8. A Visit to the Cemetery

A WIDOW WOMAN Part 8

“Why isn’t there a proper gravestone, like the others have?” asked Betty.

Jane had taken the two children to the cemetery where, a year to the day earlier, her husband George had been laid to rest.

“They cost a lot of money,” replied Jane, “and although we have enough to live on, we don’t have enough to spend on luxuries like gravestones.”

“The vicar might help buy one,” suggested Roger, “he comes to see you sometimes. Everyone knows.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Jane, shocked. The Reverend Pyke did sometimes call to see her, just for a few minutes and out of the goodness of his heart. There was no more to it than that, or rather, not much more.

“Mrs Jardine said,” replied Roger, “she says she can see from her window, and he goes up stairs with you. She says he’s up to something and she can only guess what!”

“Roger!” snapped Jane, “your father might hear! Be quiet!”

“He can’t hear anything. He’s dead,” retorted her son, who being six by then knew stuff.

“I let the vicar look at your bedroom because, somehow, we’ve got to make room for both of you,” Jane told him, “you’re getting too old to have to sleep in the same single bed, and the room isn’t really big enough for two beds, not even two tiny ones. But maybe we could get some bunk beds. You know, one above the other. That way you wouldn’t actually be in the same bed!”

“I like sharing with Roger,” put in Betty, “he keeps me warm in the winter.”

“But he’s a boy and you’re a girl and it’s not right,” said Jane quite firmly, “your dad wouldn’t have approved.”

“He didn’t mind when he was alive,” retorted Betty, “and Roger was still a boy back then, and I was still a girl.”

“You were quite little then, the two of you. But you’re getting older, especially you, Betty.”

“And me. I’m growing older too!” declared Roger.

“What’s wrong with him being a boy anyway?” asked Betty, “when daddy was alive I know you and him slept in the same bed.”

“He used to make you squeal sometimes,” added Roger, “everyone knows that’s what mummies and daddies do when nobody’s looking, they make each other giggle and squeal.”

“My friend Marlene says her parents are always at it,” added Betty, “morning, noon and night, she says. But they won’t be for much longer because her mummy’s having a baby soon. If the Reverend Pyke goes upstairs with you like Mrs Jardine tells everyone, might you have another baby, mummy?”

“I most certainly will not!” hissed Jane, “now for goodness sake, let’s have no more nonsense from either of you or I’ll not bring you to see daddy ever again!”

“We’d have to dig a long way down to actually see him,” Roger told her, “he’s been buried a long way down. They say it’s six feet, which is more than the reverend Jonah is tall!”

“You shouldn’t call him that!” protested Jane, who was beginning to feel as if she and her children were on opposite sides in a war.

“But he said it’s all right. He said it’s his name,” said Roger.

“He said it doesn’t harm anyone, calling him Jonah,” added Betty, “he says it harms people who you call them names that aren’t true. And he says he visits you because you and him are friends. Not boyfriend and girlfriend, but proper friends, like me and Roger.”

“Are you friends?” asked Jane, her heart warming at the thought.

“Of course we are, silly,” laughed Betty, “and if Roger wasn’t going to marry you when he’s old enough, then he’ll marry me, wouldn’t you, Rog?”

“Boys can’t marry their sisters,” explained Jane, “I believe there’s a deep down important reason, but I can’t remember what it is. Something to do with if brothers and sisters get married and have a baby there might be something badly wrong with it.”

“They can’t marry their mothers either,” said Betty, a little spitefully.

“They can then, can’t they, mummy?” demanded Roger.

They were in the churchyard, which was attached via a narrow pathway to the church, and the Reverend Jonah Pyke was leading a party of mourners and a coffin out of the church and along it, towards them. They had noticed that the man who dug the graves had prepared a deep hole not very far from where they were standing and it was than hole that the coffin and its entourage were approaching.

“Come along,” hissed Jane, “let’s give them some privacy.”

She took them both by a hand and led them away, weaving between a few much older graves and their weathered and often illegible stones.

Betty paused by one, and pointed.

“Look,” she said, “someone with my name is resting here. It says so. And my age. She was eight, look. Betty, aged eight, it says.”

“That’s so sad,” sighed Jane, “that a child so young should die. But it used to happen quite a lot. Years ago, when my own mum was alive, a lot of children got ill and died. It must have been very upsetting for their parents. I’d be heart-broken if it happened to either of you.”

“It won’t will it, mum?” asked an anxious Roger.

She tousled his hair and smiled won at him. “Of course not, silly,” she said, “the doctors know a great deal more about things than they did when my own mother was young. She’d have been your granny if she’d lived, but she died not so long after you were born. She was quite an old lady by then, nearly eighty, believe it or not.”

“That is old,” decided Roger.

The three of them turned to see what was going on near the open grave. The coffin had been lowered in and Jonah was proclaiming a few chosen words in his sepulchral pulpit voice, just about audible to them.

Then, the wooden coffin having been lowered into the waiting hole, the other group slowly started dispersing. The vicar bade the mourners goodbye and instead of accompanying them back towards his church he scurried towards Jane and the children.

“I’m glad to bump into you,” he said, “I’ve a bit of news for you. The houses on your road are to be pulled down soon.”

“Where will we live then, mummy?” asked an alarmed Betty, “we must have a house to live in!”

“That’s what I was going to add,” grinned Jonah, “they’ve already nearly finished a row of houses the other side of the church and you’ll be offered one of those. So will your neighbours, so if you’ve any friends where you live they’ll still be close enough to play with. And, what’s more, you’ll each be able to have your own room because there are three bedrooms and an upstairs bathroom! Think of that! Won’t you be posh!”

“Is that right, Jonah?” asked Jane.

“I got it from the horse’s mouth,” smiled the vicar, “now excuse me, I’d best rush back to the party I just left but I knew you’d want to know. Isn’t it exciting?”

He scurried off and Roger stood gazing after him, open mouthed.

“He understands horse language!” he exclaimed, “I wonder, do horses say prayers too? Is that how he knows what they’re saying?”

© Peter Rogerson 20.06.21

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