Alberta Clipper (43 page)

And the irony of it was that Mark felt ready to leave now.  Because he knew she was his.  Because he knew now that she loved him too.

The cemetery was much busier than usual.  Christine preferred not to visit on holidays, for fear of bumping into her father, or anyone else.  But this St. Patrick’s Day, she was making an exception.  As they slowly walked along the tarmac path, recently dug graves to their right, a promised field to their left, she linked her arm through Mark’s.  There was less chance of her turning and running away like that.  And she didn’t want to run.  Her other arm was by her side, two milky roses in her grip, her thumbnail sunk into the stem of one.

An unmistakeable scent of spring filled her lungs as they walked.  It still felt cold, or at least it did to Christine, but she was still adjusting to the change from having been in Sydney.  Dotted around the graveyard, little groups of people stood huddled over, some kneeling, weeding, scouring a greening headstone with wire brushes, others just standing, staring at a place they last left their beloved.  The groups, mostly adults in twos and threes, some with small children skipping around them, were an unusual sight for her.  She was used to seeing solitary individuals, mostly men, the regulars, those quietly visiting the graves on Saturdays when she would usually be here, striking in her youth.  But today, there was a different mood around the headstones, as family groups, carrying cheerful daffodils and posies of wilting shamrock, many chatting gaily to each other, took the opportunity of the holiday to be there.

Mark was quiet as they walked along, very conscious of the significance of his being there.  He would take his cue from Christine.  He tried to silently gauge her mood.  It wasn’t certain how she would feel once they were at the grave.  Would she be sorry that she had asked him to come?  He hoped to God not.  He wanted badly to do this with her.  After this, there would be nothing left between them.  No barriers.  No secrets.

Christine’s pace slowed almost imperceptibly.  Mark stayed with her.  They were close now.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the familiar names and headstones.  Watching her.  Judging her.  Noticing this tall, dark-haired man she was pressed to.  Wondering who he was.  But as she walked past, Christine knew they would approve.  That they would be happy for her.  She inadvertently smiled to herself, and Mark gave her a questioning look. 

“You okay?”

“Yes.”  She squeezed his arm in hers, her expression now solemn.  “It’s just here.”

Her words were hardly audible, but he followed her gaze to a gravestone just ahead of them, and they stopped walking.  Christine’s eyes were fixed.  Mark watched her, anxious for a moment, but she seemed calm.  He turned to the plot of granite kerbing and stone.  It was a simple
,
unassuming grave.  Almost tasteful next to some of the gaudy testimonials that they had passed.  Just
a cross on a plinth.  Mark read the
epitaph
slowly. 

HERE LIES PATRICIA GROGAN

BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER

AND ZOЁ GROGAN

BORN AN ANGEL

SAFE IN THE ARMS OF HER GRANDMOTHER

They stood in silence, not moving, their arms linked.  After what must have been th
ree or four minutes, Christine took her arm away and left the two roses on the plinth next to a small pot of narcissus.

“Dad must have been here this morning,” she said to the tiny golden flowers.  She stood back next to Mark, her hands in her pockets.  Mark felt he could speak now. 

“Your Mum was only fifty-three when she died,” he shook his head.  “She was so young.”

“Yeah,” Christine nodded.  “My Dad was eight years older than her.”  She smiled, remembering.  “She used to call him a cradle-snatcher when they were arguing.  Only messing about, you know,” she looked at Mark.  “And he would laugh, and accuse her of leading him astray.  It was funny,” she said.  “Because, because they were just peas in a pod.  Real soul-mates.  Best mates.”

Mark nodded.  He tried to imagine what it might have been like to grow up in a home where your parents were best friends too.  He found he couldn’t.

They stood in silence again for a while.  “It must have been very difficult,” he said, “coming back here so soon after you had buried her.”  He looked at Christine.  He was terrified of going too far.  Of treading on long-dormant memories and upsetting her.  But they were here now.  He wanted to dig as deep as he could.  Reveal as much of her as he could, without hurting her.  He looked back at the dates on the headstone.  “Or maybe you didn’t come?” he said softly.  “With Zoë?”  He fell silent, watching her.  Hoping.  Hoping she would open up to him.  Hoping he hadn’t said too much.

“I didn’t want to,” she said after a heart-freezing moment.  A tear formed in the corner of her eye, but it didn’t fall.  She thought back to the day itself.  She hadn’t wanted to come.  She hadn’t wanted to live.  Parts of that day, that week, had been totally erased from her memory.  Sometimes, when she felt the need to torture herself, she would close her eyes and try to remember those blanked moments, hours.  Remembering was bad enough.  Sometimes not remembering went deeper.

She could remember lea
ving the hospital with Aggie.  Th
e
i
r aunt had driven them in her car to the graveyard.  Her father had met them here with the undertaker.  He had been carrying a tiny white coffin.  It had seemed only big enough for a doll.  She had stared at the unfamiliar man in the dark winter coat.  She couldn’t understand why he was there.  She had
just
stared and stared.

“Christine?”  Mark put his arm gently around her waist.

“My Dad made me come,” she said.  “I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.”  She half laughed at Mark.  “I definitely wouldn’t have come otherwise.”

Mark squeezed her to him.  “Matt Grogan will take some living up to, I think,” he said.

They stood facing the headstone for another minute.  There had been showers earlier that morning, but now the sun was doing its best to find a way through the grey
,
cotton wool clouds.  A small mechanical digger clanked about further down the way, close to the unbroken field.  Apparently out of nowhere, a wedge of geese flew high overhead, t
heir honking sound causing Mark and Christine
to lift their faces and gape at the sight.  They watched them disappear past the tops of the trees at the cemetery boundary.

“Would you like to have more children?” Mark’s voice betrayed his unease at asking the question.  He felt Christine freeze in his grasp.  Half of him immediately wished the words back from whence they came, but the other half needed there to be no secrets.  No secrets.

Christine turned her face away.  She was shocked at the question.  But not at its directness, or propriety.  She was shocked because she realised no one had ever asked it of her before.  Not her father, not Aggie, not Emily.  Not even herself.  Not one of them had seemingly thought she was at the point where she could think rationally about it.  But Mark had.  Was he right?  Could she contemplate having another child?

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to upset you.”  Mark looked terrified.  “You don’t have to answer.”

“No.”  She turned to him.  “No, I, I don’t mind that you asked.  It’s just,” she looked back at the headstone.  “It’s just I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about it.”

They stood there, Mark staring anxiously at Christine, while Christine searched her soul for the answer to a question she had never before heard uttered.  And yet, the question seemed to her to be the key that might unlock that very same soul.

“Yes,” she said at last.  “I suppose I would.”

Mark heard the words, and knew that whether she had said yes or no, it would have made no difference to him.  A high-pitched laugh grabbed his attention for a second, and he saw a couple with a little girl beside them, skipping along the path, a baby cocooned to the mother in a sling across her front.  The sight of them filled Mark with a sense of hope and excitement.  He looked quickly back at Christine, but saw that she too was watching the scene, the little girl’s pigtails bouncing with shiny, green ribbons.

She looked back at the headstone, and stooped to smooth out some imagined unevenness in the gravel.  Then she stood, and went to the cross and kissed it, and turned back to Mark.

“Okay?” she said evenly.  “Shall we go?”

“Sure.”

They linked arms again, and started to walk back along the path.  Christine didn’t look back once.  As they walked along, the sun was briefly successful at getting around the clouds.  Christine lifted her face to the rays, lapping up the heat like a junkie. 

“How about you?” she said, squinting at Mark in the light.  “Would you like to have children?”

“Eh, yeah,” Mark said.  “I would.  It’s not a deal-breaker though, or anything,” he added anxiously.

Christine laughed.  “Very poetic choice of words,” she said.  “But you and Jennifer.  You never?”

“She didn’t want kids,” Mark said, looking at the path just ahead of his feet.  “And, I guess, I didn’t want them badly enough to push it.”

Christine nodded in silence.

“But maybe that’s more indicative of our relationship than anything else.”  He looked at Christine.  “She didn’t want kids with me, nor I with her, I suppose.  It’s only now,” he reddened, “with you, that I think I do.  I do want them.  With you.”

Christine said nothing, but he could see her smiling as they walked along, past rows of carved names.

“I mean, please don’t think I’m pressurising you or anything.”  He stopped walking and pulled her facing him.  “I don’t care.  If you do.  Great.  But if not, that’s okay, or, or whatever.  Maybe in a few years, maybe -”

“Mark.”  Her tone was urgent. “Mark.  It’s okay.”  She kissed him softly.  “I love you.”

It wasn’t the first time she had said it, but it still made Mark’s stomach contract.  He held her cold cheeks in his hands and kissed her forehead.  An elderly couple lowered their eyes as they shuffled passed them.

“C’mon,” Christine said, resuming their path along through the oldest part of the cemetery and towards the gate.  “Let’s go.  I’m freezing.”

“You know,” Mark said as they walked, “my parents are buried here too.”

Christine stopped abruptly
.  “Where?” she said.  “Oh
,
I’m so sorry.  So typical of me.  I’m so wrapped up in myself.  I never thought.”

“No, no.  I don’t come out much.  Ever, actually,” Mark said.

Sh
e regarded him thoughtfully.  “Well, would you like to now?”  She didn’t want to be presumptuous.  She of all people knew how it might not be something Mark wanted to do.  But apparently, Mark was just worried about upsetting Christine.

“You sure?” he said.  “You’re up for it?”

“Of course,” she said squeezing his hand.  “I’d be honoured.”

“Right so.”  Mark turned around and squinted across the rows of headstones in the sun.  He appe
ared lost.  Then he pointed
towards
a corner near the main gate, to
a part of the graveyard Christine hardly ever gave a second glance to.  “Over there,” he said.  “I think,” he grinned.  “It’s been a while.”  He held out his arm.  “Ready to meet the parents?”

“Mark,
” she laughed and pushed him.

They left the tarmac avenue and walked along a grassy path where the headstones were weathered and the walkways narrow.  After a moment, Mark stopped at a plain rectangular headstone with the name Harrington engraved in black on the plinth.  “Here we are,” he said.

The inscription
, telling of his father’s demise almost twenty years before, was faded.  Beneath it, the letters told of the more recent death of his mother. 

Mark laid his hand on the cold stone.  “I suppose I should have brought something,” he said quietly.

This part of the graveyard was quieter.  N
o machinery chugged about.  The
graves
here
were more or less left in peace now. 

A few
wrought
iron
benches marked the perimeter
.  “My mother used to sit there a lot,” Mark pointed at the bench closest to them.  “After he died.  I remember her sitting there, just staring at his grave.”  Mark mirrored the memory, standing at the headstone, staring back at the empty space on the bench. 

“She must have been heartbroken,” Christine said.

“Not really,” Mark walked over to the seat and wiped his hand across it, dispersing the last
trace
of the morning’s rain.  He sat, and opened his arm to Christine who sat down next to him.  “They had a difficult relationship.”  He gazed across at where his parents now lay tog
ether for perpetuity.  “I think…
I think he disappointed her.”

Christine felt sad.  She watched Mark as he remembered times which sounded far from her own family experience.  She couldn’t imagine her father and mother any way but in love.

“Thinking about it now,” Mark continued.  “It sort of makes sense to me that she never really pushed me into marrying Jennifer.  Her own sisters,” Mark made a face at Christine,” never stopped, going on about their nephew, living in sin, blah blah blah.  But Mum, she never pushed it with me.  Maybe that was why.  I’ve never really thought about it.”