The Little Death

by Sarah Till

  The earth’s teeming with ants and I dig with a stick to see where they’re coming from. A millipede crawls out and makes me jump, and I lift a stone to see where it came from. There’s a piece of brown leather under the stone, and I pull at it before I realise what I’m doing. It comes away easily. It’s a man’s shoe, its laces long rotted, and its heel worn. I think for a minute and look inside. It’s full if dirt and has clearly been there for a long time. Hadn’t Polly written that Jimmy had brown shoes on when he disappeared? This was the only place that she hadn’t looked in all the years she’d been searching the moor.

  I run down the valley, the shoe in my hand. When I reach the wall I jump over it and run inside the house, searching for my car keys. I’m leaving muddy footprints all over the floor. The shoe on the table are dripping peat mud onto my cream carpet. I find the keys in the kitchen drawer and grab a towel and rub my hair. I’m breathless and I run upstairs to find the first instalment of her notes. Yes. Brown shoes. It must be. I’m running around, finding the address in her spidery writing, pulling on a dry coat and pushing the shoe into a carrier bag. I’ve put a huge blue cross on the map where I found the shoe and I push everything I need to show her into a carrier bag.

  It’s not until I’m finally ready to set off that I see the brown envelope behind the door. It seems she’s already been here today and left this. It was posted through the door and addressed to Gabriel. There’s a note on the outside:

  Dear Gabriel

  I’m sorry I didn’t come this morning as arranged, I’ve had a lot to do as you’ll see when you read this. If you didn’t turn up then I hope that nice Patricia will pass this on to you. There’s no need to worry, just read what’s in the envelope and all with be clear.

  All my best

  Polly

  I rip it open and stand down. How did I miss her on the moor? I kept my eyes peeled in case she was behind me the whole way. The mud from the shoe is dripping over the rug now, and I put it in the sink, putting the kettle on.

  Hope Springs Eternal

  Two days after Colin’s funeral I went up to the moor. Like a lot of things in my life, I hadn’t realised how much I cared. I missed him. I missed the early morning tea that I had often wished was a little bit later. I missed the tap of his pen on the arm of the chair when he was doing his crossword. The way his glasses perched on his nose when he was reading the paper.

  I’d missed our Saturday nights out for a while. It had been a release for me. Getting dressed up. Putting on that lovely jewellery Colin had bought me and the dresses I bought in the villages. I looked after my figure and made sure they always fitted me. I missed the dancing. The closeness of another human being. The laughter around us and the music. The radio wasn’t the same. I finally admitted that I missed Colin. Some of our acquaintances – I wouldn’t call then friends – came to the funeral and told me I was welcome to go to the social club with them. I never did. I retreated into a strange little world of trying to work out where you went after you were dead. I’d given up on God after Jimmy died, and Colin wasn’t religious.

  Yet when I was on the moor, the evidence was everywhere. For a start, the wreckage. I’d seen it first years ago. The weather gets pretty bad up there and sometimes the earth is scorched. But all through me mam and dad dying, people coming and going and then Colin dying, it keeps on, year after year. The clouds are still there and the sun. The wreckage is a constant and something else changes around it, grinding it down and rusting it. So I know there’s something bigger than me.

  I think that’s what’s kept me going. Coming back day after day, the seasons turning how they do and me getting older. Flowers die off. Heather fades to brush and I come across dead creatures all the time up there. It was only when I was sat throwing some bread to a couple of sparrows near the wall one day in March that I realised that it’s all quite separate, it is. Oh yes. All that weather and the air and the warm and cold and all that, well, it’s to do with the sun, obviously, but it’s life. And death. And I’d been getting worked up about something that happens every day in families everywhere.

  True, Jimmy dying was a bit out of the ordinary. And Colin died young. But in a lot of ways we’re no different to them bunny rabbits who die up on ‘t moor and those birds who just drop out of the sky. We just think we’re different. I had to laugh when I realised. I thought I was different. Special. Hard done to. But life is bloody hard. Then we die. But it’s good as well. There are some good bits.

  I learned to drive. I was sixty when I passed me test and I needed fifty-two lessons, but it clicked eventually. I still had Colin’s car and I kept that for a while, then I changed to a smaller mini, then my red fiesta. Everything became and lot easier. If it was raining, I could sit in the car and wait until it stopped. The only days I didn’t go up there was when it was snowing heavily. I got to know the area very well and started to make some notes as well as my drawings. Once a week I went to the library to look up the names of the animals and plants. Jimmy was here somewhere, in them and I was happier than I had ever been.

  Then, one rainy day, I drove up and couldn’t find a parking space. Cars were parked double and There was an ambulance at the end of the pathway. I got my binoculars out and I could see yellow coats in the distance, up on the ridge. A group of people were watching at the end of the road, just in front of the farmhouse and I went over. My heart was beating out of my chest because I thought they had found him. What else could it be? One of them lampers, poaching for bloody eggs must have stumbled over him. I bloody knew it, I thought. I was right all along. My Jimmy. I was already feeling vindicated.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  A woman turned around and smiled at me. And that’s how I got to know Sarah.

  ‘Oh. There’s a man’s body been found up there. He’s passed over.’ She did a strange thing with her hand and I wondered if she was a vicar or something. But she carried on. ‘A walker or something. They’re just going to get him.’

  I pressed her.

  ‘A walker? Not someone from the crash?’

  She’d glanced over at the wreckage.

  ‘Why? Are you looking for someone?’

  I weighed her up. She looked a bit la-de-da with her silk dressing gown thing over a long dress. Her hair was what I like to call fashionably ruffled and you could tell she liked herself. She had a bunch of house keys dangling from her fingers, so I guessed she lived in one of the farmhouses. She might know something.

  ‘Yea. My boyfriend was in the crash but nobody knows what happened to him.’

  Boyfriend sounded so silly. So like time had stood still and this old woman I had become still thought about herself hand in hand with Jimmy Jones. I wished I had said husband or partner. What would one more lie matter now? She nodded and looked at me hard.

  ‘Jimmy Jones?’

  I was flabbergasted. I hadn’t heard his name said by someone else for decades. Some else had acknowledged his existence.

  ‘Yea. How did you...?’

  She put her hand on my arm.

  ‘I’m a psychic. I’ve been waiting for you, Polly.’

  The same obsession I had felt about Jimmy and the moor turned in that moment to Sarah. I forgot about the poor dead walker and the steady flow of nosey people trampling my flowers and scaring my animals in the weeks following and turned my attention to Sarah. I forgot about not being able to park near my spot for rubberneckers and not being able to get a seat in the café for bloody news reporters. I went to her house for tea. She made me think we were friends and that she really had been waiting for me. Then, after about a week, she mentioned a cost.

  It was five hundred pounds. She would come out onto the moor with me and show me some ‘spots’. She would make some maps for me. I already had maps and I didn’t have five hundred pounds, so she offered to do a ‘reading’ in her house for two-hundred and fifty. I weighed it up and I could afford that, so I agreed.

  When I went home that day there was a letter waiting for m
e. The week previous I’d been to the doctors for a check-up. My hearing was going – well, I was eighty-odd, I’ve been going on here like I was in my fifties – and I kept getting headache. They’d taken some blood and the letter told me to go in the next day for the results.

  But it would have to wait. This business with Sarah had made me realise that I was on the brink of discovery at last. It was funny really. Every day when I woke up I thought I was lucky. I’d outlived everyone I knew. I still bought the Stockport Reporter and I’d watched the obituaries of all Jimmy’s brothers and sisters fly by. All my aunties and uncles. I never knew any cousins because no one would have anything to do with me mam and dad. Even Connie and Teddy were gone, and both their kids and their grandkids lived in Australia.

  So I was completely alone, but I kept going. Yes, traipsing over the moor every day was hard and if the weather was bad I would go up to one of the villages instead. But what else was there to do? So I just kept on best I could. Admittedly, I’d been more tired lately and started watching Coronation Street in bed. And more than once lately I’d forgot to go shopping and hardly eaten anything. I’d read in the paper that you eat less when you’re old and that was certainly true. I couldn’t manage much at all lately. But what did it matter to anyone? Once that door was closed, I was no one else’s business.

  Or so I thought.

  Betrayal

  I was so excited about Sarah that I nearly forgot to go to the doctors. And I wish I had really. I saw Dr Raynor, who is very nice, but a bit bossy.

  ‘You need to take it easy, Polly. All that running around isn’t doing you any good. Look, I need you to go for a scan. Just to check up. Some of your blood readings are high.’

  I wasn’t listening really. I was going through every possibility of what Sarah could tell me. Debating whether it was, as Colin would have said ‘a crock’ or if there was something in it. I took the scan card and went straight there. Why wait? I didn’t even look at the screen as the nurse ran the scanner over the jelly on my tummy. I wouldn’t know the results for a couple of weeks probably, they said. By that time I would have seen Sarah.

  But when I got up the next morning there was a knock on the door. It struck me that whoever it was waited until my front room light went on. I peeped out of the curtains and it was a blonde woman. I would have pretended not to be in, but she saw me. So I opened the door. Big mistake.

  ‘Polly? I’m Catherine. I’m a social worker. Dr Raynor sent me. You went to see her yesterday?’

  I nodded and pulled my housecoat around me.

  ‘Right. Only I just got up.’

  She came in.

  ‘I’ll wait until you get dressed if you want?’

  I went upstairs and got dressed slowly. I’d show her. Brushed my teeth and combed my hair. She had waited.

  ‘Right then Polly. I just want you to know what you’re entitled to. Help wise.’

  We both looked around. It was a bit messy. Papers and things everywhere. Not like when Colin was here. My drawings pinned on the walls. Full ashtrays.

  ‘I’m alright. All this. I’ve been very busy.’

  She stood and looked at my drawings.

  ‘These are very good. You should get them framed. Who did them?’

  I shook my head. Was it so unbelievable that I had done them?

  ‘Me. I did them. It’s my hobby. That’s where I go every day.’

  She sat back down and got out a booklet.

  ‘So there are a number of options. You can have a home help. They’ll come in and help.’ I snorted. No shit sherlock, I thought and laughed. But she wasn’t laughing. ‘Or then there is residential living.’

  She handed me the leaflet with six grinning pensioners on the front. They were in different states of disability and in a sterile white room with a few plants. She looked at me hopefully.

  ‘They provide all your meals.’

  I nodded.

  ‘But would I be able to go out every day. In my car?’

  She looked shocked.

  ‘You’re still driving?’

  I sensed danger and hit back.

  ‘Yes. I took my re-test at seventy-five and when I needed to afterwards. I’ve never had an accident. Look. What is this? I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  Unless not tidying up every day is suddenly crime of the century I laughed to myself. But she didn’t think anything was funny.

  ‘Nothing wrong, but we have a duty of care to make sure you are alright. Dr Raynor is just doing her job.’

  I am not stupid. I have learned over the years that being obstinate and proud isn’t always the right way. Meeting people in the middle often is.

  ‘Well I suppose I could do with someone here to... help. How much would it cost?’

  She looked pleased and wrote it down.

  ‘It varies.’

  She handed me the leaflet with three options. I chose the middle one. Someone coming in three days a week. I could afford it. And I would have even more time to go out. She went away looking very pleased with herself.

  In the afternoon I went and sold my wedding ring. I got three hundred quid for it. Two hundred and fifty for Sarah and fifty quid for petrol and cake. I treated myself to a jam and cream scone in the café but I couldn’t finish it. I put it in my bag for the birds later. I’d brought some reminders back from the moor and put them in my yard and some little starlings came in to have a look.

  Then I went up to Sarah’s. It was the busiest day for ages and I was tired when I got there. She had it all set out very nice. Tea pot and china cups. A thick red tablecloth. Her house was every bit as affected as she was. Trying too hard, if you ask me.

  She sat down and did a tarot reading. She told me a lot of things about Jimmy’s family that could be true or not, but the thing that got me was that she seemed to know about our deep connection. She told me she could sense it from me. The she could see it in me and Jimmy was on the other side reflecting it back.

  She told me she had a Connie on the other side for me. That we could go dancing when I passed over at the club. With Colin and Teddy. Then came the main part. She told me that Jimmy wanted to say something and she went very weird. She started to talk in a deep voice and I believed Jimmy was telling me where he was.

  I’m here, Polly. I’m on the moor. I didn’t suffer. They didn’t find me because I was at the front. I know it’s horrible love, but I didn’t feel anything. But I’m there. I’m in the soil and everywhere. And Sarah’s here now to connect us. You can talk to me anytime.

  I remember crying and getting my hanky out.

  ‘Look, Jimmy, I didn’t know what happened. So I married Colin. But I never forgot you. Never’

  I know Polly. It’s fine. I wouldn’t have expected you to wait. And I’m watching over you every day on the moor. Walking every day. Thank you for that. I’m with you.

  It was heart breaking. As far as I was concerned he was in the room with me. I talked to him for about half an hour and I can’t remember what I said. All about Annie and Jack and his brothers and sisters and how we all had loved him. About my parents dying and all sorts.

  Course, I realise now that everything Sarah said to me was public knowledge. It turned out she knew a lot of the families. She’d been ‘connecting’ them for years. She would have known a lot about the crash – she would have made it her business too. She could have found out about Jimmy from the papers and the inquest – the passenger list was published, and it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. And all about Colin and Connie and Teddy from his obituary and funeral notice. A little bit of research goes a long way and if she was charging two hundred and fifty quid a go then it’s nice work if you can get it.

  But people get hope where they can, don’t they? I suppose I knew I was poorly, really. Things had gone downhill quickly and I had lost some weight. My legs felt shaky traipsing through the heather and I was very, very tired. I needed all the hope I could get, and Sarah was conveniently there to bolster me up.


  That day when I left Sarah’s house and drove home I was flying high. I felt nineteen again and I stopped at the chippy for a fish supper. The last of the big spenders! But I thought that puzzle was fitting. I thought I was near to the truth. The one place I hadn’t looked was the wreckage itself. The likelihood of finding anything was low, I knew that, but even if I just had some of the soil to bring home I would be happy. Well, not happy. Satisfied. Closure. I’d known for a long time that it was how it was left at the inquest, the implication that he was somewhere else with another life and had never got on the plane that had fuelled my obsession. But I wasn’t going to change at that late stage.

  My well embedded genes had kicked in long ago and I huddled around the spirit world with Sarah. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em as my mother said.

  These Foolish Thing Remind Me of You

  I had intended to get up as usual at 6am and drive up there. I was dead beat from tidying up before the home help came – isn’t it funny how people do that. Clean before the cleaner comes. It’s because we care what people think more than we realise.

  I had it all planned. One of the crash victims, the young child who had survived, had written and article about it recently. It’d been published in the bloody la-de-da Guardian, of all places. Photos of my moor with my plants and birds. Riding on the infamy of the dead hiker, raking it all up again. I had the article on my wall and I was going to go up onto the moor then go and see her and tell her my story. Tell her that it wasn’t all about her and there was another mystery. All this with my new sense of bravado for ‘talking to Jimmy’.