Apples and Prayers (14 page)

I'd been before, in previous years and had, of course, seen nothing. 

But, despite its childish nature and mere superstition, the prospect filled us both with dread. We needed a good suck on a bottle of old pearmain wine, to soothe our jitters before we set off.

It was a clear night for April's end, with a bright moon shining in a cloudless sky, like a newly-minted groat. It lit our way and shed enough beams for us not to have to bother with lanterns. As we walked along the winding lane from the Barton up to the village, the moonlight played between the overhanging branches of the trees, newly decked with buds and freshly opened leaves on their early bowers. This scintillation of the moon and the warming pearmain wine inside our blood, so excited us that our talk was merry and light and, for once during those days, I felt my burdens lifting.

‘Morgan,' Alford began, ‘you know how happy I am, now Dufflin's made his proposal! I can barely work for dreaming of our marriage.'

She was giggling and twittering like a skylark and the mottled moonlight made a pretty and delightful picture of her face, the brightest star of Devon. She was truly transformed by the inner growth of her child and had begun to flourish with its advance. She was also delighted, finally, by her boy's proposal of marriage, which had come just the day before. She seemed illumined from within by it, as she was illumined on the outside by moonbeams.

‘Go on,' I replied. ‘Tell me again if you must,' and I invited her to recount the detail once more. ‘It did sound… amusing…' I added.

She'd come rushing home from market just the day before, with an unaccountable smile on her face. She'd babbled like the shallows of the tumbling brook and I had needed to seat her before the hearth, calming her down with words and a secretive sup, before she poured her news out in quieter tones. Now we were on our way to the churchyard, she recounted the moment again.

‘He came up to me at market, Morgan… and I was proper with him when he approached, what with people's eyes upon us and all kinds of mutterings about… well, about you know what… Still, a chance to have some fun with him, I thought, so I gave him coy replies, you know, feigning blushes.'

‘Boys are so gullible,' I laughed.

‘And how, Morgan. It flustered him completely, the shyness I put on.'

‘And Dufflin still hadn't… noticed?' I nodded towards her belly and gave her a knowing smile.

‘He'd suspected nothing yet Morgan! Or, if he had, he didn't say a word. Anyway, I've been too worried to tell him, not until I had some sign he'd treat me with honour, in the proper fashion. It was him who got me in this way and him who should properly make amends, don't you think?'

‘Indeed I do Alford! But you're lucky – and unique – if you've found a boy who'll do so!'

‘I am. I am,' she said. ‘He came straight up to me, with the proudest, most dignified steps… Lord, you'd have mistaken him for some swaggery noble. And this without so much as a furtive glance from me to bring him over. Then, he took me politely by the hand and led me to a private place, you know, where the churchyard wall is, high up by Tremlett's yard?' As she remembered the moment, Alford's face shed pretty smiles, like a tree yielding its fruits.

‘And why was he even at market?' I asked her knowingly. ‘Surely he must have had a day's work at the forge?'

Alford bit her lip. ‘He has… how shall I say… missed more than a few hours' work in recent weeks.' I knew what she meant, for their loving hadn't blossomed in a void, but in careful hours stolen from their duties. ‘But you should have seen him, Morgan!' she went on, before I could comment. ‘He'd scrubbed himself up proper, like a gleaming new horse-brass, without so much as a smudge of blacksmith's soot upon him.'

‘He's usually quite begrimed from the smithy,' I agreed.

‘Aye, but nothing that a quick splash in the ford won't shift.'

‘Of course,' I said. ‘I meant nothing of it.' She smiled at me and went on.

‘No one scrubs up like that and strides around importantly, without having something weighty on their mind. I knew right away what he was going to say. “How now,” I played with him. “Why bring me here to this secluded spot where no one's eye can see what you're doing? I hope you haven't got improper intentions on me today, Dufflin?” I was coy, looking down, playing decent to make him squirm. He stumbled on…

‘“Alford,” he said, “sweet Alford I mean... It's my honest and clean intention... what I mean to say is... by your leave I would... that's if you so wish it...” and so he clattered on for some good length of time, barely able to get the proper words out in the right order, until I looked him firmly in the eye and answered him simply with “Yes”.

‘“What do you mean “Yes? ” he said.

‘“I mean “Yes” Dufflin. Yes you're a fool if you don't understand “Yes”. Yes I will marry you Dufflin, that's what you're asking me, isn't it, yes?

‘“Yes”, he said.

‘“Then ‘Yes' it is all round, Dufflin. I'll wed you.

‘“You will? But I've barely asked and…”'

Alford and I stopped in the lane and, crossing our wrists, grasped each other's hands to twist ourselves around in a carefree jig.

‘In this case, yes, I know what I desire, Morgan. What could be the outcome of these past few months, if not that Dufflin marries me and makes an honest father for his child?' She touched her belly and raised her eyes, which made them shine more strongly.

‘Anyway,' she went on, ‘my acceptance so amazed him that he faltered. He lost his balance. Stumbled over. Grazed his brow along the yew branch that was growing over where we stood.'

‘Fool,' I said, kindly.

‘It made him twist and lunge. He fell headlong into the wall and gave himself a blow which laid him out and I not so much as having touched him.'

‘Alford, you're wicked.'

‘Perhaps Morgan, but that wickedness gave me what I wanted, didn't it?'

‘I suppose it did,' I agreed.

‘Anyway, I wasn't sure if he was playing with me then, just lying there on the ground. Lord, I was worried! I shook him to see if he was all rright…'

‘And?'

‘He was out cold, Morgan!'

‘Mercy me,' I said.

‘That's when I screamed,' Alford admitted. ‘He came to almost immediately with that and people came running over from the market square to see what the noise was about. When they reached us, I was calm again and he was sitting there with a daft smile on that daft face.'

With her telling, we found that we'd disturbed the night's creatures all along the lane. Beyond the break of trees to our side, we could hear badgers scurrying back to the safety of their wooded setts and night owls hooting in the hollow tree trunks where their nests were secluded.

She was clearly very fond of her boy. What with bearing his child, her acceptance had been a formality. Not if, but when. Dufflin, however, only learned of the child's existence after he regained his senses there on the ground. He was, by her account, as well pleased by the news of his growing child, as he was by the notoriety that was already spreading amongst the market folk about his unusual proposal.

We walked a short while further and, when we reached the churchyard, Alford and I saw several from our village leaving through the gate. None of them appeared disturbed or frightened, which we took to mean that no spirits had, as yet, revealed themselves. A fact of very much relief. 

As we entered the churchyard we crossed ourselves and prayed for God's mercy that we wouldn't see our own, nor any other phantoms, there in the graveyard that night. 

The gate gave an almighty squeak as Alford lifted it, which startled her and made her turn to me with sudden worry.

‘Let's go back, Morgan,' she said, spinelessly. ‘The gate's squeaking its warning.'

‘Go to,' I chided her. ‘The gate doesn't speak at all. All it needs is an oaken pin to set it back straight on its hinges. You're frightened over nothing, Alford. Go and ask the carpenter to fix the rattler or, better still, prevail on your clean and dear Dufflin for an iron hinge to mend it.' 

With that I pressed her forward with a laugh and we were both within the walls of the churchyard.

Each and every week we came to church on one of the working days and once on our day of rest. But we seldom lingered in the graveyard, for the dead can take possession of a person's soul and never release them if that person's too mindful of the grave. 

Both Alford's parents had been laid to rest in paupers' graves. Polly White Hair had died unwedded, but she was given a grave with a stone carved with her maiden name, Polly Sercombes. It was natural that my Lord should see to her burial and afford her a dignified plot. My mother, too, had been buried at my Lord's expense perhaps, again, apology for her drowning under his water wheel. I don't know where my father or sisters are lying.

The few graves that had been dug in recent months, were all excavated by the Buckland gravesman, Ben Red. Ben was his given name, but Red his common one, called by all because of the blood-red colour of our land, tinged with the richness of iron. We imagined him standing in the sacred earth of a grave with a shovel in his hands, up to his knees in blood every day. It was an unfair description, but he bore it well, for a man with the most disagreeable job. 

‘Ben's Red once more,' they'd laugh at him when they saw him chucking earth and he'd shout back ‘One day it'll be your grave I'm digging, so mind who you offend!' 

His work had made him muscle-bound and impervious to the various weathers of the world, be they the daily weathers that fell on him from the heavens, or the weathers of woe that must have fallen on him as he stood waist high in graves his whole life. He was a carefree soul when he was sober, but he seemed to always need to finish his day's labour with a harder night's drinking and chasing women in the taverns. Maybe this was the only way he could see to return to his digging the following morning. He didn't seem to fear dying so much itself, as the death in life that the daily tedium of his work yielded and so he learned to live in, and for, the moment that he found himself in, bearing all hardships with a bullish thick skin and a bellyful of cider. 

I've always hoped that my final resting place would be prepared by a man with a careful mind; by a man who's given good thought to important matters of life and death and human repose. But Ben Red was no such man to dig a plot for it: the way that he carried on in pursuit of his pleasure and folly was as shameful as it was vain, for all must end in death, when all pointless pleasures take their leave of us. No one should have known this better than Ben Red. 

Once we were inside the graveyard, the night was by then quite clear, but silent and terribly chill. We huddled together on a grassy knoll under the old Russet tree, which had seeded itself many seasons before in the corner of the cemetery, where Polly's grave was sited. The tree was now grown to a considerable size. It was then just breaking out into bud and, before long, would bear plenty of apples. I looked up into its branches from my damp plot below. The trunk was peppered with holes, so old and knobbled, it seemed to grow on and up into the night sky, its limbs sprouting out in a five-armed star, that put me in mind of our Saviour's five Holy wounds themselves. A slight breeze sighed up there in its twigs, carrying a veil of cloud across the moon, pushing the light away. With this darkness, I felt a shudder pass over me and the strange sensation that I actually
wished
to see the ghostly visions for which we'd come. But had I suddenly seen my own ghost there and then, I'm sure I would have fallen dead in truth, or been struck dumb. I was in no way wishing for it to be proved so.

After some time we were still sitting in silence, watching the night through the portals of our own eyes, when Alford reached out and touched me, gently, linking her arm through my own. I'd been feeling so solitary until then, that I'd almost forgotten she was there with me. Her sudden contact made me jump with fright. My jump, however, seemed to scare her more in turn and several moments passed in gasps and nervous laughter, until we calmed ourselves by touching each other's faces in the gloom, to prove that it was still we two who were gathered there together and none other. 

Our calmness restored, we lapsed once more into silence, soaking up the night. I could make out the furtive movements of cunning foxes on their night rounds and birds nesting beyond the cemetery wall. We sat listening to the various tongues of the night for some time but, when we'd been there for so long without so much as a movement in front of us, it became clear that no visions would avail themselves of us that night. 

I prepared myself to leave. 

Then I found that Alford had fallen asleep on my shoulder and I was obliged to wait some time longer until she'd woken; I didn't want to disturb her right away, she was so tired from the inner workings of her body.

Whether I myself then fell asleep and saw what I saw on the stage of one of my strange dreams; or whether I was party to a true vision there in the churchyard, I can't say. The apparitions had all the qualities of wakefulness, but how could I possibly know if I was still awake, or if I was sleeping? Whichever it was, I no longer care, for the visions came to me in procession from behind the nearest grave. 

At their head – Holy Virgin have mercy upon us – stood John Toucher, his features and bearing as real as the day itself, though transparent like the waters of a glassy stream. I was almost fooled into believing it was the man himself, but he floated… floated I tell you… above the ground, as only a ghost may.

‘What are you doing here, Morgan?' he asked me, in a voice that was both his and yet also possessed of some other, unearthly quality. I made a double take, for it seemed to me that his voice was ringing in my ears, as real as if he'd just spoken.