"There's plenty of other things just as urgent, does it have to be done right now?" I complained.
Uncle Hobart, mumbling to himself, rummaged amongst the things on the high shelf extending round the kitchen. Aunt Martha had packed the shelf full of her favourite bits and pieces and I was waiting for the inevitable crash when Uncle Hobart knocked something off. "Ah, 'ere it is!" he exclaimed, blowing the dust from a small tin box he'd found. Sitting down, he opened it up, scrabbling about inside for a few minutes, clicking his dentures as he pawed through the contents. Finally, he pulled out a faded old photograph, handing it to me with raised eyebrows. I tilted it towards the light, studying it carefully. "It's the back field, behind the 'ouse," he informed me over my shoulder, but I could see that for myself.
The photograph had been taken from an upstairs window, showing the view across the back field, towards Hogg Hollow. The field was full of water and judging from how far it came up the fence posts, I guessed that it had to be at least six inches deep. An old combine harvester was stuck up to its axles in the middle of the muddy mire.
"That's what 'appens when yer don't keep yer ditches and land-drains cleaned out," Uncle Hobart informed me in a self-righteous tone.
I tossed the photograph back at him. "From the look of that harvester, I'd say that photo must be at least thirty years old. When was the last time you had a flood like that, then?"
"There's only been the one," he admitted reluctantly, "but that's 'cause I've kept the drains cleaned proper ever since." He hurried on, "Farming 'as its responsibilities. It ain't all running around in green wellies and whistling at yer sheepdog. Looking after drains is all part o' the work."
I slumped down in my chair, holding my hands up in mock capitulation. "Okay, okay. Don't keep on about it. I'll clean the bloody ditches out."
"It ain't as though yer got ter do it by 'and, like I 'ad ter, is it?" he remonstrated. "We got the digger now, ain't we?"
"I said I'd do it, didn't I? So just shut up and hand me that beer you're hiding down the side of your chair."
Aunt Martha stuck her head around the kitchen door. "Phone, Hobart," she called.
"Who is it then?" he queried, hissing open a can.
"The vicar," she replied. "He wants to know whether you quoted a hundred and twenty, or a hundred and forty pounds to hire the back field for the village fete."
*
As Uncle Hobart came back into the room from taking the telephone call, I raised my eyebrows and pursed my lips.
"What?" he said, glaring at me.
"Whistling at sheepdogs, eh?" I chided him. He had the grace to look abashed. "Responsibilities, eh?" I sneered.
Finishing his can of beer in one long quaff, he studied me over the rim. Then, crumpling the can in a knotty fist, he tossed it into the sink burping loudly. "Aye, well," he answered in a quiet voice, guiltily turning away to study the photograph once more.
"Well, what?" I persisted.
Shifting about uncomfortably in his seat, Uncle Hobart picked at a loose thread on his jumper, then clicked his dentures, sighing. "The vicar wants ter 'ire the back field, but he insisted that the ditches are cleaned out first," Uncle Hobart admitted, still studying the photograph with avid interest. "'E's worried some kiddie might fall in one and 'urt itself on some rubbish."
"So, looking after the drains is all part of farming, is it?" I asked sweetly.
"Yeah, well," he replied.
"So what's this all about then?" I persisted, enjoying his discomfort.
"'E's going ter pay us good money, ain't 'e?"
I nodded at him. "And I suppose it didn't cross your mind to tell me that earlier, did it? Going to keep that little financial transaction to yourself, were you? Pocket the profit and let me do all the hard work, no doubt."
"I'd 'ave told yer when the time were right, like," he said defensively.
I gave him my, Yes, and fairies live at the bottom of the garden, look and he shrugged. "What's he want to hire the field for, anyway?" I asked.
"The Village Fete, like I said."
I frowned. "But that's always held over at Bingham's place, isn't it?"
Uncle Hobart nodded in agreement. "Usually, but not this year. Bingham's diversifying. 'E's starting a caravan site." Uncle Hobart began picking at his jumper again, looking decidedly shifty.
"Well?" I finally demanded in exasperation. Going to the kitchen window Uncle Hobart looked out, coughing a couple of times. The tilt of his shoulders spoke a thousand words. "Well!" I repeated impatiently.
As he answered, Uncle Hobart sidled towards the kitchen door. "I sort o' told the vicar that you'd organise the fete fer 'im, didn't I?" he said. "I'll be too busy, yer see." And with those words Uncle Hobart did a quick disappearing act, the kitchen door swinging shut behind him.
*
We were standing in a deep ditch abutting the back field, staring into the end of a three foot corrugated metal pipe running under the main road. Sticking my head in, I shone my torch into the dark depths, dismayed at the amount of rubbish highlighted by the strong beam of light.
"How long is this pipe, exactly?" I asked Uncle Hobart.
He scratched his head and clicked his dentures at me. "'Bout forty feet, far as I remember."
"And how the hell are we supposed to get this lot out?" I enquired dubiously, shaking my head.
I heard the hiss of a can opening behind me. "We'll borrow Stan's terrier and send 'im through with a piece o’ string tied round ‘is neck," Uncle Hobart said over my shoulder. "Then we'll pull a rope through, tie a brush on the end of the rope and haul it out with the tractor. Don't worry, Peter boy, I got it all worked out."
He was making it sound far too easy for my liking, and as I studied the piles of rubbish again, an uneasiness stirred in my stomach. "It'll take a bloody big brush to shift this lot," I complained, looking back over my shoulder at him.
He winked, laying a finger alongside his nose. "Yer leave all that ter me, Peter boy," he replied in a confident tone. "Yer just stay 'ere and 'ave a beer while I go and get some stuff tergether."
*
"Oy, wake up, yer lazy bugger!" a voice urged me.
As my nose was licked by a large wet tongue, I opened my eyes with a start. Stan's wire-haired terrier was standing over me, panting and slobbering slime all over my face. I grimaced, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth. "I only sat down to get a stone out of my boot," I explained to Uncle Hobart as he stood over me with a reproachful look. "I must have nodded off."
"Come on then," he said, walking over to the tractor.
After tying up the dog, I helped Uncle Hobart drag an enormous red and yellow cylindrical brush from the back of the trailer. This was followed by a large coil of rope and a big ball of bailer twin.
"Where the hell did you get this from?" I asked, helping to roll the gigantic brush into the ditch.
"Borrowed it, didn't I?" he told me with a wink. "They're closed fer repairs so they ain't going ter miss it fer a couple o' days, are they?" We manoeuvred the brush up to the opening of the large land-drain and then Uncle Hobart sat on it recovering his breath. Opening a can of beer, he took a pull and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "It were right 'andy really. It were just lying there. I didn't even 'ave ter disconnect it."
I took a closer look at the fluffy object and suddenly a memory stirred. "Hey, isn't this one of those big brushes from Ken's Kar Wash?" I checked.
Ignoring my question, Uncle Hobart jumped down, tied the end of the bailer twine around the dog's neck and shoved it into the end of the pipe.
"Stay 'ere and feed this string in while I go and call the dog from t'other end," he ordered.
"But..." I protested, but he had already disappeared.
*
Half an hour later the rope was threaded through the drain and I waited patiently for the signal. A noise echoed down the pipe as Uncle Hobart tapped on his end, the instruction for me to push the big brush into position. As the tractor revved, the brush slowly entered the pipe, jerked a couple of times, then stopped. I could still hear the tractor revving madly in the next field but the brush stayed put.
A moment later Uncle Hobart's voice came reverberating through the pipe to me. "'Ang on a mo, the tractor's slipping in the mud, I'm going ter get some straw ter put under the wheels."
Sitting down, watching the clouds drift by, enjoying the late afternoon sun on my face, I opened a can of beer, took a long, satisfying drink, then contemplated life and the ways of the rich.
The voice startled me. "Hello Peter, where's Hobart?"
"Oh, hello Aunt Martha, you made me jump." I nodded at the pipe. "He's across the road, in the other field. That is he was, but now he's gone to fetch some straw."
Aunt Martha scrambled her way down into the ditch beside me. "Can you tell him that I'm going into Ealford to get my hair done when you see him?"
"Yes of course," I agreed.
"What are you two up to anyway?" she asked, moving across to the pipe and peering in.
I heard the muffled roar of the tractor starting up and struggled to my feet. The brush lurched when Uncle Hobart took the strain and I smiled at Aunt Martha, giving her the thumbs up before walking over to make sure the rope attached to my end of the brush didn't hang on anything. This was the rope we planned to haul the brush back on when it reached the far end of the pipe. Glancing over at Aunt Martha, I gave her a reassuring nod, still feeding the rope in, but something made me look back, something nagging away at the back of my mind. A movement caught my attention and I looked down, following the line of rope snaking away passed my feet. Aunt Martha was standing with one foot in the coils! I made a funny squeaky kind of noise, pointing a shaky finger at her, just as Uncle Hobart gunned the accelerator of the tractor, taking off at top speed.
Aunt Martha disappeared just like that.
One second she was there, the next she was gone, in a flurry of swirling clothes and thrashing feet. Uncle Hobart had roared away on his tractor like a formula-one driver, pulling her into the pipe. I dove at her disappearing legs but only managed to catch one of her shoes. I heard one long, thin scream, then an awful ear-ringing silence.
Uncle Hobart found me some time later, muttering, "Sweet Jesus!" over and over again.
*
Uncle Hobart was slumped in his favourite chair, staring at the wall. He'd been sitting that way since the doctor left, after pronouncing Aunt Martha dead. Between us, we had washed and laid her out in the front parlour, then called the doctor, the police and the local priest. They had all been and gone and now the house seemed cold and empty.
I coughed for the second time and a pair of faded blue eyes focused on me. "When're you going to call the undertaker?" I asked quietly.
Uncle Hobart stuck his finger in his ear and fished about for a moment before answering. Then he shook his head and leant forward. "I ain't."
"Do you want me to do it, then?" I asked, assuming he was too upset to do it himself.
"Nah, we don't need no undertaker," he told me in a firm voice. "I'm going ter bury 'er meself, ain't I?"
It took some time for those words to sink in. "But you can't do that," I protested. "It's illegal."
"Nah, it ain't," he assured me. "I checked. I can bury 'er where ever I like."
"But what about the service, and the coffin, and... and all the other stuff?"
"Coffin's upstairs, under me bed. And I'm doing me own service."
"How the hell did you manage to get a coffin under your bed," I exclaimed in disbelief. This was becoming surreal.
"It's one o' them cardboard one," he told me. "'Ad it up there fer years. It were meant ter be fer me, weren't it?"
I took a few deep breaths to recover my composure. "Oh right," I managed finally. "It's one of those ecological ones, is it?"
Shaking his head, Uncle Hobart clicked his dentures. "Nah," he said. "Wouldn't waste me money buying one o' them. Made it meself, out o' some old cardboard boxes. Don't see the point o' wasting money when yer don't 'ave ter."
I groaned inwardly, closing my eyes, trying to ignore that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach.
*
The funeral went okay, I suppose. At least, most of it did, if you ignore the accident with the coffin that is.
Uncle Hobart had dug the grave with the JCB, which meant it was a tad deep, so he put some road cones around it to stop people falling in. Unfortunately the red and white stripes of the road cones clashed outrageously with the cardboard coffin he'd made, having painted it a bright fluorescent-green with a job-lot of paint pinched from somewhere. But what made matters worse, was the lettering still showing through from the box beneath. 'Cramley's Condoms Are Safe', they spelt out in bold, black type.
We set the coffin down beside the grave so that Uncle Hobart could read the service. It had started to drizzle; that thin, searching kind of drizzle, that managed to find its way into every tiny opening in your clothing and by the time the last hymn had been sung, we were all soaked to the skin, shivering with the cold. I took up position at the foot of the coffin and Stan - an old friend of Uncle Hobart's - stood at the head. On Uncle Hobart's nod, we lifted the coffin from the ground and I was amazed at how light Aunt Martha had become since she'd died. She hardly weighed anything at all now.
Stan coughed pointedly at me and nodded at the ground. Looking down, I saw that Aunt Martha was laying on the wet grass with a serene smile on her face, looking for all the world as though she'd just fallen asleep, instead of having just fallen through the bottom of the soggy cardboard coffin. Stan's stern face grew even sterner when I discreetly kicked Aunt Martha into the grave, dropping the remains of the coffin in on top of her. After back-filling the grave with the JCB, Uncle Hobart placed a wooden cross at the head of the plot, and said a few private words. And after that, we all tramped back into the house for some well-earned sandwiches.