Paul Angel paul@ddm1.co.uk
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When a body is found outside, in the landscape, it demands a level of attention not afforded to a death indoors. Being found dead anywhere is an undignified ending, as ‘to be found’ implies that the person died alone, or if not, that they died by another’s hand.
A body was found in the Gardens, first thing. There are worse places to die: on a battlefield is one, in the workplace must surely rank as a very poor place to spend your final seconds. If you’re going to die anywhere alone, make it in a summer meadow, or in a woodland in early spring, so that your dying senses have one last chance to absorb the world you were so lucky to be alive in. This body was found on a damp cold Friday morning, just after sunrise, on a footpath by the river. No name, no identity, just a stink of Special Brew and piss, or vice versa. The final indignity of this lonely alcoholic was to have his picture snapped by the local press with a long-range lens and a complete absence of sensitivity. Ordinarily, when a person dies, there is sadness. There are family and friends and workmates and neighbours who are affected and upset and comforted by each other. For this body found dead in the Gardens there is none of that. He will be identified eventually, from a register at the YMCA - he is neither missing nor missed, just another seaside town problem, and one less to worry about. But there is an upside. When the Police come, there is an air of celebration – the man’s dead, but still, up goes a marquee, and blue and white bunting, from tree to tree. The officers stand around in their bright coloured coats and jolly hats and drink tea from plastic cups and chat with members of the public, telling nothing, but telling all just by being there. “I wonder who he was?” say passers by, just as they would if a horse drawn funeral procession was to pass through the street, and so for this anonymous death there is a moment of fame, a posthumous fifteen minutes. But then we go on our way. Outside of the blue-taped cordon, people pass on the way to the seafront or back to the shops, and in the drizzle children play, unaware of the meaning of the tent and the tape that’s imprinted in every adult mind by news footage and TV dramas. In the shops, tills bleep and ring, and in the streets there is the bustle of the everyday. By mid afternoon, the body is gone, and by sunset the tent and the tape and the evidence of death will be packed and washed away. I meet one man who claims to have known him: “I don’t feel fuckin’ sorry for him,” he said, “If he can’t take his fuckin’ drink and falls and cracks his fuckin’ head it’s not my fuckin’ problem,” he said. “Bum a fag?” he said, and I shook my head and he stumbled away. |