Rose Cottage (14 page)

The cemetery was large – two fields taken over from Low Beck Farm when the old churchyard became too crowded to be serviceable – and surrounded by a high wall. My grandfather’s grave was about midway along on the west side, a large plot, to leave space, as I remembered Gran saying, for late-comers. Among the flowers I had brought for him were clusters of his favourite rose, the cottage rose, Old Blush, which he had planted in every available space at home, because, he said, they wouldn’t let him grow ‘the real roses’ at the Hall, just ‘those coloured cabbages they breed nowadays, all size and no scent’.

‘You’ll want water for those,’ said Davey. ‘The tap’s over near the main gate, and there’s usually a can there. I’ll get it for you.’ He went off, leaving me to go to the graveside alone.

I had stooped to set my basket down at the kerbside before I realised that, when I had gathered the flowers that morning, I had not even thought about taking any
for Aunt Betsy. Admittedly, she had never expressed a preference for, or even an opinion of, any flower or plant, except to complain about the scent of the wild garlic in the lane, but even so—

I need not have troubled. On the grave-space next to my grandfather’s there were already flowers, masses of them, arranged with some care in a couple of metal urns. Not roses, but a mixture of garden and wild flowers, lupins and delphiniums and Canterbury bells, along with dog-daisies and cornflowers, and trails of ivy and wild honeysuckle. The wild flowers were all dead or dying, but the others were fresh still.

Even in the presence of the quiet dead it is not easy to control one’s thoughts. My first one was, who in the world would have done this for that very unpopular old woman, my great aunt? My second was that she herself would have called it a sinful waste, and Popish at that.

So who? Miss Linsey’s ghosts? My dead mother and her long-dead gipsy, creeping after dark into the cemetery with this charming tribute to someone whom, in life, she had disliked, even hated, whose viper’s tongue had driven her from home? If there was any sort of truth in Miss Linsey’s tale of lights and people at the grave, no ghosts had put these flowers there. Then who? Not Gran; she had known that I would visit the grave-plot, and she surely would have told me if she had asked anyone else to bring flowers.

A sudden breeze stirred the grasses by the wall, sending a couple of petals floating to the ground, and bringing with it the scent of roses, and with the
scent, a vivid memory of a garden crammed with roses and lupins and all the flowers of summer. Miss Mildred’s garden. Miss Mildred, the one person I knew whose simple loving kindness would have embraced even Aunt Betsy. Whose loving kindness put me to shame.

I detached a sprig of the cottage rose from the bunch in my basket, and laid it on her grave, then turned to give the rest to Granddad.

He, too, had been visited. In the vase near the headstone was a bunch of roses, chief among them the silvery pink of his beloved Old Blush.

‘Who in the world?’ I asked. ‘Miss Mildred?’

‘Might be,’ said Davey. He had returned with a can of water, and we had puzzled over it together. There was no card or message. ‘But I’ve not seen flowers here before. Well, we can ask her, but I doubt it’s not her.’

Another ‘we’, and in its own way as comforting as Mr Blaney’s. I smiled at him, and knelt to replace the fading roses in the vase with the fresh ones I had brought. ‘Then who?’

‘Dear knows, but you see what it might mean? Look at those flowers. The garden ones are still okay, but the wild ones, the cornflowers and such, they’re all dead. Which they would be, if they’ve been there since Sunday.’

I sat back on my heels, staring up at him. ‘Then you really think that? Miss Linsey’s ghosts?’

‘I reckon so. Who else? It fits. Somebody brought them. Somebody’s been here. It could be folk your
aunt had known at home in Scotland, maybe, visiting nearby, and they came over, and old Linsey-woolsey saw them.’

‘But Davey, they vanished. She said they just disappeared.’

He pointed to the door we had come in by. ‘She’d have come in by the main gate. If her two ghosts came in the way we did and left the door open, it’s only a couple of steps out to the road, and they’d gone. It was pretty dark Sunday night.’

‘Ye-es. Yes, you could be right. But who? And if it was friends of the family, Gran’s family, why didn’t they go into the village, to see your mother, perhaps? Or to Rose Cottage—’ I stopped.

‘Yeah,’ said Davey. ‘That’s what it comes to, isn’t it? They did go to Rose Cottage. They may have come to see Mum as well, but there was nobody home at our place last weekend. Look, let’s not worry about it now. If they came to leave flowers here, they mean no harm to you and yours, that’s for sure. And if you’re thinking what I think you are, stop it.’

‘I – I don’t know what to think.’

‘Then don’t try. Have you finished your flowers?’

‘Yes.’ I stood up, watching while he tilted the can to trickle water into the vases. ‘Look, why don’t we stop by Witches’ Corner and ask Miss Mildred if she brought the flowers. Get that bit clear, at least.’

‘No good. She’s not home. She went into Sunderland this morning, and it’s my guess the two of them’ll go to the pictures and get home late. There, I needn’t have bothered to get the water. There’s plenty. Hang
on while I tip the rest out. Those pansies could do with a drop, and that rose bush by the wall. That’s it. Okay. Tell you what, we’ll go home, and Mum’ll give us some dinner, and maybe talk some sense into us.’

As it happened, Mrs Pascoe did not get the chance, as, by unspoken consent, neither Davey nor I mentioned Miss Linsey or the riddle of the cemetery. We told her merely that we had met in Gipsy Lonnen, and that he had gone back with me to put flowers on the graves, and brought me home for dinner.

‘If that’s all right?’ I said. An unexpected guest could pose problems with food rationing.

‘Lord bless you, child, of course it is. There’s plenty, and you’re welcome. Davey, get her a knife and fork, and go and call your father.’

She refused my offer of help, told me briskly to sit down, and began to dish up a large chicken pie. ‘And had old Tom been doing a good job on the graves?’

‘Mr Corner told me he was still sexton, and I could hardly believe it! Does he do it all himself still? I used to think he was about a hundred, and that’s years ago.’

‘Eighty-two, and won’t even talk about retiring. He does get help with the grave-digging, though.’

‘Well, the place was very tidy, and the grave looked fine.’ I hesitated, then asked her merely if Miss Mildred was in the habit of taking flowers to the cemetery. She knew nothing about that, she said, with a kind of snort, but she did know that poor Miss Mildred wasn’t even welcome, these days, to take them to the church, since
the vicar’s wife fancied her own stuff so much, and looked down her nose at other people’s.

‘And now there’s none coming in from the Hall – here, Jim,’ as Mr Pascoe and Davey came in, ‘yours is ready.’ She set his plate down, and spooned potatoes. ‘Have you washed your hands, Davey?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ said Davey, and winked at me as he took his place.

Mr Pascoe greeted me as he sat down. He was a quiet, mild-mannered man, who was known for miles around as an excellent craftsman. He was, in looks, an older version of Davey; an inch or so shorter, perhaps, and with the thicker body and greying hair of middle age, but the same grey eyes and indefinable poise of self-belief that marks the man who knows his limitations, but who also knows what he is good for, and expects – and receives – the respect it brings him. It was a dignity which, I supposed, carried over from the other part of his profession. He was, of course, the local undertaker.

‘Davey says you’ve been to see the graves? They’d be all right, old Tom does the grass every Friday, rain or shine. By the way, Kathy, I’ve been on to Caslaws, and they’ll do your move for you Monday at latest, but there’s a chance of Saturday, so you’d best be ready. Davey can take time off to give you a hand.’

‘Thank you very much.’

‘You’re welcome, you know that. Give the girl some more of those potatoes, Mother. She’ll be on short rations down there at the cottage.’

‘No, really, I’ve got plenty. The pie’s lovely, Aunty Annie.’

Mrs Pascoe primmed her lips, looking pleased. ‘Well, eat up,’ she said, and sitting down she began to ask me about the Brandons and Gran’s new house, while Davey and his father ate busily and, when they spoke at all, exchanged brief comments about the work they were doing at the Hall.

I helped clear the plates, and while Mrs Pascoe was dishing the pudding – a hearty syrup sponge – I asked her, ‘Was there much damage done at the Hall in the war? Gran said it was a mess, though I suppose you can’t blame the boys. The RAF, I mean.’

She gave me a quick, sideways look. ‘Nobody blames them, poor lads. We all know what they did for us, and if that’s any comfort to you, it’s the truth.’

‘Thank you. These two plates for the men?’

‘That one was for you. If it’s too much, give it to Davey. No, the Hall wasn’t too bad, really, just scratches and chips everywhere, and the floors a bit of a mess. Nothing that can’t be repaired, with a bit of plaster and a lick of paint and some polish to bring it up lovely again. No real harm done. We’d moved some of the breakables down to the cellar, and the carpets from the drawing room, and the pictures, and things like that. The books are still down there.’

‘Is the kitchen still the same?’

‘The big kitchen, yes. They put a modern stove in the servery, and the cooking was mostly done there. The library’s the worst. That’s where the bar was.’

‘I can imagine.’

She primmed her mouth again, but looked amused.
‘Well, they had a dartboard there. Where old Sir Giles’s portrait used to be.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘But the billiard room’s all right. Someone must have kept their eye on that.’

‘Billiard room?’ said Davey. ‘You talking about Toad Hall?’

Mrs Pascoe tut-tutted, and I laughed as I got up to help her with the dishes. I had forgotten the name which, inevitably, had stuck to Tod Hall once
The Wind in the Willows
reached our classroom. Our elders, afraid of the Hall’s reaction, had tried, but in vain, to stop us using it.

‘I’m taking the van across this afternoon,’ said Davey, to me. ‘Want to come over with me?’

‘I thought you said you weren’t working this afternoon?’

‘I’m not. But Dad wants some tools bringing that he left there, and there’s some timber needs carting over as well. Wouldn’t you like to see the place?’

‘Well, yes, I would. I’ll be writing to Gran tonight, and I know she’d like to hear what’s going on.’

‘If you’re writing to your Gran—’ said Mr Pascoe. ‘Annie, lass, there’s that paper the masons sent. Can you think on where we put it?’

‘It’s behind the clock on the mantelpiece Get it for your Dad, Davey.’

‘Give it to Kathy,’ said Mr Pascoe. ‘There you are, Kathy, maybe you’ll send it to your Gran, if you’re writing. I’d have asked her about it myself, if she’d been on the phone. They want to know about the text for the stone.’

‘The stone?

‘Your Aunt Betsy’s headstone. Well, it’s the same stone, of course, your Granddad’s. There’s space left, as you know. The masons have taken long enough, they always do, but I wrote a while ago to ask them what was keeping them back, and they said they were still waiting for the text. You know how most folk like something from the Bible put on the stone, and your Gran did say something about it, but I reckon she’s forgotten.’

‘Well, I’ll ask her, but she probably didn’t want one.’ I thought of the Unseen Guest, who would have been welcome, I was sure, in this kindly house. ‘I think she had enough of them at home. But I’ll ask her, certainly.’

‘And tell her we were asking after her.’

This, being translated, was ‘give her our love’. I promised, smiling, and was interrupted by Davey, sounding impatient.

‘Are you coming? If we go now I can get you back in plenty of time for your date with the vicar.’

I glanced at Mrs Pascoe as I hung the tea towel to dry above the fireplace.

‘You go on,’ she said. ‘I’ll be quicker putting the things away myself. I know where they go.’

As she turned to stack the clean dishes away in a cupboard, I thought she was smiling.

Davey drove the van round to the back of the Hall, and under the archway into the courtyard. This was a wide, cobbled square, with the old mounting-block at its centre, and on two sides the stable doors and the archways of the coach-house. One of the other sides had held offices and quarters – now mostly storerooms – for those servants who had lived in, and on the fourth side were the back premises of the Hall itself.

I remembered the courtyard as a peaceful place, where doves strutted and cooed, or flew up in mock alarm when the stable clock struck or a gardener wheeled his barrow across the cobbles. But today it was very different. Evidences of the proposed conversion were everywhere, piles of bricks, a cement mixer, ladders, buckets, timber, and an unattractive collection of bathroom fittings still pasted up with strips of gummed wrapping. And there was something else that was new, or rather, unexpected after the gap of years. The smell of horses. The stable half-doors and the old
tack room door stood open, and outside was a pile of manure sweepings ready to be carted off, presumably, to the garden heap.