Ten Years Earlier
Peggy stood a little way from her father’s grave, shaking hands with those mourners who weren’t going on to the reception in the working men’s club a few streets away. Her back was turned, but Honor knew she’d seen the gravediggers in the lee of the trees leaning on their spades, waiting for them to clear the graveside.
Honor hadn’t gone to her own father’s burial. Refused. JP was the only mourner, and she didn’t even want to know where he was buried. Miles from her mother, she’d insisted. But there was a good turn-out for Christie’s passing. Honor walked to the lip of the grave and looked over. Sunflowers were scattered over the coffin. Peggy got up early and stripped her father’s allotment and garden of every sunflower in them, and now their huge yellow-petalled faces lit up the dark down there.
One last goodbye. A final thanks so much for coming, and Peggy was there at her side. She slid her arm around Honor’s waist and leaned in towards her, resting her head on Honor’s. Lofty and Titch, Christie used to call them. Little and Large.
Honor had loved him and Peggy adored him. But they couldn’t keep him. The size of a tree, over the last four months Christie had shrunk away to a bundle of twigs. Christie, who couldn’t believe he’d fathered anyone as clever as his darling Peggy. I did something right in another life, he said in wonderment to Honor at Peggy’s graduation, standing to applaud his glorious girl in his one good suit and his polished lace-up shoes. The same suit and polished shoes they buried him in.
It was quiet in the churchyard. The sound of birds. Distant traffic. Wind through the leaves of the yew tree.
“He’d put his arm around me on the back step and he’d point out the constellations. And the moon he’d save for last and he’d say ‘That’s where your Mam is, Peggy lass. Looking down on us. Wave at Mam like a good girl.’ It must have been so hard for him, but he never once complained.”
Honor wiped away tears she hadn’t realised she’d been crying with the back of her hand.
“What will I do, Honor? I’m an orphan,’ Peggy said, “and I’ve read the books. Terrible things happen to orphans.”
Honor turned her friend away from the grave and slipped her arm through the crook of Peggy’s elbow. She felt Peggy’s resistance, the desire to stay rooted here among the dead, but she started moving anyway. Pulling her friend back into the world of the living.
“It’s as well you’ve got me to look after you then,” Honor said. “Lesson number one: write down the time you were born, which day of the week it was and your actual birthdate – somewhere you won’t lose it in case you forget, or need your fortune telling. Lesson number two: never buy a cat – it will certainly eat you in your sleep or in the event of a fall. Lesson number three: never fall. It hurts. Lesson number four: drink – particularly gin which is a consolation for orphans and is to be encouraged…”
And as the women walked together down the gravel path, the gravediggers stepped out from the shadows.