The Emerald Comb (15 page)

We all stood in the dining room, surveying the scene with open mouths.

‘Can I go out, Dad? And climb in the branches?’ Lewis tugged at Simon’s arm.

‘Not yet, let me check if it is safe first. Katie, we’ll have to find a tree surgeon to come and help us deal with this. And get on to the insurance company. We need to get that kitchen window boarded up today.’ Simon was already making a list of stuff to do.

‘All in good time,’ I said. ‘How about we have breakfast first? I’ve got some sausages to cook.’

Simon shook his head. ‘The kitchen’s unusable, until I cut off that branch and clear up all the glass and leaves. Look, you can’t get anywhere near the grill.’

I grinned. I’d already thought of that. ‘I’ll get the camping stove out.’

Lewis high-fived me. ‘Great idea, Mum!’

While I set up a camp kitchen in the dining room and fried the sausages, Simon donned a pair of wellies and went out to survey our wrecked garden. Lewis watched from the kitchen door, hopping excitedly until he was allowed to go out. Lauren had discovered that the best view of the fallen tree was from her bedroom window. She climbed up on the windowsill and tucked herself behind the curtain to watch. Thomas was grumpy from his broken night’s sleep and after staring wide-eyed at the branch in the kitchen declared he wanted to do nothing but watch CBeebies for the morning. That suited everyone, so on went the TV.

‘It’s going to take some major chopping up,’ Simon announced, when he came back in for his breakfast.

‘Can I climb on it first?’

‘Yes, Lewis. I reckon it’s safe enough. When you’ve eaten, and helped Mum clear up.’

‘Yes!’ Lewis punched the air.

‘Can I, too?’ asked Lauren.

‘Sure. Put old clothes on,’ I said.

They had a great time amongst the branches all morning. I helped Simon saw through the branch which had come through the kitchen window, and soon we were able to tug that clear, sweep up the broken glass, leaves and twigs, and get the kitchen back into use. The kids were making a den in the upper branches of the tree. Soon they were covered in scratches, their clothes filthy and wet but their faces glowing and happy. Even Thomas came out to join them after a while, and Lewis helped haul him up onto the tree trunk, and steadied him as he walked along it, ducking around the branches.

We got the window boarded up, and a promise from a glazier to fix it properly within the week. The tree surgeon couldn’t come until Monday at the earliest – he was overwhelmed with work following the storm. Lewis didn’t see why we had to have the tree cut up at all.

‘Can’t we just leave it? Like in the New Forest, they just leave trees where they fall, and let them rot. Much more environmentally friendly.’

I smiled at his latest buzzwords. ‘Lewis, if we don’t cut up the tree we’ve got no garden. Nowhere to kick a football. Nowhere to sit in the sun or have a barbecue. It has to go. Make the most of playing in it this weekend.’

And they did. The sun stayed out for the rest of the weekend, and the kids stayed out with it. I almost began to think like Lewis – let’s leave the tree where it is. But our neighbours, Stan and Eileen, came round, asking when we would get the tree removed, pointing out the damage to their beloved dahlias and roses, not to mention the fence and rotary clothes line. They’d looked cross when they first called, but when they saw the damage to our kitchen and the wreck of our back garden, they softened.

‘Bless you, that’s some clear-up task you’ve got ahead of you,’ Eileen said, shaking her head at the flattened trampoline.

‘Well, if you need access to our side, you’ve only got to ring the bell,’ said Stan. ‘We’ll be in all week. Your tree surgeon can come down the side passage if he needs to.’

‘Thanks. Who owns the fence on that side?’

‘That one’s ours,’ said Stan. ‘Soon as you’ve got the tree sorted we’ll deal with the fence. The insurance’ll cover it. Come on, Eileen, best leave these poor folk to their work.’

We spent a few more hours tidying and clearing up, doing what we could. By mid-afternoon there was no more we could do. Simon joined Thomas making a complicated layout of wooden Brio train track in the sitting room, while the older children retreated into their Nintendos. I had a few free hours before it was time to cook the dinner.

‘I’m off for a walk around the village,’ I told Simon. ‘Just to see whether there’s any more trees down, or anything.’ I needed to clear my head. Despite the drama of last night I still could not put Simon’s evasiveness about his late nights, or the mystery of that letter, out of my mind.

He looked up from the floor where he was coupling various engines and trucks together for Thomas to push around the track. ‘Buy some milk while you’re out, will you? We’re short.’

‘And some sweeties for me?’ piped up Thomas.

‘Sure.’ I blew them both a kiss, and set off on my walk.

There were several branches strewn across the village roads, and a couple of trees down in other gardens. The pavements were littered with smashed roof tiles, and I spotted a few wheelie bins in odd places, rammed into hedges, wrapped around lamp posts and at least two in the pond on the village green. Everyone was out sweeping their bits of pavement, picking up the rubbish and hauling pieces of tree out of the roads. People I’d not yet spoken to nodded and smiled at me as I passed, and commented on the damage. The old British Blitz spirit: we only ever talk to strangers when we’re pulling together in the face of adversity.

In the village Co-op, everyone was talking about the storm, and the chaos it had brought.

‘There are no trains running,’ said one man. ‘A tree’s down across the line just outside North Kingsley station. Just hope they sort that out before Monday morning.’

I hoped so too, or Simon would have to drive to work. He’d hate that.

A tweed-clad woman shook her head. ‘Terrible. And the church roof took some damage. Lots of tiles down. The vicar’ll be wanting to start a church roof fund, I reckon. I’ll have to host a coffee morning.’

I smiled. What a cliché: raising money to pay for a new church roof. Still, this was a small community and the church was at the heart of it. I decided to go up and see how badly it had been hit. Maybe I could look for Bartholomew and Georgia’s graves, too, while I was there.

The church was tucked in behind the high street. You could go round by the road or cut up through an alleyway next to the White Hart. I took the alleyway, which brought me out at the back of the churchyard. A path led through a lych gate and wound its way amongst the graves and round the side of the church.

There were indeed some roof tiles down, smashed on the paths and graves, but not as many as the tweedy woman had suggested. I glanced up at the roof. To my untrained eye it looked repairable. She wouldn’t have to hold too many coffee mornings to put that right.

So, how do you find a grave, amongst so many? Bartholomew and Georgia had both died in the 1870s. Would their graves even be readable after so many years? I wished I’d printed off the plan of the churchyard from the CD. I vaguely recalled that the St Clair plot was at the top end of the churchyard, so I headed up that way first.

I began reading the inscriptions on the graves either side of the path, then more systematically worked my way up and down the churchyard, scanning the graves for the name ‘St Clair’. Some stones were badly weathered, their inscriptions worn smooth and unreadable. Some looked as though they’d been carved yesterday, even though they were a hundred years old or more. I guessed it depended on the type of stone used.

One corner of the churchyard was in good condition – no weeds, the grass cut neatly, and the graves cleaned of lichen and moss. A notice pinned to a board, blown over by the storm, announced the work of the St Michael’s Churchyard Restoration Society. They met every Wednesday afternoon, apparently: new volunteers most welcome, just turn up at two ready to work, refreshments provided. The cleaned graves were a little clinical looking for my taste; I rather preferred the unkempt look of the untended graves. But if I didn’t find Bartholomew and Georgia today it might be worth coming to have a chat to the society.

There were no St Clair graves in the restored section. I moved back into the untended part, and pushed my way through the long grasses and thistles to check the inscriptions.

Finally, I found them. They lay side by side, Bartholomew on the left, his stone tilted slightly left, and Georgia’s tilted right. It was almost as though in death they were trying to keep apart from each other. Bartholomew’s stone read:
In loving memory of Bartholomew St Clair. Departed this life December 19
^th
1876. ‘For all my wrongs I do repent.’
And in smaller letters, at the bottom:
This stone erected by his son, B. St Clair. May the Lord forgive you.
Georgia’s was simpler:
Georgia St Clair. Died April 14
^th
1875. Forever mourned
.

Here they were, my great-great-great-grandparents. Bartholomew presumably had dictated the words on Georgia’s gravestone. Forever mourned – now there was a love story in those two simple words. They’d been married for over thirty-five years and how he must have missed her when she died.

His own gravestone was more puzzling. I guessed he’d requested before his death for the words ‘For all my wrongs I do repent’ to be put on his grave. And then Barty had felt the need to implore God to forgive his father.

I traced the words with my fingers. What were those wrongs? What had Bartholomew done that was so bad he needed to plead for forgiveness on his gravestone? As on so many occasions before, I wished I could go back in time and be a fly upon the wall, watching their lives unfold, and knowing for certain what happened and why.

It was Tuesday before the tree surgeons could come to make a start on removing the beech. Lewis and Lauren were at school, and I’d dropped Thomas off at his nursery class by the time they arrived. The day was chilly and overcast, but at least no rain was forecast.

‘Ted the Tree’ was a scrawny looking man of indeterminate age, with wiry muscles and a wispy beard. Dressed in shorts, torn T-shirt and a tool-belt he wielded his enormous chain saw as though it were a carving knife. I was glad the kids weren’t around to get in his way. His sidekick Jamie was a young lad of nineteen or twenty, tall and skinny, whose job it was to drag away the cut-off branches, feed the smaller stuff into a shredder and pile the larger pieces ready for cutting up into firewood. They were a good team, working efficiently, and by lunch time most of the branches were gone, leaving just the main trunk of the tree stretched across the garden, plus its enormous roots pointing skyward beside the remains of the garden wall.

I took cups of tea and a plate of biscuits out to the men, as they sat on the trunk to eat their lunch-time sandwiches.

‘Cheers,’ said Ted. ‘Such a shame, this tree must have been a right beaut.’

‘It was,’ I agreed. ‘The kids loved climbing it, too. My husband was considering building them a tree house in it.’

Ted grimaced. I got the impression he didn’t approve of tree houses. ‘You’ll have a right big hole when we get those roots out.’

‘Mmm. And a wall to rebuild.’

‘Yeah. Reckon a bit more of it’ll fall when we cut those roots. See how they’re wedged up against it? We can’t take the rubble away, missus. You’ll need a skip for that.’

‘That’s OK. I think we’ll keep the old bricks and see if they can be reused.’

Ted sniffed. ‘I’d put a smart new fence in, meself.’

I gave him a non-committal smile and passed the biscuits. Not everyone appreciated old things the way I did. But those bricks – they’d been there two hundred years or more. Of course I wanted to keep them and rebuild the wall if we could!

The men spent the afternoon attacking the main trunk with their chainsaws. Gradually the tree grew smaller and smaller until there was just a ten-foot section of trunk and the fan of roots left. Jamie dragged the trashed trampoline down to the end of the garden, out of the way. They worked on the root ball then, cutting off what they could, and digging underneath on the side the tree had fallen, where the roots were still buried in the earth.

I left them to it while I went to fetch the children from school. The kids were excited to get home and find the huge pile of logs, ready to be turned into firewood, which filled half our driveway. I warned them not to climb on the precarious-looking pile, and went to check on Ted’s progress.

I found him standing on the edge of the root-crater, while Jamie knelt at the bottom, scrabbling in the dirt with his hands.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

Ted pointed in the hole. ‘Found something. Down there. Jamie’s just checking it out, now.’

‘What is it?’ I peered down.

‘Bones,’ said Jamie. ‘Probably a dog or something. All mixed up in the roots of this tree.’

I shuddered. Someone’s pet, buried at the foot of the tree.

‘Collect them up,’ I said. ‘I’ll rebury them somewhere further down the garden.’

Jamie pulled out a couple of pieces of bone and laid them on the side of the hole. He began pulling at another piece whose end was just visible in the tangle of roots. It came free suddenly, and we all stood staring in shock at what he was holding.

I’m no expert on bones, but it looked to me unmistakably like a human femur.

Ted gasped. ‘Jesus! That’s no dog. Pass it here, lad.’

Jamie dropped the bone as though it was burning him and scrambled out of the hole, wiping his filthy hands on the back of his jeans.

Ted picked it up and examined it. ‘Well, that’s a first, in all my working life. Never come across no human bones before.’

‘Do you reckon there’s more?’ I asked.

‘Can’t imagine only a leg was buried, so yep, I’d say there’s more.’

I felt sick. Human remains, in our garden, where our kids had been playing! ‘Oh God. What do we do?’

‘Best call the police, I’d say. Don’t worry, they’re not going to think you’ve done away with your husband or anything like that.’ Ted laughed, pleased with his own joke.