‘In here’ – he gestures at the room – ‘you will watch demonstrations, but more importantly and more commonly, you will stand alongside your tutor, either myself or Norman, my deputy, and watch us work, gradually practising aspects of the procedure yourselves. Occasionally, you will go out to homes or hospitals to accompany embalmers, but the bulk of your work will be in here.’ He pauses and looks in turn at each of them, enjoying, William thinks, the assumed gravity of the moment. ‘And if you work hard and pay attention, what you learn here over the next twelve months will turn you into some of the best embalmers in Europe.’
Ray’s eyes dart all over the room. For William, Simon and Roger, nothing in here is new; the embalming tables, the trolleys with buckets and drainage trays, the cadaver. They will all have had access to mortuaries and chapels of rest from an early age. In fact, William will have been a relative latecomer at fourteen.
Arthur walks towards the door, beckoning them to follow. In the far corner of the adjacent, smaller room are two stacks of six stretchers, and embedded in the wall, cool storage chambers.
‘These are actually an ex-air raid precaution.’ Arthur lays his hand on the basic-looking steel frames, each with five wooden slats, painted white, running lengthways. On each corner is a metal bracket which enables them to be stacked. ‘Simple, but they do the job. Bodies are stored here, and taken through to the demonstration room next door.’
William wishes he felt kinder, more generous towards Ray, but being near him raises unease in himself, an unease that takes him back further than his first weeks with Robert, when he stood next to his first cadaver with his uncle’s hand on his shoulder. What bothers him today, glancing every now and then at Ray, is the knowledge that he, eight years ago, and almost dizzy with the unfamiliarity of it all, was just as much of an oddball himself. And who knows what those four years in Cambridge would have been like had he not been rescued so early and so completely by Martin and his friendship, which both cocooned him and propelled him out into chorister life. He’s not unaware how perverse it is, that rather than wanting to offer the same kind of rescue to Ray, to go out of his way to ease his passage into a new world, William resents Ray for the mirror he presents him with. Well-practised, William swats the image of Martin from his mind.
‘You’ll learn your trade here. Observing good practice and practising yourselves are the heart of what we do. Nevertheless, there’s no avoiding the theoretical knowledge you need. At the end of each day, you’ll be given a written question from your tutor, and that evening, you’ll answer it to the best of your ability, using Scudamore. When your tutor has time, you’ll go through your answers together.
‘So’ – Arthur claps his large hands – ‘let’s get to work.’
As they follow Arthur back to the demonstration room, William glances at Ray’s feet, anticipating correctly that his shoes are scuffed and worn.
The subdued, dreamy light from the single opaque window high up on the wall snaps into something hard and bright as Arthur turns on a lamp next to the table. Once they are all gathered, with notebooks balanced on clipboards, he slides the paper sheet from the body.
33
‘It’s slave labour.’
Ray and William are waiting to order drinks while Roger and Simon save the table at their first lunchbreak.
‘Rubbish.’ William bristles every time this man opens his mouth and shows his ignorance. ‘We’ve got to practise on real bodies. We can’t just play around and then throw them away, so it’s better we help with a real embalming. What’s the other option?’
‘They pay us, Einstein.’
‘But they’re training us! Everyone pays to be trained, don’t they?’
‘No.’
William thinks Ray is making up for not knowing anything in class by being such a know-it-all now.
‘Apprentices get paid,’ says Ray. ‘Not much, but something.’
William hasn’t thought of that – he doesn’t really know much about how things work in the wider world. The barman is taking his time to wipe down the counter at the other end of the room, chatting to regulars. He wishes he’d hurry up and take their order so they can get back to Roger and Simon. He doesn’t want them to think he and Ray are a pair just because they’re young.
‘I was offered a car mechanic’s apprenticeship back home,’ says Ray, ‘and they’d have paid me.’
‘Maybe you should have taken it.’