me.’
‘My name is Onions. James Onions.’
The man was well-spoken and his name was recently familiar to Jeremiah. ‘How can I help thee, Mr Onions?’
‘I have a complaint. A rather serious complaint.’
‘Nothing too painful, I hope?’ Jeremiah said flippantly. ‘Mebbe you should be seeing a doctor, not me.’
‘I suppose I should have expected a frivolous reply,’ Mr Onions responded, ‘in view of the nature of my complaint.’
‘Which is?’
‘My wife called in here a matter of a couple of weeks ago to request that you add an epitaph, following the death of my mother, to the grave where she and my father, who passed away three years ago, are buried.’
‘I think you’ll find as the work’s bin done, Mr Onions, if you’d like to go and check.’ Jeremiah walked over to a high desk strewn with paper and started rummaging through them for confirmation.
‘I have checked, Mr Goodrich, which is why I’m here.’
‘St Mark’s churchyard in Pensnett, if I remember right,’ Jeremiah murmured, browsing. ‘So what’s the nature of your complaint? The work’s been completed like I said. Course, if you’ve come to pay for it, I ain’t made out the bill yet, but I can soon remedy that.’
‘Let me save you the trouble. I’m paying no bill until a brand new headstone is installed on the grave.’
‘A brand new headstone?’ Jeremiah scratched his head, mystified as to what could be so wrong that a brand new headstone would be justified.
‘Precisely. A brand new headstone. I have a note here of the inscription my family wanted putting on that headstone, Mr Goodrich …’ He felt in his pockets and drew out a piece of paper. ‘No doubt you already have a note of it still, somewhere …’
‘If you can just bear with me a minute, while I find it …’ Jeremiah rootled about again. ‘Ah! What’s this?’ He adjusted his spectacles and scrutinised the piece of paper. ‘To the memory of Jacob Onions who passed away 15th October 1853.’ He looked at his irate visitor. ‘That the one?’
‘That’s the one, Mr Goodrich. If you would be so kind as to read on …’
‘Farewell dear husband must we now part, who lay so near each other’s heart. The time will come I hope when we will both enjoy Felicity.’ Jeremiah looked up questioningly. ‘A fine sentiment, Mr Onions.’
‘The inscription we intended adding was also a fine sentiment, Mr Goodrich. But do you realise what we have ended up with?’
‘I can see what you was supposed to end up with …’
‘Excellent. Then you will realise that what we ended up with, and I quote, “Here also lies the body of Octavia Tether, obliging wife of Henry. May she be as willing in death as she was in life”, is not entirely supportive of my father’s spotless reputation. You have put him in bed with another woman, Mr Goodrich, and my family is not amused. Worse still, you have obviously despatched my honourable, devoted and alas dear departed mother to the bed of Henry Tether.’
‘Our Arthur!’ Jeremiah exclaimed with vitriol. ‘He did it. I’ll kill him, the bloody fool. I swear, I’ll kill him.’
‘I’m going for a drink in the Bell while you get the dinner ready, Mother,’ Arthur said as they stepped out of the pristine dimness of St Michael’s redbrick structure into the sunshine of a late September noon. ‘It’ll give me an appetite. I seem to have lost me appetite this last couple of days as well as this cold I’ve got.’
‘I’ll boil some nettles up in the cabbage, our Arthur,’ Dinah said sympathetically. ‘Nettles always help to keep colds and chills at bay. Your father could do with it as well. I’m sick of seeing him off the hooks all the while.’
Only Dinah accompanied Arthur to church that Sunday morning, since his father, Jeremiah, was at home in bed feeling out of sorts and very sorry for himself. Not that he was an ardent churchgoer; he would always seek some excuse to avoid Sunday worship.
‘By the way, I’m going out this afternoon, Mother.’
‘Oh? Do you think you’m well enough?’
He forced a grin. ‘I’d have to be dead not to go. Anyway, I’m hoping as your nettles will perk me up.’
Arthur left his mother and exited the churchyard by the Bell Street gate while she took a different way, walking with another woman down the broad path that spilled onto Church Street. He entered the Bell Hotel and ordered himself a tankard of best India pale ale which he took to an unoccupied table close to the fireplace. A man whom he knew did likewise, nodded a greeting and sat on a stool at another table. Arthur blew his nose on a piece of rag he took from his pocket, and sniffed. This damned head cold. He’d picked it up from that blustery graveyard at St Andrew’s in Netherton. By association, his thoughts meandered to that pair of headstones in Pensnett churchyard where he’d mixed up the inscriptions. Of course, it was because he’d been taken short while he was doing them. He’d not been concentrating. And how could he when his bowels had been about to explode? Well, it would cost him dear, for his father was adamant that he pay for new headstones himself as punishment. Nor would he be paid for cutting the letters, and he’d better get them right this time.
He stuffed the rag back in his jacket pocket and pondered Lucy Piddock instead. This day had been a long time coming and he’d been counting the hours till he could see her again. It seemed ages since he’d last seen her, and he was by no means sure she cared anything for him at all. But he was hopeful that at least he might have her father on his side.
Four men approached. Two were familiar.
‘D’you mind shifting along the settle, mate?’ one of them said. ‘We’n got a crib match.’
‘Glad to oblige,’ Arthur replied amenably. He removed his tankard from the table as he shifted along the bench that lined the wall on one side of the room and placed it on the next. ‘Are you playing for money?’
‘There’s no point in it unless yo’ am,’ was the pithy reply.
Arthur watched as they began their play, amazed that grown men could become so absorbed in something which he considered so trivial. He finished his beer, stood up and made his way to the bar for another. When he’d got it he turned around to go back to his seat only to see that somebody else was occupying it. The room was filling up so he decided instead to stand by the bar and quietly finish his drink there. Most of the patrons he knew, some only by sight, but those he was better acquainted with merely nodded. He watched, envious of the banter they shared, and it struck him that nobody was bothering to engage him in conversation. Not that he minded right then; he sometimes found it difficult to converse with folk, especially when he was nursing a cold or toothache, and so preferred to be left alone anyway. He leisurely finished what remained of his beer and slipped out to go home, unnoticed by anybody.
It was strong beer they brewed in Brierley Hill and it had gone straight to Arthur’s head. It was on account of the head cold, of course. Two drinks didn’t normally affect him. It did the trick for his appetite, though, for now he was ravenously hungry, feeling weak and wobbly
