It seems I have to apologise to a number of my readers for giving them such an awful shock. Alright, I'm sorry if it upset you to learn of Sir Jeremy Akehurst's departure from this life, but - let's face it - he'd had a generous innings.
To look on the bright side of this situation, it has been possible over the past week or so for me to examine some interesting differences between owl-culture and how you quackes behave. To begin with, we have different reactions to the status known as 'dead'. This can fairly be described as 'that status in which one exists only in other people's memories', but this is at odds with the scientific fact that matter is indestructible. It all depends on how one regards the alternative status, known as 'alive'. This, I think, occurs when the body and the spirit are united in co-existence and it came as some surprise to us (we owls, that is) to learn that quackers have spirits and believe in some kind of afterlife. From what I can see of them, there is some doubt about their assertion that there is life before death; life with no flying or hunting, spent largely in their dismal offices, can hardly be described as 'life' as we owls know it.
Anyway, the important part of Sir Jeremy - his spirit - became detached from the rather attractive body in which it had existed for about eighty years. The same thing happened to my dad, Wobble, when we were barely fledged. As the sun rose one morning, he was drifting home from his last hunting trip of the night, the trip on which he fed himself, when he was clipped by the wing-tip of a hang-glider. Penny carried on raising us until we were ready to fly, all the time expecting Wobble to re-appear, but he didn't. It was me that found him where he had fallen, but there was not much left of him for me after various other creatures had eaten their fill. It was then that Penny and me became a couple.
I had never seen a quacker achieve deadness before, and I could not believe the fuss and rigmarole that all the quackers put themselves through in order to get rid of the part of Sir Jeremy that was of so little further use. The box that they chose to put him in, by the way, would have upset Sir Jeremy, because he had asked for "an old pine crate" to be used, "preferably one that's nearly worn out with use, or you can get the lads from the hairdressers to knock me one up in the scenery workshop, something made out of old tat and off-cuts," but they made him a really posh one in oak, with brass handles and a name-plate on it, saying who was inside. God knows why.
A whole breed of corpse-disposers emerged, called 'undertakers' but better described as 'money-takers'. In my view, the live ones would have done better to pull him out into the garden at The Laurels (rest home for elderly gentlefolk) and let nature take its course. I mean, a lot of creatures -tasty snacks in themselves - make their living from corpses. Incidentally, it's the use of that word 'corpse' that intrigues me. It reminds me of the theatrical verb 'to corpse', which means "to spoil a piece of acting by forgetting one's lines or laughing uncontrollably". Well... what that's got to do with all the hypocritical posturing I saw, I don't know. And as for 'laughing uncontrollably', that's what they should have done. Those quackers would have done well to remember that I can read all their thoughts.
Most quackers that we know have become accustomed to Penny's and my relationship with Oscar and Cara; they know that we are part of the family, so were not surprised when I could be seen sitting quietly on Oscar's shoulder, Penny on Cara's. throughout this difficult period. For instance, I was with Oscar when he and Sam Adams attended the solicitors' office to read Sir Jeremy's last instructions. These included his funeral requirements, but much of it was boring stuff about property and money in conclusion of some arrangements that had been in place for many years. Sir Jeremy had insisted on tidying all this up when Sam came back to Malcaster, even though they assured him that he would live for many years yet. Smart Sir Jeremy!
I've never seen so many quackers all at one time as the crowd that came to the burning. It seemed an awful waste to put him in an ornate box and then burn the whole lot, but I suppose this is just another example of quacker stupidity; the box would have been jolly useful for someone to build a nest in and raise a brood of chicks... several broods. Quite a few Granary members assembled in the theatre foyer on the evening before, where Oscar and Sam had stood the box in the corner with its lid off, so that Sir Jeremy could - if he had had his eyes open - have seen the celebration and joined in. The money-takers had made Sir Jeremy look all pious and solemn, so Sam fetched some fresh make-up from the dressing rooms and gave him a big smile. He still looked all wrong in a dark suit and regimental tie, so they got Cara to find the old Widow Twankey costume, complete with ginger wig and chest enhancements. With all this on, Sir Jeremy looked far more jovial and in keeping with a mood of celebration.
The Granary has about 300 members, many of whom attended the wake, and each of them greeted the star of the show as they arrived. With a bit of imagination, the lads could have arranged for Sir Jeremy to acknowledge everybody, to nod and smile at everybody and mention them by name. That would have been nice, but, quite frankly, they did very well in the time allowed to have him standing upright and properly dressed. Any further machinery might have been described as overkill.
My friend Rollo (the bar steward) kept everybody supplied with strong drink and nibbles that they all poured and stuffed down their beaks in vast quantities. There was a lot of singing and dancing and, when the jollity was at its peak, Oscar called for silence and said, "We are assembled here tonight to perform a sad duty, but our friend here..." (gesture toward coffin) "...left strict instructions that there should be no long faces on this occasion. He was especially keen for everybody to remember that he began his life in a Peckham council flat, the son of a grocer's assistant: facts of which he was justly proud. Frequently, he recalled the debt of gratitude he felt he owed to our former Patron, the late Sir Robert Sidley-Smyth, with whom he served in World War Two and who helped him undergo his formal training as an actor. How he used that training and his introduction to Malcaster are parts of the legend that we celebrate tonight. I take this opportunity to forewarn you of a provision in his will that we re-allign our thinking in this theatre in order to find again what he called 'Shakespeare's Audience. Above all else, he wanted no sadness at this event, only celebration of a life lived to the full, so..." He allowed a dramatic pause. "Yet..." Another pause. "I feel it my duty to remind you of one of Sir Jeremy's particular aversions, when I quote him as bellowing red-faced in a paroxysm of anger, '...and there's one thing that makes my blood BOIL! .... CREMATION!! " And at that the revelry began in earnest. Rollo was delighted because Sir Jeremy had left enough of those quackers' folding paper things to pay for the whole event, plus a special Bar Steward's Bonus.
Oscar and Sam were among the ones who kept the grin on Sir Jeremy's face by singing and dancing, shouting and laughing, all the way through until a horse-drawn gun-carriage arrived just before noon. Then they all had to dash around to get into their costumes while the coffin was loaded. It was the Territorial Army, by the way, who had found the gun-carriage, which seemed appropriate for a former soldier. To everyone's amazement, they had also found four jet-black cart-horses to pull it
Two of the horses had had that awful operation done to them, but the lead horse on the right had not, which was a bit unfortunate because the fourth horse was a sprightly mare who was just coming into season. I quite liked her; she had a sense of humour, but the stallion was a bad-tempered oaf who kept flaring his nostrils and stamping his hooves. They all had black plumes stuck into their bridles, which looked jolly spectacular. I commented to the mare that they all looked like Shire cart-horses, but I had never seen a black one before, let alone four of them, to which she relied with a snigger, "And it took a hell of a lot of Grecian 2000 to get us looking like this."
Eventually, all the Malcaster Players appeared in their costumes and formed up behind the gun-carriage for the procession to the crematorium. The chief money-taker insisted on walking solemnly in front of the entourage in order to lend (as he called it when addressing his assistants) "just a hint of professionalism and decorum to this drunken rabble". And off he strode at a very slow pace indeed, then had to wait while everybody else caught him up. I could hear his fee increasing by the minute.
In accordance with Sir Jeremy's wishes, Wardrobe had supplied everybody with their favourite costume, to wear for the procession through Malcaster, so it was only Cara and a couple of her ladies who were in civvies. Everybody else looked as jolly as you can imagine, and danced along with tunes played by the few musical members who were augmented by some buglers and drummers from the T.A.. Only Sam and Oscar looked slightly serious, because Sam wore his 'Hamlet' outfit while Oscar was dressed as 'Prospero' complete with a gigantic magic wand that he used to control people.
Naturally, Malcaster came to a standstill as we passed through. The people, in their hundreds, paused and gawped, then lined up along the route, six deep in some places, to grin and cheer the spectacle we were providing. I reckon they were so impressed by what they saw that, if we had pushed our luck then, we would have been halfway to "regaining Shakespeare's Audience", as Sir Jeremy had so dearly wished.
At the crematorium, the coffin was arranged on a sort of apron stage with bunches of flowers cascaded all round and over it, thousands of them - really gay. For a short period when a man who looked far more cadaverous than our corpse spoke (he turned out to be the Bishop of Malcaster and specially employed to interpose between us and God), everybody looked sad and bowed their heads, so I had to suffer a cacophony of muttering as they all thought their private thoughts, not many of which (truth to tell) were about Sir Jeremy. Lots of people got up and said bits of Shakespeare and stuff, but the best moment came when the box disappeared through the tabs. Sam and Oscar had delivered the cue for this to happen, in unison and in loud ringing tones of "Fear no more the heat o' the sun, the furious winter's rages; thou thy worldly task hath done; home art gone and ta'en they wages," and the coffin slid upstage to a general blackout in deadly silence and the tabs glided together. It was then that some really cheerful music started and everybody joined in with Gracie Fields singing "Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye."
Everybody agreed that we had given Sir Jeremy a send-off that he would have enjoyed, and probably did - even though he kept quiet throughout the proceedings - but it took the entire membership several days to recover. When their heads were cleared, it was necessary to put all the productions back on track and this included the one by the Actors' Workshop which was left with only a week to get pulled into shape ready for its first performance. Everybody panicked and, already, rumours were leaking out about the provisions of Sir Jeremy's last will and testament. Jotting No. 25, 'Back from 1954'. will give you some idea of the flavour of things, but notices were sent out in accordance with the Constitution and Rules, calling an Extraordinary General Meeting.
Even before Sir Jeremy's ashes were scattered into the Great Surrey Canal, the Granary Theatre had reverted to its usual business of political infighting and mindless back-stabbing. An opportunity for peace and success had been missed again.
Jonah was a very experience director, teacher and writer who sadly passed away in February 2006. He was also the author of the highly successful "Playmaker - The Craft of Directing Plays (The Way I Seen It)".