The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020, Jane Riley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542008143

  ISBN-10: 154200814X

  Cover design and illustration by Leo Nickolls Design

  To Mum and Dad.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  The Yellow Notebook

  Undying Love

  The Folder of Systematic Funeral Protocol, Page Three

  Generational Pull

  Last Date

  The Dance

  The Power Walk

  Something to Say

  The Ellipsis of Life

  Maltesers

  Nails in the Coffin

  The Competition

  Candles

  Henry

  Pub Talk

  The Visit

  Seeing Blue

  Advice from the Grave

  Rescued

  PART TWO

  The Invitation

  The Dinner Party

  The Day After

  Snooping

  The Diary

  La Lumière de Marie

  Salsa Dancing

  More Spontaneity

  General Improvements

  Death by Toaster

  Talking Candles that Smell of the Dead

  The Beach

  Embalmers

  Bath Time

  The Samples

  The Misunderstanding

  Spermatozoa

  Waxing Lyrical

  Mr Lowry

  Candle-Making

  Standing Up, Properly

  PART THREE

  Paperbacks and Pineapples

  The Right Hook

  Six Weeks and One Day to Go

  Cake

  Letting Go

  I’ll Do It My Way

  Making Clock & Son Sing

  Cold-Calling

  The Gift

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE

  I must eat less cake.

  I must stop watching infomercials.

  I must take up a hobby – making model aeroplanes, perhaps?

  I must go to the movies once a month, even if it means going on my own.

  I must find love.

  Can I find love?

  The Yellow Notebook

  They say old habits die hard, which is true, but I also think that new habits are born easily when you live on your own. Like talking to yourself. Ordering pantry items in alphabetical order. Storing balled-up socks in colour-coordinated rows in a drawer. Buying microwave meals for one when you should be cooking from scratch, because you really do love to cook. And fantasising – writing lists of things you’d like to do, imagining a life that isn’t yours, all from the comfort of your sofa.

  Mine are rather like New Year’s resolutions. Except I make them at any time of the year, whenever I think my life needs reviving – jotting them down in a yellow, dog-eared notebook I’ve had for ages. It’s an enjoyable way to spend an evening when you have little else to do and no one to share your time with. It’s also a pleasant way to unwind from my job as a funeral director.

  I was on the sofa with a red wine and mediocre microwave chicken cacciatore, fantasising again. I put my unfinished meal on the floor and picked up the notebook, turned to a new page and began to write.

  Thou shalt not grow too large to fit comfortably into a standard-size coffin: I must start exercising.

  I don’t know why I adopted old-fashioned vernacular but I liked its authoritative tone, which I’d not used before. There was something arresting about addressing imaginary masses of people, even if I was the only addressee. It gave me a sense of hopefulness that maybe this time I might actually get off the sofa and carry out some of my desires.

  Thou shalt be messy: I must refrain from excessive tidiness.

  I kicked a shoe out of place. Stared at its haphazard placement and sideways slant, out of whack with its partner. I knew the sight of it shouldn’t make me break out into a sweat but it was a start.

  Thou shalt broaden your social life: I must make friends with people other than those who have passed on.

  The nature of my vocation, being on call day and night, made it difficult to have meaningful encounters with anyone else. And as for meeting potential dates, well, that was proving more difficult as time went on and my previously single friends were preoccupied with getting married and having children. You see, if you boiled it down as if deglazing a pan, what I really yearned for was a partner. And love. Ideally both at the same time.

  I chewed the end of the pen and wondered with horror if my only option was to sign up to a dating site. Quelle horreur, as Mum would say. Yet if I did, how would I describe myself? Bachelor, thirty-nine years old, walking fit (at best), with excess podge and a slight slouch. Has a kind heart and is a good listener. Considers himself a gourmand (tonight’s microwave meal notwithstanding, as well as the six others I have in my fridge). In his job people may be dying to see him but what he’s looking for is a like-minded – living – female to bring love into his life.

  Sigh.

  The truth was, I had my eye on somebody already and had done for a long time. If only Marie knew that she was the like-minded living female I dreamed of enlivening my life. I suppose there was only one way to make it happen.

  Thou shalt find a way to ask Marie out.

  Marie may be married, but hadn’t she said only a few weeks ago that she was unhappy? The idea of me asking her out was so outrageous it made me laugh. Not just a chuckle but uncontrollably, stupidly, unable to stop. A socked foot left the ground, then both feet were airborne as I fell back against the sofa in glee, rejoicing at the audacity of my latest resolution.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ I said out loud, even though it was a humid February evening, as I pondered the extraordinary notion of going on a date with the woman I had admired from a distance for fourteen years.

  Then I put my feet back on the floor, picked up the television remote, turned on the TV and switched channels. Nothing took my fancy. I left it on a documentary about stars and galaxies with the sound on mute. Yet, as I drank the rest of the wine, I couldn’t stop thinking about Marie. My mind clicked and whirred like the old ceiling fan above me, as if deciding whether to slow down or speed up. It was an apt analogy. Do I or don’t I? Hold off or dive right in? Slow down or speed up?

  Undying Love

  The next morning I drove to work at the same time I always did (eight o’clock) and arrived at the same time I always did (twelve minutes past eight), parked in the small car park behind our building where there were four spaces reserved for Clock & Son Funeral Home, and went inside. I unlocked the front door, swung the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open’ and stepped on to the footpath to take a minute to survey the outside world, as I always liked to do – to remind myself for a brief moment of the beauty of life in the inner city, in contrast to the death behind the cloistered walls of my business.

  I breathed in the reassuring smells of petrol fumes and roasted
coffee, as the nose-to-tail rush of morning traffic eased to a comfortable road-rage-free rhythm along King Street. Clouds formed judder bars across the sky. The wind whipped everything around me into new shapes. I nodded to pedestrians walking past but they seemed unaware I was even there. I didn’t mind. I’m not one to draw attention to myself and have learned the art of listening – a necessary trait in my line of work.

  I went back inside and headed to the morgue to check on our latest client, whom our embalmer, Roger Dewfield, finished sprucing yesterday. Anne Mulligan lay snug in one of our solid oak coffins, nestled in white satin lining. I smoothed out her jacket to remove the creases, tugged at the corners of her collar and tucked a strand of hair back into place. You would never have known that the cause of death was anaphylactic shock from a bee sting while lawn-mowing. How serene she now looked. Gone were the signs of bee-stung fear and facial swelling. Her head was just so, muscles fully relaxed, lips a gentle smile, skin smooth and creamy. Her face was heart-shaped – chin on the pointy side – with almond eyes and a caring mien.

  I know it sounds silly but I like chatting to cadavers. If I’m honest, it eases my loneliness and there are times when it helps make things clearer. Helps sort the dross from the vaguely sensible thoughts clattering around my mind like loose Smarties in a nearly empty box. I had gone to bed with Marie and resolution number four on my mind, and woken up with it, and her, still there. It followed me into the shower, sprung out at me from my underwear drawer and plopped on to my toast as if it had morphed into marmalade. Was this going to be the one resolution that shadowed me until I acted upon it, poking my bottom and tapping my shoulder like an annoying toddler?

  You see, in our last conversation together, Marie had hinted at unhappiness in her marriage, which got me wondering. Was she really, truly unhappy or had it been a throwaway comment that meant nothing more than that her husband’s habit of leaving half a banana on the kitchen bench at breakfast irritated her? Or perhaps he left used clothes in a mound on the bedroom floor, which would be most distressing if it was on a regular basis?

  Marie was Clock & Son’s preferred florist and had been ever since she started her business, Alchemy Flowers, fourteen years ago at age twenty-four. She reminded me of Cleopatra then, and still does, with her black hair, striking eyes rimmed with kohl and skin like porcelain. She had short no-nonsense nails and long, slender fingers with the occasional thorn-prick. At the time she was in between boyfriends; I was dating no one. Four months later, she started dating Henry and they married about two years after that. Four months! For most people that would be plenty of time in which to act upon their feelings. Me? I did nothing. Just imagine where I might be now, had I plucked a petal or two of courage. Ugh, it didn’t bear thinking about. I even remember when she brought in her first bouquet: a beautifully symmetrical arrangement of brightly coloured flowers that was de rigueur for the early noughties. And she was punctual, just like me. When we last met – at a café on the main road, an easy walk between our two businesses – it was to discuss the arrangements for the funeral of the president of the Cactus and Succulent Society.

  ‘The client wants the entire coffin covered in cacti and succulents,’ I explained, ‘plus large living sculptures of the president’s initials using the same plants. Not your usual pastel-coloured bouquet.’

  Marie nodded and took notes, unperturbed by sculpting cacti into letters.

  ‘You’ve only got a few days,’ I added.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, Oliver. I like a challenge,’ she said. ‘Better a challenging flower arrangement than a challenging husband.’

  She may have laughed but when I looked her in the eye, she glanced away. That’s when I started wondering: what did she mean and how unhappy was she? If it was to do with her marriage, then I have to say I had never warmed to Henry. I had assumed his brusque, rather arrogant manner hid a softer side that only those close to him saw. Yet, what if there was no softer side and Marie had had enough? So I asked, ‘Everything alright?’

  ‘Oh, you know . . .’ she said, waving the words away.

  ‘If you want to talk, I’m happy to lend an ear.’

  ‘Thanks, Oliver. It’s just . . . well, sometimes . . .’

  I was going to probe further but her phone rang and the opportunity got sucked out of the window and churned in the back of the rubbish truck that was lumbering off down the road. It wasn’t mentioned again but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  Could I be the one to bring happiness back into her life?

  I glanced at Anne, checked my watch. Jean didn’t usually come in until nine so I had time. Anne looked amenable to a practice run and if I pretended she was Marie . . .

  ‘So, you see,’ I said, walking around to the end of the coffin to face Anne, ‘I was wondering . . .’

  No, far too dithery. I moved away from Anne and did a circuit of the room.

  ‘Hey,’ I said casually, ‘how about we have a drink sometime?’

  No. We often had a drink after work and it was never anything other than a drink after work.

  What about: ‘Look, I don’t want to be presumptuous but you know how you said you weren’t happy? With Henry and all that? Well, maybe, you know, I could . . . we could . . .’ I gave a European-style shrug with an open-palmed gesture to show how relaxed I was about whether she said yes or not, and that I had plenty of other women I could ask out if she declined. Ha! Then I caught sight of my pantomime pose freeze-framed in the antique mirror at the end of the room. Idiot. I shoved my hands in my trouser pockets and headed back towards Anne.

  Or, I could tell her outright that I loved her. Announce it like it was mine to own.

  ‘I love you, Marie. I love you and that’s all there is to it.’

  Or perhaps: ‘Leave Henry. Be with me!’ I practised again, with emphasis on the words ‘leave’ and ‘me’.

  I was Romeo. Figaro. Or was it Don Giovanni? I was the dashing suitor who would save Marie from her terrible marriage and abominable husband and be a far better partner than anyone else could possibly be. My right hand came out of a pocket – I couldn’t help myself. ‘Oh yes, Marie, I love you.’ But my hand clonked the lid of the open coffin. Made me yelp – twice – and dented my knuckles. A red blotch spread across my skin, moved like running dye. I gripped my hand tightly in case it might fall off and thought, I might have to go to hospital.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I turned around. Jean, our long-serving administrator, stood in the doorway behind me.

  Taken aback, I said the first thing that came to me. ‘You’re early.’

  As always, her hair was hairspray-set and a brooch fixed to her left lapel. Today, it was a silver cut-out of a bicycle. Not the usual type of jewellery for a woman of her age, but Jean was a woman who surprised every so often.

  ‘Are you alright?’ she asked.

  I tried to smile but feared it was more of a grimace. ‘Bloody coffins,’ I said.

  ‘It’s just, Mr Mulligan is here. Waiting outside.’

  I nodded. Jean left. I let go of my hand and pushed aside thoughts of proclaiming love and kinship till death do us part to Marie, and got on with the day.

  The Folder of Systematic Funeral Protocol, Page Three

  After Mr Mulligan left, a Ms Castor arrived, then a Mr and Mrs Robertson. I asked them all the same set of questions, based on those my father devised as part of his Folder of Systematic Funeral Protocol in 1977, following his own inheritance of Clock & Son. What are your names? Who is the deceased? What is their relation to you? How did they die? Do they wish to be buried or cremated? Would you like the twenty-pound-a-head afternoon tea option or the fifty-pound? Asparagus sandwiches or mini quiches? The list went on. It even included sample phrases of condolence I suspected came from the insides of Hallmark cards. They were to be regurgitated, as Dad once told me, ‘when you can’t think of the right thing to say’.

  I followed it to the letter when I first took over the business, only to fin
d that saying the right things came naturally. Having read the Folder so many times, I realised I had memorised every greeting card message and soothing word of consolation it contained. They rolled off my tongue as smoothly as floor dirt with my newly purchased microfibre cleaning slippers. Not only that, but I was able to sense what to say, when. Dad’s folder of advice became the springboard from which I could tap into my own innate empathy and compassion to help soothe the souls of my clients.

  After the Robertsons, I had just enough time to eat the leftover ‘sympathy’ biscuits – the flavour of which changed each week, according to what whetted Jean’s appetite or, if Mum was buying, whatever happened to be on sale – and check my emails before a body was wheeled in at four, followed by a nursing home call-out at six. I was thrilled to have cheered the wife of a dentist who would have been familiar with the mouths of most in the local community by suggesting we hand out dental floss with every order of service and offering Marie’s idea of featuring flowers in varying shades of white. It was another routine day.

  A week later and I still couldn’t stop thinking about Marie and how on earth I was going to proceed with my dilemma. But my desire to pursue her was having unsavoury side effects: I could feel a rise in blood pressure and had butterflies in my stomach. It was not only distracting but unsettling. As I often craved a quick fix of chocolate in times of distress, I bought a Mars bar on my way to work one day. I saved it to eat in the back room, on my own, leaning against the embalming table, enjoying the quietude of the place. At lunchtime, when I was certain no one else was around and the room was free from Roger and his handiwork, I scurried to my place of respite. I unwrapped the bar and took a mouthful. I closed my eyes to savour the taste. I don’t know how many Mars bars I’ve eaten over the years but every time I do they make me drool. It’s the rich caramel, high sugar content and the chewiness which slows down your eating. The perfect antidote to a stressful situation.

  ‘Oliver?’

  My eyes snapped open. A dribble of chocolate-flavoured saliva slid down the side of my mouth. Mum stood in the doorway. I pondered whether to pretend I was inspecting the embalming room because of Roger’s recent laxness in tidiness and care, having recently left an apple core nestled into the wig of a ninety-seven-year-old lady, or offer her a bite. Mum got in before me.