A Grave in the Cotswolds Page 3

  And so it proved, with only minor deviations. Karen had a headache, which was not unusual, but pained me to witness. Her hair, once thick and tawny, had thinned and faded after the removal of much of it in the hospital. Her suffering head throbbed almost visibly, the crease in her brow suggestive of a heavy weight crushing her crown. Stephanie had lost another tooth, the resulting gap somehow ghastly in my once-perfect little daughter. She and I had enjoyed a close bond from the outset, when Karen returned to teaching and I was setting up the business. My little toddler girl would play calmly in the office while people came to discuss burials. Looking back it felt like an idyll in every respect.

  Timothy had been in trouble at school – again. He could never explain his sudden bouts of violence against other children, but we assumed it could only be a legacy of Karen’s injury, an inchoate rage against the loss of the trouble-free life we had known in his first years. When I suggested that it might simply be that he was too young to be confined to a classroom and expected to conform to the rules of an institution, no matter how benign, Karen defended the system, from her standing as one-time professional teacher.

  I went to my office, to find out how my weary colleague had fared. Maggs had nothing to report, which in itself was a disappointment. She smiled determinedly, and asked about my trip to the Cotswolds.

  ‘I got into trouble with the police,’ I said, anticipating her reaction.

  She eyed me attentively, her brown face slightly tilted. ‘Speeding?’ she guessed.

  ‘Nope. I wasn’t even in the car at the time.’

  ‘Tyres,’ she nodded, pleased with her cleverness. ‘I knew they weren’t legal.’

  ‘Right. And tax. It was a policewoman, at the funeral. Sort of. Her mother was actually there first, and she came along later, for some reason. With a detective boyfriend.’

  ‘Bummer,’ said Maggs carelessly. Like me, she had a healthy disregard for life’s trivialities. The small stuff passed us by where other people seemed to find it desperate. They would fight over who did the washing-up, or whether the toothpaste was in the right configuration. We chose instead to focus on the larger issues of grief at the utter finality that came with death; the future condition of the planet; the obligations we had shouldered in our work and our relationships. Maggs and Karen and I had been a forceful trio when we founded Peaceful Repose, carrying all before us. If Karen and I had grown tireder and older since then, Maggs continued just as before, an indispensable inspiration and support. Even now, after twenty-something hours with no sleep, she was reliably focused.

  ‘It’s daft, though,’ I persisted. ‘When the city centres are impassable and the youth of today are feral monsters, why waste time on model citizens like me?’

  ‘Forget about it,’ she advised. ‘And have a nice weekend. I’ll see you on Monday.’

  ‘Yes…you too,’ I said, never doubting that I would indeed see her on Monday.

  I went back to take over from Karen. She had put some potatoes on to boil, but done little else towards preparing us a meal. ‘Chops?’ I suggested, looking in the freezer.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I’ll turn the spuds off for a bit, then, or they’ll be done too soon.’

  ‘OK.’

  I flew around the kitchen, thinking about the food. I could gather some mint from the garden, and fish some frozen runner beans out for the veg. It was simple, basic stuff, which Karen could have done standing on her head before she was injured. Now she so easily lost focus, so that peeling and boiling potatoes could seem to her all that was required for a family meal. We had often sat down to unadorned pasta, or a large quantity of grilled bacon with nothing to go with it. I had quickly learnt to have instant sauces, frozen peas, tins of beans and sweetcorn and soup stacked in the cupboards ready to add to Karen’s partial meals. I had also acquired a microwave oven, despite a strong resistance to that sort of cooking. Karen and I had been united in choosing a simple lifestyle, with slow cooking, home-grown vegetables, minimal use of technology. It went with the ethos of the business, after all. But much of that had changed over the past three years. The world itself was in deep confusion over the demands of the environment, the global recession, the price of oil – the word ecological had begun to seem old-fashioned, along with alternative and even organic. My children were catching up with the digital age, while Karen and I struggled to cling to the ideology that had been so important to us.

  After the meal, I put the children to bed. They shared a room, and I read them a story sitting on the edge of Stephanie’s bed. It was a chapter of The Jenius by Dick King-Smith, an old favourite of my daughter’s. But I noticed that it was Timmy who listened more intently, laughing at the witticisms, his eyes fixed on my face as I read.

  ‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’ Stephanie asked me as I tucked her in.

  ‘I don’t know. What do you want to do?’

  ‘Go swimming!’ shouted Timmy.

  Stephanie and I both groaned theatrically. Timmy’s passion for water was inexplicable to us both. Trips to the local swimming pool were strictly limited to times when it was inescapably Timmy’s turn to choose what we did. Karen carefully monitored the fairness of such decisions.

  ‘Not your turn,’ said Stephanie emphatically.

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘We went swimming last weekend,’ I said. ‘And you lost your rucksack – remember?’

  It was chastening to see how his face fell. ‘Oh, Tim,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. It’s the holidays next week – we’ll go swimming three times, I promise.’

  ‘Daddy!’ protested Stephanie. ‘That’s too much.’

  ‘Maggs can take me,’ my little boy suggested. ‘She likes swimming.’

  It wasn’t true. Maggs had no more fondness for the noisy, chlorine-imbued atmosphere of the local baths than I did. But she liked Timmy, and put herself out for him as she had never done for his sister. Maggs, more than anybody, had noticed how badly Timmy had been cheated by the injury to his mother, and had swiftly, unobtrusively, done her best to fill the gap. The bond between them was seldom openly acknowledged by any of us. It was simply taken for granted as one element in our lives.

  ‘Don’t bank on it, Tim,’ I cautioned. ‘She’s only just got back from holiday, and she’ll have a lot to do. I think we’ll just have a lazy weekend. We could go for a walk and see if we can find catkins and sticky buds.’

  Neither child manifested any enthusiasm for my suggestion.

  Chapter Three

  It was nine-thirty on Saturday morning when a sharp rap sounded on the front door. We almost didn’t hear it because Timothy was shouting and Stephanie had the TV on far too loud.

  A policeman stood there, and I sighed impatiently. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ I snapped. ‘Give me a chance.’

  ‘Mr Slocombe?’ he asked calmly.

  ‘Yes, yes. Look, I’ll get the tyres replaced today, OK? There’s no need for all this harassment.’

  ‘Sir, this is not about tyres. It concerns a burial in Gloucestershire yesterday. I understand that you were responsible for it.’

  ‘What? Yes. Mrs Simmonds. So what?’

  ‘There has been a complaint, sir. From the council. They contacted the police with a view to pressing charges.’

  My impatience escalated. This was familiar territory. ‘The burial was entirely legal,’ I told him. ‘The council has no jurisdiction over what was done. Believe me, I know my rights on this. It’s my business, after all.’

  ‘The council owns the land, sir. You have committed a trespass.’ His face relaxed a little as he heard his own words. ‘Quite an unusual trespass at that,’ he added.

  My mind was racing. ‘But it’s too late,’ I protested. ‘You can’t just move a grave once it’s been established. There’s nothing to be done now.’ I suspected that I knew the law on this matter better than this officer did. ‘There’d have to be an application to the Home Office for exhumation. Nobody does that lightly.’ Indeed, such a proced
ure was the stuff of nightmares – literally. It was one of my greatest dreads.

  ‘We need you to explain that to the man from the council,’ he agreed. ‘He might listen to you.’ His expression suggested that this was unlikely, and I sighed.

  ‘So I’m not under arrest, then?’

  ‘Trespass is not a criminal offence, sir. But the…well, delicate nature of this case means we would prefer for you to come and talk it through with Mr Maynard, face-to-face. Get the whole matter settled quietly.’

  A suspicion struck me. ‘He wants us to pay for it – is that what you’re saying? He’ll leave the grave undisturbed if we pay some sort of rent for the land?’

  ‘Not for me to say, sir.’

  I was inwardly cursing myself from the moment of the revelation that the land had not belonged to Mrs Simmonds. It had not occurred to me to ask for proof of ownership, which seemed idiotically sloppy, in retrospect, although Mrs Simmonds had clearly said the field was hers. She had deceived me, I realised, with a sickening sense of having been betrayed. If she had admitted that there was the slightest chance of local council involvement, I would have refused to accede to her wishes. The first rule of one-off natural burials in anything other than a cemetery or churchyard was – Don’t Tell The Council. Don’t ask their permission, don’t casually phone them to check that it’s all right with them. Leave them out of it. Generally speaking, burials fell under the jurisdiction of the Parks and Recreation Department, often headed by an earnest little jobsworth who would seize this deviation from the usual run of daily paperwork with relish. Mythical regulations about waterways and notifiable diseases would surface and proliferate until any chance of conducting the proposed burial vanished under the weight of obfuscation. There would have to be specialist reports on the density of the soil, the potential consequences for rare moths or molluscs, the appalling difficulties involved in parking eight or ten vehicles on the roadside for the funeral, delaying everything so drastically that the proposal could only be abandoned.

  And the law was, in effect, on our side. Once the burial was accomplished, it was pretty well permanent. Retrospective complaints could safely be ignored. Usually. The fact that this land was unconsecrated meant an exhumation could be more readily carried out than if the grave had been in a churchyard, although it would still be a serious procedure, with any amount of paperwork. I became aware of a dawning collection of doubts. I had made a mistake, a gaffe, and was already quailing inwardly at the potential consequences.

  The police did not drive me to Broad Campden in a locked car with a stout female officer beside me. They let me go by myself, in a car with expired road tax and bald tyres. The man on my doorstep insisted I had to go and hear what Mr Maynard had to say. ‘He said he’d meet you by the grave at eleven-thirty. I think that gives you plenty of time, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Can’t I just phone him?’ I pleaded.

  ‘Sorry.’ He shook his head.

  ‘It’s Saturday. Why isn’t he at home planting potatoes?’

  A shrug suggested that I was wasting time for both of us. ‘All right,’ I conceded, as if I had a choice. ‘Let me go and tell my wife.’

  Karen took it serenely. ‘What a pain,’ she said. ‘When will you be back?’

  I visualised the tedious drive, an hour and a half each way. ‘Hard to say,’ I replied. ‘But definitely long before dark.’ Darkness fell at about seven, the equinox less than a week away.

  The children had no plans for the weekend. They would watch too much television, but also play with the chaotic jumble of toys in their bedroom, Stephanie herding her Playmobil figures on and off the brick trains that Timothy fashioned for them. Karen might read to them or organise some cutting and sticking, or drawing. Or she might not. They were unlikely to go outside, any of them. Karen had once grown most of our vegetables, but somehow that had all withered away since her injury. If I had been at home, I might have taken them on a walk by the old canal, watching the nesting birds and pointing out the new spring flowers. My mother had done the same for me and it must have been in the blood.

  So I drove all the way back to Broad Campden, where the council officer had arranged to meet me, the police liaising between us in a way I found surprising. Until, that is, I realised that they hoped this would see the end of their involvement. From their point of view, I was the best chance of calming the whole thing down, and leaving poor Mrs Simmonds where she was.

  Mr Maynard was waiting for me, standing in the gateway to the field, on the spot where policewoman Jessica had planted herself in order to chastise me about my car. The associations were unfortunate, rendering me more defensive than was useful. A strong wind – even stronger than the day before – was blowing, ruffling my hair and providing an irritating background noise as it swirled through the surrounding trees. I spotted one magpie, riding a wind-tossed branch with apparent enjoyment.

  ‘So!’ the man from the council began with an air of infuriating triumph. ‘This is Mr Drew Slocombe, is it?’ The invisible third person to whom he appealed said nothing.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said, refraining from offering him a hand to shake. ‘I gather there’s a problem.’

  He was a weedy man, with a round head on which the hair had receded to an oily semicircle. His eyes were small and round, his chin unobtrusive. But his mouth was fleshy, his lips damp. ‘This is a travesty,’ he shrilled at me. ‘A travesty!’ He waved an outraged arm towards the grave. I had to admit it was a good word.

  ‘I don’t really think so,’ I said mildly. ‘It was what she wanted.’

  ‘Without any consultation, without due care to ascertain ownership of the land,’ he accused. ‘You simply took her word for it, and went on your own selfish way, out to make money from a foolish woman’s whim.’

  He had combined the most pertinent point with a fatuous and offensive imputation. It meant I had to take him seriously and not seriously at the same time, which very much threw me off balance.

  ‘I don’t think Mrs Simmonds was foolish,’ I said. ‘She had a fine regard for the environment, and her own clear values. She faced up to her own mortality, which I found admirable.’ It was a clunky little speech, and I was not proud of it. There had been a time when I addressed groups about natural burials, with some impressive rhetoric.

  ‘The land was not hers,’ he shouted, bringing his face close to mine. ‘You have committed a definite trespass on council property.’ We were standing a few feet inside the field, thirty or forty yards from the grave itself. I had the impression that Mr Maynard was reluctant to go any closer, that the mere fact of it made him nervous. He wasn’t unique in that, of course, but it did nothing to increase my scant respect for him.

  ‘So I am now given to understand, although I imagine it was a genuine mistake. I presume she must have rented it? In fact, I’m sure she thought she had the right to use it as she did. I gather she inherited the house years ago, but only moved here fairly recently. She must have been told the land went with it in some way, even though it’s so far from the house.’ Why couldn’t I just say it straight? She must have thought it was OK to be buried here. Instead I went on the attack. ‘Are you perfectly sure it belongs to the council? It seems very odd to me. After all, if Mrs Simmonds had been paying rent on it, she would know it wasn’t hers to do as she liked with.’

  ‘Yes, of course I am. I know all the details, thank you very much.’

  ‘Then it must have been a misunderstanding. Age-old usage, missing paperwork – that sort of thing.’

  ‘That is not the point. The point is, the land is now valueless. Useless.’

  My heart gave a lurch out of all proportion to his actual words. I had managed to convince myself during the drive up to the Cotswolds that whatever happened, I would not be personally liable, but now that the conversation was turning to economics, things began to feel scary. ‘Well…’ I began, not knowing what I meant to say, ‘well, I don’t think there was any need to involve the police. There are various th
ings we can do, if we think about it calmly. You could fence off the grave, and put the rest of the field to whatever use you want.’ Besides, I wanted to add, it is a very little field. Barely two acres, I would guess.

  ‘But it’s sick,’ he blurted. ‘Insensitive and disgusting and sacrilegious. A travesty,’ he repeated, for good measure.

  ‘No,’ I argued, finally on firmer ground. ‘It is none of those things. It’s perfectly normal and natural, and if you have a problem in acknowledging the basic facts of death and decomposition, then I feel sorry for you.’

  His beady eyes narrowed and the lips grew even wetter. ‘Mind what you say,’ he warned. ‘You have not heard the end of this. I intend to apply for an exhumation order, with all costs awarded against you, Mr Slocombe. You personally.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘You petty little man. Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time than interfere in something you don’t even begin to understand? Can’t you see this for what it is? An innocent mistake was made, and nobody loses by it. I can’t believe you received very much in rent for this scrap of land. In fact, if it was properly investigated, I wouldn’t be surprised to find she paid you nothing at all. After Mrs Simmonds’ mother died, I just bet you forgot all about it, and never collected any rent.’ A thought struck me. ‘And how did you find out about the burial so quickly?’

  ‘One of the mourners telephoned yesterday afternoon,’ he said, looking rather pale at my attack. ‘They were worried about the legalities, as well as the sheer lack of dignity in the whole sordid business.’

  I knew it wasn’t worth arguing any further with him. If he saw a simple natural burial in a small Cotswold field as sordid, there was no hope for him.

  But the argument was not entirely within my control. ‘So?’ he went on, quickly reviving. ‘The situation is completely unacceptable. What do you propose to do about it?’

  ‘Me? Nothing whatsoever. It’s too late to do anything. Besides, it’s not up to me, is it?’

  ‘It most certainly is. Either you reimburse the council for the full market value of this property, or we take the whole business to a higher authority. Personally, I want this abomination removed immediately.’