by Susan Hill
*
As they walked up the slope towards the church, she saw that others were already there, figures bent over, or kneeling around the graves, working, and for a second, she wanted to turn back and run from them, for they might stare, or even speak to her, and she would know what they were thinking, about herself and about Ben, they would intrude.
It was seven o’clock, there would be an hour more of the evening light, which was paler now, as though the sun had faded in colour as it had lost its warmth. The old headstones threw blurred shadows across the grass.
As they went through the gate, Jo moved a little nearer to her, protective, knowing what she felt, and perhaps he needed help from her, too. Those people who turned, hearing the new footsteps, turned back at once, lowered their heads. No one stared. So it was the same. They did not trust her, they were suspicious and nervous of her, after the stories they had been hearing these past weeks. Perhaps already the story of yesterday and her sale of Ben’s things to the travelling man, had reached them. Ruth held up her head.
But it was not to Ben’s grave that they went first. Godmother Fry was buried at the front of the church, under a plain buff headstone, and it was for her that Ruth had brought the blue and white and pale mauve flowers, which had been her favourites; her own garden had always been thick with snowdrops in January and forget-me-nots in April and May, in the shade of the lavender bushes.
Jo spread the moss, pressing it firmly into the ground, and Ruth picked out the shape of a cross with the flowers, mixing them together anyhow, for that was how her Godmother had liked them, not separated or planted out in orderly rows.
They had only half-finished, when she heard a step directly behind her, a shadow lay over the moss. She looked up.
‘Ruth – I’d not expected you – not this year. I’d come to do it for you.’
Miss Clara – Godmother Fry’s neighbour and friend for over thirty years, Miss Clara, small and shrunken, with crippled bones, her hands and feet swollen and hardened with rheumatism. But she had come, with a basketful of blue flowers, she had been going to kneel and dress the grave, no matter that her limbs would be so stiff she might hardly be able to hobble home afterwards.
‘I’d have been glad to do it. You …’
Jo glanced anxiously at Ruth. But she did not mind, she would say it.
‘We’re going to Ben’s grave next, with the yellow flowers.’
Miss Clara. Ruth had forgotten her; if she had been at Ben’s funeral, she had not noticed. And she was not a person who would ever have intruded or pried or gossiped. She realised that since the death of Godmother Fry, Miss Clara must have been lonely, and she felt a dart of grief and pity, and of guilt, too, for she might have done something, might have visited her and talked. But she had been too wrapped up, first within the warm womb of her happiness with Ben, and then in the cold shell of grief. She had not thought of anyone.
She said, ‘You’d like to help – you’d like us to use your flowers.’
For Miss Clara was standing, looking down anxiously at what they had already done, not wanting to go away again.
‘Jo…’
He stood up at once, and took Miss Clara’s basket.
‘It’s very cold,’ Ruth said, ‘and damp, too – you shouldn’t kneel. But if you tell Jo – if you show him how you’d like it to be…’
She saw the gratitude in Miss Clara’s eyes.
Jo said, ‘I’ll come over to you, Ruth – when I’ve finished it. Wait for me to come.’
‘Of course.’
And then she went alone, around the side of the church, carrying her basket of moss and golden flowers, she began alone, to dress Ben’s grave. It was darker here, the sun had dropped down behind the tower. The moss felt like seaweed, and the turf of the new-mounded grave was cold. She thought, then, of that other body, carried away from the terrible cross at dusk, and the great stone rolled in front of the tomb, imagined how it must have been inside, echoing and fusty as a cave, with the limp figure drained of all its blood and bound about in cloths, she felt, within herself, the bewilderment and fear and despair of those men and women.
‘Ben,’ she said once, and rested her hand on a part of the turf she had not yet dressed with moss. But she felt only calmness, still, and did not try to imagine whatever might be underneath the soil now.
She could scarcely see the colour of the flowers, they were no longer bright, as they had been when she picked them, and would be again, tomorrow, under the first sun. The cross she made was dense, each flower packed tightly to the next one, so that the spiked petals of the dandelions and the rounded buttercups overlapped, with the primroses pushed between.
By the time Jo came over to her, it was almost dark and the grave was nearly finished. Ruth’s back and legs ached.
She handed the basket to Jo.
‘You should do some – part of it ought to be yours.’
She stood up and rubbed her hands over her neck and shoulders. The air smelled of the moist flowers.
‘Miss Clara went home. She said to tell you …’ he hesitated.
“What?’
‘To tell you – she said, “I’ve had her in my mind. I’ve thought about her, every day.”
Some of the other people had brought lanterns and the churchyard was lit here and there by their unsteady, silvery light, rings of it lay about the grass and the graves like glow-worms. Ruth caught the quick sight of some face, turned momentarily towards the lamp. But there were no sounds. Jo said, pausing for a moment, and resting back on his heels, ‘Tomorrow …’ and there was an excitement in his voice, ‘Tomorrow, think how it will be!’
Yes, Ruth thought, and so it will be, for it is true, and the sun will shine and the grave-flowers will be like the raiment of the risen dead. But if he is risen, where do I find him, or see him? How can I know?
She was tired enough, in her body and her mind, to lie down, here and now, and sleep, as these men and women were sleeping, and wait for the new life of the morning.
‘Jo…’
‘Yes, we’ll go now. It’s finished, isn’t it?’
‘It’s finished.’
The baskets were empty, light as air, Jo swung them both from his hands. The people who were left had gathered together in groups, not far from the path, murmuring to one another, shifting their lanterns, but as Ruth and Jo passed they fell silent and did not move, perhaps they would none of them ever look at her, or speak again? Well, she would bear it, and they were not the ones to blame.
Someone was standing in the middle of the path, just beyond the gate. Jo stopped dead. But Ruth went on, close enough to see his face, and as she looked up into it, it came over her again, as when she had seen Miss Clara, this intense awareness of another person’s suffering, and shame at the way she had excluded all thought of it.
Arthur Bryce looked old; the injured arm and shoulder drooped and Ruth saw that he did not know how to speak to her, dared not begin.
Now, Jo was beside her. ‘I was coming,’ he said defensively, ‘I’d have been home soon.’
‘No …’ His father shook his head and shifted his feet on the gravel. ‘I’d have known you were here. I’d not have worried.’
No, for none of them ever did, Jo had always told her that. ‘They don’t notice me, they don’t care what I do.’
Was that true? How could she know what Arthur Bryce truly felt about the death of his elder son and about the younger one, who kept himself outside their circle? He was not a man who would ever reveal his thoughts or emotions, because of awkwardness and also because he himself did not fully understand them. Ruth thought I have never been close to him, never tried to reach him, he is the father of Ben, without him, Ben would never have existed, and yet he might be a stranger. They seemed to have come face to face for the first time in their lives.
She said, ‘Will you go and look at the grave?’
‘I thought… I just wanted to come.’ But he did not move.
‘We’ve dre
ssed it, it’s beautiful … it’s a golden cross. All the flowers are gold,’ Jo said, ‘but you wouldn’t be able to see it now. You ought to wait until morning.’
Someone passed them, carrying a lamp.
‘It was only right someone should come.’
‘Alice …’
‘No. She goes out – somewhere. She’s always out, these nights.’
And Ruth knew, without needing to ask, that Dora Bryce would be beside the fire, keening, and would complain to them all when they got home, would say, ‘Did you expect me to go? Up there in the dark on my hands and knees? Did you expect me to be able to bear that, and my own son only just in his grave? And what does any of it mean – Easter, when he was taken from me?’
But I have been the same, she said, I have locked myself up and been selfish and bitter and full of doubts and my own pity, where is the difference between us, in all truth?
‘I’ll get back. I’d only wanted to see if it was done.’
Jo burst out angrily, ‘Did you think it wouldn’t be? That we’d forget? How could you think Ruth wouldn’t be here, and me? We…’
Ruth laid a hand on his arm.
‘Walk with us,’ she said to Arthur Bryce. And at last, something was between them, she recognised it in his face, uncertain affection and grief for her, a desire to say and do what was right, what would please her. He wanted to walk with them and not to be, or to feel, alone. He wanted her love. And knew that he had it, as she went along between him and Jo, down towards the village. None of them spoke, but they were bound together and the past was redeemed.
At the bottom of the lane, he said, ‘You don’t want to go up there, over that common, you oughtn’t to be on your own.’
‘It isn’t late.’
‘It’s dark.’
‘I’m used to it. I’m not afraid of the dark.’
Jo said at once, ‘But I’ll go with you, I always do. I’ll take you.’
‘No. Go home, Jo. Go with your father.’
For someone else needed the boy’s company and strength, she had clung on to him too selfishly all these weeks past, and it would not be losing him, to send him now, with Arthur Bryce, back to his mother, his own home, not losing but sharing.
Ruth set off down the slope, carrying the baskets, full of a quiet joy.
*
She could not imagine why she had ever thought of moving the bed; it was familiar and she felt secure in it, cradled by the soft mounds of the feather mattress which were impressed with her own shape.
And tomorrow was Easter Day.
Then, as she lay there, she recalled, vividly, the conversation she and Ben had had last year, on Good Friday. They had been walking through the beech woods, but it was too cold, her hands and face had felt flayed and sore, and her head ached in the east wind, they came home. The weather had seemed to underline the day’s significance. Between twelve o’clock and three, the sky had blackened and a sudden blizzard had swirled up the garden, the gale battered at the cottage windows.
‘Listen to it!’
Ben had looked up from his book. ‘They used to say the birds all stopped singing, for those three hours. That everything went quiet, except for the wind.’
‘They used to say that the cattle knelt down in their stalls at midnight on Christmas Eve.’
‘You could still find those who believe it.’
‘Do you?’
‘It’s only a way of putting things.’ He got up and walked to the window to watch the storm.
‘And will the sun shine again, at three o’clock?’
‘Oh, sooner than that today. Look.’
He pointed up to the clouds, already parting in the wind, like rags being shredded by rough pairs of hands, revealing smears of blue. Hail lay on the grass but it would soon melt.
Ruth went to stand beside him. Then he said, ‘One day…’
‘One day what?’
Ben hesitated. ‘I often think about it. About dying. Times like this. Today.’
‘No!’
He looked at her in surprise.
‘Don’t you?’
‘I – I don’t know. But I don’t like Good Friday, I want it to be over.’
‘Why?’
‘I want it to be Easter Day.’
‘But you must have Good Friday first.’
‘I’m going to make the dinner now.’
‘Ruth? Don’t you think about dying?’
‘No. I don’t know.’
Though it was not long since Godmother Fry’s peaceful death, and she had thought about it then, and it had seemed a good thing, natural and right, Godmother Fry had been very old, and waiting for death, happy to receive it.
Ruth shook her head. ‘Not yet. Not for me or for you.’
‘Of course – for me and for you.’
‘No – when we’re old, and if we are very ill. Then. And I think about it when animals die. But that’s all different.’
‘Why? And why should you mind it? If you think about dying, you know that it …’
‘I don’t want to think about it.’
‘But it doesn’t matter. In the end, dying doesn’t matter. Can’t you see?’
‘It doesn’t mean we have to think about it and talk about it. Not now. Not yet.’
‘Yes.’
She had heard and remembered but never truly understood what he said that day.
‘It does mean that. It is all around us and within us and outside of us. Us. And once you know that, then it doesn’t matter at all.’
She had clutched hold of his arm, then, in sudden dread, and to try and bring him back to her, to this world here and now, she was afraid of his distance from her when he spoke like this, afraid of the things he seemed to know, and of what might happen.
‘Don’t… don’t talk about it, you mustn’t talk about dying. You must never, never die. I won’t let you die.’
‘Ah, Ruth.’ And he had looked at her, his face full of a kind of sadness, and knowledge, ‘Ah, Ruth.’
It was as though he had just spoken to her, now, aloud in this quiet bedroom, she could see every detail of his face. And he had had to die.
She sat up, startled. Where had that come from? How did she think of that? For it was not a phrase remembered, nor a fancy. It was a piece of truth, and vital to her. He had had to die.
She lay back on the pillows, unable to comprehend it. But quite certain. She slept, and dreamed no dreams, and woke, at the sound of the first bird call, in the pearly dawn of Easter Day.
*
Yesterday, the world had been full of flowers and trees; today, it was the birds that she saw everywhere, as she walked to church in the early morning. The sun shone again, as Jo had said it would, though the grass was heavy with dew, her shoes were soaked before she reached the top of the garden. Low down in the bushes, chiff-chaffs pinked out their sharp, repeated notes, and high up, spiralling until they were almost out of sight, were the larks, streaming with song. In the fields she saw pheasants, the clever and the lucky ones who had escaped the gun, and were free now, the shooting season over; the trailing tails of the cocks glowed gold and copper and rust red. Everything was singing, it was as though she could hear the faint, high humming as the world turned. She thought, I am still happy, I am still sane; and was certain that it would last, at least for today and perhaps for as long as the sun shone. She seemed to be lifted a little way out of herself, to be floating above the ground.
Jo was waiting for her at the corner of the lane, looking serious and suddenly older, taller, in his dark Sunday suit. Today, she could see in him no resemblance to Ben at all.
The last time she had been inside the church was for Ben’s funeral. Well, she would not brood about that, it was over and she must think only about this day, trying to understand. And she must go in among all the people and never mind if they stared at her and judged her. But seeing them walking up the hill ahead, and a group standing in the church porch, she clenched her hands tightly, and it seemed that
her heart would leap up into her mouth.
‘Oh, Ruth, look! Look.’
They had reached the lych-gate. Jo was pointing. She looked.
Had she been blind last year? Had it looked like this? The churchyard was brilliant as a garden with the patterned flowers, almost every grave was decked out in growing white and blue, pink and butter-yellow, and underneath it all, the watery moss and the vivid grass; it was as though all the people had indeed truly risen and were dancing in the sunshine, there was nothing but rejoicing and release. She walked slowly across the turf to the side of the church and stood, looking towards Ben’s grave. It was like a sunburst. She did not need, or want, to go nearer.
Jo touched her arm. ‘You see,’ he said, his voice full of wonder, ‘it did happen. It does. It’s true.’
‘Did you ever doubt it?’
‘Once,’ he said carefully, ‘one time.’
Only once. Ruth realised how close to Ben he was, in his way of seeing and understanding the world; he had the same clear grasp of the truth that lay beneath the surface of things, he saw, as she had only glimpsed once or twice, the whole pattern. They had the gift of angels.
Stepping into the church was like stepping into some sunlit clearing of the woods; there were flowers and leaves and the scents of them everywhere, the altar and pulpit, the font and the rails were wound about with ropes of white and golden blossoms, the ledges were banked with bluebells on mounds of moss, and the sun shone in through the windows, sending rippling coloured lights on to the stone walls, catching fire on the brass of the cross and the lectern. Ruth felt nothing but happiness, she walked down between the high wooden pews right to the front of the church, and looked here and there and smiled, if she caught someone’s eye, and did not mind that they seemed embarrassed, uncertain of her. She went into the same pew and for a second saw again how it had been that other day, with the long pale coffin that had seemed to fill the whole building, the whole world.
But what she became aware of after that was not the presence of the village people sitting or kneeling behind her, but of others, the church was full of all those who had ever prayed in it, the air was crammed and vibrating with their goodness and the freedom and power of their resurrection, and she felt herself to be part of some great, living and growing tapestry, every thread of which joined with and crossed and belonged to every other, though each one was also entirely and distinctly itself. She heard again the strange music in her head and her ears, and yet somewhere far outside of them.