The Shortest Journey (18 page)

Working on the principle that wherever there is an
ancient monument there is usually a cafe, I was delighted to find
the Belvedere Tearooms just across from the car park. It was, I was
glad to see, an old-fashioned, traditional teashop with small,
slightly rickety tables and wheelback chairs, willow-pattern china
and a large table at one end on which were laid out plates of very
home-made looking cakes. I sat down at one of the tables and looked
about me. I had been slightly surprised to find it open out of the
season, but now I saw that it was full of locals and was obviously
their morning meeting-place. A middle-aged woman, rather
surprisingly wearing a hat, brought me coffee and a selection of
cakes. After careful consideration I chose a rather chewy date and
walnut slice, which seemed less rock-hard than the others on offer.
But the coffee was very good and I was drinking it gratefully when
a voice behind me exclaimed, ‘Good Heavens! It’s Sheila Prior!’

I turned and saw a large, round-faced woman in a
tweed suit who certainly looked familiar. I was also conscious of a
slight sinking of the heart, though I didn’t know why. I was
groping for a name to put to the face when she said, ‘Ruth Barnes –
though I’m Ruth Gibson now.’

‘Of course!’

I knew now why my heart had sunk. Ruth Barnes had
been our college bore. A nice girl. Good-natured. But terribly
boring.

‘Ruth!’ I cried, trying to look delighted. ‘What a
surprise! Do you live here?’

‘We do now. My husband retired last year and we moved
here from London. We always loved the Forest – what? oh, the Forest
of Dean, but we all call it the Forest. We used to come here for
holidays when the children were small.’

She rattled on, just as she used to in the old days,
pausing only to allow the odd murmur of (assumed) interest, about
her husband (a civil servant – Ministry of Transport) and her
children (one a vet and one a mineralogist) and the house they had
bought (‘a converted coach-house, just outside Chepstow, Tutshill,
actually’) and the garden (‘really too big for Arnold to manage on
his own, but so difficult to get any sort of reliable help
nowadays’) and her own life (‘desperately busy, but oh so
fulfilling
, if you know what I mean’).

I had taken a bite of my date and walnut slice, which
effectively gagged me so that I couldn’t have uttered even if I’d
been able to get a word in. But finally the spate of words slowed
down and Ruth said, ‘And what about you? Whatever brings you to
Chepstow? How long are you here for?’

‘Oh, I’m just passing through,’ I said hastily. ‘I’m
on my way to Coleford.’

Typically she didn’t ask why I was going to Coleford
but continued her monologue. My old technique for dealing with Ruth
came back to me automatically: I closed my mind to her
conversation, allowing only the occasional phrase to penetrate, and
continued to deal with the date and walnut slice.

‘So many things you must look at in the Forest ...
the Speech House ... the locals ... so quaint and odd ... very
inbred, of course ... typical border country ... Arnold says ...
local history society ... Clearwell Castle and the caves ...
extraordinary little coal mines ... amazing church, you must make
time for that ... Cathedral of the Forest ... Newland ... splendid
little pub, marvellous food...’

Freed at last from my sticky cake, I interrupted her.
‘It all sounds splendid and I’ll enjoy seeing it, but I must...’ I
gathered up my bag and tried hard to catch someone’s eye to get my
bill.

‘Oh, you must stay and meet Arnold. He’s only gone to
the DIY place, he’ll be along here soon.’

Knowing from bitter experience that bores usually
married bores (who else?) I was determined not to get trapped by
Arnold, who would doubtless have fascinating things to tell me
about the road-fund licence or airport security, or whatever his
branch of the Ministry of Transport did. Fortunately the
middle-aged lady in the hat suddenly materialised and said, ‘Were
you the date and walnut?’ and gave me a bill.

‘I do wish I could stay,’ I said, with the warmth
that only a downright lie can give, ‘but I’ve got an appointment
and I mustn’t be late. It’s been lovely seeing you.’

I backed away, paid the bill and made my escape.

As I sat in the car fastening my seat belt I was
aware that I was feeling rather resentful that Ruth hadn’t made a
single enquiry about my life. She didn’t even ask what my married
name was! Not that I wanted to tell her my life story – heaven
forbid! – but still, I felt a little bit niggled.

I drove out of Chepstow and into the Forest. And it
was a forest and not a wood, dark and somehow forbidding. There
were a lot of conifers and Forestry Commission plantations, but
also long stretches of broad-leaf trees, just beginning to turn to
gold. Very beautiful, really, but not the friendly sort of beauty
that our West Somerset woods have. The trees were larger and taller
and seemed to encroach on the road, as if, for two pins, they would
sweep it away altogether. Tessa started to whine a little in the
back and I thought I’d better let them out for a run. I parked on a
grass verge by a little lane. There was, on the corner, a low metal
road-sign with the name in black on a white ground – strangely
urban in such a setting. The sign read ‘Miss Grace’s Lane’.

I clipped the dog leads on and they pulled me down
the lane, snuffling and exploring in the hedges full of dead leaves
and interesting smells. The lane was quite short and uninteresting
and ended suddenly in a gate with a field beyond. I wondered who on
earth Miss Grace had been and why she had given her name to this
rather boring little cul-de-sac. Perhaps, surrounded as it was by
the intimidating forest, it was the only place she felt comfortable
enough to walk in.

I gave the dogs some biscuits and water, put them
back in the car and continued my journey. A little further on I saw
a small garage and decided that, since I didn’t know how far I’d
have to go, I’d better fill up with petrol. The brand of petrol was
one I’d never heard of but I decided they were all much of a
muchness and drew up beside one of the two pumps. Sometimes I have
problems with my petrol-locking cap – it suddenly seizes up for no
reason at all – and I was wrestling with it when a child came out
of the garage. He was a boy of about ten or eleven, small and thin
with a pale face and short brown hair that stood up in a spike on
the crown. He regarded me with mild contempt, unlocked the petrol
cap, unhooked the nozzle of the pump and looked at me
enquiringly.

‘Oh,’ I said, feeling flustered, ‘fill it up, please,
if you will.’

The child filled the tank, replaced the cap, took a
chamois leather from the pocket of his jeans and cleaned the
windscreen. Then he went back into the garage and I followed him
meekly.

Inside there was a girl – a little older, about
twelve – stacking bottles of car shampoo on the shelves. The boy
stood beside the electronic till and I said, ‘You take credit
cards?’

He held out his hand. ‘That’s right,’ he said in what
I took to be the local accent. He processed my card with brisk
efficiency and gave it back to me.

Another boy, this time very young, certainly not more
than six, came in from the back with a pile of roadmaps which he
began to lay out on the counter beside the till. I wanted to say
something – I longed to know what had happened to all the
grown-ups, what the children were doing there – but they were
behaving as if this was their normal way of life, absorbed in
everyday tasks, business-like, working in a silence that it seemed
somehow impertinent to break.

I put my credit card back in my bag, gave the boy at
the till a nervous smile and said, ‘Well, thank you, goodbye.’

‘Have a nice day,’ he said, the cliché sounding
strange and outlandish in that accent and in those
circumstances.

Decidedly shaken by this encounter I drove on and,
not surprisingly, found I had missed the way. The forest still
stretched away on either side of the road, but now it was thinner
and in among the trees there were sheep – scraggy creatures with
bedraggled coats, rummaging among the leaves and bracken. There was
no mention of Coleford on the next signpost I got to. I drew up
beside it and a heavily laden lorry with the words Tintern Quarry
on its side rushed past me. One of the names on the signpost was
Clearwell and I remembered that Ruth had mentioned it, I hoped in
connection with the marvellous pub, because I suddenly realised
that what I really wanted was a comforting gin and tonic. Clearwell
was quite a large village; a lot of the houses had been gentrified
and there were several little enclaves of new village houses,
stone-built with those pointed wooden window-frames they all seem
to go in for nowadays. I identified the castle (a
nineteenth-century crenellated building, now a hotel) and wondered
which of the three pubs to choose. I avoided the largest, hung with
a plethora of hanging baskets, the geraniums still in full and
exuberant bloom, and made my way into a small one called the
Orepool. It was dark inside, but cosy and quite full. I got my
drink, ordered some lasagna and went to sit in the corner by the
window. I wished I had a book; the other customers stared at me,
not in an unfriendly way, but curiously, as if I were of another
species or from another planet, then went back to their darts and
bar billiards. When the food came I bent my head over my plate, ate
it quickly and went over to the bar to pay the bill.

I asked the barman for directions to Coleford.

‘You need to go through the village and turn right
past the chapel, then up across the Meend,’ he said.

‘The Meend?’

‘The Meend.’ he repeated impatiently, ‘and you’ll
find yourself on the Coleford road. You can’t miss it.’

As I drove through the village I saw the church,
which was unremarkable – obviously not the one urged upon me by
Ruth – and looked about me for a chapel. On the right-hand side I
saw a small, vaguely ecclesiastical building with a graveyard
behind it, and stopped in amazement. I parked the car and went over
to get a better look. It was a very mild autumn and, as I’ve said,
there were still a lot of flowers in bloom, but there in the
graveyard was such a blaze of colour that it took my breath away. I
opened the tall iron gate and went inside.

It was a large churchyard with a small chapel at one
end, obviously used solely for funerals since the graveyard was
some way from the church. Around the edge, in front of the boundary
wall, someone had made a vast, circular raised bed and this was
filled with late flowering dahlias, chrysanthemums, rudbeckia and
Michaelmas daisies. That was not all. All along the perfectly kept
path were small beds also filled with flowers and every grave that
had no vase of flowers of its own or layer of chippings had been
planted with marigolds and brilliant yellow daisies. The effect was
stunning. I walked a little way along the path and came upon an old
duffle coat which had been thrown down on the ground, and, lying
beside it, a small black dog who was guarding it. She had, laid out
neatly on the ground, a bowl of water, a bone and a handful of dog
biscuits. The dog, who had been chewing the bone, looked up as I
approached, then she got up and came towards me, wagging her tail.
I put out a hand to stroke her glossy coat and she rolled over so
that I could pat her fat stomach. I spoke to her and petted her and
then suddenly she scrambled to her feet and rushed down the path
towards a figure coming towards me.

Just for a moment I felt frightened. The man
approaching was very strange. He was tall and very thin, with
tangled grey hair down below his shoulders and a grey beard to his
waist – it was as disconcerting as suddenly coming upon an Old
Testament prophet. He was wearing a collarless shirt with the
sleeves rolled up, a navy waistcoat that had once belonged to a
suit and old khaki trousers tied at the knee with binder cord. I
hesitated. It was very quiet with no one in sight and the man
looked so odd that my instincts told me I should hurry away, back
to the car and safety, but then I saw the dog leaping up at him and
the gentle way he patted her head and, perhaps irrationally, I
stopped being frightened.

I walked towards him, calling out, ‘Good
afternoon.’

‘Afternoon, missus.’ His voice was noncommittal.

‘Is that your dog? She’s in beautiful condition.’

‘She’s a good dog is Trixie.’

He seemed pleased and I continued, ‘And is this
beautiful place all your work?’

‘It is. It’s what I do, look after the
graveyard.’

‘I’ve never seen one like it.’

‘No, folks do say that.’

‘And do you do it all on your own? It’s quite
magnificent.’

‘I like to see the graveyard look well.’ He paused
and then volunteered, ‘They didn’t buy none of those plants, it’s
all what people have give me when I do their gardens.’

‘That’s wonderful. And all the old graves planted
like this.’

‘I don’t like the old ones to think they’ve been
forgotten,’ he said.

Trixie had been rolling at his feet, but then she
broke away and came back to me delighted to have a second person’s
attention. As I bent down to stroke her, my eye was caught by a new
grave, the earth on it still roughly turned and with one wreath
(white chrysanthemums, now turning brown at the edges) laid at its
head. Stuck into the earth at the end of the grave nearest to the
path was a wooden peg, on which was written in biro the inscription
‘Edith Mary Rossiter’.

As I straightened up something of what I felt must
have shown in my face because the man said, ‘Are you all right,
missus?’

I tried to think coherently.

‘Yes ... That is, I’ve had a bit of a shock. That’ –
I pointed to the place – ‘is the grave of someone I knew – I hadn’t
expected to find her here.’