The dog’s fine. I’m just falling to pieces.
Later that evening Penny rings. ‘I’m driving down tomorrow,’ she tells me. ‘I’ll be in Upton about midday. Would you like to meet me at the churchyard? I said I’d plant some bulbs for her, you see. Might be a chance for you to … I don’t know. Gear up to it.’
I’m lying on the bed with a valerian tea. Never so wakeful in my life.
‘That’s a great idea,’ I say, with as much vigour as I can muster.
‘Courage, Pamela.’ She chuckles. ‘See you tomorrow.’
*
The cab has just driven away. I’m on the verge of the lane outside the church. A bulky berry-spattering yew tree throws the gate – the lychgate, was it called? – into shadow. I’m a little early, and Penny’s nowhere to be seen.
I don’t want to go in without her, so I walk down the lane and look up at the church tower.
We came here on the last day. No, the day before. Of course we did. A spring day it was, so warm, and I still thought Ellen was coming to Ireland too. I had no idea what she’d do there. Would she stay with me and the cousins and my aunt and uncle? Or would she have a separate house? Or maybe she and I would live together in one house, with the cousins next door, and Daddy would come and visit me. But what would Mr Parr do? I didn’t have time to work that out because church ended. And then after lunch they told me, Daddy and Ellen, that Ellen wasn’t coming.
I gaze up at the tower. Six hundred years of prayer in these stones, and somewhere in the cracks and crevices, my own innocent wonderings of those last hours before the blow fell.
A small woman in jeans and a hoodie is hurrying down the lane towards me.
‘Oh, Pamela.’ She tries to catch her breath. ‘I’m so sorry. I was early, you see, so I took the boys up to the cottage, and then I decided to walk …’
She’s slight, a bit pixie-like, with short hair and twinkly light-brown eyes. I hesitate for a moment, taking in the first sight of her. ‘So you’re Penny!’ I blurt.
She laughs, and we hold our arms out to each other and embrace.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘For everything you’ve done, and are doing. I know she …’
I can’t claim to know anything about Ellen, I realize. About how she feels.
Penny releases me, smiling. ‘Don’t worry about that now.’
Feeling infinitely stronger, I hand her a bubble-wrapped package. ‘The shark-fin mug.’
‘That is so kind!’ She nestles the mug into a pocket of her little rucksack. ‘I’m honoured! A work by Pam Lovell!’
‘Oh, yes. It’s unique.’ I smile. ‘Mistakes often are.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. The skill is getting things to turn out the same, time after time.’
‘Like happy families,’ she muses. ‘They’re all meant to be the same, aren’t they. But unhappy ones, they’re each miserable in their own special way.’
‘Now there’s an interesting connection!’
I take her arm and we go through the lychgate – it is the lychgate, I’m sure now – into the churchyard.
Yew, leaf mould, and damp stone. I breathe it in deep, this scented air as cold as the dawn. The low sun is disorientating: at this high latitude in winter, early morning seems to fade straight into late afternoon. Penny’s kneeling down by a grave almost covered in moss, taking a trowel and a paper bag from her rucksack. ‘Ellen thought her mum might like some crocuses.’
SUSAN CALVERT
1890–1934
A LOVING MOTHER
‘This is Ellen’s mother?’ I’m gaping. ‘I had no idea.’
Penny looks up. ‘Yes,’ she says after a moment. ‘She died when Ellen was fourteen.’
‘My God.’
‘I know. Awful.’
‘And she’s been here all this time. Ellen never mentioned her, not once. It never crossed my mind that Ellen even had a mother.’
Penny’s digging little holes, gently pushing a bulb into each one. ‘It wasn’t a story for a young child. Especially not you, back then …’
My eyes wander over the grave. It’s pretty, with its moss, and the headstone is scrubbed clean. ‘How did she die?’
‘Cancer.’
‘And Ellen’s father? Where is he?’
She kneels upright and smiles at me. ‘Let Ellen tell you about it all. I think she’d want to, now.’ She points with her trowel. ‘Would you like to see Lady Brock? She and Sir Michael are just over there.’
MICHAEL HUGH BROCK, Bart. DSO
1885–1939
Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Servant
HIS DEVOTED WIFE ALTHEA MARY
1892–1979
Enter Thou into the Joy of Thy Lord
A silvery glimmer enters my mind’s eye, a helmet against oak panelling. ‘Lady Brock had a suit of armour,’ I call to Penny. ‘I used to lift up the visor and go “peep-bo”. I expect he’d gone, the knight, by the time you got to Upton Hall.’
‘He went to the Lodge with Lady Brock.’ Penny laughs as she works. ‘We used to polish him. Me and Ellen, with Mr Kennet. Mr Kennet’s at the end of the row.’
WILLIAM ERNEST KENNET
1898–1980
And he was filled with wisdom and understanding
and cunning to work all works in brass
I can see the shed right now, the brick floor where I used to sit filling little flowerpots with compost that went into beautiful dark loamy crumbs. Our mouths watered for chocolate cake just looking at it, and there wasn’t a hope of getting any. The light came in through the cloudy window and the door that was always ajar for the air, and it was never cold. There was a stove with charcoal embers that always glowed, bright in the dull weather and dim in the sunshine, a stove fed by Mr Kennet’s nimble capable pincer of a hand.
Lady Brock, the dog Nipper, Mr Kennet. The past seeps out over the gravestones and grass and trees like water over a magic colouring book, making everything vivid.
Penny comes near, her planting done, and stands beside me.
‘It says “works in brass”,’ I say to her after a while. ‘The headstone.’
‘If you want the King James version, it has to be brass. It was most likely bronze, in fact.’
‘I still don’t understand. He was a gardener.’
‘That was after he was wounded. Before the First World War he was a copper-beater, an apprentice, very young and talented. Ellen didn’t want anyone to forget that. He made the weathercock in Waltham, you know. The one on top of the town hall …’
A fiery glint as we got off the bus, far up in the sky. Ellen pointing, saying, ‘Mr Kennet made that,’ and we watched the bird turn in the changing wind.
‘I knew that, of course! How did I think he made it? Maybe with his fork and trowel.’
We both laugh but the tears are seeding in my eyes.
Penny puts a hand on my arm. ‘I’ll leave you for a moment. My kids have come down after all. I thought you might like to see Selwyn on your own.’ She indicates the grave carefully. ‘Fourth from the end, up by the hedge.’
I never in my life called him Selwyn.
She goes off down towards the bottom of the graveyard where three stripling boys have appeared in an avenue of poplars. They canter about, whooping: she gives a soft remonstrating call and they cluster round her. Even the youngest tops her by a couple of inches. I turn away from the path and pace through the damp grass along the aisles of graves to the place she pointed out, and there he is, a neat granite slab.
SELWYN EDGAR PARR
1899–1971
And that’s all. A silence underneath his name and dates: space for a spouse, as yet unfilled.