The Grass Memorial

by Sarah Harrison

Spencer 1961

  Not for the first time in Spencer’s life, it was the small plane that made the big difference: the spunky little turbo-prop that droned and bounced from Wyoming to Denver. Once Spencer arrived in the mile-high city he felt he’d made the quantum leap – that was when the boy was taken out of Moose Draw, and Moose Draw had been taken out of the boy long since.

  Or that was what he believed, and he hoped it was true. If he’d ever needed proof that it was the geography of the mind, not of the map, that mattered, the last fifteen years had supplied it. He was married, he had a lovely wife, a house, a big back yard and a dog named Thumper who played in it. No kids, but that aside his was the very model of the all-American good life.

  Except for one thing – he wrote about it. And to write about it he had to be that little bit detached, to be always aware of his life’s quirks and contradictions, its simple truths and its messy corners, its universalities and its idiosyncrasies. When it was a bitch, and when it was good. He had to chew on life and extract the juice, not swallow it whole.

  One thing was for sure, he’d never have considered going back to England for a reunion if it hadn’t been for the syndicated column and the radio series, and the Rotarian meetings and ex-servicemen’s dinners. He had let the sleeping dogs of the past lie for fifteen years now: Church Norton was a long way off in every respect. When at functions and fundraisers he spoke to other veterans of the war in Europe, he would always wind up inwardly thanking God he didn’t have to live on the bygone glory days. There was no denying that the war had been an extraordinary chapter, but for a man to let it define him was to deny the present with all its possibilities.

  So, no, he wouldn’t have accepted the reunion invitation had it not represented grist to his mill, and having done so, he was wary. The writer in him warned against entering into the thing wholeheartedly: it was vital to maintain a distance, watch, observe, monitor his own reactions. But it was impossible not to feel some excitement, and he told himself this was only natural. There was no shame in making this one journey. He would surely never make it again.

  Hannah, surprisingly, had been all for it.

  ‘You should go, whatever. It’s right that you should – it’ll be a rite of passage.’

  He smiled. It still amused him when she came out with these technical terms. ‘In what way?’

  ‘It’ll close the door on the past.’

  ‘I already closed it. What if this opens it again?’

  ‘Then that’ll be interesting as well.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be interesting all right . . .’

  She’d swiped at him affectionately and he’d caught her wrist and cuddled her, thanking his lucky stars as always that things had turned out the way they had. He was unashamedly uxorious, still in love after thirteen years of marriage, scarcely able to believe his good fortune. He knew now that he had been right all those years ago when, as a red-faced boy overcome by passion, he’d told Apples that he loved her, and it was as if some benign fate had been listening then and, giving him the benefit of the doubt, had granted him a second chance in spite of everything. There had been no clearcut decision not to have kids, they had simply not come along, but he was glad of it – the truth was kids would have got in the way. Hannah and Spence were a great team, they knew it themselves and everyone said so: they had nothing to prove.

  Though he couldn’t help teasing her sometimes, he was terrifically proud of her. His wife, the doctor – and a psychiatrist at that! He even liked it that she used her maiden name professionally. It was a token of his love that he wanted her to soar and fly, he could only be enhanced, never diminished, by her success. And – what was a source of wonder to him – in spite of all she’d achieved there was still beneath it, warm and strong, the girl who had love to give away, more love than she knew what to do with, love to spare, only now it was all his. He felt as though he had been given the key of a beautiful garden and told: It’s yours; enjoy.

  Once Hannah qualified she’d come back and started a practice in Salutation, which was now a big modern town with a population that had tripled since the war. He’d remained in Moose Draw after Mack died, to be near Caroline, but after he and Hannah got married they built a beautiful wooden house about ten miles this side of Salutation, and bought his mother a neat retirement home in the suburbs. She’d acceded to this more than enthused. If there was one tiny problem nibbling at the edge of his marriage it was that it had distanced him slightly from his mother. This was not due to any change in his attitude, and certainly not to any behaviour of Hannah’s, but Caroline herself seemed to have withdrawn, as though she felt she must leave them to it.

  Together he and Hannah had rediscovered the mountains. They’d bought a four-wheel-drive and gone miles up the canyons, and over the top of the range, way, way up to the Medicine Ring, the two-thousand-year-old Indian monument. Standing gasping at ten thousand feet on that sharp ridge of rock, in a wind that was pure vaporised ice, they’d wondered at the spirit of the people who’d put the monument there, and the sheer tenacity of those who still came, regularly, to leave the votive offerings that streamed and snapped in the bitter air.

  He took Hannah back to see the wild horses, now on a protected range, and tried to explain how they’d affected him as a boy. He described the mustang at the rodeo, something he hadn’t thought about for years.

  ‘He scared the living daylights out of me, I can tell you. That was one crazy horse.’

  ‘Poor thing.’ She was always so tenderhearted.

  ‘Well . . . kinda. He was the champ, remember, he’d seen off just about everyone that tried to ride him.’

  ‘Let’s hope they pensioned him off on some beautiful slopes, with a harem.’

  ‘A stallion has to fight for a harem.’

  She’d chuckled. ‘A dirty job but someone has to do it!’

  He had once attempted to work Hannah into a column, thereby provoking the closest they’d ever come to a row. She had been absolutely white with fury, slapping the paper down on the table in front of him.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Honey – you don’t mind?’

  ‘Of course I mind.’

  ‘But you’re such an important part of my life, and it’s my life I write about, I can’t go on pretending you don’t exist—’

  ‘Not writing about me is not the same as pretending I don’t exist. And I’m not just part of your life, I am all of my own.’

  He was hurt. ‘Naturally, I realise that, if I’d had any idea—’

  She rounded on him. ‘What I don’t understand is why you had no idea? I’m a doctor. Spencer, I have patients whose confidentiality I have to respect.’

  ‘I never mentioned your patients.’

  ‘But how do you think they’re going to feel, seeing me used as some kind of funny-ha-ha material in the local paper?’

  The number of implied belittlings in this question took his breath away, and sent ice water through his veins.

  ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Me too.’ He could hear that she didn’t mean the same thing.

  ‘Hannah? Honey?’

  ‘It’s okay.’ She sat down and put her hands to her face; drew a long, deep breath. ‘Forget it.’

  But he knew he couldn’t, and that he must not, either. It had blown over, but the incident had shown just how thin was the layer of experience and maturity they’d each of them laid down. It was all still there, waiting to ambush them – the confused and vulnerable past.

  He’d asked her if she wanted to come to the reunion with him – wives were included in the invitation – but she’d declined. ‘That’s your history,’ is what she said.

  The pretext for the reunion was the creation of a memorial on what used to be the airbase. The chairman of the Church Norton branch of the British Legion had written to Spencer before Christmas explaining that such a memorial was long overdue, that it was something the Legion and the Parish Council wished to put in train, and to that end they were
contacting as many people as possible who had served on the base for a reunion over a long weekend at the end of May 1961. At this stage they were simply trying to find out whether there would be enough people interested to make such a project viable, so if he’d be kind enough to let them know, etcetera, etcetera.

  Now he had in his hand luggage the finalised programme of events: an introductory cocktail party, buffet and official welcome at Church Norton village hall; a tour of the airfield and proposed memorial site on the Saturday morning, followed by free drinks at the pub, lunch and a sightseeing trip to Cambridge in the afternoon; a dance at the village hall that evening, open to all, but at which veterans would be the guests of honour; and a service in the church on Sunday morning, with traditional Sunday lunch in various private homes afterwards.

  There was an organised group going from the States, but he’d elected to be independent, reasoning that that way he could more easily dip in and out of the proceedings, and find time to make notes and collect his thoughts. Wanting to remain clearheaded, not fuddled with nostalgia, he booked into a roadhouse ten miles down the main London road from Church Norton, the nearest thing to an American motel in the neighbourhood.

  On the Thursday night after he arrived he ate a limp, pale apology for a ham sandwich in the bar, accompanied by a Scotch in which a few tiny lozenges of ice floated like frogspawn. But the barman asked him if he was on holiday, and when he explained, gave him one on the house. He also told Spencer that coming from America he might be interested in a Roman villa which had been excavated beneath the main road.

  ‘You’d never guess it was there,’ he said proudly. ‘Traffic buzzing to and fro right overhead.’

  ‘You’ve seen it yourself?’

  ‘Not as such,’ admitted the barman. ‘But I’ve sent quite a few of our guests there and they say it’s well worth a visit.’

  At nine o’clock Spencer went to his room, watched an hour’s TV – he’d forgotten the spiky, shrugging quality of British humour – and set the alarm for six a.m., when he could call Hannah just as she was going to bed. At hotel prices they didn’t talk for long and the call left him feeling dissatisfied and edgy as though he’d have been better off not making it at all.

  Later on after breakfast he drove up to Church Norton. He figured that if he wanted to walk around quietly and look up a few old haunts, this was the time to do it, before reunion fever set in and every American was a marked man. It was then his plan to return to the hotel in the afternoon and rest up – perhaps even take in the Roman ruin – before attending the welcome party that night.

  He parked on the outskirts of the village where, he noted, the old red bus request stop had been replaced by a proper shelter with a seat and a timetable. Then he walked, following a circular route that would take him past the places he remembered. He’d given some thought to what to wear on this anonymous visit, and hoped he didn’t look too much like a Yank, though knowing the Brits’ sensitivity to nuance, there were probably a hundred little details of his appearance that gave him away. He had on light trousers, brogues, a plain shirt and sports jacket. He didn’t carry a camera or wear a hat. The weather was bright but he kept his sunglasses in his breast pocket for the time being – no Brit would be optimistic enough to carry a pair just in case.

  Things weren’t that much changed. Generally speaking the place seemed a little more spruce and tidy than he remembered, a fact which Spencer attributed to gentrification. There was a flat-roofed extension to the brick school building, and, most notably, a brand-new village hall. The pub had tubs of flowers outside and had been renamed the Haymakers’ Arms, with a sign depicting a bucolic idyll peopled by apple-cheeked goliaths with pitchforks. At this time in the morning it was closed, but he resisted the temptation to peer in at the windows.

  The church was the same – having withstood the vicissitudes of several centuries it was hardly likely to have altered in a mere sixteen years – but the grass in the churchyard had been cut, and there were fresh flower arrangements in the porch. Of course, he told himself, this was a big weekend for the village – it was playing host to the war veterans. Hence the scrubbed-up appearance, the flowers, the mown grass, the flag.

  He opened the door of the church, but there were a couple of ladies in there doing their stuff with flowers, and he withdrew hastily before they had time to engage him in conversation.

  He could no longer avoid it – the last leg of his circuit must take him past Craft Cottages. He had also to face the fact that whatever justification he’d made to himself for the trip this was an aspect of the past which exerted the mysterious, magnetic pull of unfinished business. So it was a shock to discover that the business had been finished for him: the cottages were no longer there. The whole row of five had disappeared, and in their place was a horseshoe-shaped development of small bungalows around a central lot: Craft Close. Shaken, he walked around the path that circled the lot, and saw in a couple of windows that these were old folks’ houses, more modest versions of the one his mother lived in outside Salutation. Some of the postage-stamp front yards were artfully laid out with grass and borders and winding stone paths flanked by cheery gnomes; others had been put to work as mini-allotments, with conical frameworks for beans and peas like tepee-poles, and neat rows of new season’s vegetables. It was disorientating, he could not equate this trim development with what had been here before. Taking it from the road side, the Ransoms’ end cottage must have corresponded to the lefthand bungalow, but there was no sense of it, not a trace. It had been wiped out.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  It was an elderly lady wearing a waterproof coat buttoned to the chin against the onslaught of the sun, and carrying a tartan bag from which greenery protruded.

  ‘Er – no, thanks. Just looking.’

  He at once felt stupid on two counts, for having answered as though she were a shop assistant and for blowing his cover. ‘Would you be one of our American visitors?’

  ‘I guess I would.’

  ‘How do you do?’ She held out a hand. ‘This is a big day for Church Norton, you know.’

  ‘And for me – for us. You bet.’

  ‘I’m Dorothy Cornforth.’

  She smiled expectantly, he had no option but to return the compliment. ‘Ma’am. Spencer McColl.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We’ve met before – at the children’s Christmas party in ‘fortyfour? At the old hall?’

  Now he saw that she was familiar – one of the good women of the village, always there, doing their bit. ‘I remember. You’ll have to forgive me, it’s been quite a while.’

  ‘You haven’t changed,’ she said.

  He ran his hand over his hair. ‘I wouldn’t know about that . . .’

  ‘No. You were a particular friend of the Ransoms’, if my memory serves me.’

  He felt a shimmer of apprehension, but her face was bland and cheerful.

  ‘Yes, how are they? They still live around here?’ He indicated the bungalows. ‘All this is new.’

  ‘And very nice too, I’m lucky enough to live in one myself. The Ransoms left Church Norton oh, ten years ago. Would you like a cup of tea, by the way?’

  ‘No, thanks – but here, let me take that for you.’

  He relieved her of the shopping bag and walked with her to her gate.

  ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘Janet Ransom got married again, we were all so pleased, and they moved to Bedford. And I believe her sister got married too, not so long ago.’

  ‘Really?’ It came out a little too abruptly, and he added: ‘I forget her name.’

  ‘Rosemary.’

  ‘Didn’t she used to sing in the choir?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Like an angel.’ Mrs Cornforth gave him a merry, conspiratorial look. ‘A bit of a handful, but she came up trumps as handfuls often do.’

  This seemed to pose more questions than it answered but he didn’t want to seem too interested. ‘Okay . . . What a
bout—’ he nearly said ‘the other kids’ but checked himself in time ‘—the kids? Davey, was it? And the little one?’

  ‘Davey and Ellen. I’m afraid he went off the rails after the war, the lad was never out of trouble. And I’ve heard, though it’s only hearsay, that he didn’t care for the new husband so that didn’t help. Ellen I don’t know about.’

  She opened the gate and he followed her to the front door and waited while she fiddled with the key.

  ‘Well,’ she said, turning once the door was open and taking the bag from him, ‘I do feel honoured.’

  ‘Honour’s all mine ma’am.’

  ‘Has life been good to you since the war, Mr McColl?’

  ‘Yes, it has.’ It was one of those all or nothing situations and he opted for nothing. She looked into his face with a little smile and a nod.

  ‘That’s good.’

  He felt a touch awkward as it she had the advantage over him. ‘Will you be attending any of these events they’ve got planned for us?’

  ‘Oh, I’m helping with the food for the reception, and I shall be at the church on Sunday.’ She nodded at the bag. ‘I’ve been on flower fatigues.’

  ‘I’ll see you there, Mrs Cornforth.’

  ‘You will indeed.’

  Mrs Cornforth’s return from the church indicated that it would probably be empty now, so Spencer went back and opened the smaller, north door gingerly. There was no one there and he went in. The scent of the fresh flowers filled the air and there were spatters of water on the stone flags and threadbare strips of carpet, where the ladies had slopped watering cans.

  He was about to duck out again when his eye was caught by a sheet of lined paper on top of a pile of hymnbooks, open but still holding its folds. He glanced at it and saw that it was a rough seating plan written in biro. The block of pews on either side of the aisle at the front were marked ‘Dignitaries and American visitors’; the blocks behind that were for ‘Invited guests’; and from there to the back simply ‘Village and friends’. Church Norton was going to a lot of trouble.