by Gary Crew
Outside the back gate of The Hedges stood the Mancini family mausoleum, a massive block of sandstone (‘Not like the Ities; they like their marble,’ Stan said), its sides measuring thirty feet. The interior of this stone was accessed by tunnel-like transepts, cut midway along the length of each of the four sides, and intersecting in the centre. Access to these transepts was not sealed, allowing Augustus to walk in, fingertips brushing, savouring the stone. There are no ghosts here, no phantoms, he mused, stroking the rock as he wandered. The stone is too solid.
There was provision for twelve bodies inside, each allocated a rectangular niche, opening off a transept. Once filled, these niches were sealed in perpetuity, no name being carved on the sealing stone, only that one Mancini, outside. So they are no more individuals, Augustus thought. The stone encompasses all …
One niche remained empty.
Approaching this unfilled space one solitary day, Augustus upturned his bucket and clambered in. ‘Ach!’ he grunted, wriggling, headfirst. ‘This isn’t right. But I can’t turn myself around in midair, and Stan would never lift me up,’ so he crawled on his stomach, his head facing the blind wall at the rear. Once in, he lay still as a corpse, pretending. But his was a sentient body. I need to move. I need to see, to touch, to taste, to smell, to hear … So he focused on the dark, the dark at the end, and presently, as in a dream, he saw shapes: the swirls and sediments within the stone, and after, Dust motes, or planets, are they? he wondered, moving one about the other, as stars in the Milky Way, and he sighed, watching. If this is death, he thought, it is alive, then he laughed, since he knew that he was not dead, but pretending, so he drew his arm up, freeing his hand, and touched. The surface of the stone was colder inside the tomb, rougher too, less well finished, less well dressed. Intended for the dead, who wouldn’t know, he thought. As for taste, he licked, he kissed the stone, as he had done before (in his bedroom, and elsewhere, secret), but now, being private – private as the dead – he gave this more thought. Do I taste salt? he wondered. Was this stone once the bed of a mighty sea? Or is there salt spread, in readiness for the body to come? To preserve, possibly? For salt he tasted, he knew. As for smell, he pressed his nose flat, and sniffed. At first there was nothing other than cold. Cold is not a smell, but a feeling, he thought, and he was about to lift his head, chastising himself for expecting too much; for expecting to alert all his senses in this dead place, then reconsidered. But I can smell the cold, I can, and it isn’t a smell, not really, but then again it is. It is the smell of this cold, inanimate stone. And he sighed, eager to hear, to know if there was sound there, but what he heard came from outside, the sighs and whispers of the sunlight; the life out there. Those are borrowed sounds, he thought, borrowed from life. In here there is no sound, other than myself breathing, which does not count. He worried then about the silence when he cast off his sweet voice, his song, his poetry; when he cast off this dwarfish body to become a man. A tall man. A broad man. A normal man. A man who might not sing – which was possible, wasn’t it? A real man yes, but silent as this stone.
And he wriggled out to stand in the sunshine, afraid.
The circumstances of a day at The Hedges might be called routine; then again, they might not, unless death is routine, which it is.
In the circumstance of a death, the hearse would arrive at those wrought-iron gates (ecclesiastical, in bronze), and Augustus, in order to make himself useful, would open them. Miss Bloomfield had made him a smart black suit, a smart black tie and a smart black hat that he wore each morning except Sunday, when no-one was buried. But when the hearse arrived, drawn by a fine pair of greys festooned in black ostrich, and the dread-black entourage, on foot, following behind, he was always there, the pretty dwarf, all done up in his mourning suit, to let them in.
‘Follow me,’ he would say, tucking his hat under his arm much as he had done in the mess tent at the circus, all those years ago, and he would lead the entourage, horses snuffling and blowing, heads bent, mourners shuffling, tears streaking, noses blowing, along the raked gravel path around the stone cottage to the rear garden, where he would throw open the back gate (not near as grand as the front), to allow entry to the cemetery itself.
Once they were in, Augustus would direct them to the pit that Stan had dug the day before, because afternoons were cooler, generally, and the pile of red dirt heaped there, then stand away and Father Brown would take over (since the Holy Father had not called him away, as he had so desired). He would say what he had to say, tell the lies, the platitudes or the truth, sometimes, though rarely, because either he didn’t know it or couldn’t tell it, or wouldn’t, above the weeping, until it was over, and the coffin lowered, and one ceremonial silver shovel of dirt cast down. Then everyone would leave except Augustus, and Stan of course, who had lurked behind a headstone or a tree stump, or otherwise rendered himself invisible until it was his time. Then he would fill the pit while Augustus watched, perched on a headstone, a stray rock or a pile of dirt, keeping company.
There might be days when it rained or blew, which was not routine, and the mourners grumbled rather then wept, or froze, swore or once or twice fought, since here were feuds, this being the scrub. Sometimes there were dead children and sometimes those who died before their time, the good, often; like Doctor Forster, who was kind, and Mrs Armitage, who gave up her home when there was a fire, out there in the scrub, and the lot that she gave it to disrespected her and abused her place something savage (‘Because they was savages themselves,’ Stan said). Once or twice they saw Rosa and her Da Silva because they knew people who had died, though they were of no set faith themselves, especially not Catholics. That went all right, because there was no bad blood between Rosa and Stan and Da Silva, just distance, which was probably best, considering. It is obvious they are in love, Augustus thought, the way they stand so close and whisper.
And sometimes Da Silva’s doves came in, even out there in the graveyard, landing on them both, Da Silva’s head and Rosa’s slender shoulders, nor were they shooed away. Because they had become the stuff of story themselves, that pair, dressed all in motley as they were, his hair silver as the celestial moon, hers all fierce and bold in fiery gold. To rival the sun, Augustus wondered, in ever living glory, as another poet had said, and as story should be.
Ever living. Ever giving. Ever new.
Some days were just strange, such as was the day of the staring man.
A poet, was he?
Augustus had gone out to the big gate, as he did, and the hearse came through, and the mourners, straggling, but one man stood out, stepping from the mob to stare at Augustus, and stare and stare, right through the graveside service and the shovelling with the single shovel (and the deceased a woman too, as Augustus knew, having listened to the Father for once; an older woman at that, perhaps even the starer’s mother). Yet still he stared. He was a well-presented man. All done up in a three-piece suit in worsted, with a waistcoat and a fob in gold and a smart hat and very fine tan leather boots (not country wear, but city styled, clean and polished) and under his arm a book, bound in red leather, so he might have been a teacher or a poet. Whatever he was, when the crowd left, he remained to stare, even when Augustus and Stan were the only ones left and the pit needed to be covered, since there was rain coming in. He kept it up, the starer, so Augustus went over and said, ‘Sir, have I offended you in some way? Did I do something wrong, back there at the gate?’
The man sighed and looked down, then looking up, he said, ‘My name is Oliver Dogson. I owe you my sight.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Augustus replied, since the situation was formal. ‘You mistake me for somebody else. We have never met, I am certain.’
‘No, we have not,’ the gentleman agreed. ‘But that does not alter the truth of my statement. You were dressed, I remember, in a toga, and stood upon a silver chariot drawn by a zebra. And you sang ‘Rule Britannia’ to the uproar of a calliope. There was an elephant too, draped in marigolds. All this in a circus ten
t, the canvas firmament patched blue above.’
Augustus stood still. ‘The big top,’ he breathed.
‘That song gave me my sight,’ he said. ‘Your voice gave me my poetry, my life …’
That night, alone in his room, Augustus could not sleep. That night his finger traced the grain of his life, embedded in the pale sandstone there, beside his bed. It is coming, he thought. My time is coming. My end, my beginning, I know.
Then there was the day of the silken crows. The afternoon was hot, the sun a ball of fire, the red earth baking.
‘I should go in,’ Augustus called to Stan, who dug. ‘I am too fair for this heat. The sun.’
So he left.
In the stone house, in the parlour, he found Miss Bloomfield, whom he rarely saw. She left their meals, true, she washed their clothes (and ironed them, which was unnecessary), and she swept.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, seeing him enter through the back door. ‘Augustus! What a nice surprise,’ but she made no attempt to get up, having a rectangular embroidery frame before her, and silken thread trailing.
‘Hello, Miss Bloomfield,’ he muttered, and not wanting to engage, he headed directly for the water jug in the kitchen. ‘I didn’t expect you. I have come in out of the heat. I’ll go to my room and lie down. I’m feeling faint. I won’t disturb you.’
‘You won’t disturb me,’ she declared, as he knew she would. ‘I can’t get up. Not with all of this, you see …’ She waved a long, lean hand in the air. ‘I have just put on some scones, and need to sit for half an hour, while they rise.’
‘I’ll get a glass of water and be off,’ he said, hurrying.
‘Look,’ she said (or ordered, did she?). ‘See what I am doing.’
He poured the water first and sipped, then warning, declared, ‘Just for a minute. I am faint. Woozy, even …’ But he went and stood behind her.
So he saw the work on the frame: a length of stretched white linen, and on that, within that, embroidered in silk, a view of the cemetery: The Hedges no doubt, the sandstone cottage, the hollyhocks, the lupins and the great ecclesiastical gate in bronze. But beyond (or should he say ‘without’?), peering through, their hands clutching the iron, stood three people (women, were they?), all dressed in black.
‘What are they?’ Augustus asked, shaken.
‘Ah,’ she sighed, ‘visitants. Mourners who stop by occasionally. Heralds, you might say. It is strange, I must say: they come before the date of the funeral has even been announced.’
‘What?’ he asked, dry-mouthed and groggy.
‘Especially before an auspicious death. Like before that Dr Forster passed away, who was kind, and Mrs Armitage, who gave up her home, and my Patrick, of course, who was a saint. But they don’t come in. They wait at the gate, shoving sometimes, as if they want to, but if I went out, they would leave. Pffft … Like a zephyr. A breath …’
‘Excuse me,’ Augustus muttered, ‘I must lie down. My head …’ So he went to his room, sipping his water, giddy as he was.
Later, when he heard the oven open and smelled the scones come out, then heard the front door click, he went into the parlour. The scones were on a tray in the kitchen, covered with a tea towel, and all was in order, but the embroidery was gone, that vision of those three dressed in black.
My old friends, he thought. Warning me of something. But what?
Confused – since they were strange days; strange messengers – he went out to sit with Stan in the cemetery, because he, at least, made sense.
As he sat on a slab, dreaming, drifting, he began to hum, the tune carrying over the red dirt, over the pit in which Stan laboured. The gravedigger lifted his head and, from that hole six feet down, shouted, ‘What’s that you’re humming? What’s that called? Its name?’
‘Plaisir d’amour, the joy of love …’
Stan laughed. ‘Nice,’ he said, ‘but silly, hey, that joy of love. It’s gone in a minute, I reckon. Hogie, you remember? Just a few years, and he was gone. My boy …’
‘Ah, Hogie,’ Augustus sighed. ‘And his suit, you remember, the one that Needly made?’
‘What?’ Stan yelled from the pit.
‘That Hogie suit I wore,’ Augustus called, leaning into the abyss. ‘You know, back then. You ever think it’s the same as the one that I wear now? The one Miss Bloomfield made? The black one I wear to lead the mourners?’
‘Yeah,’ Stan called, ‘I do. But you ain’t Hogie, eh? He’s gone. He’s dead, mate.’
‘Dead,’ Augustus sighed, woozy again, and three crows flew over, crying, ‘Caw! Caw!’, leaving Hogie to loom large in Augie’s heart.
Those were strange days, before the end.
Stan was serious about Augustus’s twenty-first birthday celebrations. Or what they said was his twenty-first birthday, since no-one knew for sure. Augustus himself considered the day to be the last of boyhood, the first of manhood – a death, a birth – a proper rite of passage.
‘While I want to celebrate,’ Stan said, ‘I’m not real keen on parties. I only want a cuppla people over. Who do you reckon?’
Sitting atop a pile of red dirt, graveside, Augustus cringed. Nobody, would have been his answer. I want nobody because there’s nothing to celebrate. But knowing he couldn’t admit to that, he said, ‘Well … Rosa and Da Silva, I guess. And …’ he shook his head, defeated. ‘Nobody else. We haven’t exactly kept up with people, have we? Besides, there’s a few from back then that I really wouldn’t want to see again. So, just Rosa and Da Silva. Okay?’
‘And the finch girl?’ Stan asked from the pit.
‘Ha!’ Augustus scoffed. ‘Ha, ha! So you know where she is, do you?’
‘By that sandstone spring, wherever that is,’ came the reply. ‘You reckon you could find her?’
I would like to, Augustus thought, I would like to very much, if I make it. If I become … though he said nothing.
When the evening came, Stan gave Augustus a present: a dear little walnut cane with a silver handle in the shape of a dove, so Augustus did himself up in his suit, looking very smart, though he did not wear the hat, which would have been ostentatious, and Rosa and Da Silva arrived, decked out in silver and white, and Father Brown and Miss Bloomfield, because ‘They had to be asked,’ Stan said, ‘To be civil.’
Augustus wasn’t so pleased, feeling threatened: those hands, that piano, that repertoire of old favourites, as yet unheard. Worse, unsung.
But if the truth were told, Miss Bloomfield was an asset, since she could cook, and the Father proved a bonus too, being adept at organising parlour games: charades, forfeits, blind man’s bluff and Chinese whispers, all of which Augustus enjoyed, since they were diversions. As midnight approached Miss Bloomfield produced a jelly and custard trifle while the priest discovered a bottle of sherry (very dusty, very old), and when they had partaken – Augustus included, though not Stan, who declined – Rosa suggested a song.
For Augustus, any attempt at good cheer was lost.
‘Give me a minute,’ he said. ‘It’s been a big night,’ and leaving them to the sherry, he slipped away to his room.
What will become of me? he wondered, perching on his bed. What will happen if this is the last? If I open my mouth and a croak comes out? Like a crow’s call? Like the death of poetry? Or nothing? What is nothing comes? Ah … He reached out to touch the wall, the reassuring sandstone, fearful. Will I be like Little Donny, a man in a boy’s body? Or will I wheeze and choke and finally admit that I am a freak and be done with it, like some cartoon character in a Hollywood movie? Or will my voice break, leaving me forever as I am: a boy in a boy’s body, though mute; useless – worse, loveless – and incapable of being loved. So he struck the stone, crying, ‘Now is my end, or my beginning …’ Upon which Rosa came barging in, demanding, and he went out.
‘Augustus is ready,’ she declared, as of old. ‘Miss Bloomfield has agreed to play. Right, Miss B?’
‘Indeed,’ the woman nodded. ‘All the old favourites.’
Yet as he raised his head, and planted his feet in readiness, there behind the chintz lounge he saw Stan, hunched and miserable, his roustabout eyes downcast (was he sobbing?), and Augustus paused, suddenly aware that this was Hogie’s night, not his; that though Stan loved him, would give his life for him, and sure as hell had chosen to live with him, Augustus knew he was thinking of Hogie, pining for him, who should have been here, all suited out as he never had been in life.
So when Rosa gripped Augustus from behind to unceremoniously whoosh him onto the very lid of the piano, he declared, ‘Stan, this is for you. This is for Hogie.’ Glancing down into that shadowy space between the keyboard and the floor, he planted his feet, lifted his pretty chin and sang:
Just a-wearyin’ for you,
All the time a-feelin’ blue,
Wishin’ for you, wond’rin’ when
You’ll be comin’ home again.
Restless, don’t know what to do,
Just a-wearyin’ for you …
And as he sang (his voice sublime), he called upon Sylvie, the finch girl, wherever she was, to come weaving there, to come dancing, and a cage grew, a dome of supple willow, rising up in that parlour, covering that chintz, the piano even, and within, chattering, leaping and laughing, a chimp: Hogie come back, come home – that first love, returned – and Stan Platten, grinning like an ape himself, stood upright to applaud.