Human Remains

ask. Don’t they smell bad? I know you want to know, don’t you? That’s the first question I’d ask, if I were in your position.
    They all smell different, of course, which is part of the charm. Although the smell is pervasive and lingers in the nostrils for a long time after I’ve left them, I’ve never found it intolerable. When you’ve been around them for a long time, you notice how the smell changes and develops as the decomposition progresses. At times it can be like rancid cheese, vomit, spoiled meat, even sweetish, like an exotic dessert you are almost brave enough to try. I object to the smell of decomposing food, of course. It’s similar, but has less appeal.
    I wear the same clothes when I pay my visits, and wash them often. The scent clings to the fabric, as I imagine the scent of a lover would, and as much as I would enjoy smelling my own clothes I cannot risk others noticing it.
    Actually, I haven’t told the complete truth there. I said I never found it intolerable, but there was one. Robin, I think he was called. An alcoholic, although I remember him being an intelligent man who would have been a witty and engaging conversationalist were it not for the tragedy of his life. I hadn’t realised the depth of his alcoholism until he began to decompose, and the odour that came from his fermented liver was quite unlike anything I’ve ever smelt. Even I found it difficult to bear. I went back to him less frequently, but each time it was worse, and after a couple of visits I stopped going.
    I spent longer with Maggie yesterday evening than I have for a long time. Once I started talking, I found it hard to stop. She’s a very good listener.
     
     
    In the end it was very late when I got home and consequently I slept late this morning.
    After lunch I decided on a whim to go and visit my mother in the Larches. I thought it would provide some useful distraction from my worries about the police investigation.
    She was asleep in an upright chair in the day room, her head resting at an awkward angle. A number of ladies were watching a football match on the large television, the sound turned up to prohibit conversation. I pulled up a footstool and sat next to my mother, hoping she wouldn’t wake up before I’d managed to stay the half-hour I’d decided was a reasonable amount of time. I watched the football, for want of something better to do, but it was unbelievably tedious.
    When I next looked up at her she was awake and staring at me, even though she hadn’t moved her head at all.
    ‘Hello, Mother,’ I said.
    She didn’t speak but continued to stare, unblinking. Some food was crusted in the corners of her open mouth.
    I had a sudden recollection of a moment from my childhood – although my father was already dead, so I must have been a teenager – when she had forced me to eat a saucepan full of cabbage that I had allowed to boil dry. For some reason she believed she’d left me in charge of the dinner while she had gone next door to speak to her friend, and when she came back the kitchen was full of a foul-smelling yellow smoke, and the pan was crackling on the stove top. I was in the study reading a book, oblivious to it.
    My dinner was put in front of me at the dining table shortly afterwards, a pan full of cabbage half-stuck to the burned bottom, and a fork with which to prise it loose. When I refused she left me sitting there for an hour, staring miserably at it. After that hour, she scraped a lump of the cabbage from the pan with her claw-like fingernails and pushed it into my mouth, while I struggled and cried and fought for breath.
    ‘You hate me,’ I whispered to the ghost of my mother in her wing-backed chair, ‘don’t you?’
    Her eyes glinted back at me.
    I left shortly afterwards, calling in at the Matron’s office on the way out to make sure she was fully aware of my presence and therefore not likely to phone me again for a few weeks.
    It has crossed my mind more than once that my poor dear mother is in need of a merciful release. I can imagine, imprisoned in a body that’s now beyond her control, that she would quite possibly rather be dead, especially if, as they seem to suggest, her mind is still sharp. I have no doubt at all from the vile look in her eyes today that she’s entirely lucid. And, whilst it is within my powers to assist her with ending her miserable existence – should that be the path she chooses, of course – I find that I’m relishing the thought