DIANA’S EVE

One of the most essential of nature's instincts has become a source of guilt and shame.

Diana remembered that day so well. It had haunted her this past sixty years.

Derek had been at home back then. They had only been married a month or two, bright young things that they’d been. But first they’d courted each other, or walked out, as it was called, he holding her hand and squeezing her fingers gently as if to say this is exactly how I feel about you, and she had responded by being ever so naughty and rubbing him lightly where she knew he liked it, as if hrt touch was as light as a feather.

They’d had to get married soon after one of those little finger-squeezing tickles because somehow she started putting on weight. She knew what had caused it, of course, and that it was her fault because her little antics seemed to excite him in the way that jelly and ice-cream or even a pint of foaming bitter couldn’t.

No need to revel in what we did on one particular rainy day she thought, no need to wind back the clock and enjoy the wickedness all over again… it was sinning and we shuldn’t have sinned.

But she had, of course. Derek had been in the graveyard this past fifteen years and in all their years together she had never confessed to him what she had seen that night sixty years ago.

The pain had been dreadful, but in those days you didn’t own up and seek help from doctors or nurses if shame might be involved, and she knew her shame more than anyone. And Derek knew as well. It had taken the two of them after all, but Derek had taken his guilt to the grave and was probably fifteen years later still being flogged by whips in Heaven by flagellating angels, because he knew, yes he knew.

She remembered the day he had died. It had been a long and painful prelude to the cold stillness of death, and while he waited to go and she waited to call the undertaker, she told him all about it, that other death, the stillborn death. He had thought she was asleep when he’d buried the scrap of dead flesh, and she supposed she had been, just about. But being just about asleep hadn’t stopped her from crawling to the window and watching him in the garden as he carried the little bag in which he’d wrapped her shame, and started digging a hole behind the potatoes. As she watched there had still been enough light for her to see by, though the day was coming to an end, and darkness had just about replaced the last wisps of sunlight by the time he finished.

She saw him with her mind’s eye as he had wiped the back of one hand against his forehead, and then arranged a wooden cross, small, insignificant, but large enough to mark the spot. The image was as fresh as yesterday, his left hand, the one with the scar on it from a bicycle tumble when he’d been a boy, being dragged over his forehead as he pushed the cross deep into the soil.

And then she had painfully crawled back into her bed he had come back into the house. She had heard him as he ran the kitchen tap and washed the soil off his hands. Then he had come back up the stairs, wearily, heavily, and into the bedroom. She remembered how tired he’d looked, all that digging and clandestine palava.

“That’s over, then, lass,” he’d said.

“Good man,” she’d replied, “did you notice?”

“Did I notice?” he’d asked, frowning. She remembered that frown, the almost complete ignorance as to what she might want to know.

“What it was?” she’d asked.

“Oh,” he concentrated, then, “Dead. It were dead.”

“Silly man! I mean, what kind of dead?”

“A dead girl. It were dead girl,” he told her.

“Eve. That’s what we’ll call her: Eve,” she decided.

“That’s good,” he’d nodded.

And all that had been tumbling around in her mind for sixty years, and now she felt a sort of ending coming on. Cold: that’s what she felt, cold on a summer’s day, and too weary to need to live for much longer.

But she needed to do one more thing. To assuage her guilt. To put everything right. To let Eve find a final sleep. Sixty years must have seemed a long time for the little mite, waiting in all that cold earth, and with nobody to comfort her.

It’s time, she decided, may the Lord forgive me.

But no lord would ever forgive her for what she’d done. The time had come to try and put it right, and at her age that wouldn’t be easy. But then, at eighty, nothing’s easy any more.

The garden spade was where Derek had left it fifteen years ago, rusted and still with mud clinging to it. Looking around to make sure nobody could see from their own gardens what she might be up to, she searched the weedy soil for the small wooden cross. Ah: there it was.

She dug gently, not wanting to damage Eve’s precious skin by being too hasty with rusty spade. That was Diana all over: considerate, careful, a loving mother.

But when the spade scraped on something, it wasn’t the soft and yielding skin she had expected. She’d seen old skulls on Midsomer Murders, and when she met Eve’s crumbling bones she couldn’t help the tiny scream that escaped her lips. Then she sunk onto her knees, heart pounding like it never had before, and she whispered, like she’d planned, “Eve, my darling, I’m so very sorry.”

And the skull opened her eyes and forgave her.

“It’s all right, mummy,” she whispered, “just give me one kiss..”

And Diana did. She leaned over the hole she’d dug and fell forwards, her lips reaching for her precious child’s own lips, and as they met it was as if a switch had been smartly clicked off and the light of the day went out.

“Welcome home, mummy,” sighed Eve in Diana’s head, “welcome home, my love.”

© Peter Rogerson 12.06.22

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