For a few seconds I had the uncanny feeling that I was looking at my own grave.
I stood for a few moments staring at it. Who was she—lying there silent for ever among the Mallory dead?
I went back to the Manor. Normality returned. Why should not one of my ancestors have a name like mine? Names continued through families. Ann Alice. And Annalice. Eighteen years. She had been just about my age when she had died.
At dinner that night I said to Granny M, "I saw a grave in the cemetery today which I hadn't seen before ..."
She was not very interested.
I looked at Philip. "It was someone with my name ... or as near as makes no difference."
"Oh," said Philip. "I thought you were the one and only Annalice."
"This one was Ann Alice Mallory. Who was she, Granny?"
"Ann is a name that has been used a great deal in the family. So is Alice."
"Why did you call me Annalice?"
"I chose it," said Granny M, as though it was therefore the best
possible choice and that settled the matter. "It was because there were so many Anns and Alices in the family. I thought either name a little commonplace, but as you were a Mallory I combined the two and made something which you must admit is somewhat unusual."
"As I said," put in Philip, "the one and only."
"This grave has been neglected."
"Graves do become so after the occupant has been dead some time."
"Nearly a hundred years ago she was buried."
"That is a long time to be remembered," said Philip.
"It was a queer feeling... finding the name under all the weeds and then ... my own almost... looking up at me."
"I must go and look for a Philip there," said my brother.
"There are Philips, several of them."
"You have this morbid fancy to read the gravestones, I know," said Philip.
"I like to think about them all... all the Mallorys... people who have lived in this house before us... people who are connected with us... in a way ... a long line of our progenitors."
"It is pleasant to know you have such family feeling," said Granny M crisply and thereby dismissing the subject.
But I could not get Ann Alice Mallory out of my mind. I suppose because she had been more or less my age when she had died and she bore a name which was almost my own.
The next time I went to the cemetery to clear the grave of its weeds I asked one of the gardeners to give me a bush to plant there. He scratched his head and said that it wasn't the time for planting. But he gave me a rose bush and I said that I wanted rosemary as well.
"It'll never take," he said morosely.
If they didn't I would plant others, I told myself. I planted the bushes and cleaned the plate. The grave looked quite different now, as though someone cared about Ann Alice Mallory.
I thought about her often. She had probably been born in the Manor; she would no doubt have lived there for eighteen years; and she had my name. She might have been myself.
She intruded into my thoughts. It was rather uncanny.
She had died in 1793. That was not quite a hundred years ago. What would life have been like here then? Very much the same as now, probably. Life in country villages had not changed very much. Great events would be taking place in the outside world. The French Revolution would be in progress and the very year of Ann Alice's death the King and Queen of France would have been executed.
There would be nobody living now who knew Ann Alice. Even
Mrs. Tern-would not have been born when she died —although she came into the world soon after. Mrs. Gow was seventy-nine: she might have heard some tale from her parents. They might have known her.
When I next visited Mrs. Gow I decided to bring up the subject.
Mrs. Gow had been our housekeeper for forty years. She had become a widow when she was twenty-eight and had taken the post then.
The Gows were, as Mrs. Gow herself would have said. "A cut above" the rest of our working community. They had been superior for a long time, owning their building and carpentering business, which served not only the needs of Little and Great Stanton but the surrounding neighbourhood as well.
There had always been an air of superiority about Mrs. Gow as there was about all the Gows. It was as though they must perpetually remind everyone that they were made of superior clay.
I remembered Mrs. Gow from my childhood—a stately, dignified figure in black bombazine, whom both Philip and I held in a certain awe.
Even later I felt I had to defer to her. Once I asked Granny M why even she treated Mrs. Gow with such respect.
"What is it about Mrs. Gow?" I asked. "Why do we have to be so careful with her?"
"She's a good housekeeper."
"She sometimes behaves as though she owns the Manor."
"Good servants feel this loyalty." Granny M was thoughtful for a few moments, then she said as though she had started to wonder herself: "The Gows have always been respected in this house. They've got money . . . We're lucky to have a woman like Mrs. Gow. We must remember that she does not depend on the post for her living as so many do."
There was evidently something about the Gows. Granny M always made sure that she gave Mrs. Gow little luxuries. She would not have accepted the ordinary gifts which came the way of the deserving poor—blankets and coal at Christmas and so on. For Mrs. Gow the brace of pheasants, the calf s foot jelly ... the gifts of a friend ... or almost. Mrs. Gow was not gentry: but nor was she of the sen-ant class: she hovered confidently between the two. After all. her father-in-law and her husband —when they had been alive —had been master craftsmen. And William Gow. Mrs. Gow's only son. was now carrying on the flourishing business.
I decided I would call on Mrs. Gow and see if I could learn anything about Ann Alice.
Having delivered the marzipan fancies which I had prevailed upon cook to make and which I knew were special favourites with Mrs. Gow, I seated myself on a chair near the sofa where Mrs. Gow reclined, Recamier fashion, and began my interrogation.
I said: "I was in the cemetery the other day visiting my mother's grave."
"A dear sweet lady," commented Mrs. Gow. "I shall never forget the day she left us. How long ago was it?"
"Eighteen years," I said.
"I always said she'd never get through it. Too frail, she was. The prettiest thing you ever saw. He thought the world of her."
"You mean my father. You must remember a long way back, Mrs. Gow"
"I've always had a good memory."
"I found a grave in the cemetery. A very neglected one. I cleaned up the stone a little and it was someone who had almost my name. Ann Alice Mallory. She died in 1793 when she was eighteen years old."
Mrs. Gow puffed her lips. "That's going back a bit."
"Nearly a hundred years. I wonder if you ever heard anything about her?"
"I'm not a hundred yet, Miss Annalice."
"But you have such a good memory and perhaps someone told you something about her."
"I didn't come to these parts till I married Tom Gow."
"I wondered whether anyone in the family had ever mentioned anything."
"My Tom was older than me and he wasn't born till 1808 so that would be well after she was dead, wouldn't it? Funny you should mention that date. I've often heard it spoken of in the family."
"The date?"
"When did you say she died. 1793? Well, that was the year we started up our business. I've always noticed it. It's over the Gow yard. It says Founded 1793. That's it. So it was the same time."
I was disappointed. Mrs. Gow was far more interested in the achievements of Gow's, Builders and Carpenters, than in the occupant of my grave. She went on at length about how busy her son William was and that he was thinking of handing over a lot to his son Jack. "You have to give them responsibility. That's what William says. It just shows you, Miss Annalice, what reliable good work can do for you. Everyone knows that it's Gow's for the best workmanship and I'd like to hear anyone contradict that."