‘Okey-dokey,’ agreed Ashley, suddenly amenable. ‘Shan’t be long.’
He disappeared and Freddy thankfully returned her full attention to her sewing. And when, presently, she reached the end of the seam and carefully knotted the cotton and then snipped it free, she had stopped thinking about Ashley at all. Her mind was full of the new dress and whether it would be humanly possible to wear it to the cinema that afternoon.
‘Only three more to go,’ Tess told herself at last, cupping her frozen hands and blowing gently into the blue palms. ‘Wouldn’t you know it – why did I start at the top end, for goodness sake? I might have guessed it would be one of the last I reached.’
But it wasn’t. She examined Ruby Cotman, spinster of this Parish, who had died the previous year aged ninety-three, and Joseph John Charlesworth, who had died at the age of twenty-five, almost twenty years earlier. Then she went to the last gravestone, her heart thundering uncomfortably. This was it! It looked very new and well-tended, though . . .
She leaned over the stone and read the words engraved on it.
‘In memory of Matthew Meadowes, killed at the Battle of the Somme, 1916, and of his wife, Ethel Mary, who died in April, 1925. Sadly missed.’
Wrong again, Tess thought. I wish I knew my mother’s maiden name though, then I’d be able to identify my relatives. But I’ll ask the Knoxes later; they might know. And now, what next?
She looked around her. Here, the churchyard became a meadow, and a little further down, a wood with great, dripping trees, brambles, nettles and drooping rosebay willow herb; a wilderness. And yet . . . and yet . . .
With her oilskins swishing wetly against her legs, Tess pushed her way through the long, wild grass. She half closed her eyes and began to pray; let me find your grave, Mummy! I can’t remember you, Daddy hardly ever talked about you even before Marianne, but it means so much to me to find your grave!
Truly alone now, moving far from the neatly labelled dead, Tess searched on amongst the tall, unruly grasses, the brambles, the encroaching trees.
It was a small grave, just a rounded hump, with no footstone and only a small headstone. It was almost completely hidden, but Tess, who had found it by not looking, just trusting, tore at the grasses until she could see the stone clearly. It didn’t say much.
‘Leonora. 10th April 1900 – 30th April 1922. Unforgettable, unforgotten.’
Tess crouched down in the long grass and put her hand on the headstone. Despite the fact that the name Delamere did not appear, she knew at once that she had found her mother’s grave. Peter had loved her so much, had missed her so horribly. So much that he had caused to be written, on her tombstone, the words before her: unforgettable, unforgotten. Yet he couldn’t have thought much of her last resting place since he had clearly neither visited her grave nor got anyone else to take care of it. And because of this, and his freely expressed wish that she should not pry, he had made it almost impossible for Leonora’s daughter to do anything about it, either.
It was odd, though. If she had relatives here, why didn’t they tend poor Leonora’s grave? And – and why was she so far from the rest of the dead, pushed away down here, as though they were ashamed of her?
Tess hunched herself down inside her oilskins and concentrated. She put the tips of all her cold fingers on the headstone, closed her eyes tightly, and let her mind roam free. Come to me, Mummy, she cried in the hollow ringing blackness behind her eyelids. Tell me why Daddy is so strange about you, why your own parents didn’t insist that you be buried amongst other people . . . try to tell me all the secrets, reasons, hidden truths, that my father should have told me!
Into the silence little sounds crept. A breeze touched the grasses and rain plopped off a broad grass-blade and ran down its neighbour. An insect clicked, buzzed. A bird cried, then another. In the nearby woods a chiff-chaff sang his monotonous little song and a wren whirred as it went about its business. Tess could feel calm begin to invade her mind, she felt sure that any moment now . . .
She must have gone down to the church, because there’s nothing else of interest in the village, Ashley decided, setting out from the house two minutes after promising to make his sister a cup of coffee. He had donned his own oilskins and felt comfortably warm with the rain beating on the hood. He wondered if Tess might have stopped to take a look at the library, but it wasn’t exactly an historic building. Now the church is old as old, and some of the brasses are said to be unique, he reminded himself. Yet, it’ll be the church. Funny, because she didn’t strike me as the sort to go praying all over the place, but then you don’t expect girls as stunning as that one to do anything, much.
He’d been astounded by Sprat’s little friend and that was the truth. He was used to her bringing friends home – she had done so constantly in Eastbourne – but as soon as he set eyes on Tess he had known she was different; special. Of course with her looks most men would be interested in her, but for him, at any rate, it wasn’t just her looks. There was something very attractive in the way she held herself, the way she moved – straight-backed but graceful, like a dancer. And she had the nicest voice he thought he had ever heard, soft and musical with a laugh in it even when she was serious. He started to think about her black and glossy hair, the dark blue of her eyes, the tilt of her mouth, then stopped himself. No point. She was a stunner and he intended to sit next to her in the flicks this afternoon; further than that he was not prepared to let his thoughts go. Not yet.
He loped down the street as far as the Turnpike, looked right towards the Globe and then left towards the King’s Head. No sign of her, not that he had expected one. He crossed the main road, deserted and traffic-free in the rain, and dived down Stock’s Lane. There wasn’t a soul about, but no one enjoyed being out in rain like this – he would have preferred to be indoors himself, but his errand was more important than a wetting.
He turned left into Church Road and walked briskly along under the dripping limes, then dived under the lychgate and entered the churchyard. He cast a quick glance around, but did not expect to see anyone. She would be inside, of course.
It was a big church and since his family worshipped there every Sunday, Ashley knew it well. The Sunday school corner, the choir stalls, the altar, the pews. He went in cautiously, on tiptoe, just in case she was kneeling reverently, having a quiet pray, but there was no one in the pews, by the altar, looking up at the stained-glass windows. He moved slowly up the aisle towards the gravestones with their ancient brasses; scholars came here sometimes, to do rubbings of the brasses and take them back to their pupils as an example of early whatever-it-was.
No one knelt on the tiles nor rubbed away at the brasses. Puzzled, he let his glance wander further. There were hiding places – the vestry, for one – but why should she want to hide? She wouldn’t, of course. If she fancied a look in the vestry though, she might be there still.
He looked; she wasn’t. He thought of the bell-tower. He knew how to get up there since he had gone with the vicar on a tour of the church when they’d first moved into the village. He went through the vestry and pulled open the small wooden door in the corner which hid the spiral stone stairs. He climbed them quickly, nimbly, sure that she must be up here. The bells were very old, probably very interesting. And on a clear day the view from the roof was remarkable, though the vicar would not approve of strangers climbing up to it in case they managed to fall over the crenellations and broke their silly necks on the ground far, far below. And of course it wasn’t a clear day. But nevertheless, if anyone was interested in churches . . .
He reached the ringing chamber and looked around with only moderate interest. The ropes were down, the sallies dangling invitingly. Ashley considered giving a quick tug – he could be down again and half-way home before anyone came to investigate. But it would have been childish, a kid’s trick, so he ignored the temptation and went back through the door on to the stone stair. Bell chamber next, with the great bells hanging silent, waiting for Sunday. She would be in there, peering into their vast brazen mouths, probably making notes the way girls were so fond of doing.
He opened the door and knew at once by something in the dusty silence that no one had been into the bell chamber before him. Pity. He rather fancied pouncing on her, telling her off for being up here, giving her a consoling cuddle . . .
He crossed the bell chamber, giving the nearest bell an admonitory tap with his knuckle. It was a light tap but a deep, hollow tone answered him, making him jump. Who would have thought a little tap like that could result in such a noise? Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? They’d done
Macbeth
last term . . . wasn’t it unlucky to quote
Macbeth,
or was that just on the stage?
He went to the foot of the ladder which led to the roof, then climbed it. Outside, the leads were an inch or more deep in water and the rain still lashed down. The roof was empty. Ashley climbed up and cursed under his breath. She wasn’t here, either – what the devil was she playing at? Or had Freddy been wrong? Was Tess visiting someone she knew in the village? The girl had been born and bred in Norfolk, she’d seldom been out of it from what he could make out, it was likely enough, surely, that she would know someone in the neighbourhood, visit them on a rainy morning when the friend with whom she was staying had other fish to fry?
He turned disconsolately back to the ladder, then saw the reason for the flooding on the roof. Right across the middle of the tower ran a gully which, in its turn, ran into another gully which encircled the tower. A bird had made a nest out of great many twigs, mosses, lumps of clay, and the nest was blocking one of the gullies. Best clear it out of the way before the water gets any deeper, Ashley decided, feeling virtuous, because if I don’t, by Sunday the water could get down into the bell chamber and cause all sorts of havoc.
He dug out the old nest, which wasn’t easy with bare, wet hands, and carried it over to the parapet. No one was about, he would drop it over the edge and see it splat on to the gravel far, far below.
He held the remains of the nest at arm’s length for a moment, then let go and watched, with some satisfaction, as it plummeted earthwards. He bent and picked up the rest of the muck and rubbish and threw that more prosaically over the parapet, and turned to go down the ladder. But just as he turned a flicker of movement caught his eye. Hello, Ashley said to himself, so there is someone – or something – in the churchyard after all. What is it – a dog? A fox, perhaps?
He stared out across the greens and greys and saw, in the long, wild grass only a yard or two from the woodland, that something was crouched down there. Something . . . no, it was definitely someone . . . wearing faded, beige-coloured oilskins.
Tess! He had found her! But what on earth was she doing? Had she collapsed, was she ill? He was seeing her from an odd angle, of course, but he was pretty sure she was sitting down on the ground amongst all that wet grass and not doing anything at all.
He ran over to the ladder, jumped on to it, closed the trapdoor carefully behind him, and then began the descent. He hoped she hadn’t wrung her ankle or something, but if she had he would carry her home . . . the thought made his heart beat faster in delighted anticipation. He wanted so badly to hold her in his arms and if she’d sprained her ankle, hurt herself somehow, it would be the perfect excuse! But if she was all right and just sitting there for some reason he could not yet fathom, then he had best make all speed, or she might have got up and moved away by the time he left the church.
The thought lent wings to his feet. He hurtled down the ladder, then down the spiral stair, across the church . . . out into the rainy morning.
‘Hello-ello-ello! Whatever are you doing, Tess Delamere? You must be soaked!’
Ashley’s voice brought Tess out of her silent communion with horrible suddenness and a pounding heart. She jumped a foot, she knew she did, and was furious when he cackled with laughter. But she already knew him well enough to try to cover her fright and discomposure.
‘Oh hello, Ashley. Is luncheon ready? I’m afraid I don’t have a watch so the time has rather slipped away.’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘Sorry, I hope I haven’t put anyone out.’
‘No. It isn’t time for luncheon.’ He squatted down, clearly intent on seeing what she had been up to. ‘What a very odd place to commune with nature, my dear Tess!’
‘I wasn’t communing with anything,’ Tess said stiffly. ‘Just sitting down for a moment.’
‘Sitting down? On wet grass in the pouring rain in a churchyard?’ Ashley cackled again. ‘For no reason? Oh, I doubt that, I really do.’
He really is pretty horrible; I wonder how Freddy puts up with him, Tess thought, straightening her clothing, which had got somewhat crushed from her crouching position. But she did not intend to tell him anything, not if she could help it, so she made no reply but simply stood there, with the rain running down the inside of her oilskins as well as the outside, patiently waiting for him to move. But instead of heading out of the churchyard he came over to her and tilted her chin with one finger, staring down into her eyes with a very odd look on his face.
‘You’ve been crying,’ he said. And for once he spoke gently, as though he cared, and the finger which traced the tears down her cheek was gentle, too. And then, just as Tess was beginning to think that Ashley wasn’t so bad after all, he looked behind her and began to nod his head and look smug again.
‘Oh, I
see
. You’ve found the grave of our local bad girl and you’ve been crying because she’s all by herself out here; is that right?’
Tess said nothing. She just stared.
‘Well, young Leonora Meadowes was a suicide, you see,’ Ashley said. ‘She killed herself, that’s why she’s all by herself out here. But first she had a baby out of wedlock, by some fellow who got himself killed. So her parents threw her out, said they never wanted to see her face again. Then she married some poor sucker who fell for her and was willing to take the child on, and after a year or two I suppose she got bored with him and the kid and killed herself, like I said.’ His voice changed abruptly from its rather salacious note to alarm. ‘What’s the matter? Where are you going?’