"Will ye no come back again...?"

 

As Archibald cycled up to commence his day’s shift at Oakshott & Underwood, Funeral Directors, he was surprised to see his employer, the eponymous Josiah Oakshott, peering closely at the wall beside the entrance to the ‘shop’ (as Archibald tended to call it, Josiah preferred the term ‘consulting rooms’)

“Morning Mr. O.!”  Archibald shouted, breezily, “Nice day for it, innit?”

“Good morning, Archibald” Josiah answered, without taking his eyes off the object of his attention

“Summat wrong, Mr. O.?” Archibald asked as he parked his bike and, with some difficulty, removed his bicycle clips.

“Archibald” Josiah signed, wearily, “I have asked you, on a number of occasions, to garage your bicycle to the rear of our premises.  I do not think it is seemly or right for our clients to have to negotiate a path around your vehicle in order to access our business”

“Sorry, Mr. O., I’ll shift it in a mo.” Archibald responded, cheerily and with no sense of contrition. “You’ve seen it then?” He nodded toward the object of Josiah’s attention.

“In all honesty, Archibald, I could hardly miss it!”

“I think it’s nifty!” Archibald beamed.

“Do you?” Josiah responded, doubtfully, “I have to admit to a certain sense of…what is the term that young people use nowadays?”  Josiah pondered for a few moments, before “Ah, I have it!  I am conflicted, Archibald”

“Conflicted, Mr. O.?”

“Yes, conflicted sums up my position admirably I think, Archibald.  Tell me, how did it come to be here? On our front wall?”

“It was the other day, when you had that tummy upset and couldn’t get in…”

“Ah yes” Josiah replied, gloomily, “I should have known that my absence would precipitate something”

“Any road up, this bloke from the Community summat or other came round and said could they put it on our wall ‘cause we were ‘a well known and easily identified landmark in the town’”  Archibald quoted, “Actually, he reckons it was my nativity scene that put us on the map as far as he was concerned”  Archibald said, triumphantly.

Josiah soothed his creased brow with one hand whilst closing his eyes and silently counting to ten.  The nativity scene had been a brief hiatus in the normally sober demeanour of Oakshott & Underwood, brought about by an excess of seasonal exuberance on the part of Archibald.  Despite it’s rapid removal, word had raced around the town leading to considerably more window-gazing than was typical for a Funeral Director’s.

“I can imagine” Josiah finally responded after discounting any number of less polite rejoinders.

“It’s a defridgerator” Archibald announced, proudly, patting the green and yellow apparatus.

“I think you will find, Archibald, that it is, in fact, a defibrillator”

“Yeah, summat like that” Archibald conceded.

“You are aware of its purpose, I take it?”

“Yeah, it’s like when someone has an heart attack or summat, and you grab this and give them an electric shock”

“Broadly speaking, that is the nature of the apparatus” Josiah agreed, “do you therefore see why I am, as I said earlier, somewhat conflicted?”

“Erm” Archibald considered for a moment, “well, not really, if I’m gonna be honest”

“Well, Archibald, the fact is that this machine is designed to reignite life in those in whom it would otherwise appear that life is, to all intents and purposes, extinct”

“You what?” Archibald looked confused.

Josiah sighed, wearily.  “If you are, or appear to be, dead, then this will, in all probability, bring you back to life!” He explained.

“Oh, ah, yeah, I’ve got you now” Archibald nodded, enthusiastically, “I’ve seen it done on the telly. They shout ‘CLEAR’ and everyone backs off and then they press a button and the person goes up in the air and the machines start beeping and again, and everything”

“Precisely.  So you grasp my point?”

“Erm, not really, Mr. O.”

“We are fortunate, Archibald, to have been admitted to the trade or calling of Funeral Directors.  Our clients, it is regrettable but accurate to admit, are commencing a journey that, sadly, can only be in one direction”

“Like the pop group?”

“You have me at a disadvantage, Archibald?”

“There’s a pop group, a boy band, called ‘One Direction’”

“Is that so, Archibald?” Josiah shook his head and counted to ten, again.  His G.P. had recommended this practice as a means of controlling some otherwise concerning spikes in his blood pressure.  “The flow of my argument was not intended to embrace popular beat combos, I was referring to the fact that our clients do not, to date at least, come back from “The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns” as the Bard had it”

“You mean, once they’ve snuffed it, that’s it?

“That it the nub and the gist of my argument, yes, Archibald” Josiah said with some relief.

“ ‘Cept for Mr. Haddock”

“Mr. Haddock had not gone anywhere, Archibald.  His G.P. had made a regrettable error and he was consigned to our care long before it was necessary!”

“He sat up in the Chapel of Rest and sang “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts””

“Thank you, Archibald, I am aware of the regrettable facts of the incident”

“It did Egbert a world of good, ‘cause up to then he’d been a tomato to constipation”

Egbert was a colleague of Archibald’s and another thorn in Josiah’s side.

“I think you mean ‘a martyr to constipation’, Archibald” Josiah suggested.

“Yeah, that sounds better.” Archibald conceded, “I thought it sounded odd but then I thought about what you use to grow tomatoes and it all sort of made sense”

“I fear we have somewhat wandered from my original point, Archibald.  However, no matter.  We really must be about our business” Josiah set off in the direction of the outbuildings at the back of the Funeral Director’s façade.  Archibald, wheeling his bicycle, followed in his footsteps.

“You said you had a problem with the dethingulator though, Mr. O.?”

“Defibrillator, Archibald, it’s a defibrillator” Josiah stopped and explained, patiently. “Yes, I do have my concerns.  You see, the siting of a defibrillator on the outside of our premises is, to my mind somewhat incongruous”

Archibald stared at him blankly.

“It seems to me to give the impression that the dearly departed might, in point of fact, not be departed at all, if you see what I mean?”

“Oh, you mean like, one belt from this and you could have them back again?”

“Something of that nature, yes Archibald”

“But most of our stiff…dearly departed” Archibald rapidly corrected himself under the stern gaze of Josiah, “well, they’re as stiff as a board by the time we get them.  You could plug them into the mains and it wouldn’t make any difference!”

“You are, indeed, quite correct, Archibald.” Josiah nodded, “My reservations are not well-founded in logic or reality.  Nevertheless, I cannot help but think that it sends the wrong message and sits, somewhat uncomfortably, with our branding.”  Josiah shook his head and continued his journey to his place of work.

“There is one thing, Mr. O.”  Archibald said brightly, as he skipped behind him.

“Yes, Archibald?”

“You won’t be stuck if we need to jump start the hearse in the winter”