Chapter 26
26
1963
Mr and Mrs Turner followed the old sexton up along the overgrown path. Ironically, this was the ‘new’ part of the cemetery, although to them it looked less cared for than the old part, which bore jutting monuments of staggering Victorian hideousness.
Eventually he stopped and held out a hand. ‘’Ere is where we puts ’em,’ he said, coughing around his Woodbine. ‘Nice spot. Lovely view.’
Mrs Turner mopped at her eyes. ‘They never told us…’ she half whispered, her voice competing with the wind. ‘They took her away and we never knew…’
Her husband put his arm around her. ‘Now, lass,’ he said, not unkindly, his own voice somewhat thick. ‘Don’t take on.’
‘I’m sorry, Peter.’ She made an obvious attempt to straighten her back and take in her surroundings. ‘It’s just that seeing the place…’
‘I know, love.’ He patted her arm. ‘I know.’
‘We buries ’em proper.’ The gravedigger nodded, wiping his hands down his shiny trousers. ‘Reverent, like. Not so long ago they wouldn’t have been allowed in…’ he took a run at the word, ‘…con-se-crated ground, but—’ he coughed liberally ‘—now they’ve changed the rules. Babbies can go straight to heaven now, ’parently. Dunno what was stoppin’ ’em before, like, but there you go.’
He looked at the bereaved parents, him in his good suit and overcoat, her in a two-piece and tidy little slingbacks that were all stuck up with the mud. They’d dressed up smart to come out to see where their little one lay – that was nice, he thought. Respectful.
‘But no headstones.’ Mr Turner addressed him directly.
‘Nope.’ The sexton thought about spitting but decided against it. ‘Mass grave, y’see. All the babbies that doesn’t…’ Showing unusual sensitivity, he changed tack. ‘All them little ones, they keeps each other company. All in there.’ A grubby fingernail indicated the tiny plot. ‘I keeps it nice.’
Mrs Turner bent and put her tiny posy of primroses on the shorn grass. ‘She wasn’t christened,’ she said, through tears. ‘She never got to be christened. But we were going to call her Primrose, weren’t we?’
Mr Turner and the gravedigger, united in male embarrassment, watched as she gently touched the ground next to the flowers. ‘Sleep well, our little Primrose,’ she said softly.
Then she took her husband’s arm, and they walked back to the waiting car, past all the properly marked graves of those who had lived and died.
Now – A Year Later
‘Put your hand there… that’s it. Move it gently… careful now.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Nearly. There. Can you feel that? Now, here, lift this, very, very slowly, until you feel…’
‘I think I’ve got it… oh, feck!’
The car leaped forward, jerked and stalled again. Connor pulled a face. ‘I told you, I’m not cut out for this driving yoke,’ he said.
‘Hill starts are always difficult.’ I tried to sound sympathetic, but, in reality, teaching Connor to drive would have tested the patience of a saint, and I decided to buy him some more driving lessons for Christmas this year. Last year’s Christmas present, the plastic centurion, had pride of place on the new shelving in the living room, but this year there would be proper presents. A proper dinner – I’d already bought and stuffed the turkey. We’d asked Eamonn over but he was doing the official ‘family’ thing, and I still hadn’t met the rest of the O’Keefe clan, because we were ‘taking things slowly’, according to Connor, or ‘avoiding them’, as I put it. Connor was working on researching other cillín in England, being a visiting lecturer in Irish History at York and generally achieving a medal in ‘not going home to be nagged’.
I felt the writhing inside me and put a quieting hand across my stomach. We weren’t taking things that slowly, and our unborn son was clearly keen to meet the rest of the family too. ‘Just stay put for another three months,’ I whispered. ‘You don’t want to arrive at Christmas, the precedent isn’t exactly stellar.’
‘Sorry?’ Connor ground the gears again and made another brave attempt to get the car ten centimetres further forward.
‘Nothing.’ I smiled at him, although the smile came filtered through a worry about my gearbox. ‘Thinking aloud.’
‘Ah, let’s forget this, shall we?’ The car lurched forward and stalled again. ‘Let’s go for a walk instead. We’ve not been up to the Stane for a week or so.’
With relief I accepted the end of the lesson and clambered inelegantly out of the car to take his hand. ‘We need to take some more flowers up,’ I said. ‘The old ones will be withered by now.’
‘Good idea. There’s a bit of life left in those roses in the kitchen that I got you.’
‘You don’t have to buy me flowers every week, Connor, honestly.’
There was that sudden embrace again, that careful hug as though I might be china and prone to breakage. ‘I do,’ he said fervently. ‘Trust me, I do.’
And hand in hand, watched by a coterie of suddenly interested ducks, we walked into our cottage. Behind us, the car, smelling of burning brake pads, ticked its engine cool into the oncoming evening.
Above us, the moor stretched itself into the dwindling light. Meanwhile, beneath their blanket of stone and flowers, now recognised and hopefully at peace, the little people slept on.