Grave Misgivings

by Caroline Wood

  ‘I asked you to mind your language,’ she said, ‘but as you only seem to know the one swearword, I don’t suppose you can say anything different, can you?’

  The drunk looked confused. His face began a frown that was replaced by a lopsided smile. He was about to reply but she carried on. ‘Don’t you say another word,’ she said. ‘You just go and sit down and keep quiet. Understand?’ She stared at him.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he said.

  Something snapped in her, something hot and fierce. She snatched the can out of his hand. People started to get out of their seats. She heard someone ask if she was all right.

  ‘Oh, I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve got three boys of my own; I’m not worried about a little toddler like this, throwing a tantrum.’ She dropped the can on the floor. ‘And one of my boys could give you a few effing good tips on swearing as well, sonny,’ she said and sat down. The small crowd led the drunk away.

  She shook her head, stunned at what she had just done. Not the stupid Mummy now, am I? She thought. She imagined Joseph’s reaction when she told him. He would probably laugh, tell her she’d fallen asleep and dreamt the whole thing. This would go down in family history as one of those tales that are told and re-told; each person’s version sounding as if they had been there, seen all the action. But she couldn’t let that happen, not on this occasion, not now. She wouldn’t turn this angry outburst into a funny story, told to make herself look like the game old lady standing up to the youth of today. That hadn’t been what it was about. What she’d done had come from her heart. It had been genuine, straightforward and honest. For the first time in years, she hadn’t filtered her response through layers of fear about who would think what, or what the consequences might be. She had been herself. If she made this into an amusing, batty old lady story, she would simply be giving a different performance of the stupid mum act. No, she wouldn’t let this be another distraction from the pain they’d all lived with.

  If she could stand up to an anonymous young drunk on a train, on her own, in the middle of the night, she could talk to her sons as adults. It was what they deserved. My lovely gentle Joseph, always wanting to make things better – so sensitive and kind; my lovely Daniel who bottles things up but puts on a happy face – he must feel so lost and sad about the divorce; and my lovely Matthew. My troubled, broken, drifting boy; that awful condition making his life so hard, and all the time he’s spent in and out of hospitals. I can’t go shouting at strangers on trains if I’m not even going to talk to my own sons. She looked at her reflection. It was hazy through her tears, but she could make out the weak smile on her lips. What if that young lad has got a Smart Alec for a dad as well? she thought. He might even have that Tourette's thing, like my Matthew. I might have just told him off for doing exactly what my own son does. The familiar anxiety of having done the wrong thing started to prod at her. She shook herself and sat up straighter in the seat. I’m not going to keep making excuses for other people. Not any more.

  Before the train stopped, she checked her purse for change. I can ring Joseph from the station, she thought. At the station, she went straight to the ladies. She knew Alec would be waiting outside in the car, his lips pursed and his fingers drumming impatiently on the steering-wheel. She put her bag down and took off her best brown coat. It felt limp and the worn fabric had no substance, no weight. It had been a good, warm coat when she’d first had it; heavy and thick enough to keep out the winter winds. She went inside a cubicle and hung the coat on the back of the door. I’ve had enough of that old thing, she thought. She left her bag of clothes on the floor of the ladies and went to find a telephone.

  ‘Sorry to get you out of bed, love,’ she said to Joseph. ‘I won’t stop long; your Dad’s waiting in the car. But I just wanted to tell you …’ she faltered, cleared her throat and carried on. ‘I can’t leave him helpless on his own.’

  ‘Mum, we’ve been through all this,’ Joseph said, his sleepy voice had a pleading sound. ‘I can’t make you leave — ’

  She cut in. ‘No, that’s what I wanted to tell you, love. I’ll show him how to look after himself first. Show him how to boil an egg.'

  * Grave Misgivings *

  ‘Just my luck,’ she’d say if she could still speak. ‘You work hard all your life, grind your fingers to the bone,’ she tries to move her hands in that irritated way she’d had, ‘and is this all the thanks you get?’ There is no reply, which is what had often happened when she’d been alive. No-one had dared to answer. Now though, the silence has a quality of stillness and depth she hadn’t known before – it is like a huge expanse of cold water; heavy and impenetrable. There is no movement, no distant hum of traffic, no sound at all – nothing but this mass of quietness, and this immense, motionless weight.

  She thought of winter nights when she was a child, trapped under too many blankets, unable to move and still too cold to sleep. And she remembered waking up at the barred window, having walked in her sleep again, her bare feet numb; her thin nightgown brushing against her shivering legs. She would stare at the flat darkness of a starless sky and be terrified by the never-ending blackness, the utter loneliness of that vast space. Now, once again, she is surrounded by a dense emptiness. She is engulfed by this permanent silence and infinite dark weight, and there are no suggestions of its borders, no clues to its end. It makes no difference that she is so confined and unable to move – she senses that the blackness outside the coffin is much the same as that inside it. There will simply be more of it; more than she can imagine.

  Her expression is one of fixed disapproval – the sour look from her life has remained after her death and she is happy with this, in a grudging sort of way. The look is the result of her inner satisfaction that things are going badly, and that life is just as grim as she’d always suspected – or in this case, that death is. It’s a look that says, I told you so. A look she perfected for those that knew and feared her, and a look that she has brought with her to this unendingly quiet place. If she has to be dead, she thinks, she wants her distaste stamped clearly on her lifeless features. And it is – for no-one to see, it is.

  There’s been no fussing or messing about by undertakers for her – none of that waxy-looking make-up and contrived serenity done to make the relatives feel better. They would have been shocked to see her looking like that anyway. Even if clever mortuary techniques could have produced a tranquil and contented appearance, no-one would have believed it. Instead, there would have been startled glances and questions about whether they’d got the right corpse. No, this was how she wanted it. This was how it should be – her usual impatience and intolerance grimacing up into the nothingness above. Once, a long time ago, she had shown a softer face to the world. She thought back to the shy, naive young woman she’d been, how readily she’d smiled at strangers, at anyone. And how that one stranger had turned her smile to a frozen glare, rarely to be thawed again.

  Her lips, now only a shade paler than when she had been alive, are pressed together in the same thin, straight lines. Her face tells more of a story than she would ever divulge, and she hates this, always did. She’d wanted to hide behind this mask of scowling distaste, disapproval and contempt. Her mouth is an equal sign drawn above her chin and displays the arithmetic of her life; the adding and subtraction that has taken place over the years. Her eyes, now staring flatly ahead, had stopped strangers in their tracks during her life. The laser-beams of her light grey glare had skewered innocent shop assistants, people standing in bus queues, car park attendants, anyone who crossed her path. And if any of them had tried to melt her harsh gaze with a smile, they were frozen to the spot by her withering stare. Like a blast of dry ice, it would hit them full force and form instant icicles inside their skulls. Reeling, they would scurry off and wonder what they had done. They could never know that they’d almost pierced the protective mask she used to frighten away the world she’d felt had excluded her.

  Now, she pierces the coffin lid with those same furious and a
ccusing looks – beaming them upwards into the damp earth above her, through the slab of stone pinning her down, and into the atmosphere around her grave. If any visitors stand above, they will pick up these fierce transmissions, although will have no idea what is happening to them. They’ll be dazed by those stinging sensations, then they will hurry away to shake off the toxins of the dead; return to the world of the living with its colour, movement and noise. And they will try to ignore the waves of guilt that break against their stubbornly retreating backs. Try to switch off the nagging feeling of having done something wrong.

  It had been the same in her life – this ability to inspire in others a sinking feeling that they had somehow let her down or caused harm; a certainty that they had in some way offended or upset her. This hasn’t been weakened at all by her death, and if it now pervades the air above her grave and hangs there, waiting for passers-by, that has nothing to do with her. She has no sympathy for the recipients. She hasn’t asked to die, so if her spiteful emissions have to strike at random now, then it’s of no concern to her. In any case, most of those on the receiving end will deserve it in one way or another. They’ll be too lazy, too cheerful, or not burdened by misfortune or ill-health. They may simply be at peace with themselves – happy and content with their lives in a way that she never could be. Not after they took her baby away.

  Her vibrations will stir and disturb them. Although it’s not as rewarding as the direct hits she’d made in life, she supposes she'll have to put up with the way things are now. She’s always been good at enduring discomfort. Good at playing the martyr. Now, in this constant darkness, she admits to herself that some of it has been self-inflicted – quite a lot of it, she now sees. What she can’t unravel is why she’d needed to be the way she was – so cold and hostile and closed off. That would be far too painful to examine, especially in this eternal silence.

  Prolonged hostility, cruel remarks and dark accusations had been her specialities in her later life – she’d brought misery to her husband and children. As they did to her, it has to be remembered. They never understood her, of course – she couldn’t allow them to. It was safer to keep them all at arm’s length; further. Give them the same hard-faced, hard-hearted façade she’d given the rest of the world after that stranger had used her innocent smile against her, had left her pregnant and alone for her family to reject.

  Ill-will rises up from her like steam and penetrates the layers of soil as it settles and compacts down on her. She fumes and rages in silent resentment. The coffin fills with bitterness, her familiar aura, and she senses some pleasure from imagining her fingers tapping on the cold wooden base – that impatient, irritated movement she’d so often signalled to others around her when she was alive. Now she thinks out this Morse code rattle to the visitors above and hopes it makes them uncomfortable. It is intended for all of them, any of them – the visitors to her own grave and those who have come to stand above more peaceful souls. They all deserve it, she feels sure they do.

  She thinks back to the smile on her baby’s face. How she has remembered it all through her life and sees it just as clearly now she is dead. He has grown up not knowing her, this lost child. He has been the adored son of another mother, another father. She had tried to recreate that moment she’d spent with her baby although she’d always known it wasn’t possible to feel the same ever again. That feeling of new warmth and completion, that strong pull of connection; the aching love that had overwhelmed her – it had been such a short episode of her life, but so crammed with joy, love, loss and shame. It had felt like a living death after that – when they took her baby out of her arms that day, she’d stopped being fully alive. She’d put her mask on that day and had never taken it off. Now she never can.

  The molten lava of shame that her family poured on her had cooled and set into a hard crust that no-one could ever chip into. The memory of her baby’s face, smiling up at her, was locked in her heart, protected from anyone who might damage it. She’s hidden her secret son from the world and used her talent for venom, spite and wounding words as revenge for his loss. She never saw him again. She never knew what happened to him. So she has chilled, disturbed and upset as many people as she could. It is only now that she regrets some of this – only now she can see that not everyone would have taken her baby away from her. Not everyone would have condoned such a wicked, senseless separation. And many of them would have tried to give her back the love she’d known with him, if she could have let them. Now, enclosed in her dark coffin, and surrounded by further darkness, she can look again at some of the people who tried to melt her ice. And she will probably dismiss them just as she did when she was alive. But perhaps she will have to admit to herself, deep down, that they did at least try.

  Disapproval burns in her cold heart, as she pictures pathetic bunches of flowers laid by friends and relatives on the stone rectangles above.

  ‘Bloody waste of money,’ she’d say if she could. ‘They shouldn’t bother with all those expensive flowers – it’s all done out of guilt anyway.’ And she may be right. But if visitors didn’t come with their dutiful bouquets, didn’t lay them quickly on the cold grey slabs before marching back to their lives, she would complain and criticise even more bitterly. The living couldn’t get it right when she had been alive. They stand no chance now she is dead. This almost makes her smile. Almost.

  About the Author

  Thank you for reading my short stories. I hope you've enjoyed them. I'd love to hear what you think - please let me know.

  If you liked Grave Misgivings, you may also like my novel, Noah Quince.

  Darkly comic and disturbing, Noah Quince is the story of obsession, control and a misguided search for love.

  Terrifying discoveries in his house, rumours about his absent, ancient neighbour and the mysterious disappearance of little boys, cause Noah's life to spin out of control. His ordered existence begins to unravel into chaos, fear and madness.

  Although undeserving of friends, Noah is offered loyalty and kindness by Helen and Godfrey, but can they save him from himself?

  And what's in the cupboard under Noah Quince's stairs?

  Laughter collides with fear as Noah's story seeps into your reluctant consciousness.