‘I went to the funeral. I couldn’t risk trying to get into the cathedral, so I stood in the crowd in St Joseph’s Square. A lot of people recognized me. They kept coming up and shaking my hand. The service was relayed from the cathedral. There wasn’t any trouble. It was very respectful. Moving, I suppose. A lot of people were crying, men as well as women. After the service they drove the hearse round the Square, very slowly, while people crowded to touch it, and then they halted in front of the palace while the mayor made an oration from the balcony. It was supposed to have been Otto, but he’d cried off. The poor old mayor didn’t make much of an oration, in fact he had trouble getting the words out, he was so choked.
‘That took pretty well all morning, and then they drove out to Talosh to bury him in the family grave, and absolutely anybody who had a car or could hitch a lift drove out after them to watch. I went with nine other people in the old doctor’s car. We couldn’t get near the church because of the jam – the road’s just one-track – and I wasn’t up to walking the last half-mile. It was very hot and still. The grapes were just getting ripe in the vineyards. There were hundreds – oh, I don’t know, maybe thousands – of us out there among the scrub and the boulders in that belting sun, watching those tiny figures down in the graveyard. Far too far off to hear anything. Grasshoppers and cicadas buzzing away. I don’t believe anybody moved a muscle or said a word all the time they were by the grave.
‘Then the bigwigs left and the men began filling in the earth and we all went down and filed past the grave in silence. My friends took turns to carry me, but they put me down at the entrance and I hobbled past on my own. We’d all picked up a handful of earth or a few pebbles on the hillside, and as we went past the grave, we added it to the mound. I felt that everybody in all Varina was with us, moving quietly past and saying thank you.’
‘I wish I’d been there.’
‘You were, Sis. You were.’
Neither of them spoke for a while. Letta was crying, but somehow not with grief. Van left her alone, not trying to help or comfort her till she was ready.
Downstairs the front door slammed. A moment later Momma’s voice called up, ‘Van! Van! Is he back? Where are you?’
‘Left my knapsack in the hall,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’
‘I want to know how you got out. And everything else.’
‘OK. I’ll be back.’
He eased himself onto his feet and limped to the door, but turned with his hand on the handle.
‘Must be tea-time,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a memorial banquet. Got any crumpets?’
Next morning, because it was the first day of term, Letta left early. The postman was coming up the steps as she opened the front door.
‘One for you,’ he said. ‘Fancy stamp, too.’
It was from Parvla. Letta opened it as she walked up the hill. Several sheets of the slanting, dutifully looped handwriting. (Parvla thought Letta’s neat italic very odd and tricky to read.) A photograph, a bit out of focus, gaudy colours, flowers, brown bits, a white cross with writing on it, nothing making sense. Of course not, she’d got it upside down.
She turned it and it became a mound, a grave, dug out of sun-parched soil among yellow tussocks of grass which she could hardly see because all the space around was covered with wreaths and sheaves of gladioli, carnations, and gaudy daisy-shaped things. The photograph must have been taken the day after Van had been there, because the flowers were already shrivelling with the heat. The cross was not on the mound but a bit to one side. It didn’t look official, and Van hadn’t mentioned it. Somebody had nailed two bits of wood together, driven the upright into the ground and written three words on the cross-piece, one middling, one short and one long. Because the focus was slightly blurred, Letta wouldn’t have been able to read them if she hadn’t known what they must be.
Restaur Vax. Anastrondaitu.
Why that? What did it mean? Somebody wishing Grandad had been forgotten? Surely not, unless . . . yes, perhaps, for his sake at least, that he’d been left in peace, to die in peace, far away in Winchester. That’s how Momma would have read it, anyway.
Or perhaps it wasn’t about Grandad at all, but about his name, and the other Restaur Vax, and everything that went with them, the whole marvellous, bitter, deceitful past. That? Only last night there’d been a programme about Croatia, smashed towns, refugees, lives that had lost their meaning, all because of things that had been said and done long, long ago. And not just Croatia. All round the world the same. If only this, or that, or that, had not been remembered!
Did she think so too, Letta, in safe England, walking up the hill to start a new term at the same old school? No past at all? No memories? No Field, no Formal, no dancing the sundilla? No Legends, no ‘Stream at Urya’, no songs about boastful shepherds, no dumbris, not even the word itself on Grandad’s grave?
No. Somehow it still had to be worth it. You can’t have everybody the same. That was what Ceauşescu had wanted, wasn’t it? So somehow it had to be worth it.
But anastrondaitu.
It pierced her to the heart.
THE END
About the Author
Peter Dickinson was born in Africa, but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff of Punch, and since then has earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for adults and children.
Amongst many other awards, Peter Dickinson has been nine times short-listed for the prestigious Carnegie medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice. His books for children have also been published in many languages throughout the world. His latest collection of short stories, Earth and Air, was published by Small Beer Press.
Peter Dickinson was the first author to win the Crime-Writers Golden Dagger for two books running: Skin Deep (1968), and A Pride of Heroes (1969). He has written twenty-one crime and mystery novels, which have been published in several languages.
He has been chairman of the Society of Authors and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2009.
Also by Peter Dickinson
Eva
A Bone From A Dry Sea
Tulku
Chuck and Danielle
SHADOW OF A HERO
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17262 7
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
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This ebook edition published 2012
Copyright © Peter Dickinson, 1996
First Published in Great Britain
Corgi Childrens 1996
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