“He was a lovely chap,” said Josephine. “Life’s a bitch, when you come to think of it.”
Minty would rather not have talked about it, especially now. She finished the fiftieth shirt at ten to one and went home for an hour. Lunch was free-range eggs scrambled on white toast. She washed her hands before eating and again afterward, and her face as well, and put the washing in the dryer. The flower-selling man had set up his stall outside the cemetery gates. It wasn’t really spring yet, it was still February, but he’d got daffodils and tulips as well as the chrysanthemums and carnations that had been around all winter. Minty had filled an empty bleach bottle with water and brought it with her. She bought six pink tulips and six white narcissi with orange centers.
“In remembrance of your auntie, is it, love?”
Minty said it was and it was nice to see the spring flowers.
“You’re right there,” said the flower-selling man, “and what I say is, it does your heart good to see a bit of a kid like yourself remembering the old folks. There’s too much indifference in the world these days.”
Thirty-seven isn’t a “bit of a kid” but a lot of people thought Minty much younger than she was. They didn’t look closely enough to see the lines coming out from the corners of her eyes and the little puckers round her mouth. There was that barman in the Queen’s Head who wouldn’t believe she was a day over seventeen. It was her white skin, shiny about the nose, and her wispy fair hair and being as thin as one of those models that did it. Minty paid the man and smiled at him because he’d called her a kid, and then she went into the cemetery, carrying her flowers.
If it weren’t for the graves it would have been like the country in there, all trees and bushes and grass. But it was no good saying that, Jock said. The graves were the reason for the trees. A lot of famous people were buried here but she didn’t know their names; she wasn’t interested. Over there was the canal and beyond it the gasworks. The gasometer loomed over the cemetery like some huge old temple, commemorating the dead. Ivy was the plant that grew most plentifully in here, creeping over the stones and slabs, up the columns, twining round the statues and pushing its tendrils through the splits and cracks in tombs. Some of the trees had black, shiny, pointed leaves, like leather cutouts, but most were leafless in winter, their bare branches sighing and shivering when the wind blew but hanging now limp in stillness. It was always quiet, as if there were an invisible barrier above the wall that kept out even the traffic noise.
Auntie’s grave was at the end of the next path, on the corner where it met one of the main aisles. Of course, it wasn’t really her grave, it was just the place where Minty had buried her ashes. The grave belonged to Maisie Julia Chepstow, beloved wife of John Chepstow, who departed this life 15 December 1897, aged fifty-three, asleep in the arms of Jesus. When she’d brought Jock here she’d told him this was Auntie’s grandmother and he’d been impressed. For all she knew, it might be true. Auntie must have had two grandmothers like everyone else, just as she must have. She was going to have Auntie’s name put on the stone, she’d said. Jock said the grave was beautiful and moving, and the stone angel must have cost a fortune, even in those days.
Minty took the dead stalks out of the stone pot and wrapped them in the paper that had been round the tulips and narcissi. She poured the water out of the bleach bottle into the vase. When she turned round for the flowers, she saw Jock’s ghost coming down the main aisle toward her. He was wearing jeans and a dark blue sweater and his leather jacket, but he wasn’t solid like he’d been last night. She could see through him.
She said bravely, though she could hardly get the words out, “What d’you want, Jock? What have you come back for?”
He didn’t speak. When he was about two yards from her he faded away. Just vanished like a shadow does when the sun goes in. Minty would have liked some wood to touch or maybe to have crossed herself, but she didn’t know which side to start from. She was shaking all over. She knelt on Auntie’s grave and prayed. Dear Auntie, keep him away. If you see him where you are tell him I don’t want him coming here. Always and forever your loving niece Araminta.
Two people came along the path, the woman carrying a little bunch of carnations. They said, “Good afternoon,” the way no one ever would if you met them outside in the street. Minty got up off her knees and returned the greeting. She took her parcel of stalks and her empty bleach bottle, and dropped them in one of the litter bins. It had begun to rain. Jock used to say, Don’t worry about it, it’s only water. But was it? You didn’t know what dirt it picked up on its way down out of the sky.
Chapter 2
AUNTIE’S REAL NAME was Winifred Knox. She had two sisters and a brother, and they all lived at 39 Syringa Road with their parents. Arthur was the first to leave. He got married and then there were just the sisters at home. They were much older than Auntie, who had been an afterthought, the baby of the family. Kathleen got married and then Edna did and their father died. Auntie was left alone with her mother and cleaned offices for a living. Her engagement to Bert had been going on for years and years, but she couldn’t marry him while Mum was there dependent on her, in a wheelchair and needing everything done for her.
Mum died the day before Auntie’s fortieth birthday. She and Bert waited a decent interval and then they got married. But it didn’t work, it was a nightmare.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Auntie said. “I suppose I’d led a sheltered life, I didn’t know anything about men. It was a nightmare.”
“What did he do?” Minty asked.
“You don’t want to know, a little innocent like you. I put an end to it after a fortnight. Good thing I’d kept this house on. If I’d any regrets it was not having any little ones of my own but then you came along like a bolt from the blue.”
Minty was the bolt and her mother was the blue. Her name was Agnes and she’d been Auntie’s best friend at school, though they hadn’t seen so much of each other since then. No one was surprised when Agnes appeared with a baby; she’d been asking for it, going with all and sundry. There was never any mention of the baby’s father; it might have been a virgin birth for all the talk there was of him. It was the early sixties and people weren’t anywhere like as strict as they’d been when Auntie was young, but they still looked down their noses at Agnes and said the baby was a liability. Agnes brought her to Syringa Road sometimes and the two of them pushed the pram round Queen’s Park.
That afternoon in May when Minty was six months old there was no talk of park visiting. Agnes said could she leave Minty with Auntie just for an hour while she went to visit her mum in the hospital. She’d brought a supply of nappies and a bottle of milk and a tin of puréed prunes for babies. It was funny how, whenever she told Minty this story, Auntie never left out the purére prunes.
The time Agnes came was just after two and when it got to four Auntie began to wonder what had happened to her. Of course, she knew very well that when people say they’ll be back in an hour they don’t actually return for two or three hours; they’re just saying it to make you feel better, so she wasn’t worried. But she was when it got to six and seven. Luckily, what few shops there were in the area stayed open round the clock, so she asked the lady next door-that was before Laf and Sonovia came-to keep a lookout for Agnes and she took Minty in the pram and bought baby porridge and more milk and a bunch of bananas. Auntie’d never had any children of her own but she was a great believer in bananas as nourishing, the easiest to eat of all fruits, and liked by everyone.