Page 7

Rory drifted into his own disturbing thoughts. On an infrequent visit to Bristol after the baptism of his younger sister, his mother had walked him to a churchyard. They trekked waist high through scorched meadows. She'd been almost agreeable.
"Uncle Harry's grave will be in a mess. His gold-digging wife has remarried and doesn't visit."
The heat and tall grass inspired thoughts of Africa and high adventure. Rory ignored the sensation of nettles brushing his knees until he realised he'd been savagely stung. But all in all he
felt the raw joy of living. They negotiated parched meadows and ripening orchards, ignoring dazzling sunlight and swarms of biting insects. Dogging his mother's footsteps he brooded on why she stored her frocks in camphor balls. She was never free of the smell. It was not a stink he resented and ever after camphor coupled its
fragrance to Worcester Pearmains and the frenzy of wasps. Now he pleaded thirst but his mother wouldn't have it.
"We're here to see Harry's grave not steal fruit."
Uncle Harry, his grandfather's brother, had sported huge biceps and tight belly muscles. Among neighbourhood kids he'd flex them.
"Make a tight fist and hit me as hard as you can, I can't be hurt."
Rory was reluctant, he was a serious respecter of person. The wall of knotted flesh met his soft knuckles and made him wince.

"Need a strong body and pure spirit, son, to survive in this world."
Rory cherished the vivid memory of Harry Christy the indestructible hero who'd sailed to war aboard HMS Warspite. Reported lost in the battle of Jutland the ship limped back to Scapa Flow and brought Harry home to local glory. But as his mother said, women were the stronger sex; they had to be to survive the purgatory of having kids. It took Rory years to get purgatory explained. In his mother's opinion men might be tough enough to fight wars but the fools were running from life.
Harry's skull had split like an egg when he fell under a tram in Bristol.
"The daft loon got through the war unscathed then killed himself shopping for a worthless wife."

A squat Norman church with an interesting Saxon belfry, crowded on all sides by great elms, pinpointed their destination. Gladys grimaced.
"This mess used to be a neat graveyard. No congregation these days."
Rory wanted a pee and hopped into a shaded spot over-arched with giant yews. Flaking slate headstones struggled to free themselves from dense undergrowth. Few were upright and few could be read, rusty lichen smothering the legends. Gladys studied the crumbling menhirs then contemptuously rubbed a corner of Harry's headstone.
"You can keep your damned fruits of earthly love - I despise them."
She'd gathered a fistful of meadow flowers and hesitated before dropping them onto the weed-choked plot. She loved Harry almost as much as she loved her father.
"God! Why do we bother?"
Rory quizzed her.
"Why are you mad at Harry?"
She stayed silent for a moment - then burst out savagely.
"That bitch of a wife! It's her fault - she didn't deserve him!"

Flies and midges danced in the stillness. Rory brooded.
How do you conjure Harry's physical splendour rotting inside a shambolic grave?
"But it was the tram that killed him."
"He was doomed the day he married her. Just as I was doomed the day I wed your father."
Rory, returned to imagining death. It must be absolutely rotten. Flies are afraid of dying. He often watched their frenzy in spider webs.

This is a page from Milk and Honey by Gerald Moore, available for purchase from Lazarus Press.

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