Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [69]
Graham said, ‘Least he was a decent bloke. Not like Dr McDougall.’
Clive shook his head. ‘That man was a complete bastard,’ he told us. ‘I haven’t got a good word to say for him.’
Ed’s wife asked, ‘Why?’
‘Didn’t like anyone, as far as I could tell. Some disgusting habits, too. Used to write the organ weights in blood on the walls, until I bollocked him about it. Never forgave me for that. He crossed me right off his Christmas card list.’
Ed said, ‘Tell them about Dick Romney.’
Clive sighed happily. ‘Good old Dick. Thin as a rake, he was; I used to worry when he had a shower in case he stepped on the plughole and fell through.’
‘He had a shower once, all right,’ Graham chipped in.
‘That’s right, he did, didn’t he?’ Clive laughed. ‘He was getting the kidneys off the pluck once when he stuck his finger through this big renal cyst filled with urine. Shot right into his face and soaked him; he swallowed some, too.’ Anne Burberry made a face, as did Maddie. Clive went on, ‘Never drove above forty miles an hour, even on the motorway, because of all the car crashes he’d had to look at.’
‘Don’t forget the trousers,’ put in Ed.
‘God, yes, the trousers!’ At our blank looks, Clive explained. ‘Never changed his trousers; he must have worn the same pair every day for ten years. Got so that they could stand up on their own. You learned never to look below his waist because of all the odd stains.’
We were laughing so hard at this that we were getting some looks, but no one minded much by then and the conversation moved on to some of Clive’s old technician colleagues. ‘When I first started here, I had to work with Alf and Bert. Alf wasn’t too bad – a bit like a caveman, but able to do the job when he could be bothered – but Bert was something else. He was the stupidest man who ever lived; couldn’t tie his own shoelaces and had to stop walking whenever he let one rip. He was married to a Thai woman and everyone but Bert knew that she earned some pocket money on her back with her legs akimbo; he just thought she was careful with the housekeeping. He used to go on regular holidays to Thailand on his own with just a change of clothes in a carrier bag; he’d come back and spend the next six weeks giving employment to the clap clinic staff.
‘He and Alf used to get up to some outrageous scams. I know for a fact that they used to eviscerate the bodies the night before and leave them out; sometimes, on hot summer nights, some of them started to go off’ Clive turned to Maddie and me sternly. ‘Don’t ever do that, girls. Not bloody professional. Not bloody professional at all.’
Ed said, ‘They used to get the organs mixed up, didn’t they?’
‘Nothing was ever proved, but people did wonder . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Bert finally left when he hatched this cunning plan to get his pension and carry on working. It required him to resign, stay off work for a couple of months, and then get his old job back. Simple really, except that it meant asking Alex McDougall, then the head of department, to re-employ him, and he refused.’
Listening to all this, I was amazed at how life must once have been in the mortuary. It seemed to be much more regulated and controlled these days, something I thought could only be for the good. At least, though, it made the evening fly past and, what with the wine and the food, it was a brilliant night.
THIRTY-SIX
Ed and I were having a beer evening, something which we had taken to doing on odd occasions since becoming good friends. As we sat in the Cross Keys in the early