At the side

"Not bloody bored now, are you, John Atherton?"

John sweated into his collar, his kex, the shovel handle and the mud of Charlie Waterworth's grave. In time John's brow would do its bit to rot Charlie's posh wood casket: John's brow and the still pricking rain. Sweat met the drizzle and mixed. The hole was three feet deep, but it should've been five by now; the Waterworths would have to make room for the two diggers during the burial at this rate. John looked round at the four walls, at Bert perched owlishly at the side, and Bert's pipe, held pointing at the sky. Just the sight of the mud around him sapped the strength from John's arms and he tried to get his breath back, looking all the time at Bert.

"Yes."

Bert frowned. "Ah, bugger you," he said and got back to his pipe. He puffed at it, with a beat that he seemed to want John to follow with his digging. He looked at John, who started work again. Slowly he dug. He stressed each pull of the shovel, stretched it out till it was like an actor digging. Every move he tried to put between two sucks of Bert's pipe. Out of the corner of his eye John looked for a reaction.

Finally Bert ground his teeth on the stem and said: "Can't you go any bloody faster, John Atherton?"

"Can't you give us hand, y'old sod?" John was having trouble with the soil. It had clumped itself onto the shovel as far as the where the wood handle began. He shook the shovel, then swung it round so he could reach the other end. "This'd never take so bloody long if you were in 'ere as well." He pulled a clod off the edge of the blade. It crumbled in his hands, leaving two small bones.

"Ugh! Agh! Bloody hell!" he cried, appalled; he dropped them and tried to climb backwards up the side of the grave.

"What's wrong wi you now, you bugger?" Bert asked angrily.

"Bones! Bloody bones!" John was sat on the grass now, legs still hanging over the hole, but tensed up so they didn't dangle down against the sides. John changed his mind again and stood up, far away from the grave.

Bert looked down into it. He chewed on his gums a bit. This was an old church. Some graves might have lost their stones over the years. They might have been digging one up all this time. If there were a body already in there then they'd have to stop on this hole and dig another somewhere else. There just wasn't time for that. He spied the white fragments that John had dug up, and suddenly he laughed a whip-crack that echoed off the surrounding hills.

"A mole! Frightened by bones of a mole! Daft bugger. Get back into t'ole, go on. Learn yirself a thing or two from t'mole."

"I'm not going back in there. There might be summat else."

"Frightened, are ye?"

"Aye."

"Bloody kids," said Bert, meaning just the one. "Wish I'd never bloody gone ter wake ye. Right." And he bent himself one bit of limb at a time into the hole, slowly, to try and make John feel a bit of guilt. When John had said nothing and Bert was in the grave, Bert called up: "Well?"

"Well what?"

Bert said, holding his arms out as if to point himself out to John. "I'm in."

"So?"

"So, come down an' all."

"Bugger that!"

"Blimey, ye're a moody bugger."

"Yeah? So're you."

"I'm old and knackered. What excuse do you 'ave for it, eh?"

John tried to think of one. He looked round, and both their tempers cooled. Trying in vain to fan the flames, Bert repeated: "Eh?" But John couldn't think of an answer, and he looked so miserable stood up there covered in mud, rain like tears on his cheeks, a child's face, that Bert felt sorry for him.

"I'm young and fed up!"

"Fed up? What, wi' diggin'?" Confused, Bert picked up the shovel and bent to work.

"No, not that. Just... nowt ever happens." It was more complicated, but John could never get further than that.

"What about t'mole? That was summat, wasn' it?"

John rolled his eyes. "I don' want bloody mole bones!" he shouted. "What's t'bloody point of a bloody mole? I want summat interestin' to 'appen. I'm fed up of this 'ole bloody place. Sooner I get outer 'ere the better."

John paused and was quiet. They both heard the sound of footsteps down by the church. They looked at each other and then craned their necks towards the noise. The Waterworths had started to arrive. Early.

"Oh, bloody hell," they both said, and then Bert: "Come on, John. We must 'ave an hour at most." John nodded, picked up a second shovel, and jumped into the grave, and they both hacked away at the ground. Faster they hewed, chopping as if their lives were at stake. Bert stuck his head up once and saw the vicar looking over at them, a frown on his face that meant excommunication. "Oh, bloody hell," he said again, bent over, whacked the shovel into the ground and pulled hard on the handle.

"Agh, me back!" Bert shouted and staggered backwards. His face was cringed with pain. "Oh, Jesus, John, me back's gone." He breathed hard a few times and tried to steady himself, still in the same position. John didn't know what to say. Bert had back trouble sometimes; he used it to excuse never picking anything heavy up. But this weren't a time for skiving, so Bert must mean it. "What're we gonner do now?" the old man cried out.

John looked at him for a few seconds. "Right," he decided and, dropping his own shovel, scrambled out of the grave.

"What? What's goin' on? John! Don' leave me in 'ere!"

"I'm gettin' that bloody thing started."

Bert looked like he hadn't heard. Then his mouth swung open with shock. Stiff with pain from his chest to his hips, he made a few tries at getting out of the grave before he was stood, bent as usual, and began to waddle after John.

"Ye don't know how to bloody drive!" he called at John's back.

John flapped a hand back at Bert "Can't be that 'ard," he said. "How fast can it go? It's only a bloody digger."

John got to the cab and pulled himself into the seat. Bert had left the keys in, and they swung with the shock of John's sitting down. He turned them and there was a noise like half a pull of a saw on wood. He turned them again, and again there was the noise. He pulled out a knob marked "CHOKE" and fiddled with a stick that must have been the gears. He turned the keys, messed with something, turned the keys, another couple of sticks, but they were probably for the digger arm, turned the keys, turned the keys.... Nothing.

"Look," Bert said, "best leave it, eh? I couldn't get it to bloody start this morning, an' I were at it for a good hour an' alf. We don't have time for this, John Atherton. Get out of that bloody machine and give us 'and with diggin'-"

John turned the keys again: nothing. "John! Come on!" Pissed off at Bert and the digger both, he kicked out at the metal plates between him and the engine. It all roared to life. Left in gear by Bert, and then put into and out of gear a few times by John, before being left in gear again, the digger took off and pitched itself over a few ruts before pointing itself towards the church.

John struggled to turn left or right, but nothing seemed to work. The lumber and plod of the digger quickly put enough space between him and Bert that he couldn't hear any of his advice, couldn't hear it anyway over the banging of the engine; he realized that, like it or not, this was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in years. As the friends and family of the dearly departed Charlie Waterworth scattered from the path to the church—a path that the digger was bent on taking—he thought briefly about all the things that had ever happened in the village. None of them would compare to this. And, watching the huge arm of the runaway beast struck the church door, and finding time had slowed down, as splinters flew this way and that way to the tune of a crashing, grinding racket of a noise, John decided that he would never, ever, complain again that nothing ever happened.