St. Mary's and All Saints Churchyard, Eyford, Kent
an original story
I.
George sat before the fire in his father’s chair, his right hand gripped around the family crest carved into the dark wood, his view traveling from the fireplace to the portraits of ancestors above it. The eyes of the painted lords and ladies, some of whom wore white wigs or white ruffled collars, seemed to shine with life in the flickering light.
“I have something for you, dear boy,” said Captain Thomas, who walked into the room with a dust-coated bottle in his hand. “This rum’s traveled a long way with me, all the way from the West Indies. All the way from Jamaica. Over rough seas, through calm and through storm. Good Jamaica rum, yes, just the thing to settle your nerves.”
He poured a generous amount of rum into a glass which he then transferred to George’s shaking hand. George took a drink and felt the warm bite of it in his mouth and down his throat, but the fear remained in his eyes and his hands continued to shake.
“Think of it this way,” said Captain Thomas, whose face was reddening with the drink. “I know that you were born in this house and raised in this house and, having lived all your young life in this house, regard it as your home. Your permanent home, your home forever, a home that now belongs to you and to no one else. But this house is, in a sense, not truly your home but merely a room in an inn, where you will stay for just one night. Another man slept there last night and still another will sleep there tomorrow.
Just look around at the pictures on walls, dear boy. All the previous tenants that have come and gone. Your father, his father, his father, and so on and so on back to the days of Henry VIII. They all came and went, all of them, and they all left the house, and, more importantly, the family, intact for the heirs to come.
Now, George, your father is dead, may he rest in peace and rise in glory, and you are the master of this house, the paterfamilias, and as the paterfamilias it falls upon you to avenge this injury to the family. You have no need of my opinion of what sort of a man Lieutenant Marsh is and of his shameful conduct towards your sister.”
Words burned their way up George’s throat and collected in his mouth — rake, libertine, scoundrel, blackguard. Smooth-tongued liar, breaker of promises. Poor Kate, he thought, seduced and abandoned and now with child.
“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” said Captain Thomas. “I can read you like a book. You’re just like your father in that way, in fact I told him those exact words more than one or twice. You’re thinking, ‘yes, I am afraid, scared to death in fact, but I am resolute and will not let any fear prevent me from my duty as a man and a brother.’”
“I know, I know,” said George. “I’m only worried because as a military man he knows his way around a gun.”
“If you were to take a hundred paces, and then turn around and open fire then I would agree with you. But you are to take only ten, and at that distance there’s not much difference between a good shot and a bad shot, the same way you don’t need to be a crack shot to hit a fish in a barrel.”
After the fireplace was extinguished and the candles snuffed out, George retired to his bedroom, which had sheltered in him in good health and in high fever, as a boy and as a man, and spent an almost sleepless night within its walls.
They started before dawn in a horse-cart that Captain Thomas himself drove. George looked, left and right, at the grounds, at the familiar childhood haunts that seemed somehow strange in the watery light. He saw the old brick garden wall, which once loomed over him like the citadel of Troy but now reached only his shoulder. He thought of the garden behind it, of the time when old Blackie dug up all of the newly-planted herbs in burying his bone. He was a good dog, Blackie. How long ago had he died? Twelve years ago?
The cart rolled down the dirt path, past the hedge maze that Kate once got lost in and the little wood where he and she once played make-believe. Fairy wood, they called it, Puck’s wood, and in their imagination two moss-covered boulders became the thrones of Oberon and Titania. They were up before the cock’s crow, before the earliest rising farmer who could witness their ride to the dueling ground beyond the old pear orchard.
George and Lieutenant Marsh stood back to back, each holding a gun. George’s second was Captain Thomas, the Lieutenant’s a private soldier from his regiment. The sun had begun to shine through the morning mist and seemed to stare down upon them like a pupilless eye. In the quiet one could hear birdsong from the nearby trees, the rattling of leaves, the distant rumble of a farmer’s horse-cart.
They began taking their ten paces. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight —
After the eighth pace the Lieutenant pivoted and shot George in the back. George fell to the ground. Lieutenant Marsh and his second fled through the overgrown orchard to the nearby woods. Captain Thomas cut his horse free from its cart and rode as fast as he could to Dr. Mills’ house. The two men returned to find George surrounded by a pool of dark blood on the dewy grass. Dr. Mills pronounced him dead at that moment.
Captain Thomas and Dr. Mills rode out to find the undertaker.
The following day, which was a Sunday, Captain Thomas, Dr. Mills, Kate, more distant relations, an old family servant and the village parson watched as the sexton buried him in the churchyard.
II.
“No, it’s not from India,” said Mark, pint glass in hand. He drank more than a mouthful and then continued. “India Pale Ale was made for export to India, to be strong enough to survive the sea voyage.”
“Thank you for enlightening me,” said Dave, who took a sip of his own pint of India Pale Ale and imagined Kipling’s Soldiers Three.
“That’s right,” said a graying man in glasses next to them at the bar. “I was in Madras, Fusiliers, and we used to get shipments every fortnight. We’d get into it, let me tell you, we’d get into it on payday, and on leave in the hill stations. It was stronger then, I think, not watered down like it is today, but then again I think we had a better head for liquor in those days. Not to take anything away from you, boys. You’re joining the Army?”
“His Majesty’s Army Air Corps,” said Mark, with pride.
“God bless you,” said the old man, “and let me buy you a pint of India Pale Ale that’s neither gone to nor come from India. Back in those days the Army had nothing that flew, unless I suppose you count Lieutenant Colonel Fitzhampton’s pet falcon, which we adopted as a sort of mascot of the regiment. Let me tell you, if I was fifty years younger, or forty years younger, or even thirty years younger, I would be fighting the Hun right beside you.”
The publican came round and took their lunch order, which was a cheese ploughman’s for Mark and a steak and kidney pie for Dave.
“It’s on the house,” the publican said as he pumped a nut-brown pint for another regular. “Bless you, boys, and God protect you. I was in the Great War myself. And lost a brother.”
After their lunch they walked past the tearoom and the butcher’s to the bookshop next to the railway station. Dave recalled many past visits. Both he and the books had grown, he reflected, in his case from boy to youth to man and in theirs from Winnie-the-Pooh to The Thirty-Nine Steps to David Copperfield. He would need a shorter, lighter book, he thought, for the journey to Rochester and the barracks, and thus his eyes fell upon the shelf labeled “new and recent bestsellers.” He picked them up one by one, Appointment with Death, Random Harvest, The Code of the Woosters, and chose the latter.
He had been on the station platform many times before, to board trains to town, which had its cinema, or farther afield, to Ramsgate for seaside holidays or once or twice to London.
“That’s our train, I think,” said Mark, pointing to the distance.
The train pulled into the station and stopped. The two of them carried their bags into the carriage and sat down next to each other. It started moving again and instead of reading his book Dave watched the familiar little station leaving through the window. They then passed the green where they used to play cricket and the spire of the church in which they were baptized.
“I’ll come and join you soon,” said Dave, who did not smoke and did not particularly relish the idea of standing around in the cold, breathing in the others’ smoke. “Just let me finish this chapter.” He had bartered his cigarette rations with the other men, saving up enough to buy a few new books.
Mark walked out into the night and Dave sat on his cot and opened his book. The barracks was mostly empty save for a few other men who were writing letters to wives, mothers, sisters or sweethearts. He put down the book and let his mind drift back to that marching afternoon’s daydream.
He and Mark, childhood friends, conquering heroes, favorite sons, returning home on a flag-draped train with VCs on their chests. Everyone at the station to meet them, from mum and dad and grandmum and granddad to Jonathan, Colin, Aunt Edith, little Jimmy, Mr. Stephenson, Mr. Hall, the publican, the vicar, the old man, Dr. Williams. Everyone, butcher, baker, candlestick maker. And especially Eliza and Anne, in their finest Sunday dresses, eyes shining and faces beaming to see their soldiers come home.
Rationing over and plenty on the table, a feast, eggs and bacon, warm, freshly baked bread and yolk-yellow butter, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, treacle tart and thick custard. Pint-glasses of nut-brown ale and decanters of port. And, more importantly, the laugher of old friends.
He thought especially of Anne. He imagined the two of them revisiting all of their old places, which had remained the same as when he had left them, then walking along the riverside in the shade of the trees, just like they used to.
They could sit in a particularly shady spot and talk of the past and then of the future, of the young, innocent sunlit days and of how in his absence she had searched her heart to find that things were now clear, very clear, that she truly knew her own feelings now and wanted him to know that she felt the same way about him.
He then reflected that this fantasy would only make the reality less bearable and thus stopped.
He resumed the scene. Bertie Wooster was telling Jeeves that he did not need his help because he, Bertie Wooster, had come up with the perfect plan for untangling their friends’ romantic complications.
“I know, Jeeves, that it might seem like a deuced complicated situation but I’ve been using the old bean and —
At that moment a Luftwaffe bomb found its target.
He had died for king and country approximately 13 miles from the village in which he had been born. After much work by the army doctor, the coroner and the embalmer, the coffin journeyed to its final resting place down the same tracks to the same station from which he had left.
With military ceremony they buried him in the churchyard.
III.
Dr. Singh put his shoes on and backed out of the driveway, then drove past the bus stop, brick two-story houses and small green parks. He turned onto the high street and passed Betfred, Nando’s and the closed George and Dragon, Eyford Arms and Red Lion Inn pubs. I can’t wait, he thought, until they open back up again, until we can sit down together with a beer and not worry about spreading this horrific disease. He remembered first moving to Eyford, his first pints at there, meeting friends, his discovery of the little still-worshipping historic church. The Red Lion, he thought, used to have pub quizzes every Friday night. In his mind the pub quiz, once taken for granted, became a symbol of everything joyful and superfluous and now lost.
Only a handful of early morning pedestrians and dogwalkers were out and he could count only one not wearing a mask.
“I thought we’d trying something different this week,” said Dr. Morris, taking a black and green package out of her large purse. “Kenyan shade grown. It gets very good reviews online.”
“I’m sure it’ll be better than the mud we’ve been drinking the past two weeks,” said Dr. McMullen. “Speaking of the past two weeks, I would like to thank each and every one of you for going above and beyond for our patients. This must seem terribly trite, terribly cliched, but remember that we’re all on the same team. All of us, from the hospital manager to the surgeon to the people doing the washing up.”
They were sat round the staff room table under fluorescent lights. Through the window one could see an almost full cark park and the occasional car speeding down the motorway.
“I just feel bad for you, Dr. Singh,” said Dr. Morris. “It’s been a real trial by fire, isn’t it?”
“It hasn’t been a problem,” said Dr. Singh. “Truly.”
“I mean,” Dr. Morris continued, “your first job out of medical school and it’s the biggest crisis we’ve seen in our lifetimes.”
“I wish I had some profound, inspiring words for you,” said Dr. McMullen. “Most of all, I wish I could tell you that this will all be over in a month, or two months, or six months.”
“I’ve something to say along those lines,” said Dr. Singh. “I became a doctor because I had serious health problems as a child. For a few years I was in and out of hospital and the doctors and nurses there helped me get through it. And I decided I wanted to help other people in the same way.”
Dr. McMullen spoke after a pause. “That’s great to hear. That’s very inspiring.”
Dr. Morris noticed the lack of commitment or enthusiasm in Dr. McMullen’s words and looked around the room to see tired faces.
“When I was a teenager,” he said, “and my brother or I would complain about something, our father would say, ‘You think you have serious problems? Let me tell you about the Blitz.’ I think we may be facing a blitz of our own.”
Of course I have a headache, Dr. Singh told himself, silently, as he drove home through the darkness. His headlights illuminated signs, hedgerows, brick walls and other pieces of the landscape that seemed strangely drained of color. Of course I have a headache. It would be abnormal for someone in my situation to not have a headache, or indeed to feel well in general. You don’t need to be a doctor to connect the throbbing in my head, the ringing in my ears, the flushing of my face to stress, fear, long hours, lack of sleep, and frequent caffeine refuelings, to say nothing of wearing a surgical mask for twelve hours straight.
He felt his nose and cheeks. The mask had cut into his face the way he imagined a knight’s iron helmet would. He prescribed himself a whiskey and sleep.
The next morning he saw the other doctors’ fatigue, red veins in watery white eyes.
He could almost hear the elderly patients wheezing or gasping or coughing, like dogs straining against their leashes, as he drove home after dark. Of course you’re fatigued, he told himself, and as for the chills and sore throat? A cold, surely.
When he got home the thermometer showed a fever temperature, which started rising. He called the hospital and spent the night coughing and cold sweating.
I’ll just stay home and wait this one out; sleep it off, sleep it off — 10:17 and still awake — 11:49 and still awake — ice-cold, then warm and desert-dry — reawakened at 2:39 — at 3:53 — at 4:27.
He saw the sunlight through the window the next morning but could not drag himself out of bed.
Gasping — wheezing — the heart pounding faster and faster — mouth and nose and throat pulling air into previously damaged lungs — sheets and blankets drenched in sweat — the piling of every blanket in the house on top of him, which did not keep out the burning — freezing inner cold — the thoughts running down a half-dozen black corridors — the fears, the reassurances, the rationalizations — shivering, shivering — sucking in as much air as possible, pulling it in with every muscle of mouth and throat and chest again and again and again and again and —
He was admitted as a patient in his own hospital.
Bright lights — the gurney down the hallway to the emergency room — the voices becoming muffled distant echoes — “patient’s medical history” — head heavy, the world spinning — “…and childhood pneumonia” — multiple electronic machines beeping — “patient’s blood oxygenation is dropping” — drowning in air — arms shivering — shoulders shivering — back shivering — legs shivering — the insertion of an intravenous drip — day — night — sleeping — awakening — “I think that might be our best option at this point” — the world of appearances dimming — “initiate artificial respiration” — insane dreams, fiery dreams, fanged dreams, indescribable dreams, screaming dreams, dreams invading the white hospital room with vicious colors —
Wearing masks and standing apart from each other, they buried him in the churchyard.
Postscript:
The Herodian relics are all that relics should be — columns distorted, well worked over by time, Absalom’s tomb with its bulbous roof and odd funnel tapering out of it. The armies of the dead in all directions, interminable. A fine thing to obsess yourself with, burial and lamentation and lying about under the walls of Jerusalem waiting for the Messiah’s trumpet to sound. A few Arab hens are scratching up dust and pecking. Not a breakfast egg comes to the table that isn’t death-speckled.
Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account
Author’s Note:
As a boy first discovering the pleasures of history I reacted with a certain horror upon reading about ancient cities which had seen the lives and deaths of many generations. I imagined the modern, living cities as mere iceberg tips above the surface of a vast accumulation of skeletons. I imagined that the physical remains of the dead left little room for living. Considering their continent’s history of war, how could any European dig a flowerbed without unearthing the skull of legionnaire, a knight, a musketeer or a Tommy gunner? (On hindsight I suppose that these fantasies were very influenced by my childhood love of dinosaurs, which we primarily know through their fossilized skeletons.)
If you talked to me in 2020 you probably heard me attempt to describe a feeling of truly living through history in a way I had never felt before in my adult life. That summer I watched some British coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and this story came from my mind combining frequent references to the ‘Blitz spirit’ and the queen’s evocation of “We’ll Meet Again” with that old, childish intuition that death is the raw material of history.
For those curious, Eyford, Kent does not exist and I stole the name from a similarly fictitious village in a Sherlock Holmes story.
well done and a pleasure to read