Overhead
in the bedroom. I guessed it would be familiar. A sound from her childhood.
Her mother standing behind her when she was a little girl, smiling
at her reflection as her comb swished through her daughter’s
long, fair locks. Lucy tiptoed to the foot of the stairs. The swishing
continued. She climbed the stairs and pushed open the bedroom door.
The swishing abruptly stopped.
She was twirling the tortoiseshell comb in her fingers when Paul came
in, towel round his waist, dark curls damp on his chest. ‘Hey
Luce, whatever’s the matter?’ he exclaimed. ‘You
look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘It’s nothing…nothing at all,’ she murmured.
But I knew her heart was pitter-pattering against her ribs. Between
the teeth of the comb were clearly visible several strands of my wife’s
long, blond hair.
There are generations of Wainrights buried in Saddlescombe churchyard.
Lucy found my grave without too much searching - almost as if I’d
drawn her there.
‘You’d make a super sleuth,’ remarked Paul, |
studying
the tombstone from which she’d scratched away a heavy layer
of lichen to pick out the date I’d died: 12th November 1906.
‘Hey,’ he exclaimed. ‘1906…wasn’t
that the same year…’
‘As they got married ....yes,’ she said, moving down
the line of headstones to stop at the last but one.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Paul coming up behind and
putting his arms round her, resting his hands on her belly where
once a baby had briefly lived. ‘You’ve found Louise.’
Yes. She’d found her. And the inscription on her gravestone
came as no surprise. The words familiar now. Two lines of the sonnet
voiced in my soft Somerset burr.
From the dates on the graves, they were able to determine that I
was twenty one when I died, Louise sixty seven. They guessed correctly
that she never remarried.
‘And I suspect there were no kids,’ said Paul. He was
almost correct there.
Lucy didn’t answer. She now realised she was being guided.
But it didn’t scare her. I think she |
