Flesh and Blood

1 A Family Gathering

Matt Guilder stared at the composed features of his grandmother. They had made up her face so that her skin was smooth, the wrinkles eased away. He had never known Gran well, but he remembered her as far older than this.

He couldn’t stop staring. At any moment he expected her to turn and look at him.

A hand squeezed his arm. His father: strong, reassuring, just a little impatient. “Come on, boy,” he said. “You’re causing a traffic jam.”

Matt made himself turn away from his dead grandmother and nodded. He and his father left the room as others filed in to pay their last respects.

They walked back through to the front room of his grandparents’ house, where his mother and her sister Carol were sitting either side of Gramps. Matt sat by his mother, but she barely noticed him. His father went and stood with Uncle Mike by the window, saying nothing, just staring across the paddock to the church and the woods beyond.

There were about a dozen people in the room: members of the family, most of whom Matt barely recognised. Most of his mother’s side of the family were strangers to him. He had only ever met them on one or two awkward family occasions. He sat in silence, waiting for something to happen.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get that scene out of his head: Gran lying in her open coffin in the room she had called the library, floral tributes arranged all around her.

It was the look on her face that stuck in his mind. Her expression wasn’t quite the blank look you might expect from a corpse. There had been an Inquest after her death, and it had heard that she had fallen down the stairs after the fatal heart attack, but there was no sign of injury now, so that was not what was bothering him. There was something else, something more. It was as if she were trying to tell them something from beyond death.

And then he realised what it was: she looked
relieved
. As if death had offered her some kind of refuge.

He tried to swallow the sudden dry lump in his throat. There was a noise from the hallway. The undertakers had arrived to seal Gran into her coffin and take her on the short journey to the village church.

~

Matt walked to the church with his father and Uncle Mike, the three of them slightly apart from the rest of the procession.

“How was the trip?” asked Uncle Mike, a short, shuffling man whose every gesture seemed to apologise for his very existence.

“Busy,” said Matt, when it seemed that his father wouldn’t summon up the effort to reply.

“Nah,” said his father dismissively. “You should try the M25 –
that’s
busy.” His father was a photocopier salesman. He drove over a thousand miles a week.

Matt stared at the ground as his father went on, “What a way to spend a Tuesday morning, eh, Mike?”

Uncle Mike grunted. “Sure,” he said. “I tell you, I could have done without all this. The old bag always hated me, anyway.”

Matt’s father gave a short laugh, then caught Matt’s eye and stopped. “Maybe, Mike,” he said. “But she wasn’t all bad.”

Matt looked away again. His father had said almost exactly the same as Mike only the previous evening. His parents had been arguing, as they usually did before they had to go anywhere together. “She always hated me,” his father had said at one point. “They all did!” It had suddenly given Matt a different perspective on his parents: what they must have been like before he had come along, before they were married. It must have been hard for his father – the brash young salesman from London – to break into this close-knit rural family. He must have tried hard to win the approval of Gran and Gramps, but he had never really succeeded. In the end he had given up trying. It was a side of his father that Matt had never even guessed at before.

“Not all bad?” Mike asked, in answer to Matt’s father’s platitudes. “She made a pretty good show of it then.”

~

Matt was surprised how many people filled the church. It seemed that all of the village had turned out to send his grandmother on her way. History, he supposed: the Wareden family went back generations in the village of Crooked Elms.

The vicar was young and nervous-looking. Matt recognised him from the house, although at the time he had taken him for a distant cousin, perhaps. How could he have missed the dog collar, he wondered? The vicar had thick glasses and a patchy blond beard that he didn’t really seem old enough to be growing.

“Jesus said, I am the resurrection, and I am the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” The young vicar sounded like an English teacher reciting poetry: his voice somehow detached from the words, putting emphasis in all the wrong places.

Already Aunt Carol was choking back her tears in the front row, clutching her two daughters, Tina and Kirsty, to either side. Matt’s mother was gripping his father’s arm, her face even blanker than Gran’s had been in her coffin.

Gramps stood straight, immediately in front of Matt. He’d never been an army man – he’d been a conscientious objector in the war – but now it was as if he was standing on parade. Being inspected by a senior officer.

~

When the funeral service was over, they filed out behind the coffin into the spring drizzle. Matt pulled his borrowed jacket tight, envying his cousin Vince his black leather jacket.

Row upon row of crooked gravestones crammed together in the churchyard. Most were old, their edges softened by centuries of weathering, their surfaces stained and encrusted with yellow and grey discs of lichen. Here and there a few limp bunches of spring flowers brightened the gloom: offerings to the dead – as if the dead were going to notice, thought Matt dismissively.

They waited by the lychgate as the pall-bearers eased the coffin into the back of the hearse, ready to take Gran to the crematorium.

“Hope they don’t drop it,” Matt’s father muttered.

Matt stifled an awkward giggle, as his mother turned an angry glare on her husband.

As he stood by the lychgate, Matt noticed a small area off to one side that was separated from the rest of the churchyard by a low, wrought iron fence. Within the fence there was a single stone cross bearing the date 1898. Lined up before the cross were six narrow, rectangular slabs, all overgrown with brambles and yellowed grass. It was the neglected state of this patch that had caught his attention – why would nobody in the village keep that patch tidy?

Curious, Matt wandered across for a closer look.

1898. He wondered what could have happened all that time ago. There must have been some kind of accident, he thought. Six deaths. Such a tragedy must have had a huge impact on the village.

He peered at one of the six slabs. There were words engraved on the stone. Names. The letters were hard to make out, but clearly there were four names on this slab alone, each with the same surname – something like Sapsford or Sapeford. This slab marked a family grave then.

Six slabs ... so
six
family graves.

What could have caused such a tragedy?

Matt turned away from the disturbing monument. His grandmother’s coffin was in the hearse now, and the crowd was starting to break up. He hurried to catch up with his family.

~

Back at his grandparents’ house in the village of Crooked Elms, Matt sat alone in the back of the Volvo. On the journey back from the crematorium his parents had not exchanged a single word. Arriving here at the house, they had gone straight inside but Matt had lingered in the car, saying he would follow them. Here, amid the clutter of his father’s work, he felt safe. He thought of home. He should have been playing football for the Under-16s this morning. He wondered how the team had done.

He yawned. It was barely noon yet it felt like the day should be nearly over.

He would have to go inside, he knew, but there was something nagging away at him that made him hold back. It would be so easy just to stay here, pretend to have dozed off. Why did days like this always take so long?

He opened the car door and climbed out. He couldn’t stay here all day. He didn’t want to upset his mother, or make his father angry. He didn’t want to make them argue again.

His grandparents – just Gramps now, he reminded himself – lived in a large stone house that had, at various times, served the village as school-house, chapel and more recently doctor’s surgery, before Gramps’ retirement. Matt headed around the side of the house and went in by the back door.

The heat was intense after the chill spring air and Matt suddenly felt dizzy. He leaned with a shoulder against a wall and surveyed the packed living room. Tables had been set out with food and drinks and there was a tight knot of people gathered around these.

Matt slipped the jacket off his shoulders and dumped it on a chair in the hallway, stepping sharply out of the way as Aunt Carol rushed by with another plateful of sandwiches. As she plunged through the living room, the throng parted before her as if she was somehow projecting her presence before her. She was that kind of woman, he supposed. You always knew she was there.

He still felt hot, a little dizzy. He loosened his black tie, then rubbed at his eyes.

His mouth felt dry, so he headed into the living room and joined the congestion around the tables. Instantly, a paper plate was being thrust at him by small hands.

His eyes followed the hands, the thin arms buried in a sombre black and purple dress, and met the blank look of his young cousin, Kirsty. She pushed the plate at him until he took it, then followed up with a serviette.

He nodded. “Thanks, Kirsty,” he said. She clearly had no idea who he was.

As ever, Tina was by her side. At twelve, she was five years older than Kirsty, but other than the difference in size they could have been twins. Both had mid-brown hair tied hard back from their faces, and both wore wire-framed glasses that only served to emphasise the squint they had inherited from their father.

“This is cousin Matthew,” said Tina, tipping her head so that her mouth was close to her sister’s ear. “He’s with Aunty Jill and Uncle Nigel. They’re from Norwich, Norfolk.”

At each of these statements, Kirsty nodded solemnly. “Pleased to meet you, cousin Matthew,” she finally said. Tina patted her sister’s arm approvingly.

Matt turned away. There were drinks on the table. He glanced around, then took a dainty glass of sherry. He took a sip and it was sweet and thick and clung to the lining of his throat as he tried to swallow. He put the glass and plate down. He felt hot and dizzy again, and had to clutch at the mantelpiece for support.

It was this place, he decided: the dry, dusty atmosphere, the heat of all these people crowded together. All the voices seemed to swirl around him and, as he stood there, he suddenly experienced a most vivid flashback to when he was a small child sitting in his father’s arms on a roundabout in a park, the world spinning around him as if it would never stop... never stop... never...

Matt struggled to swallow again. He could feel the heat threatening to smother him, hear the voices start to echo around his head once more. Maybe he was going down with something.

Just then, there was a sudden cry. Matt turned to see a commotion around the food tables.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” said Carol sweeping through the crowd.

Kirsty was lying on the floor, her head propped up on her sister’s lap. “Mother,” said Tina matter-of-factly. “It’s okay. Kirsty has just had one of her turns.”

Carol took a paper plate and used it to fan her youngest child. Soon Kirsty was pushing herself up on her elbows and peering around. Her face was pale and her eyes brimming with tears behind their glasses. She looked as if she didn’t really know where she was.

“It’s all right, darling,” said Carol. Kirsty started to sob, and buried her face in her mother’s chest.

Matt turned away, wishing again that the day would soon be over. He was intensely aware of all the people milling around: all of them seemed to be eyeing the ornaments and the pictures on the walls. All these valuables... something would have to be done with them when Gramps’ turn came. It was as if everybody was making a mental list, staking their claims in advance.

Gramps was sitting in a high-backed armchair by the far fireplace.

Matt felt compelled to approach him, despite the heat pouring out of the fire. He caught his mother’s eye and smiled. She was standing just behind Gramps, as if she could neither bring herself to sit with him nor leave him alone.

He leaned over and touched his grandfather’s arm. “Hi, Gramps,” he said.

The pale blue eyes stared past him, their gaze fixed on some distant point.

Matt sat on a foot stool and looked back. Gramps was looking out of the window, across the paddock to the church and the woods. He turned towards Matt. “Matthew,” he said, and smiled. “I’m glad you came, boy. You all right, are you? Look a bit off colour.”

“You should know,” said Matt. “You’re the doc.”

Gramps smiled, his gaze becoming distant once again.

The heat by the fire was quite intense. Matt could feel his shirt starting to stick to his back.

“... burning now.”

The word
burning
jerked Matt back to awareness. He’d been drifting again. He saw his mother’s sudden look of concern, and mumbled, “Hmm?”

“Dorothea,” said Gramps. “She’ll be burning now. Or they’ll have done it already.”

Suddenly Matt realised what he was talking about: Gran’s cremation.

“It’s right, of course,” said Gramps, as if he was merely talking about the weather. “We Waredens always burn, one way or another. The only way to end up is as ashes – there’s nothing they can do with ashes. It’s the best way.”

“Dad,” said Matt’s mother, leaning down over his chair.

Matt saw how his grandfather’s knuckles had whitened as his grip on the arms of his chair had intensified.

“Ashes to ashes,” recited Gramps, in a weak, croaking voice. “Dust to dust... all gone to dust... they make glue from the bones of horses – that’d be all right, too. There’s no way back from glue.”

Matt tipped back in his seat as his mother moved round to calm Gramps. The old man was rocking back and forth in his chair as he rambled, and every word forced spit and bubbles out past his yellowed teeth.