Girl, (Nearly) 16: Absolute Torture! (10 page)

Jess was quite struck with this idea. She made plans to die immediately, so that Fred would be convulsed with guilt and visit her tomb daily with a freshly written sonnet. And he would neglect his personal appearance, of course, even more than usual. Dramatically. Mushrooms would grow out of his ears. No girl would ever look at him again. And, of course, he would never look at another girl.

‘Anyway,’ said Mum, ‘when he died, he left instructions that his heart was to be removed and buried in his first wife’s grave.’

‘Gross!’ screamed Jess.

‘What did they do with the rest of him?’ asked Granny.

‘The rest of him was buried in Westminster Abbey. In Poets’ Corner.’

‘How bizarre,’ said Jess.

‘Did you say his
first
wife’s grave?’ asked Granny, with a Miss Marple-like pounce.

‘Oh yes. He did eventually marry again.’

‘What, he married again, but he asked for his heart to be buried with his first wife?’ said Jess.

‘Yes. Exactly.’

‘Weird,’ said Jess. What sort of second wife would put up with that kind of thing? If Fred ever told her he wanted his heart to be buried with a previous girlfriend, Jess would personally eat it with barbecue sauce and fries.

‘Oh, look!’ said Granny. ‘The sun’s just come out! It’s going to be another lovely day!’

Huh! Granny! What did she know?
Nothing
.

Chapter 15

‘It’s not far to Hardy’s grave!’ trilled Jess’s mum excitedly, backing the car out of the parking space with slightly too much panache. As if Jess cared. Hardy’s grave could be at the other end of the Zarg Galaxy, as far as she was concerned.

She had begged Mum to let her rush to the nearest shop and buy some more credit for her phone, but Mum had been adamant that they must have an early start, and that Jess was spending far too much time on the wretched thing anyway.

‘Steady on, Madeleine!’ said Granny. ‘You nearly hit that wall!’

‘Don’t nag, Granny,’ said Jess’s mum. ‘You know I’m the safest driver in the whole country, so just give me a break.’

Hey! Maybe Mum and Granny were finding it hard sharing a room. Maybe they’d had a blazing row, and maybe Mum had gone off in a sulk, locked herself in the bathroom and scrawled
Mum is a loser
on the bathroom mirror, in soap. Mum still called Granny ‘Mum’ sometimes. It was a little strange imagining Mum as a sulking teenager. But then, Jess supposed even Granny must have been a sulking teenager once.

Jess smiled to herself at the thought. The smile felt strange on her face. She realised she hadn’t done any of that smiling or laughing business for days.

‘At least it’s not far,’ said Mum. ‘Just a few miles to the churchyard.’

Jess was annoyed that it wasn’t very far. She would gladly have stayed slumped in the back of the car all day, watching listlessly as the countryside rolled past – preferably a countryside of horrid precipices, rocks, ravens and pine trees struck by lightning.

Alas, this kind of countryside was not typical of the south-west of England, and she had to put up with sunlit meadows, cute cuddly hills and occasional glimpses of twinkling sea.

Jess was longing to get to the sea. Mum had said they would stay by the sea for several days once they got down to Cornwall. When they arrived anywhere with a beach, Jess was planning to go out and sit and stare at the waves. She just hoped the beach would be deserted. It would be awful to have to share her mood of tragic despair with hordes of screaming kids smearing themselves with ice cream.

Somehow this thought led to Fred. How ironic that the best person on the planet had been left behind. If only he’d been with them, she was sure that Thomas Hardy’s heart would have acquired a hilarious glamour. It would be top of the list of wacky tourist attractions. Fred would have thought of a hundred even more weird things to do with one’s body after death. Being separated from him made the whole planet seem poisoned and pointless.

‘Here we are!’ cried Mum gaily, as they drove down a shady lane towards a tiny church deeply veiled in trees. The last place on earth where you could buy credit for a mobile phone.

‘This is where we’ll see his grave!’ said Mum with ghoulish rapture.

Jackpot
, thought Jess.

‘His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey,’ said Granny, consulting the guidebook. ‘They must have got the heart out before he was cremated, then. I wonder who does that sort of thing?’

Granny had an almost indecent interest in such matters. For a moment, Jess was afraid she might get the urn out of the car boot, and take Grandpa’s ashes to visit Thomas Hardy’s heart.

However, she refrained, thank goodness, so it was only the living members of the party who went through the little gate into the tiny churchyard. Jess saw the grave immediately, on the left of the path.

‘Here it is!’ she said. She wanted to get this over as soon as possible and get back to daydreaming in the back of the car.

‘Oh no, love, that’s not it,’ said her Mum.

‘But it says
Thomas Hardy
.’

‘That’s not him. The dates are too early. That’s another Thomas Hardy. I think that must be his father – or possibly grandfather. Let me work out the dates . . .’

There were several tombstones all in a row, and each one was engraved with the name Thomas Hardy.

Jess was gutted. She hadn’t even managed to find the correct Thomas Hardy. Why did there have to be so many of them? There seemed to be a whole epidemic. Wasn’t it a little bit unimaginative of his parents to call him Thomas, knowing there were so many Thomas Hardys in the family history? Why hadn’t they called him Leonardo or Oliver? Or Dave?

‘Here’s the one!’ said Granny. ‘It says about his heart being buried here. In his first wife’s grave, you know – Emma Lavinia Gifford.’

‘Here’s a poem he wrote to the memory of Emma,’ said Jess’s mum, getting a book out of her pocket and opening it at a page marked by a bus ticket. She started to read, in a silly sort of breathless, yearning voice.

‘
I stand here in the rain,

With its smite upon her stone,

And the grasses that have grown –
’

‘Stop! Mum!’ said Jess. ‘Don’t read poems out in public! Weird!’

‘Don’t be silly, Jess,’ said her mum. ‘There’s nobody about.’ And she instantly resumed. Jess shook her head in disbelief, and caught Granny’s eye.

Granny leaned towards Jess and whispered, ‘Just let her have her way, dear. She always was incurably romantic.’

The thought of her mother as an incurable romantic was about as bizarre as the thought of her granny as a champion tennis player. Jess looked up at the trees and deliberately didn’t listen to the poem. She was wishing she was a bird.

And if I was a bird
, she thought,
I’d fly straight back home and find Fred, and if he was with Rosie I’d poo on her head, obviously, and she’d run off. And then I’d perch on Fred’s shoulder for ever, and roost inside his vest, and never leave him.

This fantasy was somehow quite comforting, and after they’d seen the inside of the church, they got back into the car, so today’s indigestible dose of history seemed to be safely over. Jess wrote a Humphrey Bogart postcard to Flora.

Dear Flo,

Having a totally dire holiday. Mum is dragging me round endless graveyards, reading out awful poems in a sad nerdy voice. My granny is carting the ashes of my grandpa around with her. And Fred is apparently falling for somebody called Rosie. Have fun – somebod
y
’s got to.

Love, Jess.

Maybe she should send another card to Dad.

Hi, Dad!

Thomas Hardy was cut up and buried in two separate places! Sick or what? Have you decided where you want to be buried? Never die, though – I’ll kill you if you do. This trip has been so depressing, only a cute puppy can cheer me up. See to it!

Love, Jess.

After she had finished both the cards and stuck the stamps on, Jess went back to the idea of herself as Fred’s pet canary, and stayed there while her mum drove for ages out of the county of Dorset and into Devon.

‘You’ll notice,’ said Mum, ‘that the lanes in Devon are very deep, and the soil is wonderfully red.’

Such an optimist. Jess was living in a dream world, and would hardly have noticed if Devon had been inhabited by dragons and the soil had been composed of chocolate cake.

Chapter 16

Eventually they arrived at the town where Mum was planning to stay the night. It was called Totnes. Jess cheered up. It looked like the kind of fun, busy place where mobile phone credit would be widely available. What else mattered?

‘I’ve always wanted to come here,’ Mum said, parking erratically as usual, rather too close to a camper van. It seemed to Jess that her mother always wanted to go everywhere. Maybe she had not received the correct careers advice. Maybe she should not have been a librarian, but a travel rep. Although travel reps always had to wear such dismal uniforms. Jess could not imagine her mum in a sky-blue polyester suit, crisp shirt and idiotic cravat. Mind you, Mum’s usual clothes were in a weird class of their own.

Today she was wearing a pair of black loose trousers, lightly scattered with stars (and, to be honest, tea stains), a Bob Marley T-shirt and a cardigan knitted in Peru, showing native peoples involved in what looked like human sacrifice.