The Coffin

©2006 Ian Hobson

Getting up for work had been difficult for the first couple of days, but I soon got back into a routine. In fact, everything was going fine until the Tuesday of my third week. I was up at six-fifteen as usual, had my breakfast, and was out of the front door by a quarter to seven. I live in an old terraced house that used to belong to my mum ' the same house I grew up in - and the front door opens directly onto the street. As I left the house, checking the contents of my rucksack to make sure that I'd not forgotten my thermos flask and sandwiches, I locked the door and turned around and there it was: a coffin! Sat there on the pavement, right outside my front window!

Where the bloody hell has this come from? I thought. It was a nicely made coffin; nothing flash, just pine, by the look of it, though it had very ornate-looking brass handles. I glanced up the street; it's on a slight incline, and I wondered for a moment if the coffin might have fallen from a hearse and come sliding downhill, but if that were the case, how would it have got itself up onto the pavement? Anyway, there was no sign of a hearse, just the usual parked cars. I don't have a car any more; I sold it about a year after my wife died. I had other uses for the money then; though, thankfully, not any more, thanks to AA.

Anyway, I couldn't stand around waiting for someone to turn up and claim the coffin; I own the house, not the pavement outside it, so it wasn't my responsibility. So off I went to catch my bus.

When I got to the factory, all hell had broken loose: during the night a water main had burst on Coalback Lane and the water had flowed through the back railings and across the yard and almost completely flooded the boiler-house. Of course, as a maintenance engineer, I got roped into the cleanup operation. And so I forgot all about the coffin; until a quarter to five, when I got back home to find it still sat there outside my house.

I suppose at this point I ought to tell you that the house has been in the family for many years, as it used to belong to my grandfather, and that's who this story is all about really.

Anyway, some bright spark had blue-tacked a sign to the coffin that read Vacant possession on completion. As I read the sign, old Mrs Gray from next door came out and asked me if it was my coffin. I told her I wasn't planning to have a use for one just yet, and then, foolishly, I asked her how her husband was, as I hadn't seen Joe for three or four weeks and he had been quite ill throughout the winter. She told me he was very well, thank you very much, and went back inside. So, wishing I'd kept my stupid mouth shut, I unlocked my front door and went in to make a couple of phone calls.

It only took a half-hour for a young copper to show up. Fortunately I was out of the shower by then, though I hadn't quite finished shaving. He examined the coffin and took a few notes and then suggested I phone the local funeral directors. I told him I'd already done that and that they'd said that they hadn't lost any coffins. At this point he got on his radio while I made us both a cup of tea, and then after another half-hour or so, two more coppers arrived with the undertaker. A Mr Greenwood, I remember his name was, and he had a small tool-kit with him and, as quick as a flash, he had the lid off the coffin, and the five of us stood staring down into it.

This is where my grandfather comes into the story. He'd died during the war and, according to my gran, on the day he was due to be buried in the parish cemetery, both he and his coffin had gone missing. Apparently there had been an air-raid just as the coffin was being carried out of the house. I think most of those doing the carrying were women, what with there being a shortage of men, and all, and as the siren went off they set the coffin down and everyone, including my mum and my gran, scurried off to the air-raid shelter. And then later, when they returned, the coffin and my granddad's body were gone.

Black-marketeers were blamed at the time; not that my gran was bothered about the coffin; she just wanted her husband back so that she could give him a proper burial. My mum reckoned that my gran had never got over the loss. She said it was like grieving twice. And I know all about grieving, what with loosing my mother and my wife in the same year.

But anyway, back to my granddad. I'd forgotten all about the incident with the missing coffin; though I still had all the family photographs and knew what he looked like. But of course, he'd died several years before I was born and, to me, the disappearance of his body and the coffin was just a story that my mum and my gran used to tell me. Though you'd think that finding a coffin on my doorstep would have jogged my memory a little; but it didn't.

Anyway, as I stood beside the young police officer and looked into that coffin there was no doubt in my mind about what I was seeing: it was my granddad, all dressed up in his Sunday best, and with his hair neatly trimmed and parted, looking just as he must have on the day of his disappearance, over sixty years ago.

I passed out, or fainted, or whatever you want to call it. And when I came round I was lying on my back outside my front door with the Grays leaning over me and asking me if I was alright. I asked what time it was and Joe told me it was ten to seven. When I asked what had happened to the coffin and the policemen, Jo and his wife exchanged knowing looks and then sent for an ambulance.

By the time I arrived at the hospital I felt fine, but I couldn't work out why the day was getting brighter when it should have been getting darker, and why the sandwiches I'd eaten at lunchtime were still in my rucksack along with my still full-to-the-brim thermos flask. The digital clock-cum-calendar on the waiting area wall read 07.58, Tuesday, 16 April, and as I looked at it, it dawned on me that it was still Tuesday morning.

That afternoon and evening at home, I sat in a daze, unable to comprehend what had happened. I even searched the house and the dustbin, looking for empty bottles, but there were none. And, anyway, if I'd been drinking, I'd have known about it. But, physically, I felt fine. So I watched some TV - just to confirm that it really was still Tuesday - and then, at half-ten, after I'd watched the news, I set my alarm and went to bed. Then in the morning, when I got up, I looked out of the front window to make sure there were no coffins, and then went off to work.

I was a little worried about explaining my day's absence; I could hardly tell the truth, could I? Fortunately my boss was on a management-training course, but he'd left instructions that if I was back at work I was to help Dave with some work in the boiler-house.

"You missed a right day, yesterday, Dave told me. "A water-main burst and flooded the boiler-house, and we had a hell of a job cleaning up the mess.