by
words she couldn't quite catch as they darted in and out of her mind
spiriting her shadows away with their soft Somerset burr.
It was over breakfast they heard the crash. The sound of splintering
glass.
Lucy ran upstairs to find the tortoiseshell frame on the floor where
I’d thrown it, surrounded by shards of glass, our photo dislodged
as intended. The comb too I’d knocked off the dressing table;
in its teeth was held a corner of our photo, ready to hand to her.
Trembling slightly, she prised the photo from the comb and turned
it over. On the back, in my wife’s neat copperplate was written
‘Our wedding. Cawthorne 15th August 1906’ followed by
the words:
To seek a maiden fair as thee
I roamed the land and sailed the sea
Words Lucy had already heard. Words softly spoken in a Somerset burr.
My words that had soothed her to sleep the previous night.
‘Cawthorne?’ said Paul, when she showed him our wedding
details. ‘That’s just down the valley from here.’
He paused. ‘Now let me guess where we’re going today,’
he added with a grin. |
Cawthorne church is tiny. Hidden
deep in a combe, reached by an ancient stone footbridge. As they
crossed over, a woman appeared from an adjacent cottage in a paint-splashed
smock. ‘I’ve the keys,’ she explained when they
asked if they could look round the church. ‘Should be easy
to trace,’ she added when Lucy showed her our photo. ‘There’s
only been a handful of weddings in that time.’ The cracked,
leather-bound register gave them our names. Frank Stanley Wainright,
farmer. Louise May Croft, housekeeper.
‘There used to be a big house further up this valley. Long
since demolished. I’d guess Louise could have worked there,’
said the woman. ‘As for Frank. Wainright’s a common
enough name round these parts. They farmed over in the next parish.
And most of them are buried in Saddlescombe church.’
Paul raised his eyebrows at Lucy and smiled. He knew exactly what
she intended to do the next day.
He was having a soak in the bath and she was curled up on the sofa
in the sitting room, reading about Saddlescombe and its red sandstone
church high on the moors, when she heard the sound. |
