I arrive at the cemetery on a cold, overcast day. The gray sky and chilly breeze make me want to finish my work quickly, and then I feel guilty about not spending more time here. The trees are completely leafless, and their bare twigs form lacy circular shapes against the dull clouds. I stare for a moment at their geometric perfection; it will be months before they leaf out again. When the leaves fall in the autumn, it happens so suddenly, within a span of a few weeks. Like when people die -- it happens so suddenly.
I carry a rake, a broom, a large trowel that I use as a digging tool, a plastic yard-debris bag, and a foam kneeling pad. In a few minutes I have arrived at the block where my parents' graves are located, and I lay the equipment on the ground. Sweeping the stones and raking the surrounding grass for leaves, twigs, and windblown debris of paper and plastic takes only a brief time; I know that the wind will blow more debris into the area later, but for today, at least, the graves will not look neglected. Then with foam pad and trowel in hand I look around for any weeds that may have sprouted and grown during the latter half of summer. When I spot one, I kneel down on the pad, loosen the earth around the weed with the trowel, and pull the weed out. It has rained recently, and the ground is soft and moist, even muddy in the depressions. All of this takes less than fifteen minutes.
Though the weather is raw, I don't leave right away. Getting up stiffly from my pad, I take a seat on a nearby bench for a few minutes. Mum and Dad deserve that. I can't help feeling that if I left as quickly as possible, they would somehow know. I face the gravesite and its double headstone with their names engraved, and think about my childhood with them.
I was born in the waning days of the Great Depression, shortly before the outbreak of World War Two. One of my earliest memories is of my mother pulverizing sugar cubes to make granulated sugar. She laid the cubes between two layers of tea towels and rapped them steadily with a hammer while I stood and peeped over the edge of the kitchen table, watching her. Looking back, I assume that sugar was in short supply in those days, possibly rationed because of the war; she was probably lucky to get her hands on sugar in any form.
My other earliest memory is being bathed in a round metal basin in the kitchen sink, sitting in the basin and holding onto the rim with my little hands. We didn't have a proper bathroom in our little row house in Cokeworth, just a loo in a little shed attached to the side of the house; when I was older I bathed, like my parents and my brother, in a big metal bath set on a square of oilcloth on the kitchen floor, in water made warm by the boiling contents of kettles heated on the stove. Our house had two small bedrooms upstairs and no front garden; the door opened directly onto the street.
My dad went into the mill at the age of twelve. He worked hard and didn't drink his money away, because he wanted to provide for my mum, my brother, and me. He kept us in school until we were sixteen years old. Then I went into the mill, but the four extra years of schooling made a difference for me. I was able to move up to a supervisory post and afford a better house for my wife and the two daughters who came along. It was higher up on the hill, farther from the river, although still within sight of the chimneys of the mill. It had an indoor bathroom and three little bedrooms, so each girl could have her own. It had a tiny front garden, as well as a back garden, and a bay window in the front room.
When I was a boy, I was a bit of a trouble-maker, but not on purpose. Some of my mates were free with their fists when someone crossed them, or they would throw stones or swing pieces of wood like cudgels. They weren't averse to a scuffle or a dust-up to settle a dispute. I had my share of ill-temper, like any boy, but I had less control of the consequences. Rocks could fly through the air when I was angry, even though I was sure I hadn't actually thrown them, or a branch would fall from a tree and strike my foe, even though I hadn't actually swung it. I was frightened by the unpredictability of these events -- I have always wanted to be in control of my actions -- and I learned that I could do so by keeping my moods strictly in check. It is possible, if you try, to develop an extremely even temper.
My mates took to calling me "Peaceful Percy" because I never fought or argued. I didn't like that moniker, at least not the "Percy" part, because Percy is not, in my mind, a very masculine name, and at any rate my name is Edward. But they just meant it in fun.
I have maintained my peaceful demeanor all my life, and it has stood me in good stead. My money hasn't been wasted on excessive liquor, fines for disturbing the peace, replacement costs of destroyed property, or lost wages, so I have been able to take good care of my family. I thought I had it all figured out.
My mum died in her fifties from some female complaint -- I was never too sure about the details -- and we buried her here in the Cokeworth cemetery. While my dad lived we all kept her gravesite neat, sweeping off the dead leaves, scouring the lichens off her modest tombstone, and pulling the weeds. But my brother moved away and my father became more feeble, so it all fell to me. Our last visit each year was always in October, after the leaves had finished falling and the weeds had finished growing. When he died at the age of eighty, we buried him beside my mum, and for the last five years I have done the grave-tending alone. Last year I laid my wife to rest in this cemetery also, in a newer area some distance from my parents' graves. It seems to be a pattern in my family -- the women die too young, but the men just go on and on.
I remain on the bench for maybe five minutes, knowing I will start feeling cold if I don't get moving again soon. Even in wool pants, a thick coat, and a watch cap, I can feel the chill trying to work its way into every crevice of my clothing. No one else is visiting the cemetery today. Why would they? The beauty of spring and summer has totally vanished, and even the red and yellow leaves that lend a final brilliance to the very end of the growing season have turned brown, shriveled, and fallen. Tomorrow is November first, All Saints' Day, the entrance into the darkest months of the year. Maybe people will come tomorrow.
I look right and left once more before standing and gathering my tools, as if to reaffirm that I am entirely alone, but now, in the final moments of my visit, I see another figure approaching on the path, a woman who appears to be about my age. Somehow I am not surprised. Most of the people buried here were old, and those of us who remember them are only a little less old. The youngsters have no reason to come to a cemetery.
When she nears the bench where I am sitting, the woman stops and regards me. She is wearing a russet-colored knitted cap, from under the edges of which there escape a few wisps of graying hair. A brown knee-length coat with wooden buttons, a knitted off-white muffler wrapped around her throat, thick stockings, and sensible shoes make up her costume. Her hands are buried deep in her coat pockets and her shoulders are hunched slightly as if to keep the cold air from seeping in around her collar. Despite her warm layers she appears to be slight of build, as though life has not been generous to her.
I sense that she would like to rest on the bench but hesitates to intrude on my space, so I smile slightly and invite her to sit down if she wishes. "There is plenty of space for two," I say, moving my tools, which had been leaning up against the bench seat.
"Thank you," she says, seating herself on the other end of the bench. "I've been here visiting a family grave, and it's rather a long walk back home. But I won't rest long. It gets dark so early now." She looks down at her lap, not facing me.
"I think we're the only people here," I say. "I've been doing some grave-tending too, my parents' graves," and I gesture with my hand toward the bare grass and the headstone.
"I saw you when you came in," the woman remarks, "but I thought you were the sexton because you were carrying tools." Now she is looking me in the face, and I see how the cold air has made her cheeks pink and taken away some of the drabness.
"Me? Oh, no," I reply, laughing a little. "I'm not the sexton." I know the sexton who serves the old church that is located at the edge of the cemetery; he is a short, rather rotund, bald man who looks nothing like me. "I'm just an ordinary ex-millworker, finishing out my working years as a machinist until I can claim my pension." The mills closed down some years ago; that is why I have changed jobs.
"Have you lived here all your life, then?" the woman asks me. It is a generic opening remark, I notice, but inviting of more conversation than a bland comment about the weather. I feel a tiny spark of pleasure at the prospect of having a brief conversation with someone before returning to the solitude of my house.
"Yes." I tell her, "I worked in the mill, like my dad. I'm afraid my life has been pretty unexciting. Are you a Cokeworth native too?"
"No," the woman says, shaking her head slowly, "I moved here after I married."
"But you have family graves here," I state, recalling her earlier remark.
"Just two," the woman says pensively. "I came to visit my son's grave today."
"I am so sorry." No words can do it justice. Of all the things that can happen to you, the death of your child is the worst. I should know. The woman looks away briefly toward to west, where the sun is getting ready to set, peeping out from between the clouds. The sun is so far south at this time of the year.
"You have someone else here also?" I continue.
"Just my husband. He died of drink some years ago, when he was fifty. The heavens forgive me for saying it, but it wasn't much of a loss. He was a sorry excuse for a husband." I am a little startled by her frankness. She turns her head to face me again and adds, "But I am very sad about losing my son. He was a sweet boy and so smart, so clever. I was so proud of him. Now I have no one."
"What did your son do?"
"He was a teacher. But he never married and I have no grandchildren. Do you have children?"
I notice that her eyes are pale blue. They harmonize with her gray hair and the rusty-reddish cap. Speaking of her child has animated her expression; he must have been the brightest spot of her existence, it seems to me.
"I had two daughters and two grandsons, but one of my daughters has passed away." You see, I think, we have something in common.
"Does she lie here also?" the woman inquires in kindly tones.
"No," I say ruefully. "She lies alongside her husband in his hometown. This is such a bad business, children dying before their parents."
"Yes," the woman reflects, frowning. "It should never happen like this. But at least you have your other daughter and your grandsons. I hope they are a comfort to you and your wife."
"My wife has passed away also, and I rarely see my daughter or her family. They live near London." (Make that I never see them. She has stayed estranged from us because she always thought we favored her sister. She almost never brought her own son to see us, and never the other boy. I haven't seen her since her mother's funeral.)
The woman is silent for a few moments. Her hands, encased in tan gloves, are out of her pockets now, and she twists them together briefly. "You don't mind talking about your family?"
"No," I answer. "I am too old to care what people think about me now."
"I know what you mean. I no longer have anything to hide, or anyone to be afraid of, or even anything that anyone would take away. When I turned fifty, I decided to stop caring what people think about me."
"You know what?" I say. "I don't believe that people are thinking about us at all." It isn't meant as a joke, but it sounds like a little joke anyway, and the woman smiles. I am glad she smiles; I am glad I said "us", her and me against the impersonal world.
I want to get up, walk, stretch my muscles, but I don't want to leave her here alone on this bench, so I say, "Would you like to show me your son's grave?"
She looks up at my face as I stand. "I can show you where it is, but there's not a tombstone yet. I am trying to save up money, bit by bit, to buy one eventually. I never expected to buy one so soon. He was only thirty-eight." Her face is looking sad again as she stands. Her head comes only to my shoulder; she seems too small for such a burden.
As we direct our steps toward the region of the cemetery where the most recent interments are located, I decide to introduce myself.
"My name is Edward Evans, by the way."
"Eileen Prince."
We come to the location of the grave. Even without a stone, she knows exactly where it is; the traces of the disturbance of the earth are not entirely obliterated yet.
"What was his name?" I ask.
"Severus."
"Severus Prince?"
"No, Severus Snape. Snape was my husband's name. But he's gone now, my son's gone, I have no more connection to that name. So I have gone back to my original name. It seems more like me."
"Why did you marry him, if you don't mind my asking?" The question seems a little bold, but we have both already declared that we are beyond caring what people might think.
"You can guess. He was charming, I thought I was in love, I fell pregnant, then everything went downhill." She doesn't look at me as she says this, just continues staring at the bare earth of her son's grave.
"That's the short story?" I ask.
"Are you interested in the long story? He was older than me, and good-looking in a dark, craggy way. And he seemed self-assured, self-confident, like he could take care of me. I didn't have any other boyfriends -- I was shy in those days -- and I was flattered that he paid attention to me. Then I fell pregnant, and so we married. But he was no great shakes as a husband. He couldn't hold a job for very long because he was always getting into arguments, and it was always the other person's fault. So we lived a hardscrabble existence, and he took out his frustrations on me and our boy. And there was the drinking; that didn't help."
She sighs deeply. "I don't know. I don't mean to put all the blame on him. I'm sure I wasn't what he wanted in a wife either. I could have put up with it for myself, but not for my boy. I sent him away to a boarding school up north. That was so hard to do. It tore my heart out, but I needed to get him away from my husband. There were no good answers, just different degrees of bad." She is silent for a few moments, during which I don't know what to say, and then she asks, "What was your family like?"
I feel a little apologetic because my story is better than hers. "I was pretty lucky, in comparison. My dad didn't have a lot of schooling, but he was always kind and loving. When he was close to dying, I asked him once if he regretted anything and he said no. He said he had a chance, once, to send me away to school on a scholarship, but he turned it down because he couldn't bear to be parted from me. He said, 'You were such a good son. I could tell you would succeed, no matter what school you went to. I didn't want to send you away. I wanted to keep you.' And he did. We lived here in this same town, and I had him for a good long time. We always got along together well."
Eileen lifts her face to look at mine. "I wish my son had had a father like yours. So many things would have been different. It sounds like your family did it right."
A twinge of guilt steals over me for suggesting that my family was trouble-free, and I need to set the story straight. "Maybe it's just luck. My mates called me Peaceful Percy, but I couldn't make peace in my own family."
She looks at me quizzically.
"My older girl -- I hardly ever see her now. My younger girl, the one who died, won a place in a special school up north, and even though we loved them both equally, my older girl could never believe that. She was jealous of her sister's success. She wasn't happy with herself, so she persisted in believing that no one else was happy with her either. I don't know what more we could have done to change that. She and her sister were different people, that's all. My brother and I are different people too, but we get along."
Eileen continues staring at the the bare ground with a scattering of small weeds that have sprouted out of the disturbed soil. Even bundled in her warm clothes, she looks so small and vulnerable. Once she had a family, someone to love. Now it has all shrunk to this, a patch of barren earth in an obscure cemetery under a cold, leaden sky.
"I missed my boy so terribly, but I knew it was for his own good."
"I missed my daughter too." I think to myself that I still have hopes of repairing the relationship with my remaining daughter, but Eileen has no one now. I dare not express this thought. It is time to move on.
"Let's walk back toward the gate, and you can show me the kind of tombstones you like," I suggest.
"Yes, I should be going before it gets dark," she agrees.
We walk back along the paths, commenting on the stones. I try to keep my remarks very non-committal because I don't know her taste or her budget, and I fear speaking ill of a design she actually admires. There are tall, old-fashioned columns topped with angels; scroll-shaped stones engraved with old-fashioned poetry; cherubs and little lambs; flat, spare stones with only a name in Roman letters and a bare birth-year and death-year. Some declare their owner's military service. Some have only a man's name and, engraved underneath it, the single word "Wife". Some modern-looking stones include engraved sprays of flowers and photographs of the deceased.
Finally she points to a grave marker of polished granite, flush with the grass, not expensive-looking but beautifully done, with the deceased's full name and full dates of birth and death, a line of inscription that reads "At Peace", and an attractive scrolled border. "Like that one," she says. "Simple, but dignified and lovely. And I could afford it."
"What would it say?" I ask.
"Severus Snape, January 9, 1960 to May 2, 1998. Beloved Son," she answers.
"That would be very nice," I say. "Your son was only a few days older than my daughter; she was born in January 1960 also. Today is the anniversary of her death. October 31, 1981. Seventeen years ago."
I glance at Eileen; she has an odd, unreadable expression on her face. "That was an unforgettable day," she says.
"Yes, unforgettable, " I answer. "The death of a child is so catastrophic. The second of May of this year must be unforgettable for you too."
We arrive at the bench again, not far from the main gate. I stop and say, "I need to scrape the mud off my boots before I get in my car," and I sit on the bench, pull the trowel from my sack, and, crossing each ankle over the opposite knee in turn, scrape the mud from the sides of my boot soles. But there is also mud compacted between the treads of my soles, and the trowel is too broad and blunt to get it out, so I pick up a twig to pry out the mud, but the fallen twigs are dry and brittle; they snap easily under pressure. I should have brought a nail. I don't want to track this mud into my car.
"I have a better stick. You can use this," she says, and she pulls a slender brown stick from her pocket and holds it out to me. I reach to take it in my hand and stare in confusion. It looks too good for the task, polished, with a little carving at the thicker end.
"Are you...sure?" I stammer. "This looks awfully nice."
"Go ahead," she laughs. "It won't be damaged."
The stick in my hand is awakening old, buried memories. I gaze at it, shaking my head slowly, and an image swims into my vision, an image of my dead daughter's wand. I have not seen a wand since she died, but I feel certain that that is what this is. A wand. And now it is a mud-digger? I feel paralyzed; then I look up at her again and see the look of bright expectation on her face. She really means that I should do this, so I do. As I lever the hunks of mud out of the treads of my boots, I remark, "This stick reminds me of my late wife's knitting needles. If you have another one, you could do some knitting." I feel compelled to pretend that I don't know what it really is. Maybe she does have another one, inherited from her husband or her son.
"Yes, I could," she agrees. "Making scarves. That would be a higher use for it."
Not so high as its original purpose, I think. Do these things wear out? Run down? Is it non-functional now? I do not ask.
When my boot soles are clean I wipe off the wand with my pocket handkerchief and inspect it; it appears undamaged. I hand it back to her and she stows it in the depths of her coat pocket.
The sun is setting, and I know the temperature will fall swiftly.
"Let me give you a ride home so that you don't have to walk," I say. "It will be cold and dark soon." She demurs at first; she does not want to put me out of my way, but I offer the idea that we parents of dead children should stick together and support one another, and she agrees. I put the tools in the boot of my car and then open the car door for her. My father taught me good manners.
"I have no one to go home to. If you do not either, would you like to stop at a tea shop for a cup of tea and a little bite to eat?" I do not usually speak so boldly, but at my age I now have nothing to be afraid of and nothing to lose.
"A warm and cheerful place? That would be lovely, but you must let me pay for my own." That is okay with me. I am Peaceful Percy. I will not argue. And there is something we need to talk about.
Beloved Son by Oregonian
Story Notes:
This is Oregonian of Slytherin House, writing for the Terrible Two-Shot Challenge, using the third prompt, "What A Tangled Web We Weave". Thanks, as always, to my wonderful betas, Islastorm/Elaine and Will.