by Hazel Holt
‘Ruth!’ I cried, trying to look delighted. ‘What a surprise! Do you live here?’
‘We do now. My husband retired last year and we moved here from London. We always loved the Forest – what? oh, the Forest of Dean, but we all call it the Forest. We used to come here for holidays when the children were small.’
She rattled on, just as she used to in the old days, pausing only to allow the odd murmur of (assumed) interest, about her husband (a civil servant – Ministry of Transport) and her children (one a vet and one a mineralogist) and the house they had bought (‘a converted coach-house, just outside Chepstow, Tutshill, actually’) and the garden (‘really too big for Arnold to manage on his own, but so difficult to get any sort of reliable help nowadays’) and her own life (‘desperately busy, but oh so fulfilling, if you know what I mean’).
I had taken a bite of my date and walnut slice, which effectively gagged me so that I couldn’t have uttered even if I’d been able to get a word in. But finally the spate of words slowed down and Ruth said, ‘And what about you? Whatever brings you to Chepstow? How long are you here for?’
‘Oh, I’m just passing through,’ I said hastily. ‘I’m on my way to Coleford.’
Typically she didn’t ask why I was going to Coleford but continued her monologue. My old technique for dealing with Ruth came back to me automatically: I closed my mind to her conversation, allowing only the occasional phrase to penetrate, and continued to deal with the date and walnut slice.
‘So many things you must look at in the Forest ... the Speech House ... the locals ... so quaint and odd ... very inbred, of course ... typical border country ... Arnold says ... local history society ... Clearwell Castle and the caves ... extraordinary little coal mines ... amazing church, you must make time for that ... Cathedral of the Forest ... Newland ... splendid little pub, marvellous food...’
Freed at last from my sticky cake, I interrupted her. ‘It all sounds splendid and I’ll enjoy seeing it, but I must...’ I gathered up my bag and tried hard to catch someone’s eye to get my bill.
‘Oh, you must stay and meet Arnold. He’s only gone to the DIY place, he’ll be along here soon.’
Knowing from bitter experience that bores usually married bores (who else?) I was determined not to get trapped by Arnold, who would doubtless have fascinating things to tell me about the road-fund licence or airport security, or whatever his branch of the Ministry of Transport did. Fortunately the middle-aged lady in the hat suddenly materialised and said, ‘Were you the date and walnut?’ and gave me a bill.
‘I do wish I could stay,’ I said, with the warmth that only a downright lie can give, ‘but I’ve got an appointment and I mustn’t be late. It’s been lovely seeing you.’
I backed away, paid the bill and made my escape.
As I sat in the car fastening my seat belt I was aware that I was feeling rather resentful that Ruth hadn’t made a single enquiry about my life. She didn’t even ask what my married name was! Not that I wanted to tell her my life story – heaven forbid! – but still, I felt a little bit niggled.
I drove out of Chepstow and into the Forest. And it was a forest and not a wood, dark and somehow forbidding. There were a lot of conifers and Forestry Commission plantations, but also long stretches of broad-leaf trees, just beginning to turn to gold. Very beautiful, really, but not the friendly sort of beauty that our West Somerset woods have. The trees were larger and taller and seemed to encroach on the road, as if, for two pins, they would sweep it away altogether. Tessa started to whine a little in the back and I thought I’d better let them out for a run. I parked on a grass verge by a little lane. There was, on the corner, a low metal road-sign with the name in black on a white ground – strangely urban in such a setting. The sign read ‘Miss Grace’s Lane’.
I clipped the dog leads on and they pulled me down the lane, snuffling and exploring in the hedges full of dead leaves and interesting smells. The lane was quite short and uninteresting and ended suddenly in a gate with a field beyond. I wondered who on earth Miss Grace had been and why she had given her name to this rather boring little cul-de-sac. Perhaps, surrounded as it was by the intimidating forest, it was the only place she felt comfortable enough to walk in.
I gave the dogs some biscuits and water, put them back in the car and continued my journey. A little further on I saw a small garage and decided that, since I didn’t know how far I’d have to go, I’d better fill up with petrol. The brand of petrol was one I’d never heard of but I decided they were all much of a muchness and drew up beside one of the two pumps. Sometimes I have problems with my petrol-locking cap – it suddenly seizes up for no reason at all – and I was wrestling with it when a child came out of the garage. He was a boy of about ten or eleven, small and thin with a pale face and short brown hair that stood up in a spike on the crown. He regarded me with mild contempt, unlocked the petrol cap, unhooked the nozzle of the pump and looked at me enquiringly.
‘Oh,’ I said, feeling flustered, ‘fill it up, please, if you will.’
The child filled the tank, replaced the cap, took a chamois leather from the pocket of his jeans and cleaned the windscreen. Then he went back into the garage and I followed him meekly.
Inside there was a girl – a little older, about twelve – stacking bottles of car shampoo on the shelves. The boy stood beside the electronic till and I said, ‘You take credit cards?’
He held out his hand. ‘That’s right,’ he said in what I took to be the local accent. He processed my card with brisk efficiency and gave it back to me.
Another boy, this time very young, certainly not more than six, came in from the back with a pile of roadmaps which he began to lay out on the counter beside the till. I wanted to say something – I longed to know what had happened to all the grown-ups, what the children were doing there – but they were behaving as if this was their normal way of life, absorbed in everyday tasks, business-like, working in a silence that it seemed somehow impertinent to break.
I put my credit card back in my bag, gave the boy at the till a nervous smile and said, ‘Well, thank you, goodbye.’
‘Have a nice day,’ he said, the cliché sounding strange and outlandish in that accent and in those circumstances.
Decidedly shaken by this encounter I drove on and, not surprisingly, found I had missed the way. The forest still stretched away on either side of the road, but now it was thinner and in among the trees there were sheep – scraggy creatures with bedraggled coats, rummaging among the leaves and bracken. There was no mention of Coleford on the next signpost I got to. I drew up beside it and a heavily laden lorry with the words Tintern Quarry on its side rushed past me. One of the names on the signpost was Clearwell and I remembered that Ruth had mentioned it, I hoped in connection with the marvellous pub, because I suddenly realised that what I really wanted was a comforting gin and tonic. Clearwell was quite a large village; a lot of the houses had been gentrified and there were several little enclaves of new village houses, stone-built with those pointed wooden window-frames they all seem to go in for nowadays. I identified the castle (a nineteenth-century crenellated building, now a hotel) and wondered which of the three pubs to choose. I avoided the largest, hung with a plethora of hanging baskets, the geraniums still in full and exuberant bloom, and made my way into a small one called the Orepool. It was dark inside, but cosy and quite full. I got my drink, ordered some lasagna and went to sit in the corner by the window. I wished I had a book; the other customers stared at me, not in an unfriendly way, but curiously, as if I were of another species or from another planet, then went back to their darts and bar billiards. When the food came I bent my head over my plate, ate it quickly and went over to the bar to pay the bill.
I asked the barman for directions to Coleford.
‘You need to go through the village and turn right past the chapel, then up across the Meend,’ he said.
‘The Meend?’
‘The Meend.’ he repeated impatiently, ‘and you’ll
find yourself on the Coleford road. You can’t miss it.’
As I drove through the village I saw the church, which was unremarkable – obviously not the one urged upon me by Ruth – and looked about me for a chapel. On the right-hand side I saw a small, vaguely ecclesiastical building with a graveyard behind it, and stopped in amazement. I parked the car and went over to get a better look. It was a very mild autumn and, as I’ve said, there were still a lot of flowers in bloom, but there in the graveyard was such a blaze of colour that it took my breath away. I opened the tall iron gate and went inside.
It was a large churchyard with a small chapel at one end, obviously used solely for funerals since the graveyard was some way from the church. Around the edge, in front of the boundary wall, someone had made a vast, circular raised bed and this was filled with late flowering dahlias, chrysanthemums, rudbeckia and Michaelmas daisies. That was not all. All along the perfectly kept path were small beds also filled with flowers and every grave that had no vase of flowers of its own or layer of chippings had been planted with marigolds and brilliant yellow daisies. The effect was stunning. I walked a little way along the path and came upon an old duffle coat which had been thrown down on the ground, and, lying beside it, a small black dog who was guarding it. She had, laid out neatly on the ground, a bowl of water, a bone and a handful of dog biscuits. The dog, who had been chewing the bone, looked up as I approached, then she got up and came towards me, wagging her tail. I put out a hand to stroke her glossy coat and she rolled over so that I could pat her fat stomach. I spoke to her and petted her and then suddenly she scrambled to her feet and rushed down the path towards a figure coming towards me.
Just for a moment I felt frightened. The man approaching was very strange. He was tall and very thin, with tangled grey hair down below his shoulders and a grey beard to his waist – it was as disconcerting as suddenly coming upon an Old Testament prophet. He was wearing a collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a navy waistcoat that had once belonged to a suit and old khaki trousers tied at the knee with binder cord. I hesitated. It was very quiet with no one in sight and the man looked so odd that my instincts told me I should hurry away, back to the car and safety, but then I saw the dog leaping up at him and the gentle way he patted her head and, perhaps irrationally, I stopped being frightened.
I walked towards him, calling out, ‘Good afternoon.’
‘Afternoon, missus.’ His voice was noncommittal.
‘Is that your dog? She’s in beautiful condition.’
‘She’s a good dog is Trixie.’
He seemed pleased and I continued, ‘And is this beautiful place all your work?’
‘It is. It’s what I do, look after the graveyard.’
‘I’ve never seen one like it.’
‘No, folks do say that.’
‘And do you do it all on your own? It’s quite magnificent.’
‘I like to see the graveyard look well.’ He paused and then volunteered, ‘They didn’t buy none of those plants, it’s all what people have give me when I do their gardens.’
‘That’s wonderful. And all the old graves planted like this.’
‘I don’t like the old ones to think they’ve been forgotten,’ he said.
Trixie had been rolling at his feet, but then she broke away and came back to me delighted to have a second person’s attention. As I bent down to stroke her, my eye was caught by a new grave, the earth on it still roughly turned and with one wreath (white chrysanthemums, now turning brown at the edges) laid at its head. Stuck into the earth at the end of the grave nearest to the path was a wooden peg, on which was written in biro the inscription ‘Edith Mary Rossiter’.
Chapter Twelve
As I straightened up something of what I felt must have shown in my face because the man said, ‘Are you all right, missus?’
I tried to think coherently.
‘Yes ... That is, I’ve had a bit of a shock. That’ – I pointed to the place – ‘is the grave of someone I knew – I hadn’t expected to find her here.’
‘You’d better sit down. Here’ – he took my arm gently – ‘sit down on the seat until you feel proper.’
I found that I was shaking – shock, I suppose – and clenched my hands tightly to pull myself together. The man looked at me with some concern and the dog sat close by my feet as if in sympathy. After a while I felt more myself and said, ‘The lady who is buried over there – do you know anything about her?’
He pulled at his beard, considering the question before he replied and then said, ‘The funeral were about a couple of weeks ago. She were the lady staying with that foreign gentleman and his sister in the holiday cottage up on the Meend.’
‘Foreign?’ I asked. ‘What sort of foreign?’
‘That I couldn’t say. Foreign. Talks funny. Proper English, but funny, you know what I mean. Not that I saw him more than a couple of times and never saw the sister at all – an invalid, that Molly Phillips in the Post Office says, though I don’t know how she knows, because I don’t reckon she’s ever set eyes on her, nor on this lady either.’ He gestured towards the grave. ‘Nobody did. The ladies didn’t go out at all and the gentleman, he only went into Coleford in the car to get the shopping.’
‘Didn’t anyone see them?’
‘No. Nobody goes up there much, it don’t lead nowhere. Reg Lydden might have seen them when he went up on to the Meend to see to his sheep. But he didn’t say nothing about it. He don’t say much about nothing, do Reg Lydden.’
‘Is the foreign gentleman still here?’ I asked.
‘That’s right, still here, him and his sister. Won’t be for long, though. Said he’s going away next week. Give me money to keep up the grave, though I didn’t want none. I like to see the old graveyard look nice. He asked the vicar to see to the stone. Can’t put up no stone until the ground’s settled. That’s why it’s marked, you see.’ He indicated the wooden peg.
‘Yes, I see. Tell me, do you know his name?’
‘His name?’ The man looked surprised at my question. ‘I don’t rightly recall it – it were a foreign name. Van something.’
‘Van!’
‘That’s right. Foreign.’ he explained patiently, ‘like I said. I’ve got it writ down, he put it on a bit of paper for me. I’ve got it somewhere in the house.’
‘Can you tell me how to get to the cottage where he lives?’ I asked.
‘You want to go up there?’
‘Yes, I – I’d like to ask about my friend.’
‘Yes, well, it’s not far. You go along this road for about half a mile and then you’ll see a narrow lane going off to the right. Real steep, it is. Follow that on for another half mile and you’ll see Brooks Cottage on the left, right on the top of the hill. You can’t miss it, nothing else up there. Miserable place in winter. Old Jackie Brooks used to be snowed up half the year when he lived there.’
‘Thank you so much,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very kind.’
I felt in my handbag and found a five-pound note.
‘Please take this,’ I said, thrusting it into his hand. ‘No,’ I continued when he protested, ‘I’m so glad you’re looking after her grave. If you like, get something for your little dog, some extra biscuits or something. She’d have liked that. She loved animals.’
I stood for a moment looking down at the grave and then walked quickly back to the car.
I found the lane and drove up the steep slope and out on to what I decided must be the Meend. It was rough common land, mostly covered with bracken and with a few scattered windblown hawthorns and elder bushes. Several defeated-looking sheep strayed across the road, unconcerned or unused to traffic, and a few were drinking at one of the pools of dark, brackish water beside it. In front of me on the top of the hill I saw a cottage, standing on its own, silhouetted against the sky.
I stopped the car. Everywhere was very quiet and still. There was no birdsong, no wind, no sound of any human activity. The Meend stretched away for some dista
nce on either side and far away to the left I could see the vague greyish shape of the Welsh Black Mountains which seemed to melt into a greyer sky. Now, having got so far, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go on. Van – it seemed incredible. I had been so sure that Marion had nothing to do with Mrs Rossiter’s disappearance. My mind was confused and I didn’t seem able to think properly. I sat for a few moments, unable to make any movement, forward or back. Then Tris, excited by a sheep moving beside the car, uttered a sharp bark and I started the car again and went on up the hill.
I stood for a moment at the gate, looking up at the cottage. It was built of grey stone, probably a miner’s cottage and quite small, but an extension had been built on to the side and there had been some attempt to make a garden at the front with shrubs and paved flagstones. As I looked, I thought I saw the curtains in the downstairs window moving, as if someone was looking out from behind them. I thought of Michael’s warning about plunging into things and of what I might find, and I hesitated. Then I took a deep breath and knocked on the door. My mind was a complete blank. I had no idea what I was going to say to Van and whoever else was there; I would just let things happen.
I waited for what seemed like ages and then I knocked again. It was, I noticed, a black iron knocker, old and worn underneath – the original, I supposed, and not a modern reproduction. The door was suddenly opened, not by Van, not, indeed, by anyone I had ever seen before, but by an elderly man.
He was tall and very thin, his face deeply suntanned and with eyes that were still a clear, bright blue. He stood looking at me without speaking, his gaze steady and enquiring. I found myself talking quickly and not very coherently.
‘Oh, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for someone who can give me news of Mrs Rossiter. Mrs Edith Rossiter. I believe she’s been staying here. I’m an old friend – Sheila Malory – we’ve been so worried...’
He opened the door wider.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said.
His accent was strange; I couldn’t place it. I followed him into the cottage and he shut the door behind me.