She was a real tomboy back then. Brown hair cut short, a white blouse beneath a dark-green pullover, a pleated grey skirt above grey socks gathered around her ankles, and heavy black shoes. I suppose I must have been about fifteen at that time, and she would have been a year or so younger than me, but I recall noticing that she already had sizeable breasts stretching her blouse. Though there really was nothing feminine about her. She liked to swear, and had the cheekiest grin I ever saw, and never took lip off anyone, even the bigger boys.
We were supposed to wear ties for going to school, but I noticed that first night that she had already discarded hers, and at the open neck of her blouse I saw a small Saint Christopher medallion hanging on a silver chain.
‘You’re papes, right?’ she said, straight off.
‘Catholics,’ I corrected her.
‘That’s what I said. Papes. I’m Catherine. Come on, I’ll show you how this all works.’
And we followed her to a table to retrieve wooden trays and queue up at the kitchen to be served our evening meal.
Catherine lowered her voice. ‘The food’s shit. But don’t worry about it. I’ve got an aunt somewhere that sends me food parcels. Keeps her from feeling guilty, I suppose. A lot of the kids aren’t really orphans. Just from broken homes. Quite a few get food parcels. Got to get through them fast, though, before the fuckers in here confiscate them.’ She grinned conspiratorially and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Midnight feasts up on the roof.’
She was right about the food. Catherine steered us to a table, and we sat among the hubbub of raised voices echoing around the high ceiling of the great hall, slurping at thin, flavourless vegetable soup and picking at green potatoes and tough meat swimming in grease. I found myself sinking into a depression. But Catherine just grinned.
‘Don’t worry about it. I’m a pape, too. They don’t like Catholics here, so we won’t be staying long.’ An echo of Mr Anderson’s words from earlier. ‘The priests’ll be here for us any day now.’
I don’t know how long she had been deluding herself with that thought, but it would be another year before the incident on the bridge finally brought a visit from the priest.
They didn’t like papes at school either. The school in the village was an austere grey granite and sandstone building pierced by tall arched windows set in stone dormers. Carved in the wall below the tower that held the bell which called us to lessons was a stone crest of the school board above a kindly lady in robes teaching a young student the wonders of the world. The student had short hair, and wore a skirt, and made me think of Catherine. Although I guess it was supposed to be a boy from classical times. It bore the date of 1875.
Being Catholics, we weren’t allowed in to morning assembly, which was a Protestant affair. Not that I cared a hoot about missing the God stuff. I didn’t find God till much later in my life. Strangely enough, a Protestant God. But we had to stand outside in the playground, in all weathers, until it was over. There was many a time that we would be let in, finally, soaked to the skin, to sit chittering at our desks in ice-cold classrooms. It’s a wonder we didn’t catch our deaths.
To make it worse, we were Dean kids. Which set us apart again. At the end of the school day, when all the other kids were free to escape into open streets, and homes with parents and siblings, we were made to line up in pairs, and suffer the barracking and catcalls of the others. Then we were marched back up the hill to The Dean where we had to sit in silence for the next two hours doing our homework. Freedom came only at mealtimes, and in the short periods of free time before we were forced early to bed in cold, dark dorms.
During the winter months, those ‘free’ periods were filled with Mr Anderson’s Highland dancing classes. Unlikely though it seemed, dancing was his passion, and he wanted us all perfectly drilled in the
In the summer months it was too light to sleep. By the time June came around, it stayed light until almost eleven, and restless soul that I was, I couldn’t lie awake in my bed with the thought of a whole world of adventure out there.
I discovered very early a back staircase leading from the ground floor of the east wing down into the cellars. From there I was able to unbolt a door at the rear of the building, and escape out into the falling dusk. If I sprinted, I could very quickly reach the cover of shadows beneath the trees that lined the park. From there I was free to go where I would. Not that I ever went far. I was always alone. Peter never had trouble getting off to sleep, and if any of the others were ever aware of me leaving they gave no sign of it.
My solitary adventures, however, came to an abrupt end on the third or fourth outing. That was the night I discovered the cemetery.
It must have been quite late, because dusk had given way to darkness by the time I slipped out of the dormitory. I stopped at the door, listening to the breathing of the other boys. Someone was snoring gently, like a purring cat. And one of the younger ones was talking to himself. A voice unbroken, expressing hidden fears.
I could feel the cold of the stone steps rising as I descended into darkness. The cellar had a damp, sour smell, a place mired in shadow. I was always afraid to linger, and I never did know what it was they kept down there. The bolt protested a little as I eased it back across the door, and I was out. A quick glance in each direction, then legs pounding across asphalt to the trees. Usually I would head up over the hill, then down again towards the village. Street lights reflected on the water there, where the wheels of ten or more mills had once turned. Silent now. Abandoned. Lights twinkling in a few of the windows of the tenements built for the millworkers, trees and houses rising steeply on either side below the bridge that spanned the river a hundred feet above it.
But tonight, in search of something different, I turned the other way instead, and soon discovered a metal gate in the high wall that bounded the east side of the garden. I’d had no idea that there was a cemetery there, hidden as it was from the view of The Dean by tall trees. As I opened the gate I felt a little like Alice passing from one side of the looking glass to the other, except that I was passing from the world of the living into the world of the dead.
Avenues of tombstones led away left and right, almost lost in the shadow of willows that seemed to weep for those who had gone before. Immediately to my left lay Frances Jeffrey, who had died on 26 January 1850, at the age of seventy-seven. I don’t know why, but those names are etched as clearly in my mind as they were in the stone that they lay beneath. Daniel John Cumming, his wife Elizabeth and their son Alan. How strangely comforting, it seemed to me, that they should all be together in death as they had been in life. I envied them. My father’s bones lay at the bottom of an ocean, and I had no idea where my mother was buried.
One whole length of wall had tombstones set into it, with well-kept oblongs of grass in front of them, and ferns growing around the foot of the wall.
I am amazed that I was not afraid. A cemetery at night. A young lad in the dark. And yet, I must have felt that I had much more to fear from the living than from the dead. And I’m sure I was right.
I wandered off along a chalk path, headstones and crosses huddled darkly on either side. It was a clear sky and the moon was up, so I could see without difficulty. I was following the curve of the path around to the south when a noise made me stop in my tracks. It would be hard now to say what it was I heard. It was more like a thud that I felt. And then somewhere away to my left a rustling among the grass. Someone coughed.
I have heard it said that a fox makes a coughing sound that is almost human, so perhaps that is what I heard. But another cough, and a movement among the shadows of the trees, much bigger than any fox could have made, stilled my heart. Another thud and I was off. Running like the wind. In and out of the moon-dappled shade. Almost dazzled by the patches of bright silver light.
Maybe it was only my imagination, but I could have sworn I heard footsteps in pursuit. A sudden chill in the air. Sweat turning cold on my face.
I had no idea where I was, or how to get back to the gate. I stumbled and fell, skinning my knees, before scrambling to my feet and leaving the track, heading off among the shadows of brooding stones. To crouch now in the gloom, behind the shelter of a large tomb taller than myself, crowned by a stone cross.
I tried to hold my breath so as not to make any noise. But the pounding of my heart filled my ears, and bursting lungs forced me to suck in oxygen, before expelling it quickly to make room for more. My whole body was trembling.
I listened for the footsteps but heard nothing, and was just starting to relax and curse my overactive imagination, when I heard the soft, careful crunch of feet on gravel. It was all I could do to keep myself from crying out.
