Artwork by Snarff
I like to sit among the gravestones at night. It doesn't bother me at all. Its where Im going to end up, so why worry? Life is ephemeral; Ive known that for a long time, ever since my husband died. He was twenty-seven, wed been married for three years. This is for ever, he told me on the night of our honeymoon. That was before we found out about the tumour in his head. So now I work long hours in the nursing home, making life comfortable for people who don't have long to live.
Coming to the graveyard is good therapy for my depression. Who knows, maybe I once came here hoping to see the ghost of Gerry, my husband. But of course, I wouldnt. A graveyard is one of the last places youd expect to find a ghost. Think about it. A ghost generally haunts the spot where he or she died. How many people die in graveyards? In truth, graveyards always had fascinated me. I loved reading the inscriptions on gravestones and checking out the dates of the people who had died. Ghoulish? I suppose so but no different from being obsessed with the likes of Buddy Holly or Elvis Presley. At least I knew that Gerry wasnt alone.
*
I first became aware of the graveyard ghost about three weeks after Gerrys funeral: images caught in the corner of my eye, then dismissed as soon as they faded from perception. You know how it is; you see a cat scamper around a corner, and then you look no cat, and no way out. At first youre confused Could have sworn I saw a cat oh well, I couldnt have. and ten seconds later youve forgotten about the cat altogether; after all, you couldnt possibly have seen a ghost, could you?
But some people are more receptive to the spirits than others, and yes, I accept them as more than just figments of the imagination. Their flesh was once as solid as my own, their blood flowing just as freely through their veins. And their eyes wept just as bitter tears before drying out forever.
At first the ghost avoided me, but took to wandering freely when he realized that I could see him. That hed been dead a long time was evident from his clothes: knee-length boots, black canvas coat, white ruffs about the sleeves and throat, a tricorne hat above a white wig. Early to mid-eighteenth century, I guessed. This was confirmed one night when he stood over a badly neglected gravestone and pointed down. I pulled away a pile of leaves and brambles with my hands and tried to read the inscription. Impossible, of course, so the following night I took a pen and paper, hoping to trace it out. My endeavours were rewarded.
THOMAS JOHN COTTERELL
1704 1751
AT PEACE
My graveyard ghost now had a name. But why did he, alone, haunt the graveyard? I soon became obsessed with Tom Cotterell.
*
Records were easily checked. The church had been built between 1729 and 1748. Tom Cotterell, I discovered, died after a fall from his horse. On March the seventh, 1751, he became the first person ever to be laid to rest in the church grounds. A magistrate and respected member of the community, he left no family. He died, I noted, in the forest, so why his ghost alone should haunt the graveyard I couldnt imagine. If only I could make contact.
But that was a foolish idea. Staying away from the graveyard would surely be my wisest course of action. Gerry was dead; I had to accept that. But I couldnt help myself; I had to know about my graveyard ghost. Id heard the old superstition of course; that the first person to be buried in a cemetery is destined to come back as the guardian, standing sentinel over the monuments of the dead forever more.
Was old Tom the graveyard guardian?
A fanciful and romantic notion; but as good an explanation as any. What a lonely existence.
*
When the woman called Margot first came to the rest home I hadnt been to the cemetery for more than two weeks. My life was getting back to normal; Id even been for a girls night out with a few of the nurses.
On the day she arrived, Id signed in, donned my green nurses uniform and gone for a coffee in the staff room. It was ablutions day for two of the patients, fish was on the menu for dinner; a mundane Tuesday morning, no different from any other and the Graveyard Ghost couldnt have been further from my mind.
I made breakfast for Margot that day; toast, marmalade and a pot of tea in a blue china cup. No disrespect to the elderly, but some of them were just a little too shaky to hold delicate china.
Although confined to a wheelchair, and being in her late seventies, Margot was still quite cheery. Unfortunately, cancer of the pancreas had proved untreatable and her time was short. As ever, I went to her room with a sense of apprehension; it is always uncomfortable meeting a terminally ill patient for the first time. However, Margot couldnt have been brighter, or more charming.
Good morning, my dear, she greeted me.
Later in the afternoon I wheeled her out onto the hospital grounds. It was mild for an October day; the sun shining, a light breeze. I placed a shawl around her shoulders and sat in a wicker chair beside her. She looked healthy, if painfully thin. Silver hair tied in a bun, green cardigan, and small silver-framed spectacles.
Such a beautiful day, she remarked.
I smiled, nodded agreement. There would not be many more.
Whats your name? she asked.
Louise, I told her.
Have you worked here long, Louise? she asked.
Just over a year.
Do you like your job. It can be very trying looking after old people.
Yes, I like it. And no, I don't find it trying at all. Not all the time, anyway. Like most jobs, there are times when you could simply scream. But mostly, its pleasant enough.
We chatted for a while, and then I wheeled her back inside when it started to get chilly. Over coffee, she started talking about her younger days. For someone whod known such a hard life it was surprising, perhaps, that she had come through it all with such contentment.
Shed been born, she told me, during the First World War, her parents dying in a Zeppelin raid in 1916. Raised by her uncle (an ex-miner whose health had been permanently damaged by mustard gas in France) and his wife, Margot had been placed in an orphanage at the age of five when her uncle died in his sleep and the aunt had been unable to cope. The years in the orphanage were bad; poor food, hard work. Margots childhood had been a non-existent affair from the start. She told me all this without any trace of bitterness, and over the next few days she gradually told me the rest of it.
Marriage to a reasonably wealthy man had been a mixed blessing. An inveterate gambler, womaniser hed died on the beaches of Dunkirk leaving behind a pile of crippling debts and forcing Margot to sell the house and work as a maid to make ends meet.
Shortly after the Second World War she married again, but it was a loveless affair. They raised one child, a son, whod grown up spoilt, caring little for anyone but himself, and Margots husband threw him out as soon as he came of age. The husband himself died in a car crash twenty years previously and Margot, now getting on in years, was left on her own until she could no longer look after herself.
In life shed experienced many things but never love.
At night, ever a bad time, I started to experience periods of melancholy; for Margot, who had never known affection and for myself, for losing it far too soon.
*
The following Saturday I dressed up to go out; a green velvet dress, worn only once, and the watch Id been given for my twenty-fifth birthday. I applied eye shadow and a dab of lipstick. It was time to stop grieving and start living again.
The flashing lights of the discotheque were a little overwhelming at first, but a few gin and tonics soon put me in the mood. I got on alright with a boy called Michael, but it could never end with anything more than a peck on the cheek. I was alone and convinced that I was starting to enjoy my independence.
(Living alone for years, no company, no affection until you can no longer look after yourself!)
Instead of going to bed, I kicked off my high-heeled shoes, pulled on a pair of boots and went for a walk, still a little disoriented after the drinks and flashing lights. Like a magnet, the graveyard attracted me. Did I need the company of a ghost?
The night was crisp, the evenings getting colder. I wouldnt be taking many more of these walks. At the cemetery, a group of kids in fancy dress were drinking and partying, most of them were now drunk. Id forgotten it was Halloween. After a while they wandered off and I ambled in, absently picking up a couple of empty bottles and dropping them into a waste-bin. Sitting on a bench, I looked around for the ghost. He was there, of course, just as he had been for more than two hundred and fifty years.
You seem so alone, I said aloud.
And he responded; not with his voice, but with words placed in my head; Alone? You have no idea what it is to really be alone. I have no one.
I was startled, for I had never expected to make contact with him. I didn't answer; in truth, I didn't know what to say.
Do you want to see loneliness? Look beyond the walls of this cemetery.
I stood up and walked to the wall, unable to defy his will. In the streets I could make out the barely discernable forms of other ghosts, walking around like lost souls. It was tempting to ask who they were, but I realized that it didn't really matter. Icy fingers ran down my back. They seemed unaware of anyone, living OR dead. In life they had been completely isolated, shunning the company of others.
To avoid pain?
But I didn't isolate myself that way not really.
I looked back at the Graveyard Guardian.
Why are they like that? Was it something they did in life? Is that it, are they being punished?
It sounded silly, I knew that; just as I knew that these people had cast THEMSELVES out. Any punishment was self-inflicted. They were lost souls, as clichd as that might sound. I found it unbearably painful to look at them.
Why? I asked, I don't want to see this.
They were afraid too, the Guardian replied. And theyre still afraid. Do you think pain can be avoided by turning your back on people? Look at them. Is that how you want to end up? You foolish child, don't you know how much you have? I crave company more than anything else. So many years. So many lonely years.
Those words would come back to haunt me. I was not a ghost, but my existence was just as hollow; I still grieved for all I had lost. Now I could see that life really didn't end in death. It was comforting, yet still sad.
Why did he have to leave me?
In death my husband had saved a life, his heart transferred into the body of a dying woman. Id refused to meet up with her; she was alive, he wasnt it didn't seem fair.
But I was alive too, and I was young. I should have grown old with Gerry but I never would, why dwell on it? Some things just arent meant to be. I WOULD meet that man; it was time to stop taking comfort in graveyards it was time to stop grieving. I turned to the Graveyard Guardian, but he faded from sight and I left the cemetery feeling unbearably sad. As much as I hurt, I had family and friends to talk to, people who could share my pain, a job to take my mind off things. All these helped me to cope. But this ghost Tom Cotterell had no one. Did I really imagine that ghosts had no feelings, that they didn't need company like everyone else?
Back in the flat I held Gerrys photograph in my hand. If only hed come back and speak to me, just once. If only
I fell asleep in the armchair. The photograph was still in my hand when I woke up. Memories. Thats all I had left. Just memories. Was this all there was to my life?
*
A week later Margot started to fall into decline and was confined to bed. It would only have been a matter of time, but it was still a shock to see her fade so quickly. I took to looking after her, sometimes talking to her. She couldnt have understood at that point, but it helped. In a way, I became her family; there was no way of tracing her son and she wouldnt have wanted to see him anyway. This home was all she had. Knowing the end was near; I worked a little extra time to be with her. She deserved to have somebody with her at the end.
*
On the final day of her life, Margot sat up in bed and smiled at me. That was when I knew it was all over. Before death there is usually a period of recovery before the end. Margot was in that condition now. It may have been rash, but in a way I had been thinking about it for the best part of a week.
The day was clear, the sun was out.
Margots feeling better today, I told sister Harris, why not let me take her out for a while?
So we lifted her into a wheelchair, placed a shawl around her shoulders and a blanket over her legs, and I took her out for a stroll. Margot enjoyed her freedom, but soon began to tire. By then, it had gone beyond the point where I could think about the rights and wrongs of what I was doing. I just wheeled her straight to the cemetery, sat on a bench next to her and held her hand, quietly talking to her. If only I could have explained why I was deciding her fate, marking out her destiny in the Afterlife. But all I could do was talk about Gerry, telling her how I had coped after his death. Oh, I knew that I was talking to myself, but I felt better for it, and for all I knew, Margot might even have taken it all in. Finally, I just sat there holding her hand. Was this all that life came down to? A quiet death? Maybe the good fortune to have someone with you at the end? What had Margots life been anyway, a series of heartaches and unlucky breaks? And now, at the end, there was no one to grieve.
I felt her life passing; a loosening of her grip on my hand, a final inhalation of breath.
Im sorry, Margot, I said. I was really going to miss her. I like to think that I made her last few weeks in this world a little more pleasant than they otherwise would have been. But she had never been one to complain.
*
I don't go to the graveyard these days. I don't need its comfort anymore. But sometimes I pass it at night and glance in. They are still there, and probably always will be. They talk; hold hands. And Margot is young, much younger than when she died.
They don't notice me, but why should they? They exist in their world and I exist in mine. Im happy for them, but sometimes I feel unbearably lonely.
A brother of one of the nurses has just got divorced. Hes asked me out a couple of times, and who knows? Maybe Ill say yes next time.
But I remember the words spoken by Gerry on our honeymoon. This is for ever.
I really think that it may be. Gerrys gone, but is he waiting for me? Is he missing me as much as I miss him? I like to think that he is.
Sometimes I look at my wedding ring and wonder if we can only ever find contentment in the next life.
I hope so, because nobody deserves happiness more than Margot.
THE END