I had been planning to return a book to the library, but when I got there it was shut, with a small notice announcing the King’s death pasted to the door. Some still honored the tradition. I glanced across the road at the cemetery gate, remembering the white banner from the library falling onto the funeral procession, and Mr. Jackson, and Caroline Black. It seemed a long time ago, and yet I also felt as if I’d lost Mummy only yesterday.
I didn’t want to go home, so instead I crossed the road, entered the gate, and began walking up the path toward the main part of the cemetery. Halfway up, Simon’s father was sitting on a flat tombstone and leaning against a Celtic cross. He had a hand on each knee and was gazing into the distance the way old men do by the seaside. His eyes flashed with the blue of the sky so that it was hard to tell what he was looking at. I wasn’t sure that he saw me, but I stopped anyway. “Hallo.”
His eyes moved about but did not seem to fix upon me. “Hallo,” he said.
“It is a shame about the King, isn’t it?” I said, feeling I ought to make conversation.
“Shame ‘bout the King,” Simon’s father repeated.
I had not seen him in a long while. Whenever I looked for Simon at work, his father did not seem to be digging with him, but was off getting a ladder or a wheelbarrow or a bit of rope. Once I had seen him propped up against a grave, asleep, but had thought he was sleeping off a night of drink.
“Do you know where Simon is?” I asked.
“Where Simon is.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and looked deep into his eyes. Although they were turned in my direction, they did not show any recognition. It was as if he were blind, though he could see. Something was wrong with him-he clearly would not push a spade into clay again. I wondered what had happened to him.
I squeezed his shoulder. “Never mind. It’s been lovely to see you.”
“Lovely to see you.”
Tears pricked my eyes and nose as I continued along the path.
I tried to stay away from our grave, and wandered for a time around the cemetery, looking at the crosses, columns, urns, and angels, silent and shining in the sun. But somehow in the end I still found my way there.
She was already waiting for me. When I saw her I thought at first that she was wearing a black dress, but when I got closer I realized it was blue-which was what Mummy had worn so scandalously for Queen Victoria. I smiled at that, but when Lavinia asked why I was smiling, I knew better than to say.
Simon Field
They’re sitting each on her own grave, like they used to. I ain’t seen them together in a long time, though neither would ever tell me what the matter was with the other whenever I saw one alone. Too much happened in too little time for them girls.
They don’t see me-I hide well.
They ain’t quite themselves now-they don’t have their arms linked, and they don’t laugh the way they used to. They’re sitting far apart and making polite talk. I hear Maude ask, “How is your mother?”
Livy gets a funny look on her face. “Mama is going to have a baby any day now.”
Maude looks so surprised I almost laugh and give myself away. “That’s wonderful! But I thought-I thought she was too old to have children. And-after Ivy May…”
“It seems not.”
“Are you pleased?”
“Of course,” Livy says. “Life does go on, after all.”
“Yes.”
They both look at their graves, at Ivy May’s and Kitty Coleman’s names.
“And your grandmother-how is she?” Livy asks.
“She is still living with us. She had a stroke a few months ago and can’t speak.”
“Oh, dear.”
“It’s just as well, really. It’s much easier to be with her now.”
The two of ‘em giggle as if Maude’s said something naughty. I come out from behind a grave and scrape my feet in the pebbles on the path so they’ll hear me. They both jump. “Hello,” Maude says, and Livy says, “Where have you been, naughty boy?” and that’s like old times. I squat by our granpa’s grave across from them, pick up two pebbles from the path, and rub ’em ‘tween my fingers.
“How did you know we were here?” Maude asks.
I shrug. “I knew you’d both come. King’s dead, ain’t he?”
“Long live the King,” they say together, then smile at each other.
“Isn’t it a pity?” Livy says. “If Mama has a boy she shall have to name him George. I don’t like that name as much as Edward. Teddy, I would have called him. Georgie isn’t quite so nice.”
Maude laughs. “I’ve missed your silly remarks.”
“Hush,” Livy says.
“Simon, I saw your father just now,” Maude says suddenly.
I let the pebbles drop back onto the path.
“What happened to him?” she asks real quiet.
“Accident.”
Maude don’t say nothing.
“He were buried. We got him out, but…” I shrug again.
“I’m sorry,” Maude whispers.
“And I,” Livy adds.
“I got something to ask you,” I says to Livy.
She stares at me. Bet she’s thinking ‘bout that kiss down the grave, years ago. But that’s not what I’m going to ask her.
“You know I marked all the graves here. Got all of ‘em in the meadow, far’s I know. ’Cept yours.” I jerk my head at the Waterhouse angel. “You told me not to, all them years back, after the Queen died. So I didn’t. But I want to now. For Ivy May. To remember she’s there.”
“What, to be reminded she’s just bones?” Livy says. “That’s horrid!”
“No, no, it ain’t that. It’s to remind you she’s still there. Some of her rots, sure, but her bones’ll be there for hundreds of years. Longer’n these stones, even, I’ll bet. Longer’n my mark. That’s what matters, not the grave and what you put on it.”
Maude looks at me funny, and I can see that all these years she ain’t understood my skull ‘n’ crossbones either, for all her being smarter than Livy.
Livy don’t say nothing for a minute. Then she says, “All right.”
I get up and go behind the plinth with my pocket knife.
While I’m back there, scratching the mark, they start talking again.
“I don’t care if Simon marks the angel,” Livy says. “I’ve never felt the same about it since it fell. I’m always expecting it to fall again. And I can still see the break in the nose and neck.”
“I have never liked our grave,” Maude says. “I look at it and none of it makes me think of Mummy, even though her name’s on it. Did you know she wanted to be cremated?”
“What, and placed in the columbarium?” Livy sounds horrified.
“No, she wanted her ashes scattered where flowers grow. That’s what she said. But Daddy wouldn’t do it.”
“I should think not.”
“It’s always felt wrong, burying her here, but there’s nothing to be done. As you said, life goes on.”
I finish the mark and fold up my knife. I’m glad to have done it, like I finally scratched an itch on my back. I’ve owed Ivy May a long time. When I come out I nod at them. “I has to get back to work. Joe’ll be wondering where I am.” I’m quiet a minute. “You’ll be coming back to see me, both of you?”
“Of course,” they say.
Don’t know why I asked that, ‘cause I know the answer, and it ain’t the one they gave. They’re growing up and they don’t play in the cemetery anymore. Maude’s got her hair up and looks more like her mother every day, and Livy’s…well, Livy. She’ll be married at eighteen, to a soldier, I expect.