‘Rebecca—can I call you Rebecca, dear?’
We walked on a narrow path with overgrown grass on either side. The earth was dry and cracked. The path led us away from the churchyard and around the back of the pub, with ploughed fields to the left and the right. ‘This takes you all the way to Bluebell Lane. You’ll soon find your bearings.’
I didn’t care about my bearings. I had none. I was thinking of a privet hedge. There you are you daft girl. Each step felt awkward, uncomfortable. I kept my head down staring at my boots.
Miss Shillingham coaxed me along as if I were a recalcitrant animal. ‘I expect you’re missing your friends, dear, well you’ll soon make some more, you’ll soon settle in, Brightley’s a most interesting village.’
What could I say after twenty minutes on the same narrow path? We trod the fresh earth of rutted fields under our feet until the church spire rose in front of us.
Most interesting indeed, my good woman, we are now back to where we started.
‘If you keep walking that way—’ and she chopped her hands through the air to show me ‘you’ll reach the top of the lane that goes to Little Hartley.’
Can barely wait to do that.
‘Everything looks the same here,’ I said, staring at the brown horizon. ‘There isn’t anything to see.’
I wanted two fried eggs, three rashers of bacon and five slices of hot buttered toast.
‘Well, my dear, that is where you’re wrong.’ She looked at me sharply. In the distance a tractor was rumbling through a field, a few cows were talking to each other, there was the rustle of leaves, the murmurs of country life. ‘There’s all sorts of things going on around here, dear. You just have to look for them.’
Maybe I’ll see ghosts dancing in a beam of light?
‘Don’t you ever get lonely here?’
Flora’s grey hair glistened in the morning sun. ‘Oh no, dear, why would I?’ She clicked open the latch on the church gate; we were at the far side of the churchyard. ‘This is the other way back. The long way.’
The path wound around the back of the church, past the yew tree. A stone wall sat minding its own business in this part of the churchyard and behind that, further up the path and half hidden from view, was the house I could see from my bedroom window. I kept looking behind me, listening for footsteps, but there were none.
‘Expecting someone, dear?’ Flora asked.
I shook my head.
The path ended in a clearing with a line of moss-covered graves. The stones were green and grey and had discoloured streaks all over them. The graves were marked by a narrow line of horizontal stones, instead of newer upright headstones like the other graves in the churchyard cemetery.
‘Most of these are two hundred years old, at the very least.’
The names on them were mostly overgrown with moss and impossible to read. The air took a sudden cool turn, the light seemed to dip a little and I glanced up, expecting rain. There was nothing but a long band of grey sky.
I was starving. I turned to go and was surprised to see a boy perched on top of one of the headstones. He was about the same age as Maggie, and he was just sitting there, looking around, dressed in a shirt and trousers held up with braces, wearing a battered old straw hat, one leg swinging backwards and forwards like a pendulum. The sun burst out from behind the clouds and a shaft of sunbeams lit him up sitting there like that. I recognised something about the light.
Algernon? Is that you? Wearing different clothes? Aren’t you going to say hello then?
The boy lifted his hat to Flora. You could see it was a really well worn straw hat, the type old Farmer Field might have worn years ago, brushing birds and spiders from the brim.
Flora Shillingham looked like she knew him. He stared at her and neither of them spoke for what seemed like a long while. It was an odd silence. The air felt heavy, like it does sometimes when you can almost see the atoms of the sky. When the sky is so blue you feel you can reach out and touch something that isn’t really there. The boy stopped swinging his leg, hopped down from the grave, stuck his hands in his pockets, pushed his hat back on his head and walked off, whistling a tune.
‘Who on earth is that?’ I asked Flora, thinking that now there were strange things round every corner.
‘Just a local, dear. Nothing to concern yourself about.’
The boy disappeared between the rows of graves and the whistling turned to birdsong and the churchyard was exactly the same as it had been seconds ago, minutes ago, years ago.
‘There you are, dear. Just a boy. From around here.’ Flora tugged at her sleeves.
My stomach rumbled. ‘I really need breakfast.’
‘Five minutes more, dear, then you can go home for your eggs.’
I followed Flora between the graves until she came to a white upright headstone that had a carved angel standing at the side of it, with the inscription:
Here Lies Thomas Lark
Gone to His Maker
Aged 22 years and three months
Dearly Beloved Son of Alice and Stanley Lark
May He Rest In Peace
‘He was very good at cricket. A bowler, good with the ball, but could bat if needs be. We played sometimes.’ She nodded towards the village green. ‘In the summer. My brother didn’t think he was any good for me. He always bowled him out. I was seventeen. People married at that age, it was normal then.’
‘Thomas Lark?’
‘Yes, dear. He lived at Brightley Common with his mother. Alice. Just the two of them. My father said his prospects weren’t bright. At least he missed the First War. His father was killed. He never knew him. So many men of the village were taken in that war.’
‘Couldn’t you marry him anyway?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t have much say in things, but my father was right. In those days you had to have something to offer. Poor Tom. He was killed in the Second War. All those brave boys marching off and never coming back. His name’s on the war memorial.’
‘I’m really sorry, Flora.’
‘No point being sorry, dear. Being sorry doesn’t bring anyone back. Anyhow, he’s here now.’ She tapped her chest. ‘Always will be. Some of them do rest in peace, but some haven’t quite finished.’
I remembered the words. Awake forever in a sweet unrest. ‘What haven’t they finished?’
‘Whatever it is they need to do. When you’re young, you’re restless—and some of them died so young. They don’t want to sleep. They don’t all rest in peace. They want to keep going.’
She peered into my face intently. She must have seen something there.
‘How can they keep going?’
‘They have their ways,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.’