Stone Cradle (29 page)

W
e buried Rose in Eastfield Cemetery. It was a slow procession from the church – fitting it was, for it gave us all time to prepare ourselves for the bit that came next, the most awful bit, the putting of her in the ground. Lijah led the procession, with Dan next to him. The three girls walked behind, arms linked. I was walking behind them but could tell they were all crying. Fenella started them off – sobbing brokenly by the heave of her shoulders. Scarlet was shaking her head a little and breathing hard. Mehitable was motionless as she walked but I knew that tears would be streaming down her face, nonetheless. Mehitable. Who knew what was going on in her head? Scarlet and Fenella would recover in their own good time – but Mehitable had a double load of grief to deal with, mourning her mother and the mother she would have rather had.

I watched their backs as they walked and thought, how many different ways there are of crying, as many ways as there are unhappy people in the world.

And then we came to it:
ashes
to
ashes,
dust
to
dust
… the swing
and sway of the words, the waving of the vicar’s arm, the blustering breeze and the sobbing of the three daughters. Rose’s coffin was lowered. How dreadful, I thought, as it descended – how dreadful to be shut up in a box and put in a hole in the ground and have the earth cover you over, and to be stuck in there in the cold and dark, all alone, for all eternity. You can’t burn people no more, Lijah told me. You can’t get away with it. So we’ve all got to go in a hole in the ground, whether we like it or not.

Afterwards, we all stood around for a bit, as you do. The vicar spoke quietly to Lijah at one end of the grave then started moving around the company. Lijah was left alone, looking down into the hole where they had put his Rosie, forlorn as a boy. I was standing a little way off, watching him. I waited for one of his children to approach him and comfort him, but none of them did. They were all talking to each other, or the other mourners. After a moment or two, I went up to Lijah and put my hand on his arm.

‘Come on, Lijah,’ I said gently. ‘It’s time to go back to the house.’

He did not move. He was staring down at the grave.

‘Come on, love,’ I said.

He raised his head, and shook it slightly. ‘Well,’ he said, awkwardly, ‘she’s got a bit of peace now, I suppose.’ He lifted the corners of his mouth in a grimace, shrugged and made a
humphing
sound. Then he scratched his ear, and stuck his hands in his pockets. I squeezed his arm.

As we turned to go, I saw that the girls were standing at the far end of the grave, all looking towards us. They turned and walked off down the path, after Dan.

The wake was in Rose and Lijah’s house in Buckle Street. Once we got inside the door, the girls moved into action. Mehitable brewed up some large pots of tea – Mrs Loveridge had borrowed three enormous teapots from the Legion. Scarlet and Fenella set to with the sandwiches. Lijah and Dan and the other men went to the
parlour for a smoke. The neighbours were all in, of course, and the women saw to the handing out of the sandwiches and cake and everyone talked quietly and bustled about as they do at these things. I did my best to help out and make a bit of conversation with folk but it’s not really my strong point, idle chat. I was pleased when folk started to give their condolences and drift off. Dan stayed by the door to see them out. ‘Are there many men left in the parlour?’ I asked Scarlet as she came out balancing a pile of empty cups and saucers.

‘Not many,’ she said. ‘With any luck we can all get off soon.’ She bustled past me, into the kitchen. Oh we can, can we? I thought.

I felt a sudden need for a bit of air. Dan was still at the front door ushering folk out, so I went out the back. I went and stood in the middle of the garden and took a few long, deep breaths

Those terraces had long, thin gardens and low walls, so you could look right down over everybody else’s garden. Washing was strung up, here and there. Pigeons were cooing in their coop at the end of number forty-two. It was an ordinary day; washing, pigeons, empty sky. I looked up at the sky and thought it had never seemed emptier.

I waited until I thought everyone but family would be gone before I went back inside. The clearer-uppers were still there. Mrs Lane and her daughter who was grown-up but retarded were washing plates and cups in the kitchen. Sally Loveridge was emptying ash trays into a tin can. I looked around for the girls but couldn’t see them. I peered in at the parlour. Lijah was sat on a straight-backed chair with Mr Lane and his sons around him. They were still sipping tea. The air was white with cigarette smoke. They weren’t saying much to each other, the men. I backed out and closed the door behind me.

I wondered what had happened to the children.

As I closed the parlour door, I heard footsteps on the stairs. They were all descending – Daniel first, with a few papers in his hand,
then Mehitable, Scarlet and Fenella. Scarlet had some of Rose’s old dresses over her arm.

Daniel glanced at me, and nodded, ‘All right, Gran,’ he said. ‘Thanks for helping out this afternoon.’ He went out of the front door.

It was only as Fenella, the last, was passing me, that it dawned on me they were all leaving. I caught her by the arm.

‘Where are you lot off to?’ I said, and I had a bit of difficulty keeping the sharpness from my tone.

Fenella looked a little embarrassed. She could never tell a lie, that one. ‘Well, Gran, it’s sort of wrapping up now, isn’t it? You’ve got lots of help to clear up. Billy has to get back and we thought we’d walk her round. I hope you don’t mind.’

Scarlet turned back. She came up close, so she could speak without being overheard. The door to the kitchen was stood wide open.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Gran,’ she said. ‘But we just need to get off, okay? We’ll see you and Dad tomorrow. We’ve done our bit for now. We stayed until everyone went.’

I stared at her. I lowered my voice as much as I could. ‘What do you mean
stayed
until
everyone
went?
What’s your father supposed to do this evening, stare at the wallpaper?’ I hissed, and I could feel my gaze blazing.

Scarlet lowered her voice still further. ‘We’ve said goodbye to Dad, he’s fine about it. He’s got you, all right? He’s got you. Now we need a bit of time to ourselves. She was
our
mother,
all right?’

‘There’s still her things to be sorted.’

‘That’s what we were doing. Dan’s got the paperwork. I’ve taken some dresses and Fenella will have the brooch. Billy don’t want anything. The rest can just be disposed of now
please
…’ I saw she was close to tears, ‘just let us go, will you?’

She took Fenella by the arm and marched her towards the door. Fenella looked back and gave a weak smile. ‘Bye then, Gran,’ she said. They closed the door gently behind them.

Sally Loveridge came out of the kitchen. She had been waiting until our little exchange was over. She was holding a stack of clean plates. She gave me an ingratiating smile. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘do you want me to stack these in the kitchen or take them through?’ She indicated the parlour door with her head.

Put them on yer
’
ead and dance the fandango for all I care
,
I thought.
Loving it, aren’t you? Being so good and noble.

‘Kitchen’ll be fine,’ I said, then forced myself to add, ‘thank you.’ She went back inside.

Upstairs, in Rose and Lijah’s bedroom, I manoeuvred my way around all the extra furniture and opened the wardrobe. Rose’s house-coat was still there and a few old dresses, along with a couple of skirts and blouses. They had left the shoes – she always had very big feet, did Rose. I thought, there’s probably some large woman out there who’d be glad of them but I’m blowed if I know her.

In the chest of drawers there was underthings and some fine stockings – they would all have to be disposed of in the proper manner. I laid out a clean sheet on their bed, and began piling everything else onto it. That night, when the house was empty but for me and Lijah, I could parcel it all up, then I would take it out to the garden.

No, I thought, not the garden. The neighbours. No, I will go and find a field, somewhere, and I will do what is right by Rose out in the open, without anyone watching, just her and me. I will set a match to all that is left of her, and say the right words in my head. She should be blessed on her way in the proper manner by someone, after all.

We do right by the dead in the hope that the living will one day do right by us.

A few weeks after we buried Rose, Lijah moved into my little house in Wellington Street, not far from the Corporation Depot. Well,
there wasn’t any point in him hanging around his and Rose’s house, kicking his heels.

It’s a strange thing, to be an old lady and have your son living with you when he is an old man too. You do not see the oldness in your own child. You look at him and see the boy who used to whimper in his sleep. And you can’t help treating him like the boy who used to whimper in his sleep an’ all – which doesn’t go down so well sometimes when’s he middle-aged and balding.

It was like we had returned to what we was before. Lijah had lived with me for the first twenty years of his life, on and off – and then there was a break in our arrangement when he went off and married and had five children – and then he came back to live with me for another twenty years. I do sometimes wonder if my life has been a bit peculiar.

It saddens me to relate this, but despite the fact that we had been a large family, once, it came pretty clear to me that now it was just me and Lijah. Scarlet and Fenella came round the day after Rose’s wake, to help me brush the carpets what needed a good going over after a load of feet had been tramping on them. We cleaned the curtains too, tried to get the smoke out of them.

But as soon as their jobs were done, they made their excuses again and left. Billy came at the weekend and brought some steak and kidney with dumplings on top for us to heat up on Sunday. She didn’t stay long either. Oh, they all did their bit, I’m not saying they didn’t. But their bit was all they did. When I decided that Lijah should move back in with me, they all came and helped us pack stuff up and carried it round, and I had baked biscuits and cakes so we could all sit crammed round my little kitchen table for the rest of the afternoon and drink tea and eat ’til we were stuffed. And how long did they stay? Half an hour. There was a fruit cake didn’t even get broken into.

Bright and cheery, they were with us. All full of helpfulness and
not sharing anything. Lijah was too grief stricken to notice, but I noticed, all right.

One day, some weeks after Lijah had moved in with me, I decided to take the initiative and call by Daniel’s sign-writing business. He was busy, which maybe accounts for how he was a little off with me. We were stood in his yard and he had just had a load of work in. One of the big breweries was opening up a string of pubs across the county, all with the same name. The idea was, Daniel explained, that wherever you went, you would be able to find a Crown & Anchor, and they would be all the same inside so you would get comfortable with them being all the same. And after a while, you wouldn’t want to go nowhere different, as it being not-the-same would make you
un
comfortable. There was something about this that seemed not-right to me, although I’m not sure I can really put it into words.

So, he had a big job on that day. He had a row of signs constructed – must’ve been more than twenty of them, and three men going from one to the other. One was doing the background, another the anchor and another the crown. The lettering was done by Daniel himself as he wouldn’t let nobody else near that.

We stood in his yard, and I said to him, ‘Well, it’s quite the little factory you’ve got here now I’ve come to find out what’s up with you lot and why you’re all being so off with me and your father.’

There was a pause. His voice went a bit careful. ‘We all appreciate you looking after Dad,’ he paused again. ‘Don’t think we don’t.’

‘So in other words, now he’s moved in with me, you think that lets you off the hook.’

Daniel gave me a sideways glance. ‘That’s not the way it is, Gran. I don’t think that’s right fair, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘So why don’t you come round more often?’

He took a deep breath. ‘We was round only last weekend, Gran,
and Scarlet dropped by after work on Wednesday, she told me.’

I couldn’t find the words for it. It wasn’t that they weren’t coming to see us, it was that they were being dutiful and no more, and I wanted more.

‘Gran, I don’t want to be inhospitable or anything, but the lads are waiting for me to tell them what to do.’

Ah
yes,
the
big
businessman
now,
I thought bitterly. He hadn’t even taken me into his office and offered me a cup of tea. I could have come up with a smart retort but I didn’t have the heart for it, that day. I turned away.

As I walked off down the road, I could feel Daniel watching me go. I hoped his conscience was pricking him a bit. I even felt a little tearful and sorry for myself. I thought,
I
didn’t
realise
when
we
lost
Rose
we
were
losing
the
children
as
well.
How
has
this
happened
? I didn’t turn around.

I bought myself a canary. Lijah had been promising me one ever since we’d moved up to Peterborough but there must have been a drastic canary shortage or something as he kept telling me he couldn’t find the right one. ‘I’m not fussed,’ I kept saying to him. ‘Anything yellow with a pair of wings will do.’ In the end, I gave up on him and went out and got it myself from the market. Trouble was, I put it in the parlour and the chimney in there was not too efficient – not bad enough to pay for a sweep but blocked enough to make sure a bit of smoke and soot came in the room. Sooner or later, that yellow canary looked more like a blackbird. I couldn’t let it out to hop around, even with the door closed. It would have made a right mess.