Free The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh Page A

Komstock lying on the table in her wedding dress. I shall never forget the sight of her. She was transfigured. That’s the only word for it. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of showing their Loved Ones to more people than I can count and more than half of them say: ‘Why, they’re quite transfigured.’Of course there was no color in her yet and her hair was kinda wispy; she was pure white like wax, and so cool and silent. I hardly dared touch her at first. Then I gave her a shampoo and her blue rinse and a set just as she always had it, curly all over and kinda fluffed up where it was thin. Then while she was drying the cosmetician put the color on. She let me watch and I got talking with her and she told me how there was a vacancy for a novice cosmetician right at the moment so I went straight back and gave Mr. Jebb my notice. That was nearly two years ago and I’ve been here ever since.”
    “And you don’t regret it?”
    “Ah, never, never for a moment. What I said just now about being ephemeral every artist thinks sometimes of his work, doesn’t he? Don’t you yourself?”
    “And they pay you more than in the beauty parlor, I hope?”
    “Yes, a little. But then you see Loved Ones can’t tip so that it works out nearly the same. But it isn’t for the money I work. I’d gladly come for nothing only one has to eat and the Dreamer insists on our being turned out nicely. It’s only in the last year that I’ve come really to love the work. Before that I was just glad to serve people that couldn’t talk. Then I began to realize what a work of consolation it was. It’s a wonderful thing to start every day knowing that you are going to bring back joy into one aching heart. Of course mine is only a tiny part of it. I’m just a handmaid to the morticians but I have thesatisfaction of showing the final result and seeing the reaction. I saw it with you, yesterday. You’re British and sort of inexpressive but I knew just what you were feeling.”
    “Sir Francis was transfigured certainly.”
    “It was when Mr. Joyboy came he sort of made me realize what an institution Whispering Glades really is. Mr. Joyboy’s kinda holy. From the day he came the whole tone of the mortuary became greatly elevated. I shall never forget how one morning Mr. Joyboy said to one of the younger morticians: ‘Mr. Parks, I must ask you to remember you are not at the Happier Hunting Ground.’ ”
    Dennis betrayed no recognition of that name but he felt a hypodermic stab of thankfulness that he had kept silence when, earlier in their acquaintance, he had considered forming a bond between them by lightly mentioning his trade. It would not have gone down. He merely looked blank and Aimée said: “I don’t suppose you’d ever have heard of that. It’s a dreadful place here where they bury animals.”
    “
Not
poetic?”
    “I was never there myself but I’ve heard about it. They try and do everything the same as us. It seems kinda blasphemous.”
    “And what do you think about when you come here alone in the evenings?”
    “Just Death and Art,” said Aimée Thanatogenos simply.
    “Half in love with easeful death.”
    “What was that you said?”
    “I was quoting a poem.
“… For many a time
    I have been half in love with easeful death,
    Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath;
    Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
    To cease upon the midnight with no pain…”
    “Did you write that?”
    Dennis hesitated. “You like it?”
    “Why, it’s beautiful. It’s just what I’ve thought so often and haven’t been able to express. ‘To make it rich to die’ and ‘To cease upon the midnight
with no pain
.’ That’s exactly what Whispering Glades exists for, isn’t it? I think it’s wonderful to be able to write like that. Did you write it after you came here first?”
    “It was written long before.”
    “Well, it couldn’t be more lovely if you’d written it in Whispering