Death in Brunswick by Boyd Oxlade Read Free Book Online Page A

‘There goes the gun gravedigger!’
    The caretaker bowed mockingly and, staggering slightly, went back to his cottage. Dave drove slowly into the cemetery.
    He parked the car under a huge gum and got out. The cemetery was old and nearly full. It stretched for a kilometre before him on two slight hills. To his right a wrought iron fence ran gently up and down, narrowing into the distance. The other slope was a little higher than the one on which he stood and the brow of the hill hid the end of the railings. The thickly clustered headstones seemed to run into the horizon.
    He could see the flash of a spade on the other slope—that must be old Mick. He started walking down. Most of the graves were topped with weathered granite slabs sunk with time, the monuments leaning every which way, some split and broken, like discarded toys. Great old cypresses stirred softly against the blue sky. The chirp of countless sparrows and the coo of pigeons nearly drowned the low hum of traffic from Bell Street. High above a hawk drifted.
    Now he was walking through the oldest section: Irish Catholic. Rank grass grew over rusty iron railings and the tall Celtic crosses were spotted with lichen. As he went his eye flicked over the inscriptions: ‘Patrick O’Donohue, Native of Co. Antrim. Died 1860. Requiescat in Pace. ’ ‘In Loving Memory of little Tom Ryan, died aged two. 1882. And his brothers and sisters: Gervase, Sebastian, Florence (Dolly), Malachi, Brigit and Dominic…’
    He walked on past a sign—‘C of E and Nonconformist’. Here was a forest of stern angels, veiled urns and broken pillars. ‘In Loving Memory of Michael Dawson, Saddler of Coburg, Died 1880 in his sixty-fourth year. Only Sleeping’. You’ve really overslept, mate! A great stone archangel holding a double-edged long sword brooded above the leather-worker’s tomb. Dave often wondered how a Victorian artisan’s family could afford these monstrosities. He supposed that there were just as many greedy undertakers round then as now.
    He crunched through gravel. He was approaching the bottom of the hill. Here the graves were neater; here prosperous Edwardian burghers lay with their families. ‘In Memory of James (Jim) Lang, died 1911, aged fifty-two, a much loved husband and father.’ And (in fresher gold lettering) ‘His wife Emily, died 1937, aged eighty-four’.
    Why did women live so much longer now? They didn’t in the old days. Repeated childbirth and drudgery did for them early—Dave thought of June. She’ll die before me, probably of rage! We’ll bury her with a loud hailer!
    He sniggered and then felt remorseful, for he truly loved the termagant.
    Starting to climb the hill he looked back—how pretty it was! People used to have picnics here— how odd we would think that now.
    This was the start of the Italian section. It was more difficult to walk in a straight line now. It was so crowded that graves had been sunk in many of the paths. This had taken place before Dave’s time; a corrupt caretaker had let the city’s biggest Italian undertaker plant his defunct countrymen anywhere, like radishes. The grasping mortician had even sold grave plots twice and three times to different families, leading to much unseemly wrangling among the bereaved. After the inevitable government inquiry a Trust had taken over and ran the cemetery on sober and commercial lines. The older gravediggers remembered the former times with regret: bribery had flowed freely and the caretaker was so busy hiding his ill-gotten wealth that supervision was non-existent. The old man had stashed banknotes all over his cottage where most of it was found after his death, but Bluey spent much time tapping the walls and floors looking for hidden treasure.
    Now Dave was in the midst of the Italian section, called on the caretakers’ map ‘Wog Cath’. Here the mortuary extravagance was