Stone Cradle

Praise for
Stone Cradle
:  

A
n autumn funeral, orange and black: it is November. Sunlight strikes the gas tower behind Wellington Street and makes the huge, corroded cylinder glow as if on fire. The iron walkway wrapped about it stands out in sharp relief, a stairway leading nowhere but around. Purgatory has come to Peterborough.

Lijah Smith, about to bury his mother, stares at the gas tower as the undertakers bring the small coffin from the house. He is standing on the pavement, next to the hearse, chewing tobacco and enjoying the twitching of the neighbours’ curtains. Only Mrs Martin from number sixty-three has come out onto the pavement to stare honestly. Her husband worked at the Horse Repository before the war and Lijah knows them both. He nods to her. She nods back. He sees she has put on her best shoes and guesses by the way she is standing that they discomfort her.

There are four pallbearers but Lijah’s mother is so tiny and light that one of them could have managed the coffin crossways in his arms. Two of the four place their end of the coffin onto the hearse,
then step back to allow the others to slide it home. They turn their backs on Lijah and gather for a whispered conversation. Lijah guesses that the man in charge has decided he doesn’t need them all.

Something changes hands between the men and two of them turn and bow, then stride off down the road. The chief undertaker steps forward and holds open the door for Lijah to climb into the rear seat of the hearse. Lijah turns and lifts the lid of his mother’s dustbin, spits his tobacco into it and replaces the lid. He settles his cap on his head and shakes out the cuffs of his shirt. Before he gets in, he leans sideways on one foot. The coffin inside the hearse provides a surface so that he is able to see himself mirrored in the long window. He checks to see if the oiled kiss-curl that he plasters to his forehead each morning is still in place. He licks a finger and adjusts the curve of the curl, then turns back to the open door in time to see the two undertakers exchange a look.

‘Righto, gentlemen,’ Lijah says with pride, and steps into the hearse. For what he knows will be the first and last time in his life, he watches as a man – bought and paid for – bows and closes a car door after him.

It seems a shame to waste any of the plump black seating, so Lijah sits dead centre and leans back with his arms resting across the top of the banquette. As the hearse pulls away, he moves forward and taps on the sliding window. The undertaker in the passenger seat opens it. Lijah shuffles forward further and says, ‘We are going up Eastfield, aren’t we? We’re not taking the back route?’

‘Not unless you wish, sir.’

‘Eastfield, right enough.’

‘Of course, sir.’

The man has only just slid the window back into position when Lijah taps again.

‘Yes, sir?’ The man’s voice has become exaggeratedly respectful.

‘Nice and slow, like.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘No, I mean, even slower than usual.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The man slides the window back and Lijah sees him mutter to the driver. Lijah had glue-ear for two years as a boy and has never lost his talent for lip reading. The man is saying, ‘Bloody Norah, any slower, we’ll be going backwards.’

Lijah sits back with a smile of satisfaction. They pass the Corporation Depot and turn into the main road.

The service is brief. Lijah is the sole mourner. Soon, they are outside again in the cold sunshine. The ochre-coloured tiles on the houses opposite the church look soft and textured in the light – two crows sit on a chimney pot. It is an autumn funeral, orange and black.

The hearse turns slowly into Eastfield Cemetery and proceeds along a wide path. Lijah knows this cemetery well. They are returning to the plot where his wife Rose was buried twenty years ago. The grave has been re-opened and Lijah is going to put his mother on top of his wife.

A new plot on the far side of the cemetery would have cost twelve pounds. Opening up an old one can be done for eight. The car was three pounds six shillings, counting petrol. Lijah offered to bring his own, but they weren’t having it.

The vicar is no longer with them, which suits Lijah fine. His mother would not have wanted all that ashes to ashes nonsense. Lijah watches as the two undertakers slide the coffin out of the car and place it on top of the sheeting laid ready on the ground beside the open grave. You motored, Dei, Lijah says to himself, feeling a tickle of emotion inside him for the first time. You motored all the way up Eastfield Road, nice and slow, just like I promised you.

He steps up to the grave and looks down into it. He peers, trying to see what might be seeable after twenty years: the ant-riddled
wood of the coffin lid? Rose’s skull staring up at him, soil-filled sockets for eyes? The very image of death: he half fears and half desires it, for then he will be able to say to himself that he has seen it, and it is nothing.

All he sees is earth: dark earth. They mun’t dig right down when they open it up again, he thinks. Well, I suppose that’s just as well. Poor Rose. It was a very different funeral for her. No motor for his Rosie – they still used the horse-drawn bier twenty years ago, the crowd trailing behind on foot, led by Lijah and their three daughters sobbing fulsomely, and Dan all stiff and silent – but no Bartholomew, just a big hole in the air where Bartholomew should have been.

He broke his mother’s heart that boy, Lijah thinks to himself.
What was left of it, that is.
Lijah scratches his right ear.

He realises that the undertakers and the gravedigger are waiting for him, so he gives the nod and the men lift the coffin up on the sheet and lower it down into the grave. They stand back with their heads bowed.

Lijah is suddenly angered by their solemnity. Have they not realised that this is a job to be done, without their foolish sentiment? He waves an arm to indicate they can go, for all he cares. He and the gravedigger can finish the job. He steps back onto the path and lifts a hand to his waistcoat pocket, fishing out his tobacco.

The head undertaker approaches tentatively and says, ‘Would sir like to call in at the office later, to conclude arrangements?’ Lijah still owes them six pounds.

‘I’ll settle here and now, thanks very much. Your job’s done, young fella.’ He unbuttons his jacket and waistcoat so that he can reach his second waistcoat, the one underneath, where he keeps his wallet.

The undertaker is clearly relieved. ‘Oh, very good, sir … Cigarette?’ He reaches into his trouser pocket and withdraws a packet of Capstan.

Lijah smiles. ‘Right you are, then.’

When the undertaker has taken Lijah’s money and lit his cigarette, he lights one for himself, nods towards the grave and says, ‘Don’t normally get mother and daughter buried in the same grave. Spouses, sometimes.’

‘They weren’t,’ says Lijah. ‘It’s my wife in there, and it’s
my
mother is going in on top.’

The undertaker raises his eyebrows. ‘Close, were they?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

There is a short pause, then the caretaker murmurs, ‘Can’t say I’d like my mother-in-law on top of me.’

Lijah takes a sideways glance at the man and thinks, I daresay she’d not be too keen on it neither.

The undertaker nods across the cemetery. ‘Still, nice day for it. You were lucky with a bit of sunshine.’

‘Aye, I was that.’

Pleasantries concluded, the two men shake hands. The undertakers climb into the hearse and reverse with some alacrity. As they pull away, they give Lijah a wave.

Lijah is suddenly tired. He sits down on the edge of the path to watch the gravedigger fill in the grave. The gravedigger is an old fella – perhaps even the same one who shovelled the earth on top of Rosie twenty years ago. Is it really so long since she died? A picture comes into his head, unbidden: the children traipsing up the stairs, one by one, to say their goodbyes to their mother – the looks on their faces as they came down. It was a painful death. Stomach cancer.
Of the many things they blame me for, I’m surely not to blame for that.

No stomach cancer for his mum. She had stayed tough as old boots until her nineties. Then she had dropped dead without warning in the street, on her way back from the tobacconists. She had outlived her daughter-in-law by two decades.

Were
they
close
? Lijah’s features lift in a grimace at the thought.
His mother and his wife had hated each other for nigh-on thirty years.

The gravedigger pauses to withdraw a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his face. Then he resumes. The earth is soft, his task noiseless.

Lijah stares across the cemetery. I’ll be here one day. Well at least there’ll be no room for me in there with those two, thank God. They’ll have to dig another hole. Came into the world in a graveyard; leave it in one. In between has been just passing time.

Beyond the grave there is a row of silver birches, their white trunks scarred with black, leaves mostly fallen. The oaks are still shedding slowly, unwilling to acknowledge the coming winter. The grave on the right of Rosie’s is a beautiful piece of black marble.
Bet that cost a bob or two.
A scattering of orange leaves lies over it, looking just right.

The sun disappears. The cemetery is cold.

Dei, in my deari Duvvel’s tan. Eh, mandi? The kitchema, that’s all I’m good for, Dei. You always said as much. Ne ken, never has been.
Lijah sniffs loudly and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. The gravedigger glances up, then bends back to his work.

The gravestones that stretch to the left are all carved of stone. Peculiar how many are in the shape of books, Lijah thinks: open books – must have been fashionable once – all open in the middle. That’s wrong for a start. They should be at the final page. The stone adjacent to Rosie’s grave has a husband and wife in it. He can just make out the carved lettering.
Resting,
it says at the top, then underneath the names and dates.
Reunited,
it says at the bottom.

Resting.
Reunited.
There’s a laugh.

An autumn funeral – right somehow. I’d like to go in the autumn, he thinks. He rises and brushes the seat of his trousers. The grass is damp. Lijah checks his watch. Time to raise a glass to his mother’s memory at The Ghost Pig. He remembers what Rosie said she said to her, that time she turned up to live with them in
Cambridge.
You’ve married my son, and you’ll sup sorrow by the spoonful ’til the day you die.

Lijah tips the gravedigger and strides down the path. Over the nearby fence, he can see they are building another housing estate, across Newark Hill. New houses are springing up like crocuses these days. Peterborough is blooming. It will be one vast suburb, soon. Behind the bar at the pub, they have an unopened bottle of single malt. She was worth a large one, was his mother. Clementina. Lemmy. Lem.