Leave the Grave Green

“She’s always chattered like a magpie, from the day she learned to talk, even with strangers.” Sharon’s hands lay loosely in her lap, palms turned up. They might have been disembodied, so unanimated were they, and Kincaid noticed that since he’d seen her last, the small pink nails had been bitten to the quick. “It’s only since I told her about Con that she’s been like this.” She looked up at Kincaid in appeal. “I had to tell her, didn’t I, Mr. Kincaid? I couldn’t let her think he just scarpered, could I? I couldn’t let her think he didn’t care about us.”

Kincaid gave the question careful consideration before answering. “I think you did the right thing, Sharon. It would be hard for her now, regardless, and in the long run I’m sure it’s better to tell the truth. Children sense when you’re lying, and then they have that betrayal to deal with as well as the loss.”

Sharon listened intently, then nodded once when he’d finished. She studied her hands for a moment. “Now she wants to know why we can’t see him. My auntie Pearl died last year and Gran took her to the viewing before the funeral.”

“What did you tell her?”

Shrugging, Sharon said, “Different people do things different ways, that’s all. What else could I say?”

“I imagine she wants some concrete evidence that Con is really gone. Perhaps you could take her to see his grave, afterward.” He gestured at the graves laid out so neatly in the green grass of the churchyard. “That should seem familiar enough to her.”

She turned to him again, her hands clenching convulsively. “There’s not been anyone to talk to, see? Gran doesn’t want to know about it—she disapproved of him anyway—”

“Why was that?” asked Kincaid, surprised that the woman would not have been pleased at a better prospect for her great-granddaughter.

“Marriage is marriage in the eyes of the Lord,” mimicked Sharon, and Kincaid had a sudden clear vision of the old lady. “Gran’s very firm in her beliefs. It made no difference that Con wasn’t living with her. And as long as Con was married I had no rights, Gran said. Turned out she knew what she was on about, didn’t she?”

“You must have girlfriends you can talk with,” said Kincaid, as there seemed no helpful answer to the last question.

“They don’t want to know, either. You’d think I’d got leprosy or something all of a sudden—they act like they’re afraid it might rub off on them and spoil their fun.” Sharon sniffed, then added more softly, “I don’t want to talk to them about Con, anyway. What we had was between us, and it doesn’t seem right to air it like last week’s washing.”

“No, I can see that.”

They sat quietly for a few minutes as the lights began to come on in the cottages. Indistinct shapes moved behind the net curtains, and every so often a pensioner would pop out from one door and then another, putting out milk bottles or picking up papers. It made Kincaid think of those elaborate German clocks, the kind in which the little people bob cheerfully in-and-out as the hour chimes. He looked at the girl beside him, her head again bent over her hands. “I’ll see you get your things back, Sharon. She would want you—” Bloody hell, now he was doing it. “Mrs. Swann would like you to have them,” he corrected himself.

Her response, when it came, surprised him. “Those things I said, the other night… well, I’ve been thinking.” In the fading light he caught a quick flash of her eyes before she looked away from him again. “It wasn’t right, what I said. You know. About her…”

“About Julia having killed Connor, is that what you mean?”

She nodded, picking idly at a spot on the front of her sweatshirt. “I don’t know why I said it. I wanted to hit at someone, I guess.” After a moment she continued in a tone of discovery, “I think I wanted to believe she was as awful as Con said. It made me feel better. Safer.”

“And now?” Kincaid asked, and when she didn’t answer he continued, “You had no reason for making those accusations? Con never said anything that made you think Julia might have threatened him?”

Shaking her head, she said so softly that he had to lean close to catch it, “No.” She smelled of Pears soap, and the good, clean ordinariness of it suddenly squeezed at his throat.

The twilight deepened, and from some of the cottage windows came the blue flicker of televisions. Kincaid imagined the pensioners, all women that he had seen, having their evening meals early so that they could settle down in front of the box, uninterrupted, isolated from themselves as well as one another. He gave a tiny shudder, shaking off the wave of melancholy that threatened him, like a dog coming out of water. Why should he begrudge them their comfort, after all?