No Graves As Yet Read online

  Joseph walked behind them, Hannah on his arm, barely keeping her composure. She had purchased a new black dress in Cambridge, and a black straw hat with a veil. She kept her chin high, but Joseph had a strong feeling that her eyes were almost closed and she was clinging to him to guide her. She had hated the days of waiting. Every room she went into reminded her of her loss. The kitchen was worst. It was full of memories: cloths Alys had stitched, plates with the wildflowers painted on them that she had loved, the flat basket she used to collect the dried heads from the roses, the corn dolly she had bought at the Madingley fair. The smell of food brought back memories of crumpets and lardy cakes, and hot, savory onion clangers with suet crust.

  Alys had liked to buy the blue-veined Double Cottenham cheese and butter by the yard, instead of the modern weights. It was the smallest things that hurt Hannah the most, perhaps because they caught her unaware: Lettie arranging flowers in the wrong jug (one Alys would never have chosen); Horatio the cat sitting in the scullery, where Alys would not have permitted him; the fish delivery boy being cheeky and answering back where he would not have dared to before. All of these were the first marks of irrevocable change.

  Matthew walked with Judith a few steps behind, both of them stiff and staring straight ahead. Judith, too, had a veiled hat and a new black dress with sleeves right down to the backs of her hands, and a skirt so slender it obliged her to walk daintily. She did not like it, but it was actually dramatically becoming to her.

  Inside the church the air was cooler, musty with the smell of old books and stone and the heavy scent of flowers. Joseph noticed them immediately with a gulp of surprise. The women of the village must have stripped their gardens of every white bloom: roses, phlox, old-fashioned pinks, and bowers of daisies of every size, single and double. They were like a pale foam breaking over the ancient carved woodwork toward the altar, gleaming where the sunlight came in through the stained-glass windows. He knew they were for Alys. She had been all the village wanted her to be: modest, loyal, quick to smile, able to keep a secret, proud of her home and pleased to care for it. She was willing to exchange recipes with Mrs. Worth, garden cuttings with Tucky Spence even though she never stopped talking, patient with Miss Anthony’s endless stories about her niece in South Africa.

  John had been more difficult for them to understand: a man of intellect who had studied deeply and often traveled abroad. But when he was here his pleasures had been simple enough: his family and his garden, old artifacts, watercolor pictures from the last century that he enjoyed cleaning and reframing. He had delighted in a bargain and searched through antique and curio shops, happy to listen to tales of quaint, ordinary people, and always ready to hear or pass on a joke—the longer and shaggier, the more he relished it.

  Joseph’s recollections continued as the service began, and he stared at all the long, familiar faces, sad and confused now in their hasty black. He found his throat too tight to sing the hymns.

  Then it was time for him to speak, just briefly, as representative of the family. He did not wish to preach; it was not the time. Let someone else do that—Hallam Kerr, if he had a mind to. Joseph was here as a son to remember his parents. This was not about praise, but about love.

  It was not easy to keep his voice from breaking, his thoughts in order, and his words clear and simple. But this, after all, was his skill. He knew bereavement intimately, and he had explored it over and over in his mind until it had no more black corners for him.

  “We are met together in the heart of the village, perhaps the soul of it, to say goodbye for the moment to two of our number who were your friends, our parents—I speak for myself, and for my brother, Matthew, and my sisters, Hannah and Judith.”

  He hesitated, struggling to maintain his composure. There was no movement or rustle of whispering among the upturned faces staring at him.

  “You all knew them. You met in the street day by day, at the post office, at the shops, over the garden wall. And most of all you met here. They were good people, and we are hurt and diminished by their going.”

  He stopped for a moment, then began again. “We shall miss my mother’s patience, her spirit of hope that was never just easy words, never denial of evil or suffering, but the quiet faith that they could be overcome, and the trust that the future would be bright. We must not fail her by forgetting what she taught us. We should be grateful for every life that has given us happiness, and gratitude is the treasuring of the gift, the nourishing of it, the use, and then to pass it on bright and whole to others.”

  He saw a movement, a nodding, a hundred familiar faces turned toward him, somber and bruised with the suddenness of grief, each one hurt by its own private memory.

  “My father was different,” he continued. “His mind was brilliant, but his heart was simple. He knew how to listen to others without leaping to conclusions. He could tell a longer, funnier, more rambling joke than anyone else I know, and they were never grubby or unkind. For him, unkindness was the great sin. You could be brave and honest, obedient and devout, but if you could not be kind, then you had failed.”

  He found himself smiling as he spoke, even though his voice was so thick with tears it was hard to make his words clear. “He did not care for organized religion. I have known him to fall asleep in church and wake up applauding because he thought for an instant that he was in a theater. He could not bear intolerance, and he thought those who confessed religious faith could be among the worst at this. But he would have defended St. Paul with his own life for his words on love: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am nothing.’

  “He was not perfect, but he was kind. He was gentle with others’ weaknesses. I would gladly labor all my life that you would be able to say the same of me when I, too, come to say goodbye—for the time being.”

  He was shaking with relief as he returned to his seat beside Hannah and felt her hand close over his. But he knew that under her veil she was weeping and would not look at him.

  Hallam Kerr took the pulpit, his words sonorous and sure but curiously lacking in conviction, as if he, too, had been swept out of his depth. He continued the service in the familiar way, the words and music woven like a bright thread through the history of life in the village. It was as certain and as rich as the passing seasons, barely changing from year to year down the centuries.

  Afterward Joseph again chose the part that was in a way the most harrowing, standing by the church door and shaking hands with people as they fumbled for words, trying to express their grief and support, and few of them knowing how to. In some way the service had not been enough; something was still unsaid. There was a hunger, a need unmet, and Joseph was aware of it as a hollowness within himself. Now, when he needed it most, his words had lost their consuming power. The last shred of certainty in himself melted in his grasp.

  Judith and Hannah stood together, still in the shadow of the arched doorway. Matthew had not yet come out. Joseph moved into the sun to speak to Shanley Corcoran, who waited a few yards away. He was not a tall man, and yet the power of his character, the vitality within him, commanded a respect so that no one crowded to him, although most did not even know who he was, let alone the brilliance of his achievements, nor would they have understood had they been told. The word scientist would have had to suffice.

  He came forward to Joseph now, holding out both his hands, his face crumpled in grief.

  “Joseph,” he said simply.

  Joseph found the warmth of touch and the emotion it evoked almost unbearable. The familiarity of such a close friend was overwhelming. He was unable to speak.

  It was Orla Corcoran who rescued him. She was a beautiful woman with a dark, exotic face, and her black silk dress with its elegant waist, flowing jacket to below the hip, and slender skirt beneath was the perfect complement to her delicate bones.

  “Joseph knows our grief, my dear,” she said, laying her gloved hand on her husband’s arm. “We should not struggle to say t
hat for which there can be no words. The village is waiting. This is their turn, and the sooner this duty is accomplished, the sooner the family can go back home and be alone.” She looked at Joseph. “Perhaps in a few days we may call and visit with you for a little longer?”

  “Of course,” Joseph answered impulsively. “Please do. I shall not go back to Cambridge until the end of the week at least. I don’t know about Matthew—we haven’t discussed it. We just wanted to get today over.”

  “Naturally,” Corcoran agreed, letting go of Joseph’s hand at last. “And Hannah will go back to Portsmouth, no doubt.” There was a pucker of anxiety between his brows. “I assume Archie is at sea, or he would be here now?”

  Joseph nodded. “Yes. But they may grant him compassionate leave when he is next in port.” There was nothing he could do for Hannah. She must now face the ordeal of helping her children recover from the pain of their grandparents’ death. It was the first big loss in their lives, and they would need her. She had already been away for the larger part of a week.

  “Of course, if it’s possible,” Corcoran acquiesced, still looking at Joseph with the slight frown, his eyes troubled.

  “Why should it not be possible?” Joseph said a trifle sharply. “For heaven’s sake, his wife has just lost both her parents!”

  “I know, I know,” Corcoran said gently. “But Archie is a serving officer. I dare say you have been too busy with your own grief to read much of the world news, and that is perfectly natural. However, this assassination in Sarajevo is very ugly.”

  “Yes,” Joseph agreed uncomprehendingly. “They were shot, weren’t they?” Did it really matter now? Why was Corcoran even thinking about it—today, of all days? “I’m sorry, but . . .”

  Corcoran looked a little stooped. It was so slight as to be indefinable, but the shadow in him was more than grief; there was something yet to come that he feared.

  “It wasn’t a single lunatic with a gun,” he said gravely. “It’s far deeper than that.”

  “Is it?” Joseph said without belief or comprehension.

  “There were several assassins,” Corcoran said gravely. “The first did nothing. The second threw a bomb, but the chauffeur saw it coming and managed to speed up and around it.” His lips tightened. “The man who threw the bomb took some sort of poison, then jumped into the river, but he was pulled out and lived. The bomb exploded and injured several people. They were taken to hospital.” His voice was very low, as if he did not want the rest of the people standing in the graveyard to hear, even though it must be public knowledge. Perhaps they had not grasped the meaning of it.

  “The archduke continued with his day’s agenda,” he went on, ignoring Orla’s frown. “He spoke to people in the town hall, and later he decided to go and visit the injured, but his chauffeur took a wrong turn and came face-to-face with the final assassin, who leaped on the running board of the car and shot the archduke in the neck and the duchess in the stomach. Both died within minutes.”

  “I’m sorry.” Joseph winced. He could picture it, but the moment he did, their faces changed to those of John and Alys, and the death of two Austrian aristocrats a thousand miles away melted into unimportance.

  Corcoran’s hand gripped his arm again, and the strength of him seemed to surge through it. “It was chaotically done, but it comes from a groundswell of feeling, Joseph. It could lead to an Austro-Serbian war,” he said quietly. “And then Germany might become involved. The kaiser reasserted his alliance with Austria-Hungary yesterday.”

  It rose to Joseph’s lips to argue that it was too unlikely to consider, but he saw in Corcoran’s eyes how intensely he meant it. “Really?” he said with puzzlement. “Surely it will just be a matter of punishment, reparation, or something? It is an internal matter for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, isn’t it?”

  Corcoran nodded, withdrawing his hand. “Perhaps. If there is any sanity in the world, it will.”

  “Of course it will!” Orla said firmly. “It will be miserable for the Serbs, poor creatures, but it doesn’t concern us. Don’t alarm Joseph with such thoughts, Shanley.” She smiled as she said it. “We have enough grief of our own without borrowing other people’s.”

  He was prevented from replying to her by the arrival of Gerald and Mary Allard, close friends of the family whom Joseph had known for many years. Elwyn was their younger son, but their elder, Sebastian, was a pupil of Joseph’s, a young man of remarkable gifts. He seemed to master not only the grammar and the vocabulary of foreign languages but the music of them, the subtlety of meaning and the flavor of the cultures that had given them birth.

  It was Joseph who had seen the promise in him and encouraged him to seek a place at Cambridge to study ancient languages, not only biblical but the great classics of culture as well. Sebastian had grasped his opportunity. He worked with zeal and remarkable self-discipline for so young a man, and had become one of the brightest of the students, taking first-class honors. Now he was doing postgraduate studies before moving on to a career as a scholar and philosopher, perhaps even a poet.

  Mary caught Joseph’s eye and smiled at him, her face full of pity.

  Gerald came forward. He was a pleasant, ordinary-seeming man, fair-haired, good-looking in a benign, undistinguished way. Brief introductions were made to the Corcorans, who then excused themselves.

  “So sorry,” Gerald murmured, shaking his head. “So sorry.”

  “Thank you.” Joseph wished there were something sensible to say, and longed to escape.

  “Elwyn is here, of course.” She indicated very slightly over her shoulder to where Elwyn Allard was talking to Pettigrew, the lawyer, and trying to escape to join his contemporaries. “And unfortunately Sebastian had to be in London,” Mary went on. “A prior commitment he could not break.” She was thin, with fierce, striking features, dark hair, and a fine olive complexion. “But I am sure you know how deeply he feels.”

  Gerald cleared his throat as if to say something—from the shadow in his eyes, possibly a disagreement—but he changed his mind.

  Joseph thanked them again and excused himself to speak to someone else.

  It seemed to stretch interminably—the kindness, the grief, the awkwardness—but eventually the ordeal was over. He saw Mrs. Appleton, somber and pale-faced, as she said goodbye to the vicar and started back to the house. Everything was already prepared to receive their closest friends. There would be nothing for the staff to do but take the muslin cloths off the food already laid out on the tables. Lettie and Reginald had been given time off also, but they would both be back to help with the clearing away.

  The house was a mere six hundred yards from the church, and people straggled slowly under the lych-gate and along the road through the village in the quiet sunlight, turning right toward the Reavley home. They all knew each other and were intimately concerned in each other’s lives. They had walked to christenings, weddings, and funerals along these quiet roads; they had quarreled and befriended one another, laughed together, gossiped and interfered for better or worse.

  Now they grieved, and few needed to find words for it.

  Joseph and Hannah welcomed them at the front door. Matthew and Judith had already gone inside, she to the drawing room, he presumably to fetch the wine and pour it.

  The last person was ushered in, and Joseph turned to follow. He was crossing the hall when Matthew came out of John’s study ahead of him, his face puckered with concern.

  “Joseph, have you been in here this morning?”

  “The study? No. Why? Have you lost something?”

  “No. I haven’t been in since last night, until just now.”

  Had his brother looked any less concerned, Joseph would have been impatient with him, but there was an anxiety in Matthew’s face that held his attention. “If you haven’t lost anything, what’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I was the last one out of the house this morning,” Matthew replied, keeping his voice very low so that it would not carry to anyone in
the dining room. “After Mrs. Appleton, and she didn’t come back—she was at the funeral all the time.”

  “Of course she was!”

  “Someone’s been in here,” Matthew answered quietly, but with no hesitation or lift of question in his voice. “I know exactly where I left everything. It’s the papers. They’re all on the square, and I left some of them poking out a fraction, to mark my place.”

  “Horatio?” Joseph said, thinking of the cat.

  “Door was closed,” Matthew answered.

  “Mrs. Appleton must have . . . ,” Joseph began, then, seeing the gravity in Matthew’s eyes, he stopped. “What are you saying?”

  “Someone was in here while we were all at the funeral,” Matthew replied. “No one would have noticed Henry barking, and he was shut in the garden room. I can’t see anything gone . . . and don’t tell me it was a sneak thief. I locked up myself, and I didn’t miss the back door. And a thief wouldn’t go through Father’s papers; he’d take the silver and the ornaments that are easy to move. The silver-rimmed crystal bud vase is still on the mantelpiece, and the snuffboxes are on the table, not to mention the Bonnington, which is quite small enough to be carried.”

  Joseph’s mind raced, wild ideas falling over each other, but before he could put words to any of them, Hannah came out of the dining room. She looked from one to the other of them. “What’s wrong?” she said quickly.

  “Matthew’s mislaid something, that’s all,” Joseph replied. “I’ll see if I can help him find it. I’ll be in in a moment.”