´Another funeral´�
Margaret sighed these words to herself as she adjusted her black hat in the oval mirror. She was ninety years old and her sad and broken eyes stared back at a face she could not bear to admit was hers. She looked at the deep crevices in her dying skin and imagined her face being slowly shaped on some potter´s wheel.
The black hat was getting yet another outing. It was only June and this was, what, her fifth this year? Her sixth? She had even buried her eldest son in February. Though Tom was sixty-two, she had still thought of him as her little boy, her baby. Those last few weeks in the hospice had been a nightmare, watching her own child die like that. She was a frail woman herself and lacked the strength to hold and comfort him. He had died within five minutes of her kissing him goodbye; she´d felt it happen in the taxi home. As she paid the driver, she heard the impatient knelling of her phone but did not hurry to answer. Nothing could be done.
The doorbell rang.
That´ll be the Guthries, she thought. Alan and Barbara Guthrie lived next door. Like Margaret, they had lived in Nettlestone their whole lives. Though they were only ten years younger than Margaret, they looked twenty years younger again. Alan had retired early; he´d made a tidy sum in the motor game. Barbara had never worked a day in her life. She´d raised her boys, sure, but she´d never had to work. Never had to bury her children.
´Come in, come in´ Margaret said, as she removed the security chain from the door. The Guthries followed Margaret into the front room.
´Scribbled him out yet, have you?´�
Alan was indicating the black and white photograph on a varnished sideboard beneath the mirror. It was a school photograph with the year, 1928, written in the corner. All of the Nettlestone schoolchildren had posed for that picture. It was a small school and the children fitted easily on the arranged benches. A small school for a small village.
Margaret was not certain now that she could remember the photograph being taken at all. When she thought about it, she was only confident of her imagination in this matter. She could picture herself quite clearly sitting on the long, thin bench. There was something else; was it memory, was it dream? She could hear the photographer telling her to brush some hair from her face, she does so; she straightens out her grey dress also. She closes her eyes and tries to remember but recoils from doing so. Recently, this photo, that day has haunted her dreams. Something telling her to look away from the camera, something telling her to look at the other children´s faces. Look at Alice Reed, look at Nobby Thompson. But she can´t, she is rooted to the spot. She looks down at her hands in the dream instead and they are crumbling away in the strong wind. When Margaret awakes from this dream she always finds she has been frantically tearing at her bedclothes in her sleep.
In recent years Margaret had taken to marking the deaths of one of her old schoolmates by drawing a red cross in biro on the face of the deceased. She did not know why. Whenever she tried to recall doing it, she was unsure whether it was imagination or memory. Convincing herself that she had done it, and merely forgotten doing so, was of no comfort to her whatsoever.
Bill Grice had sat next to Margaret in the picture. Like most of the children in the photo, he too had lived his whole life in the village. His father was a farm labourer and Bill was one of twelve children. He´d never married, kept himself mostly to himself. Margaret often saw him at the post office or sometimes walking his Jack Russells. He´d been dead a few days when they found him or so the local gossips had it. Apparently they´d started to eat him. Poor Bill, thought Margaret.
The silence was broken by Alan, laughing and pointing at the bright red cross on Bill´s face.
´It´s like bingo!´ he said.
´Ha! Yes! What do you get for a full house?´ Barbara chirruped in.
The Guthries found Margaret amusing. They found everything amusing. This was a source of irritation to Margaret whose silence prompted a nervous jangle of the car keys from Alan.
Margaret decided against the veil.
The drive to the church was a short one. Even now, Margaret could walk it herself in ten minutes, but it had started to rain and the Guthries, in any case, drove everywhere.
It was a short service.
On the drive back to the house Margaret began to feel unwell. It was the most appalling headache she had ever known. She felt terribly hot; her cheeks seemed to be on fire. She tried to open the window on her side but she fell back into her seat with the effort. As Alan pulled the car over, Margaret thought of the red biro on the sideboard, she pictured it suddenly rising of it´s own free will; some unseen hand scribbling at her young face, the pen practically stabbing at the print. Trying to get to the other side.
After Margaret´s funeral, the Guthries burnt the photograph in their back garden. Walking back despite the rain, they told each other that Margaret must have known she was ill, she must have made that mark herself when they were laughing at her that morning. But it was no use. Each knew what the other was really thinking.
A hearse drove past them as they prepared to enter their front garden.
Another funeral, thought Alan.
Another funeral, thought Barbara.