3’ x 8’ x 6’

Anubis looked down on the breakroom from his place on the highest shelf among the spare lightbulbs and binbags. A cobweb that spanned the space between his dusty snout and a small, spare watering can fluttered in the updraft of the electric heater. Under his basalt gaze, close to the ticking heater, a man in a heavy coat sat quietly at a table reading a newspaper. Opposite him a much younger man drummed at the screen of his phone with mantis thumbs.

 “When can I start digging the holes?” said the younger man, without looking up from the screen of his phone.

“They’re not holes, they’re graves; we’re not hole diggers, we’re grave diggers,” said the older man without looking up from his newspaper.

“I’m not though, am I? You’re a grave digger, I’m a grave filler,” said the young man looking up from his phone and letting his plastic chair rock forward to rest on all four legs.

“Backfilling is an essential job,” said the older man, turning a page with thick fingers, “it takes years to be really good at it.”

“It’s just refilling the holes.”

“Aye, but leaving them open is frowned upon,” said the older man with a sigh.

“But anyone could do it.”

The older man smoothed the pages of his newspaper with a calloused hand and looked up at the young man. “You aren’t just filling a hole; you are burying a body. You are interring the mortal remains of a human being. You are, hopefully, the last person who will ever see their coffin. Every swing of your shovel blots out another patch of the sky that they have walked under since they took their first steps. You are tucking them in so that they might enjoy the blessed rest of everlasting peace,” said the older man, before knocking work-tanned knuckles on the puzzle page. “Now, can I enjoy the blessed peace of my break?”

“But digging them out would be better cardio.”

The older man stared at his apprentice for a second before dropping his head back to his paper. “Put the kettle on.” 

Anubis watched the young man scrape his chair back from the small Formica table and fill the kettle at a sink below the shelf where the god stood.

“How long have you been doing this?” said the young man, sniffing suspiciously at the milk that had been out of the fridge since the last time he had been required to make the tea.   

“Started the week I left school.”

“When was that?” Two teabags aimed at the well-used mugs on the bench missed completely and skidded onto the floor.

“Nineteen seventy-six.”

“Jesus Christ! That’s before Star Wars came out. The old Star Wars!”

“It was a long time ago, in a cemetery far, far away. Well, the one at St. Bede’s about ten miles away, but that is a lot of graves. That’s why I dig the graves and you backfill, and make the tea.”

“How long were you on backfilling?”

“Long enough. A lot longer than you’ve been doing it.”

“Who was doing the digging in those days?”

“Man called Steve Roberson. Gaucho Steve.”

“Did he make you make the tea?”

“No, because we didn’t have a kettle. We had a shed with a paraffin heater and one chair.”

“So you sat in it when he was digging and he sat in it while you were filling?”

“No, because when he was digging I was watching, learning how to do it properly, and when I was filling he was watching, telling me I was doing it wrong.”

“Is that why they called him Groucho?”

“Gaucho. It’s a sort of Argentinian cowboy. He was pretty grouchy though. He was convinced the council were going to get shot of all their grave diggers and put the job out to tender. He thought a private company would come in and do the work in half the time with an excavator and we’d be made redundant.”

“You can use an excavator! Why haven’t we got an excavator?”

“Because you can do a better job with a spade.”

“You called it a shovel before.”

“I called yours a shovel. Mine is a spade. We’ve been through this. Spade for digging, shovel for filling. Anyway, there has been a graveyard here since the thirteenth century, the paths can’t take an excavator.”

“You should have told Cowboy Steve.”

“Gaucho Steve. He knew that, he was just making excuses. He had a dream of running away to Argentina to be a gaucho, so he told himself there was no future in gravedigging. He should have stuck to what he knew, he was a great grave digger.”

    “Why did he go to Argentina then?”

“To see the world. He wanted to ride on the Pampas, work on the cattle farms, and he did, but not for long.”    

“What happened?”

“The Falklands war.”

“Was that in Argentina?”

“Well, depends who you ask. Did you not learn about it at school? 1982?”

“I was born in 2004.”

“Bloody hell. My spade is older than you. What do they teach you in school these days? Anyway, never mind, look it up on your phone. It was a war between Argentina and the UK, so English lads weren’t too popular in Argentina at the time, as you’d imagine. Gaucho Steve got chucked off the ranch where he was working and ended up with a cleaning job in a corned beef factory. He stuck it out for a few more years but ended up coming back over here.”

“Back to the graveyard?”

“No, poor bugger, he was ruined by the time he got back. All sorts of health problems. Never worked again. Never ate corned beef again either.”

“Where is he now?”

“Under the willow by the East gate.”

“Seriously? He’s dead?”

“He was when I buried him.”

“Good job you didn’t want to run away to be a cowboy.”

“No, not me. I stayed here and got good at what I do. I didn’t see the Pampas, but I saw a lot of life and I dug a lot of very good graves for a lot of different people, including Gaucho Steve. That’s why I won him,” said the older man, pointing up at the Anubis statuette, erect on his marble plinth, web-draped on the shelf.

“So, when can I start digging the graves?”

“When I can’t do it anymore.”

“When will that be?”

“When it’s mine you’re digging. Now put the kettle on.”