In the Springtime of the Year (11 page)

She walked through the lych-gate and then stepped on to the grass, moving between the old, moss-covered headstones. The flints on the church face gleamed pewter. She did not need the moonlight, she could have found her way unerringly if she had been blind.

The old graves gave way to new, along the south side of the church, with his the last, the most recent, at the end, and beyond that, open grass.

Ruth stopped dead. They had taken the flowers away, all of them, there was only a bare oblong mound, like a molehill pushed up through the turf. It might have belonged to any one, any stranger. She could not register the truth of where she was and what it meant, it did not seem possible Ben here, Ben dead, and never able to speak or move or breathe again in this world. It was a nonsense.

She knelt down on the grass. She said, ‘We went to the sea, Jo and I. To Hadwell Bay. And there was only the sand and the sky and the sunlight, we walked and
walked
. You should have been there. Why weren’t you there, why?’

Silence pressed in upon her. The yew trees and the poplars were columns of stone.

She thought, what has happened to him now, what does he look like, how has he changed? She did not know anything about the time it all took. And in a moment of terror and desire to rescue him, to free him from the prison of earth and the pale wooden box and bring him back to life, she scrabbled at the turf and tore it and a lump came away easily in her hand, for it was loosely laid, there had not been time for it to take root. She let it drop and her hands were mealy with the crumbs of soil.

Then a picture came before her eyes of his body lying in that close darkness, straight and still, and of his flesh beginning to flake and fall away from the bones, his hair drying and going brittle and the blood caking inside his veins. She told herself, over and over again, what she knew when she was sane m her mind, she said, what is here is nothing, this is not Ben, this is an old coat, like a chrysalis, outgrown and of no more use, he is not here. Then where, where? For the flesh she had loved and the breath which had mingled with her own breathing, all she had been able to see and hear and touch of Ben, were under her feet, the same – and no longer the same, nothing.

If she had been afraid of how the tree had injured his body, what was that? That was nothing to what the
earth
and the creatures and the juices of the earth were doing now, to how they would break down and utterly destroy him.

Words, phrases reeled through her head, one detached itself and she spoke it aloud.

‘A time to be born and a time to die,’ and she believed that to be true. But if she had known when she first met Ben that his time to die would so soon come, she would have gone away from him at once, would never have taken the appalling risk of love.

Would she?

But she did not know, she knew nothing any more.

She was beyond tears, and so she lay down on the mound of turf and rested, hoping, hoping, and the hours passed, the moon rose, and she was given nothing, no comfort, there was only the chill from the ground, a seeping moisture of earth and grass. She no longer blamed anyone, God or life, Ben or chance, the falling tree. It had happened, it had been necessary, the pattern was complete. But she cried out, ‘Please, please …’ without knowing for what she asked.

If she could die, herself, here, now … But she could not.

She stayed and the warmth and brightness of sun and sea, the peace of that day, belonged to some other life, long past.

After that night, for weeks, she came here, to sit or lie beside the grave and her visits were noted, she
was
watched and the story spread through the village and out into the countryside, they talked about her. Predicted. Waited.

6

‘THE SEA? WHAT
are you talking about? You’ve gone daft, boy. The sea?’

Jo stood at the far end of the room. That night, they had been waiting up for him and in the end, he had had to give away his secret, because for some odd reason, his mother had demanded to know about his doings, though she had not noticed, until now, whether he existed or not.

‘You’re to tell me what you’ve been at.’

‘We went to the sea. On the train from Thefton. That’s all.’

‘She may be half-crazed but does she have to drag you down in it?’

‘Don’t talk about Ruth like that.’

‘That’s it, turn against me, you as well. All of you. It’s only what I’ve come to expect, though God knows why I should deserve it. I’ve tried, I’ve struggled on in this place and do you think this is all I was born for? Don’t you think I had chances enough, when I was your age, for something better?’

The same things, over and over again. Alice sat stiffly, her face expressionless.

‘How much do any of you care or understand? What do you know about how I suffer? The sacrifices I’ve made. You don’t, you know nothing. He was the only one, he was sensitive, and he was taken from me, and what have I left?’

Jo turned one of the small stones about between his finger and thumb.

‘And why does she have to have you? Going all the way up there, doing everything for her. What do you ever do for me? Why can’t she lift a finger? Others have had to. Hasn’t anyone told her, life goes on and she’s no exception? As if I couldn’t have taken to my bed and never got up. She’s not in her right mind and whose fault is it but her own? She’s making use of you. It’s to stop. You’re not to go over there, spending half the day and night, locked up with a mad woman.’

‘She is not mad, you shouldn’t say those things.’

‘Is that how you’d talk to me? My own son? Don’t you take on her airs. She’s the proud one, she’s cut herself off. Well then, let her be, she’s nothing to us now.’

‘She is to me.’

‘Yes, you’re on her side, she’s turned you against me. How do you know anything, boy? You can’t see the truth about her, a child like you. Nor he. She took him and now she’s trying to take you.’

‘She needs someone. Me. I have to help her.’

‘Have to? And if I say you don’t?’ Dora Bryce turned away, making for the kitchen. ‘The sea. What right has she to go spending money, going on pleasure
trips
, enjoying herself. The sea! So much for what she feels. How long is it? Four weeks? Less. And she can go off to the sea. She’s hard as hard,’

‘No,’ said Jo quietly. He felt sick inside himself, but he would not let Ruth down, he would defend her against all of them.

‘And what will happen to her? I’ll tell you. It’s only what anyone could tell you. She’ll either go out of her mind and have to be taken away, or else find another man, quick enough, and be off. That’s what.’

It was Alice who interrupted, Alice, not Jo, who could no longer sit in that stifling room, hearing the endless complaints, the self-pity and bitterness. She got up.

‘Leave it,’ she said, ‘leave him alone. Does it matter where he went? It does no harm. Can’t we talk like normal people, can’t anybody forget about it for a moment?’

‘You? You as well? Taking her side, going against me?’

‘No one’s against you.’

‘I could have been Someone, Miss, had a real life, I could.’

‘We all know what you fancy you could have been. A lady! We’ve heard it all our lives and do you suppose we believe it? Why should we? And does it matter? Because whatever you might have been is a day-dream, isn’t it, an escape from the truth? You live in a day dream. But this is real, this is what you are, here, a
woman
of fifty, married to a farm hand. Well why can’t you be satisfied, why not make do?’

Dora Bryce leaned against the wall, swaying slightly, a hand up to her face.

‘And I’m not staying. I’m not sitting here in this room, waiting for something you dream about, hopes, half-plans, waiting this year, next year, sometime, never, and most likely it’ll be never, I’m not going to be what you think you’ll make of me, do what you fancy you could have done, I’ll find something of my own, live my own life and be glad of it, whatever it is. I’ll make do when you can’t.’

Jo wanted to make them stop somehow, he could not bear the sound of their voices, raised, harsh, and the cruel words that darted to and fro and were meant to wound and to be remembered. But he could do nothing. They did not notice when he slipped out of the room and the front door, his visit to the sea was forgotten now. He went down the lane and out of the village, and the lump in his chest was waiting to rise up, he would cry, for the hatred in Foss Lane, and for what they had said about Ruth, he would cry because, if Ben had been here, he would have known what to do to silence them, to resolve everything.

He went his usual way, up the field and over the ridge, and it was not until he got there that he could let go, lie on the ground and weep. But not for himself. He would survive. It was for them, and because the memory of that magic day by the sea had been soiled
over
, now that they knew of it. He only had the pebbles, and be took one of them out of his pocket and held it against his face. It was something.

Alice Bryce went too, out of the cottage and, after a moment’s thought, away, in a different direction, to Harmer’s Barn, where Rob Foley lived. Rob Foley, the farrier, who spoke to her when he could, looked at her in a particular way. Wanted her. She felt guilty and excited and half-afraid, she felt mistress of herself, and held her head up, not caring who saw her or what they said.

And so it was Arthur Bryce, come home after drinking beer, who had to face the bitter complaints and renewed crying, on his own, and be blamed for everything that had gone wrong in her life. He sat wearily, feeling the old pain in his injured arm and shoulder, saying nothing, for where would be the point? But he wished he could have done something to make her happier, to change her life or else resign her to this one, for in spite of it all, he loved her.

*

If she had to go, again and again, to the graveyard, as though pulled by some force outside herself, there was another place, Helm Bottom, and that was different, it soothed her, all the thoughts and feelings which churned about inside her when she sat by the grave
were
stilled, she could take hold of herself again, here in the woods, and breathe quietly, memories came back and they were happy.

For some days, the fine, clear weather went on and there was again a sense of the approaching spring. It was early afternoon, a Saturday. She had crossed the field and gone between the beeches and the sunlight shafted in, here and there, picking out the brown and yellow of the dead leaves and gilding them, casting long, rippling shadows. She came to the bottom of the slope, in among the bushes, and then she heard it. Stopped. There was a sound of singing, coming from somewhere on the other side of the clearing, a curious chant, and the voices were high, childish. At first, she could not make out any words, nor could she see them, but after a few moments, they emerged from between the trees, in a small, slow procession. She backed a little, behind an oak tree, waited.

There were five children, girls, and she knew them all, they came from the village. Each of them wore long clothes, old skirts and dresses which belonged to their mothers or adult sisters, made of cotton or silk, and with a piece of white cloth, sheeting or curtaining, draped over their heads like nuns’ veiling. The first child carried something in her hands, holding it a little away from her body, some sort of small, white box.

They seemed quite unreal, figures out of a dream or a haunting, but the sight of them stirred a memory in Ruth of the file of mourners, walking up the church
path
behind the coffin-bearers. Except that they had been black, all black, and the children wore white. They were singing the same lines over and over again, and none of their voices quite kept in time with one another, they did not blend.

‘All the birds in the trees

Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing

When they heard of the death

Of poor Cock Robin,

When they heard of the death

Of poor Cock Robin.’

They came nearer, the singing continued without a break. They stopped, not far from the fallen elm tree, and only then, one by one, faltered into silence. The girl, Jenny Colt, who carried the box, bent down, set it on a pile of leaves, and a second child came forward and began to dig a hole with a rusty garden trowel. The others watched, their faces old-young and very solemn, their bodies like statues, draped in the long, rag-bag clothes.

The hole was made.

‘Now you sing. When I bury it I say the words and you sing.’

She knelt and lifted the box, and laid it with great care in the earth, and began to say something as she covered it over with soil and leaf mould, the chanting started up again, and her own words were for a
moment
confused with the singing. But eventually, Ruth could make it out.

‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…’

No more.

‘All the birds in the trees,

Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing …’

She had stuck a cross made of twigs into the ground, and now, got up and stood, head bowed, reverent as a priest, and the singing never stopped. Soon, they all turned and went away with the same slow steps, through the trees and their voices came floating back, until there was only the echo of them. And then silence, and the fresh grave, of some bird or small animal.

Ruth went over to the elm tree, and as she sat on it, the sun broke through here too, and she felt a moment of happiness, and more, an assurance that she would survive; she would one day emerge from the long, dark tunnel and on the other side of it, would be more herself than she had ever been, remade, whole. How it would happen or when, and what else had to come before it, she could not tell, and if she asked, would receive no answer. But if she were to drown and die, before she was allowed to live again, she would not be alone, not be without love and protection, for all she might feel that it were so.

The children were safe, because they had been able to act out the ritual of a death and a funeral, they would not come to harm. She was glad that she had seen them, and heard the solemn, broken singing, the tune and the words rang round her head for days afterwards, and at night the white figures crossed and re-crossed the paths of her dreams.