Flasher in the graveyard.

Billy dug graves and they were dug to perfection: smooth, straight sides that never collapsed, always just wide enough but never much more, and no muck left where the mourners would stand. Undertakers and the clergy spoke highly of him and he had been headhunted by other graveyards. We arrived at the graveyard on a stormy day in November, a sad little band accompanying a friendless old biddy on her last journey. Her grave was at the top of the hill and she had squandered her money on the heaviest coffin available. The pall bearers, in the absence of family, declined to risk their backs by carrying the ton weight up the hill and trollied it. Irene would have been appalled, but was in no position to protest. As we trundled up the hill with Irene, we lifted our eyes to note the wild beauty ahead of us. Leafless trees stood stark against a grey mobile cauldron of raging clouds spilling over themselves. At the top of the hill Billy stood like a colossus waiting to receive and deal with the dead. He was big and he was young. His arms were folded across his chest and his legs were planted firmly on the ground as he leaned forward into the wind. As we all looked up towards Billy, steering towards him and struggling as we tried to guide the coffin-laden trolley with wonky wheels along the pitted path, Billy’s trousers fell to his ankles in one clean sweep. Our sorry little funerary band faltered, unsure of ourselves. It took a few seconds for the calamity to register in Billy’s head, and when it did he shuffled off to the side to hide the indelicacy of the scene behind a headstone that barely came up to his knees. The more he struggled with his trousers the more they refused to cooperate and the more embarrassed Billy became till he finally stumbled and fell into the perfect grave he had dug for Irene and out of which he could not climb. Eventually a ladder was procured from somewhere, but in the business of it all and in our rush to rescue Billy we had abandoned Irene in her heavy coffin on a trolley on a hill, and gravity had started to do its thing, and poor Irene was heading for the gate and the open road. We capered after her and stopped her just in time and eventually got her installed in her rightful place; and above all we gave thanks that she had died alone and that there were no distraught relatives to complain and be offended