Free Facing the Tank by Patrick Gale

Boniface’s history and a briefer summary by Canon Wedlake of the enormity of the task lying in store for the cathedral masons, there were some prayers and then everyone stood again for the start of the disinterment. The choristers sang a suitably medieval psalm setting and the Dean laid hands on the winch chain and began to pull.
    There was an unrestrained craning of necks as the lid rose the first five inches. Several service sheets fluttered irreverently to the flagstones from fingers parted with excitement. Dr Morton stood on his hassock and his peculiar beady-eyed face, which had always reminded Lydia of an ostrich’s, rose above the crowd, hungry for view. Clive froze in the middle of unwrapping a throat pastille, apparently aware that he was rustling too loudly, and Lydia felt a sudden extraordinary temptation to climb on to her chair. There was then a slight threat of anti-climax. Everyone realized that from where they were placed it was impossible to see inside the tomb and that the prospect of one’s Dean hauling a slab of pre-Norman stone into the air on a winch teetered on the dull side of inspiring. Then two things happened extremely fast. Five small birds like canaries, only white, flew at great speed from under the lid and disappeared into the quire. More obviously the Bishop groaned and fell in a dead faint. Gavin Tree was a tall man and his fall put two chairs and the Dean’s wife off their balance and gathered a rush of helpful hands and counsel. As Sam, the Dean and a man Lydia did not know helped to carry him out, pursued by a still otherworldly Mrs Chattock and an undisciplined gaggle of choristers, it became clear both that the service was considered thoroughly finished and that not everyone had seen the apparition of the white birds. Clive had not for a start, but he had notoriously slow reactions so he took it on trust from Lydia, who had seen. Mrs Delaney-Siedentrop certainly had not, and was making increasingly unsubtle references to popery and cheap stagecraft. The scene was like a re-enactment of the one at Babel. Those who had seen pointed for the benefit of their less fortunate neighbours and made gliding motions with their hands. Those who had not, scoffed and indicated the weight of the lid while muttering about oxygen. Gradually the crowd dispersed, having waited for the news that the poor Bishop was well on the way to recovery, and the Scottish Masons began to move in. There was a small scuffle amongst the local radio crew when it transpired that their smuggled video camera had jammed at the crucial moment.
    Over the days that followed there was a marked increase in the ranks of Those Who Had Seen – the party that was tasting the sweet tang of autobeatification. Soon the less fortunate party came to number only three; Clive, who none the less counted himself as a believer, Mrs Delaney-Siedentrop, who most certainly did not, and Fergus Gibson, who had suddenly had a bad feeling about his mother and had left the service during the Dean’s brief address.

8
    ‘Mother?’
    Fergus stood in the doorway of Lilias Gibson’s room. The old woman was slumped sideways against her pillows. Between her dashingly military wedding photograph and a silver-framed one of her adopted Nigerian chiefling, the early morning tea he had brought her before leaving remained untouched.
    ‘Mother? Are you asleep?’
    Fergus advanced to the bedstead. A huge round mirror on the wall to stage left of her bed reflected the touching scene; rapidly greying interior designer peering concerned at snow-white, unconscious ex-missionary.
    ‘Mother?’
    Still she lay, her head dangling in mid-air. Her hair, still brushed out for the night, formed a lacquer-stiffened cloud around her tiny skull. The draught through the open door caused it to drift slightly. Its whiteness and that of the pillows made her ancient skin seem a warm, toffee brown.
    ‘Please no. Mother?’ He reached out and touched her neck with his fingertips.