Chapter 15
15
Charlotte was arranging her own hours at the observatory, and, once Brian had given her keys to the padlock on the gate and the building itself, she didn’t have to stick to a strict nine-to-five schedule. For the next few days, she constructed the database that she was planning on using to catalogue the documents she found, working at the desk in her room at Nightshade Cottage. It didn’t make much sense to drag all the way up the hill to Observatory Field just to stare at a computer when she could be working in the comfort and light of Nightshade Cottage’s annexe. She knew she needed to be efficient, to get her systems up and running so that when she was spending time at the observatory, she was using it productively.
She’d been getting up early, before the heat of the Somerset summer sun was at full strength, to take Comet for a wander through the lower slopes of the woodland. At seven o’clock in the morning, the woods had an ethereal, unworldly air, and she was getting quite addicted to the heavenly scent of pine balsam mixed with mouldering bracken that the damp, early morning mist produced. Comet loved it too, darting in and out of the trees, snuffling and sniffing at the scents of rabbits, badgers and the roe deer that inhabited the woodlands. They were a vulnerable fringe, a buffer between the rest of Lower Brambleton and the site of the new housing estate, and Charlotte felt a sense of relief that they weren’t going to be bulldozed to make way for more houses. Some things had to remain, in the midst of all of this change.
Once their early walk was complete, Charlotte began working each day. Comet, happy to stretch out in a burgeoning patch of sunlight that peered its way through the sash window in the living area-cum-study of the annexe, was usually quiet until the afternoon, when he’d request a quick pit stop in the back garden. They’d walked through the woods a couple of times in the evening, too, but Comet wasn’t too fussed about a second walk. The fresh country air was exhausting him, and they were both sleeping well when they eventually turned in.
Staring at a computer screen for hours on end, though, was hardly edifying. It was the part of her job she liked the least, even though it was necessary for the successful completion of a project. Finally, after a few days of tweaking and amending, she was satisfied with the setup. By way of celebration, and because supplies in her fridge were woefully low, she decided to take Comet out for a longer stroll that Saturday morning. She knew that there was a farm shop on the furthest boundary of Lower Brambleton that was within walking distance, and so she decided it was time to check it out.
The route on foot to Saints Farm shop was meandering, and just the exercise both she and Comet needed after a few hours’ work at the desk. Although she was reluctant, initially, to let the spaniel off the lead, the lane that led from Nightshade Cottage to the centre of Lower Brambleton was extremely quiet, and so, for about a quarter of a mile, she unclipped him so that he could dash up the sloping verges and have a good sniff. When she knew she was getting closer to the main road, she put his lead back on. Comet had excellent recall, despite what his early escapades at the observatory would suggest, but even the most well-behaved dog could get spooked.
The main road was quiet, too, which wasn’t entirely surprising. Lower Brambleton was one of those charming little hamlets that were dotted all over Somerset: not big enough to have its own school, but to her left as she walked, Charlotte could see the austere grey tower of what looked to be a Norman church. Most likely thirteenth century, the building was still standing, but the tower was at a rather interesting angle. She wondered if services still took place there.
Charlotte had been raised in the Church of England, in so much as she’d attended a C of E primary school, and she still retained an affection for ecclesiastical buildings. Although she hadn’t set foot in a church since her grandfather had died five years ago, she liked the idea that a church, and a graveyard in particular, could be grounding. She spent so much time looking at the stars, and trying to harness accumulated knowledge of the cosmos, collected by countless astronomers, that a sense of perspective about her place in the universe was comforting.
Not in any particular rush to get to the shop, she decided to take Comet for a detour. It would be lovely to get a closer look at this rather wonky church. If it was locked, she’d just amble around the grounds.
As she pushed open the wooden gate that led to the churchyard, Comet gambolled ahead, nose on alert for anything interesting, and legs running nineteen to the dozen over the grass. The graveyard looked well-tended, which suggested the church was still in use, and the close-cropped turf seemed safe enough for the dog to walk on, although Charlotte did call him back every time it looked like he might scamper too close to the gravestones. There was no one else around, but she didn’t want to appear disrespectful.
Walking idly up to the heavy, curving oak door of the church, she wasn’t surprised to find it locked. Most were, these days, and she suspected that even Lower Brambleton wasn’t immune to the odd bit of rural criminal opportunism. She turned back down the path and decided to spend a few minutes reading the gravestones. She’d almost done a joint honours and included history in her degree, and remembered well the local history part of her A Level, where she’d spent a lot of time researching the stories behind the names on the memorial plaques inside her local church. While her mates had bunked off for a cigarette behind the enormous yew trees in the graveyard, she’d been captivated by the names of those who’d gone before, and whose families had memorialised them in stone plaques on the church walls.
Although she couldn’t get inside the church today, she satisfied her curiosity by ambling down the path, reading the names and inscriptions as she went. Many of the graves nearest the entrance to the church were lost to time and the driving rain of the West Country, and were illegible, but here and there she spotted names, dates, some heartbreakingly short and some evidence of long, prosperous lives. She was particularly amused by one for an Edmund Grimes, which read:
Here lies Edward ‘Wanderlust’ Grimes,
Who roamed the world and had great times.
He walked with adventure, and now with God,
‘Seek and ye shall find,’ says the Lord (Matthew 7:7).
Charlotte wondered if it had just been travel that had enthralled Edmund. In his ninety-eight years on the planet, he must have seen a lot.
Moving back towards the gate, the headstones were getting newer. She was in the 1960s now, and then the seventies, until she reached the newest additions. The nineties were clearly when the churchyard had run out of accommodation, as graves she passed were dated 1995. But in truth, it wasn’t the date that caught her attention on the last plot before the gate. The white-coloured marble was as clean as it must have been when it had been erected; the black engraving clear against the stark background, with no humorous verse to distract from the sadness that it signified. The names, now familiar to Charlotte from the conversations with Brian and Lorelai, were in sharp relief in the strong morning sun. They read:
Here lie Laura and Martin Ashcombe,
Stargazers together in life and in death.
Taken too soon on 15 January 1995,
Now they explore the heavens side by side.
Charlotte could feel her pulse speeding up as she read the inscription. It was pure coincidence that she’d decided to explore the churchyard, but it felt as though something had been leading her to those names again. The tragedy of their loss, and their intimate connection with the observatory would inevitably charge her research with emotion, and as she looked at the gravestone, she began to feel the weight of that responsibility. It was all too easy, when she was handling historical documents and entering them into a database, to forget that there were lives connected to the information. Living under the same roof as Lorelai, that reminder was all too clear.