A Grave in the Cotswolds Read online

  ‘I had the impression of someone rather, well, forceful. I made some joke, if I remember rightly, about her living another thirty years or more.’

  ‘She seemed quite healthy to me,’ Thea agreed. ‘But perhaps she wasn’t. Perhaps she knew this was likely to happen.’

  ‘According to the certificate, she died of an occlusion.’

  Thea Osborne blinked. ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘A blockage, basically. Generally impossible to predict. Very quick.’

  ‘Oh. So she approached you because she wanted a woodland burial, and fixed up all the details – is that right? That weird coffin, for a start. Don’t you have to make some special application to use something like that?’

  I smiled. ‘Actually no, hardly at all. You don’t really want to know the whole story, do you?’

  ‘Not if you can’t be bothered to tell me.’

  She meant it literally – not in a nasty way, but giving me permission to save my breath, if that’s what I preferred. I saw her looking around at the people in the field. She had the air of a person slowly coming to understand that her role was over, the last line delivered, and all that remained was to leave.

  The Talbots had begun to get into their somewhat elderly BMW, apart from the boy nephew who was hanging back as if wanting time alone. I wondered fleetingly about his bike and where he would go on it. The family lived miles away, somewhere the far side of Oxford. Was he intending to cycle the whole way? I watched the family for a moment. ‘Who’s Carrie – do you know?’ I asked Thea.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The boy said something about Carrie, in his little speech.’

  ‘Must be a girlfriend, I suppose.’

  ‘And why isn’t she here?’

  She looked at me with a parody of patient understanding. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry. I wasn’t really asking you. Just wondering. It’s funny the way families get to you, in this business. You want to figure all the relationships out, and understand the patterns. Loose ends niggle at me.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘I’m the same, but in my case, it’s just idle curiosity. I really should get myself a life, one of these days.’

  I had no answer for that, other than a string of inappropriate questions that I would have liked to ask her. Like, was she married? Where did she live? Why was she doing house-sitting, of all things? Instead, I stuck firmly to the matter in hand. ‘Is there a get-together somewhere?’ I asked, thinking I would have heard if this was the case. Mourners were moving off slowly, apparently with nowhere definite to go. Nobody had said anything about adjournment to a local hostelry, or glanced at watches as if due somewhere.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it. How sad.’

  It was time for me to go. The melancholy little funeral had given me scant satisfaction – the woman had died too soon, with only the teenaged nephew showing any sense of loss. Every death should be important; the survivors should acknowledge that the pattern had changed. The permanent hole left by the deceased should be given its due recognition. In this case, I sensed surprised relief amongst the relatives, except for Jeremy, and an almost careless reaction from the middle-aged couples in attendance, who were purportedly local friends. Nowhere could I see evidence that Greta Simmonds’ death caused much more than a momentary pain to most of the people who knew her.

  ‘Oh, look!’ said Thea suddenly, as I started to walk away from her.

  I turned, following her pointing finger to a tree that stood at the edge of the field. Four big magpies were lined up along a bare branch, staring down at the grave.

  ‘Four means a parcel or something like that,’ said Thea.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘“One for a wish, two for a kiss. Three for a letter, four better.” I always thought that meant a parcel.’

  I smiled at her naïvety. Magpies were scavengers, and already they had detected the presence of decomposing flesh. I tried to catch the eye of the gravedigger, who would be well aware of the need to proceed quickly with his duties. ‘Maybe somebody’s going to win the lottery,’ I said carelessly.

  I walked to the gate, where my vehicle was parked on a wide grass verge. I still sometimes called it a hearse in my own mind, but in reality it was a large estate car, with the rear seats removable to leave space for a coffin. Standing beside it was the young couple who had been chatting to the gravedigger, the woman sideways to me, the man behind her with a hand resting on her shoulder. She was light-skinned, in her early twenties. He was tall and black and a few years older. They were talking about my car.

  ‘Is this your motor?’ asked the man, unsmilingly.

  I admitted ownership readily enough.

  ‘Are you aware that three of the tyres are illegal, and the road tax expired over two weeks ago?’ asked the girl.

  They weren’t in uniform. It did not occur to me that they were police officers, so I laughed. ‘The disc’s in the post,’ I said easily. ‘And the MOT is due next week. I’ll sort it all out then.’

  ‘Not good enough, I’m afraid, sir,’ said the man. ‘Might I see your licence and insurance documents?’

  The penny dropped. ‘Good Lord, are you police?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s right, sir. PC Jessica Osborne, and Detective Sergeant Paul Middleman.’

  ‘Osborne?’ I had automatically filed away the name of the small woman I had been chatting to at the graveside. It’s a habit with undertakers – people’s names acquire considerable importance in my line of work.

  ‘Right.’ The girl gave me no encouragement.

  ‘There’s a lady called Osborne over there,’ I continued, pointing into the field.

  ‘She’s my mother,’ said PC Jessica.

  Chapter Two

  Thea Osborne argued strenuously on my behalf, but her daughter stood her ground. ‘I do not believe the law says he can’t drive home,’ said Thea. ‘That’s idiotic.’

  The girl sighed melodramatically. ‘If he lived just a few miles away, it would be different. But no way can I let him go sixty miles on those tyres. They’re bald, Mum. They could cause a serious accident.’

  Both women looked at me, with very different expressions: the mother with exasperated sympathy, and the daughter with officious scorn. There was little similarity between them anyway – Jessica stood three or four inches above Thea, and was nowhere near as pretty. I was still wrestling with the fact that Thea was old enough to be the mother of this strapping PC – she must have been twelve when she had her, I thought. Or maybe she was a stepmother, or adopted the girl as an older child, when she was still in her twenties.

  I repeated my feeble defence. ‘I knew they were a bit dodgy, but I was waiting for the MOT. I haven’t had them all that long. I thought they must have a bit of life left in them.’

  ‘And the tax?’ queried Jessica.

  ‘I applied for it on the computer, four days ago. It’ll arrive on Monday, I expect.’

  ‘You were two weeks late applying, then?’

  ‘I suppose so. They give you a fortnight’s leeway, don’t they?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Mr Slocombe, sir, that is a complete myth. Besides, today is the sixteenth of March. Your tax ran out on the twenty-eighth of February. By any reckoning, you are overdue. As well as that, the usual procedure is to have the MOT test before renewing the tax.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I admit everything,’ I pleaded. ‘But please let me go home. My wife’s not well. She’ll need me to be there this evening.’ I was over-egging it, almost starting to enjoy the whole episode. There was something pleasingly ludicrous about an undertaker being given a rap for an illegal motor. I could see that Thea was aware of some of this – that she felt, like me, that such details were beside the point. A woman had died and been buried, there were wars going on and whole populations starving. The minutiae of vehicle regulations counted for little in the larger scheme of things.

  ‘Besides,’ Thea persisted, ‘you’re not in uniform. Doesn�
�t that mean you’re not entitled to throw your weight around like this?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Jessica was clearly losing any cool she’d retained till then. ‘If I observe a felony taking place, whether in uniform or not, it’s my duty to confront it.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Thea, earning herself my eternal affection. ‘You just enjoy the effect it has on people.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the daughter, inflating her bosom with dignity and turning back to me. ‘But the law’s the law.’

  ‘So, what must I do?’ I enquired humbly.

  ‘Kwik-Fit will still be open – you can go and get new tyres, and be on your way in an hour or so,’ said the girl briskly.

  And it’ll cost me money I didn’t have, I calculated gloomily. The credit card could stand it, just, but I’d vowed to myself not to use it again until the end of the month. The business survived only by virtue of a constant juggling act with the finances, and although I had been able to access Mrs Simmonds’ carefully secured money, things were still very tight.

  ‘Right,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Where’s the nearest one, then?’

  They didn’t know. They weren’t local. Jessica and her boyfriend had invited themselves over to join Thea for a meal in Chipping Campden, all three of them staying in Mrs Simmonds’ house (which I thought slightly dubious, but it seemed they felt perfectly justified) overnight, before departing to their respective homes next day. ‘Or we might even leave it till Sunday, if the weather improves,’ said Thea, happy to share their plans with me. Her daughter rolled her eyes again, obviously thinking I had no need to be told about their personal arrangements.

  I was uneasy, even agitated. Money trouble always sent me into a spin, and I also had the worry of Karen and the children expecting me home. Plus there was my usual reluctance to finally detach myself from the person just interred. Normally, this was accomplished quite gradually and painlessly, because they were buried in the field behind my house, and I could stroll around the graves every day and commune with them as much as I liked. This time, I believed I would never come back to this remote little village, never revisit my one-time client, to check that all was well with her. Daft, I know, but there’s something about the dead that makes it difficult to abandon them completely. I liked to know I’d done a good job; that nothing had disturbed their resting place. I worried for Mrs Simmonds’ remains left alone in this corner of land, with careless relatives and uncomprehending neighbours, and the constant niggling worry about foxes and dogs that came from the shallower graves employed for ecological reasons. Mrs S might have earned my respect when she said she quite liked the idea of an arm or leg being taken away by a vixen as a hearty supper for a nest of fox cubs, but I had no intention of letting such a thing happen.

  I was also annoyed – as anybody would have been – with the young police officer, who I could not help feeling had been showing off for the benefit of her boyfriend, if not her mother. The detective beau further confused me by appearing sympathetic towards my predicament, whilst studiously remaining silent. Where Thea was rapidly becoming a confirmed ally, he seemed, if not quite on my side, then far from impressed by the eager Jessica. The criss-crossing currents of emotion and motivation made me feel tired. The cold wind kept blowing, with a few drops of rain in it, hitting the side of my face. All the mourners had gone, leaving us, a motley foursome, to bid a final farewell to Mrs Simmonds.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ burst out Thea, after a moment or two of silence. ‘You started this, you sort him out.’ She was addressing her daughter. ‘Find out where he can get some tyres, and show him how to get there. The whole thing is completely ridiculous, and you know it.’ She gazed impatiently at the sky, as if appealing for celestial witnesses. ‘Since when did the police become so hopelessly sidetracked by stupid little details like car tyres? No wonder you get so little respect from the public. This is a prime example of where it’s all gone wrong.’

  Detective Paul cleared his throat warningly, and his eyes widened. He was big, and muscular, filling the blue rugby shirt he wore with bulges that could only come from serious physical power. I imagined him felling a runaway criminal with a forceful tackle that showed no concern for subsequent cuts and bruises.

  Jessica’s bosom heaved again, and she clenched her lips tightly together, before managing to speak. ‘Mr Slocombe, it’s up to you what you choose to do next. I’m going to file a report to say I cautioned you about the condition of your vehicle and the failure to show a valid tax disc. If you report to a police station within forty-eight hours, with proof that the tyres have been replaced, that will be enough. No further action will be taken. Do you understand?’

  She was polite and calm. I nodded weakly, feeling I’d had a reprieve from a prison sentence. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to sign anything?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘Well, goodbye then,’ I said, looking hard at Thea Osborne, wondering if I had caused a major family rift, and whether there was anything I could do to mend it. ‘Thank you very much. I mean – it was nice to meet you. I’m sorry if I’ve made you late.’

  ‘It was a very nice funeral,’ said Thea gently. ‘Dignified but human. Just the sort of thing I’d like to have myself.’

  ‘Oh, God, Mother,’ groaned Jessica. ‘Don’t start on that now.’

  Somehow they appeared to have evened things up, to have established a balance between them that was free from animosity. I smiled carefully.

  It was close to two o’clock, the burial having begun at twelve-thirty, and somehow the subsequent business having occupied nearly an hour. Nobody had had any lunch, especially me, and my stomach was complaining. The grave was already being discreetly filled in again by the efficient local man, assisted by young Jeremy, and there was absolutely no further reason to stay.

  ‘I’d better get on, then,’ I said. ‘I’ve kept you for ages, haven’t I? I’m so sorry. You must be hungry by now.’

  Nobody replied, but Thea met my eye with a little nod of understanding that seemed close to an apology for her daughter. I went back to my delinquent vehicle and climbed in. There was a Mars bar in the glove compartment, and I retrieved it and tore off the paper before trying to start the engine. All I needed was the overzealous police constable to get me for eating while driving. According to Maggs, that was one of the latest batch of misdemeanours you could be stopped for.

  The country lanes were confusing, and I forgot to check the map before finally setting off. All I knew was that I needed to head south, and my sense of direction was just about reliable enough to ensure I got that much right. I remembered passing through Stow-on-the-Wold on the way up, so hoped to find a sign directing me back that way, once I’d reached a more major road.

  All of a sudden I felt any sense of urgency fall away. Karen was quite capable of collecting the kids from school and giving them their tea. Maggs would handle any phone calls or visits to the office. It was Friday, and although my life hardly followed the normal working pattern, there was still the general air of relaxation, if only because we could forget about school uniforms and packed lunches for a couple of days.

  It was over three years since Karen had come home from hospital, pale and fearful after being shot in the head at close range. Nothing vital had been destroyed, and at first the doctors had assured us that her periods of blankness and problems with eating and sleeping were the result of trauma, rather than physical damage. The very fact of her still being alive had carried us through several euphoric weeks. And she did slowly get better, although the lack of appetite persisted and the resultant loss of weight alarmed me. She had always had lovely creamy shoulders and neck, well padded for a child’s head to rest on. She had been strong and nurturing, a perfect wife and mother. The new Karen was very different, her efforts to play the same role as before often painful to observe. I watched her self-assessments, whereby she calculated how much energy she had that day, and where the priorities should lie. She tackled
everything head-on, from some deep sense of obligation, but there was no joy in her. It took me a long time to see that the euphoria had been all mine, and that my wife was no longer sure about the purpose of being alive.

  The only answer she could find to that question lay in the children. Stephanie and Timothy, who had been four and three at the time of her injury, needed her irrefutably.

  I decided to stop at a pub for a sandwich and drink before joining the M5 and pressing on home, if I could find one still serving food at that time in the afternoon. A detour on a whim down a small road leading to a village, the name of which I never noticed, took me to a plain-looking hostelry, which offered me a choice of ham or cheese in white or brown. I drank a large quantity of very expensive apple juice, and hoped I could reach home before my bladder started to bother me.

  The motorway was busy, it being a Friday afternoon, but nowhere near as bad as it would have been a year or two earlier, before failed businesses, high-priced fuel and general economic gloom took so much commercial traffic off the roads. No longer did people head in their thousands for the South-West the moment a nice weekend was promised. Admittedly, this rush had never really gone mad until after Easter, but given the reduction in lorry movements, and the near disappearance of small vans dashing hither and yon on mysterious business, the traffic kept moving very nicely.

  Home beckoned strongly on the final stretch. The children would greet me like Irish setters, as if I’d been away for months. Karen would smile and tell me about her day. Maggs would wait in the background, and then fill me in on any developments. I had never seen myself as a patriarch, but nonetheless, there was a pleasing sense of being absorbed into a world of women and children, all focused on me. The hunter coming home, the returning warrior, the breadwinner with his sack of sustaining goodies over his shoulder.