Passing On (12 page)

Closer to, memorial detail became apparent: elaborate confections in the form of open books inscribed with the particulars of the departed, weeping cherubs and angels, praying heads and exuberant crosses. It disposed entirely of any notion of the rural midland English as a phlegmatic and undemonstrative lot. Many of the graves had flowers on them — wilting asters and marigolds in jam-jars, or vases of plastic roses and daffodils in luminous colours. One unkempt mound bore a glass with a Harp Lager insignia, filled with greenish water.

Edward and Helen approached the sycamore tree and stood before the raw earth of Dorothy’s grave. In the month since the funeral, infant weeds had sprung up, and some blades of grass.

‘No chippings,’ said Edward. No thing for vase. I’m not even sure about this kerbstone business.’

‘You can have granite chips, but they’re almost as bad. Just grass, then?’

‘Just grass, yes. It would be nice to try to naturalise some fritillaries. Or those small grassland orchids — Lady’s Tresses.’

‘Oh, Edward,’ said Helen with a sigh.

‘Just a thought.’

They stood there uncomfortably. Both had a fleeting vision of what lay beneath the mound of earth: the varnished wood, the brass handles, their mother. Edward, fighting the thought, imagined decay; Helen remembered the posy of flowers from the garden that she had tried to fix to the coffin lid with sellotape.

Sellotape will not stick to varnish, she had discovered; she ended up with hammer and tintacks, shrinking at the unseemly noise and violence. The flowers would be withered now, down there.

Both recalled the funeral, calculated time: a month, already, when we have been without her. Both examined their feelings.

I am adjusting, thought Helen, I am stepping aside. But funny things are happening. In some way she is more here than she ever was. It is as though she had not died but been transformed.

Edward thought: It is as though I were adrift, untethered. I don’t think of her much, no more than I ever did, but something terrible is going on. At moments all is well, and then at others I think that I am flying apart.

Helen took a tape-measure out of her pocket and suspended it above the grave.

‘That height? Or a bit more? They want to know.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Edward.

Two foot six, then. And just “Dorothy Edith Glover: April 10th 1907—May 24th 1987”. They seem to feel it’s a bit stark.’

‘It is. Compared with everyone else.’ Edward looked around.

Deeply lamented. In loving memory. Pray for the soul of …

R. I . P.

Helen rolled up the tape-measure and pushed it into her pocket. ‘Well, I shall just have to be firm, then. They obviously think it most inadequate.’

They turned and walked back towards the lych-gate. ‘Presumably,’ said Edward, ‘they take it to mean we weren’t all that fond of her.’

‘Or else that we’re hard up. More lettering costs more. Polished granite is more expensive than limestone. The angels and open books and things cost a packet — I looked at the brochure.’

It was Saturday morning, which meant that the village was fairly populous; on weekdays it was emptied of all but the old, the very young and those tending them. The central green had cars scattered all around it. Ron Paget’s Rover stood outside the Swan, the more plushy of the two pubs. A sinister looking cluster of motor-bikes huddled in front of the other one, the Goat and Compasses; as the Glovers passed two more arrived with a deafening roar and two androgynous figures, clad in skin-tight leather as though for a bout of deep-sea diving, went into the pub, stripping off immense gauntlets. From within came the crash of reggae music. A BP oil tanker was blocking the narrow lane down to the Old Forge, towering over the thatched cottage to which it was attached by its pipe-line as though with an umbilical cord. Beyond, the post van hooted indignantly. An old man sat on the bench by the War Memorial. From the gravelled sweep of the entrance to the Old Rectory came Mrs Hadley on a gleaming chestnut horse; she clattered past the Glovers, the old man, other passers-by with the age-old superiority of the mounted over those on foot. A car slowed down to pass her and she raised her crop graciously.

‘We need something for lunch,’ said Helen. ‘And dog food.

And cereal.’ And detergent, she added to herself. ‘You may as well stay outside, there’s an awful crowd in there.’

She stood in a queue at the single check-out; the village store had supermarket aspirations without the amenities. Two young women in front of her were murmuring confidentially. One said ‘I gather Brown Owl has resigned …’ It took Helen a moment or two to realise the affairs of the village Brownie pack were under discussion. She looked over their heads and caught the eye of an acquaintance, who smiled faintly and dipped away in embarrassment, observing the quarantine imposed upon those recently bereaved. There we go again, she thought, mother is still here, still making herself felt. She paid for her purchases, tucking the detergent under the other things.

Outside, she found Edward in conversation with Peter Sidey, the leader of the preservationist element in the village. The preservationists, over the years, had lost ground — quite literally.

They tended to be schoolteachers, academics and the recently retired; against them were ranged builders, farmers and most of those who, by luck or good management, owned a half acre or derelict cottage ripe for profitable transformation. Such people were adept at the manipulation of planning committees, the lobbying of local government officers. The preservationists, pinning their faith to moral superiority and persuasive argument, were beaten back every time.

The cause at issue right now was the planning application for half a dozen houses in the orchard attached to a cottage in the centre of the village, the property of a local farmer. The farmer, himself a member of the planning committee, had recently removed his stockman from the cottage and built him a modern bungalow on the farm, an arrangement now recognised as less altruistic than it might appear. Peter Sidey was explaining all this to Edward. Edward, Helen could see from his stance, was bored: he had his head tilted on one side and was watching a bird in a tree behind Peter Sidey’s left ear. People believed that Edward, as an ardent nature conservationist, must be similarly passionate about all environmental matters. This was not so. He found it difficult to get worked up about buildings and tended to think of landscapes as habitats rather than objects of aesthetic concern.

‘Clegg will make about a hundred thousand,’ said Peter Sidey, ‘if his application goes through. And the village will lose its last open space. I’ve seen the plans for the houses and they’re peculiarly insensitive — more suitable for Milton Keynes.’ He was a retired architect, past seventy now, who had exhausted himself over mainly fruitless endeavours to obstruct the likes of this opportunist farmer. He would have had a much more tranquil retirement, Helen thought, in some already brutalised corner of the country.

The Glovers made appropriate noises of concern. Peter Sidey outlined the opposition plans and urged them to write letters and attend a protest meeting. ‘If that piece of land is developed there will be no large open space left in the village except the Green itself. And of course the Britches, thanks to your mother’s public spirited stand over the years. By the way, had you ever realised the name is Saxon by origin? From braec — a word meaning land newly taken into cultivation.’

‘Well, it’s the opposite now,’ said Edward. ‘Extremely uncultivated.’

‘Quite. Interesting, though — the indestructibility of a name.’

Helen and Edward broke away as soon as was decently possible. They were both tickled at the image of Dorothy as a defender of the public good. ‘Perhaps we should have told him she spent twenty years not selling the Britches simply to annoy the people who wanted to buy it,’ said Edward.

‘Certainly not. The result remains the same, whatever her reasons.’

As they approached the front door of Greystones Helen heard the telephone ringing within. She felt a rush of excitement and anticipation, and realised that in the preoccupations of the last half hour she had not thought of Giles Carnaby once — definitely a record. Fumbling with the latch key, she rushed for the telephone, thrusting the shopping basket at Edward.

It was Joyce Babcock. Reminding her at length, in case she hadn’t made a note of it, of the Christmas holiday schedule for the library. When at last she put the receiver down and went into the kitchen she found that Edward had unpacked the shopping. The bottle of detergent stood in reproachful isolation at one end of the table.

Thinking of Giles Carnaby, of course, was not so much a considered process as an involuntary twitch. She did not want to think of him but could not help it. Indeed he was there most of the time, presiding within her head, dimming a little when her attention was engaged, all-pervasive in times of relaxation. At night he filled the room. She heard again every word he had spoken; she reconstructed his face, his body, his clothes.

A man she had met three times. With whom she had spent six hours or so. Who had displayed a friendly interest in her.

She saw herself, and did not care for what she saw. She stood to one side and observed this pathetic self-deluding fifty-twoyear-old in a state of romantic yearning and sexual excitation.

Given to the observation of others, she now observed herself, but without charity. She agreed with her mother: riding for a fall, driving nails in her own coffin, only herself to blame.

And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to be done.

Edward, offended by the detergent, wandered out into the garden and was instantly distracted by the sound of digging from beyond the yew hedge. Rather desultory digging. Of course — that boy was here. He went to the gap in the hedge and saw

Gary at the far end of the kitchen garden. He was not digging at all now but taking a breather, evidently. A prolonged breather, during which he took a bar of chocolate out of his pocket and unwrapped it in a leisurely way.

Edward stood there.

Gary half-turned, spotted him out of the corner of one eye and began to dig again with great fervour.

Edward continued to stand there for another minute or two.

Then he plunged off into the Britches to check the nest-boxes.

‘He what?’ exploded Louise. ‘A row with the headmistress about evolution? Only Edward could have a row about evolution.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Helen. ‘It was the stock subject for argument in the late nineteenth century, in some circles.’

‘Oh, then . . Trust Edward. I wish he had resigned — it would have been hilarious. So what else is new?’

Helen reached out for Edward’s anorak, lying on the oak chest, and put it round her shoulders. She wished, not for the first time, that the telephone was not in the hall, always the coldest place in the house. The telephone was in the hall because Dorothy had said that telephones had to be in halls; it occurred to Helen that there was no longer any reason for this to be so. In one moment of combined panic and acceptance she knew that the telephone would stay exactly where it was.

‘I’ve ordered the memorial stone.’

‘The what?’

‘Gravestone. Sorry — it’s what the brochures say.’ She described the choice. ‘Do you think that sounds all right?’

‘I suppose so. God! What a thing to have to do. I’m sorry — everything gets shoved on to you.’

‘Edward helped.’

‘Well, good. But now I’m feeling guilty. I ought to be there.

Actually life has been fairly murderous lately. The office. And Tim has been having a go of his sinus plus conjunctivitis and something else he describes as angst and is being generally unsupportive. And Phil is playing up. Actually I think I may come down this weekend, just to escape. So … anything else?’

Helen put the anorak on. ‘Ron Paget tried to get us to build on the Britches again.’

Louise laughed. ‘Tell him Edward’s turning it into a conservation area for endangered species. Actually, Ron doesn’t know it, but he’s got a point — you really ought to think about money a bit. Tim wants you to see some people he knows who do investment advice — then you’d get more out of those shares.

Apparently they’re all in the wrong things.’

‘We don’t want…’ Helen began.

‘Don’t be silly. Tim’s going to fix it up. You can have a nice day out in London — do you good.’

‘We don’t …’ But Louise was off on another track. Helen stared at the oak chest and wondered what was in it. She couldn’t remember anyone having opened it in years. There was a torn squab cushion on the top and it was traditionally used as a place to dump coats, scarves and gloves. Helen thought she could distantly recall having seen it open with her mother upended over it, rummaging. It had been Dorothy’s territory, as indeed had all of the house, except for areas of communal use. It occurred to Helen — listening to Louise, contemplating the chest — that in all the years she and Edward had lived at Greystones they had fully occupied only their own bedrooms; elsewhere, they perched.

As soon as Louise had rung off she removed the cushion and opened the chest. The contents reeked of damp. On top was a rug, colourless with age and stained with mildew. Helen picked it out and dropped it on the floor; beneath was a tangle of string.

So that was where mother had kept all that string from parcels which must not be discarded lest it be needed. There was a stack of crumpled brown paper, some of it addressed to herself and to Edward or Louise and bearing injunctions about not opening before Christmas; she recognised the handwriting of aunts and godmothers.

Beneath the layer of string and paper was a foetid mass of material: old curtains and cushions, felted blankets, a porridge of gloves and belts, garments decayed almost beyond identification.

Moth and mouse had thrived down here. Helen reached in and stirred with distaste; a brown knitted pixie hat surfaced that her

mother used to wear long ago, unravelled now to a skeletal condition. She spotted a sweater she once gave Edward for a birthday, and various throw-outs of her own. She remembered her mother, standing squarely at the front door, fending off supplicants from the village school Parent-Teacher Association, the Darby and Joan Club, the summer Fete; Greystones never had jumble. Had her mother harboured some primitive superstition about the totemistic quality of one’s possessions?