The council official’s head jerks as he looks quickly around him.
‘There are rules and regulations covering interments, and I think that they have not been adhered to in this burial ground. For example, graves or lairs had to be at least one and a half feet from a wall. Look,’ the professor indicates a row of headstones, ‘those are clearly not.’ He kicks his foot gently against the long side of a mounded oblong of grass.
‘Coffins are also supposed to be three or four feet down from the surface. I don’t think these are.’
‘Why aren’t they?’ Mr Frame’s voice is worried. ‘Surely there were inspectors to ensure things were done properly?’
The professor shrugs. ‘Not always. This appears to have been a smaller church group, away from the main town. They probably did everything themselves, from laying out bodies to digging the actual grave.’
He walks further along the wall to where the earth was bare. ‘What is also worrying me is this part here. You say the cemetery was closed due to overcrowding?’
Mr Frame nods.
‘Well,’ says Professor Miller, ‘if they weren’t observing the Home Office rules for spacing out coffins, it may be that, in the attempt to bury relatives beside each other, they were doing something which I’ve come across in other small country kirkyards.’
‘Which is?’
‘Breaking up older buried coffins and tipping the contents into the opened trench to make more room. See this bluish-black colour of the earth all around here? That denotes the presence of decaying corpses.’
Mr Frame takes a handkerchief from his pocket and covers his mouth. ‘I suppose if we consult the Record of Burials, it would tell us what they’ve actually done.’
The professor laughs. ‘I doubt if they’ve kept an accurate note. Our ancestors weren’t as bureaucracy-ridden as we’ve become.’
‘You said “our ancestors”,’ Mr Frame enquires. ‘Do you have relatives here?’
‘Yes, from a long long time ago,’ says the professor. ‘It’s one of the reasons I accepted this commission. My wife and daughter always wanted to visit Scotland.’
They are approaching my end of the kirkyard. I breathe quiet and shallow among the stones.
‘Sorbus aucuparia.’ The professor reaches out to touch a leaf of my tree and then withdraws his hand.
‘Mountain ash,’ says Mr Frame.
Professor Miller puts his head on one side. ‘Do you notice it is the only living thing at this end?’
‘Plenty of dead, though,’ jokes Mr Frame.
‘Actually no . . .’ The professor is thoughtful. ‘Not even the dead rest here.’
He frowns and turns slowly to face the sun. ‘At first I thought it was to do with the custom of burying people on an east–west line. Scotland used to be a very God-fearing country, so in many cases the headstone was placed at the west end of the plot.’ He gives a small smile. ‘It was believed that the Lord’s Second Coming would be as the sun rises, from the east, so you would wish to be laid facing Him in preparation for your resurrection. The church itself was usually built at the northern end, not in the centre, so that no one could be shamed by being buried in the shadows of the northern side. If there was such an area it would be kept for suicides, criminals and vagrants. These people wouldn’t have tombstones and that’s why, usually, the north side of an old graveyard will have no memorials.’
‘So that is why there is nothing here?’
‘Except . . .’ said Professor Miller. ‘The church remains are in the right-hand corner. Which means that this isn’t the north side . . . and . . . this part is not just bare, it’s devoid of anything . . . of everything. Of life . . . and . . . death.’
Mr Frame laughs nervously.
And again, suddenly, the realisation is in my mind. Nothing flourishes here. The rowan is the only single thing that exists. Living or dead. And even the tree is strangely still. Now it is springtime and no bird has made its nest among its branches. In the autumn no bird came to eat the red rowan berries. I remember quite clearly last year, when they cascaded onto the ground, small and round and ripe, no ant or insect ate them. They lay until, rotting, they returned to the soil.
The two men move away down towards the gate. I hear Mr Frame say, ‘I think I’ll notify our environmental health department and get them down here immediately. They can decide what to do.’ He paused for a minute.
‘We’ll have to wait for their clearance. Although there may be some work the squad can get on with meantime. Removing that tree for example.’
He calls to the foreman and they have a brief discussion. The workies take their tools and clamber back inside the van.
They are gone.
Silence.
But for how long?
I stand high on the wall. I touch my face; salt tears are there. They are going to destroy my place. I will have no refuge now. Even the criminals and beggars got a place of rest. Not me. I lean far out over the wall and grab a branch of the tree to swing myself down.
An edge cuts into me and tears the surface of my skin as I land at the base of the tree. The rope-thick roots rush up against my body and I roll over onto the soft earth. I see a gash in the sleeve of my jacket. Liquid red squeezes through. A few drops of my blood spill and are quickly swallowed up into the dark soil. I stand up shakily and suddenly, impulsively, I wrap my arms around its solid trunk.
The recoil sends me staggering backwards, dazed and stupefied. As though it had leapt to life beneath my grasp, had become a writhing throbbing snake, slithering against my body.
I dab at my arm. Blood makes me faint and dizzy. That’s it. That explains my feeling of strange revulsion.
I stagger to my feet. I must get away. I take, though I do not know this, what will be my last look at its pearl-white skin and grey-green leaves. My doomed mountain ash.
Later, but it was really too late then. Far, far too late, I found out that rowan trees were planted to ward off evil.
‘You’ve hidden it. Where is it?’
He’s rummaging through the bottom kitchen cupboards as I come in the back door. Fancy dishes, cake plates, water jugs and a decorated fruit bowl are strewn around him on the floor. Emblems of our former family life.
‘Dunno what you mean.’ I drop my rucksack on the floor and edge past him, picking my way among the debris. Cloth napkins, a flower vase. Things we’ve not used in months. Not since she left.
I
