heard because otherwise it would have been all around the village by tea time.

Sophia put her finger to her lips and hushed us like we were schoolchildren. "We shouldn't laugh. A man has died. Our own vicar. We should be respectfully po-faced."

I mimed buttoning up my lip and then we proceeded to walk silently into the large ornate church doors, silenced by our sensible Sophia for the remainder of the stroll.

"Hold on," George whispered, breaking the silence, "if our vicar's up there at the pearly gates then who's conducting the service?"

"I hadn't thought of that," I said.

And I hadn't. I had spent the whole week instead thinking about Reverend Silk's unusual demise and not of what that entailed. One shouldn't be so morbidly curious but one always is. We can't get enough of being morbid and even more so when there's something mysterious or unusual about the way a person died. He didn't die in the war or of some mundane illness but a random freak accident. What are the odds? But on the other hand, his last moments were happy as he climbed into a tree like a schoolboy to follow a passion, to get away from it all and be with nature. It had to be admired.