The Missing Body

I would like to introduce you to, 'The Missing Body' alternatively known as, 'The Coffin.'  This is an original farce, perhaps somewhat black in its humour, that I hope amuses you.

Background to the Missing Body

 

This short story is set at the end of the 1960’s, a time when Britain had  been fully woken by the pop boom and still revelled in the euphoria of winning the 1966 Football World Cup. Rural towns and villages remained sleepy with no giant supermarkets, fast food or coffee chains. Chicken in the basket with a glass of blended plonk was considered a posh night out.  Manufacturing industry was thriving as was the Scouting movement. Health & Safety was in its infancy and there was a general feeling that nothing bad could happen to our kids. Sometimes they had to experience a clip round the ear or a bloody nose to help prepare them for adulthood. Parks still had keepers and it was safe to cycle on the roads. TV was still in black & white and the local copper was still very much revered.

 

The story that you are about to read is based loosely on a true one told by the master magician John Milner (http://www.milnersmagic.com/). Intending to include it in his stage show, John had had a trick coffin constructed. Unfortunately the trick did not work out as he had intended. Being unhappy with the required illusion, he decided to get rid of the coffin. However, how to dispose of a coffin? John chose to engage some boy scouts, getting them to bury it in a seaside beach. Not the wisest of moves. Well, it might have been had they not been spotted on the beach. John’s story got me thinking.

 

I have written this fictional tale as a set of conversations without including any detail about the characters involved, the locations or story atmosphere other than what emerges during the conversations.  You, the reader, are invited to let loose with your own imagination. The settings for my story are:

 

The Black Country:

  • a typical small two up, two down Victorian house with a scullery kitchen and downstairs toilet. A yard at the back with rear access for the owner’s small open-backed lorry;
  • a small timber yard and coffin making workshop set up at the back of a similar property; and
  • the local Scout hut;

West Wales:

  • a grassed field in coastal Wales, usually inhabited by cattle, but made available as a Scout campsite during the summer months;
  • a clean sandy beach a mile or so from the campsite, reached through more fields and over dunes, all situated between two headlands against which sits the seaside town of Aberafon;
  • Aberafon’s small Police Station; and
  • the Red Dragon, one of many small pubs in Aberafon and, fortuitously, situated next door to the Police Station.

Of course, this Aberafon is a fictional town, not dissimilar to the town of a different name where the real events took place. I wouldn’t want to get the police into trouble, now would I ……. though my guess is that the ones involved dined out on the story for a long time afterwards. The story kicks off in the Black Country with the central character Fred being asked a question by his wife May.