We still had the Clavering pew in the church. This consisted of the two front pews with a little door, which had a lock and key, and when we walked in behind my father and mother, I believe she felt that the good old days were back. Perhaps that was the reason why she enjoyed going to church.
After luncheon on Easter Sunday we always went to the churchyard taking flowers, and these we put on the graves of the more recent family dead. Here again, prestige was restored, for the Clavering section was in the most favourable position and the headstones were the most elaborate in the churchyard. I know my mother was constantly irritated by the fact that when she died her memorial would be far less splendid than it would have been if the money to provide a worthy one had not been gambled away.
I was sixteen years old on that particular Easter Sunday. Growing up, I thought, and I should soon no longer be a child. I wondered what the future held for me. I didn’t fancy growing old in the Dower House like Miriam, who was now thirty-one years of age and as far from marriage with her curate as ever.
The service was beautiful and the theme interesting.
“Be content and thankful with what the Lord has given you.” A very good homily for the Claverings, I thought, and I wondered whether the Rev. Jasper Grey had had them in mind when delivering it. Was he reminding them that the Dower House . was a comfortable residence and quite grand by standards other than those of Oakland Hall; Miriam and her curate should be thankful and marry; Xavier and Lady Clara should do the same; my father should be allowed to forget that he had brought us to our present state; and my mother should rejoice in what she had. As for myself, I was happy enough and if only I could find the answers to certain questions which plagued me I should be quite content. Perhaps somewhere inside me I yearned to be loved, for I had never really enjoyed that blessing. I wanted someone’s eyes to light up when I came by. I wanted someone to be a little anxious if I were late coming home-not because unpunctuality was undesirable and ill-mannered but because they were fearful that some ill fortune had come to me.
“Oh God,” I prayed, ‘let someone love me. “Then I laughed at myself, because I was telling Him what to do just as my mother did.
When the time came to visit the graves I took a basket of daffodils and walked with Miriam and Mama from the Dower House to the church.
There was a pump in the Clavering section from which we filled the jars which were kept there, and then put the flowers on the graves.
There was Grandfather, who had begun to fritter away the family fortunes, and there was Grandmother and the Greats, and my father’s brother and sister. We could not, of course, deck out the graves of all the dead. I liked to wander round and look at the shrubs and open books in stone and read the engraved words. There were memorials to John Clavering, who had died at the battle of Preston for his King in 1648. James who had died at Malplaquet. There was another for Harold, who had been killed at Trafalgar. We were a fighting family.
“Do come away, Jessica,” said Mama.
“I do declare you have a morbid streak.”
Called from the guns of Trafalgar I walked solemnly back to the Dower House, and it was later that afternoon when I wandered out through the gardens to the edge of the stream. I was still thinking of long-dead Claverings who had died so valiantly for their country and how John had fought the Roundheads in an unsuccessful attempt to keep his King on the throne, a struggle which had cost the King not only his throne but his head, and James fighting with Marlborough and Harold with Nelson.
We Claverings had taken our part in the making of history, I told myself proudly.
Following the stream I came to the end of the Dower House gardens.
There was a stretch of meadow-about an acre in which the grass grew long and unkempt. By the hedge grew archangel or white dead-nettle with its flowers just coming out. They would be there until December, and later the bees would be so busy on them that it wouldn’t be possible to get near them. Very few people ever came here and it was called the Waste Land.
As I walked across it I noticed a bunch of dog violets tied up with white cotton, which was wound round their stems. I stopped to pick them up and as I divided the grass I saw that the spot on which they had been lying was slightly raised. It was a plot of about six feet long.
Like a grave, I thought. I How could it be a grave? Because I had been to the church yard that afternoon with Easter flowers my mind was on graves. I knelt down and pushed aside the grass. I felt round the earth. Yes, it was a mound. It must be a grave, and today someone had put a bunch of violets on it.
Who could possibly be buried on the Waste Land? I went and sat thoughtfully by the stream and asked myself what it meant.
The first person I encountered when I went back to the house was Maddy, who, now that I no longer needed a nurse, had become maid of all work. She was at the linen cupboard sorting out sheets.
“Maddy,” I said, “I saw a grave today.” It’s Easter Sunday so I reckon you did,” she retorted.
“Oh, not in the churchyard. In the Waste Land. I’m sure it was a grave.”
She turned away, but not before I had seen that her expression was one of shocked horror. She knew there was a grave in the Waste Land.
“Whose was it?” I insisted.
‘now why ask me ? “
“Because you know.”
“Miss Jessica, it’s time you stopped putting people in the witness box. You’re too inquisitive by half.”
“It’s only a natural thirst for knowledge.”
“It’s what I call having your nose into everything. There’s a word for that. Plain nosiness.”
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t know who’s buried in the Waste Land.”
“Buried in the Waste Land,” she mimicked; but she had betrayed herself. She was uneasy.
“There was a little bunch of violets there—as though someone had remembered it was Easter Sunday.”
“Oh,” she said blankly.
“I thought someone might have buried a pet dog there.”
That’s as like as not,” she said with some relief.
“But it was too big for a dog’s grave. No, I think it was some person there … someone buried long ago but still remembered. They must have been remembered, mustn’t they, for someone to lay flowers there so carefully.”
“Miss Jessica, will you get from under my feet.”
She was bustling away with a pile of linen sheets, but her heightened colour betrayed her. She knew who was buried in the Waste Land, but, alas, she wasn’t telling.
For several days I worried her but could get nothing out of her.
“Oh, give over, do,” she cried at length in exasperation.
“One of these days you might find out something you’d rather not know.”
That cryptic remark lingered in my mind and did nothing to curb my curiosity.
All that year I brooded on the matter of the secret grave until the following spring when there was activity across the stream at Oakland Hall and I ceased to think about it. I was aware that something was happening because suddenly tradesmen called constantly at the house, and from my seat by the stream I could hear the servants shouting to each other. There were regular thwacks as carpets were brought out of the house and beaten. The shrill feminine tones mingled with those of the dignified butler. I had seen him several times, and he always behaved as though he were the owner of Oakland Hall. I was sure be was not haunted by the spectre of Better Days.
Then the day came when I saw a carriage arriving and I slipped out of the Dower House to see it turn into Oakland’s drive. Then I hurried back, darted across the stream, crept close to the house, and hidden by bushes I was just in time to see a man lifted from the carriage and placed in a wheelchair. He had a very red face, and he shouted in a loud voice to the people around him in a manner to which I was sure the rafters of Oakland Hall had been unaccustomed during the Better Days.