The Memory of Us: A Novel (17 page)

I nodded in feigned obedience.

She sat up straighter and looked at me with a chill in her eyes that belied the casual tone of her words. I felt the unspoken warning before she broke the stare and spoke again.

“And how silly of me to think that you would return any romantic notions where he is concerned. I raised you to be a smart girl.” She slipped off her jewelry and went right into the next thing on her mind. “Anyway, your timing is good. Tomorrow afternoon Mrs. Sheldon is coming for tea, and her grandson, Simon, will be with her. He is a very nice young man, and he seems to have taken an interest in you. You know, he is reading law at Oxford.”

“Yes, I heard something about that. I don’t know how long the funeral will go, but I will try to be home in time for tea.” The lies were coming more easily to me. If I were Catholic like Kyle, would that be something I’d have to confess? It felt completely justifiable right now, under the circumstances.

I brushed the crown of her hair, finishing again at the ends, and stepped back so that she could admire my work. She ran her hands down the length of it and smiled approvingly. I must be back in her good graces because she turned her cheek out to me.

“Good night, Mother.” I kissed her perfunctorily.

“Good night, Julianne.”

I went to the kitchen where I knew that Betty would have saved some supper for me. Breaking yet another rule, a minor one in comparison, I took the plate to my bedroom. Mother feared attracting rats by having food upstairs.

In the morning, at 10:30 sharp, I heard the welcome roar of Kyle’s truck. Looking down from my window, I noticed that he was more dressed up than I had ever seen him before. He wore a black three-piece suit, white shirt, and gray tie. I hurried down just in time to see Mother taking in his new look. Her eyes were more approving than she wanted to be. Kyle’s funeral attire made him look more like someone she would encounter socially. Unfortunately, I knew that the everyday Kyle, the one I loved, would never measure up.

“Good morning, Mrs. Westcott,” he said, taking off his fedora.

“Good morning to you. I am sorry to hear about your father.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Westcott. And thank you for allowing Miss Westcott to attend his burial. She was very helpful to us these past few weeks.”

“Well, good. She might be earning some extra credit at school for it.” I winced at her tactlessness.

Kyle looked my way, and I saw the tiredness in his eyes.

My mother turned. “Ah, here she is now. Julianne—don’t forget about tea with Mrs. Sheldon and her grandson this afternoon.” She gripped my hand with authority and cast a menacing glance at Kyle as she spoke to me. “Did you know that Simon’s mother was a Dewhurst, from the Dewhurst Tea Company? I hear they have homes in Cardiff
and
in Paris. Such a catch.”

“I will try my best to be here, Mother.” I wrangled myself away, and we made our way to the truck. I would have offered the Aston, but I didn’t want to deny Kyle the dignity of driving me in his own vehicle.

It wasn’t until we’d driven the length of the winding drive and passed through the gate that I was able to shed the pretenses displayed for Mother and let myself delight at being alone with Kyle again. Even the gravity of the occasion couldn’t dampen my spirits. He must have been thinking the same thing. At the first opportunity, he stopped the truck on the side of the road and slid over to me.

“Good morning, gorgeous!” He rested his head against mine, and we closed our eyes, tentative in the bittersweet emotions coursing through our bodies on this unusual morning. He moved forward for a slow and gentle kiss that rapidly became more hungry.

“Good morning, yourself,” I said between breaths.

He pulled back, resting his head against mine once again. “I intend to do that every morning for the rest of our lives.”

“I would like that. I think my mother might have some objections, though.”

“Then I will have to convince her that her gardens need lots of attention to give myself a reason to be here all the time.”

“And you’d have to move to London with me.”

“I’ll pack up tomorrow.” He slid back to the wheel and started down the road.

Levity aside, I asked, “Where are we going?” I had expected to drive toward town to Saint Stephen’s, but we were driving in the opposite direction, toward the country.

“We’re going to a cemetery at All Souls in Charcross, past Knowsley Park.”

“Not Saint Stephen’s?”

“I was there this morning. We had a rosary and a funeral Mass for my father.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have been there.” I hated being left out of any corner of his life.

“Well, I know that you didn’t feel comfortable last time that you were at Mass in London, and I didn’t want to put you in a difficult situation this morning. There’s a lot of standing and kneeling, and
Latin
.” He knew that I would shudder at the last one, completely intimidated by the language that was so literally foreign to me.

“Well, that makes sense. This isn’t the morning to jump right in. But Kyle, if we’re going to be together, you’re going to have to teach me how to participate there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if I’m going to go to Mass with you.”

His eyes widened. “You mean that you’d become Catholic for me?”

“I’d become
German
for you, if that’s what you wanted.”

“Hmm.” He looked toward the road, lost in thought.

We arrived at a sprawling piece of land. Headstones dotted the horizon, with angels and crosses scattered among them, their height and detail indicating the wealth of the families that commissioned them. The arched iron gate reading “All Souls Cemetery” had seen better days. Flaking black paint revealed layers of color that had been applied in the fashion of long-ago years. Off in the distance I could see a tiny stone church with a steeple and bell tower. Next to it was another stone building, about the same size as the church. I asked Kyle about it.

“That’s All Souls church, and next to it is the rectory. The priest lives on one side and the groundskeeper on the other. The congregation is very small, being all the way out here, but he’s mostly here to conduct funerals and burials, and to counsel the grieving.”

“How depressing!”

“Well, it depends on the priest. Some of them like this post because they’re reclusive by nature, and this is about the loneliest church you could get appointed to. On the other hand, there are those priests who have a real gift for this work and see it as an important ministry. Either way, though, I’ve heard that the isolation gets to you after a while, so they rotate priests about every two or three years.”

The cemetery was enormous, and Kyle told me that the oldest sections had been there for several centuries. The ones closest to us dated the farthest back. Their headstones were sunk into the ground at varying angles and their letters were weathered in places; the names and memories of the unfortunate ones below were slowly being erased. The newer ones ran up the hill and were arranged in ordered, symmetrical rows.

It would be impossible to find our way to the specific gravesite on our own, so we drove to the church. Kyle instructed me to wait in the truck while he asked for directions. I rolled the window down and looked at the church in more detail.

It was small. From the exterior, I doubted that it would fit more than a hundred people. It was constructed of stones in brown and gray, randomly laid, with white mortar seams that had discolored over time. The steeple seemed taller than it had from the road, and I saw two bells in the tower. I wondered what they would sound like—two solemn wails echoing and mourning in this vast resting place. The roof had a steep slant, and below it were simple windows, rectangular at the bottom until they came to a pointed arch at the top. The lone door mimicked the shapes of the windows.

In front of the church was a courtyard lined with the same kind of stones. An elderly couple walked out of the church, rosaries in hand, followed by Kyle. The woman pointed toward the rectory, and I couldn’t hear what she said to him. Kyle knocked there and was greeted by what must have been the most recent priest sent to this beautiful desolation. I could see him nod as he put his arm around Kyle’s shoulder, inviting him in. Kyle turned around to me, gesturing that he would be right back. When he returned, he had the plot location and a map of the grounds.

“We’re all set,” he said. “I’m glad we stopped. We could have been driving around forever!” He handed the map to me and asked me to navigate for him.

The newest part of the cemetery was about half a mile away, and it didn’t take us long to find our destination.

Stopping the truck, he opened my door for me. I looked out and saw six other figures there already. Kyle leaned in toward my ear to tell me who they all were.

“You remember Father Sullivan and Mrs. Mawdsley. The others are Mr. Alden, our landlord since as long as I can remember, and two parishioners from Saint Stephen’s. The other one is Mr. Paddock. He owns a bar near our flat and is also from Wicklow. My father always enjoyed grabbing a pint or two there and reliving the old days. Mr. Paddock is the only person who could ever make Dadaí laugh about the past.”

“Do you think that he’s laughing now, being with your mother and sisters?”

“I have no doubt of it.”

I folded my hands together as though in reverence, but more because I didn’t want Kyle to hold them. I was suddenly very intimidated that we were about to see people who were part of his life and who were, no doubt, aware of his previous vocation. I didn’t know what he might have told them yet, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to.

But Kyle had different plans. Without knowing the uncertain anxiety that was racing through me, he worked one hand free of the other and grasped it tightly.

I tried to pull it away, but his grip was too strong. “Are you sure that you want to do that?” I whispered. “What are they going to think?”

“That I am a lucky man to be holding the hand of such a beautiful lady.” I could tell that he had already considered the angles to this situation. And unlike me, he had chosen to be forthright. I felt ashamed at the contrast between my deception and his courage, and silently vowed to follow his lead in the future.

I couldn’t help but be pleased that he was so confident in us.

Us.
It had a nice ring to it.

I had trouble making eye contact with Father Sullivan, despite what Kyle had told me the other night. In any case, it was no matter that Father Sullivan might be understanding of it—Mrs. Mawdsley glared at me as if she would throw me down in that two-yard-deep hole if she could.

My thoughts quickly turned to our purpose for being there, and I laid my hand affectionately on the simple coffin that held the body of the elder Mr. McCarthy.

“Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis,”
Father Sullivan began. Although I didn’t understand the words, I prayed for Kyle’s father in my own way and bowed my head like the others. I had brought a rose from Mother’s garden, from the bushes that he had spent too brief a time tending, and I tossed it over the coffin, whispering a good-bye.

At the end of the service we lingered while everyone but Father Sullivan left. He shook Kyle’s hand and then hugged me as if he had known me for a long time. I smiled at this gentle and generous man, grateful for his acceptance of me.

“Well, my son. This is a day of joy and sadness.”

“Father Sullivan, maybe this is wrong, but I’m not feeling sad today. My father is at last with my mother and sisters, and with God. He’s free from his pain. And I”—he looked at me with near adulation—“I am honored to have Miss Westcott here with me.”

Father Sullivan beamed an approving smile. “Miss Westcott—may I call you Julianne? I feel like we know each other a little better now.”

I nodded. I still didn’t know the right words for this kind of situation.

“It is good to see the smile that you have put on our Kyle’s face.” He winked at him. “I’ve thought for some time that this is where he was heading!”

“I wish that
I
had known,” I responded. “I could have saved myself a year of headaches!”

They both laughed at that. At another time it would have seemed odd to me to be laughing in a cemetery. But Kyle and Father Sullivan were both so good-natured that it was difficult to be anything but lighthearted around them, even given the surroundings.

As we started the drive home, I was pleased that someone very close to Kyle was so considerate of me. I was afraid that we weren’t going to have it so easy.

“Kyle—what do we do about my parents?”

He looked over at me. “What do you mean, what do we do?”

“I mean, this—you—are not going to be very well received by them.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that.” He sighed and turned his attention back to the road. “Look, it’s not going to be easy. But whatever happens, we’ll do it together.”

“I know.” I bit my lip, not knowing how to proceed.

“You do that a lot, you know.”

“What?”

“You bite your lip when you’re nervous, or when you’re thinking too hard.”

I liked that he had noticed such a detail about me. “I do, don’t I? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s adorable.” He said it in such a way that indicated
everything
I did was adorable to him. That was going to be a hard one to live up to. He saw that I was still distracted, though, and held out a hand to reassure me.

“Julianne. We are good together. Since the first time we spoke, we fell into something that was so easy. We don’t have to tell them right away—you can work out the best way to do that. But I’m not going anywhere, and sooner or later they will have to know that. Have faith.”

“You’re right. Thank you for that.”

Kyle slowed down and gradually stopped a few blocks from our house. He had never stopped holding my hand, but he moved his up to my hair now and stroked it. Pulling me toward him, he kissed me reassuringly. “I want to be able to do that without hiding it.”

“Me, too. Soon. I promise.”